I picked up the gun and showed him the muzzle, and for a second or two he was the bird and it was the snake. "One more wisecrack and I'll put a bullet in your belly. Do you believe that?"
His tongue flickered in and out with startling quickness, lapped across his lower lip, and disappeared again. He nodded. Keenan was frozen. He looked like he wanted to retch but didn't quite dare.
"He told me it was big time, a big score," I resumed. "That's all I could get out of him. He took off on April third. Two days later four guys knock over the Portland-Bangor Federated truck just outside of Carmel. All three guards dead. The newspapers said the robbers ran two roadblocks in a souped-up '78 Plymouth. Barney had a '78 up on blocks, thinking about turning it into a stacker. I'm betting Keenan put up the front money for him to turn it into something a little better and a lot faster."
I looked at him. Keenan's face was the color of cheese.
"On May sixth I get a card postmarked Bar Harbor, but that doesn't mean anything -- there are dozens of little islands that channel their mail through there. A mailboat does the circuit, picks it up. The card says: 'Mom and family fine, store doing good. See you in July.' It was signed with Barney's middle name. I leased a cottage on the coast, because Barney knew that would be the deal. July comes and goes, no Barney."
"Musta had a terminal hard-on by then, kid, right?" Sarge said. I guess he wanted me to be sure I hadn't buffaloed him.
I looked at him remotely. "He showed up in early August. Courtesy of your buddy Keenan, Sarge. He forgot about the automatic bilge pump in the boat. You thought the chop would sink it quick enough, right, Keenan? But you thought he was dead, too. I had a yellow blanket spread out on Frenchman's Point every day. Visible for miles. Easy to spot. Still, he was lucky."
"Too lucky," Sarge almost spat.
"One thing I'm curious about -- did he know before the job that the money was new, all the serial numbers recorded? That you couldn't even sell it to a currency-junker in the Bahamas for three or four years?"
"He knew," the Sarge rumbled, and I was surprised to find myself believing him. "And nobody was planning to junk the dough. He knew that, too, kid. I think he was counting on that Lewiston job you mentioned for ready cash, but whatever he was or wasn't counting on, he knew the score and said he could live with it. Christ, why not? Say we had to wait ten years to go back for that dough and split it up. What's ten years to a kid like Barney? Shit, he would have been all of thirty-five. I'd be sixty-one."
"What about Gappy MacFarland? Did Barney know about him, too?"
"Yes. Cappy came with the deal. A good man. A pro. He got cancer last year. Inoperable. And he owed me a favor."
"So the four of you went out to Cappy's island," I said. "A little nobody-on-it named Carmen's Folly. Cappy buried the money and made a map."
"That part was Jagger's idea," Sarge said. "We didn't want to split hot money -- too tempting. But we didn't want to leave all the swag in one pair of hands, either. Cappy MacFarland was the perfect solution."
"Tell me about the map."
"I thought we'd get to that," Sarge said with a wintry smile.
"Don't tell him!" Keenan cried out hoarsely.
Sarge turned to him and gave him a look that would have melted bar steel. "Shut up. I can't lie and 1 can't stonewall, thanks to you. You know what I hope, Keenan? I hope you weren't really looking forward to seeing in the new century."
"Your name's in a letter," Keenan said wildly. "If anything happens to me, your name's in a letter!"
"Cappy made a good map," the Sarge said, as if Keenan were not there at all. "He had some draftsman training in Joliet. He cut it into quarters. One for each of us. We were going to have a reunion on July fourth, five years later. Talk it over. Maybe decide to wait another five years, maybe decide to put the pieces together right then. But there was trouble."
"Yes," I said. "I guess that's one way of putting it."
"If it makes you feel any better, it was all Keenan's play. I don't know if Barney knew it or not, but that's how it was. When Jagger and I took off in Cappy's boat, Barney was fine."
"You're a goddam liar!" Keenan squealed.
"Who's got two pieces of the map in his wall safe?" Sarge inquired. "Is it you, dear?"
He looked at me again.
"It was still all right. Half the map still wasn't enough. And am I gonna sit here and say I would have preferred a four-way split to a three-way? I don't think you'd believe it even if it was true. Then, guess what? Keenan calls. Tells me we ought to have a talk. I was expecting it. Looks like you were, too."