The Hemingway Thief (24 page)

“I'm not in a very critical mood,” I said.

“Maybe this will help,” he said, handing me the joint. I took it, licked the end, and slid it between my lips. Elmo held his lighter under the tip, and I took a big toke. I was tired and the smoke hit me hard.

“Go ahead,” I said, as the unpleasant, fragrant smoke poured out of me. Elmo leaned back across the cot and my legs so that the back of his head rested against the smooth rock wall. His voice rolled and bounced off the walls, sounding like it was coming from everywhere. If characters in a book could hear their omniscient narrator, this is what the voice would sound like.

“The story begins with a talented thief in the first half of the last century. War breaks out. He joins the army to see this world everyone's been talking about. He gets there, sees a little action, and then the war's over. He spends some time in Paris. Then a little more time. Before he knows it, that's where he lives. He has some friends. Makes a good living as a dipper at the racetrack. Life is good, not great, but good.”

He paused here to make sure I was with him. The pot was good, maybe the best I'd ever had, but I was picking up what he was laying down.

“So our thief meets a writer. Handsome guy with a little bit of talent. He shows our thief his work, and they talk about things—art, music, literature—that no one ever bothered to discuss with our thief before. Our thief falls in love with the writer. It's more than affection. He wants this man, the writer. Our thief has had these feelings before. Acted on it once during the war when they all thought they were going to die. Our thief knows what he is, and while he is not ashamed, he knows he needs to keep it secret. He often wonders if the writer knows how he feels. He steals things for him, but never gives them to the writer. He wonders each evening as he walks along the Seine whether the writer might feel the same. And if he didn't? What then? But for now our thief is in love, and for a while, that is enough.

“The writer becomes frustrated. He is making a poor living as a correspondent for a Canadian newspaper, but it is fiction that is his real passion. He's written quite a few short stories and is working on a novel, but no one will publish him. This becomes the focus of most of their conversations until it becomes as consuming for our thief as it is for the writer. He thinks about it constantly. How can he make this man whom he loves happy? And then one day, as they are discussing the matter over a couple of cups of café au lait, an idea emerges. It begins as a hypothetical, but it slowly, surely, painfully becomes a plan.

“Our thief will steal a suitcase filled with everything the writer has ever written, save one piece of work. This will be his best story. The writer will tell everyone who will listen about his terrible loss, especially any editors or publishers he may know. The writer will have to really sell the story, and the thief would teach him how. After all, our thief made a very good living as a confidence man back in the States. Then, when he has the hook in an editor, one who seems sympathetic and willing to help, that is when the writer will produce his one remaining story. If he plays it right, some editor somewhere would take pity on him and he would get published.

“It might just work, this plan of our thief's, and if it didn't? No problem. His precious work would be safe in the trusted hands of the writer's friend, the thief.

“‘You are the only one I truly trust,' the writer tells the thief. The thief almost swoons, but he is able to finish his coffee all the same.

“The day comes and goes. Not a hitch. There was a moment, at the train station, when our thief is surprised to find that the carrier of the suitcase is the writer's wife. Our thief had met the wife before, and the writer's mistress too. He was fearful, if only for a moment, that she would recognize him, but our thief's unparalleled skill comes to the fore and he manages the purloining without incident.

“Our thief spends two agonizing months in an attic with the suitcase. That was the agreed-upon time, two months. He couldn't see his writer. He could only read his words. In that time he came to love the words as much as the writer. He read them through, one after the other, and when he finished them he started over again. Meanwhile, the writer gets a sympathetic editor to publish his one remaining story, a little thing about a rape, along with a couple of other stories he produced, and some poetry. The plan has worked.

“Then comes the exchange. The money for the goods. It does not go well. Our thief does not give back the suitcase. Instead he flees. He goes home for a while. But the grief follows him and he flees again. This time for the Madres. Then he dies, alone in the desert.”

Elmo took the joint from me and took a toke of his own. He held it in his lungs for an incredible amount of time, then let it flow out of his mouth as gracefully as water over garden falls.

“What do you think?” he asked.

“Needs an ending,” I said. “And you yadda-yadda'd the best part.” The bud was working well, otherwise I'm sure my response would not have been so measured.

“The thief is Ebenezer,” Elmo said.

“Yes, I got that.”

“The writer is Hemingway.”

“I picked up on that, too.”

“I'm just saying because you look confused.”

I'm sure I did. I was already dealing with less than a few hours' sleep over the last three days. I had witnessed a few killings. The deadliest woman in the world was trying to kill me. I was lying on an army cot in a cave-room dug into a mesa that used to be an Apache stronghold and was now the home of a group of pot farmers lead by the last descendant of John Wilkes Booth. To top all this off, I had just taken a couple of major tokes off a joint filled with the purest strain of weed I'd ever had.

“If I look confused, it may be because you told us you weren't going to help us find the suitcase,” I said. I propped myself up on my elbows and swiped the joint away from Elmo. “And then you demonstrated how much you weren't going to help us by, you know, completely and totally not fucking helping us.”

“There are—”

“Rules. Yes, I know,” I said. I blew out my smoke, meaning to blow it in his face, but it caught in my throat and I was thrown into a fit of hacking coughs. When I was done, I looked up at Elmo with teary eyes. “What I don't know is why you're bothering to tell me any of this.”

“I want you to understand,” Elmo said. He was still lying across my legs as if we were two sorority sisters gabbing about our boyfriends. “You see, I was sitting up there in my room, reading your book, and it occurred to me that you're not the only ones after the suitcase.”

“It just occurred to you? I mean, it didn't occur to you when you had a sniper aimed at his fucking head?”

“Ebenezer and I became good friends while he was here,” Elmo said, ignoring me. “I was just a kid then. My father was still running things. Ebenezer taught me a lot about life, the outside world, things like that. I think maybe if I hadn't met Ebenezer, I would have probably run things the way my Pop did.” He looked around the room and nodded at the ceiling. “All of this, what we are now, in a way it's because of Ebbie.”

“Were you two, um . . .” I said, and trailed off in what was my version of tact.

“He was a good friend,” Elmo said. “You said I skipped over the best part? You mean what happened at the exchange?”

“From a dramatic point of view, that would have been the good part, yes.”

“I left it out because Ebenezer never told me what happened. Not completely,” Elmo said, and let out a long, hard sigh. He took up the second book from his lap. It was Milch's copy of
A Moveable Feast
. He thumbed through it until he found the page he wanted. He read the words to himself with a gentle, unintelligible mumble. I heard “primitive,” “tramps,” and “prepared to kill a man” clearly enough, however. When he was done, Elmo nodded and looked me in the eye. “I think if you know anything about Hemingway, you could make a pretty good guess as to what happened. Basically, what he says in here is that when you're out and about in places there might be gays, then you gotta carry a knife.”

“Jesus,” I said.

“Gotta be able to defend yourself against all those fag rapists who are crawling out of the sewers, you get me? That was his kind of thinking.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah, and his buddy Miss Stein had a few things to say on the subject herself,” Elmo said, turning the page. “Let's see. Yep. ‘The act is ugly and repugnant.' Male homosexuality she means here. Not, you know, lesbians, Miss Stein being one herself. Says these poor bastards are all junkies and drunks because they can't deal with how goddamn disgusting they are.”

“Jesus,” I said again.

“I think when they met for the exchange, Ebbie and Hemingway that is, maybe Ebenezer told him how he felt, or maybe made a move.” Elmo waved Hemingway's book. “You can guess how well that went over.”

“Chavez told me Ebenezer kept the suitcase out of love. You're saying it was spite?” I said. My professor in college had been in love with the idea that Hemingway was a latent homosexual. He theorized that this was the reason why Hemingway took on so many uber-manly pursuits. It was why he drank, why he couldn't stay married, and why women played such terrible roles in his writing. Perhaps Ebenezer had picked up on that same vibe and made the mistake of pursuing it. Maybe Hemingway had put it out there on purpose, trying to lead Ebenezer on so that he could get a favor out of him. Maybe it was all bullshit. Maybe I didn't care because I was still thinking about the megalomaniacal book dealer who wanted me dead.

“Maybe at first,” Elmo said. “Thin line between love and hate and all. But when Ebenezer talked about his writer it was always with affection. And he loved the stories. I know that. Even more than Hemingway he loved the stories.”

“You ever see them?”

“No. That's the whole damn point, son,” Elmo said, and slapped the paperback against his knee. “No one can see them. Not ever.”

“I don't follow.”

“Neither do I, to be honest. Ebenezer was an odd duck, you know, and I'm not talking about his sexual proclivities. I'm not the type who gives a shit what a guy does in his bunk, you know?” He waited until I nodded that I did understand. “Ebenezer followed Hemingway's whole life. Every adventure, every heartache, every success, every failure. You know what he told me?”

“No.”

“He told me it was the longest con job he'd ever seen. From start to finish, every part of Hemingway's life was bullshit. An image built on as much flimsy pretense as a dime-store hood running the Spanish Prisoner.”

“Because he thought Papa was gay?” I asked.

“No,” Elmo said, and gave me a disparaging look. “Because it was all calculated. It was all meant to inform his literature and to make him a star. It was all craven bullshit, you understand?”

“No.”

“The only thing that had ever been real was the theft. At least according to Ebenezer.”

“But it was a con too,” I said.

“Not if he never got the stories back,” Elmo said with a wistful smile. “As long as Hemingway never got those stories back, then it was a real theft. It was really taken from him. And then all the grief and misery Hemingway felt from that loss would be real because the loss was real.”

“But Hemingway is dead. What's the difference if anybody sees them now?”

“I told you, Ebenezer was an odd duck. He was insistent that no one besides him should ever see the stories. He tried to burn them, you know. Lots of times. He would tell me about it. Said he had the match lit, hanging right over the pages, but he could never do it. And now they are buried out in the desert, out in that hovel he lived in for the last few years of his life. I think they should stay there.”

“Because that's what Ebenezer wanted?”

“Yes.”

“And his opinion is the only one that matters?”

“It is to me,” Elmo snapped. “I owe him.”

“For what?” I asked. Elmo shoved the Hemingway book back in his pocket.

“Friendship doesn't mean much to most people in these parts, but it does to me. Ebbie was a friend, but I don't know how he died. I didn't even know he
was
dead for a year after it happened. He never visited regular, so I didn't think much when he stopped coming around. I was just driving by on my way to somewhere else when I thought I'd stop by. One of the locals had found him. He'd been out in the sun for a few days and the animals had gotten to him. That's all I know. My friend died alone in the desert, Coop. I couldn't do anything for him then, but I can do this thing for him now. I can protect the suitcase.”

“But like you said, we're not the only ones looking for it,” I said. I pulled my legs up and swung them over the side of the bed. I held my book in my hands as I hunched over next to the old cowboy.

“Yes,” he said. “That is why I need you to get it. I need you to get it and bring it to me. I'll keep it safe.”

“Why come to me?” I asked. “Milch is Ebenezer's kin. Grady is better at this stuff than I am.”

“I trust you.”

“Why?”

He stuck his index finger into the inside cover of my book and flipped it open. He stabbed the cover page with his digit, directing me toward one sentence written with a fat-tipped pencil in compact handwriting.

Henry Cooper is OK

—Sully

Part 4

The End of Something

Chapter Twenty-Seven

At dawn we were on the move again. Nobody asked any questions about Elmo's change of heart, and I didn't offer up any more information than necessary. I told them we were headed to Ebenezer's old camp and that it would be dangerous. I gave a perfunctory explanation that Elmo had taken pity on us. That seemed to be enough. I kept my deal with Elmo and my plans for the suitcase to myself.