Treasure-hunting, he had discovered, was also a stimulant.
He looked around for a moment at the weedy yard, the sagging barn, the clusters of blindly staring sunflowers. It’s not much, but I think this is it, just the same, he thought. The place where I put the Corson Brothers behind me forever and get rich in the bargain.
It’s here-some of it or all of it. Right here. I can feel it.
But it was more than feeling-he could hear it, singing softly to him. Singing from beneath the ground. Not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands. Perhaps as much as a million.
“A million dollars,” Ace whispered in a hushed, choked voice, and bent over the map.
Five minutes later he was hunting along the west side of the Camber house. Most of the way down toward the back, almost obscured in tall weeds, he found what he was looking for-a large, flat stone. He picked it up, threw it aside, and began to dig frantically. Less than two minutes later, there was a muffled clunk as the blade struck rusty metal. Ace fell on his knees, rooted in the dirt like a dog hunting a buried bone, and a minute later he had unearthed the Sherwin-Williams paint-can which had been buried here.
Most dedicated cocaine users are also dedicated nail-biters and Ace was no exception. He had no fingernails to pry with and he couldn’t get the lid off. The paint around the rim had dried to an obstinate glue. With a grunt of frustration and rage, Ace pulled out his pocket-knife, got the blade under the can’s rim, and levered the cover off. He peered in eagerly.
Bills!
Sheafs and sheafs of bills!
With a cry he seized them, pulled them out… and saw that his eagerness had deceived him. It was only more trading stamps.
Red Ball Stamps this time, a kind which had been redeemable only south of the Mason-Dixon line… and there only until 1964, when the company had gone out of business.
“Shit fire and save matches!” Ace cried. He threw the stamps aside. They unfolded and began to tumble away in the light, hot breeze that had sprung up. Some of them caught and fluttered from the weeds like dusty banners. “Cunt! Bastard! Sonofawhore!”
He rooted in the can, even turned it over to see if there was anything taped to the bottom, and found nothing. He threw it away, stared at it for a moment, then rushed over and booted it like a soccer ball.
He felt in his pocket for the map again. There was one panicky second when he was afraid it wasn’t there, that he had lost it somehow, but he had only pushed it all the way down to the bottom in his eagerness to get cracking. He yanked it out and looked at it.
The other cross was out behind the barn… and suddenly a wonderful idea came into Ace’s mind, lighting up the angry darkness in there like a Roman candle on the Fourth of July.
The can he had just dug up was a blind! Pop might have thought someone would tumble to the fact that he had marked his various stashes with flat rocks. Thus, he had practiced a little of the old bait-and-switch out here at the Camber place. just to be safe. A hunter who found one useless treasure-trove would never guess that there was another stash, right here on this same property but in a more out-of-the-way place…
“Unless they had the map,” Ace whispered. “Like I do.”
He grabbed the pick and shovel and raced for the barn, eyes wide, sweaty, graying hair matted to the sides of his head.
9
He saw the old Air-Flow trailer and ran toward it. He was almost there when his foot struck something and he fell sprawling to the ground. He was up in a moment, looking around. He saw what he had stumbled over at once.
It was a shovel. One with fresh dirt on the blade.
A bad feeling began to creep over Ace; a very bad feeling indeed.
It began in his belly, then spread upward to his chest and down to his balls. His lips peeled back from his teeth, very slowly, in an ugly snarl.
He got to his feet and saw the rock marker lying nearby, dirt side up. It had been thrown aside. Someone had been here first… and not long ago, from the look. Someone had beaten him to the treasure.
“No,” he whispered. The word fell from his snarling mouth like a drop of tainted blood or infected saliva. “No!”
Not far from the shovel and the uprooted rock, Ace saw a pile of loose dirt which had been scraped indifferently back into a hole.
Ignoring both his own tools and the shovel which the thief had left behind, Ace fell on his knees again and began pawing dirt out of the hole. In no time at all, he had found the Crisco can.
He brought it out and pried off the lid.
There was nothing inside but a white envelope.
Ace took it out and tore it open. Two things fluttered out: a sheet of folded paper and a smaller envelope. Ace ignored the second envelope for the time being and unfolded the paper. It was a typed note. His mouth dropped open as he read his own name at the top of the sheet.
Dear Ace, I can’t be sure you’ll find this, but there’s no law against hoping. Sending you to Shawshank was fun, but this has been better. I wish I could see your face when you finish reading this!
Not long after I sent you up, I went to see Pop. I saw him pretty often-once a month, in fact. We had an arrangement: he gave me a hundred a month and I let him go on making his illegal loans. All very civilized. Halfway through this particular meeting, he excused himself to use the toilet-something he et,” he said. Ha-ha! I took the opportunity to peek in his desk, which he had left unlocked. Such carelessness was not like him, but I think he was afraid he might load his pants if he didn’t go “to visit his Uncle John” right away. Ha!
I only found one item of interest, but that one was a corker. It looked like a map. There were lots of crosses on it, but one of the crosses-the one marking this spot-was marked in red. I put the map back before Pop returned. He never knew I looked at it. I came out here right after he died and dug up this Crisco can. There was better than two hundred thousand dollars in it, Ace. Don’t worry, thoughI decided to “share and share alike” and am going to leave you exactly what you deserve.
Welcome back to town, Ace-Hole!
Yours sincerely, Alan Pangborn Castle County Sheriff P.S.: A word to the wise, Ace: now that you know, “take your lumps” and forget the whole thing. You know the old saying-finders keepers. If you ever try to brace me about your uncle’s money, I will tear you a new asshole and stuff your head into it.
Trust me on this.
A.P. Ace let the sheet of paper slide from his numb fingers and opened the second envelope.
A single one-dollar bill fell out of it.
I decided to “share and share alike” and am going to leave you exactly what you deserve.
“You crab-infested bastard,” Ace whispered, and picked up the dollar bill with shaking fingers.
Welcome back to town, Ace-Hole!
“YOU SONOFA WHORE!” Ace screamed so loudly that he felt something in his throat strain and almost rupture. The echo came back dimly:… whore… whore… whore…
He began to tear the dollar up, then forced his fingers to relax.
Huh-uh. No way, jose.
He was going to save this. The son of a bitch had wanted Pop’s money, had he? He had stolen what rightfully belonged to Pop’s last living relative, had he? Well, all right. Good. Fine. But he should have all of it. And Ace intended to see that the Sheriff had just that. So, after he removed Pusbag’s testicles with his pocket-knife, he intended to stuff this dollar bill into the bloody hole where they had been.