Mark Bowden - Finders Keepers. The Story of a Man Who Found $1 Million

Praise for Finders Keepers:

Not only does Bowden do a bang-up job relating the raw facts, he plunges headlong into the ethical quicksand that can swallow people confronted by large sums of cash.... [Joey Coyles] eventual fate is a sadly logical conclusion to this modern-day fable of self-destruction, greed and moral vacuity.

Donna Marchetti, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

A brisk, sad story... [As Bowden] accurately reports, South Philly is a close-knit clump of ethnic neighborhoods.

Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times

Bowdens writing is razor-sharp; you come away from his fast-paced narrative convinced he understands Joey better than hes willing to admit. Perhaps we all do.

Elaine Margolin, San Francisco Chronicle

Rich... Finders Keepers is not your standard adventure tale, but it has the same kind of edge and steam-rolling pacing as the rest of that genre.... A classic story line, and Bowden makes the most of it.

National Geographic Adventure

You find yourself cheering for Joey Coyle, the urban folklore hero of Finders Keepers.... [Bowdens] prolific use of dialogueshort, snappy sentences with a South Philly accentkeep the story lively and moving along in this quick read, perfect for an airline trip.... Bowden also paints scenes that leave you chuckling.

Lynn Bronikowski, Rocky Mountain News

Finders Keepers retains the rumpled charm and snappy pace of good beat reporting.... Bowden has delivered a story of parable-like clarity and timelessness.

Paul Collins, Oregonian

[Bowden] presents Joey Coyles story sympathetically, but without whitewashing the facts.

L. D. Meagher, CNN.com

Funny, sad and exasperating.

Jim Clark, Columbus Dispatch

A master at pacing, putting the reader right alongside Joey, feeling the same speed-induced high as he makes dumb and dumber decisions... Most of all, Mr. Bowden leaves the reader pondering the most obvious question on each page: What would you do?

Todd Wills, Dallas Morning News

[A] fast reading account of a fool and his money. Bowden keeps a low and nonjudgmental profile but doles out his account like a good storyteller. Its testament to his solid narrative that even long after the sad sack Coyle loses his charm, his story maintains our interest.

The Tampa Tribune

An interesting crime story... [Finders Keepers] does such a good job documenting human nature, both generous and selfish.

James Hart, The Kansas City Star

An amazing-but-true tale... In fiction Coyle would wind up on a tropical isle, but the real tragicomic ending is still compelling, if only because it happened to some other schmuck.

Laurina Gibbs, Maxim

[This] mesmerizingand tragicfable is a worst-case illustration of Be careful what you wish for.

Details

An interesting portrait of a desperate man who learns that a $1.2 million windfallone that literally fell off a truckwasnt the answer to his prayers.

Mark Skoneki, Orlando Sentinel

Provocative... A sobering lesson about the dark side of human nature... Bowden has a knack for finding that peculiar, little told news story and turning it into a full-blown narrative that makes the literary world sit up and take notice.

Mark Davis, The Daytona Beach News-Journal

[Bowden] documents both the story and its characters with clarity and riveting suspense.... [Finders Keepers] reflects true reporting at its very best.

Larry Cox, The Tucson Citizen

FINDERS KEEPERS

Also by Mark Bowden:

Doctor Dealer

Bringing the Heat

Black Hawk Down

Killing Pablo

THE STORY OF A MAN WHO
FOUND $1 MILLION

MARK BOWDEN

Copyright 2002 by Mark Bowden

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic
or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway,
New York, NY 10003.

Portions of this book originally appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine.

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

FIRST GROVE PRESS EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bowden, Mark, 1951

Finders keepers: the story of a man who found $ I million / Mark Bowden.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-8021-4021-1 (pbk.)

I. Coyle, Joey. 2. StevedoresPennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaBiography. 3. Narcotic addictsPennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaBiography. 4. Working classPennsylvaniaPhiladelphia. 5. Theft. 6. Philadelphia (Pa.)Biography. I. Title.

CT275.C8647 B69 2002
974.81192dc2I
[B] 2002066712

Design by Laura Hammond Hough

Grove Press
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

03 04 05 06 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Rhoda Weyr

There is an old expression in South Philly for anything of uncertain origin. They say, It fell off the truck.

It means: Dont ask.

Thursday
February 26, 1981

Joey Coyle was crashing. He had been high all night, and coming down from the meth always made him feel desperate and confused. When he was cranked up the drug gave him gusts of energy so great that his lungs and brain fought to keep pace. That was how he felt at night. When he slept it was usually during the day.

Today there would be little sleep because he had used up his whole stash. No stash and, as usual, no money. It had been almost a month since the union had called to give him work on the docks. He made good money as a longshoreman. It was where his father had worked and where his older brother worked. Joey had never finished high school but he had an educated feel for machinery. On the docks they used him to repair the lifts, and he was good at it. He took pride in that. Engine grease colored gray the heavy calluses on his hands. But for more than a year the economy had been bad in Philadelphia and there had been few chances to work. They had called him to fill in for a few weeks over the Christmas holidays, but there had been nothing since. So the desperation kicked in at sunrise. Where would he find the next fix?

The empty hours weighed on Joey. He was twenty-eight and he still lived in his mothers house. He was devoted to his mom. His father had died of a heart attack on a night after Joey had stormed out following an argument. The old man hadnt liked the length of Joeys hair. His last words to his son were spoken in anger, and Joey believed he had killed him. Eight years had passed and the guilt he felt was undiminished. Looking after his mother had helped, staying with her, but she had fallen ill with liver disease and she needed care he couldnt give, or couldnt be relied upon to give. She had moved just a few blocks away to his sister Ellens apartment. Joey took it as another defeat. He felt like he had let his mother down, but also that she had let him down. She had left. He felt rejected and a failure, but would not have put those words on the feelings because Joey was not the type to look inside himself to figure out how and why he felt the way he did. He just kept moving. Meth helped with that. Most people called it speed. Joey called it blow. It blew away all the demons of self-doubt and depression. In the months since his mother left his days blurred into nights in a speeding carousel of exhilarating highs and then crushing lows. Then would come the accelerating frantic urge to find money to buy more, to fire himself up again.