The Hemingway Thief (26 page)

“Why they throw you out,
muchacho
?”

“Bad manners,” I said, and looked him in the eye.

“You still got bad manners?”

“You know what they say about bad habits,
muchacho
,” I said. I kept my face hard as granite, but it was becoming increasingly difficult not to piss my pants.

“Enough, Paco,” Jorge said. “They are with Elmo, no? Show me what you take before you go, Dutch. No tricks. OK?”

“OK,” Dutch said. Jorge patted Dutch's arm and stood back from the car. My Mexican pulled his head out of the window. The third removed his foot from the bumper and walked slowly out of our way. Dutch put the truck in gear with a deep, wrenching pull and crawled past the guards. He lifted two fingers to the brim of his 49ers cap and Jorge returned the gesture and added a nod.

“Don't you think you should've mentioned La Dónde might be on her way?” I whispered even though we were past the gate and nearly to the canyon.

“Naw,” Dutch said. “Jorge would never let us in if he thought she'd be coming too. Plus, she might not be coming. All the guys who knew Ebenezer Milch are dead or far away by now. Only Elmo knows the secret.”

“She may have followed us,” I said. “If she does come, will they stop her? Will they be
able
to stop her?”

“Probably not,” Dutch said with a queasy grimace. “They guard a gate for a low-rent drug king. It's not like they're Green Berets.”

“But she might not come at all, right? She went after Digby.”

“We shouldn't stick around longer than we have to,” Dutch said, as the canyon walls rose on either side of the truck, enveloping us in a velvety shadow. The rear window opened and Grady poked his head through again.

“How much farther?” he asked. Dutch pointed forward where beams of morning sun poked through the other end of the canyon.

“We climb up and out and we're there,” Dutch said. He drove over the small stream running through the center of the canyon and steered the truck up onto a ridge jutting out of the wall. It was just wide enough to accommodate the truck, and it angled upward, becoming steeper, until it seemed we were going to leave the earth and drive right into the sun. I shaded my eyes with my hand, my sunglasses proving to be worthless against the intense light. Dutch did the same.

“It's like driving blind,” he said. I felt the front tire on my side begin to sink, and Dutch corrected the wheel. He let out a low whistle and I wondered what would kill us first, La Dónde's bullets or Dutch's driving.

The road leveled out again and we emerged onto a dusty pan extending out for about a quarter of an acre. The canyon was on our right and the mountainside to our left. Dutch drove the truck away from the canyon edge and closer to the cliff at the far end of the shelf. The cliff dropped down about two hundred feet and ended in a broad, torrential river that fed the canyon's stream. On the other side of the river was a green, leafy crop of marijuana the size of a Nebraska cornfield.

“El Cuerno's?” I asked, and Dutch nodded. “Where's the camp?” Dutch pointed out his window at a squat domicile made of red adobe jutting out of the mountainside like a cyst. This was where Ebenezer Milch, the Hemingway thief, had made his final home. The windows were decorated with shabby burlap drapes blowing lazily in the breeze. The door had been cobbled together from several packing crates, and the centerboard declared it to be the property of Pensacola Air Force Base. Ebenezer had built a low wall of cinderblock and mud extending around his home and to the cliff. Along the top of the wall he'd fixed a series of upside-down broken beer bottles as makeshift spikes. The gate in the middle was less foreboding, made from the same crates as the house door and carved into pickets.

We piled out of the cab. Milch and Grady rolled out of the truck bed hunched over and stiff like old, broken men. Grady reached back inside and groaned as he pulled out a long canvas sack. It contained two .22 rifles and a Remington .12-gauge shotgun Elmo had lent us. A cold drop of rain splashed on my neck and snaked down my spine. Dark, angry thunderheads were devouring the bright morning sky.

“Storms come up quick around here,” Dutch said. “They go just as quickly, too. Let's get inside.” The rain started to fall in fat gobs as we dashed through the gate and burst into Ebenezer's home.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The air was dead and smelled like a frat-house laundry bag. There was a spindly chair on its side next to a large wire spool Ebenezer had probably used as a dinner table. A potbelly stove sat in the corner, its kinked and dented pipe rising out through a hole in the roof. A hummock of ash and charred wood bits surrounded it. Outlaws, runaways, and fugitives had all called this place home for a night or two in the days before El Cuerno had claimed it, and the red dirt floor was littered with evidence of their stays; a few tins of Dinty Moore here, a pile of cigarette butts there. But there was no evidence of a suitcase or anyplace it might be hidden.

“It's not here,” Grady said. Milch's shoulders slumped, and he fell against the wall. His knees buckled and he slid down until his ass rested on his ankles.

“Hold on now. We haven't searched the place,” I said.

Grady put his hand above his eyes like he was shading the sun, craned his neck forward, and pantomimed a swiveling examination of the room.

“There,” he said. “I searched it.”

I started to say something, but he held up his finger.

“Hold on. It pays to be thorough.” He repeated his mocking search and when he was done he threw up his hands. “Damn, still nothing.”

“I don't think that's necessary,” I said. “I'm only trying to help.”

“It's not here,” Grady said, and adjusted the gun sack strung across his back.

“Let's think about this for a second,” I said. Milch was running his tongue slowly over his bottom lip while staring at a Mexican candy wrapper splayed open on the ground. “You okay, Ebbie?” He nodded unconvincingly. I patted him on the shoulder and turned to Dutch. “What happened to Ebenezer after he died?”

“Before my time, Coop,” he said. “Elmo was the only one who knew him.”

“He never talked about him?”

“Not to us,” Dutch said. “How often do you talk about someone who died thirty years ago to a room full of people wouldn't care if he died yesterday? I doubt most people in camp've even heard of Hemingway, let alone his suitcase. Why would they give a shit about the man who stole it?”

He had a point. In our quest to find Hemingway's lost suitcase, I had forgotten that most people had never heard of it. I had been imagining Elmo sitting around the fire, retelling Ebenezer's Parisian adventure over and over again with his band of reformed smugglers, thieves, and murderers sitting in rapt attention. Dutch disabused me of this fantasy and replaced it with the image of a group of barely literate, formerly overviolent men telling dirty jokes and bloody vignettes. Ebenezer had found the perfect place to hide the suitcase: in the middle of a region filled with men who could not begin to express how little they cared about its existence.

“When Elmo tells stories, they're usually about J. W. Booth and how he died fighting the Apaches,” Dutch said. “Elmo's a man who knows his audience.”

“Fuck this place,” Milch said, standing up and sticking a cigarette between his lips. “Let's go. We need to go.”

“We just got here,” I said, blocking Milch's way to the door. “And not without a little bit of trouble either.”

“It ain't here,” Milch said. His eyes were red and the corners of his mouth were set in terse, wrinkled triangles. “If the suitcase ever existed, it's at the bottom of the Paris River.”

“You mean the Seine,” I said.

“Whatever the fuck,” Milch said, and pushed past me. He was opening the door when I shoved him. The door closed again as he fell against it. He caught himself before he fell, and wheeled around with a wild fist. If I had been an experienced fighter, I could have easily dodged it. I was not an experienced fighter. The blow caught my ear, and I heard a small pop followed by a dull sound like a distant airplane.

“I owed you one from Tequilero,” Milch said.

“Tequilero?” Grady said.

“Forget it,” Milch said, and made for the door again. This time it was Grady who stopped him. His punch was faster and more compact than Milch's, out and back like a striking rattlesnake. Milch took a step back and fell on his ass. A small rivulet of blood trickled from one nostril.

“It's forgotten,” Grady said. “Now let's think about what we do next.”

“We fucking leave,” Milch said. He touched the blood under his nose with his fingertip and examined it. “It ain't fucking here. You were just saying it to Coop. That Dónde bitch could be here any second.”

“We've got time,” I said.

“No, we don't,” Milch said in a whine. “It ain't here, Grady, you said so yourself.”

“Yeah, but I'm a pessimist,” Grady said, massaging the hand he used to hit Milch. “You've been the one who was so gung ho we'd find the case. What changed your mind?”

“A room with nothing but food wrappers and used butts,” Milch said. “And an old fucking stove.” He kicked his leg out at the potbelly, striking one of the legs with his sneaker. It was heavier than Milch expected and he let out a howl and grabbed his foot. He snarled at the stove, lifted his foot up, and brought his heel down on the center. This time the stove lurched to the side and almost upended. The pipe's connection gave a low, rusty groan, and when the body came back down on all four feet, the stack broke away entirely. An ashy nebula of black soot spilled out and dusted Milch.

“Calm down, kid, or I'm gonna hit you again,” Grady said. “The case is probably hidden in one of the hills around here. We just have to look for it.”

“Don't you get it? Elmo never even saw the fucking suitcase,” Milch said. He wiped the blood from his nose with his T-shirt. “You heard him yourself. He has no proof anything Ebenezer told him was anything more than just another con.”

I backed away from Milch, giving him space to have his tantrum. I wanted to throw a fit too, but one was enough. I stuck my finger in my ear and wiggled it. The ringing was starting to dissipate, but my head was swimming like a barrel of eels. I leaned forward, took a deep breath, and noticed a thin rut in the layer of ash next to the stove. It was too linear to be accidental. The ringing stopped.

“He never saw it because it never fucking existed,” Milch continued. “It was just a fucking story my uncle told my grandfather. Ebenezer was a loser who died alone out in the desert, and nobody noticed for a whole goddamned year.” His shoulders hunched over and he covered his eyes with his hands. His next words came out in a barely-audible croak. We inched closer to hear him, but I kept my eye on the rut in the ash. “Pop never saw the suitcase either,” he continued. “I asked Dad why and he said Ebenezer didn't want anybody to see the stories without Hemingway's permission. I asked him why he never went after the suitcase, even after Ebenezer died.”

“What did he say?” Grady asked.

“He said the knights never find the Grail. They come close, but they never get their hands on it. They weren't meant to.”

“What the fuck does that mean,” Grady said.

“It means he knew my uncle was full of shit,” Milch said.

“I don't think so,” I said. “I think your grandfather understood Ebenezer's story better than any of us.”

“Hey, if Milch wants to go, maybe we should go,” Grady said, and offered his hand to Milch. Milch moved his arm, saw Grady's hand, and took it. Grady pulled him to his feet. “The suitcase was our only bargaining chip, and we don't have it. Our only chance now is to run like hell for the border.”

“No,” I said. “The suitcase is here.”

“I hit you too hard in that ear, Coop,” Milch said. “You're not listening. I'm
telling
you it's bullshit. I'm
telling
you we got to get out of here.”

“Hemingway wrote Ebenezer's name down in that manuscript. We saw it with our own eyes,” I said. “That wasn't bullshit. He wouldn't remember a guy forty years later unless he meant something. Chavez met Hemingway. Hemingway came all the way down here for a suitcase. The manuscript is real. Ebenezer's stories were real. That means the suitcase is real.” I lifted the leather satchel containing the manuscript that still hung off my shoulder. “You came here because of this, because it confirmed your uncle's story. You came because you wanted to have a bit of the legend for yourself, something your grandfather never had the balls to do. You wanted to be a part of it, so you came down here.”

“And I was wrong,” Milch said. “Nobody has seen the fucking thing.”

“Of course not,” I said. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. My lips were dry and cracked. I ran my tongue over them and it was like sandpaper scraping over sandpaper. “Your uncle was a professional thief. A professional knows how to hold onto his score. Didn't you see
Goodfellas
? What happened to the guy who bought his wife the Cadillac? DeNiro fucking whacked him. That's what.”

“Are you losing it, Coop?” Grady asked.

“Why would he show it to Elmo? Fucking guy lives in a mountain fortress full of thieves and cut-throats,” I said. “He's supposed to walk in there and say, ‘Lemme tell you where I keep my priceless piece of fucking history?' No, he's gonna keep it hidden. And you don't keep something like that hidden in the goddamn hills where the elements can get at it either, Grady. You keep it close. You keep it warm and you keep it dry. The suitcase is here. It is in this house.”

“Plenty of people have come through here since then. How do you know one of them didn't take it?” Grady asked.