The Hemingway Thief

by Shaun Harris

  After an hour, the plywood door shuddered open and a stooped young soldier came in with two cold Jive Cola bottles on a cardboard lunch tray.

  “Do you have rum? With or without lime. I’m not picky,” I said. The soldier scuttled out the door without a word, and we were left in the stifling heat. We sat and drank our colas. Mine was flat and had an acidic aftertaste, but I supposed that was what a Mexican Jive Cola tasted like.

  When the bottles were empty, a middle-aged Mexican in fatigues stomped into the room and stood in front of us like a teacher about to discipline a pair of unruly boys. He had the hefty well-fed look of a man who had been in charge for quite some time. He held three manila folders in one hand and pushed his slick black hair back across his head with the other.

  “Te llamas Grady Doyle?” he barked. “Por que estás en Mexico?” Grady blinked a few times and shook his head. “Yo sé que hablas español.”

  “No sé,” Grady said. They stared at each other until Grady cracked a smile. Then the Mexican shook his head, held up his hands, and walked back to the open door. He waved his hand at someone outside and waited in the doorway, looking back at us.

  The shadow of an ambling, slight man walking with obvious difficulty loomed over the threshold. The shadow stopped and its owner exchanged a few words with the Mexican at the door. The shadow’s voice was raised, but not loud enough for me to make out the words. It was clear, however, that he was in charge. The Mexican spoke quickly, shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders until eventually he threw up his hands and marched back to the far corner of the room, where he stood with his arms crossed like a petulant child. The shadow took a moment to compose himself before coming in.

  He wore a tobacco-colored linen suit, a matching fedora, and round, wire-rimmed spectacles perched precariously on the end of his bony nose. A gold watch fob completed the dandy-on-safari look. He moved across the room with a delicate, waspish grace that belied his tall, gawky frame. He waved the leather portfolio containing the manuscript, dropped it on the metal desk in the center of the room, and leaned against the desktop. There was a moment when the desk threatened to slide across the floor and dump him on his ass, but he adjusted his weight and folded his hands in his lap. He had a thin, Clark Gable–style mustache that made me hate him at once.

  His skeletal hand took a bottle of Walgreens-brand pink bismuth from his inside jacket pocket. He slit the thin plastic seal with a manicured thumbnail and tossed the scrap on the ground. Eschewing the dosage cup, he chugged directly from the bottle. There was less than a third of the bottle left when he was done.

  “Mexico,” he said with a pained grimace and a commiserating nod. Apparently just invoking the name of the country was enough to explain his gastric distress. “Gentlemen, my name is Newton Thandy,” The name didn’t register right away. For starters, I had only previously known the first initial. Secondly, the pronunciation of his last name dripped from his mouth in a southern drawl that turned the two syllables it should have been into something along the lines of seven or eight. When my brain finally did make the connection, it came with the realization that the chances of this encounter being about a bribe were now quite slim.

  “Newton Thandy, rare books and antiquities?” I said with raised eyebrows. Thandy pointed at me like a game-show host congratulating a contestant on a particularly difficult piece of mundane trivia.

  “Exactly, Mr. Cooper,” he said, and took a sip of the pink stuff. “The one and only.”

  “He work for you?” Grady said, nodding at the uniformed man.

  “Colonel Ramirez?” Thandy said. “Today he does, yes.”

  “You see this, Coop?” Grady said with a sardonic smile. “A white guy in charge of a Mexican military operation. That’s the problem with this country. Too many white Americans coming down here, taking all the jobs.”

  “Don’t see a lot of rare book dealers with that sort of clout,” I said, ignoring Grady. He hadn’t sensed the danger we were in. I had only the barest wisp of it myself, and it was only because of the absolute wrongness of a man like Thandy being in a place like this. All I knew was that something was off and it raised the hairs on my arms.

  Thandy gave a shrill, polite laugh and clapped his hands together.

  “Very good, Mr. Cooper, very good.” Thandy said, smoothing his mustache. “As it happens, book dealing is my second career. Actually, to be more accurate, it is my second life. This life, my new one, is far more, um, civilized than my last one, but I have to tell you that I am astounded on an almost daily basis by how much my old life keeps bleeding in.” He chuckled at this, not with the pantomimed gaiety he previously displayed, but with something more genuine and dark. “Bleeds,” he said, as if this offered enough of an explanation to let us in on the joke. “For instance, I am aware of who would and who would not be sympathetic enough to help me with my, well, I guess you would call it my mission down here in Old Mexico”.

  “Your mission to steal Milch’s manuscript?” I said. Grady looked at me as if I was the biggest fool he’d ever seen. I flipped him the bird. “You think there’s any chance he doesn’t know we know about it?”

  “Mr. Cooper is indeed correct,” Thandy said, and took another swig. “But not entirely. I’m not stealing it. I am reclaiming it. You see, the Ebenezer Milch you know stole it from me less than a week ago.”

  “That’s not the story he told us,” Grady said. He spat the words with some bravado, but I knew as well as he did that Milch had been lying. Doc had been suspicious of the story of discovering the manuscript in a random trunk, and a person of Thandy’s obvious means finding and purchasing it made much more sense. Still, Milch’s name was hidden in the manuscript. That couldn’t have been a coincidence, and I wasn’t ready to jump on the Newton Thandy train so quickly. After all, he had made his introductions via gunpoint.

  “I’m sure Mr. Milch told you all sorts of wild tales,” Thandy said. “He is a career criminal. That’s what the police told me, at least. A career criminal with a violent streak. A dangerous man is what I’m saying.” He snapped his skeletal fingers and the colonel handed him the manila folders. He handed one to me. I took it and flipped through the thin copy paper as if I were handed dossiers like it every day. There was a mug shot of our Mr. Milch along with what I can only assume was a police record, at least it looked like the ones I’d seen on TV. I closed the folder and handed it to Grady.

  “Con man,” Grady said, more to himself than me. “Thief, too.”

  “It’s all here in the files, gentlemen,” Thandy said, rubbing his hands together again. “I have men on my payroll who can find out anything about anybody.” He opened another folder. “For instance, Mr. Doyle, the file we’ve compiled on you is especially interesting. This file suggests you are a man who is no stranger to criminal enterprises.” He closed the folder and a reptilian smile slithered across his face.

  “Well, yeah, I was in the DEA,” Grady said with a sniff.

  “Yes, well, it also says you are the type of man who worked both sides of the street.”

  “It says that?” Grady said. He gave me a quick glance as if to assess my reaction to this news.

  “Not in so many words.”

  “Then how many words did it use?”

  “It says you were a DEA agent assigned to New Orleans,” Thandy said. He put the bottle to his lips again and grimaced when he realized it was empty. He tossed the bottle onto the desk and pulled a fresh one from his inside pocket. I had an uncle who used to pull the same trick with rum bottles he would swipe from airplanes. “It goes on to say that you were under investigation for corruption; bribery, to be specific. You chose to leave the agency on your own, and then two witnesses disappeared. The case was closed due to lack of evidence.”

  “And you think that means what? I was dirty?”

  “It suggests that other people saw you that way. There must have been a reason for them to think you’re that sort of man. I’m simply appealing to that part of your nature
. The part that might be willing to hear my offer.”

  “You know, for a bookseller you’re not too good at reading between the lines, are you, Thandy?” Grady said. Thandy closed Grady’s folder, placed it in on the desk, and picked up the last one. He checked his watch.

  “And that means?”

  “It means fuck you,” Grady said.

  Thandy took a swig of the pink stuff and turned to me.

  “Your turn, Mr. Cooper.”

  “For what?”

  “It says here you’re from Chicago,” he said. “I have your occupation as author?”

  “Novelist,” I said. I could feel my face reddening. I knew what was coming next.

  “I’ve never heard of you,” he said, as if that were the definitive word on my career. “But that might be because you write under the name Toulouse Velour. I don’t blame you. If I wrote that crap, I’d hide under a woman’s name too.”

  “Toulouse is a guy’s name,” I mumbled, but Thandy had already closed the file and dropped it on top of Grady’s. He sat quietly for a moment, maybe to let it sink in that he had attained all this information, including my pen name, in the short amount of time we had been in the shack.

  “I’ve been trying to understand how you two came to be involved in this. I can’t imagine it was simply happenstance. A former corrupt Fed and a writer? Why did Milch come to you? What is your involvement? How do you know him?”

  “I never saw him before yesterday,” Grady said. Thandy looked at me and I nodded. Thandy sighed and pulled the gold watch from his pocket. It had his initials on the back.

  “What time is it?” Grady asked. “We have an appointment we’re late for.”

  “Ah, yes,” Thandy said, and clapped his hands. “With Mr. Philip Norwood, owner and operator of City of Angels Books, correct?” Grady looked back at Thandy with insouciant ease, not letting on that Norwood was, in fact, the rare book dealer we were meeting in Ensenada. I, on the other hand, swore under my breath. “Unfortunately, Mr. Norwood was arrested in Ensenada for something or other about an hour ago. He’ll be detained for quite some time.”

  “You got him arrested,” Grady said, nodding at the colonel. Thandy nodded back with smug satisfaction.

  “How did you even know?” I asked.

  “News travels very fast in the rare book business,” Thandy said. “Norwood asked an interesting question about Ernest Hemingway in a chatroom Mr. Costas and Mr. Daniels were monitoring. After that, it was easy to track him.

  “Who the hell are Costas and Daniels?” I asked.

  “Good question,” Thandy said, and held up the watch for the colonel to see. “It’s time.” The colonel gave an indifferent nod and opened the shack’s door. Pale purple light poured in along with a familiar face.

  “Did you fellas miss me?” Andy said in his Texas drawl. He walked with the use of a cane, and his foot was wrapped in a comically large cast, making it look like something a child would draw. He was dressed in fatigues like the soldiers, except one leg of his trousers was cut off to accommodate the cast.

  “Aw, shit,” Grady said.

  “This is Mr. Andy Daniels. You also know his partner, Dell Costas.”

  “I thought you were in the hospital,” I said.

  “You think I’m gonna let some spic operate on me?” Andy said. “You should see my fucking foot. Swelled up so big it looks like a fucking pig’s foot.”

  “It was an accident,” I said.

  “Boss?” Andy Daniels said to Thandy with a hungry look.

  “Yes, it’s time to begin, Mr. Daniels,” Thandy said, and snapped his fingers. Andy uncrossed his arms and walked a few paces to stand in front of me. He unholstered his .45 with the casualness of a mailman pulling a letter from his bag, aimed it with the same nonchalance, and fired a bullet between my legs. I let out a noise like a wounded puppy, jumped up, and stared at the smoking splintered wood that had been just inches from my crotch.

  “What the fuck!” I yelled. Andy balled my T-shirt in his fist and shoved me back in my seat. The gun was still out of the holster.

  “I have found you two with my stolen property,” Thandy said, holding up the leather portfolio that held the manuscript. “I’m sorry if my demeanor gave you the impression this was going to go civilly.”

  “Look, Mr. Thandy,” I stammered. “You got this all wrong.”

  “I do?” Thandy said, and tilted his head quizzically. “You’re ready to tell me your tale, is that it?”

  “Sure,” I said, talking fast. “We got this guy, comes into the hotel. He gets in a fight and we help him out. Just trying to do the right thing, you know? Then we find he has this manuscript. We haven’t even read it. So this guy, Milch, asks us to bring it up to Ensenada for him. We didn’t know it was stolen. You say it’s yours. It’s yours. No skin off my nose. I was going to ask for a finder’s fee, maybe, but at this point I’d just like to go home.”

  “I see,” Thandy said. “So you’re just trying to do the right thing? Is that it?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Of course,” Thandy repeated. He nodded along with the words and ran his bony hand through his hair. “Is this the truth, Doyle?”

  “He forgot to mention Mr. Costas had a bad meeting with the grille of a VW truck, but yeah, that’s the sum of it.” Andy took a swipe at my head and I saw stars.

  “What the hell,” I said. “He’s the one who said it.” I felt a strange tingling in my stomach. Something turned over and my head felt fuzzy as I became completely aware of each hair standing on end. Andy either had a hell of a right cross or something was seriously wrong.

  “That’s no longer necessary, Mr. Daniels,” Thandy said, and checked his watch again. I felt a cool rush in my system as if ice water had been injected into my veins. My head swooned and the edges of the desk began to blur.

  “I don’t feel so good,” Grady said. He put his head between his knees. I did the same.

  “That would be the sodium pentothal I put in your Jive Cola,” Thandy said. “It’s a proprietary solution a friend of mine in Guatemala came up with. It can be ingested rather than injected, and it works much better than the chemical solutions the CIA use. You didn’t taste it?”

  “I just figured that’s what Mexican Jive Cola tastes like,” I said. There was a lurch in my stomach and I started to see double.

  “The only drawback is that it takes some time to take effect,” Thandy continued. His voice sounded deep and distant, like Lou Rawls at the bottom of a well. “So I thought, why waste the time, why not see what you had to say for yourselves on your own. I think it will be fun separating the lies from the truth, don’t you think? For instance, have you read the manuscript?”

  My brain told me to say no, but when I opened my mouth I gave a slurred yes along with a vigorous nod.

  “And do you know what it is?” Thandy asked. He rubbed his hands on his pants and leaned toward me in an almost-paternal gesture.

  “Theories,” I mumbled. There was a loud ringing in my ears. “Missing chapters. A Moveable Feast.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “Milch,” I said. Grady vomited on his shoes. Thandy frowned and said something to the colonel. The colonel shrugged his response.

  “We may have given Mr. Doyle too much,” Thandy said. “Now, I want you to pay attention when I ask you this next question, yes?”

  “Yes,” I said. My gut clenched and bolt of bile traveled up my throat, but I was able to swallow it again. Thandy lifted my chin with his delicate spider web of a hand. He held my face so that I looked right into his blue-green eyes. Eyes like a raging sea. Confident eyes, yes, but there was something else. If I was honest with myself, and the sodium pentothal made sure that I was, I would say they were the eyes of a madman.

  “What did Milch tell you about Hemingway’s suitcase,” the madman asked.

  Chapter Eight

  It was late in the day, and the sun was making its descent behind the mountains as we finished diggi
ng our graves. A few harsh rays lit up what would be our final resting place, a couple of plots scraped out of the dusty, hard pan. The soldiers had watched us for about half an hour until the scene of the two gringos digging in the dirt lost its entertainment value. They shuffled off to the large hut on the other side of the road. It was dinnertime and we could see their shadows through the closed windows as they lined up for their chow.

  The interrogation had been quick. Thandy realized, around the same time I did, that we didn’t really know anything. We told him where Milch could be found and who was with him. I told him I had found Milch’s name in the manuscript, but I hadn’t figured out why it was there. When Thandy decided we had nothing more to offer him, we were brought outside and given shovels. With our final resting places complete, we dropped our shovels in the dirt and fell to our knees next to them. I am not a man who is used to manual labor, but I was proud of the hole I had dug. Looking at it, one would never know it hadn’t been done by a professional gravedigger.

  Thandy stood over us as we knelt in the dirt. His thin silhouette, tinged purple in the gloaming dusk-light, gave him a ghoulish character. He examined our graves, and when he was satisfied, he clapped his hands and rubbed them together with the vigor of a man scraping difficult blood stains from his flesh. His grin had gone from gleeful to lascivious.

  “Boys,” he said, and I wondered what happened to “gentlemen.” “I have to apologize. My good cheer has nothing to do with your incipient demise. I assure you the look on my face is excitement not joy, and, I’m sure as a writer, Mr. Cooper, you know the difference.”

  “This look, though,” Andy said, pointing to his own thick face, “is joy. I’m fucking ecstatic.” He had been quiet during the grave-digging process except for an occasional word with the colonel. He sat in a dilapidated beach chair, and every now and then when I lifted a clump of dry dirt from the earth I caught him looking at me while rubbing his hand over his ridiculous cast.

  “Yes, thank you, Mr. Daniels,” Thandy said, and fancied him with a look that said he was not at all grateful for the interruption. “You see, boys, whenever I travel I try to learn as much about the local culture as possible and to experience it whenever I can. And I am learning so much on this trip. So, as I’m told, the Mexican government, at least the part where the rubber meets the road, does not hold due process in very high regard. The colonel here has a particular disdain for it. For instance, in this part of Mexico—well not exactly here, it’s usually found more in the Sierra Madres, but we’re close enough for government work—anyway, there is a time-honored tradition for when a criminal is taken into custody away from civilian witnesses. Basically the very situation we have here. The tradition is called La Bota, la Lena, y el Plomo.”