Finders Keepers

  "Well . . . okay." And because something else seems required: "Don't bother with eye makeup. Your eyes are very pretty as they are. Goodbye."

  She ends the call without waiting for Tina to say anything else and resumes pacing. She spits the wad of Nicorette into the wastebasket by her desk and blots her lip with a tissue, but the bleeding has already stopped.

  No close friends and no steady girl. No names except for that one teacher.

  Holly sits down and powers up her computer again. She opens Firefox, goes to the Northfield High website, clicks OUR FACULTY, and there is Howard Ricker, wearing a flower-patterned shirt with billowy sleeves, just like Tina said. Also a very ridiculous tie. Is it really so impossible that Pete Saubers said something to his favorite English teacher, especially if it had to do with whatever he was writing (or reading) in a Moleskine notebook?

  A few clicks and she has Howard Ricker's telephone number on her computer screen. It's still early, but she can't bring herself to cold-call a complete stranger. Phoning Tina was hard enough, and that call ended in tears.

  I'll tell Bill tomorrow, she decides. He can call Ricky the Hippie if he thinks it's worth doing.

  She goes back to her voluminous movie folder and is soon once more lost in The Godfather Part II.

  12

  Morris visits another computer cafe that Sunday night, and does his own quick bit of research. When he's found what he wants, he fishes out the piece of notepaper with Peter Saubers's cell number on it, and jots down Andrew Halliday's address. Coleridge Street is on the West Side. In the seventies, that was a middle-class and mostly white enclave where all the houses tried to look a little more expensive than they actually were, and as a result all ended up looking pretty much the same.

  A quick visit to several local real estate sites shows Morris that things over there haven't changed much, although an upscale shopping center has been added: Valley Plaza. Andy's car may still be parked at his house out there. Of course it might be in a space behind his shop, Morris never checked (Christ, you can't check everything, he thinks), but that seems unlikely. Why would you put up with the hassle of driving three miles into the city every morning and three miles back every night, in rush-hour traffic, when you could buy a thirty-day bus-pass for ten dollars, or a six-month's pass for fifty? Morris has the keys to his old pal's house, although he'd never try using them; the house is a lot more likely to be alarmed than the Birch Street Rec.

  But he also has the keys to Andy's car, and a car might come in handy.

  He walks back to Bugshit Manor, convinced that McFarland will be waiting for him there, and not content just to make Morris pee in the little cup. No, not this time. This time he'll also want to toss his room, and when he does he'll find the Tuff Tote with the stolen computer and the bloody shirt and shoes inside. Not to mention the envelope of money he took from his old pal's desk.

  I'd kill him, thinks Morris--who is now (in his own mind, at least) Morris the Wolf.

  Only he couldn't use the gun, plenty of people in Bugshit Manor know what a gunshot sounds like, even a polite ka-pow from a little faggot gun like his old pal's P238, and he left the hatchet in Andy's office. That might not do the job even if he did have it. McFarland is big like Andy, but not all puddly-fat like Andy. McFarland looks strong.

  That's okay, Morris tells himself. That shit don't mean shit. Because an old wolf is a crafty wolf, and that's what I have to be now: crafty.

  McFarland isn't waiting on the stoop, but before Morris can breathe a sigh of relief, he becomes convinced that his PO will be waiting for him upstairs. Not in the hall, either. He's probably got a passkey that lets him into every room in this fucked-up, piss-smelling place.

  Try me, he thinks. You just try me, you sonofabitch.

  But the door is locked, the room is empty, and it doesn't look like it's been searched, although he supposes if McFarland did it carefully . . . craftily--

  But then Morris calls himself an idiot. If McFarland had searched his room, he would have been waiting with a couple of cops, and the cops would have handcuffs.

  Nevertheless, he snatches open the closet door to make sure the Tuff Totes are where he left them. They are. He takes out the money and counts it. Six hundred and forty dollars. Not great, not even close to what was in Rothstein's safe, but not bad. He puts it back, zips the bag shut, then sits on his bed and holds up his hands. They are shaking.

  I have to get that stuff out of here, he thinks, and I have to do it tomorrow morning. But get it out to where?

  Morris lies down on his bed and looks up at the ceiling, thinking. At last he falls asleep.

  13

  Monday dawns clear and warm, the thermometer in front of City Center reading seventy before the sun is even fully over the horizon. School is still in session and will be for the next two weeks, but today is going to be the first real sizzler of the summer, the kind of day that makes people wipe the backs of their necks and squint at the sun and talk about global warming.

  When Hodges gets to his office at eight thirty, Holly is already there. She tells him about her conversation with Tina last night, and asks if Hodges will talk to Howard Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, if he can't get the story of the money from Pete himself. Hodges agrees to this, and tells Holly that was good thinking (she glows at this), but privately believes talking to Ricker won't be necessary. If he can't crack a seventeen-year-old kid--one who's probably dying to tell someone what's been weighing him down--he needs to quit working and move to Florida, home of so many retired cops.

  He asks Holly if she'll watch for the Saubers boy on Garner Street when school lets out this afternoon. She agrees, as long as she doesn't have to talk to him herself.

  "You won't," Hodges assures her. "If you see him, all you need to do is call me. I'll come around the block and cut him off. Have we got pix of him?"

  "I've downloaded half a dozen to my computer. Five from the yearbook and one from the Garner Street Library, where he works as a student aide, or something. Come and look."

  The best photo--a portrait shot in which Pete Saubers is wearing a tie and a dark sportcoat--identifies him as CLASS OF '15 STUDENT VICE PRESIDENT. He's dark-haired and good-looking. The resemblance to his kid sister isn't striking, but it's there, all right. Intelligent blue eyes look levelly out at Hodges. In them is the faintest glint of humor.

  "Can you email these to Jerome?"

  "Already done." Holly smiles, and Hodges thinks--as he always does--that she should do it more often. When she smiles, Holly is almost beautiful. With a little mascara around her eyes, she probably would be. "Gee, it'll be good to see Jerome again."

  "What have I got this morning, Holly? Anything?"

  "Court at ten o'clock. The assault thing."

  "Oh, right. The guy who tuned up on his brother-in-law. Belson the Bald Beater."

  "It's not nice to call people names," Holly says.

  This is probably true, but court is always an annoyance, and having to go there today is particularly trying, even though it will probably take no more than an hour, unless Judge Wiggins has slowed down since Hodges was on the cops. Pete Huntley used to call Brenda Wiggins FedEx, because she always delivered on time.

  The Bald Beater is James Belson, whose picture should probably be next to white trash in the dictionary. He's a resident of the city's Edgemont Avenue district, sometimes referred to as Hillbilly Heaven. As part of his contract with one of the city's car dealerships, Hodges was hired to repo Belson's Acura MDX, on which Belson had ceased making payments some months before. When Hodges arrived at Belson's ramshackle house, Belson wasn't there. Neither was the car. Mrs. Belson--a lady who looked rode hard and put away still damp--told him the Acura had been stolen by her brother Howie. She gave him the address, which was also in Hillbilly Heaven.

  "I got no love for Howie," she told Hodges, "but you might ought to get over before Jimmy kills him. When Jimmy's mad, he don't believe in talk. He goes right to beatin."

  When Hodges a
rrived, James Belson was indeed beating on Howie. He was doing this work with a rake-handle, his bald head gleaming with sweat in the sunlight. Belson's brother-in-law was lying in his weedy driveway by the rear bumper of the Acura, kicking ineffectually at Belson and trying to shield his bleeding face and broken nose with his hands. Hodges stepped up behind Belson and soothed him with the Happy Slapper. The Acura was back on the car dealership's lot by noon, and Belson the Bald Beater was now up on assault.

  "His lawyer is going to try to make you look like the bad guy," Holly says. "He's going to ask how you subdued Mr. Belson. You need to be ready for that, Bill."

  "Oh, for goodness sake," Hodges says. "I thumped him one to keep him from killing his brother-in-law, that's all. Applied acceptable force and practiced restraint."

  "But you used a weapon to do it. A sock loaded with ball bearings, to be exact."

  "True, but Belson doesn't know that. His back was turned. And the other guy was semiconscious at best."

  "Okay . . ." But she looks worried and her teeth are working at the spot she nipped while talking to Tina. "I just don't want you to get in trouble. Promise me you'll keep your temper and not shout, or wave your arms, or--"

  "Holly." He takes her by the shoulders. Gently. "Go outside. Smoke a cigarette. Chillax. All will be well in court this morning and with Pete Saubers this afternoon."

  She looks up at him, wide-eyed. "Do you promise?"

  "Yes."

  "All right. I'll just smoke half a cigarette." She heads for the door, rummaging in her bag. "We're going to have such a busy day."

  "I suppose we are. One other thing before you go."

  She turns back, questioning.

  "You should smile more often. You're beautiful when you smile."

  Holly blushes all the way to her hairline and hurries out. But she's smiling again, and that makes Hodges happy.

  14

  Morris is also having a busy day, and busy is good. As long as he's in motion, the doubts and fears don't have a chance to creep in. It helps that he woke up absolutely sure of one thing: this is the day he becomes a wolf for real. He's all done patching up the Culture and Arts Center's outdated computer filing system so his fat fuck of a boss can look good to his boss, and he's done being Ellis McFarland's pet lamb, too. No more baa-ing yes sir and no sir and three bags full sir each time McFarland shows up. Parole is finished. As soon as he has the Rothstein notebooks, he's getting the hell out of this pisspot of a city. He has no interest in going north to Canada, but that leaves the whole lower forty-eight. He thinks maybe he'll opt for New England. Who knows, maybe even New Hampshire. Reading the notebooks there, near the same mountains Rothstein must have looked at while he was writing--that had a certain novelistic roundness, didn't it? Yes, and that was the great thing about novels: that roundness. The way things always balanced out in the end. He should have known Rothstein couldn't leave Jimmy working for that fucking ad agency, because there was no roundness in that, just a big old scoop of ugly. Maybe, deep down in his heart, Morris had known it. Maybe it was what kept him sane all those years.

  He's never felt saner in his life.

  When he doesn't show up for work this morning, his fat fuck boss will probably call McFarland. That, at least, is what he's supposed to do in the event of an unexplained absence. So Morris has to disappear. Duck under the radar. Go dark.

  Fine.

  Terrific, in fact.

  At eight this morning, he takes the Main Street bus, rides all the way to its turnaround point where Lower Main ends, and then strolls down to Lacemaker Lane. Morris has put on his only sportcoat and his only tie, and they're good enough for him to not look out of place here, even though it's too early for any of the fancy-schmancy stores to have opened. He turns down the alley between Andrew Halliday Rare Editions and the shop next door, La Bella Flora Children's Boutique. There are three parking spaces in the small courtyard behind the buildings, two for the clothing shop and one for the bookshop. There's a Volvo in one of the La Bella Flora spots. The other one is empty. So is the space reserved for Andrew Halliday.

  Also fine.

  Morris leaves the courtyard as briskly as he came, pauses for a comforting look at the CLOSED sign hanging inside the bookshop door, and then strolls back to Lower Main, where he catches an uptown bus. Two changes later, he's stepping off in front of the Valley Plaza Shopping Center, just two blocks from the late Andrew Halliday's home.

  He walks briskly again, no strolling now. As if he knows where he is, where he's going, and has every right to be here. Coleridge Street is nearly deserted, which doesn't surprise him. It's quarter past nine (his fat fuck of a boss will by now be looking at Morris's unoccupied desk and fuming). The kids are in school; the workadaddies and workamommies are off busting heavies to keep up with their credit card debt; most delivery and service people won't start cruising the neighborhood until ten. The only better time would be the dozy hours of mid-afternoon, and he can't afford to wait that long. Too many places to go, too many things to do. This is Morris Bellamy's big day. His life has taken a long, long detour, but he's almost back on the mainline.

  15

  Tina starts feeling sick around the time Morris is strolling up the late Drew Halliday's driveway and seeing his old pal's car parked inside his garage. Tina hardly slept at all last night because she's so worried about how Pete will take the news that she ratted him out. Her breakfast is sitting in her belly like a lump, and all at once, while Mrs. Sloan is performing "Annabel Lee" (Mrs. Sloan never just reads), that lump of undigested food starts to crawl up her throat and toward the exit.

  She raises her hand. It seems to weigh at least ten pounds, but she holds it up until Mrs. Sloan raises her eyes. "Yes, Tina, what is it?"

  She sounds annoyed, but Tina doesn't care. She's beyond caring. "I feel sick. I need to go to the girls'."

  "Then go, by all means, but hurry back."

  Tina scuttles from the room. Some of the girls are giggling--at thirteen, unscheduled bathroom visits are always amusing--but Tina is too concerned with that rising lump to feel embarrassed. Once in the hall she breaks into a run, heading for the bathroom halfway down the hall as fast as she can, but the lump is faster and she doubles over before she can get there and vomits her breakfast all over her sneakers.

  Mr. Haggerty, the school's head janitor, is just coming up the stairs. He sees her stagger backward from the steaming puddle of whoopsie and trots toward her, his toolbelt jingling.

  "Hey, girl, you okay?"

  Tina gropes for the wall with an arm that feels made of plastic. The world is swimming. Part of that is because she has vomited hard enough to bring tears to her eyes, but not all. She wishes with all her heart that she hadn't let Barbara persuade her into talking to Mr. Hodges, that she had left Pete alone to work out whatever was wrong. What if he never speaks to her again?

  "I'm fine," she says. "I'm sorry I made a m--"

  But the swimming gets worse before she can finish. She doesn't exactly faint, but the world pulls away from her, becomes something she's looking at through a smudged window rather than something she's actually in. She slides down the wall, amazed by the sight of her own knees, clad in green tights, coming up to meet her. That is when Mr. Haggerty scoops her up and carries her downstairs to the school nurse's office.

  16

  Andy's little green Subaru is perfect, as far as Morris is concerned--not apt to attract a first glance, let alone a second. There are only thousands just like it. He backs down the driveway and sets off for the North Side, keeping an eye out for cops and obeying every speed limit.

  At first it's almost a replay of Friday night. He stops once more at the Bellows Avenue Mall and once more visits Home Depot. He goes to the tools section, where he picks out a screwdriver with a long blade and a chisel. Then he drives on to the square brick hulk that used to be the Birch Street Recreation Center and once more parks in the space marked RESERVED FOR REC DEPT. VEHICLES.

  It's a good spot in w
hich to do dirty business. There's a loading dock on one side and a high hedge on the other. He's visible only from behind--the baseball field and crumbling basketball courts--but with school in session, those areas are deserted. Morris goes to the basement window he noticed before, squats, and rams the blade of his screwdriver into the crack at the top. It goes in easily, because the wood is rotten. He uses the chisel to widen the crack. The glass rattles in its frame but doesn't break, because the putty is old and there's plenty of give. The possibility that this hulk of a building has alarm protection is looking slimmer all the time.

  Morris swaps the chisel for the screwdriver again. He chivvies it through the gap he's made, catches the thumb-lock, and pushes. He looks around to make sure he's still unobserved--it's a good spot, yes, but breaking and entering in broad daylight is still a scary proposition--and sees nothing but a crow perched on a telephone pole. He inserts the chisel at the bottom of the window, beating it in as deep as it will go with the heel of his hand, then bears down on it. For a moment there's nothing. Then the window slides up with a squall of wood and a shower of dirt. Bingo. He wipes sweat from his face as he peers in at the stored chairs, card tables, and boxes of junk, verifying that it will be easy to slide in and drop to the floor.

  But not quite yet. Not while there's the slightest possibility that a silent alarm is lighting up somewhere.

  Morris takes his tools back to the little green Subaru, and drives away.

  17

  Linda Saubers is monitoring the mid-morning activity period at Northfield Elementary School when Peggy Moran comes in and tells her that her daughter has been taken sick at Dorton Middle, some three miles away.

  "She's in the nurse's office," Peggy says, keeping her voice low. "I understand she vomited and then sort of passed out for a few minutes."

  "Oh my God," Linda says. "She looked pale at breakfast, but when I asked her if she was okay, she said she was."

  "That's the way they are," Peggy says, rolling her eyes. "It's either melodrama or I'm fine, Mom, get a life. Go get her and take her home. I'll cover this, and Mr. Jablonski has already called a sub."