Finders Keepers

‘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 di

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 I’m sitting on eighteen years’ worth of unpublished John Rothstein manuscripts.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 co

‘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 pla

‘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.