Chapter 67: The Safe that Jake couldn't Crack
Jake is called upon to open some abandoned safes, but one proves more than his talented paws can handle.
***EVERYONE STAY HEALTHY & WASH THOSE PAWS***
Of all the city's uniquely different districts, the two that the raccoon named Jake Runnel least enjoyed visiting were Tundratown, with its chilling temperatures and snow, and the Rainforest District, because it is wet. He stood there in the Rainforest all alone in the pouring rain with only his umbrella offering him some protection, but his tail was still soaked wet by the sprinklers above. In front of him was a vine-covered warehouse, a tin sided building that had been quarantined off with bright yellow plastic police tape. The raccoon was in a bad mood as he stood there clutching his umbrella and a large black canvas satchel.
There was the sound of crunching gravel behind him and turned to see a familiar red fox in a police uniform behind the wheel of a black and white police cruiser as it drove towards him. Next to the fox was a tiger in a blue suit sitting in the passenger seat.
"I'm wet!" the raccoon complained when the fox named Nick Wilde rolled down the car's window.
"Quit whining and get in the car," Nick scoffed back. "It will be worth your time."
With a grunt, Jake tossed his black bag into the back of the cruiser and claimed inside, frowning as he looked around.
"What's the matter, Runnel?" the tiger asked with a snicker. "Are you not used to being back there without cuffs on?"
"Not funny, Detective Fangmeyer!" the raccoon snapped back. "Besides, you have never owned a pair of pawcuffs that I couldn't pick. So what am I doing here of all the damned places?"
Before Nick could answer, Fangmeyer suddenly asked, "Geeze Runnel, your right eye is swollen are you okay?"
"Jake got a black eye," Nick answered for the raccoon. "His father-in-law punched him for letting Marie get cut up by that crazy skunk."
"How can you tell if a raccoon has a black eye?" the tiger asked. "I mean, how can you tell with that black fur mask?"
"He forcefully reminded me that I had promised to keep Marie and the boys safe, but then that nut job Sarah Winstead broke out of the psycho ward at the jail and made a beeline for my family. She almost got them too." Jake answered.
"Marie's dad may have a point, just how many times has someone tried to kill you since we first met?" the tiger asked.
"Not that many!" Jake protested.
"There was that nutty priest who tried to sacrifice you to his snake god," Fangmeyer called out. "Then there was LePew, which makes two."
"Don't forget about the gangster Scarface Scareese, that tiger wanted to gut Jake with his claws!" Nick added. "Then there was whoever set both of us for crimes we didn't commit and had us dumped into the state penitentiary in the middle of the night where a gang of warthogs was waiting."
"Then you got shot with the Night Howlers," the tiger continued. "That makes five attempts in how many years?"
"The Night Howlers doesn't count," Nick chuckled. "Whoever did that wanted Jake to become savage, but not dead."
"Still four times, hell I've been a cop for twelve years and no one has tried to off me!" Fangmeyer said as he turned and looked back at the raccoon. "If I was your father-in-law, I'd have done more than just punched you in the eye, I'd have beaten the crap out of you and then locked my daughter and grandkittens away where you couldn't get near them!"
"That crazy priest did try to blow you and Wolford up in your cruiser," Nick reminded the tiger. "So that counts for once."
"Still, it has been four times!" Fangmeyer exclaimed.
"You two haven't answered my question," Jake sullenly stated as he tried to change the subject. "Why am I here?"
"Have you ever heard of that union boss Jimmy Hoofa?" Nick asked as he put the car in drive again.
"He disappeared sometime long before any of us was born," the raccoon answered. "Did you find him?"
"Bogo thinks so," Nick replied.
"Everyone knows he's under the concrete at that stadium up in New Gnu!" Jake scoffed.
"That's what I said!" Fangmeyer added.
"No, they scanned the ground and found nothing. That was just a street rumor," the fox sighed.
"So why do you need me?" Jake asked again.
"There was a guy who owned this storage building and he died a few years ago," Nick answered as he parked the police cruiser next to several more police cars and trucks. "The city is putting it up for auction for unpaid property taxes and a couple of guys from the tax accessor's office came to check it out, they found something weird inside."
"Did they find Jimmy Hoofa?" Jake guessed.
"What they found was part of a note in the owner's desk which said that there was a letter about Hoofa inside the safe, but we found three safes," Fangmeyer said. "All are apparently locked and the safes are too thick to scan without drilling into them."
"Why not just cut them open and look inside?" the raccoon asked as he sat up. "Your CSI team can do that."
"They wanted to, but Bogo said no," Nick replied with a smile. "Orders from the mayor's office."
"Why not?"
"Simple, they are expensive antiques and he didn't want to destroy their value without you taking a crack at them first."
"Who knew that Bogo had such high regard for you?" Fangmeyer added.
"Three antique safes?" Jake excitedly called out as he grabbed his bag and jumped out of the cruiser into the rain. "Let's get going!"
Pushing past the CSI team, the raccoon rushed over and stared at one of the safes with a look that could mirror that of a kit in a candy shop. Nick could have sworn his friend was drooling. All three safes were in fairly good condition, with some rust but they could easily be restored to their former glory. "Have you done everything you need to do with the safes?" the raccoon finally asked. "Can I touch them?"
"Sure, go to town," Fangmeyer called over to him. The detective in the blue suit was looking at a notepad in his paws. "Just for the record, I bet the CSI team a round of drinks that you could open that safe in front of you. They seemed to think that even you couldn't do it."
The raccoon's ears drooped as he looked at the safe in front of him. It was tall, but unlike the other two which were rectangular, this one was round. "It's a cannonball safe, made from mangalloy, also called manganese steel, and it's stronger than regular steel or cast iron. Combined with its rounded shape, this makes it impossible to blow up with anything they had back when it was built in 1889 and its weight makes it too heavy to manually move it, I heard these things weigh over three thousand pounds," Jake began to explain as he stood on a stepstool and looked the safe over. "This one has duel time locks. Did you know that the most famous of these safes once foiled the famous bank robber Jaguar James when he and his gang tried to rob a bank during an 1876 heist? Let me see what I can do with the other two safes first and then I will come back to his one."
One by one, Jake managed to crack the other two safes without damaging them. They were filled with small amounts of cash and some old jewelry, but nothing of any importance. With a sigh, the raccoon pulled out his phone and made several calls as he stood in front of the last safe. Within half an hour, there were almost a dozen of the city's once most notorious safecrackers in the room. It was a motley assortment of retired criminal talent, all arguing and staring at the round safe. Most were shaking their heads as they looked it over.
"Are you telling me that none of you have ever successfully opened a safe like this before?" a voice boomed out as Chief Bogo entered the room and scowled down at the group. "Benny you've been cracking safes for over thirty years!"
"It can't be done Adrian," the formed burglar answered as the old fennec fox shook his head. "You can't open one of these like you could the others, you're gonna have to drill…"
"Ah guys!" a small tailless rat called out as he jumped up on the stool and looked at the safe.
"What is it Tails?" Jake asked as he watched his employee. The rat was not a safecracker, but a very talented former thief who now designed many of the gadgets which Jake's firm used.
"I hate to break it to all you so-called experts, but isn't this door like a big plug that goes into a cylinder and has to be completely rotated so the teeth are aligned before you open it?" the rat asked. He held his smartphone in his right paw and was comparing the safe in front of him to an image online.
"So what?" Benny sighed.
"Then I think this thing might be open and it's just rusted shut?" Tails answered.
It was indeed open and after applying plenty of grease, along with some very hard pulling, they got it open but the note with the location of Jimmy Hoofa was not found inside. The city sold the safe at auction and it now resides in Jake's warehouse as a reminder that no matter how good you think you are, there is always someone or something better.
The notorious labor union leader Jimmy Hoffa disappeared on July 30, 1975, and his body was never found. Hoffa's body was rumored to be buried in Giants Stadium.
It was a cannonball safe that foiled the attempted robbery by Jesse James and the Cole Younger gang during their Great Northfield Minnesota Raid on September 14, 1876. The Head Bank Teller, Joseph Haywood, claimed he couldn't open the safe because it was still on a time lock and it cost him his life. After a shootout with the local townsfolk, Jessie James and the surviving outlaws fled leaving behind two of their gang dead and two of the town's citizens slain. Their take from the robbery was just over a mere twenty-six dollars.
The priest who tried to kill Jake is from Zootopia: A Raccoon's Revenge. LePew was the mercenary skunk who kitnapped Fru Fru and then tried to kill Jake in Chapter 21 of Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption. The mobster Scarface tried to kill Jake and set him, Nick, and Al Catpone up for crimes they didn't commit in Chapter 29 of Zootopia: A Raccoon's Redemption.
