We Should Have a Word for It

 

When the Heat Dies Down - Flash Fiction by John Scheck

 Me and Jim fixed one of the ladies’ toilets at some art museum, and the bastards had our van towed while we was working. They denied it, but who else woulda? They shoulda apologized for the mistake. Cost more than they paid us to get our vehicle out of the yard, so we worked for free. Wanted revenge on them hoity snoots and got it. Maybe we went a little overboard, but that’s water under the bridge.

Couple weeks later, the evening of Saint Paddy’s, just happened we was in a bar near the museum after stumbling out of Southie at some point in the revelries.

“This is the last beer,” Jim said. “My wife’s already gonna kill me.”

Heading out the door, we saw a bunch of police jackets and hats hanging by the door so we each put one on, just joking around, even found handcuffs—no guns, not that we woulda took’em. We walked out as cops. We was a little lost, then turned the corner and there it was: the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

“Let’s mess with these rich pricks,” Jim said.

I wanted my money back for the towing as bad as anyone, but what the hell could we do at one in the morning after Saint Paddy’s? Jim must’ve already thought about this, at least since becoming a cop five minutes earlier. He walked right up to the service door and rang the bell. We told the guard we was cops and he buzzed us in. The rest is history, as they say.

We cuffed both guards and wandered around inside for a bit, still deciding what to do. I woulda been happy finding the cash to pay the towing, but Jim said we might as well grab some art while’s in a art museum. Made sense.

“We need to teach them a valuable lesson: never mess with a man’s vehicle.”

We took our sweet time, grabbing some things we thought looked cool, like the dudes in the boat in a storm cuz we both fished and had our share of rough seas.

After getting what we wanted, Jim pulled his car around. We loaded it all up and vamoosed, then stowed the loot in his garage. We was still drunk when we got home, but we both been a lot drunker on this holiday. Not much of a hangover when I got up later that afternoon but another kind of hangover hit hard when I read the headline in The Boston Globe that evening.

“$200m Gardner Museum art theft” was the headline in the Globe. About shit myself. Jim called me not long after I read it.

“Meet me in my garage,” was all he said.

Even back then, we knowed not to say nothing on the phone.

“It doesn’t look like the cops have any idea who did it,” Jim said first thing when I got there. “They suspect it’s ‘organized crime.’ Got a laugh out of that.”

I suggested we dump everything, let someone find it.

“Screw that.” Jim said, vetoing my suggestion. “You forgetting they towed the van?”

I didn’t, so we decided just to sit on the paintings, sell them when the heat died down and everyone forgot about it.

“That couldn’t take too long, right?”

“A few months,” I said. “But I’m putting the boat painting up in my bedroom, gift for the wife, least till we sell it.”

“Then I got dibs on the Vermeer, The Concert, like the paper calls it.”

We measured both and went out the next day and bought frames. We shoulda waited, but cops probably wasn’t looking for someone stupid enough to buy frames for $200 million in stolen paintings the next day, right? Hiding in plain sight, or reverse psychology, or whatever you call it.

We got fourteen artworks in Jim’s garage with the other two hanging in our bedrooms. She can’t tell no one, but the wife likes the idea of a Rembrandt in her house. Consider the towing charge as rent on the paintings.

Twenty-six years later, the heat ain’t died down none, and we got a $5m reward on our heads.

Still, heist of the century? My ass.

 Afterword: The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum art theft occurred on March 18, 1990, when two men disguised as police officers entered the museum, subdued the security guards, and stole artworks valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The stolen works included pieces by artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer, and Edgar Degas, making it the largest unsolved art theft in history by estimated value. Despite three and a half decades of investigation and a substantial reward, none of the stolen pieces have been recovered.

Lines in the Sand - John Scheck

 

Lines in the Sand

John Scheck 

 “Lines in the Sand” continues seamlessly from La Frontera Saga. Ax and the Brotherhood—the murderous biker gang that carved a bloody path across the borderlands—have expanded their gun-theft operation, bringing them into collision once again with narcos, corrupt officials, and federal agents.

DEA agent Juan Rodríguez and ATF agent Cliff Owens are drawn into a storm of kidnappings, cartel warfare, and shifting loyalties, relying on intelligence from unlikely sources, including Vicente Morales, a trusted Sinaloa insider.

At the center of the chaos stands Diego Valverde, a Spaniard determined to transform cartel wealth into schools, infrastructure, and opportunity. His vision offers hope in a land scarred by violence—but also paints a target on his back.

As Colonel Ignacio García and his elite soldiers wage a relentless war against the cartels, alliances fracture, corruption spreads, and survival becomes uncertain.

A fast-moving, violent, darkly funny border thriller where every alliance has a price—and every line in the sand is meant to be crossed.

Criminal Code

 Available on Amazon

   When the elite legal firms of Beverly Hills need problems erased for their most select clients, not argued in court or boardrooms, they contract downward to lesser law offices—ethically compromised “ambulance chasers” with no qualms about getting their hands dirty. Shadowy intermediaries are summoned like genies and the best of these is Tag, a veteran fixer with a brutal past, a dark personal code, and a clear warning to clients: vengeance comes at a cost they may not be able to afford in the end. But in Los Angeles, the rich are used to getting what they want, making Tag a very busy and rich man.

   Contracted for a devastating act of retribution against Walter Greene, a Hollywood mogul with a dark legacy of sexual abuse, Tag penetrates Greene’s guarded world to exact the revenge his client sought, winning a battle but starting a war. Far from learning his lesson, Greene enlists his own fixer. Morgan is competent, detached, and even more ruthless. But instead of two champions from mythology facing off, like David and Goliath, or Achilles and Hector, Tag and Morgan don’t see themselves as enemies but friendly competitors in an illicit market that’s booming.

   What follows is a shadowy war of revenge and spiraling violence, well outside the boundaries of the law and society.

Recipe Accident

   File under "waste not, want not."

  Here’s a recipe that happened by accident. I had a few spare vegetables lying around: three carrots, an onion, one zucchini, and a quarter head of cabbage—I had zero garlic in the house. I cut them up and put them in salted water with pimentón dulce. I turned the heat way down, then went to my office to work.

   I set the stopwatch on my phone so I could keep on eye on the time. I was so into what I was doing that I let it cook for a bit over an hour when I was thinking that twenty minutes should have been sufficient. I was surprised that none of the vegetables were mushy after all this time, but the flame was super low. I zipped this up with my stick blender.

    I was bowled over by how good this simple broth came out. Although the ingredients to my mistake aren't the same, I could say this dish was based loosely on a simple dish here called hervido valenciano, only because I was talking about this with a friend the day before.