Rough Stone Rolling

Much to my wife’s displeasure, I really get glued to the crime shows on Court TV and A&E. One of my favorite episodes was about a nebbish night watchman that worked at an armed truck company. He’s duped by a girl into believing she’s in love with him, and is persuaded to let her and her friends help him rob something like $30 million dollars that’s sitting in the warehouse, waiting to be transported. Without recapping the whole story, there’s one point where they move the dough from a company van to another car in the woods and, in a rush, leave about $3 million behind. The van wasn’t found for several days. When I saw the episode I wondered what it would be like to find that kind of money in the middle of nowhere in the woods. I really debated with myself whether I’d report it or keep it.

I’m currently reading a novel with a similar plot, No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy. It’s also now a movie in the theaters, produced and directed by two of my favorite filmmakers, the Coen brothers. The difference with this story is, a hunter stumbles on the aftermath of a drug deal gone bad. There are several shot up cars, dead bodies, a large cache of brown heroin and a satchel carrying $2.4 million. It doesn’t take the hunter long to decide to take the money. Unfortunately, he makes a couple of dumb moves that draws a vicious hitman after him.

The difference between the two scenarios– in my opinion– is that the fictitious hunter takes money that belonged to very bad men who obtained it illegally. In my temporal mind there’s a moral chasm between the two situations, and I’d be much more apt not to turn in the drug money. All right, I’m still not sure if I would or not; that’s a lot of money. I might run a “hypothetical” by my bishop to get his point of view. But, is it stealing when the bad guys are dead? I can’t exactly put an ad out on Craig’s List to get in touch with their bosses. I’m sorry, but you have to talk me through this with a little more than “It’s not your money.” I could do a lot of good with it, like buy a house, set up my daughter’s education, put it in an IRA– anything but generate the production of more drugs and dead people.

Would it make a difference if the satchel was left there with the brown heroin, but no dead bodies were around? Would that ease your conscience a bit?

If you’re LDS or another good person of conscience, and are reading this, you might think this is a moral no-brainer and I’m silly to even bring it up. But I’m not looking for a “if I was a supremely righteous person” answer, I want to know what you’d really probably do. So before you lay down your judgement, let me say this one more time:

You’re in the middle of nowhere. You find $2.4 million that was left behind by people you know were drug dealers. Do you take it? And then, do you keep it?