Needful Things - Stephen King [261]
"What's that?"
"Uncirculated. In mint condition. Have you got a lot, Ace?"
"Quite a few," Ace said, "quite a few, Natty my man." But he was disappointed. He had six rolls, three hundred pennies, and the ones he was looking at didn't look in particularly good shape to him. They weren't exactly beat to shit, but they were a long way from being shiny and new. Six hundred dollars, eight hundred tops.
Not what you'd call a big strike.
"Well, bring them down and let me look," Nat said. "I can get you top dollar." He hesitated, then added: "And bring some of that marching powder with you."
"I'll think about it," Ace said.
"Hey, Ace! Don't hang up!"
"Fuck you very much, Natty," Ace replied, and did just that.
He sat where he was for a moment, brooding over the pennies and the two rusty cans. There was something very weird about all of this.
Useless trading stamps and six hundred dollars' worth of steel pennies.
What did that add up to?
That's the bitch of it, Ace thought. It doesn't add up to anything.
Where's the real stuff? Where's the goddam LOOT?
He pushed back from the table, went into the bedroom, and snorted the rest of the blow Mr. Gaunt had laid on him. When he came out again, he had the book with the map in it and he was feeling considerably more cheerful. It did add up. It added up just fine.
Now that he had helped his head a little bit, he could see that.
After all, there had been lots of crosses on that map. He had found two caches right where those crosses suggested they would be, each marked with a large, flat stone. Crosses + Flat Stones = Buried Treasure. It did seem that Pop had been a little softer in his old age than people from town had believed, that he'd had a bit of a problem telling the difference between diamonds and dust there at the end, but the big stuff-gold, currency, maybe negotiable securities-had to be out there someplace, under one or more of those flat rocks.
He had proved that. His uncle had buried things of value, not just bunches of moldy old trading stamps. At the old Masters farm he had found six rolls of steel pennies worth at least six hundred dollars. Not much but an indication.
"It's out there," Ace said softly. His eyes sparkled madly.
"It's all out there in one of those other seven holes. Or two.
Or three."
He knew it.
He took the brown-paper map out of the book and let his finger wander from one cross to the next, wondering if some were more likely than others. Ace's finger stopped on the old Joe Camber place. It was the only location where there were two crosses close together. His finger began to move slowly back and forth between them.
Joe Camber had died in a tragedy that had taken three other lives.
His wife and boy had been away at the time. On vacation.
People like the Cambers didn't ordinarily take vacations, but Charity Camber had won some money in the state lottery, Ace seemed to recall. He tried to remember more, but it was hazy in his mind.
He'd had his own fish to fry back then-plenty of them.
What had Mrs. Camber done when she and her boy had returned from their little trip to find that Joe-a world-class shit, according to everything Ace had heard-was dead and gone? Moved out of state, hadn't they? And the property? Maybe she'd wanted to turn it over in a hurry. In Castle Rock, one name stood above all the rest when it came to turning things over in a hurry; that name was Reginald Marion "Pop"
Merrill. Had she gone to see him? He would have offered her short commons-that was his way-but if she was anxious enough to move, short commons might have been okay with her. In other words, the Camber place might also have belonged to Pop at the time of his death.
This possibility solidified to a certainty in Ace's mind only moments after it occurred to him.
"The Camber place," he said. "I bet that's where it is! I know that's where it is!"
Thousands of dollars! Maybe tens of thousands! Hoppingjesus!
He snatched up the map and slammed it back into the book.
Then he headed out