The boys hear what is clearly voices overhead.
"What if the fencer doesn't have the money, Boss?"
"Then you and Happy break one of his legs. That'll teach him not to toy with us. You got it?"
"Right, Boss."
"Okay then, get going. Me and Lefty will be casing that place around the corner in the meantime and..."
Sluggo. Lefty. Happy. Boss.
Those are the names of our mobsters. I mean jewel thieves, but remember, this story is set in New Jersey.
I can't get over those names. Sluggo, Lefty, Happy and Boss. Especially Happy. The greatest mobster name ever.
Anyway,
How stupid are our heroes? How freaking stupid ARE our heroes?!
Hey Billy, why don't you just end your question with a question mark.
And also, what are you doing down here? Exploring the place looking for treasure? You don't live here. Why don't you just leave.
Maybe the bad guys just discovered this tunnel. Which explains why they're standing over it and talking, instead of actually going down into the tunnel. Because they saw the kids come down here before. So as a result, they're not bothering to go down the tunnel, but are standing around aboveground.
Really, what kind of logic is this?
Yeah, the door that didn't open before might just work this time. Kinda like the combination lock. If at first the combination doesn't work, just try it again. It'll work eventually.
They head back through to the other tunnel and reach the ladder leading to the trapdoor at the top. Archie tries to open it.
Good thing Archie decided to jiggle the door sideways a little this time. Now the unopenable door is open. See, you just gotta do something slightly different. Trying something you'd never done before just might work. Like when half of Billyhank touched the fake brick wall. He'd never done it before, and this time he realized it was fake and apparently covered up a door.
"Alright!" both boys responded.
The kids climb up the ladder and are unsurprised to find themselves in a garage, just like Archie predicted.
And I am realizing another one of the problems with this book. The lack of surprises. Sometimes we do get surprises, although they are often in the form of idiocy or things that make no sense. But a lot of the time, the book tells us what's going to happen before it happens, or engages in very obvious foreshadowing.
Like when the kids took the inflatable boat to the river. The story told us it was a very overcast day (and it waited until after they were at the graveyard and planning to head back home to tell us). Did anyone not expect it to rain? Or when the boys plan to do something, like throw Amanda in a pool. They think about doing it, talk about doing it, and then do it.
There aren't many major surprises. If the readers are told that something is going to happen, then one of two things need to happen:
- Whatever they were told was going to happen shouldn't happen; plans should go wrong, and something unexpected should happen.
- What the story said would happen should happen, but in a surprising way.
Both would surprise the reader. At least, they would surprise the reader by having unexpected events occur in the story. If the reader expects plans to go wrong, then they at least won't know exactly how, or exactly what will happen as a result.
Surprise, suspense, things that make a story work. If this book wants to be an exciting adventure, it needs to be more exciting.
Anyway, back in our "exciting" adventure, the boys try to open the doors from inside the garage, but discover they are firmly locked. Which makes me wonder, why? What kind of garage is locked and unopenable from the inside?? I'm just not seeing that.
What is this, a puzzle? Or are our boys budding architects? Why do they need so badly to know the number and physical placement of windows? It would have been much better writing to just say that they were looking for a way out, and then mention that they spotted the windows up on a loft. Fewer sentences, and writing that just flows better.
They spot a wooden ladder and climb up. Archie opens the window, which takes three tries because that's important I guess.
I can only imagine how much falling twelve feet would hurt.
Oddly, Billy decides to go first. He jumps out, tumbles when he hits the ground, and gives the okay signal. Hank comes after him, but fails to tumble when he hits the ground, so his ankles and knees take most of the impact, and he gets up hobbling.
For once, Archie goes last. He goes out the window and closes it behind him, so no-one will know that anyone was ever in the garage. He jumps to the ground and tumbles like Billy, then gets up okay.
They look around to the front of the garage.
No-one touched the stone slate covering the entrance to the tunnels. Except our heroes. If they're good enough to put the slate back into place with it looking untouched, then I'd imagine so are the bad guys, so this proves nothing.
Once they get to Archie's house, Hank hobbling all the while, they take the treasure out of their knaps- backpacks, and put it on the floor of Archie's garage, where presumably no-one will walk in on them and see it.
Yeah, they're engaging in a repeat of what they'd done in the tunnel before. Only this time, they're dancing and celebrating. DANCING! I wonder what their dance looked like. They also talked about what they'd do with the money made off the treasure.
"I'm getting all of that stuff too!" Billy said, "plus a pool in my backyard, just like Amanda has!"
"A pool would suit me too!" Archie said. "But I also need a boat, water skis, and a new fishing rod! Another thing I need is..."
Why do I picture Archie with a top hat and monocle saying that?
I love how they keep one-upping each other's dreams. Also, they'll get pools in their backyards? Without their parents noticing? How will they explain to their parents where all their sudden money came from?
I can imagine how this conversation might go:
"Where did you get all this money from?!"
"Um, I'd rather not tell you..."
"Drugs? Was it drugs?! It better NOT be drugs!!"
"No, it wasn't drugs!"
"Then if not, what was it? Because drugs are the only thing I can think of that would make a twelve-year-old boy rich this quickly!"
"Well, uh, I snuck into a tunnel underneath this neighbor's house, found a box buried under the dirt with lots of stolen jewels in it, that totally has nothing to do with the jewel thieves the news has been talking about, and I sold the jewels. By the way, I heard some people talking overhead when I was in the cave. It's probably not related to the jewel thieves or the jewels I mysteriously found."
"That makes no sense!"
Wait. They partied for two hours?? How did that work? Two hours is longer than the length of an entire movie! I can't imagine any party that three twelve-year-olds would have in a garage going on for that long. Or at least not without someone coming in and interrupting, then noticing all the jewels on the floor. And what did they do in that party? What did it consist of? Spraying water hoses in the air? Dancing? Slapping each other and shaking each other? What activity could possibly fill two whole hours?
The stupid still isn't over people. There are three more chapters to go before I provide my conclusive thoughts. Stay tuned.
Billyhank hive mind dialog count: 17
Crushing something on someone's head count: 5½
Total victory celebration length: 2 hours 52 minutes
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