‘He misspelled stupidity.’ It was all Drew could think of to say.
‘Uh-huh, and material. Real mistakes, not cleaned up by some copyeditor.’ The boy’s eyes glowed. It was a glow Drew had seen often, but never in one so young. ‘It’s alive, that’s what I think. Alive and breathing. You see what he says about étienne Lantier? That’s the main character of Germinal, by émile Zola. And it’s new! Do you get it? It’s a new insight into a character everybody knows, and from the author himself! I bet some collectors would pay big bucks for the original of this, and all the rest of the stuff I have.’
‘You say there are six notebooks in your possession?’
‘Uh-huh.’
Six. Not a hundred or more. If six was all the kid had, then he certainly wasn’t acting on Bellamy’s behalf, unless Morris had for some reason split his haul up. Drew couldn’t see his old pal doing that.
‘They’re the medium-sized ones, eighty pages in each. That’s four hundred and eighty pages. A lot of white space – with poems there always is – but they’re not all poems. There are those short stories, too. One is about Jimmy Gold as a kid.’
But here was a question: did he, Drew, really believe there were only six? Was it possible the boy was holding back the good stuff? And if so, was he holding back because he wanted to sell the rest later, or because he didn’t want to sell it at all? To Drew, the glow in his eyes suggested the latter, although the boy might not yet know it consciously.
‘Sir? Mr Halliday?’
‘Sorry. Just getting used to the idea that this really might be new Rothstein material.’
‘It is,’ the boy said. There was no doubt in his voice. ‘So how much?’
‘How much would I pay?’ Drew thought son would be okay now, because they were about to get down to the dickering. ‘Son, I’m not exactly made of money. Nor am I completely convinced these aren’t forgeries. A hoax. I’d have to see the real items.’
Drew could see Hawkins biting his lip behind the nascent moustache. ‘I wasn’t talking about how much you’d pay, I was talking about private collectors. You must know some who are willing to spend big money for special items.’
‘I know a couple, yes.’ He knew a dozen. ‘But I wouldn’t even write to them on the basis of two photocopied pages. As for getting authentication from a handwriting expert … that might be dicey. Rothstein was murdered, you know, which makes these stolen property.’
‘Not if he gave them to someone before he was killed,’ the boy countered swiftly, and Drew had to remind himself again that the kid had prepared for this encounter. But I have experience on my side, he thought. Experience and craft.
‘Son, there’s no way to prove that’s what happened.’
‘There’s no way to prove it wasn’t, either.’
So: impasse.
Suddenly the boy grabbed the two photocopies and jammed them back into the manila envelope.
‘Wait a minute,’ Drew said, alarmed. ‘Whoa. Hold on.’
‘No, I think it was a mistake coming here. There’s a place in Kansas City, Jarrett’s Fine Firsts and Rare Editions. They’re one of the biggest in the country. I’ll try there.’
‘If you can hold off a week, I’ll make some calls,’ Drew said. ‘But you have to leave the photocopies.’
The boy hovered, unsure. At last he said, ‘How much could you get, do you think?’
‘For almost five hundred pages of unpublished – hell, unseen – Rothstein material? The buyer would probably want at least a computer handwriting analysis, there are a couple of good programs that do that, but assuming that proved out, perhaps …’ He calculated the lowest possible figure he could throw out without sounding absurd. ‘Perhaps fifty thousand dollars.’
James Hawkins either accepted this, or seemed to. ‘And what would your commission be?’
Drew laughed politely. ‘Son … James … no dealer would take a commission on a deal like this one. Not when the creator – known as the proprietor, in legalese – was murdered and the material might have been stolen. We’d split right down the middle.’
‘No.’ The boy said it at once. He might not yet be able to grow the biker moustache he saw in his dreams, but he had balls as well as smarts. ‘Seventy-thirty. My favor.’
Drew could give in on this, get maybe a quarter of a million for the six notebooks and give the boy seventy percent of fifty K, but wouldn’t ‘James Hawkins’ expect him to dicker, at least a little? Wouldn’t he be suspicious if he didn’t?
‘Sixty-forty. My last offer, and of course contingent on finding a buyer. That would be thirty thousand dollars for something you found crammed into a cardboard box along with old copies of Jaws and The Bridges of Madison County. Not a bad return, I’d say.’