Breaking into this thing would be a major undertaking which would involve some serious equipment, a lot of noise, and way more time than I wanted to spend committing a felony. As I had to remind Julie Patchouli—even though Billie Joe is an asshole, even though the contents of this vault are illegal items, even though he owes you money, peeling a safe in a private home is actually a crime, and you can go to jail for it.
Tearing this thing apart was out of the question, although I wasn’t ready to blow it off. We just need a different approach, I told her. I looked at the gun collection. There were two pistols, two shotguns—a pretty nice Ithaca twelve-gauge pump in a custom case and a sawed-off 410 snake charmer, and a .30-30 hunting rifle. One of the pistols was a .38 Special with a box of
