"That's what I thought," he said, and he looked over at me for the first time since we'd gotten into the van. "I didn't figure on insurance, though. Didn't figure Eleanor was gonna have to die because I didn't have forty thousand dollars."
"I think I can help you out with that, Louis."
He didn't take me seriously. "Yeah? You got forty thousand dollars you ain't using?"
"I want to buy an option on that piece of land you got up in Eastport. That ought to be worth something."
He still wasn't listening to me, not really. "You know Sam Calder, that son of a hoah, he'd offered me fifty for it, but when he found out how much I really needed the money, he decided he didn't need to buy it aftah all, he just needed a right-of-way to cross it. Twenty-five is all he'll give me. And his boy will give me twenty-six. And no matter which one of them I give it to, they'll have something fuming up theyah before I'm cold in the ground."
"Maybe so, Louis. But not if you sell me an option on it. I'll give you fifty for it, just like Calder's original offer."
He turned slowly, looked at me. "Yo-ah serious, ahn't you."
I nodded. "Yeah."
"You a rich man?" he asked me. "I didn't figure you for one."
"Being rich is kind of a fluid concept, Louis." It was my turn to think for a minute. I hadn't considered myself a rich man, either. "Put it this way: paying you fifty grand for an option isn't gonna put too big a crimp in my situation."
"I'd be saying no," he said. "If Calder can't build his tanker port, there won't be no new jobs at it."
"You been out there on the bay, haven't you?"
"Yeah," he said.
"You want 'em bringing loaded oil tankers in there? Picture a bunch of old trucks with lousy brakes, overloaded, sitting at the top of a steep hill. You might get most of them down, but sooner or later one of them is gonna get away from you."
"Oh," he said, "you don't have to convince me. I'd set fiyah to the whole state if it'd get Eleanor out of that hospital whole. It's just that I didn't want to have to be the one to decide whether that place got built or not."
"You don't have to be."
"No?"
"No. First of all, it's just an option. Call it the right of first refusal. Something else happens to put you in dire need, you can still dump it. Okay? We'll make the deal run until your son Gerald moves up here, and then you can give it to him, let him figure out what to do. Besides, the property might be worth a lot more by then."
Louis nodded his head. "Might," he said.
"There's only one condition," I said.
"What's that?"
"You gotta take the money in cash."
He looked over at me. "Why in cash?"
"That would make it easier for me, Louis. If I had to write you a check, it would take too long to set up. Besides, then you'd have to deal with the taxes."
"You get paid in cash often in the computah business?"
"Louis, you used to be different, Bookman told me so. Said before you found religion, you used to raise hell, but then something happened to you, and you changed. Am I right?"
He nodded. "Ayuh."
"I, ah, I guess I pulled a lot of shit in my life, Louis, but I'm different now. I'm trying to do something good, for once in my fucking life. Why you trying to make it hard?"
"Oh, I'm not," he said. "I'm sorry, Manny. None of my business where you got it from. I appreciate what yo-ah doing, I can't tell you how much." He took a deep breath, straightened up a little bit. "Where should I say I got the money from?"
"I don't think anybody will care where you got it. Tell 'em you had it buried in coffee cans under your barn floor."
"You know, I nevah thought of that," he said. "Maybe I should go dig around undah theyah, see what I find." It was an attempt at humor, but it didn't hide the sadness in his voice. He'd never believe I was a computer programmer, never again.
* * *
When in doubt, ask a lawyer. There was a guy who practiced in Lubec, had a sign out in front of his house. His name was Weaver, and Louis and I decided to stop and see him on our way past. It just happened that Weaver was tied up with old man Calder and some other guy, so we sat in his kitchen and waited. At least he had coffee going, or his wife did. She seemed very nice, much more cheerful than anyone ought to be. She was short, round, and happy, there were pictures of her and her husband everywhere, and the two of them could have been bookends. I got a chance to talk to her for a while because Louis was still a little stunned. It struck me then that he wasn't out of the woods yet, that regardless of his financial situation, Eleanor was still in the hospital. Mrs. Weaver tried to engage him, asking him how Eleanor was holding up, but Louis had retreated to some monosyllabic alternate universe. She gave up on him after a while, and she and I sat in the kitchen and listened to her husband doing what lawyers do. I could hear him, not the words he said but the sound of his voice, measured and reasonable. The guy with Sam had a voice that was a little higher and a little more strident, and Sam himself was off the chart. He either started or finished every one of his sentences with "Goddammit, Weaver." Mrs. Weaver and I sat drinking coffee in her kitchen and listened to him. I found my mood rapidly improving, watching Mrs. Weaver giggling every time Sam said something in the other room.
"You know," she said to me, "Mr. Calder has always been such an unhappy man. You would think, with all his money, he could have anything he wants, but I can honestly say that in all the years I've known him I can't remember seeing him smile." She glanced over at Louis, but he was still in a world of his own.
"Takes more than money, I guess."
"Well, you know, that's true," she said. She pitched her voice low and leaned across the table to be heard. "Mr. Weaver and I don't have a lot, but we enjoy life, do you know what I mean? We both like to play golf. I may never be that good, but my husband is actually not bad, you know, he's got a nice tight swing and he stays in the fayahway mowah than just about anyone I know. But what I mean to say is, we enjoy life. We have a time-shayah in Noth Carolina, and we go golfing down theyah for two weeks every yeah, and we take other vacations when we can affodd it, we've played everywayah from Florida to Banff, you know, and of course we play around heah. There's a nice little course right over to Campobello. But Sam, he hardly evah even takes a day off." She leaned closer. "Tell me," she said. "Can going to business be that interesting? Can it be so much fun that it's all you want to do? And if it is, how come everyone that does it looks so unhappy?"
"I don't know the answer to that one." I stopped, and she and I listened to Sam launching into a tirade, but after a strong start he lost steam. "I can tell you that I used to enjoy my profession a lot more than I do now." I watched Louis out of the corner of my eye, but I might as well have been speaking Swahili. "I used to think being good at something was worth whatever price you had to pay for it. It's like playing a game, I guess. You want to win, even if there's no prize. There was something in me that needed that. But you know, after my son's mother died
"
She clucked her tongue. "Sorry to heah that."
"Thanks. But I've had to spend a lot more time with my son recently, and it almost makes me wonder why I was so interested in what I was doing before. You know, I've never played golf. I don't think I've ever even held a golf club in my hands. I used to wonder about people who played. Like, What could they be thinking?"
She laughed softly. "Oh, I know what you mean," she said. "When my husband first wanted me to go, I thought he was crazy. I agreed to try it, though, and I went and took some lessons with him. It was so funny, at first, half the time I would miss the ball altogethah. But you know what? All it took was one good shot. The first time I swung that drivah and heard that smack that you hear when you've struck it well, Lord, I stood theyah and watched it fly
. That was all it took. I've been hooked evah since. You know, you should try it sometime. I bet you'd like it."
We listened to Sam Calder through the walls of her house. "Now, goddammit, Weaver
"
"You suppose he'd be happier if he played golf?"
"Oh, you know," she said, "it wouldn't have to be golf. But you ought to have something that you can do, just because. You've got to have something in your life that makes you smile."
* * *
A while later, I looked out of Weaver's kitchen window and saw Sam Calder Sr. and the guy who was with him go stomping across Weaver's front yard towards Sam's Mercedes. They stopped for a few seconds to stare at the minivan before continuing on. Weaver came back into the kitchen a few minutes later, and his wife made introductions. He offered to take Louis and me into his office, but that hardly seemed necessaryhis wife was going to hear it all anyhow, though I didn't say that. I explained what Louis and I wanted to do, and it turned out he had contract templates loaded in his word processor, all he needed to do was fill in the details and change some shit around. We wound up signing papers about an hour later, and Weaver had some advice for Louis on handling the money once he got it. Weaver's fee was a hundred and fifty bucks, and I had to fight with Louis to pay it out of my end. I won, finally, but it was a struggle.
When we got back to Louis's house, he stared at his Jeep with a funny look on his face. I thought I knew what it was. I've done it myself, and it's worse when you do it in the city, you get fried and park your car on the street someplace, and then in the morning you can't remember where you put it. You spend a couple of hours, or days, sometimes, wandering around the neighborhood looking for it, and when you finally find it, you stand there staring at it, thinking, Shit, I don't remember this at all. But there it is, you know, and your key fits and all that, so it had to be you who put it there, and it's a strange thing to realize that you were behind the wheel but someone else was driving.
"C'mon, Louis," I told him. "It's all right." He shook his head and followed me into the kitchen. "I gotta make a run down to Manhattan," I told him once we were inside. "I should be back in a couple of days. You gonna be all right?"
I watched him stand there, breathing, looking at the wall. "You know," he finally said, "when I was in that cell, I felt like I was back where I belonged. I felt like I had just been playacting all these yeahs since the last time I was locked up. I've been pretending that I was grown up, but it was all for show."
"That's fucked up, Louis. Eleanor needs you now, you gotta be there for her. You think you can do that?"
He nodded. "I'll be all right."
I went upstairs and grabbed one of my duffel bags. The other one, the one that held my laptop, my birding stuff, and the money, I left where it was. I did grab five bundles out of it, though, fifty grand. It seemed such a meaningless thing, like I was giving someone some of my extra socks. I took them downstairs, laid them on the kitchen table, where Louis was sitting down. His friend Jim Beam was nowhere in evidence. Louis let out a big sigh when he saw the money, like he'd been holding it in ever since I'd picked him up.
"Manny," he said. "I don't know what to say."
"You don't need to say anything."
"I don't know why you're doing this," he said.
"I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, Louis. Made a lot of poor choices." I had always taken care of myself first. I had the feeling that if I got started telling him about that, we would be sitting there for hours. "Maybe this'll make up for a couple of them."
"Maybe it will." Louis's voice got husky, and he got that Sunday-morning look in his eye. He stood up, walked over, and took my hand in both of his. "I'll pray for you, son, you and Nicky both. I'll pray that the Lord forgives you, and that he sets you on the right road."
"Thanks, Louis." His gratitude was making me itchy because I still had no real appreciation for money. I wasn't giving him something I had worked for, it didn't feel like I was doing anything more significant than passing on a pair of shoes that didn't fit me anymore. "I appreciate that. You want my advice, I would take the money up and give it to Weaver, let him handle it for you. You can't just go and lay it on the hospital, you know what I'm saying? You gotta make them think you had to sell your firstborn to get it, every step of the way. You need a ride back down there? You need a ride down to the hospital in Machias?"
"I can make it," he said. "You go on and do what you need to do. Thank you, Manny. Thank you for everything."
* * *
I almost forgot about Gevier's money, but I noticed his invoice lying on the floor of the passenger side of the van when I threw my duffel bag inside. It wasn't a lot, not to me, but I don't think money ever means much of anything to a thief. It had never mattered that much to me if I was broke, because I knew how to get what I needed. You take a guy like Gevier, though, even though he was obviously a bright guy and knew his profession, if no one came into his garage for a few weeks, or a few months, he could wind up in a hard way pretty quickly. It struck me then that I'd had the unearned luxury of not needing to worry about finances most of my life, on account of being a crook, while more or less normal guys like Gevier and Louis probably had to expend a lot of mental energy sweating how they were going to make it. Of course, neither one of them was likely to get locked up for pursuing his chosen profession.