It’s a Mystery: “Trust is the mother of deceit”
Finders Keepers
He was breathing hard, but all too aware (self-awareness had been both a curse and a blessing all his life) of the picture he must make: an old man in flappy blue pajamas, nothing left of his hair but white popcorn puffs above the ears. This was what had become of the writer who in the year JFK became president, had been on the cover of Time magazine: JOHN ROTHSTEIN, AMERICA’S RECLUSIVE GENIUS. …Now that he was awake, he was pissed off as well as scared, although he’d do well not to show that.
They ferret out his safe and demand “the combo”:
Rothstein was almost angry enough to refuse, according to Yolande, his second effort at marital bliss, anger had been his lifelong default position, but he was also tired and frightened…. If he balked, they’d beat it out of him.
The safe yields a ton of cash still in bank envelopes. Plus, dozens of black moleskin notebooks, every page filled with notes in Rothstein’s small, neat handwriting. They are what he cares about, not the money:
“Please.” Rothstein said, “Just leave them. The material isn’t meant to be seen. None of it’s ready.”
This plea, to his utter surprise, provokes the one he pegged as the wheel dog, Morrie a.k.a. Morris. The revelation here: Morris is a besotted fan. He feels betrayed by the last book in Rothstein’s famous Runner trilogy. He’s furious because in that one he sold out his character Jimmy Gold (the one Time magazine called “an American icon of despair in a land of plenty”).
It was the last one. Man, what a crap carnival. Advertising? I mean, advertising?”… Slowly, almost reflectively, he stripped off his Yellow balaclava, revealing a young man of classic Boston Irish countenance: red hair, greenish eyes, pasty-white skin, weird red lips. “House in the suburbs? ...Everybody sells out, is that what you were trying to say?... You created one of the greatest characters in American literature, then shit on him.”
By now, he had removed a pistol from his jacket and had it aimed at the old author. This sparks Rothstein’s anger into a full-blown rage. Beginning with “dumbass literary criticism” he hurls insults at Morris:
“Shut up, genius, I’m warning you.”…”You know what, kid? It’s guys like you who give reading a bad name.”“Last warning,” Morris said.”Fuck your warning…. Either shoot me or get out of my house.”
Morris Bellamy shoots him. Alert: I’m not being a spoiler. This happens in the first chapter.Morris and his two cohorts take off pronto with the loot. Morris disposes of the duo with dispatch (this is Stephen King) and returns to his house in a town identified only as the “filthy little city that the residents called the Gem of the Great Lakes.” His undoing is that he can’t resist boasting about the notebooks to his only friend, Andrew Halliday, who happens to be a bookseller specializing in rare editions. Halliday’s horrified reaction, which includes a warning about the ramifications of his “score,” sends Morris into a tailspin. He puts the notebooks and the cash in a trunk and buries it near his house, goes on a drinking binge during which he commits a particularly violent rape, and winds up in prison with a life sentence.King’s mid-20th century literary lion, Rothstein, is a composite of J.D. Salinger and John Updike with echoes of other lettered heavyweights—consider the first part of his last name. The creation of this character was obviously enormous fun for King. Like Salinger, Rothstein deserted the Fame Table early on to become a recluse writing material he refuses to publish. Oh, and his last published story is called “The Perfect Banana Pie.” As for his oeuvre, The Runner, The Runner Sees Action, and The Runner Slows Down are clearly homages to Updike’s Rabbit novels. And, of course, King has long explored the relationship between writing and madness, reading and obsession. Notably in Misery (1987) where the completely loony Annie Wilkes abducts her favorite author and holds him captive. Incidentally, a stage adaptation of Misery starring Bruce Willis is coming to Broadway this October. It’s certainly a tribute to the story and King’s timeless appeal. .When Finders Keepers continues it’s 2010 and the Saubers family, Linda and Tom and their children Tina and Pete, are living in the house where Morris grew up. The Saubers are in dire straits and have been ever since Tom was injured at a job fair by a maniac driving into the crowd in a Mercedes. (The opening scene of Mr. Mercedes sans Tom.) When thirteen-year-old Pete finds the trunk full of cash and the notebooks Morris hid, he cooks up a scheme to give the money to his parents anonymously. Pete also becomes enamored with Rothstein’s writing and his popular protagonist Jimmy Gold. He is all too aware that he is the only one in the world to have read the fourth and fifth books in the series.By 2013 when Morris is paroled, the money has almost run out. Pete makes a drastic decision and is forced into a deadly cat and mouse game with a ballistic Morris, who is on the trail of the notebooks. The Saubers family is imperiled and it falls to the charismatic crime-solvers from Mr. Mercedes to save them. There is tech expert Jerome Robinson, now at Harvard but ever ready to consult. More central to the rescue effort is canny ex-cop, Bill Hodges and his savvy sidekick, Holly Gibney. They run a business called Finders Keepers that collars crooks and all manner of miscreants. Bill works wonders against the bad guys with his Happy Slapper, a sock full of ball bearings, while Holly uses movie dialogue as she hones her sleuthing skills. She has a priceless bit involving “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli.”The wildly original King pushes the limits. Nobody gets into the mind of a psychopath with more ease. The climax includes a really creepy cliffhanger, not to worry there is a third volume in the wings. Good and evil triumph. It’s been said that King knows more about scary goings-on than anybody since Edgar Allan Poe. Finders Keepers is yet another superb example of that.
“What I’m about to tell you must not go beyond these walls. I’ve been sounded out by a high source, the highest, in fact.”Mental picture of Georgina dressed like Moses, with a tablet of stone under each arm.
The source is the Home Office and she wants Diamond to accompany her to Sussex to look into an investigation by their police authority that appears to be flawed. In other words, one of the senior officers has screwed up:
I’ll say I can’t leave the cat, he thought. He was as desperate as that…. “To be honest, I’m not comfortable investigating brother-officers.”“Neither am I. But it’s inescapable…. You and I will make a terrific team. Dallymore and Diamond, troubleshooters.”Dallymore and Diamond.He was reminded of the story of the famous comic double act coming on stage at the Glasgow Empire, the toughest of all gigs. Mike Winters made his entrance and when his brother Bernie followed, a voice was heard to say, “Oh Christ, there’s two of them.”Teaming up with Georgina would be a low point in his career, if not the pits.
The senior officer in question, DCI Henrietta Mallin, is “Hen” to Diamond. The two happen to be old friends and colleagues, having worked together on a case ten years ago. Diamond vows to keep this from Georgina as long as possible. When they get to Mallin’s house he manages to signal Hen not to let on that they know each other. Mallin is quick on the uptake and Georgina proceeds to interrogate her, blithely unaware of their past.The crux of Mallin’s unprofessional conduct concerns a seven year old murder case. The body of a local gardener, Joe Rigden, was found in the trunk of a stolen car. The young man driving the car, Danny Stapleton, was arrested, pleaded not guilty, and is serving a life sentence. He continues to maintain his innocence. When DNA evidence cropped up in the car incriminating Mallin’s niece she chose to ignore it. No problem until recently, when an anonymous letter was received by the Sussex police implicating Mallin in no uncertain terms. Georgina doesn’t have to work hard to get an admission of guilt:
Hen answered in a flat, resigned voice Diamond hardly recognized. “I said it all before to Commander Hahn. I can’t think what else you expect me to say. I messed up and got caught out.”
It’s the caveat that she adds that piques Diamond’s interest. When she was suspended she was working on a missing persons case: A series of disappearances that can’t be explained:
“We isolated as many as eight cases in the past four years where the victims were almost certainly murdered and their bodies never found…. I believe someone has set up a business disposing of bodies…. This is organized crime. And the point of telling you is that it preoccupied me at the time the DNA details reached me.
Diamond’s instinct tells him this is important stuff. Three years have gone by since Hen’s DNA cover-up. Raising the issue now must have something to do with her missing persons project. Meanwhile, at a posh school in the same area, an art teacher disappears without a trace. Not long after, one of her students goes missing. Diamond, at his unorthodox best, connects the corpse in the car, the missing teacher and her pupil, and Hen’s vanishing victims. All at once, Diamond, with a reluctant Georgina firmly in tow, is up to his eyeballs in gruesome revelations. It is Lovesey’s signature that a person is fingered who might seem improbable, yet the clues to his/her complicity were there before your very eyes.Diamond has remained since the beginning of the series, The Last Detective (1991), an old fashioned policeman. His hostility to computers is a charming throwback. Georgina’s admonition—“If you want to be a Mr. Fixit in the twenty-first century, it helps to be computer-literate”—falls on deaf ears. Diamond is always witty, erudite and thoroughly engaging. Here, the verbal jousting between Dallymore and Diamond adds a delightful dimension. Peter Lovesey’s Down among the Dead Men gives us Diamond at his best.
Mahoney was as corrupt as any congressman on Capitol Hill.… He would stab his enemies in the back—and sometimes he’d stab his friends in the back if it was politically expedient to do so…. But there was one area where Mahoney was above reproach: the proper treatment of veterans. It was the only area where he was above reproach.
As House Rivals opens, DeMarco has been urgently summoned by Mahoney in his usual “drop everything” fashion. Seems there is an old Marine buddy, Doug Thorpe, in Montana who saved Mahoney’s life in Vietnam:
“If it wasn’t for him, my name would be on that black wall down there on the Mall. … Anyway, I want you to go see him.”“In Montana?” DeMarco said.Mahoney ignored the whine in DeMarco’s voice. “It’s about his granddaughter. According to Doug, she’s uncovered some conspiracy out there and somebody’s threatening to kill her.”“What kind of conspiracy?”…”All I know is that Doug’s never asked for a damn thing from me in all the years I’ve known him…Anyway, he said he needed help and he didn’t know who else to go to and his granddaughter won’t listen to reason. So I told him you were going to help him.”
DeMarco gets to Montana and meets Doug Thorpe, who dispatches him to Bismarck, North Dakota, where his granddaughter, Sarah Johnson, currently hangs out. DeMarco and Sarah meet in a family-friendly bar of her choice: Minervas. Sarah is a tall, striking blonde who is twenty-two years old and according to her grandfather rich as Croesus due to her late mother’s legacy. She’s a blogger intent on exposing the flagrant transgressions of energy tycoon Leonard Curtis. What is immediately apparent to DeMarco is her intensity:
After two minutes with her, DeMarco could tell that she was completely committed to whatever she was doing…. Joan of Arc. That’s who this young woman was. She was so zealous about what she believed in that she was willing to be burned at the stake. She wasn’t an activist; she was a crusader and would be martyr.
Sarah is convinced that Curtis is bribing everybody and anybody he can to favor his fracking ventures. She has no hard evidence, but a lot of old fashioned snooping has uncovered behavior that is highly suspicious. When three guys rough her up and threaten her with a lot worse if she doesn’t stop, it just strengthens her conviction.She wants DeMarco to get the FBI and the Justice Department involved. She doesn’t want the cavalry; she wants a federal task force!
The only thing DeMarco really cared about was this girl not getting hurt…he thought she was being naïve if she believed she could change a political system that had become blatantly corrupt. She also didn’t seem to understand that without solid evidence—which she didn’t appear to have—she would never be able to prove to the satisfaction of any court in the land that Curtis was doing anything illegal. But his job wasn’t to help her advance her cause; his job was to keep her from getting killed.
What DeMarco knows for sure is that there is a middleman like himself doing the tycoon’s dirty work. Someone has to make the threats and deliver the cash. As he gets close to identifying his adversaries, the situation heats up, and things get really hairy for Sarah and DeMarco. DeMarco finds himself in a battle of wits against two relentless rivals who will stop at nothing to come out on top.This is a high voltage thriller that casts a sharp eye on the world of local politics and the ship of state. Lawson’s clever polished prose sets indelible scenes and creates unique characters. His ear for dialogue is admirable. When it comes to solid suspense, House Rivals is as good as it gets.____Irma Heldman is a veteran publishing executive and book reviewer with a penchant for mysteries. One of her favorite gigs was her magazine column “On the Docket” under the pseudonym O. L. Bailey.