After pulling out a coffin full of cash, the boys return to their community dumpsite and throw the money into the wind, leaving their poor neighbors to find it. There they meet his daughter, Pia Dante, and realize her grave must contain the money.

Having figured out that the money is at the cemetery, the boys search the place until they find three graves belonging to members of José's family. Before the police can catch them, the boys run across rooftops and escape into a taxi. As the boys decode the letter in the hideout they rent with Rat's savings, they know the police are closing in. Gardo also learns that the code in José's letter can be de-encrypted using Gabriel's Bible. After Raphael is nearly killed by the police during interrogation, Gardo speaks to Gabriel in prison and learns Zapanta siphoned off thirty million dollars in international aid that was supposed to help the poor he then framed Gabriel for several crimes when he tried to prove it. Inside the locker, they find a letter addressed to Gabriel Olondriz, a man who is serving a life sentence in retaliation for trying to prove Senator Zapanta's corruption. After enlisting the help of a younger boy named Rat, Raphael and Gardo learn that the key opens a luggage locker at the train station.

Raphael and his friend Gardo keep the wallet to themselves when the police come to their dumpsite looking for it. He finds a bag containing a wallet, eleven thousand pesos, photos of a girl, a map, a key, and the ID of a houseboy named José Angelico, who was killed by the police during an interrogation.

Narrated by several different characters, the book begins in the voice of fourteen-year-old Raphael. With corrupt police and government officials hunting them down, the boys use their street smarts to solve the mystery and redistribute the money to the poor people to whom it rightfully belongs. Set in an unnamed developing country, Andy Mulligan's Trash (2010) is a young-adult thriller novel about three boys whose lives change when they find in the garbage a bag linked to a murder and millions of stolen dollars.

Trash by Andy Mulligan