Finders Keepers Read online

  John Rothstein

  PS: I still laugh about the Famous Chicken!!!

  Drew scanned the letter longer than necessary, to calm himself, then looked up at the boy calling himself James Hawkins. "Do you understand the reference to the Famous Chicken? I'll explain, if you like. It's a good example of what Rothstein called her lunatic sense of humor."

  "I looked it up. When Miss O'Connor was six or seven, she had--or claimed she had--a chicken that walked backwards. Some newsreel people came and filmed it, and the chicken was in the movies. She said it was the high point of her life, and everything afterwards was an anticlimax."

  "Exactly right. Now that we've covered the Famous Chicken, what can I do for you?"

  The boy took a deep breath and opened the clasp on his manila envelope. From inside he took a photocopy and laid it beside Rothstein's letter in Dispatches from Olympus. Drew Halliday's face remained placidly interested as he looked from one to the other, but beneath the desk, his fingers interlaced so tightly that his closely clipped nails dug into the backs of his hands. He knew what he was looking at immediately. The squiggles on the tails of the ys, the bs that always stood by themselves, the hs that stood high and the gs that dipped low. The question now was how much "James Hawkins" knew. Maybe not a lot, but almost certainly more than a little. Otherwise he would not be hiding behind a new moustache and specs looking suspiciously like the clear-glass kind that could be purchased in a drugstore or costume shop.

  At the top of the page, circled, was the number 44. Below it was a fragment of poetry.

  Suicide is circular, or so I think;

  you may have your own opinion.

  In the meantime, meditate on this.

  A plaza just after sunrise,

  You could say in Mexico.

  Or Guatemala, if you like.

  Anyplace where the rooms still come

  with wooden ceiling fans.

  In any case it's blanco up to the blue sky

  except for the ragged mops of palms and

  rosa where the boy outside the cafe

  is washing cobbles, half asleep.

  On the corner, waiting for the first

  It ended there. Drew looked up at the boy.

  "It goes on about the first bus of the day," James Hawkins said. "The kind that runs on wires. A trolebus, he calls it. It's Spanish for trolley. The wife of the man narrating the poem, or maybe it's his girlfriend, is sitting dead in the corner of the room. She shot herself. He's just found her."

  "It doesn't strike me as deathless poesy," Drew said. In his current gobsmacked state, it was all he could think of to say. Regardless of its quality, the poem was the first new work by John Rothstein to appear in over half a century. No one had seen it but the author, this boy, and Drew himself. Unless Morris Bellamy had happened to glimpse it, which seemed unlikely given the great number of notebooks he claimed to have stolen.

  The great number.

  My God, the great number of notebooks.

  "No, it's sure not Wilfred Owen or T. S. Eliot, but I don't think that's the point. Do you?"

  Drew was suddenly aware that "James Hawkins" was watching him closely. And seeing what? Probably too much. Drew was used to playing them close to the vest--you had to in a business where lowballing the seller was as important as highballing potential buyers--but this was like the Titanic suddenly floating to the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, dinged-up and rusty, but there.

  Okay, then, admit it.

  "No, probably not." The photocopy and the letter to O'Connor were still side by side, and Drew couldn't help moving his pudgy finger back and forth between points of comparison. "If it's a forgery, it's a damned good one."

  "It's not." No lack of confidence there.

  "Where did you get it?"

  The boy then launched into a bullshit story Drew barely listened to, something about how his uncle Phil in Cleveland had died and willed his book collection to young James, and there had been six Moleskine notebooks packed in with the paperbacks and Book of the Month Club volumes, and it turned out, hidey-ho, that these six notebooks, filled with all sorts of interesting stuff--mostly poetry, along with some essays and a few fragmentary short stories--were the work of John Rothstein.

  "How did you know it was Rothstein?"

  "I recognized his style, even in the poems," Hawkins said. It was a question he had prepared for, obviously. "I'm majoring in American Lit at CC, and I've read most of his stuff. But there's more. For instance, this one is about Mexico, and Rothstein spent six months wandering around there after he got out of the service."

  "Along with a dozen other American writers of note, including Ernest Hemingway and the mysterious B. Traven."

  "Yeah, but look at this." The boy drew a second photocopy from his envelope. Drew told himself not to reach for it greedily . . . and reached for it greedily. He was behaving as though he'd been in this business for three years instead of over thirty, but who could blame him? This was big. This was huge. The difficulty was that "James Hawkins" seemed to know it was.

  Ah, but he doesn't know what I know, which includes where they came from. Unless Morrie is using him as a cat's paw, and how likely is that with Morrie rotting in Waynesville State Prison?

  The writing on the second photocopy was clearly from the same hand, but not as neat. There had been no scratch-outs and marginal notes on the fragment of poetry, but there were plenty here.

  "I think he might have written it while he was drunk," the boy said. "He drank a lot, you know, then quit. Cold turkey. Read it. You'll see what it's about."

  The circled number at the top of this page was 77. The writing below it started in mid-sentence.

  never anticipated. While good reviews are always sweet desserts in the short term, one finds they lead to indigestion--insomnia, nightmares, even problems taking that ever-more-important afternoon shit--in the long term. And the stupiddity is even more remarkable in the good notices than in the bad ones. To see Jimmy Gold as some sort of benchmark, a HERO, even, is like calling someone like Billy the Kid (or Charles Starkweather, his closest 20th century avatar) an American icon. Jimmy is as Jimmy is, even as I am or you are; he is modeled not on Huck Finn but Etienne Lantier, the greatest character in 19th century fiction! If I have withdrawn from the public eye, it is because that eye is infected and there is no reason to put more materiel before it. As Jimmy himself would say, "Shit don't

  It ended there, but Drew knew what came next, and he was sure Hawkins did, too. It was Jimmy's famous motto, still sometimes seen on tee-shirts all these years later.

  "He misspelled stupidity." It was all Drew could think of to say.

  "Uh-huh, and material. Real mistakes, not cleaned up by some copyeditor." The boy's eyes glowed. It was a glow Drew had seen often, but never in one so young. "It's alive, that's what I think. Alive and breathing. You see what he says about Etienne Lantier? That's the main character of Germinal, by Emile Zola. And it's new! Do you get it? It's a new insight into a character everybody knows, and from the author himself! I bet some collectors would pay big bucks for the original of this, and all the rest of the stuff I have."

  "You say there are six notebooks in your possession?"

  "Uh-huh."

  Six. Not a hundred or more. If six was all the kid had, then he certainly wasn't acting on Bellamy's behalf, unless Morris had for some reason split his haul up. Drew couldn't see his old pal doing that.

  "They're the medium-sized ones, eighty pages in each. That's four hundred and eighty pages. A lot of white space--with poems there always is--but they're not all poems. There are those short stories, too. One is about Jimmy Gold as a kid."

  But here was a question: did he, Drew, really believe there were only six? Was it possible the boy was holding back the good stuff? And if so, was he holding back because he wanted to sell the rest later, or because he didn't want to sell it at all? To Drew, the glow in his eyes suggested the latter, although the boy might not yet know it consciously.


  "Sir? Mr. Halliday?"

  "Sorry. Just getting used to the idea that this really might be new Rothstein material."

  "It is," the boy said. There was no doubt in his voice. "So how much?"

  "How much would I pay?" Drew thought son would be okay now, because they were about to get down to the dickering. "Son, I'm not exactly made of money. Nor am I completely convinced these aren't forgeries. A hoax. I'd have to see the real items."

  Drew could see Hawkins biting his lip behind the nascent moustache. "I wasn't talking about how much you'd pay, I was talking about private collectors. You must know some who are willing to spend big money for special items."

  "I know a couple, yes." He knew a dozen. "But I wouldn't even write to them on the basis of two photocopied pages. As for getting authentication from a handwriting expert . . . that might be dicey. Rothstein was murdered, you know, which makes these stolen property."

  "Not if he gave them to someone before he was killed," the boy countered swiftly, and Drew had to remind himself again that the kid had prepared for this encounter. But I have experience on my side, he thought. Experience and craft.

  "Son, there's no way to prove that's what happened."

  "There's no way to prove it wasn't, either."

  So: impasse.

  Suddenly the boy grabbed the two photocopies and jammed them back into the manila envelope.

  "Wait a minute," Drew said, alarmed. "Whoa. Hold on."

  "No, I think it was a mistake coming here. There's a place in Kansas City, Jarrett's Fine Firsts and Rare Editions. They're one of the biggest in the country. I'll try there."

  "If you can hold off a week, I'll make some calls," Drew said. "But you have to leave the photocopies."

  The boy hovered, unsure. At last he said, "How much could you get, do you think?"

  "For almost five hundred pages of unpublished--hell, unseen--Rothstein material? The buyer would probably want at least a computer handwriting analysis, there are a couple of good programs that do that, but assuming that proved out, perhaps . . ." He calculated the lowest possible figure he could throw out without sounding absurd. "Perhaps fifty thousand dollars."

  James Hawkins either accepted this, or seemed to. "And what would your commission be?"

  Drew laughed politely. "Son . . . James . . . no dealer would take a commission on a deal like this one. Not when the creator--known as the proprietor, in legalese--was murdered and the material might have been stolen. We'd split right down the middle."

  "No." The boy said it at once. He might not yet be able to grow the biker moustache he saw in his dreams, but he had balls as well as smarts. "Seventy-thirty. My favor."

  Drew could give in on this, get maybe a quarter of a million for the six notebooks and give the boy seventy percent of fifty K, but wouldn't "James Hawkins" expect him to dicker, at least a little? Wouldn't he be suspicious if he didn't?

  "Sixty-forty. My last offer, and of course contingent on finding a buyer. That would be thirty thousand dollars for something you found crammed into a cardboard box along with old copies of Jaws and The Bridges of Madison County. Not a bad return, I'd say."

  The boy shifted from foot to foot, saying nothing but clearly conflicted.

  Drew reverted to the wouldn't-hurt-a-fly smile. "Leave the photocopies with me. Come back in a week and I'll tell you how we stand. And here's some advice--stay away from Jarrett's place. The man will pick your pockets."

  "I'd want cash."

  Drew thought, Don't we all.

  "You're getting way ahead of yourself, son."

  The boy came to a decision and put the manila envelope down on the cluttered desk. "Okay. I'll come back."

  Drew thought, I'm sure you will. And I believe my bargaining position will be much stronger when you do.

  He held out his hand. The boy shook it again, as briefly as he could while still being polite. As if he were afraid of leaving fingerprints. Which in a way he had already done.

  Drew sat where he was until "Hawkins" went out, then dropped into his office chair (it gave out a resigned groan) and woke up his sleeping Macintosh. There were two security cameras mounted above the front door, one pointing each way along Lacemaker Lane. He watched the kid turn the corner onto Crossway Avenue and disappear from sight.

  The purple sticker on the spine of Dispatches from Olympus, that was the key. It marked the volume as a library book, and Drew knew every branch in the city. Purple meant a reference volume from the Garner Street Library, and reference volumes weren't supposed to circulate. If the kid had tried to smuggle it out under his City College jacket, the security gate would have buzzed when he went through, because that purple sticker was also an antitheft device. Which led to another Holmesian deduction, once you added in the kid's obvious book-smarts.

  Drew went to the Garner Street Library's website, where all sorts of choices were displayed: SUMMER HOURS, KIDS & TEENS, UPCOMING EVENTS, CLASSIC FILM SERIES, and, last but far from least: MEET OUR STAFF.

  Drew Halliday clicked on this and needed to click no farther, at least to begin with. Above the thumbnail bios was a photo of the staff, roughly two dozen in all, gathered on the library lawn. The statue of Horace Garner, open book in hand, loomed behind them. They were all smiles, including his boy, sans moustache and bogus spectacles. Second row, third from the left. According to the bio, young Mr. Peter Saubers was a student at Northfield High, currently working part-time. He hoped to major in English, with a minor in Library Science.

  Drew continued his researches, aided by the fairly unusual surname. He was sweating lightly, and why not? Six notebooks already seemed like a pittance, a tease. All of them--some containing a fourth Jimmy Gold novel, if his psycho friend had been right all those years ago--might be worth as much as fifty million dollars, if they were broken up and sold to different collectors. The fourth Jimmy Gold alone might fetch twenty. And with Morrie Bellamy safely tucked away in prison, all that stood in his way was one teenage boy who couldn't even grow a proper moustache.

  10

  William the Waiter returns with Drew's check, and Drew tucks his American Express card into the leather folder. It will not be refused, he's confident of that. He's less sure about the other two cards, but he keeps the Amex relatively clean, because it's the one he uses in business transactions.

  Business hasn't been so good over the last few years, although God knew it should have been. It should have been terrific, especially between 2008 and 2012, when the American economy fell into a sinkhole and couldn't seem to climb back out. In such times the value of precious commodities--real things, as opposed to computer boops and bytes on the New York Stock Exchange--always went up. Gold and diamonds, yes, but also art, antiques, and rare books. Fucking Michael Jarrett in KC is now driving a Porsche. Drew has seen it on his Facebook page.

  His thoughts turn to his second meeting with Peter Saubers. He wishes the kid hadn't found out about the third mortgage; that had been a turning point. Maybe the turning point.

  Drew's financial woes go back to that damned James Agee book, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Gorgeous copy, mint condition, signed by Agee and Walker Evans, the man who'd taken the photographs. How was Drew supposed to know it had been stolen?

  All right, he probably did know, certainly all the red flags were there and flying briskly, and he should have steered clear, but the seller had had no idea of the volume's actual worth, and Drew had let down his guard a little. Not enough to get fined or thrown in jail, and thank Christ for that, but the results have been long-term. Ever since 1999 he's carried a certain aroma with him to every convention, symposium, and book auction. Reputable dealers and buyers tend to give him a miss, unless--here is the irony--they've got something just a teensy bit sketchy they'd like to turn over for a quick profit. Sometimes when he can't sleep, Drew thinks, They are pushing me to the dark side. It's not my fault. Really, I'm the victim here.

  All of which makes Peter Saubers even more important.

  William comes ba
ck with the leather folder, face solemn. Drew doesn't like that. Maybe the card has been refused after all. Then his favorite waiter smiles, and Drew releases the breath he's been holding in a soft sigh.

  "Thanks, Mr. Halliday. Always great to see you."

  "Likewise, William. Likewise, I'm sure." He signs with a flourish and slides his Amex--a bit bowed but not broken--back into his wallet.

  On the street, walking toward his shop (the thought that he might be waddling never crosses his mind), his thoughts turn to the boy's second visit, which went fairly well, but not nearly as well as Drew had hoped and expected. At their first meeting, the boy had been so uneasy that Drew worried he might be tempted to destroy the priceless trove of manuscript he'd stumbled across. But the glow in his eyes had argued against that, especially when he talked about that second photocopy, with its drunken ramblings about the critics.

  It's alive, Saubers had said. That's what I think.

  And can the boy kill it? Drew asks himself as he enters his shop and turns the sign from CLOSED to OPEN. I don't think so. Any more than he could let the authorities take all that treasure away, despite his threats.

  Tomorrow is Friday. The boy has promised to come in immediately after school so they can conclude their business. The boy thinks it will be a negotiating session. He thinks he's still holding some cards. Perhaps he is . . . but Drew's are higher.

  The light on his answering machine is blinking. It's probably someone wanting to sell him insurance or an extended warranty on his little car (the idea of Jarrett driving a Porsche around Kansas City pinches momentarily at his ego), but you can never tell until you check. Millions are within his reach, but until they are actually in his grasp, it's business as usual.

  Drew goes to see who called while he was having his lunch, and recognizes Saubers's voice from the first word.

  His fists clench as he listens.

  11

  When the artist formerly known as Hawkins came in on the Friday following his first visit, the moustache was a trifle fuller but his step was just as tentative--a shy animal approaching a bit of tasty bait. By then Drew had learned a great deal about him and his family. And about the notebook pages, those too. Three different computer apps had confirmed that the letter to Flannery O'Connor and the writing on the photocopies were the work of the same man. Two of these apps compared handwriting. The third--not entirely reliable, given the small size of the scanned-in samples--pointed out certain stylistic similarities, most of which the boy had already seen. These results were tools laid by for the time when Drew would approach prospective buyers. He himself had no doubts, having seen one of the notebooks with his own eyes thirty-six years ago, on a table outside the Happy Cup.