e was going to say, but I couldn‘t believe it.
‘Me.‘
‘You‘re not going to tell me that you had time to set up a false identity while the bulls
were sweating you,‘ I said, ‘or that you finished the job while you were on trial for -‘
‘No, I‘m not going to tell you that. My friend Jim was the one who set up the false
identity. He started after my appeal was turned down, and the major pieces of
identification were in his hands by the spring of 1950.‘
‘He must have been a pretty close friend,‘ I said. I was not sure how much of this I
believed - a little, a lot, or none. But the day was warm and the sun was out, and it was
one hell of a good story. ‘All of that‘s one hundred per cent illegal, setting up a false ID
like that.‘
‘He was a close friend,‘ Andy said. ‘We were in the war together. France, Germany, the
occupation. He was a good friend. He knew it was illegal, but he also knew that setting
up a false identity in this country is very easy and very safe. He took my money - my
money with all the taxes on it paid so the IRS wouldn‘t get too interested - and invested it
for Peter Stevens. He did that in 1950 and 1951. Today it amounts to three hundred and
seventy thousand dollars, plus change.‘
I guess my jaw made a thump when it dropped against my chest, because he smiled.
‘Think of all the things people wish they‘d invested in since 1950 or so, and two or three
of them will be things Peter Stevens was into. If I hadn‘t ended up in here, I‘d probably be
worth seven or eight million bucks by now. I‘d have a Rolls ... and probably an ulcer as
big as a portable radio.‘
His hands went to the dirt and began sifting out more pebbles. They moved gracefully,
restlessly.
‘I was hoping for the best and expecting the worst -nothing but that The false name was
just to keep what little capital I had untainted. It was lugging the paintings out of the path
of the hurricane. But I had no idea that the hurricane ... that it could go on as long as it
has.‘
I didn‘t say anything for a while. I guess I was trying to absorb the idea that this small,
spare man in prison grey next to me could be worth more money than Warden Norton
would make in the rest of his miserable life, even with the scams thrown in.
‘When you said you could get a lawyer, you sure weren‘t kidding,‘ I said at last ‘For that
kind of dough you could have hired Clarence Darrow, or whoever‘s passing for him these
days. Why didn‘t you, Andy? Christ! You could have been out of here like a rocket.‘
He smiled. It was the same smile that had been on his face when he‘d told me he and his
wife had had their whole lives ahead of them. ‘No,‘ he said.
‘A good lawyer would have sprung the Williams kid from Cashman whether he wanted to
go or not,‘ I said. I was getting carried away now. ‘You could have gotten your new trial,
hired private detectives to look for that guy Blatch, and blown Norton out of the water to
boot. Why not, Andy?‘
‘Because I outsmarted myself. If I ever try to put my hands on Peter Stevens‘s money
from inside here, I‘d lose every cent of it My friend Jim could have arranged it, but Jim‘s
dead. You see the problem?‘
I saw it For all the good the money could do Andy, it might as well have really belonged
to another person. In a way, it did. And if the stuff it was invested in suddenly turned bad,
all Andy could do would be to watch the plunge, to trace it day after day on the stocksand-
bonds page of the Press-Herald. It‘s a tough life if you don‘t weaken, I guess.
‘I‘ll tell you how it is, Red. There‘s a big hayfield in the town of Buxton. You know where
Buxton is at, don‘t you?‘
I said I did. It lies right next door to Scarborough.
"That‘s right And at the north end of this particular hayfield there‘s a rock wall, right out
of a Robert Frost poem. And somewhere along the base of that wall is a rock that has no
business

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