Then maybe they can show you, Pete thought snidely, but when Billy held out his palm, Pete slapped him five and watched him go with mild envy. Ten-speed bike under his ass; expensive Nike kicks on his feet; summer place in Maine. It seemed that some people had already caught up from the bad time. Or maybe the bad time had missed them completely. Not so with the Saubers family. They were doing okay, but—
There must be more money, the house had whispered in the Lawrence story. There must be more money. And honey, that was resonance.
Could the notebooks be turned into money? Was there a way? Pete didn’t even like to think about giving them up, but at the same time he recognized how wrong it was to keep them hidden away in the attic. Rothstein’s work, especially the last two Jimmy Gold books, deserved to be shared with the world. They would remake Rothstein’s reputation, Pete was sure of that, but his rep still wasn’t that bad, and besides, it wasn’t the important part. People would like them, that was the important part. Love them, if they were like Pete.
Only, handwritten manuscripts weren’t like untraceable twenties and fifties. Pete would be caught, and he might go to jail. He wasn’t sure exactly what crime he could be charged with—not receiving stolen property, surely, because he hadn’t received it, only found it—but he was positive that trying to sell what wasn’t yours had to be some kind of crime. Donating the notebooks to Rothstein’s alma mater seemed like a possible answer, only he’d have to do it anonymously, or it would all come out and his parents would discover that their son had been supporting them with a murdered man’s stolen money. Besides, for an anonymous donation you got zilch.
???
Although he hadn’t written about Rothstein’s murder in his term paper, Pete had read all about it, mostly in the computer room at the library. He knew that Rothstein had been shot “execution-style.” He knew that the cops had found enough different tracks in the dooryard to believe two, three, or even four people had been involved, and that, based on the size of those tracks, all were probably men. They also thought that two of the men had been killed at a New York rest area not long after.
Margaret Brennan, the author’s first wife, had been interviewed in Paris not long after the killing. “Everyone talked about him in that provincial little town where he lived,” she said. “What else did they have to talk about? Cows? Some farmer’s new manure spreader? To the provincials, John was a big deal. They had the erroneous idea that writers make as much as corporate bankers, and believed he had hundreds of thousands of dollars stashed away on that rundown farm of his. Someone from out of town heard the loose talk, that’s all. Closemouthed Yankees, my Irish fanny! I blame the locals as much as the thugs who did it.”
When asked about the possibility that Rothstein had squirreled away manuscripts as well as cash, Peggy Brennan had given what the interview called “a cigarette-raspy chuckle.”
“More rumors, darling. Johnny pulled back from the world for one reason and one reason only. He was burned out and too proud to admit it.”
Lot you knew, Pete thought. He probably divorced you because he got tired of that cigarette-raspy chuckle.
There was plenty of speculation in the newspaper and magazine articles Pete had read, but he himself liked what Mr. Ricker called “the Occam’s razor principle.” According to that, the simplest and most obvious answer was usually the right one. Three men had broken in, and one of them had killed his partners so he could keep all the swag for himself. Pete had no idea why the guy had come to this city afterwards, or why he’d buried the trunk, but one thing he was sure of: the surviving robber was never going to come back and get it.
Pete’s math skills weren’t the strongest—it was why he needed that summer course to bone up—but you didn’t have to be an Einstein to run simple numbers and assess certain possibilities. If the surviving robber had been thirty-five in 1978, which seemed like a fair estimate to Pete, he would have been sixty-seven in 2010, when Pete found the trunk, and around seventy now. Seventy was ancient. If he turned up looking for his loot, he’d probably do so on a walker.
Pete smiled as he turned onto Sycamore Street.
He thought there were three possibilities for why the surviving robber had never come back for his trunk, all equally likely. One, he was in prison somewhere for some other crime. Two, he was dead. Three was a combination of one and two: he had died in prison. Whichever it was, Pete didn’t think he had to worry about the guy. The notebooks, though, were a different story. About them he had plenty of worries. Sitting on them was like sitting on a bunch of beautiful stolen paintings you could never sell.
Or a crate filled with dynamite.
???
In September of 2013—almost exactly thirty-five years from the date of John Rothstein’s murder—Pete tucked the last of the trunk-money into an envelope addressed to his father. The final installment amounted to three hundred and forty dollars. And because he felt that hope which could never be realized was a cruel thing, he added a one-line note:
This is the last of it. I am sorry there’s not more.
He took a city bus to Birch Hill Mall, where there was a mailbox between Discount Electronix and the yogurt place. He looked around, making sure he wasn’t observed, and kissed the envelope. Then he slipped it through the slot and walked away. He did it Jimmy Gold–style: without looking back.
???
A week or two after New Year’s, Pete was in the kitchen, making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, when he overheard his parents talking to Tina in the living room. It was about Chapel Ridge.
“I thought maybe we could afford it,” his dad was saying. “If I gave you false hope, I’m just as sorry as can be, Teens.”
“It’s because the mystery money stopped coming,” Tina said. “Right?”
Mom said, “Partly but not entirely. Dad tried for a bank loan, but they wouldn’t give it to him. They went over his business records and did something—”
“A two-year profit projection,” Dad said. Some of the old post-accident bitterness crept into his voice. “Lots of compliments, because those are free. They said they might be able to make the loan in 2016, if the business grows by five percent. In the meantime, this goddam Polar Vortex thing . . . we’re way over your mom’s budget on heating expenses. Everyone is, from Maine to Minnesota. I know that’s no consolation, but there it is.”
“Honey, we’re so, so sorry,” Mom said.
Pete expected Tina to explode into a full-fledged tantrum—there were lots more of those as she approached the big thirteen—but it didn’t happen. She said she understood, and that Chapel Ridge was probably a snooty school, anyway. Then she came out to the kitchen and asked Pete if he would make her a sandwich, because his looked good. He did, and they went into the living room, and all four of them watched TV together and had some laughs over The Big Bang Theory.
Later that night, though, he heard Tina crying behind the closed door of her room. It made him feel awful. He went into his own room, pulled one of the Moleskines out from under his mattress, and began rereading The Runner Goes West.