“Don’t touch it. You’ll cover them with fingerprints—the police will hardly thank you.”
“I’m wearing gloves, Mr. Writer,” replied Luis as he stuffed the wad into his coat pocket. “And you touched them too.”
Roberto stared at the wad in his own hand as if seeing it for the first time, and cursed inwardly, before dropping it on the ground.
“We’ll tell the officers when they arrive,” he insisted. “We have to hand it over.”
It would be so simple: Just one call to the authorities and they’d arrive in less than an hour, whether by sea or by air. He didn’t have the slightest doubt that it was the right decision. His hand was halfway to the pocket where he kept his phone, but he stopped when he saw that Ramón Docampo had raised his arm.
“Not so fast. There’s an alternative.”
“What?”
“We could keep it.”
A murmur spread through the group, like fire through a barn. There was no need to look at them to know which idea was more popular. Far more popular.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“Well, to start with, because the money doesn’t belong to us.”
“And who does it belong to?” Ramón Docampo looked around theatrically. “I don’t see anyone here but us. What the sea washes up on the shore belongs to whoever finds it.”
A chorus of agreement echoed around him.
Roberto was astonished.
“Come on, be reasonable! It’s clearly a stupid idea!”
His heart sank when he saw that nobody agreed with him. Everyone was staring at the wad of notes on the ground with the greedy expressions of hunting dogs eyeing a hare. Even Antía seemed undecided. “This money belongs to someone.” He tried to find another angle. “They’re bound to be looking for it.”
“They don’t need to know that it’s ended up here,” Luis cut in. “It could have washed up anywhere.”
“Listen to me, everyone.” Roberto tried to sound as authoritative as possible. “Nobody ties a bundle of cash to a buoy in the middle of the sea if they aren’t doing something illegal. It’s not like putting it in a piggy bank. This money must be linked to drug trafficking.”
“And what’s that got to do with us?”
“Because the owner will be looking for it, for Christ’s sake!” Roberto exploded. “They’re not the sort of people you want to get on the wrong side of, and believe me, that’s exactly what will happen if you steal their money. We need to tell the Guardia Civil. Now.”
“Not so fast,” interjected Ramón Docampo. “My son’s right. Nobody needs to know this money is here. It would be like it never existed.”
Roberto stared at them impotently. They had been overcome by greed; he could see it in their eyes.
“Don’t you understand that what you’re proposing is a crime?” he insisted. “We could end up in jail. Think about it.”
“Maybe we keep just some of it.” It was the first time Antía had spoken since they’d opened the bundle, and Roberto felt his stomach tighten to see that even she was considering it. “Just a few thousand. Then we can call the Guardia Civil to come and get the rest, and everyone will be happy.”
“They’d realize the money was missing.” Roberto shook his head. “They’d see the gap, and they’d put two and two together. Anyway, what do you think will happen when you start flashing the cash a few weeks after a narco hoard has been washed up? Do you think nobody’s going to notice?”
“That’s why we can’t hand it in.” Rosalía Freire shook her head. “As soon as news gets out that the money’s appeared, the narcos will know that we found it. And it won’t matter if we keep some of it or not. Those people are suspicious by nature.”
“So?”
“They’ll assume that we’ve kept some of it, and they’ll come to Ons to get their revenge,” she replied. “You aren’t from here; you don’t know them like we do. It doesn’t matter what we do; as far as they’re concerned, it’ll be our fault that they lost their money. They’ll think we’ve hidden some of it. You said it yourself: They’re not the sort of people you want to get on the wrong side of.”
“We can’t tell anyone, particularly not the authorities,” Ramón Docampo said, backing her up. “We’ll just divvy it up and be done.”
