Finders Keepers (11 page)

There was a handwritten note on the newspaper that said,

Ed—Here's the article I told you about. What's going on out there? I guess Duncan's on the case—HAH!

Walt

Mr. Walt Miller! That old fart was nosy! I wondered if he'd seen the hole behind the washtub in Grumpa's basement. I remembered the day he brought tools to fix the pipes. He'd told Grumpa that Sheriff Duncan had stopped him near Capone's hideout. He'd driven the longest possible way to get to Grumpa's from Hayward, supposedly because of tourist traffic. That was crazy—there wasn't much traffic outside of town and hardly any around Westman Drive. Mr. Walt Miller was lying, and I knew why. He was after the Clarks' cash.

I picked up the remote to make room on the table for the newspaper, and that's when Grumpa returned from the can.

“I told you not to touch that remote!” Grumpa yelled. “Hell's bells! Is it possible for you to sit still for ten minutes?”

I'd been asked this question before but never in such a loud voice. His voice was so loud my eyes were starting to sweat.

“For the love of Gertrude, don't cry!”

I pressed my lips together so no sounds would come out. I plopped on the sofa and folded my arms.

“For the love of Gertrude.” Grumpa shifted around in his recliner and turned up the volume. The commercials stopped and his stupid show started again. Stupid show. Stupid grumpy Grumpa. I used my t-shirt to soak up my eye sweats.

Grumpa sighed all big and pressed buttons to turn down the sound. “Minnow, I suppose you want me to entertain you.”

I shrugged.

“I've been meaning to wash my truck. I could watch you do it. I'd have to make sure you don't drown yourself with the hose.”

“No thanks.”

He turned the TV off and put the footrest down. “I got some fish on ice that need to be scaled and cleaned. We could do that.”

“Can I use the knife?”

“That's all I need. You cutting off your leg. Or worse, cutting off my leg!”

If he wouldn't let me use a knife, there was no point in asking if he'd teach me taxidermy.

He said, “I could show you how to make pizza dough. It's soft and squishy. So you could squish it around for a while.”

“Then can I have a job at the restaurant?”

“No.”

“I don't want to squish dough.”

Grumpa said, “Fine. Tell me what you want to do.”

A few minutes later, we were zipping across Whitefish Lake in Grumpa's speedboat. And I was steering! Grumpa kept his hand on his hat so it wouldn't blow away. The wind dried the sweat on my face, and lake water sprayed the sides of the boat. I let my right hand dangle in the mist while I steered with my left. I shrieked and turned the wheel right and then left so the boat cut through the water in the path of a corkscrew.

“Enough!” Grumpa yelled over the rumbling motor. He reached over and pulled the lever. The boat went from a zip to a chug. “You can head to the cove on the east side, the one past the sandbar. That's enough speeding for one day. My ticker doesn't like it.” He thumped his chest.

I knew the place because I'd seen Grumpa fishing there every summer. I steered slowly to the cove. Grumpa dropped the anchor into the water with a
plunk
. “You can use that pole, but I'm not hooking your bait. You're gonna have to touch worms.”

“I'm not afraid of worms or hooking them. I'm not afraid of anything except sharks and maybe snakes a little.”

Grumpa handed me the container of worms. I pulled out the fattest one I could find and rolled it in my hand just to show him how unafraid I was. Then I stretched it over the hook. In a swift move my arm arched back and flicked the line into the water. Like a professional.

Grumpa cast his line, too.

I wanted to show him I was a real fisherperson, but it was hard to be quiet and still as the lake. I couldn't sit on my hands because I had to hold the pole. My teacher had told me to count to fifty before I say or do things. She said counting was a strategy to make me think first, but actually her strategy just made me a very fast counter.

Before I got to fifty, Grumpa reeled in his line. I hadn't even noticed his bobber dart under the water. He pulled out a tiny perch and shook his head all disgusted. “Look at this.” He unhooked the perch and dropped it in the water. “Too many people fishing in this lake these days. I swear you used to get fifteen-pound walleyes every time you put bait in the water. There's just too much lake property being bought up, and it's being bought by people who don't respect the lake.”

“Like people who need fancy fishing radars to catch anything,” I grumped.

“Gerald Westman—that's the guy who built your cabin—owned a lot of lake property. He made a fortune selling it. Now we've got people here who overfish and don't know how properly to get rid of fish guts. Last week I caught a tourist dumping minnows in the water. Don't they know that's how we get non-native fish in our lakes?”

I shook my head. “They don't know anything!”

After I counted to fifty, I asked, “Is that why you don't want us to sell my cabin? Because we respect the lake and the new people probably won't?”

“Who said I don't want you to sell it?”

“Alex said you'd rather have us next to you even though I'm a pain.”

“That kid! Words go in his ear and straight out his mouth.”

I reeled in my line to make sure a fish hadn't nibbled my worm. I hadn't felt a single tug. The worm, now gray and bloated, still clung to the hook. I cast the line again. “Grumpa, did you help build Al Capone's hideout?”

“Hell's bells! How old do you think I am?”

“I saw that newspaper article from Mr. Walt Miller in the living room. Do you think he's after Capone's stash?”

“Walt? That old fart would take a dime from an orphan.”

“Grumpa, would you tell me the rest of the story? The part after Al Capone gave your dad some of his fortune?”

Grumpa sighed.

“Please? If you don't want to, we could talk about something else. We could make a list of the ten best things about Hayward.”

“If it's a choice between having to listen to you or listen to myself, I guess I might as well finish the story.”

A
L
C
APONE AND THE
C
LARK
F
AMILY
L
OOT

Al Capone's brain was rotting from his disease. He had enough wits, though, to realize he was going to get caught, and his fortune would end up with the government or his enemies. He didn't like either outcome. Capone started hiding money. He gave some of it to his buddies to keep safe while he was in prison.

Most of his buddies were too scared of Capone to run off with his money. They did what he asked. But others figured Capone wouldn't survive prison. They figured if he did survive prison, he'd be a nothing when he got out. There'd be new gangsters, and Capone's days of ruling Chicago were over. Those buddies not only decided to keep his money, but they figured they'd steal from each other.

As soon as my father got home with that suitcase of money, trouble came looking for it—trouble named Johnny Russo and Sammy Costa. They were as mean as Capone.

I was sleeping in my bedroom upstairs when Johnny and Sammy came looking for the suitcase. I woke up to a commotion. Yelling and cussing. I looked from my window and saw Johnny and Sammy had my dad outside. I knew them from the restaurant. Sometimes they ate with Capone.

Sammy held Pops down and Johnny slapped him around. It was terrible to see such a thing. Pops was so tough. But not that night. I was real little and there was nothing I could do.

My mother—my tiny church-going mother—came out of the house with a rifle and stood at the driveway. Now my old man brewed his own trouble, but my mother was a wonderful woman, and I was scared out of my pants that something might happen to her.

She said, “That money's not here. I'm a Christian woman, and there's no room for blood money in my home or my heart. That money is the devil's calling card.”

I knew that suitcase full of money was hidden in a crate in the basement. My folks had been fighting about it all week. My mother said she was going to give it to the police, and my father threatened to hurt her if she touched it.

Pops tried to tear himself away from Sammy and Johnny, yelling that he didn't have any of Capone's money. They smacked him again and told him to shut up and that they didn't believe him.

Then my mother held the rifle to her eye. She said, “I don't care if you believe me or not. You gotta get through me to get to him. You going to kill a woman in cold blood? In the Northwoods? People here know who you are and what you are. This isn't Chicago where you can get away with killing. If you hurt me, folks here will hang you.”

They seemed to think about that. I just hoped Pops would keep his big mouth shut and let my mother take care of this mess. Then she said, “Now if I shoot you, two gangsters from the city, gangsters who come to my home and threaten my family, I'm a hero and a saint. They'll build a statue of me in the park, and your own mothers won't shed a tear at your funerals because you're bad men.”

Sammy said, “You couldn't hit the side of a barn with that rifle.”

My mother said, “I can hit the side of a birdhouse with this rifle.” And she fired a shot. In the moonlight, you could see the birdhouse near the very end of the driveway blow into a thousand pieces. I couldn't believe it. I didn't know my mother could even hold a gun. That was a one-in-a-million shot.

Then she said, “Your heads make a fine and easy target.”

Sure enough, they backed away, got in their car, and they sped out of there.

The next day, she got a bottle of whiskey and said my father deserved a nice drink after a night like that. He should've been suspicious. I was. But he started drinking. Pretty soon he'd passed right out. That's when my mother sent me to my room and said to stay there while she hid the money where nobody would find it, including my father. I guess that's when she put it in the basement under the washtub.

When Pops woke up, she wouldn't tell him where she'd hid the money. She said he wasn't going to drink and gamble it away. She said they were either going to do good things with that money or get rid of it. He was burning mad. I thought he was going to hit her, but she said, “If it weren't for Edmund, I'd have let those thugs take you. If I can shoot a birdhouse from the other end of the driveway, imagine what I can do while you're sleeping. Close range and all.”

So he never hit her. And they never, not once, spoke another word to each other. Not at home, not at the restaurant. Not ever. My father died a few months later, and misfortune started raining down. Mother kept talking about us burning that money together, but then she'd change her mind and talk about who she could help. Then she'd say she was afraid to give the money to the church. She thought bad things would happen to the pastor. She was afraid to give the money to the orphanage because she thought bad things would happen to the kids. She thought if Capone got the money back, the curse would lift, but he was in prison. She thought maybe after Capone died, the curse would lift, but she decided she couldn't wait. The loot had to go. She said she was going to burn it up.

That whole time, she never let me have a penny of that money. I thought I might get a train set out of the deal, but no. Couldn't even get one little train set, and trains were my favorite thing in the world. We ran the restaurant and worked day and night. My mother wanted me to understand an honest dollar. There was no tree climbing, no running around, no train collecting, and no swinging from water pipes in the basement, that's for darn sure.

So the Clark family loot came to an end with a match and a fire.

*   *   *

“That's it? That's the end?”

“That's it, Minnow.”

The whole story was a sad mess. All that money and she burned it? She wouldn't even give her kid a train set? That's crazy. Mrs. Hillary Clark could have made it so Grumpa didn't have to work so hard, and then Grumpa could have made it so Neil didn't have to work so hard. Their lives could've been easier and happier.

One match took everything from the Clarks.

It took something from me, too. After Dad had cried and Shawn Weller's sign had gone in the yard, I mostly knew the cabin was gone. Still, I'd had the teeny-tiniest piece of hope that Capone's money might save the cabin. It wasn't big hope. It was speck-of-dust hope, but now even that was gone. How could losing something so small feel so big and empty?

“Stories don't have happy endings, Minnow.” Grumpa said. “You'll save yourself a lot of grief if you stop looking for them.”

I didn't feel like fishing anymore. I reeled in my line, yanked the bloated worm off the hook, and dropped it in the water. A few sunfish darted to the surface and nibbled until the worm was gone.

“I've got some golden shiners,” Grumpa said. “Want to try one?”

“No thanks.” I leaned back in my seat and studied the shoreline. If I squinted I could make out the shape of the Clarks' house from our fishing spot.

Grumpa looked toward the house, too, and said, “I've always wondered where she burned it.”

“You didn't see her burn it?”

“Didn't need to.”

I sat up so fast I knocked my fishing pole over. “Then you're not sure.”

“She said she was going to. That's good enough for me.” Grumpa lifted his fishing hat and wiped sweat from his forehead.