hurricane headed right at it.
One of those two kinds of men just hopes for the best The hurricane will change course, he says to himself. No right-thinking hurricane would ever dare wipe
out all these Rembrandts, my two Degas horses, my Jackson Pollocks and my Paul
Klees.
Furthermore, God wouldn’t allow it. And if worst comes to worst, they’re
insured. That’s one sort of man. The other sort just assumes that hurricane is going to tear right through the middle of his house. If the weather bureau says the hurricane
just changed course, this guy assumes it’ll change back in order to put his house on
ground zero again. This second type of guy knows there’s no harm in hoping for the
best as long as you’re prepared for the worst.’
I lit a cigarette of my own. ‘Are you saying you prepared for the eventuality?’
‘Yes. I prepared for the hurricane. I knew how bad it looked. I didn’t have
much time, but in the time I had, I operated. I had a friend–just about the only person who stood by me–who worked for an investment company in Portland. He died about
six years ago.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Yeah.’ Andy tossed his butt away. ‘Linda and I had about fourteen thousand
dollars. Not a big bundle, but hell, we were young. We had our whole lives ahead of
us.’ He grimaced a little, then laughed. ‘When the shit hit the fan, I started lugging my Rembrandts out of the path of the hurricane. I sold my stocks and paid the capital
gains tax just like a good little boy. Declared everything. Didn’t cut any corners.’
‘Didn’t they freeze your estate?’
‘I was charged with murder, Red, not dead! You can’t freeze the assets of an
innocent man–thank God. And it was a while before they even got brave enough to
charge me with the crime. Jim–my friend–and I, we had some time. I got hit pretty
good, just dumping everything like that. Got my nose skinned. But at the time I had
worse things to worry about than a small skinning on the stock market.’
‘Yeah, I’d say you did.’
‘But when I came to Shawshank it was all safe. It’s still safe. Outside these
walls, Red, there’s a man that no living soul has ever seen face to face. He has a Social Security card and a Maine driver’s license. He’s got a birth certificate. Name of Peter Stevens. Nice, anonymous name, huh?’
‘Who is he?’ I asked. I thought I knew what he 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