Finders Keepers Page 6

  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 lis
t 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--"

  Andy clapped his hands to the sides of his head and clutched it. "We planned nothing! And don't you try to lay this off on me! Don't you ever! I know you, Morrie. You didn't steal them to sell them, at least not until you've read them. Then I suppose you might be willing to give some of them to the world, if the price was right. Basically, though, you're just batshit-crazy on the subject of John Rothstein."

  "Don't call me that." His temples were throbbing worse than ever.

  "I will if it's the truth, and it is. You're batshit-crazy on the subject of Jimmy Gold, too. He's why you went to jail."

  "I went to jail because of my mother. She might as well have locked me up herself."

  "Whatever. It's water under the bridge. This is now. Unless you're lucky, the police are going to be paying you a visit very soon, and they'll probably arrive with a search warrant. If you have those notebooks when they knock on your door, your goose will be cooked."

  "Why would they come to me? Nobody saw us, and my partners . . ." He winked. "Let's just say that dead men tell no tales."

  "You . . . what? Killed them? Killed them, too?" Andy's face was a picture of dawning horror.

  Morris knew he shouldn't have said that, but--funny how that but kept coming around--Andy was just being such an asshole.

  "What's the name of the town that Rothstein lived in?" Andy's eyes were shifting around again, as if he expected the cops to be closing in even now, guns drawn. "Talbot Corners, right?"

  "Yes, but it's mostly farms. What they call the Corners is nothing but a diner, a grocery store, and a gas station where two state roads cross."

  "How many times were you there?"

  "Maybe five." It had actually been closer to a dozen, between 1976 and 1978. Alone at first, then with either Freddy or Curtis or both.

  "Ever ask questions about the town's most famous resident while you were there?"

  "Sure, once or twice. So what? Probably everybody who ever stops at that diner asks about--"

  "No, that's where you're wrong. Most out-of-towners don't give a shit about John Rothstein. If they've got questions, it's about when deer season starts or what kind of fish they could catch in the local lake. You don't think the locals will remember you when the police ask if there have been any strangers curious about the guy who wrote The Runner? Curious strangers who made repeat visits? Plus you have a record, Morrie!"

  "Juvenile. It's sealed."

  "Something as big as this, the seal might not hold. And what about your partners? Did either of them have records?"

  Morris said nothing.

  "You don't know who saw you, and you don't know who your partners might have bragged to about the big robbery they were going to pull off. The police could nail you today, you idiot. If they do and you bring my name up, I'll deny we ever talked about this. But I'll give you some advice. Get rid of that." He was pointing to the brown paper bag. "That and all the rest of the notebooks. Hide them somewhere. Bury them! If you do that, maybe you can talk your way out of it, if push comes to shove. Always supposing you didn't leave fingerprints, or something."

  We didn't, Morris thought. I wasn't stupid. And I'm not a cowardly big-talking homo, either.

  "Maybe we can revisit this," Andy said, "but it will be much later on, and only if they don't grab you." He got up. "In the meantime, stay clear of me, or I'll call the police myself."

  He walked away fast with his head down, not looking back.

  Morris sat there. The pretty waitress returned to ask if she could get him anything. Morris shook his head. When she left, he picked up the bag with the notebook inside it and walked away himself. In the opposite direction.

  ***

  He knew what the pathetic fallacy was, of course--nature echoing the feelings of human beings--and understood it to be the cheap, mood-creating trick of second-rate writers, but that day it seemed to be true. The morning's bright sunlight had both mirrored and amplified his feeling of exultation, but by noon the sun was only a dim circle behind a blear of clouds, and by three o'clock that afternoon, as his worries multiplied, the day grew dark and it began to drizzle.

  He drove the Biscayne out to the mall near the airport, constantly watching for police cars. When one came roaring up behind him on Airline Boulevard with its blues flashing, his stomach froze and his heart seemed to climb all the way into his mouth. When it sped by without slowing, he felt no relief.

  He found a news broadcast on BAM-100. The lead story was about a peace conference between Sadat and Begin at Camp David (Yeah, like that'll ever happen, Morris thought distractedly), but the second one concerned the murder of noted American writer John Rothstein. Police were saying it was the work of "a gang of thieves," and that a number of leads were being followed. That was probably just PR bullshit.

  Or maybe not.

  Morris didn't think he could be tracked down as a result of interviews with the half-deaf old codgers who hung out at the Yummy Diner in Talbot Corners, no matter what Andy thought, but there was something else that troubled him far more. He, Freddy, and Curtis had all worked for Donahue Construction, which was building homes in both Danvers and North Beverly. There were two different work crews, and for most of Morris's sixteen months, spent carrying boards and nailing studs, he had been in Danvers while Curtis and Freddy toiled at the other site, five miles away. Yet for awhile they had worked on the same crew, and even after they were split up, they usually managed to eat lunch together.

  Plenty of people knew this.

  He parked the Biscayne with about a thousand others at the JC Penney end of the mall, wiped down every surface he had touched, and left the keys in the ignition. He walked away fast, turning up his collar and yanking down his Indians cap. At the mall's main entrance, he waited on a bench until a Northfield bus came, and dropped his fifty cents into the box. The rain grew heavier and the ride back was slow, but he didn't mind. It gave him time to think.

  Andy was cowardly and full of himself, but he had been right about one thing. Morris had to hide the notebooks, and he had to do so immediately, no matter how much he wanted to read them, starting with that undiscovered Jimmy Gold novel. If the cops did come and he didn't have the notebooks, they could do nothing . . . right? All they'd have would be suspicion.

  Right?

  ***

  There was no one peeking through the curtains next door, which saved him another conversation with Mrs. Muller, and perhaps having to explain that he had sold his car. The rain had become a downpour, and that was good. There would be no one rambling around in the undeveloped land between Sycamore and Birch. Especially after dark.

  He pulled everything out of the secondhand trunk, resisting an almost overpowering urge to look into the notebooks. He couldn't do that, no matter how much he wanted to, because once he started, he wouldn't be able to stop. Later, he thought. Must postpone your gratifications, Morrie. Good advice, but spoken in his mother's voice, and that started his head throbbing again. At least he wouldn't have to postpone his gratifications for long; if three weeks went by with no visits from the police--a month at most--he would be able to relax and begin his researches.

  He lined the trunk with plastic to make sure the contents would stay dry, and put the notebooks, including the one he'd taken to show Andy, back inside. He dumped the money envelopes on top. He closed the trunk, considered, and opened it again. He pawed the plastic aside and took a couple of hundred dollars from one of the bank envelopes. Surely no cop would think that an excessive amount, even if he were searched. He could tell them it was his severance pay, or something.

  The sound of the rain on the garage roof was not soothing. To Morris it sounded like skeletal tapping fingers, and made his headache worse. He froze every time a car went by, waiting for headlights and pulsing blue strob
es to splash up the driveway. Fuck Andy Halliday for putting all these pointless worries in my head, he thought. Fuck him and the homo horse he rode in on.

  Only the worries might not be pointless. As afternoon wound down toward twilight, the idea that the cops could put Curtis and Freddy together with Morris Bellamy seemed more and more likely. That fucking rest area! Why hadn't he dragged the bodies into the woods, at least? Not that it would have slowed the cops down much once someone pulled in, saw all the blood, and called 911. The cops would have dogs . . .

  "Besides," he told the trunk, "I was in a hurry. Wasn't I?"

  His father's hand dolly was still standing in the corner, along with a rusty pick and two rusty shovels. Morris tipped the trunk endwise onto the dolly, secured the straps, and peered out of the garage window. Still too much light. Now that he was so close to getting rid of the notebooks and the money--Temporarily, he soothed himself, this is just a temporary measure--he became more and more sure that the cops would be here soon. Suppose Mrs. Muller had reported him as acting suspicious? It didn't seem likely, she was thicker than an oak plank, but who really knew?

  He forced himself to stuff down another frozen dinner, thinking it might soothe his head. It made the headache worse, instead. He looked in his mother's medicine cabinet for aspirin or Advil, and found . . . nothing. Fuck you, Mom, he thought. Really. Sincerely. Fuck . . . you.

  He saw her smile. Thin as a hook, that smile.

  It was still light at seven o'clock--goddam daylight saving time, what genius thought that up?--but the windows next door were still dark. That was good, but Morris knew the Mullers might be back at any time. Besides, he was too nervous to wait any longer. He rooted around in the front hall closet until he found a poncho.

  He used the garage's rear door and yanked the dolly across the back lawn. The grass was wet, the ground underneath spongy, and it was hard going. The path he had used so many times as a kid--usually going to the Birch Street Rec--was sheltered by overhanging trees, and he was able to make better progress. By the time he got to the little stream that flowed diagonally across this block-sized square of waste ground, full dark had arrived.

  He had brought a flashlight and used it in brief winks to pick out a likely location on the embankment of the stream, a safe distance from the path. The dirt was soft, and it was easy digging until he got to the tangle of roots from an overhanging tree. He thought about trying a different spot, but the hole was almost big enough for the trunk already, and he was damned if he was going to start all over again, especially when this was just a temporary precaution. He laid the flashlight in the hole, propping it on a rock so the beam shone on the roots, and chopped through them with the pick.