The Hemingway Thief by Shaun Harris Page B

down on its front legs with a loud bang. He pulled the orange crate from under the pile of clothes and took a seat.
    Milch scratched at the bandage on his head and took a deep breath. A wide smile came over his face. The whimpering was gone, along with the tears I could have sworn had been rimming in his eyes.
    â€œThen what’s the fucking problem, guys?” he said, shaking his head with a laugh. Grady and I looked at each other with confusion.
    â€œAre you seriously . . . ?” Grady started, but he was cut off by more of Milch’s laughter.
    â€œYeah, yeah,” he said. “I get it and, yeah, I kind of set you up, but you have to believe me; I wasn’t a hundred percent sure Thandy would have anybody other than the first guys out here looking for me. And, I really mean this, I really didn’t think the son-of-a-bitch would try to kill you.”
    â€œWas that an apology?” I said to Grady. He looked back at me, bewildered.
    â€œGuys, focus here,” Milch said, and stood up. He opened his hands out to us, and it reminded me of a magician showing how he had nothing up his sleeves. “We got the manuscript and Thandy is out of the picture, right? We’re in the pink as far as I’m concerned.”
    â€œâ€˜We’?” I said.
    â€œOf course,” Milch said. He patted me hard on the shoulder and tossed the distributor cap back to Digby. Digby let it fall from the bed to the floor without looking. He kept his eyes on my novel and turned the page.
    Milch was unfazed. Indeed, if I had not been there, I would be hard-pressed to believe that we had been interrogating the man just half a minute before. He appeared to us now not only uninjured, but vigorous and high-spirited. He filled the room with his voice and stood over us like the archangel Gabriel delivering the Good News, or maybe just a carnival barker offering to guess my weight.
    â€œWe’re in this together,” he said, snapping his fingers to count the beat of his words. I have to admit I was mesmerized by it. “We’re bound by this thing and there’s no way around it. Me, I’m bound by history. You, you’re bound by providence. Yes, sir, we’re in this together.”
    â€œTogether in what?” I said before I realized I was even talking.
    â€œHold on there, Coop,” Grady said. “I’m still not over the part where he set us up.”
    â€œWell, you best get over it, Grady,” Milch said. He grabbed Grady by the shoulders and gave them a vigorous rub. Grady returned the gesture with a glare that almost made me piss my pants. Milch didn’t even flinch. “If you don’t, you’re going to miss out on the big prize.”
    â€œWe’ve already got the manuscript pages,” I said. Milch’s expansive smile curved into a grin like a knife slashed across his mouth.
    â€œThe manuscript?” he said. “Guys, this is about so much more than the manuscript.”
    Then he told us another story.

Chapter Eleven
    Grifter was the proper term. In the parlance of the uninitiated he would be called a “con man,” but grifter was the nomenclature Ebbie Milch preferred. It was a family business started by his great-grandfather, Oliver, who traveled around the Southwest in a buckboard, selling a concoction of river water, cod-liver oil, and camphor dubbed “Doc Saturn’s Cure-all Liniment Oil.” The tradition continued with his sons, Joseph, who peddled bogus land deals around Southern California, and Ebenezer, who branched out into the more labor-intensive field of pickpocketing and second-story work. When the Great War erupted, Ebenezer went off to fight the Hun in France, and Joseph went off to do a nickel in Folsom. Oliver died before either of his boys returned home.
    When Joseph got out, he tried to go straight, and this lasted until the fifties, when the real-estate boom was too damn tasty for a clever man