He looked at the map again and found that he could now read it perfectly. The two parallel lines with the X between them was clearly the Tin Bridge, and once you realized that, everything else fell neatly into place. The squiggle which ran between the lines, through the X, and up to the top of the paper was Route 117. The small circle with the larger circle behind it must represent the Gavineaux dairy farm: the big circle would be the cowbarn. It all made sense. It was as clear and clean and sparkly as the crisp heap of dope this incredibly hip dude had poured out of the little envelope.
Ace bent over the mirror again. "Fire when ready," he murmured, and took another two lines. Bang! Zap! "Christ, that's powerful stuff," he said in a gasping voice.
"Sho null," Mr. Gaunt agreed gravely.
Ace looked up, suddenly sure the man was laughing at him, but Mr.
Gaunt's face was calm and clear. Ace bent over the map again.
Now it was the crosses which caught his eye. There were seven of them-no, actually there were eight. One appeared to be on the dead, swampy ground owned by old man Treblehorn... except old man Treblehorn was dead, had been for years, and hadn't there been talk at one time that his uncle Reginald had gotten most of that land as repayment of a loan?
Here was another, on the edge of the Nature Conservancy on the other side of Castle View, if he had his geography right. There were two out on Town Road #3, near a circle that was probably the old Joe Camber place, Seven Oaks Farm. Two more on the land supposedly owned by Diamond Match on the west side of Castle Lake.
Ace stared up at Gaunt with wild, bloodshot eyes. "Did he bury his money? Is that what the crosses mean? Are they the places he buried his money?"
Mr. Gaunt shrugged elegantly. "I'm sure I don't know. It seems logical, but logic often has little to do with the way people behave."
"But it could be," Ace said. He was becoming frantic with excitement and cocaine overload; what felt like stiff bundles of copper wire were exploding in the big muscles of his arms and belly. His sallow face, pocked with the scars of adolescent acne, had taken on a dark flush. "It could be! All the places those crosses are... all that could be Pop's property! Do you see? He might have put all that land in a blind trust or whatever the f**k they call it... so nobody could buy it... so nobody could find what he put there..."
He snorted the rest of the coke on the mirror and then leaned over the counter. His bulging, bloodshot eyes jittered in his face.
"I could be more than just out of the shithole," he said in a low: trembling whisper. "I could be f**king rich."
'Yes," Mr. Gaunt said, "I'd say that's a good possibility. But remember that, Ace." He cocked his thumb toward the wall, and the sign there which read I DO NOT ISSUE REFUNDS OR MAKE EXCHANGES CAVEAT EMPTOR!
Ace looked at the sign. "What's it mean?"
"It means that you're not the first person who ever thought he had found the key to great riches in an old book," Mr. Gaunt said.
"It also means that I still need a stockboy and a driver." Ace looked at him, almost shocked. Then he laughed. "You kidding?" He pointed at the map. "I've got a lot of digging to do."
Mr. Gaunt sighed regretfully, folded the sheet of brown paper, put it back into the book, and placed the book in the drawer under the cash register. He did all this with incredible swiftness.
"Hey!" Ace yelled. "What are you doing?"
"I just remembered that book is already promised to another customer, Mr. Merrill. I'm sorry. And I really am closed-it's Columbus Day, you know."
"Wait a minute!"
"Of course, if you had seen fit to take the job, I'm sure something could have been worked out. But I can see that you're very busy; you undoubtedly want to make sure your affairs are in order before the Corson Brothers turn you into coldcuts."
Ace's mouth had begun to open and close again. He was trying to remember where the little crosses had been and was discovering that he couldn't do it. All of them seemed to blend together into one big cross in his jazzed-up, flying mind... the sort of cross you saw in cemeteries.
"All right!" he cried. "All right, I'll take the f**king job!"
"In that case, I believe this book is for sale after all," Mr.
Gaunt said. He drew it out of the drawer and checked the flyleaf.
"It goes for a dollar and a half." His jostling teeth appeared in a wide, sharky smile. "That's a dollar thirty-five, with the employee discount."
Ace drew his wallet from his back pocket, dropped it, and almost clouted his head on the edge of the glass case bending over to pick it up.
"But I've got to have some time off," he told Mr. Gaunt.
"Indeed." 'Because I really do have some digging to do."
"Of course."
"Time is short."
"How wise of you to know it."
"How about when I get back from Boston?"
"Won't you be tired?"
"Mr. Gaunt, I can't afford to be tired."
"I might be able to help you there," Mr. Gaunt said. His smile widened and his teeth bulged from it like the teeth of a skull. "I
might have a little pick-me-up for you, is what I mean to say.":,What?" Ace asked, his eyes widening. "What did you say?" 'I beg your pardon?"
"Nothing," Ace said. "Never mind."
"All right-do you still have the keys I gave you?" Ace was surprised to discover that he had stuffed the envelope containing the keys into his back pocket.