“It’s a woman who’s beating men,” Liz said. “There are American women, FBI, Quantico, and Covert Affairs. What about Kill Bill…Uma Thurman lives right here in Woodstock.”

“Well, sometimes,” Maddie said. “Not all the time. It depends on who she’s married to. Besides…” She made a sudden return to sanity. “Besides, those are movies. Just movies.”

“I know that. But Hollywood wouldn’t make so many movies about female assassins…and female law enforcement people who kill…if they weren’t around. Those are signals that they’re around.”

“Hollywood makes movies about women having vaginal orgasms. Every time, while some guy is holding them in the air. You think that’s a signal that vaginal orgasms are around?”

“That’s different.”

“Well, I couldn’t find them. I’m sorry. So there, I’m sorry. Now, what are you going to do about the bullet hole in my car? From your gun.”

Liz said, “I don’t know.”

Then Maddie said, “I bet Tony would figure it out.”

—

That was very gratifying to hear.

This had all taken much longer than I had anticipated. I had to get to the bank. I got up, slowly and quietly from my hiding spot, and continued the trek up the hill. Once I could have sprinted up, now just putting one foot in front of the other left me breathing hard.

CHAPTER EIGHT

FU**IN’ BANKS

“There ain’t no clean way to make a hundred million bucks…Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them…Decent people lost their jobs…Big money is big power and big power gets used wrong. It’s the system.”

RAYMOND CHANDLER, THE LONG GOODBYE

YEARS AGO, WHEN I WAS still in business, and sometimes had things or held on to things that I wouldn’t want found in my possession, I got a substantial metal container about the size of three shoe boxes. I buried it just over the property line, putting it beyond the reach of any warrant that failed to specify my neighbor’s land in addition to my own.