Finders Keepers by Stephen King

  Andy looks engaged now, and why not? He has a fish on the line. "I'm sure I don't have it in stock, but I could check BookFinder for you. That's a database. If it's listed, and a MacDonald hardcover probably is, especially if it was made into a film . . . and if it's a first edition . . . I could probably have it for you by Tuesday. Wednesday at the latest. Would you like me to look?"

  "I would," Morris says. "But the price has to be right."

  "Naturally, naturally." Andy's chuckle is as fat as his gut. He lowers his eyes to the screen of his laptop. As soon as he does this, Morris flips the sign hanging in the door from OPEN to CLOSED. He bends down and takes the hatchet from the open duffel bag. He moves up the narrow central aisle with it held beside his leg. He doesn't hurry. He doesn't have to hurry. Andy is clicking away at his laptop and absorbed by whatever he's seeing on the screen.

  "Found it!" his old pal exclaims. "James Graham has one, very fine as new, for just three hundred dol--"

  He ceases speaking as the blade of the hatchet floats first into his peripheral vision, then front and center. He looks up, his face slack with shock.

  "I want your hands where I can see them," Morris says. "There's probably an alarm button in the kneehole of your desk. If you want to keep all your fingers, don't reach for it."

  "What do you want? Why are you--"

  "Don't recognize me, do you?" Morris doesn't know whether to be amused by this or infuriated. "Not even right up close and personal."

  "No, I . . . I . . ."

  "Not surprising, I guess. It's been a long time since the Happy Cup, hasn't it?"

  Halliday stares into Morris's lined and haggard face with dreadful fascination. Morris thinks, He's like a bird looking at a snake. This is a pleasant thought, and makes him smile.

  "Oh my God," Andy says. His face has gone the color of old cheese. "It can't be you. You're in jail."

  Morris shakes his head, still smiling. "There's probably a database for parolees as well as rare books, but I'm guessing you never checked it. Good for me, not so good for you."

  One of Andy's hands is creeping away from the keyboard of his laptop. Morris wiggles the hatchet.

  "Don't do that, Andy. I want to see your hands on either side of your computer, palms down. Don't try to hit the button with your knee, either. I'll know if you try, and the consequences for you will be unpleasant in the extreme."

  "What do you want?"

  The question makes him angry, but his smile widens. "As if you don't know."

  "I don't, Morrie, my God!" Andy's mouth is lying but his eyes tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  "Let's go in your office. I'm sure you have one back there."

  "No!"

  Morris wiggles the hatchet again. "You can come out of this whole and intact, or with some of your fingers lying on the desk. Believe me on this, Andy. I'm not the man you knew."

  Andy gets up, his eyes never leaving Morris's face, but Morris isn't sure his old pal is actually seeing him anymore. He sways as if to invisible music, on the verge of passing out. If he does that, he won't be able to answer questions until he comes around. Also, Morris would have to drag him to the office. He's not sure he can do that; if Andy doesn't tip the scales at three hundred, he's got to be pushing it.

  "Take a deep breath," he says. "Calm down. All I want is a few answers. Then I'm gone."

  "You promise?" Andy's lower lip is pushed out, shining with spit. He looks like a fat little boy who's in dutch with his father.

  "Yes. Now breathe."

  Andy breathes.

  "Again."

  Andy's massive chest rises, straining the buttons of his shirt, then lowers. A bit of his color comes back.

  "Office. Now. Do it."

  Andy turns and lumbers to the back of the store, weaving his way between boxes and stacks of books with the finicky grace some fat men possess. Morris follows. His anger is growing. It's something about the girlish flex and sway of Andy's buttocks, clad in gray gabardine trousers, that fuels it.

  There's a keypad beside the door. Andy punches in four numbers--9118--and a green light flashes. As he enters, Morris reads his mind right through the back of his bald head.

  "You're not quick enough to slam the door on me. If you try, you're going to lose something that can't be replaced. Count on it."

  Andy's shoulders, which have risen as he tenses to make just this attempt, slump again. He steps in. Morris follows and closes the door.

  The office is small, lined with stuffed bookshelves, lit by hanging globes. On the floor is a Turkish rug. The desk in here is much nicer--mahogany or teak or some other expensive wood. On it is a lamp with a shade that looks like real Tiffany glass. To the left of the door is a sideboard with four heavy crystal decanters on it. Morris doesn't know about the two containing clear liquid, but he bets the others hold scotch and bourbon. The good stuff, too, if he knows his old pal. For toasting big sales, no doubt.

  Morris remembers the only kinds of booze available in the joint, prunejack and raisinjack, and even though he only imbibed on rare occasions like his birthday (and John Rothstein's, which he always marked with a single jolt), his anger grows. Good booze to drink and good food to gobble--that's what Andy Halliday had while Morris was dyeing bluejeans, inhaling varnish fumes, and living in a cell not much bigger than a coffin. He was in the joint for rape, true enough, but he never would have been in that alley, in a furious drunken blackout, if this man had not denied him and sent him packing. Morris, I shouldn't even be seen with you. That's what he said that day. And then called him batshit-crazy.

  "Luxy accommodations, my friend."

  Andy looks around as if noting the luxy accommodations for the first time. "It looks that way," he admits, "but appearances can be deceiving, Morrie. The truth is, I'm next door to broke. This place never came back from the recession, and from certain . . . allegations. You have to believe that."

  Morris rarely thinks about the money envelopes Curtis Rogers found along with the notebooks in Rothstein's safe that night, but he thinks about them now. His old pal got the cash as well as the notebooks. For all Morris knows, that money paid for the desk, and the rug, and the fancy crystal decanters of booze.

  At this, the balloon of rage finally bursts and Morris slings the hatchet in a low sideways arc, his cap tumbling from his head. The hatchet bites through gray gabardine and buries itself in the bloated buttock beneath with a chump sound. Andy screams and stumbles forward. He breaks his fall on the edge of his desk with his forearms, then goes to his knees. Blood pours through a six-inch slit in his pants. He claps a hand over it and more blood runs through his fingers. He falls on his side, then rolls over on the Turkish rug. With some satisfaction, Morris thinks, You'll never get that stain out, homie.

  Andy squalls, "You said you wouldn't hurt me!"

  Morris considers this and shakes his head. "I don't believe I ever said that in so many words, although I suppose I might have implied it." He stares into Andy's contorted face with serious sincerity. "Think of it as DIY liposuction. And you can still come out of this alive. All you have to do is give me the notebooks. Where are they?"

  This time Andy doesn't pretend not to know what Morris is talking about, not with his ass on fire and blood seeping out from beneath one hip. "I don't have them!"

  Morris drops to one knee, careful to avoid the growing pool of blood. "I don't believe you. They're gone, nothing left but the trunk they were in, and nobody knew I had them but you. So I'm going to ask you again, and if you don't want to get a close look at your own guts and whatever you ate for lunch, you should be careful how you answer. Where are the notebooks?"

  "A kid found them! It wasn't me, it was a kid! He lives in your old house, Morrie! He must have found them buried in the basement, or something!"

  Morris stares into his old pal's face. He's looking for a lie, but he's also trying to cope with this sudden rearrangement of what he thought he knew. It's like a hard left turn in a car doing
sixty.

  "Please, Morrie, please! His name is Peter Saubers!"

  It's the convincer, because Morris knows the name of the family now living in the house where he grew up. Besides, a man with a deep gash in his ass could hardly make up such specifics on the spur of the moment.

  "How do you know that?"

  "Because he's trying to sell them to me! Morrie, I need a doctor! I'm bleeding like a stuck pig!"

  You are a pig, Morris thinks. But don't worry, old pal, pretty soon you'll be out of your misery. I'm going to send you to that big bookstore in the sky. But not yet, because Morris sees a bright ray of hope.

  He's trying, Andy said, not He tried.

  "Tell me everything," Morris says. "Then I'll leave. You'll have to call for an ambulance yourself, but I'm sure you can manage that."

  "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

  "Because if the kid has the notebooks, I have no more interest in you. Of course, you have to promise not to tell them who hurt you. It was a masked man, wasn't it? Probably a drug addict. He wanted money, right?"

  Andy nods eagerly.

  "It had nothing to do with the notebooks, right?"

  "No, nothing! You think I want my name involved with this?"

  "I suppose not. But if you tried making up some story--and if my name was in that story--I'd have to come back."

  "I won't, Morrie, I won't!" Next comes a declaration as childish as that pushed-out, spit-shiny lower lip: "Honest injun!"

  "Then tell me everything."

  Andy does. Saubers's first visit, with photocopies from the notebooks and Dispatches from Olympus for comparison. Andy's identification of the boy calling himself James Hawkins, using no more than the library sticker on the spine of Dispatches. The boy's second visit, when Andy turned the screws on him. The voicemail about the weekend class-officer trip to River Bend Resort, and the promise to come in Monday afternoon, just two days from now.

  "What time on Monday?"

  "He . . . he didn't say. After school, I'd assume. He goes to Northfield High. Morrie, I'm still bleeding."

  "Yes," Morris says absently. "I guess you are." He's thinking furiously. The boy claims to have all the notebooks. He might be lying about that, but probably not. The number of them that he quoted to Andy sounds right. And he's read them. This ignites a spark of poison jealousy in Morris Bellamy's head and lights a fire that quickly spreads to his heart. The Saubers boy has read what was meant for Morris and Morris alone. This is a grave injustice, and must be addressed.

  He leans closer to Andy and says, "Are you gay? You are, aren't you?"

  Andy's eyes flutter. "Am I . . . what does that matter? Morrie, I need an ambulance!"

  "Do you have a partner?"

  His old pal is hurt, but not stupid. He can see what such a question portends. "Yes!"

  No, Morris thinks, and swings the hatchet: chump.

  Andy screams and begins to writhe on the bloody rug. Morris swings again and Andy screams again. Lucky the room's lined with books, Morris thinks. Books make good insulation.

  "Hold still, damn you," he says, but Andy doesn't. It takes four blows in all. The last one comes down above the bridge of Andy's nose, splitting both of his eyes like grapes, and at last the writhing stops. Morris pulls the hatchet free with a low squall of steel on bone and drops it on the rug beside one of Andy's outstretched hands. "There," he says. "All finished."

  The rug is sodden with blood. The front of the desk is beaded with it. So is one of the walls, and Morris himself. The inner office is your basic abbatoir. This doesn't upset Morris much; he's pretty calm. It's probably shock, he thinks, but so what if it is? He needs to be calm. Upset people forget things.

  There are two doors behind the desk. One opens on his old pal's private bathroom, the other on a closet. There are plenty of clothes in the closet, including two suits that look expensive. They're of no use to Morris, though. He'd float in them.

  He wishes the bathroom had a shower, but if wishes were horses, et cetera, et cetera. He'll make do with the basin. As he strips off his bloody shirt and washes up, he tries to replay everything he touched since entering the shop. He doesn't believe there's much. He will have to remember to wipe down the sign hanging in the front door, though. Also the doorknobs of the closet and this bathroom.

  He dries off and goes back into the office, dropping the towel and bloody shirt by the body. His jeans are also spattered, a problem that's easily solved by what he finds on a shelf in the closet: at least two dozen tee-shirts, neatly folded with tissue paper between them. He finds an XL that will cover his jeans halfway down his thighs, where the worst of the spotting is, and unfolds it. ANDREW HALLIDAY RARE EDITIONS is printed on the front, along with the shop's telephone number, website address, and an image of an open book. Morris thinks, He probably gives these away to big-money customers. Who take them, say thank you, and never wear them.

  He starts to put the tee-shirt on, decides he really doesn't want to be walking around wearing the location of his latest murder on his chest, and turns it inside-out. The lettering shows through a little, but not enough for anyone to read it, and the book could be any rectangular object.

  His Dockers are a problem, though. The tops are splattered with blood and the soles are smeared with it. Morris studies his old pal's feet, nods judiciously, and returns to the closet. Andy's waist size may be almost twice Morris's, but their shoe sizes look approximately the same. He selects a pair of loafers and tries them on. They pinch a little, and may leave a blister or two, but blisters are a small price to pay for what he has learned, and the long-delayed revenge he has exacted.

  Also, they're damned fine-looking shoes.

  He adds his own footwear to the pile of gooey stuff on the rug, then examines his cap. Not so much as a single spot. Good luck there. He puts it on and circles the office, wiping the surfaces he knows he touched and the ones he might have touched.

  He kneels by the body one last time and searches the pockets, aware that he's getting blood on his hands again and will have to wash them again. Oh well, so it goes.

  That's Vonnegut, not Rothstein, he thinks, and laughs. Literary allusions always please him.

  Andy's keys are in a front pocket, his wallet tucked against the buttock Morris didn't split with the hatchet. More good luck. Not much in the way of cash, less than thirty dollars, but a penny saved is a penny et cetera. Morris tucks the bills away along with the keys. Then he re-washes his hands and re-wipes the faucet handles.

  Before leaving Andy's sanctum sanctorum, he regards the hatchet. The blade is smeared with gore and hair. The rubber handle clearly bears his palmprint. He should probably take it along in one of the Tuff Totes with his shirt and shoes, but some intuition--too deep for words but very powerful--tells him to leave it, at least for the time being.

  Morris picks it up, wipes the blade and the handle to get rid of the fingerprints, then sets it gently down on the fancy desk. Like a warning. Or a calling card.

  "Who says I'm not a wolf, Mr. McFarland?" he asks the empty office. "Who says?"

  Then he leaves, using the blood-streaked towel to turn the knob.

  6

  In the shop again, Morris deposits the bloody stuff in one of the bags and zips it closed. Then he sits down to investigate Andy's laptop.

  It's a Mac, much nicer than the one in the prison library but basically the same. Since it's still wide awake, there's no need to waste time hunting for a password. There are lots of business files on the screen, plus an app marked SECURITY in the bar at the bottom. He'll want to investigate that, and closely, but first he opens a file marked JAMES HAWKINS, and yes, here is the information he wants: Peter Saubers's address (which he knows), and also Peter Saubers's cell phone number, presumably gleaned from the voicemail his old pal mentioned. His father is Thomas. His mother is Linda. His sister is Tina. There's even a picture of young Mr. Saubers, aka James Hawkins, standing with a bunch of librarians from the Garner Street branch, a branch Morris
knows well. Below this information--which may come in handy, who knows, who knows--is a John Rothstein bibliography, which Morris only glances at; he knows Rothstein's work by heart.

  Except for the stuff young Mr. Saubers is sitting on, of course. The stuff he stole from its rightful owner.

  There's a notepad by the computer. Morris jots down the boy's cell number and sticks it in his pocket. Next he opens the security app and clicks on CAMERAS. Six views appear. Two show Lacemaker Lane in all its consumer glory. Two look down on the shop's narrow interior. The fifth shows this very desk, with Morris sitting behind it in his new tee-shirt. The sixth shows Andy's inner office, and the body sprawled on the Turkish rug. In black-and-white, the splashes and splatters of blood look like ink.

  Morris clicks on this image, and it fills the screen. Arrow buttons appear on the bottom. He clicks the double arrow for rewind, waits, then hits play. He watches, engrossed, as he murders his old pal all over again. Fascinating. Not a home movie he wants anyone to see, however, which means the laptop is coming with him.

  He unplugs the various cords, including the one leading from a shiny box stamped VIGILANT SECURITY SYSTEMS. The cameras feed directly to the laptop's hard drive, and so there are no automatically made DVDs. That makes sense. A system like that would be a little too pricey for a small business like Andrew Halliday Rare Editions. But one of the cords he unplugged went to a disc-burner add-on, so his old pal could have made DVDs from stored security footage if he had desired.

  Morris hunts methodically through the desk, looking for them. There are five drawers in all. He finds nothing of interest in the first four, but the kneehole is locked. Morris finds this suggestive. He sorts through Andy's keys, selects the smallest, unlocks the drawer, and strikes paydirt. He has no interest in the six or eight graphic photos of his old pal fellating a squat young man with a lot of tattoos, but there's also a gun. It's a prissy, overdecorated P238 SIG Sauer, red and black, with gold-inlaid flowers scrolling down the barrel. Morris drops the clip and sees it's full. There's even one in the pipe. He puts the clip back in and lays the gun on the desk--something else to take along. He searches deep into the drawer and finds an unmarked white envelope at the very back, the flap tucked under rather than sealed. He opens it, expecting more dirty pix, and is delighted to find money instead--at least five hundred dollars. His luck is still running. He puts the envelope next to the SIG.