The phone jazzed in my pocket.
“You won’t believe this, mate. No, you will not.”
“Go ahead.”
“There’s a big sign on Columbus Boulevard with the words ‘Piers 82 to 84.’ ”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be there waiting for you.”
“Good work, Phil. Give me twenty-five minutes.”
I checked my watch. Five to ten. Twenty-five minutes. At this time of night, with traffic light, that would be plenty of time.
I stopped in front of my father, looked down upon his sleeping body. The breaths were ragged and shallow, his face was tense, almost flinching. I wondered at the dreams he was dreaming. They say as you face death your whole life passes before your eyes, but for his sake I hoped it wasn’t true.
If you can’t accept your past, had said Cooper Prod, understand it, even love it, if you can’t do that, then you become its slave. You spend your life either running from it or toward it, but either way you are running. My father had spent the whole of his life running from his past, facing it only as he faced death. And then there was Tommy Greeley, the years he wasted dealing drugs, the years he wasted plotting his revenge, never understanding what he had done or what he was trying to do, just running, running. And then there was me, just as bad, just as much a runner, even though I wasn’t ready to admit what it was that I was running from. We were all running, weren’t we, my father, Tommy Greeley, myself. Maybe it was time to stop.
I leaned over, kissed my father’s forehead as he lay sleeping in the bed.
“Good night, Dad,” I said, softly.
I was wiping at a piece of dust that had fallen into my eye when I passed the waiting room on my way to the elevators. I spied a figure rising from a chair, walking toward me with untoward haste, and I heard my name called. I stopped, turned, ready for something awful to happen, expecting some goon. But who I saw, standing before me, was the Honorable Mr. Justice Jackson Straczynski.
Chapter 69
“WHAT THE HELL are you doing here, Your Honor?” I said.
Justice Straczynski stood awkwardly before me, uneasy in my company, as if unsure of our positions one to the other. He was used to lawyers groveling for his favor, he was used to sitting on high. But now the roles were reversed, it was he who had come to me, and I knew far too much of what was far too personal for him to be comfortable in my presence. He stepped toward me, swiveled his head as if making sure he wasn’t being overheard, and then said in a low voice, “Mr. Carl, I need to speak to you.”
“How did you find me?”
“When I couldn’t reach you at home or at your office I called Mr. Slocum. I said it was an emergency. He told me your father was in this hospital. How is he doing?”
“Not so well,” I said. “You told Slocum it was an emergency?”
“That’s right.”
I shook my head. This was bad, a serious problem. Slocum wouldn’t just put it to the side, he wasn’t that kind of guy. As quick as the justice hung up he would be on the line to McDeiss. This was turning into a mess.
“I have to go,” I said. I turned away from him and started toward the elevator. He followed, speeding up so that he could walk beside me.
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said.
“Mr. Justice,” I said as I reached the elevators and pressed the down button. “I don’t have time right now to chat.”
“You mentioned something today about Tommy Greeley.”
“Did I?”
“You said Tommy wasn’t murdered that night twenty years ago. What did you mean by that?”
The elevator came. I stepped into it, turned around, pressed G and door close, door close, door close.
“Mr. Carl?”
“He wasn’t killed,” I said as the doors slowly shut in front of me.
The justice’s long thin arm shot through just as the gap between the doors was about to disappear. The doors fell back and he stepped into the car with me.
“Mr. Carl,” he said as the doors now closed behind the two of us. “I don’t understand.”
“Your brother only meant to rough him up. But the guys he used let it get out of control. They thought they had killed him, but they were mistaken.”
“So what happened to him?”
“Can’t we talk about this some other time.”
“No, Mr. Carl. We can’t.”
“Well, we will have to, won’t we?”
The doors opened into the lobby. I stepped through and started rushing toward the exit. The justice, studiously ignoring my hints, followed.
“My wife is missing, Mr. Carl.”
“And that is a problem how?” I said as I stepped outside and headed toward the parking garage, the justice all the while close behind.
“Don’t be unkind.”
“Have you checked her studio?”
“Yes.”
“Are her journals there?”
“Yes, but in boxes.”
“She’s not going anywhere without her journals.” I turned around, he stopped in his tracks. “Look, Mr. Justice. Tomorrow night, one way or the other, it will all be over and we can talk about it then, but right now I don’t have the time to discuss this.”
“He’s come back, hasn’t he?”
“You’ll have to excuse me. I have to go.”
The garage was right behind me. I turned around, jogged into the entrance, took the stairs two at a time to my parking level and then found my car. I checked my watch. Two minutes to ten. Time to go, time to get out of here.
“You said he wasn’t killed so he is most likely still alive,” called out the justice as he ran out of the stairwell, his voice coming in spurts between his gulps for breath. “And with everything that has been happening it only makes sense that he has come back.”
“I have to go,” I said, putting the keys in the car, opening the door.
“He’s come back for her.”
He was standing now right behind my car. I couldn’t pull out with him standing there.
“You have to let me go,” I said.
“You’re going to him now?”
“Yes.”
“And she’ll be there?”
“Yes.”
“Then take me with you.”
“Mr. Justice, he didn’t come back for your wife. If anything, she’s an afterthought. He came back for money he mistakenly thought he could recover here. And he came back for revenge.”
“Take me with you, Mr. Carl.”
“You don’t want to find him, Mr. Justice, trust me.” I checked my watch again. “I have to go.”
“Not unless I come too.”
He was standing behind my car. I couldn’t pull out with him standing there unless I ran him over, not that it wasn’t an attractive option. Still, I didn’t think Slocum would be so thrilled, the flattened party being a sitting Supreme Court justice and all. I thought about what to do, glanced at my watch. Skink was waiting.
“Get in,” I said.
Chapter 70
BEFORE JUSTICE STRACZYNSKI had a chance to snap shut his belt, I slapped into reverse, spun out of the spot, shifted into first and then second as I made my way for the exit. I slammed my brakes at the booth. The driver in front of me slowly searched her purse for the single coin that would give her exact change. I tapped the wheel impatiently. When my turn came I threw the card and a ten in the metal tray, told the man to keep the change, and was off. Up Broad Street, through the wilds of North Philly and then the northern stretches of Center City, past the Moorish-inspired synagogue, past the hideous State Office Building, past the tall white Inquirer Building, and then right around City Hall.
“Where are we going exactly?” said the justice.
“I want to show you something,” I said.
I continued south and then cut over, heading east into Queens Village. At one point I pulled into a parking spot, turned out the lights, checked my rearview mirror. I didn’t see anyone pull over behind me and, as the thin stream of traffic moved by, I didn’t see anything suspicious flow past. Maybe I had been wrong about Slocum, maybe he had just passed on my whereabouts to the justice and left it at that. Sloppy sloppy sloppy; I’d give him an earful when this whole thing was over. Satisfied, I pulled out again and took a now familiar route that led me onto the street with the burned-out storefronts, the yellow tape still wrapped around the entrances, where I stopped the car.