Finders Keepers (6 page)

He counted. Four hundred dollars. Four hundred in this one envelope, and there were
dozens
of them.

He stuffed the bills back into the envelope—not an easy job, because now his hands were shaking worse than Grampa Fred's in the last year or two of his life. He flipped the envelope into the trunk and looked around, eyes wide and bulging. Traffic sounds that had always seemed faint and far and unimportant in this overgrown stretch of ground now sounded close and threatening. This was not Treasure Island; this was a city of over a million people, many now out of work, and they would love to have what was in this trunk.

Think, Pete Saubers told himself.
Think,
for God's sake. This is the most important thing that's ever happened to you, maybe the most important thing that ever
will
happen to you, so think hard and think right.

What came to mind first was Tina, snuggled up next to the wall in his bed.
What would you do if you found a treasure?
he had asked.

Give it to Daddy and Mommy,
she had replied.

But suppose Mom wanted to give it back?

It was an important question. Dad never would—Pete knew
that—but Mom was different. She had strong ideas about what was right and what wasn't. If he showed them this trunk and what was inside it, it might lead to the worst arkie-barkie about money ever.

“Besides, give it back to
who
?” Pete whispered. “The bank?”

That was ridiculous.

Or was it? Suppose the money really was pirate treasure, only from bank robbers instead of buccaneers? But then why was it in envelopes, like for withdrawals? And what about all those black notebooks?

He could consider such things later, but not now; what he had to do now was
act
. He looked at his watch and saw it was already quarter to eleven. He still had time, but he had to use it.

“Use it or lose it,” he whispered, and began tossing the Granite State Bank cash envelopes into the cloth grocery bag that held the hammer and chisel. He placed the bag on top of the embankment and covered it with his jacket. He crammed the plastic wrap back into the trunk, closed the lid, and muscled the trunk back into the hole. He paused to wipe his forehead, which was greasy with dirt and sweat, then seized the spade and began to shovel like a maniac. He got the trunk covered—mostly—then seized the bag and his jacket and ran back along the path toward home. He would hide the bag in the back of his closet, that would do to start with, and see if there was a message from his mother on the answering machine. If everything was okay on the Mom front (and if Dad hadn't come home early from therapy—that would be horrible), he could whip back to the stream and do a better job of concealing the trunk. Later he might check out the notebooks, but as he made his way home on that sunny February morning, his only thought about them was that there might be more money envelopes mixed in with them. Or lying beneath them.

He thought, I'll have to take a shower. And clean the dirt out of the bathtub after, so she doesn't ask what I was doing outside when I was supposed to be sick. I have to be really careful, and I can't tell anyone. No one at all.

In the shower, he had an idea.

1978

Home is the place that when you go there, they have to take you in, but when Morris arrived at the house on Sycamore Street, there were no lights to brighten the evening gloom and no one to welcome him at the door. Why would there be? His mother was in New Jersey, lecturing about how a bunch of nineteenth-century businessmen had tried to steal America. Lecturing grad students who would probably go on to steal everything they could lay their hands on as they chased the Golden Buck. Some people would undoubtedly say that Morris had chased a few Golden Bucks of his own in New Hampshire, but that wasn't so. He hadn't gone there for money.

He wanted the Biscayne in the garage and out of sight. Hell, he wanted the Biscayne
gone
, but that would have to wait. His first priority was Pauline Muller. Most of the people on Sycamore Street were so wedded to their televisions once prime time started that they wouldn't have noticed a UFO if one landed on their lawn, but that wasn't true of Mrs. Muller; the Bellamys' next-door neighbor had raised snooping to a fine art. So he went there first.

“Why, look who it is!” she cried when she opened the door . . . just as if she hadn't been peering out her kitchen window when Morris pulled into the driveway. “Morrie Bellamy! Big as life and twice as handsome!”

Morris produced his best aw-shucks smile. “How you doin, Mrs. Muller?”

She gave him a hug which Morris could have done without but dutifully returned. Then she turned her head, setting her wattles in motion, and yelled, “Bert!
Bertie!
It's Morrie Bellamy!”

From the living room came a triple grunt that might have been
how ya doin
.

“Come in, Morrie! Come in! I'll put on coffee! And guess what?” She gave her unnaturally black eyebrows a horrifyingly flirtatious wiggle. “There's Sara Lee poundcake!”

“Sounds delicious, but I just got back from Boston. Drove straight through. I'm pretty beat. Just didn't want you to see lights next door and call the police.”

She gave a monkey-shriek of laughter. “You're so
thoughtful
! But you always were. How's your mom, Morrie?”

“Fine.”

He had no idea. Since his stint in reform school at seventeen and his failure to make a go of City College at twenty-one, relations between Morris and Anita Bellamy amounted to the occasional telephone call. These were frosty but civil. After one final argument the night of his arrest for breaking and entering and assorted other goodies, they had basically given up on each other.

“You've really put on some muscle,” Mrs. Muller said. “The girls must love
that
. You used to be such a
scrawny
thing.”

“Been building houses—”

“Building
houses
!
You!
Holy gosh! Bertie!
Morris has been building houses!
”

This produced a few more grunts from the living room.

“But then the work dried up, so I came back here. Mom said I was welcome to use the place unless she managed to rent it, but I probably won't stay long.”

How right
that
turned out to be.

“Come in the living room, Morrie, and say hello to Bert.”

“I better take a rain check.” To forestall further importuning, he called, “
Yo, Bert!
”

Another grunt, unintelligible over the laugh track accompanying
Welcome Back, Kotter
.

“Tomorrow, then,” Mrs. Muller said, her eyebrows once more waggling. She looked like she was doing a Groucho imitation. “I'll save the poundcake. I might even
whip
some
cream
.”

“Great,” Morris said. It wasn't likely Mrs. Muller would die of a heart attack before tomorrow, but it was possible; as another great poet said, hope springs eternal in the human breast.

•••

The keys to house and garage were where they'd always been, hanging under the eave to the right of the stoop. Morris garaged the Biscayne and set the trunk from the antiques barn on the concrete. He itched to get at that fourth Jimmy Gold novel right away, but the notebooks were all jumbled up, and besides, his eyes would cross before he read a single page of Rothstein's tiny handwriting; he really was bushed.

Tomorrow, he promised himself. After I talk to Andy, get some idea of how he wants to handle this, I'll put them in order and start reading.

He pushed the trunk under his father's old worktable and covered it with a swatch of plastic he found in the corner. Then he went inside and toured the old homestead. It looked pretty much the same, which was lousy. There was nothing in the fridge except a jar of pickles and a box of baking soda, but there were a few Hungry Man dinners in the freezer. He stuck one in the oven, turned the dial to 350, then climbed the stairs to his old bedroom.

I did it, he thought. I made it. I'm sitting on eighteen years' worth of unpublished John Rothstein manuscripts.

He was too tired to feel exultation, or even much pleasure. He almost fell asleep in the shower, and again over some really crappy meatloaf and instant potatoes. He shoveled it in, though, then trudged back up the stairs. He was asleep forty seconds after his head hit the pillow, and didn't wake up until nine twenty the following morning.

•••

Well rested and with a bar of sunlight pouring across his childhood bed, Morris
did
feel exultation, and he couldn't wait to share it. Which meant Andy Halliday.

He found khakis and a nice madras shirt in his closet, slicked back his hair, and peeked briefly into the garage to make sure all was well there. He gave Mrs. Muller (once more looking out through the curtains) what he hoped was a jaunty wave as he headed down the street to the bus stop. He arrived downtown just before ten, walked a block, and peered down Ellis Avenue to the Happy Cup, where the outside tables sat under pink umbrellas. Sure enough, Andy was on his coffee break. Better yet, his back was turned, so Morris could approach undetected.

“Booga-booga!”
he cried, grabbing the shoulder of Andy's old corduroy sportcoat.

His old friend—really his only friend in this benighted joke of a city—jumped and wheeled around. His coffee overturned and spilled. Morris stepped back. He had meant to startle Andy, but not
that
much.

“Hey, sor—”

“What did you
do
?” Andy asked in a low, grinding whisper. His eyes were blazing behind his glasses—hornrims Morris had
always thought of as sort of an affectation. “What the fuck did you
do
?”

This was not the welcome Morris had anticipated. He sat down. “What we talked about.” He studied Andy's face and saw none of the amused intellectual superiority his friend usually affected. Andy looked scared. Of Morris? Maybe. For himself? Almost certainly.

“I shouldn't be seen with y—”

Morris was carrying a brown paper bag he'd grabbed from the kitchen. From it he took one of Rothstein's notebooks and put it on the table, being careful to avoid the puddle of spilled coffee. “A sample. One of a great many. At least a hundred and fifty. I haven't had a chance to do a count yet, but it's the total jackpot.”

“Put that away!” Andy was still whispering like a character in a bad spy movie. His eyes shifted from side to side, always returning to the notebook. “Rothstein's murder is on the front page of the
New York Times
and all over the TV, you idiot!”

This news came as a shock. It was supposed to be at least three days before anyone found the writer's body, maybe as long as six. Andy's reaction was even more of a shock. He looked like a cornered rat.

Morris flashed what he hoped was a fair approximation of Andy's I'm-so-smart-I-bore-myself smile. “Calm down. In this part of town there are kids carrying notebooks everywhere.” He pointed across the street toward Government Square. “There goes one now.”

“Not Moleskines, though! Jesus! The housekeeper knew the kind Rothstein used to write in, and the paper says the safe in his bedroom was open and empty! Put . . . it . . .
away
!”

Morrie pushed it toward Andy instead, still being careful to avoid the coffee stain. He was growing increasingly irritated with Andy—PO'd, as Jimmy Gold would have said—but he also felt a
perverse sort of pleasure at watching the man cringe in his seat, as if the notebook were a vial filled with plague germs.

“Go on, have a look. This one's mostly poetry. I was paging through it on the bus—”

“On the
bus
? Are you
insane
?”

“—and it's not very good,” Morris went on as if he hadn't heard, “but it's his, all right. A holograph manuscript. Extremely valuable. We talked about that. Several times. We talked about how—”

“Put it
away
!”

Morris didn't like to admit that Andy's paranoia was catching, but it sort of was. He returned the notebook to the bag and looked at his old friend (his
one
friend) sulkily. “It's not like I was suggesting we have a sidewalk sale, or anything.”

“Where are the rest?” And before Morris could answer: “Never mind. I don't want to know. Don't you understand how hot those things are? How hot
you
are?”

“I'm not hot,” Morris said, but he was, at least in the physical sense; all at once his cheeks and the nape of his neck were burning. Andy was acting as if he'd shit his pants instead of pulling off the crime of the century. “No one can connect me to Rothstein, and I
know
it'll be awhile before we can sell them to a private collector. I'm not stupid.”

“Sell them to a col— Morrie, do you
hear
yourself?”

Morris crossed his arms and stared at his friend. The man who used to be his friend, at least. “You act as if we never talked about this. As if we never planned it.”

“We didn't plan
anything
! It was a story we were telling ourselves, I thought you understood that!”

What Morris understood was Andy Halliday would tell the police exactly that if he, Morris, were caught. And Andy
expected
him to be caught. For the first time Morris realized consciously
that Andy was no intellectual giant eager to join him in an existential act of outlawry but just another nebbish. A bookstore clerk only a few years older than Morris himself.

Don't give me your dumbass literary criticism,
Rothstein had said to Morris in the last two minutes of his life.
You're a common thief, my friend
.

His temples began to throb.

“I should have known better. All your big talk about private collectors, movie stars and Saudi princes and I don't know who-all. Just a lot of big talk. You're nothing but a blowhard.”

That was a hit, a palpable hit. Morris saw it and was glad, just as he had been when he had managed to stick it to his mother once or twice in their final argument.

Andy leaned forward, cheeks flushed, but before he could speak, a waitress appeared with a wad of napkins. “Let me get that spill,” she said, and wiped it up. She was young, a natural ash-blonde, pretty in a pale way, maybe even beautiful. She smiled at Andy. He returned a pained grimace, at the same time drawing away from her as he had from the Moleskine notebook.

He's a homo, Morris thought wonderingly. He's a goddam homo. How come I didn't know that? How come I never saw? He might as well be wearing a sign.

Well, there were a lot of things about Andy he'd never seen, weren't there? Morris thought of something one of the guys on the housing job liked to say:
All pistol and no bullets
.

With the waitress gone, taking her toxic atmosphere of girl with her, Andy leaned forward again. “Those collectors are out there,” he said. “They pile up paintings, sculpture, first editions . . . there's an oilman in Texas who's got a collection of early wax-cylinder recordings worth a million dollars, and another one who's got a complete run of every western, science fiction, and shudder-pulp
magazine published between 1910 and 1955. Do you think all of that stuff was legitimately bought and sold? The fuck it was. Collectors are insane, the worst of them don't care if the things they covet were stolen or not, and they most assuredly do not want to share with the rest of the world.”

Morris had heard this screed before, and his face must have shown it, because Andy leaned even farther forward. Now their noses were almost touching. Morris could smell English Leather, and wondered if that was the preferred aftershave of homos. Like a secret sign, or something.

“But do you think any of those guys would listen to
me
?”

Morris Bellamy, who was now seeing Andy Halliday with new eyes, said he guessed not.

Andy pooched out his lower lip. “They will someday, though. Yeah. Once I get my own shop and build up a clientele. But that'll take
years
.”

“We talked about waiting five.”

“
Five?
” Andy barked a laugh and drew back to his side of the table again. “I might be able to open my
shop
in five years—I've got my eye on a little place in Lacemaker Lane, there's a fabric store there now but it doesn't do much business—but it takes longer than that to find big-money clients and establish trust.”

Lots of buts, Morris thought, but there were no buts before.

“How long?”

“Why don't you try me on those notebooks around the turn of the twenty-first century, if you still have them? Even if I
did
have a call list of private collectors right now, today, not even the nuttiest of them would touch anything so hot.”

Morris stared at him, at first unable to speak. At last he said, “You never said anything like
that
when we were planning—”