“No,” she said as she strode over and grabbed the four bound notebooks from the suitcase. “Nothing of value to anyone but me.”
“Thank God you found them, Alura,” said her husband. “Now your life is complete.”
“Yes, Jackson. Now it is.”
“Because we all know that life itself was never enough.”
“What’s this?” continued Colfax. “Photos. Snapshots and the like. ’Old on,” he said, lifting an old envelope, the old law school envelope, taking out the stack of photographs, those photographs, my photographs, undoing the rubber band, pawing through them. “Racy little things, they are. Who’s the juicy number?”
“I’ll take those, thank you, Colfax,” said Tommy Greeley.
With some unerring animal instinct, Colfax looked through the photographs and then turned to Mrs. Straczynski. “They’re you, aren’t they? Yes, they are. Well, I suppose, given enough time, even the tastiest plums turn into prunes.”
“Who is this man, Tommy, and why is he here?”
“I’m the man who gets things done,” Colfax said as he tossed the photographs to Tommy. “But I don’t see no money. Where’s the fucking money?”
“There is no money,” I said.
“That’s not possible,” said Tommy Greeley.
“It’s all gone,” I said. “All of it. There’s nothing.”
Colfax stared at me for a moment, something dark and very personal rising in his features, and then he smacked me across the jaw with the point of his gun, smacked me across the jaw and sent me spinning to the floor. A line of pain shot from the edge of my jaw, through my teeth, into my stomach.
“Colfax, stop it,” said Tommy.
“Shut up, you pompous fool,” spit Colfax and Tommy seemed to shrink at the words. “I’m owed money. Where’s my money?”
“Calm down,” said Tommy, slowly. “It has to be somewhere. Let’s start with the money from Brockton. Victor, there was money in the same place as the notebooks. What happened to it?”
“What do you think happened to it?” I said as I climbed onto my hands and knees. I touched my jaw. It hurt like hell and felt mis-aligned. Blood came away in my hand and two of my teeth were loose. “You turned Sully into an addict with your Federal Express deliveries. He was using, going into debt, ever more desperate. And you trusted he wouldn’t bust open a locker you asked him to keep safe? You trusted he wouldn’t grab what money he found and suck it up his nose?
“Bloody ’ell, you didn’t tell me he was a frigging addict.”
Tommy looked to the side, thought for a moment. “What about the money in this suitcase, the money stolen from me. Where is that?”
“Spent,” I said, grabbing hold of one of the thin white columns, pulling myself to standing. “Gone. All of it.”
“You spent my money, Jackson?”
“Guess again,” I said. “You’re asking the wrong-”
“Yes, I spent it,” said Jackson Straczynski. “All of it.”
“What are you-”
“Quiet, Mr. Carl,” the justice said. “I gave it to charity, I gave it to the poor. I couldn’t wait to get rid of it all. You should be glad, Tommy. You did some good in your miserable life after all.”
“You always were jealous of me,” said Tommy Greeley.
“I wasn’t the one coveting your wife.”
“Not just coveting.”
“Everything was never enough for you, was it?”
“Don’t lecture me about ambition.”
“I haven’t broken every law and commandment known to man.”
“Oh, do you all smell that? The bright scent of pure self-righteousness. I didn’t do anything anyone else didn’t do, Jackson. The whole world was buying and selling. There were a hundred operations on campus. I just did it better. That was my crime. I did everything better.”
“Enough already,” said Colfax. “Such a tender scene, old friends and all, but I frankly don’t give a crap whose dick is bigger. And it’s not like she cares none. All she cares about is ’er silly books.”
It was true, Alura Straczynski was staring into her journals, her past lives, entranced by long-ago written words, long-ago described emotions, only dimly aware of what was going on around her. In the silence, she looked up, saw us all staring. “What?” she said.
“What indeed,” said Colfax. “What the ’ell are we going to do about the money?
“That’s your business,” I said. “I did my part, now I want Beth.”
Tommy Greeley’s neck bent in puzzlement. “Beth?” he said. “Your partner? What about her?”
I looked at Tommy and then back at Colfax, and then back at Tommy and then back at Colfax, and suddenly a whole new possibility arose. It was in the way Colfax spoke to his supposed boss, the way he had taken control of the present encounter. The way he held the gun. Colfax, that son of a bitch. From the start I had read the balance of power wrong.
“Colfax,” I said. “You’ve been a bad boy.”
“What did you do, Colfax?” said Tommy.
“The legal term is kidnapping,” I said.
“Colfax, dammit. How could you do that without-”
“Don’t start balking at my tactics now. If I left it to you, we would have been sleeping fast when the coppers stormed the house.
‘Don’t worry, Colfax, ’e doesn’t know for certain.’ ’Ell ’e don’t, and ’e got your fingerprints on that book and next morning they come streaming in. I was promised another payment. Them was the terms. So don’t go all surprised I had to take matters in my own hands. I got your suitcase here, didn’t I? I got them journals. And even the bloke you wanted for that little sword fight of yours, he showed up. Everything you told me you wanted you’ve got. So, don’t ‘Colfax dammit’ me.
“Sword fight?” said Straczynski.
I shook my head and it hurt, but I couldn’t help but shake it, even with the pain in my jaw. “A sword fight,” I said. “Of course there would be a sword fight. Now this is truly pathetic.”
“Poetic, I thought,” said Tommy Greeley as he walked over to the black covering at the end of the bar. He whisked it off, revealing two fencing swords.
“What are you doing?” said Straczynski.
“Take hold,” said Tommy as he tossed a sword into the air toward the justice, who ducked and let it rattle at his feet. “Come come, man, you can do better than that?”
“You’re not serious,” said the justice.
“Of course he is,” I said. “He wants to duel. He wants to stage some magnificent scene of derring-do, gaining his revenge at the end of some thrilling sword fight. He fancies himself another Edmund Dantes.”
“You’re insane,” said the justice.
“Come on, sir.”
“Says Hamlet to Laertes,” I said.
Straczynski looked down at the blade at his feet. It was thin, about three feet long, with a shiny guard at the hilt and, at the point, a small round loop. The sword in Tommy’s hand had the same loop.
“Pick up your saber,” said Tommy. “That’s what you preferred, right, Jackson? Sabers? The cutting blow. Twenty years I’ve been living with this. Twenty years.”
“And what have you learned in twenty years?” I said. “What great new insights in the human condition did you discover? Twenty years and the best you can come up with for transcending your miserable failed past is a stinking sword fight?”
“At least I’m being proactive.”
“I’m not going to fight you, Tommy,” said the justice.
Tommy took up a fencing position as best he could with his stiff left hand at his back hip, his right knee bent, his right foot facing forward, the sword held straight in front of him. He lunged and a loud SWAK rose as he slapped Straczynski on the biceps with the sword.
“They beat my face in with a baseball bat, did you know that?”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? That makes it all better.”
Another lunge. Another SWAK. This time against the left side of the justice’s face. The justice cringed in pain and when he stood up straight again, a red line had appeared on his cheek. Blood dripped from the edge of the wound.