“You’ve been torturing yourself about this for twenty years,” I said.
“Of course I have. It has colored everything in my life, including my political philosophy. Personal responsibility, reverence for life, harsh enforcement of the criminal code. Everything.”
“But you weren’t responsible,” I said to the justice.
“Excuse me?”
“Responsible for Tommy’s death. It wasn’t you.”
“Don’t be a fool, Mr. Carl. What do you know of my brother?”
“Enough. I know he hired the men who beat up Tommy Greeley. But it wasn’t you who put him up to it and told him what he needed to know.”
“I don’t understand.”
“And Tommy wasn’t murdered that night.”
“Mr. Carl…”
“Let’s take a walk, you and I.”
“To where?”
“To find a suitcase.”
Chapter 66
HE STOOD BEFORE the old rehabed factory building with a sense of reverence, a sense of awe, as if it were some shrine to a long-ago battle that ended badly. He shifted his weight uneasily, twisting his head from side to side. If it weren’t for our suits, any cop walking by would have taken us for second-story men.
“This isn’t right,” he said.
“Sure it is.”
“We can’t just barge in.”
“Sure we can.”
“Mr. Carl, she is my wife.”
“That’s right. Your wife. That’s what makes this perfectly legal.”
He looked at the security box at the front door. “I don’t know the code,” he said, a note of relief in his voice. “If she doesn’t answer we should go.”
I tapped the numbers into the box: 53351. The front door clicked open.
“How did you-”
“Come on,” I said, standing in the doorway, waiting for the justice to go through.
After he did, I turned around and scanned the street. I spied whom I was looking for standing in the doorway of a clothing store, on the opposite side, a few addresses down, standing as stiff as a mannequin with his dashing haberdashery. Skink. Our eyes met for a second, I gave him a quick nod, and then followed the justice up the threadbare stairs, one flight, two flights, to the large rusted metal door on the third floor.
The justice stood aside as I gave it a bang.
No answer.
“She’s not in,” he said.
There was a mat. I lifted it up. No key. There was a plant in the pot by the door, a large rock on the surface of the dirt. I lifted up the rock, turned it over in my hand. No hidden compartment, no key, just a rock. I lifted up the pot itself. No key. I ran my finger across the top of the door frame. No key.
“Where does she keep it?” I said.
“We can’t just enter her space. This isn’t right.”
“She would have a spare so her visitors could have easy access. Where would she keep it?”
He turned. “I’m going.”
I grabbed his arm. “No, you’re not. Twenty years ago you stepped out of this room and a part of you was left behind. It’s time to get it back, Mr. Justice.”
“Don’t be crude.”
“Where is the key?”
He looked down at my hand on his arm and then at my face, and he must have seen something there, some desperation, because he backed away slightly.
“Something’s going on, isn’t it, Mr. Carl?”
“That’s right.”
“Something serious?”
“As melanoma.”
“Is my wife involved?”
“Up to her neck.”
He looked away for a moment, bobbed his head, and then stepped over to the light fixture sticking out of the wall by the door. The glass covering the bulb was on a hinge. He opened it, reached in, took out the key, handed it to me.
Just like that we were in.
I didn’t take a moment to gawk at the surroundings, I didn’t take a moment to look at the furnishings, the alluring pictures of Alura Straczynski on the wall, the quote from Kafka, the great bed in the middle of the floor, I didn’t take the time to wander around as if wandering through the source of some great mysterious power, I left that for the justice. Instead, I noticed the one crucial difference from my prior visit. The journals and notebooks that had before been on the great mahogany bookshelf were now arranged on the floor in great listing stacks, as if they were being inventoried, rearranged, readied for a move. And in one corner, still flat and folded, were heavy cardboard book boxes all in a pile.
So, someone was taking a trip. All the more reason to make my search, starting with the closets.
I searched through the clothes, the art and office supplies, the high shelves with their hat boxes, the low shelves with their shoes. As I was searching, the justice was running his hand over the tilting stacks of journals, as if amazed at the sheer amount of words, words, words. The hell with that, I was looking for something more substantial. I went through the drawers, the chests, I wasn’t dainty about it either, no sir. Let’s just say the lingerie was flying.
I wasn’t finding it, but it was here, it had to be here. For Derek had been told by Benny Straczynski about a suitcase, and if Benny didn’t learn about it from his brother then he must have learned about it from someone else, someone else who knew about the suitcase and Tommy’s plans, perhaps the someone who was planning to run off with him and all that money. Maybe someone who was planning to run off and changed her mind and used her brother-in-law to get back what she had planned to run away with, the notebooks, the money, not to mention the photographs. Funny how it all came back to the photographs.
From the shelves of a linen closet I pulled down towels, sheets, cartons of cosmetics. I pulled books off the shelves to see what was behind. I kicked at walls to look for hidden spaces. I stood on a chair, jumped up to grab a rafter, pulled myself up to see what might be hidden in the overhead tangle of pipes and wires and wood. I was trying too hard, I was being too clever.
I found it under the bed.
An old, green, hard-sided Samsonite. As soon as I hoisted it onto the center of the mattress I knew something was wrong. It was light, way too light.
“Is that the suitcase you were talking about?” said the justice as he held one of the journals open in his hand.
“Who pays the rent on this place?”
“My wife.”
“With what money?”
“After the incident with Tommy, she refused to take any money from me for the studio. She said she had an inheritance from her mother. She said she would provide for her own artistic endeavors. Something about Virginia Woolf.”
“That’s why it’s so light.”
“What is that suitcase? Who is it from?”
“It was the suitcase Tommy Greeley was carrying the night he disappeared.”
I didn’t think it was possible for the justice to grow any paler, but he did, he blanched, like a cauliflower in boiling water. But I’ll give him this, Justice Straczynski, he didn’t ask how it got there. The poor son of a bitch was quick enough to figure it out on his own.
I tried to open the suitcase, but it was locked. I went through smaller drawers looking for a key. Nothing. I didn’t want to have to break the lock, I wanted it to look pristine, unchanged from that fateful night. I made a quick return to the closets, I pulled down the hat boxes, checked between and beneath the pillows.
I was making such a racket with my search that we didn’t hear the front door opening, the footsteps upon the stairs, we didn’t noticed the figure standing in the open doorway. Didn’t notice her at all, until Alura Straczynski, holding her great swath of keys out in front of her, said,
“Looking for these?”
Chapter 67
THE JUSTICE, HUNCHED over one of the journals, stared at his wife with the same exotic expression I had spied when I first visited his chambers, the admixture of passion and fascination, of fear and disgust and abject love, but there was something else, something that hadn’t been there before but which came through with stunning purity: hate. With everything else now, there was hate on his face, and the strength of that emotion seemed to startle Alura Straczynski, though just for a moment, before she gained again her brilliant self-possession.