Jack Reacher 01 - Killing Floor

were stacked side by side against the end wall. Identical to the empty boxes I’d seen at Sherman Stoller’s new house. Island Air-conditioning, Inc. But these were still sealed with tape. They had long handwritten serial numbers. I took a good look at them. According to those numbers, there was a hundred thousand dollars in each box.
    Finlay and I stood there looking at the boxes. Just staring at them. Then I walked over and rocked one out from the wall. Took out Morrison’s knife and popped the blade. Pushed the point under the sealing tape and slit the top open. Pulled up the flaps on the top and pushed the box over.
    It landed with a dusty thump on the concrete floor. An avalanche of paper money poured out. Cash fluttered over the floor. A mass of paper money. Thousands and thousands of dollar bills. A river of singles, some new, some crumpled, some in thick rolls, some in wide bricks, some loose and fluttering. The carton spilled its contents and the flood tide of cash reached Finlay’s polished shoes. He crouched down and plunged his hands into the lake of money. He grabbed two random fistfuls of cash and held them up. The tiny garage was dim. Just a small dirty windowpane letting in the pale morning light. Finlay stayed down on the floor with his big hands full of dollar bills. We looked at the money and we looked at each other.
    “How much was in there?” Finlay asked.
    I kicked the box over to find the handwritten number. More cash spilled out and fluttered over the floor.
    “Nearly a hundred thousand,” I told him.
    “What about the other one?” he said.
    I looked over at the other box. Read the long hand written number.
    “A hundred grand plus change,” I said. “Must be packed tighter.”
    He shook his head. Dropped the dollar bills and started swishing his hands through the pile. Then he got up and started kicking it around. Like a kid does with fall leaves. I joined him. We were laughing and kicking great sprays of cash all over the place. The air was thick with it. We were whooping and slapping each other on the back. We were smacking high tens and dancing around in a hundred thousand dollars on a garage floor.

    FINLAY REVERSED THE BENTLEY UP TO THE GARAGE DOOR . I kicked the cash into piles and started stuffing it back into the air conditioner box. It wouldn’t all go in. Problem was the tight rolls and bricks had sprung apart. It was just a mess of loose dollar bills. I stood the box upright and crushed the money down as far as I could, but it was hopeless. I must have left about thirty grand on the garage floor.
    “We’ll take the sealed box,” Finlay said. “Come back for the rest later.”
    “It’s a drop in the bucket,” I said. “We should leave it for the old folks. Like a pension fund. An inheritance from their boy.”
    He thought about it. Shrugged, like it didn’t matter. The cash was just lying around like litter. There was so much of it, it didn’t seem like anything at all.
    “OK,” he said.
    We dragged the sealed box out into the morning light. Heaved it into the Bentley’s trunk. It wasn’t easy. The box was very heavy. A hundred thousand dollars weighs about two hundred pounds. We rested up for a moment, panting. Then we shut the garage door. Left the other hundred grand in there.
    “I’m going to call Picard,” Finlay said.
    He went back into the old couple’s house to borrow their phone. I leaned against the Bentley’s warm hood and enjoyed the morning sun. Two minutes, he was back out again.
    “Got to go to his office,” he said. “Strategy conference.”
    He drove. He threaded his way out of the untidy maze of little streets toward the center. Spun the big Bakelite wheel and headed for the towers.
    “OK,” he said. “You proved it to me. Tell me how you figured it.”
    I squirmed around in the big leather seat to face him.
    “I wanted to check Joe’s list,” I said. “That punctuation thing with the Stollers’ garage. But the list had gotten soaked in chlorinated water. All the writing had bleached off.”
    He glanced across.
    “You put it together from that?” he said.
    I shook my head.
    “I got it from the Senate report,” I said. “There were a couple of little paragraphs. One was about an old scam in Bogotá. There was another about an operation in Lebanon years ago. They were doing the same thing, bleaching real dollar bills so they could reprint the blank paper.”
    Finlay ran a red light. Glanced over at me.
    “So Kliner’s