WANTED: Love of my Life

07. The mysterious solution

I took the paper home with me. Hey, I wasn't after the money, all right? I just... well, to be honest, I didn't quite know myself why I took it. I just did. And it wasn't like I just took off with it. Of course I thought Giacomo had just forgotten his paper, and any moment he would come dashing back and would start thanking me profusely for having saved him from the biggest blunder of his life. I mean, a homeless guy doesn't win $ 5000 every day, right?

But he never came. In the end, Miss Ellis called for us to go, and I had to abandon my post. So I took the paper with me. What else should I have done? I couldn't just let it lie there for anyone to find.

I hardly heard anything of my friends' talk about the trip on the way back to school. Nor was I particularly chatty in the cable cart. Enrique probably had the best, most quiet drive of his life. At home, I grabbed my father's huge encyclopedia – you know, one of those you'd think you'd need a crane to lift – carried it up to my room and locked the door behind me. I stared at the huge volume in my arms. That was one kind of book I never thought to be reading of my own free will. Okay, just like my usual reading, it did have a hot guy on the cover – a musclebound dude who was lifting up a globe – but nowhere was there a beautiful girl in sight. And the guy looked kind of silly. The hands of the guys on the covers of my books usually had better things to grip than a globe. Oh well, I suppose the monster-book would serve its purpose.

I flopped down on my bed and started checking answers without delay.

After only five minutes, I began to curse my parents for not having agreed to get me that laptop I had begged for last Christmas. But no. Give their little girl a computer? No, they couldn't do that in good conscience. Who knew what an impressionable teenager might stumble across in the world wide web: online gaming, porn, or worst of all: atheism! So no computer for me, no cellphone, no nothing. No, that wasn't true. I had an encyclopedia, and still a little patience left. Not much though, and it was running out quickly. Nevertheless I continued checking, answer after answer. Because if there was one thing that was equal to my impatience, it was my curiosity And the farther I got, the more curious, incredulous and fascinated I became.

As far as I could tell, every single answer to every single question in the Chronicle crossword was correct. And they weren't any old questions like 'What film bears the name of a famous sunken ship?' but stuff like 'The number of electrons in a 33As molecule' and 'The Latin name for butterflies' and 'Birthplace of Anaximander', which, apparently, was Miletus. Great. And who the hell is Anaximander?

That was not the most important question that occupied me, however. The most important question was: did Giacomo do this all by himself? Granted, a crossword wasn't exactly the best way to judge a person's intellect. But some of the stuff that was in there was pretty heavy. I knew I certainly couldn't have answered any of it. Granted, that wasn't saying much, but still...

With a resounding thud, I slammed shut the encyclopedia and let my eyes wander over the crossword once more. For the first time, I noticed several stains of tomato sauce on the paper – Pasta. O yes, Gicacomo had studied this page.

But had he completed the crossword himself or just wondered if he could turn someone else's work into ready cash? In either case, why didn't he return for the paper? I might not be very experienced in money matters, but a guy who got his dinner from the St. Christopher Shelter for the Home- and Hearthless shouldn't be able to turn down $ 5000 with impunity.

Apparently though that was exactly what Giacomo had done.

So what should I do next? Send in the solution myself and retire to the Caymans? Yea, the thought occurred to me, I admit. I'm only human, after all. But there were several weighty counterarguments. Firstly, I was a minor, so I couldn't send in the solution myself. Secondly, if I asked my parents to do it for me, they'd ask me how I got my hands on a crossword solution that wasn't in my handwriting, ground me for refusing to answer, and I'd never see one cent of the money. Thirdly, and lastly, it would mean cheating Giacomo out of more money than he had probably ever had in his entire life. And I just couldn't do that. I couldn't.