“Now look, Charlie, I couldn't very well just leave it sitting on your kitchen table while I went up to sleep, could I? I just buried it under a bush to keep it safe for a while.”

“You buried your looted cash in my garden.” I couldn't believe I'd once been close to this idiot.

“Just until I can get it and go. I'm off to France. My half-sister lives there now, she said I could go stay with her and help manage the business—she's got a nice little bar and cabaret in Paris. Anyway, I was thinking about it even before all this happened. This town has been a curse for me, Charlie, you know that.”

I did know that, as it happened. He'd had a lot of bad breaks, and only some of them he'd brought on himself. His final blow had been when his wife had divorced him, then six months later inherited a packet.

I stared into my glass for a while, and then I asked him, “How much do you suppose is in your box?”

“I'm not sure. Maybe about three thousand.”

I thought he was absolutely sure, but I didn't call him on it. I was tired, and I was tired of him, but on the other hand I felt so incredibly lucky, having seen all those poor souls dead, mangled, and homeless while my family had come through unscathed, that I could not bring myself to judge him. “If I give you a check for five thousand dollars, will you go to France and leave me alone?”

“Charlie, I can't ask you to—”

But of course he allowed himself to be talked into it. I'd find a way to return the money to its owners somehow, or donate it to the orphans, but buying GF out seemed somehow appropriate, as if it placated the Fates that had passed me over. I hunted down my checkbook, wrote him his check, and told him I didn't want to see him again, ever. And to leave his key with me. He took the thing out of his pocket with a hurt expression and put it on the table, then grabbed my hand and made me shake his, told me he'd buried it under that statue with the book, and ran away like I'd given him a set of wings.

It was madness, I know, to do that, but he'd been like a brother once, and in the last few days we'd all walked through hell.

It was only later that I heard the whole story—or rather, heard some, read about parts of it in the papers, and guessed the rest, but by then he was gone and I was stuck.