Finders Keepers

  "I'll scrunch her down by my feet. There. Is that better?"

  "What if she smothers?"

  "She doesn't breathe, stupid. She's just a doll and Ellen says pretty soon I'll get tired of her."

  "Ellen's a doofus."

  "She's my friend." Pete realized with some amusement that this wasn't exactly disagreeing. "But she's probably right. People grow up."

  "Not you. You'll always be my little sister. And don't go to sleep. You're going back to your room in like five minutes."

  "Ten."

  "Six."

  She considered. "Okay."

  From downstairs came a muffled groan, followed by the thump of crutches. Pete tracked the sound into the kitchen, where Dad would sit down, light a cigarette, and blow the smoke out the back door. This would cause the furnace to run, and what the furnace burned, according to their mother, was not oil but dollar bills.

  "Are they gonna get divorced, do you think?"

  Pete was doubly shocked: first by the question, then by the adult matter-of-factness of it. He started to say No, course not, then thought how much he disliked movies where adults lied to children, which was like all movies.

  "I don't know. Not tonight, anyway. The courts are closed."

  She giggled. That was probably good. He waited for her to say something else. She didn't. Pete's thoughts turned to the trunk buried in the embankment, beneath that tree. He had managed to keep those thoughts at arm's length while he did his homework, but . . .

  No, I didn't. Those thoughts were there all the time.

  "Teens? You better not go to sleep."

  "I'm not . . ." But damn close, from the sound.

  "What would you do if you found a treasure? A buried treasure chest full of jewels and gold doubloons?"

  "What are doubloons?"

  "Coins from olden days."

  "I'd give it to Daddy and Mommy. So they wouldn't fight anymore. Wouldn't you?"

  "Yes," Pete said. "Now go back to your own bed, before I have to carry you."

  ***

  Under his insurance plan, Tom Saubers only qualified for therapy twice a week now. A special van came for him every Monday and Friday at nine o'clock and brought him back at four in the afternoon, after hydrotherapy and a meeting where people with long-term injuries and chronic pain sat around in a circle and talked about their problems. All of which meant that the house was empty for seven hours on those days.

  On Thursday night, Pete went to bed complaining of a sore throat. The next morning he woke up saying it was still sore, and now he thought he had a fever, too.

  "You're hot, all right," Linda said after putting the inside of her wrist to his brow. Pete certainly hoped so, after holding his face two inches from his bedside lamp before going downstairs. "If you're not better tomorrow, you probably should see the doctor."

  "Good idea!" Tom exclaimed from his side of the table, where he was pushing around some scrambled eggs. He looked like he hadn't slept at all. "A specialist, maybe! Just let me call Shorty the Chauffeur. Tina's got dibs on the Rolls for her tennis lesson at the country club, but I think the Town Car is available."

  Tina giggled. Linda gave Tom a hard look, but before she could respond, Pete said he didn't feel all that bad, a day at home would probably fix him up. If that didn't, the weekend would.

  "I suppose." She sighed. "Do you want something to eat?"

  Pete did, but thought it unwise to say so, since he was supposed to have a sore throat. He cupped his hand in front of his mouth and created a cough. "Maybe just some juice. Then I guess I'll go upstairs and try to get some more sleep."

  ***

  Tina left the house first, bopping down to the corner where she and Ellen would discuss whatever weirdo stuff nine-year-olds discussed while waiting for the schoolbus. Then Mom for her school, in the Focus. Last of all Dad, who made his way down the walk on his crutches to the waiting van. Pete watched him go from his bedroom window, thinking that his father seemed smaller now. The hair sticking out around his Groundhogs cap had started to turn gray.

  When the van was gone, Pete threw on some clothes, grabbed one of the reusable grocery shopping bags Mom kept in the pantry, and went out to the garage. From his father's toolbox he selected a hammer and chisel, which he dumped into the bag. He grabbed the spade, started out, then came back and took the crowbar as well. He had never been a Boy Scout, but believed in being prepared.

  ***

  The morning was cold enough for him to see his breath, but by the time Pete dug enough of the trunk free to feel he had a chance of pulling it out, the air had warmed up to well above freezing and he was sweating under his coat. He draped it over a low branch and peered around to make sure he was still alone here by the stream (he had done this several times). Reassured, he got some dirt and rubbed his palms with it, like a batter getting ready to hit. He grasped the handle at the end of the trunk, reminding himself to be ready if it broke. The last thing he wanted to do was tumble down the embankment ass over teapot. If he fell into the stream, he really might get sick.

  Probably nothing in there but a bunch of moldy old clothes, anyway . . . except why would anyone bury a trunk filled with old clothes? Why not just burn them, or take them to the Goodwill?

  Only one way to find out.

  Pete took a deep breath, locked it down in his chest, and pulled. The trunk stayed put, and the old handle creaked warningly, but Pete was encouraged. He found he could now shift the trunk from side to side a little. This made him think of Dad tying a thread around one of Tina's baby teeth and giving a brisk yank when it wouldn't come out on its own.

  He dropped to his knees (reminding himself he would do well to either wash these jeans later on or bury them deep in his closet) and peered into the hole. He saw a root had closed around the rear of the trunk like a grasping arm. He grabbed the spade, choked up on the handle, and chopped at it. The root was thick and he had to rest several times, but finally he cut all the way through. He laid the spade aside and grabbed the handle again. The trunk was looser now, almost ready to come out. He glanced at his watch. Quarter past ten. He thought of Mom calling home on her break to see how he was doing. Not a big problem, when he didn't answer she'd just think he was sleeping, but he reminded himself to check the answering machine when he got back. He grabbed the spade and began to dig around the trunk, loosening the dirt and cutting a few smaller roots. Then he took hold of the handle again.

  "This time, you mother," he told it. "This time for sure."

  He pulled. The trunk slid forward so suddenly and easily that he would have fallen over if his feet hadn't been braced far apart. Now it was leaning out of the hole, its top covered with sprays and clods of dirt. He could see the latches on the front, old-fashioned ones, like the latches on a workman's lunchbox. Also a big lock. He grabbed the handle again and this time it snapped. "Fuck a duck," Pete said, looking at his hands. They were red and throbbing.

  Well, in for a penny, in for a pound (another of Mom's favorite sayings). He gripped the sides of the trunk in a clumsy bearhug and rocked back on his heels. This time it came all the way out of its hidey-hole and into the sunlight for the first time in what had to be years, a damp and dirty relic with rusty fittings. It looked to be two and a half feet long and at least a foot and a half deep. Maybe more. Pete hefted the end and guessed it might weigh as much as sixty pounds, half his own weight, but it was impossible to tell how much of that was the contents and how much the trunk itself. In any case, it wasn't doubloons; if the trunk had been filled with gold, he wouldn't have been able to pull it out at all, let alone lift it.

  He snapped the latches up, creating little showers of dirt, and then bent close to the lock, prepared to bust it off with the hammer and chisel. Then, if it still wouldn't open--and it probably wouldn't--he'd use the crowbar. But first . . . you never knew until you tried . . .

  He grasped the lid and it came up in a squall of dirty hinges. Later he would surmise that someone had bought this trunk secondhan
d, probably getting a good deal because the key was lost, but for now he only stared. He was unaware of the blister on one palm, or the ache in his back and thighs, or the sweat trickling down his dirt-streaked face. He wasn't thinking of his mother, his father, or his sister. He wasn't thinking of the arkie-barkies, either, at least not then.

  The trunk had been lined with clear plastic to protect against moisture. Beneath it he could see piles of what looked like notebooks. He used the side of his palm as a windshield wiper and cleared a crescent of fine droplets from the plastic. They were notebooks, all right, nice ones with what almost had to be real leather covers. It looked like a hundred at least. But that wasn't all. There were also envelopes like the ones his mom brought home when she cashed a check. Pete pulled away the plastic and stared into the half-filled trunk. The envelopes had GRANITE STATE BANK and "Your Hometown Friend!" printed on them. Later he would notice certain differences between these envelopes and the ones his mom got at Corn Bank and Trust--no email address, and nothing about using your ATM card for withdrawals--but for now he only stared. His heart was beating so hard he saw black dots pulsing in front of his eyes, and he wondered if he was going to faint.

  Bullshit you are, only girls do that.

  Maybe, but he felt decidedly woozy, and realized part of the problem was that since opening the trunk he had forgotten to breathe. He inhaled deeply, whooshed it out, and inhaled again. All the way down to his toes, it felt like. His head cleared, but his heart was whamming harder than ever and his hands were shaking.

  Those bank envelopes will be empty. You know that, don't you? People find buried money in books and movies, but not in real life.

  Only they didn't look empty. They looked stuffed.

  Pete started to reach for one, then gasped when he heard rustling on the other side of the stream. He whirled around and saw two squirrels there, probably thinking the weeklong thaw meant spring had arrived, making merry in the dead leaves. They raced up a tree, tails twitching.

  Pete turned back to the trunk and grabbed one of the bank envelopes. The flap wasn't sealed. He flipped it up with a finger that felt numb, even though the temperature now had to be riding right around forty. He squeezed the envelope open and looked inside.

  Money.

  Twenties and fifties.

  "Holy Jesus God Christ in heaven," Pete Saubers whispered.

  He pulled out the sheaf of bills and tried to count, but at first his hands were shaking too badly and he dropped some. They fluttered in the grass, and before he scrambled them up, his overheated brain assured him that Ulysses Grant had actually winked at him from one of the bills.

  He counted. Four hundred dollars. Four hundred in this one envelope, and there were dozens of them.

  He stuffed the bills back into the envelope--not an easy job, because now his hands were shaking worse than Grampa Fred's in the last year or two of his life. He flipped the envelope into the trunk and looked around, eyes wide and bulging. Traffic sounds that had always seemed faint and far and unimportant in this overgrown stretch of ground now sounded close and threatening. This was not Treasure Island; this was a city of over a million people, many now out of work, and they would love to have what was in this trunk.

  Think, Pete Saubers told himself. Think, for God's sake. This is the most important thing that's ever happened to you, maybe the most important thing that ever will happen to you, so think hard and think right.

  What came to mind first was Tina, snuggled up next to the wall in his bed. What would you do if you found a treasure? he had asked.

  Give it to Daddy and Mommy, she had replied.

  But suppose Mom wanted to give it back?

  It was an important question. Dad never would--Pete knew that--but Mom was different. She had strong ideas about what was right and what wasn't. If he showed them this trunk and what was inside it, it might lead to the worst arkie-barkie about money ever.

  "Besides, give it back to who?" Pete whispered. "The bank?"

  That was ridiculous.

  Or was it? Suppose the money really was pirate treasure, only from bank robbers instead of buccaneers? But then why was it in envelopes, like for withdrawals? And what about all those black notebooks?

  He could consider such things later, but not now; what he had to do now was act. He looked at his watch and saw it was already quarter to eleven. He still had time, but he had to use it.

  "Use it or lose it," he whispered, and began tossing the Granite State Bank cash envelopes into the cloth grocery bag that held the hammer and chisel. He placed the bag on top of the embankment and covered it with his jacket. He crammed the plastic wrap back into the trunk, closed the lid, and muscled the trunk back into the hole. He paused to wipe his forehead, which was greasy with dirt and sweat, then seized the spade and began to shovel like a maniac. He got the trunk covered--mostly--then seized the bag and his jacket and ran back along the path toward home. He would hide the bag in the back of his closet, that would do to start with, and see if there was a message from his mother on the answering machine. If everything was okay on the Mom front (and if Dad hadn't come home early from therapy--that would be horrible), he could whip back to the stream and do a better job of concealing the trunk. Later he might check out the notebooks, but as he made his way home on that sunny February morning, his only thought about them was that there might be more money envelopes mixed in with them. Or lying beneath them.

  He thought, I'll have to take a shower. And clean the dirt out of the bathtub after, so she doesn't ask what I was doing outside when I was supposed to be sick. I have to be really careful, and I can't tell anyone. No one at all.

  In the shower, he had an idea.

  1978

  Home is the place that when you go there, they have to take you in, but when Morris arrived at the house on Sycamore Street, there were no lights to brighten the evening gloom and no one to welcome him at the door. Why would there be? His mother was in New Jersey, lecturing about how a bunch of nineteenth-century businessmen had tried to steal America. Lecturing grad students who would probably go on to steal everything they could lay their hands on as they chased the Golden Buck. Some people would undoubtedly say that Morris had chased a few Golden Bucks of his own in New Hampshire, but that wasn't so. He hadn't gone there for money.

  He wanted the Biscayne in the garage and out of sight. Hell, he wanted the Biscayne gone, but that would have to wait. His first priority was Pauline Muller. Most of the people on Sycamore Street were so wedded to their televisions once prime time started that they wouldn't have noticed a UFO if one landed on their lawn, but that wasn't true of Mrs. Muller; the Bellamys' next-door neighbor had raised snooping to a fine art. So he went there first.

  "Why, look who it is!" she cried when she opened the door . . . just as if she hadn't been peering out her kitchen window when Morris pulled into the driveway. "Morrie Bellamy! Big as life and twice as handsome!"

  Morris produced his best aw-shucks smile. "How you doin, Mrs. Muller?"

  She gave him a hug which Morris could have done without but dutifully returned. Then she turned her head, setting her wattles in motion, and yelled, "Bert! Bertie! It's Morrie Bellamy!"

  From the living room came a triple grunt that might have been how ya doin.

  "Come in, Morrie! Come in! I'll put on coffee! And guess what?" She gave her unnaturally black eyebrows a horrifyingly flirtatious wiggle. "There's Sara Lee poundcake!"

  "Sounds delicious, but I just got back from Boston. Drove straight through. I'm pretty beat. Just didn't want you to see lights next door and call the police."

  She gave a monkey-shriek of laughter. "You're so thoughtful! But you always were. How's your mom, Morrie?"

  "Fine."

  He had no idea. Since his stint in reform school at seventeen and his failure to make a go of City College at twenty-one, relations between Morris and Anita Bellamy amounted to the occasional telephone call. These were frosty but civil. After one final argument the night of his arrest
for breaking and entering and assorted other goodies, they had basically given up on each other.

  "You've really put on some muscle," Mrs. Muller said. "The girls must love that. You used to be such a scrawny thing."

  "Been building houses--"

  "Building houses! You! Holy gosh! Bertie! Morris has been building houses!"

  This produced a few more grunts from the living room.

  "But then the work dried up, so I came back here. Mom said I was welcome to use the place unless she managed to rent it, but I probably won't stay long."

  How right that turned out to be.

  "Come in the living room, Morrie, and say hello to Bert."

  "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 dinners in the freezer. He stuck one in the oven, turned the dial to 350, then climbed the stairs to his old bedroom.

  I did it, he thought. I made it. I'm sitting on eighteen years' worth of unpublished John Rothstein manuscripts.