It’s Hodges behind the wheel of Holly’s Mercedes. He obeys the traffic signals and doesn’t weave wildly from lane to lane, but he makes the best time he can. He isn’t a bit surprised that this run from the North Side to the Halliday bookshop on Lacemaker Lane brings back memories of a much wilder ride in this same car. It had been Jerome at the wheel that night.
‘How sure are you that Tina’s brother went to this Halliday guy?’ Jerome asks. He’s in the back this afternoon.
‘He did,’ Holly says without looking up from her iPad, which she has taken from the Benz’s capacious glove compartment. ‘I know he did, and I think I know why. It wasn’t any signed book, either.’ She taps at the screen and mutters, ‘Come on come on come on. Load, you bugger!’
‘What are you looking for, Hollyberry?’ Jerome asks, leaning forward between the seats.
She turns to glare at him. ‘Don’t call me that, you know I hate that.’
‘Sorry, sorry.’ Jerome rolls his eyes.
‘Tell you in a minute,’ she says. ‘I’ve almost got it. I just wish I had some WiFi instead of this buggery cell connection. It’s so slow and poopy.’
Hodges laughs. He can’t help it. This time Holly turns her glare on him, punching away at the screen even as she does so.
Hodges climbs a ramp and merges onto the Crosstown Connector. ‘It’s starting to fit together,’ he tells Jerome. ‘Assuming the book Pete talked about to Ricker was actually a writer’s notebook – the one Tina saw. The one Pete was so anxious to hide under his pillow.’
‘Oh, it was,’ Holly says without looking up from her iPad. ‘Holly Gibney says that’s a big ten-four.’ She punches something else in, swipes the screen, and gives a cry of frustration that makes both of her companions jump. ‘Oooh, these goddam pop-up ads make me so fracking crazy!’
‘Calm down,’ Hodges tells her.
She ignores him. ‘You wait. You wait and see.’
‘The money and the notebook were a package deal,’ Jerome says. ‘The Saubers kid found them together. That’s what you think, right?’
‘Yeah,’ Hodges says.
‘And whatever was in the notebook was worth more money. Except a reputable rare book dealer wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot po—’
‘GOT IT!’ Holly screams, making them both jump. The Mercedes swerves. The guy in the next lane honks irritably and makes an unmistakable hand gesture.
‘Got what?’ Jerome asks.
‘Not what, Jerome, who! John Fracking Rothstein! Murdered in 1978! At least three men broke into his farmhouse – in New Hampshire, this was – and killed him. They also broke into his safe. Listen to this. It’s from the Manchester Union Leader, three days after he was killed.’
As she reads, Hodges exits the Crosstown onto Lower Main.
‘“There is growing certainty that the robbers were after more than money. ‘They may also have taken a number of notebooks containing various writings Mr Rothstein did after retiring from public life,’ a source close to the investigation said. The source went on to speculate that the notebooks, whose existence was confirmed late yesterday by John Rothstein’s housekeeper, might be worth a great deal on the black market.”’
Holly’s eyes are blazing. She is having one of those divine passages where she has forgotten herself entirely.
‘The robbers hid it,’ she says.
‘Hid the money,’ Jerome says. ‘The twenty thousand.’
‘And the notebooks. Pete found at least some of them, maybe even all of them. He used the money to help his folks. He didn’t get in trouble until he tried selling the notebooks to help his sister. Halliday knows. By now he may even have them. Hurry up, Bill. Hurry up hurry up hurry up!’
31
Morris lurches to the front of the store, heart pounding, temples thudding. He drops Andy’s gun into his sportcoat pocket, snatches up a book from one of the display tables, opens it, and slams it against his chin to stanch the blood. He could have wiped it with the sleeve of his coat, almost did, but he’s thinking again now and knows better. He’ll have to go out in public, and he doesn’t want to do that smeared with blood. The boy had some on his pants, though, and that’s good. That’s fine, in fact.
I’m thinking again, and the boy better be thinking, too. If he is, I can still rescue this situation.
He opens the shop door and looks both ways. No sign of Saubers. He expected nothing else. Teenagers are fast. They’re like cockroaches that way.
Morris scrabbles in his pocket for the scrap of paper with Pete’s cell phone number on it, and suffers a moment of raw panic when he can’t find it. At last his fingers touch something scrunched far down in one corner and he breathes a sigh of relief. His heart is pounding, pounding, and he slams one hand against his bony chest.