Finders Keepers (44 page)

Slowly and deliberately, Pete shakes his head. “It's all in the notebooks.
The Runner Raises the Flag
fills sixteen of them. You could read it there, but you'll never hear any of it from me.”

Pete actually smiles.

“No spoilers.”

“The notebooks are mine, you bastard!
Mine!
”

“They're going to be ashes, if you don't let my sister go.”

“Petie, I can't even
walk
!” Tina wails.

Pete can't afford to look at her, only at Red Lips. Only at the wolf. “What's your name? I think I deserve to know your name.”

Red Lips shrugs, as if it no longer matters. “Morris Bellamy.”

“Throw the gun away, Mr. Bellamy. Kick it along the floor and under the furnace. Once you do that, I'll close the lighter. I'll untie my sister and we'll go. I'll give you plenty of time to get away with the notebooks. All I want to do is take Tina home and get help for my mom.”

“I'm supposed to trust you?” Red Lips sneers it.

Pete lowers the lighter farther. “Trust me or watch the notebooks burn. Make up your mind fast. I don't know the last time my dad filled this thing.”

Something catches the corner of Pete's eye. Something moving on the stairs. He doesn't dare look. If he does, Red Lips will, too. And I've almost got him, Pete thinks.

This seems to be so. Red Lips starts to lower the gun. For a moment he looks every year of his age, and more. Then he raises the gun and points it at Tina again.

“I won't kill her.” He speaks in the decisive tone of a general who has just made a crucial battlefield decision. “Not at first. I'll
just shoot her in the leg. You can listen to her scream. If you light the notebooks on fire after that, I'll shoot her in the other leg. Then in the stomach. She'll die, but she'll have plenty of time to hate you first, if she doesn't alre—”

There's a flat double clap from Morris's left. It's Pete's shoes, landing at the foot of the stairs. Morris, on a hair trigger, wheels in that direction and fires. The gun is small, but in the enclosed space of the basement, the report is loud. Pete gives an involuntary jerk, and the lighter falls from his hand. There's an explosive
whump
, and notebooks on top of the pile suddenly grow a corona of fire.

“
No!
” Morris screams, wheeling away from Hodges even as Hodges comes pelting down the stairs so fast he can barely keep his balance. Morris has a clear shot at Pete. He raises the gun to take it, but before he can fire, Tina swings forward on her bonds and kicks him in the back of the leg with her good foot. The bullet goes between Pete's neck and shoulder.

The notebooks, meanwhile, are burning briskly.

Hodges closes with Morris before he can fire again, grabbing at Morris's gun hand. Hodges is the heavier of the two, and in better shape, but Morris Bellamy possesses the strength of insanity. They waltz drunkenly across the basement, Hodges holding Morris's right wrist so the little automatic points at the ceiling, Morris using his left hand to rip at Hodges's face, trying to claw out his eyes.

Peter races around the notebooks—they are blazing now, the lighter fluid that has trickled deep into the pile igniting—and grapples with Morris from behind. Morris turns his head, bares his teeth, and snaps at him. His eyes are rolling in their sockets.

“
His hand! Get his hand!
” Hodges shouts. They have stumbled under the stairs. Hodges's face is striped with blood, several pieces of his cheek hanging in strips. “Get it before he skins me alive!”

Pete grabs Bellamy's left hand. Behind them, Tina is scream
ing. Hodges pounds a fist into Bellamy's face twice: hard, pistoning blows. That seems to finish him; his face goes slack and his knees buckle. Tina is still screaming, and the basement is growing brighter.

“
The roof, Petie! The roof is catching!
”

Morris is on his knees, his head hanging, blood gushing from his chin, lips, and broken nose. Hodges grabs his right wrist and twists. There's a crack as Morris's wrist breaks, and the little automatic clatters to the floor. Hodges has a moment to think it's over before the bastard rams his free hand forward and upward, punching Hodges squarely in the balls and filling his belly with liquid pain. Morris scuttles between his spread legs. Hodges gasps, hands pressed to his throbbing crotch.

“
Petie, Petie, the ceiling!
”

Pete thinks Bellamy is going after the gun, but the man ignores it entirely. His goal is the notebooks. They are now a bonfire, the covers curling back, the pages browning and sending up sparks that have ignited several strips of hanging insulation. The fire begins spreading above them, dropping burning streamers. One of these lands on Tina's head, and there's a stench of frying hair to go with the smell of the burning paper and insulation. She shakes it away with a cry of pain.

Pete runs to her, punting the little automatic deep into the basement as he goes. He beats at her smoldering hair and then begins struggling with the knots.

“
No!
” Morris screams, but not at Pete. He goes to his knees in front of the notebooks like a religious zealot in front of a blazing altar. He reaches into the flames, trying to push the pile apart. This sends fresh clouds of sparks spiraling upward. “
No no no no!
”

Hodges wants to run to Peter and his sister, but the best he can manage is a drunken shamble. The pain in his groin is spreading
down his legs, loosening the muscles he has worked so hard to build up. Nevertheless, he gets to work on one of the knots in the orange electrical cord. He again wishes for a knife, but it would take a cleaver to cut this stuff. The shit is
thick
.

More blazing strips of insulation fall around them. Hodges bats them away from the girl, terrified that her gauzy blouse will catch fire. The knot is letting go, finally letting go, but the girl is struggling—

“Stop, Teens,” Pete says. Sweat is pouring down his face. The basement is getting hot. “They're slipknots, you're pulling them tight again, you have to stop.”

Morris's screams are changing into howls of pain. Hodges has no time to look at him. The loop he's pulling on abruptly loosens. He pulls Tina away from the furnace, her hands still tied behind her.

There's going to be no exit by way of the stairs; the lower ones are burning and the upper ones are catching. The tables, the chairs, the boxes of stored paperwork: all on fire. Morris Bellamy is also on fire. Both his sportcoat and the shirt beneath are blazing. Yet he continues to root his way into the bonfire, trying to get at any unburned notebooks still left at the bottom. His fingers are turning black. Although the pain must be excruciating, he keeps going. Hodges has time to think of the fairy tale where the wolf came down the chimney and landed in a pot of boiling water. His daughter, Alison, didn't want to hear that one. She said it was too sca—

“Bill! Bill! Over here!”

Hodges sees Jerome at one of the basement windows. Hodges remembers saying
Neither one of you minds worth a tinker's dam
, and now he's delighted that they don't. Jerome is on his belly, sticking his arms through and down.

“Lift her! Lift her up! Quick, before you all cook!”

It's mostly Pete who carries Tina across to the basement win
dow, through the falling sparks and burning scarves of insulation. One lands on the kid's back, and Hodges swipes it away. Pete lifts her. Jerome grabs her under the arms and hauls her out, the plug of the computer cord Morris used to tie her hands trailing and bumping behind.

“Now you,” Hodges gasps.

Pete shakes his head. “You first.” He looks up at Jerome. “You pull. I'll push.”

“Okay,” Jerome says. “Lift your arms, Bill.”

There's no time to argue. Hodges lifts his arms and feels them grabbed. He has time to think, Feels like wearing handcuffs, and then he's being hoisted. It's slow at first—he's a lot heavier than the girl—but then two hands plant themselves firmly on his ass and shove. He rises into clear, clean air—hot, but cooler than the basement—and lands next to Tina Saubers. Jerome reaches through again. “Come on, kid! Move it!”

Pete lifts his arms, and Jerome seizes his wrists. The basement is filling with smoke and Pete begins coughing, almost retching, as he uses his feet to pedal his way up the wall. He slides through the window, turns over, and peers back into the basement.

A charred scarecrow kneels in there, digging into the burning notebooks with arms made of fire. Morris's face is melting. He shrieks and begins hugging the blazing, dissolving remnants of Rothstein's work to his burning chest.

“Don't look at that, kid,” Hodges says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Don't.”

But Pete wants to look. Needs to look.

He thinks, That could have been me on fire.

He thinks, No. Because I know the difference. I know what matters.

He thinks, Please God, if you're there . . . let that be true.

55

Pete lets Jerome carry Tina as far as the baseball field, then says, “Give her to me, please.”

Jerome surveys him—Pete's pale, shocked face, the one blistered ear, the holes charred in his shirt. “You sure?”

“Yeah.”

Tina is already holding out her arms. She has been quiet since being hauled from the burning basement, but when Pete takes her, she puts her arms around his neck, her face against his shoulder, and begins to cry loudly.

Holly comes running down the path. “Thank God!” she says. “There you are! Where's Bellamy?”

“Back there, in the basement,” Hodges says. “And if he isn't dead yet, he wishes he was. Have you got your cell phone? Call the fire department.”

“Is our mother okay?” Pete asks.

“I think she's going to be fine,” Holly says, pulling her phone off her belt. “The ambulance is taking her to Kiner Memorial. She was alert and talking. The paramedics said her vital signs are good.”

“Thank God,” Pete says. Now he also starts to cry, the tears cutting clean tracks through the smears of soot on his cheeks. “If she died, I'd kill myself. Because this is all my fault.”

“No,” Hodges says.

Pete looks at him. Tina is looking, too, her arms still linked around her brother's neck.

“You found the notebooks and the money, didn't you?”

“Yes. By accident. They were buried in a trunk by the stream.”

“Anyone would have done what you did,” Jerome says. “Isn't that right, Bill?”

“Yes,” Bill says. “For your family, you do all that you can. The way you went after Bellamy when he took Tina.”

“I wish I'd never found that trunk,” Pete says. What he doesn't say, will never say, is how much it hurts to know that the notebooks are gone. Knowing that burns like fire. He does understand how Morris felt, and that burns like fire, too. “I wish it had stayed buried.”

“Wish in one hand,” Hodges says, “spit in the other. Let's go. I need to use an icepack before the swelling gets too bad.”

“Swelling where?” Holly asks. “You look okay to me.”

Hodges puts an arm around her shoulders. Sometimes Holly stiffens when he does this, but not today, so he kisses her cheek, too. It raises a doubtful smile.

“Did he get you where it hurts boys?”

“Yes. Now hush.”

They walk slowly, partly for Hodges's benefit, partly for Pete's. His sister is getting heavy, but he doesn't want to put her down. He wants to carry her all the way home.

AFTER

PICNIC

On the Friday that kicks off the Labor Day weekend, a Jeep Wrangler—getting on in years but loved by its owner—pulls into the parking lot above the McGinnis Park Little League fields and stops next to a blue Mercedes that is also getting on in years. Jerome Robinson makes his way down the grassy slope toward a picnic table where food has already been set out. A paper bag swings from one of his hands.

“Yo, Hollyberry!”

She turns. “How many times have I told you not to call me that? A hundred? A thousand?” But she's smiling as she says it, and when he hugs her, she hugs back. Jerome doesn't press his luck; he gives one good squeeze, then asks what's for lunch.

“There's chicken salad, tuna salad, and coleslaw. I also brought a roast beef sandwich. That's for you, if you want it. I'm off red meat. It upsets my circadian rhythms.”

“I'll make sure you're not tempted, then.”

They sit down. Holly pours Snapple into Dixie cups. They toast the end of summer and then munch away, gabbing about movies and TV shows, temporarily avoiding the reason they're here—this is goodbye, at least for awhile.

“Too bad Bill couldn't come,” Jerome says as Holly hands him a piece of chocolate cream pie. “Remember when we all got together here for a picnic after his hearing? To celebrate that judge deciding not to put him in jail?”

“I remember perfectly well,” Holly says. “You wanted to ride the bus.”

“Because de bus be fo' free!” Tyrone Feelgood exclaims. “I takes all the fo' free I kin git, Miss Holly!”

“You've worn that out, Jerome.”

He sighs. “I sort of have, I guess.”

“Bill got a call from Peter Saubers,” Holly said. “That's why he didn't come. He said I was to give you his best, and that he'd see you before you went back to Cambridge. Wipe your nose. There's a dab of chocolate on it.”

Jerome resists the urge to say
Chocolate be mah favorite cullah
! “Is Pete all right?”

“Yes. He had some good news that he wanted to share with Bill in person. I can't finish my pie. Do you want the rest? Unless you don't want to eat after me. I'm okay with that, but I don't have a cold, or anything.”

“I'd even use your toothbrush,” Jerome says, “but I'm full.”

“Oough,” Holly says. “I'd never use another person's toothbrush.” She collects their paper cups and plates and takes them to a nearby litter barrel.

“What time are you leaving tomorrow?” Jerome asks.

“The sun rises at six fifty-five AM. I expect to be on the road by seven thirty, at the latest.”

Holly is driving to Cincinnati to see her mother. By herself. Jerome can hardly believe it. He's glad for her, but he's also afraid for her. What if something goes wrong and she freaks out?

“Stop worrying,” she says, coming back and sitting down. “I'll be fine. All turnpikes, no night driving, and the forecast is for clear weather. Also, I have my three favorite movie soundtracks on CD:
Road to Perdition
,
The Shawshank Redemption
, and
Godfather II
. Which is the best, in my opinion, although Thomas Newman
is, on the whole, much better than Nino Rota. Thomas Newman's music is
mysterious
.”

“John Williams,
Schindler's List
,” Jerome says. “Nothing tops it.”

“Jerome, I don't want to say you're full of shit, but . . . actually, you are.”

He laughs, delighted.

“I have my cell phone and iPad, both fully charged. The Mercedes just had its full maintenance check. And really, it's only four hundred miles.”

“Cool. But call me if you need to. Me or Bill.”

“Of course. When are you leaving for Cambridge?”

“Next week.”

“Done on the docks?”

“All done, and glad of it. Physical labor may be good for the body, but I don't feel that it ennobles the soul.”

Holly still has trouble meeting the eyes of even her close friends, but she makes an effort and meets Jerome's. “Pete's all right, Tina's all right, and their mother is back on her feet. That's all good, but is
Bill
all right? Tell me the truth.”

“I don't know what you mean.” Now it's Jerome who finds it difficult to maintain eye contact.

“He's too thin, for one thing. He's taken the exercise-and-salads regimen too far. But that's not what I'm really worried about.”

“What is?” But Jerome knows, and isn't surprised
she
knows, although Bill thinks he's kept it from her. Holly has her ways.

She lowers her voice as if afraid of being overheard, although there's no one within a hundred yards in any direction. “How often does he visit him?”

Jerome doesn't have to ask who she's talking about. “I don't really know.”

“More than once a month?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Once a week?”

“Probably not that often.” Although who can say?

“
Why
? He's . . .” Holly's lips are trembling. “Brady Hartsfield is next door to a
vegetable
!”

“You can't blame yourself for that, Holly. You absolutely can't. You hit him because he was going to blow up a couple of thousand kids.”

He tries to touch her hand, but she snatches it away.

“I
don't
! I'd do it again! Again again again! But I hate to think of Bill obsessing about him. I know from obsession, and it's
not nice
!”

She crosses her arms over her bosom, an old self-comforting gesture that she has largely given up.

“I don't think it's obsession, exactly.” Jerome speaks cautiously, feeling his way. “I don't think it's about the past.”

“What else can it be? Because that monster has no future!”

Bill's not so sure,
Jerome thinks, but would never say. Holly is better, but she's still fragile. And, as she herself said, she knows from obsession. Besides, he has no idea what Bill's continuing interest in Brady means. All he has is a feeling. A hunch.

“Let it rest,” he says. This time when he puts his hand over hers she allows it to stay, and they talk of other things for awhile. Then he looks at his watch. “I have to go. I promised to pick up Barbara and Tina at the roller rink.”

“Tina's in love with you,” Holly says matter-of-factly as they walk up the slope to their cars.

“If she is, it'll pass,” he says. “I'm heading east, and pretty soon some cute boy will appear in her life. She'll write his name on her book covers.”

“I suppose,” Holly says. “That's usually how it works, isn't it? I just don't want you to make fun of her. She'd think you were being mean, and feel sad.”

“I won't,” Jerome says.

They have reached the cars, and once more Holly forces herself to look him full in the face. “
I'm
not in love with you, not the way she is, but I love you quite a lot, just the same. So take care of yourself, Jerome. Some college boys do foolish things. Don't be one of them.”

This time it's she who embraces him.

“Oh, hey, I almost forgot,” Jerome says. “I brought you a little present. It's a shirt, although I don't think you'll want to wear it when you visit your mom.”

He hands her his bag. She takes out the bright red tee and unfolds it. Printed on the front, in black, it shouts:

SHIT DON'T MEAN SHIT

Jimmy Gold

“They sell them at the City College bookstore. I got it in an XL, in case you want to wear it as a nightshirt.” He studies her face as she considers the words on the front of the tee. “Of course, you can also return it for something else, if you don't like it.”

“I like it very much,” she says, and breaks into a smile. It's the one Hodges loves, the one that makes her beautiful. “And I
will
wear it when I visit my mother. Just to piss her off.”

Jerome looks so surprised that she laughs.

“Don't you ever want to piss your mother off?”

“From time to time. And Holly . . . I love you, too. You know that, right?”

“I do,” she says, holding the shirt to her chest. “And I'm glad. That shit means a lot.”