Finders Keepers

‘You didn’t have to kill him. You weren’t supposed to. It wasn’t in the plan. Why’d you do that?’

Because he made me feel stupid. Because he cursed my mother and that’s my job. Because he called me a kid. Because he needed to be punished for turning Jimmy Gold into one of them. Mostly because nobody with his kind of talent has a right to hide it from the world. Only Curtis wouldn’t understand that.

‘Because it’ll make the notebooks worth more when we sell them.’ Which wouldn’t be until he’d read every word in them, but Curtis wouldn’t understand the need to do that, and didn’t need to know. Nor did Freddy. He tried to sound patient and reasonable. ‘We now have all the John Rothstein output there’s ever going to be. That makes the unpublished stuff even more valuable. You see that, don’t you?’

Curtis scratched one pale cheek. ‘Well … I guess … yeah.’

‘Also, he can never claim they’re forgeries when they turn up. Which he would have done, just out of spite. I’ve read a lot about him, Curtis, just about everything, and he was one spiteful motherfucker.’

‘Well …’

Morrie restrained himself from saying That’s an extremely deep subject for a mind as shallow as yours. He held out the valise instead. ‘Take it. And keep your gloves on until we’re in the car.’

‘You should have talked it over with us, Morrie. We’re your partners.’

Curtis started out, then turned back. ‘I got a question.’

‘What is it?’

‘Do you know if New Hampshire has the death penalty?’

They took secondary roads across the narrow chimney of New Hampshire and into Vermont. Freddy drove the Chevy Biscayne, which was old and unremarkable. Morris rode shotgun with a Rand McNally open on his lap, thumbing on the dome light from time to time to make sure they didn’t wander off their pre-pla

Curtis lay in the backseat, and soon they heard the sound of his snores. Morris considered him lucky; he seemed to have puked out his horror. Morris thought it might be awhile before he himself got another good night’s sleep. He kept seeing the brains dribbling down the wallpaper. It wasn’t the killing that stayed on his mind, it was the spilled talent. A lifetime of honing and shaping torn apart in less than a second. All those stories, all those images, and what came out looked like so much oatmeal. What was the point?

‘So you really think we’ll be able to sell those little books of his?’ Freddy asked. He was back to that. ‘For real money, I mean?’

‘Yes.’

‘And get away with it?’

‘Yes, Freddy, I’m sure.’

Freddy Dow was quiet for so long that Morris thought the issue was settled. Then he spoke to the subject again. Two words. Dry and toneless. ‘I’m doubtful.’

Later on, once more incarcerated – not in Youth Detention this time, either – Morris would think, That’s when I decided to kill them.

But sometimes at night, when he couldn’t sleep, his asshole slick and burning from one of a dozen soap-assisted shower-room buggeries, he would admit that wasn’t the truth. He’d known all along. They were dumb, and career criminals. Sooner or later (probably sooner) one of them would be caught for something else, and there would be the temptation to trade what they knew about this night for a lighter sentence or no sentence at all.

I just knew they had to go, he would think on those cellblock nights when the full belly of America rested beneath its customary comforter of night. It was inevitable.

In upstate New York, with dawn not yet come but begi

They passed a sign reading REST AREA 2 MI., and Morris thought of Macbeth. If it were to be done, then ’twere well it were done quickly. Not an exact quote, maybe, but close enough for government work.

‘Pull in there,’ he told Freddy. ‘I need to drain the dragon.’

‘They probably got vending machines, too,’ said the puker in the backseat. Curtis was sitting up now, his hair crazy around his head. ‘I could get behind some of those peanut butter crackers.’

Morris knew he’d have to let it go if there were other cars in the rest area. I-90 had sucked away most of the through traffic that used to travel on this road, but once daybreak arrived, there would be lots of local traffic, pooting along from one Hicksville to the next.

For now the rest area was deserted, at least in part because of the sign reading OVERNIGHT RVS PROHIBITED. They parked and got out. Birds chirruped in the trees, discussing the night just past and plans for the day. A few leaves – in this part of the world they were just begi

Curtis went to inspect the vending machines while Morris and Freddy walked side by side to the men’s half of the restroom facility. Morris didn’t feel particularly nervous. Maybe what they said was true, after the first one it got easier.

He held the door for Freddy with one hand and took the pistol from his jacket pocket with the other. Freddy said thanks without looking around. Morris let the door swing shut before raising the gun. He placed the muzzle less than an inch from the back of Freddy Dow’s head and pulled the trigger. The gunshot was a flat loud bang in the tiled room, but anyone who heard it from a distance would think it was a motorcycle backfiring on I-90. What he worried about was Curtis.

He needn’t have. Curtis was still standing in the snack alcove, beneath a wooden eave and a rustic sign reading ROADSIDE OASIS. In one hand he had a package of peanut butter crackers.

‘Did you hear that?’ he asked Morris. Then, seeing the gun, sounding honestly puzzled: ‘What’s that for?’

‘You,’ Morris said, and shot him in the chest.

Curtis went down, but – this was a shock – did not die. He didn’t seem even close to dying. He squirmed on the pavement. A fallen leaf cartwheeled in front of his nose. Blood began to seep out from beneath him. He was still clutching his crackers. He looked up, his oily black hair hanging in his eyes. Beyond the screening trees, a truck went past on Route 92, droning east.

Morris didn’t want to shoot Curtis again, out here a gunshot didn’t have that hollow backfire sound, and besides, someone might pull in at any second. ‘If it were to be done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,’ he said, and dropped to one knee.

‘You shot me,’ Curtis said, sounding breathless and amazed. ‘You fucking shot me, Morrie!’

Thinking how much he hated that nickname – he’d hated it all his life, and even teachers, who should have known better, used it – he reversed the gun and began to hammer Curtis’s skull with the butt. Three hard blows accomplished very little. It was only a .38, after all, and not heavy enough to do more than minor damage. Blood began to seep through Curtis’s hair and run down his stubbly cheeks. He was groaning, staring up at Morris with desperate blue eyes. He waved one hand weakly.

‘Stop it, Morrie! Stop it, that hurts!’

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Morris slid the gun back into his pocket. The butt was now slimy with blood and hair. He went to the Biscayne, wiping his hand on his jacket. He opened the driver’s door, saw the empty ignition, and said fuck under his breath. Whispering it like a prayer.

On 92, a couple of cars went by, then a brown UPS truck.

He trotted back to the men’s room, opened the door, knelt down, and began to go through Freddy’s pockets. He found the car keys in the left front. He got to his feet and hurried back to the snack alcove, sure a car or truck would have pulled in by now, the traffic was getting heavier all the time, somebody would have to piss out his or her morning coffee, and he would have to kill that one, too, and possibly the one after that. An image of linked paper dolls came to mind.