Colby Katz
Stefan Bertone and his nemeses: where the rubber meets the road
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Bertone's most startling find was a live bullet. He fingers the shell gingerly. It's the second one he has found in a tire, he says; the other one the customer took as a keepsake. "All it had to do was hit the road hard enough and the thing would have exploded," he says.
Making sure that the construction site for Las Olas River House stays clean is the job of gate tender Richard Powell. He sweeps the street daily. "Yes, ma'am, I do," he says. "My company is big on safety." Told about a Gemini customer who had six drywall screws in a single tire, Powell pauses, then gestures toward the opening in the fence leading into the construction zone. "A lot of times I see people who don't want to turn around [make a U-turn], so they try to back in here. If you did that, you'd run over something. There's all kinds of stuff on the ground in there."