Chapter 1357: Showing Consideration, One-Stop Service, Wrapped Up for Delivery
There weren"t a lot of customers who bought the new, top-quality cake in the diner, but they came in all forms.
Aside from the suspicious fact that they would buy 20 to 30 cupcakes at once, there was nothing else to say.
There was no evidence to support Caroline"s speculation that this was Luke buying all of them to win Max"s favor.
Of course, Luke wouldn"t say that he could be lazy and directly leave buying the cakes to the charity foundation in the Clinton area.
The fledgling foundation had only hired a few local girls from the Clinton area, who mainly did community work.
With one phone call from big boss Luke, however, these ad hoc social workers could rope in hundreds of residents from the Clinton area, enough for a different person to buy the cakes every day for a whole year.
Whoever bought the cakes could keep one for themselves, and the rest was delivered to Foggy and Matt"s law firm, the construction company, and the foundation"s food distribution points.
Most people wouldn"t be able to eat something like this even once a month on average; n.o.body treated it like a daily benefit.
In fact, Max and Caroline had about 50 of these top-quality cakes each day, and Luke only bought a portion of it.
As for the Wharton Business School dropout who was now a waitress, she couldn"t find any flaws not only because Luke could always use different people to buy them, but also because there were 10 to 20 genuine customers every day.
After all, Max really was talented at making cakes.
However, when Luke praised her, the girl said self-deprecatingly, "It was probably because I was too hungry when I was a kid, and my mom didn"t come home, so I stuffed some flour into the oven — that was the first time."
Luke was a DIY bigshot to begin with.
He was a big shot who had already generated a smooth production line of regular cupcakes using smart kitchenware.
He specifically pointed out and corrected a few of the biggest shortcomings in Max"s cakes, and the taste and color of the cakes immediately improved.
It wasn"t that he didn"t want to talk about the other shortcomings, but those came down to just one point — no money.
Whether it was high-quality raw materials or high-quality equipment, they were all very expensive, and Max couldn"t afford them.
Luke didn"t want to outright give Max money, even though she always mocked herself for being poor.
That was precisely why he got different people to buy the cakes each time.
Money earned through hard work was different from charity.
Max seemed cheerful, but she actually lacked confidence.
He didn"t want to become another person who hurt her pride, even if he had good intentions.
So, he would rather give her pointers on how to make cakes, then use sneaky ways to buy them so that she could break even with initial sales.
While Max and Caroline weren"t exactly raking it in, a gross profit of 100 dollars a day could blunt the pressures of life a little.
Thus, Luke, who was currently surrounded by the boss, the waitress, and the old man from the cash register, wasn"t as free as they thought.
His conversation with Max was light-hearted, and nothing like the lovey-dovey talk the other three had been imagining.
"That"s the ninth patrol car. Are the police in New York not going to sleep tonight?" Max"s words were m.u.f.fled as she chewed on her own top-quality cake.
It was weird for Luke to give her her own cake to eat, but he had already eaten 15 of them.
Every time Luke came, he would eat at least three to five, and 20 cupcakes at most.
She had already confirmed that this temporary boyfriend of hers had a big stomach, and wasn"t just buying the cakes for her sake.
Luke chuckled and swallowed the cake in his mouth before he said unhurriedly, "You forgot to mention the ambulances. How many pa.s.sed by just now?"
Max frowned. "Is it a large-scale crime scene? Or some sort of collective poisoning?"
Luke raised an eyebrow. "Are you serious?"
Max found that odd. "Why not? I remember when I went to a nightclub last time, I was pushed out after just ten minutes. A bunch of idiots shouted that it was a terrorist attack, and that someone inside had released poisonous gas."
Luke, who was familiar with the major cases in New York, knew that there was no such case. He asked with a smile, "What happened?"
Max shrugged. "In the end, I heard some people say that someone had been playing with some sort of fart spray inside, and it smelled like onions. A lot of people covered their noses and teared up at the fumes, and some fainted from an allergic reaction, so people said that it was poisonous gas."
Luke said, "…That can actually be considered a low-end version of poisonous gas, right? Since people pa.s.sed out. Hm, did you smell it too?"
"No. It was a prank, and they sprayed it in the very middle. I couldn"t get through at all." Max actually looked a little regretful. "Hm, it was the opposite for that unlucky guy who fainted. He couldn"t run, and was knocked out by the smell."
Luke was speechless. "Did you really want to smell it?"
"It was onion fart spray. The smell can make you tear up. Think about it, it seems very stimulating." Max was eager to try it out. "Maybe it"s just like…"
Luke covered her mouth. "Don"t. Dangerous behavior is strictly prohibited."
Stumped for a moment, Max then said in embarra.s.sment, "I was so poor a while ago that I almost couldn"t afford toothpaste. I couldn"t even bring myself to get someone to change the showerhead after it fell off. I wouldn"t buy something like that."
She knew that this temporary boyfriend of hers really disliked how she smoked certain things.
Although she didn"t smoke cigarettes, 60% of people in America had smoked weed before.
Max didn"t understand why he was so bothered.
Thankfully, she had been poor for a long time before she met him; with the little money she had, she may as well buy two rolls of toilet paper rather than weed.
After all, it didn"t matter if she didn"t touch weed for the rest of her life, but she could never lack toilet paper.
"I know." Luke simply smiled and pinched her face, but most of his attention was elsewhere.
He and Selina had created a huge scene tonight.
Know what a one-stop service is? Know what it means to be wrapped up for delivery to prison? Know what free credit is?
All of Luke"s NYPD co-workers would be here tonight.
The cleanup operation officially began at nine in the evening.
Luke and Selina had leveled the main nests of the 11 gangs.
Although they didn"t have time to extort information from the 11 gangs, there was ironclad evidence in their homes of illegal drugs, illegal weapons, and even ledgers of their shady dealings.
That wasn"t the end of it.
Luke and Selina even put the information they had gathered on a USB and hung them around the neck of a gang leader who had been turned into a cripple.
Now that NYPD had this information, the D.A. didn"t have to enter any plea bargains or look for witnesses to turn state"s evidence.
With the takedown of these gangs, New York"s D.A. office would have fulfilled their annual quota five times over.
A D.A."s performance record in America was based on the number of convictions made as well as the number of convictions for major crimes.
It just so happened that these gangs were involved in either shootings or homicides, as well as drugs and weapons trafficking.
Even if they didn"t confess to anything else in the police department, most of the core members and bigshots would still be in jail for 20 years or even life.
This case was enough to keep the D.A. busy until the end of the year.