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.
He’s a homo, Morris thought wonderingly. He’s a goddam homo. How come I didn’t know that? How come I never saw? He might as well be wearing a sign.
Well, there were a lot of things about Andy he’d never seen, weren’t there? Morris thought of something one of the guys on the housing job liked to say: All pistol and no bullets.
With the waitress gone, taking her toxic atmosphere of girl with her, Andy leaned forward again. ‘Those collectors are out there,’ he said. ‘They pile up paintings, sculpture, first editions … there’s an oilman in Texas who’s got a collection of early wax-cylinder recordings worth a million dollars, and another one who’s got a complete run of every western, science fiction, and shudder-pulp magazine published between 1910 and 1955. Do you think all of that stuff was legitimately bought and sold? The fuck it was. Collectors are insane, the worst of them don’t care if the things they covet were stolen or not, and they most assuredly do not want to share with the rest of the world.’
Morris had heard this screed before, and his face must have shown it, because Andy leaned even farther forward. Now their noses were almost touching. Morris could smell English Leather, and wondered if that was the preferred aftershave of homos. Like a secret sign, or something.
‘But do you think any of those guys would listen to me?’
Morris Bellamy, who was now seeing Andy Halliday with new eyes, said he guessed not.
Andy pooched out his lower lip. ‘They will someday, though. Yeah. Once I get my own shop and build up a clientele. But that’ll take years.’
‘We talked about waiting five.’
‘Five?’ Andy barked a laugh and drew back to his side of the table again. ‘I might be able to open my shop in five years – I’ve got my eye on a little place in Lacemaker Lane, there’s a fabric store there now but it doesn’t do much business – but it takes longer than that to find big-money clients and establish trust.’
Lots of buts, Morris thought, but there were no buts before.
‘How long?’
‘Why don’t you try me on those notebooks around the turn of the twenty-first century, if you still have them? Even if I did have a call list of private collectors right now, today, not even the nuttiest of them would touch anything so hot.’
Morris stared at him, at first unable to speak. At last he said, ‘You never said anything like that when we were planning—’
Andy clapped his hands to the sides of his head and clutched it. ‘We planned nothing! And don’t you try to lay this off on me! Don’t you ever! I know you, Morrie. You didn’t steal them to sell them, at least not until you’ve read them. Then I suppose you might be willing to give some of them to the world, if the price was right. Basically, though, you’re just batshit-crazy on the subject of John Rothstein.’
‘Don’t call me that.’ His temples were throbbing worse than ever.
‘I will if it’s the truth, and it is. You’re batshit-crazy on the subject of Jimmy Gold, too. He’s why you went to jail.’
‘I went to jail because of my mother. She might as well have locked me up herself.’
‘Whatever. It’s water under the bridge. This is now. Unless you’re lucky, the police are going to be paying you a visit very soon, and they’ll probably arrive with a search warrant. If you have those notebooks when they knock on your door, your goose will be cooked.’
‘Why would they come to me? Nobody saw us, and my partners …’ He winked. ‘Let’s just say that dead men tell no tales.’
‘You … what? Killed them? Killed them, too?’ Andy’s face was a picture of dawning horror.
Morris knew he shouldn’t have said that, but – funny how that but kept coming around – Andy was just being such an asshole.
‘What’s the name of the town that Rothstein lived in?’ Andy’s eyes were shifting around again, as if he expected the cops to be closing in even now, guns drawn. ‘Talbot Corners, right?’
‘Yes, but it’s mostly farms. What they call the Corners is nothing but a diner, a grocery store, and a gas station where two state roads cross.’