Past Due (41 page)

T
HE 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.

“What are you reading, dear? Anything interesting?”

“Not really,” he said, closing the journal in his hand.

“Then put it down.”

The justice trembled a bit, as if trying to gain control of his very muscles, and glanced my way before he carefully placed the journal atop one of the piles.

“Good,” she said. “Now, tell me, why have you broken into my studio.”

“I was just—”

“This is my private place, as private as my soul. You have no business meddling here. I made that clear many years ago.”

The justice gestured to the suitcase on the bed. “Mr. Carl says this is Tommy Greeley’s suitcase. Is he correct?”

“Our Mr. Carl is quite a pain in the ass, don’t you think so, Jackson? I told you we had to watch out for him.”

“How did you get Tommy’s suitcase?”

“That is none of your business.”

“What did you do, Alura?”

Her anger took control of her for a moment, anger at being forced to justify anything in her life, but then her gaze cast about the room and she took in the situation, my presence, the closets emptied, the clothes scattered about, her husband asking questions that he had never dared ask before. She stepped forward toward her husband, stepped forward until she was standing before him, only a pile of journals between them, standing before him like a penitent, and then she bowed her head so it touched his chest.

“Long ago I decided to stay with you, my love,” she said.

There was a moment when it appeared he was going to reach out his arms and embrace her, accept her, tell her all was right. It was what he had always done, what he was about to do, but then something seized him, perhaps the anger, perhaps some sickness at the heart. He stepped back, away from her, leaving her standing there, head bowed, in the middle of the room, alone.

“What did you do?” he said softly.

“Tommy was about to be indicted. He was running away. There was a boat. He had a plan. He wanted me to meet him at the dock and leave with him.”

“And you couldn’t just have told him no.”

“He was leaving. There were things he had possession of with which I couldn’t let him leave.”

“And so you brought in my brother.”

“No, Jackson, dear. You brought in your brother. But when he came to me, angry as a beast over what he considered my betrayal of his precious brother, I told him the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Yes, Jackson. You must believe. The truth. That I loved you. That I couldn’t live without you. That I was staying, that it was over between Tommy and myself. But there were some precious things of mine that Tommy still possessed. They would be in a suitcase. And I told him where Tommy and his precious suitcase would be found.”

“You let me think it was me. All this time.”

“I let you think what you wanted to think. You wanted to bear the guilt, so be it. If it was to be borne, you were better able to handle the burden.”

“You’re a witch.”

“Why such a frown, Jackson. I chose you. You should be grateful.”

“You were all I ever wanted.”

“I know, dear.”

“And you’re a witch,” he said, and then he seemed to totter. He reached out his arm, braced himself on the writing desk, clutched his gut. The whole of his marriage was coming clear to him in a way I would never understand and it was enough to send his stomach reeling.

She rushed to him, reached out for him, pulled him close. “Jackson,” she said as she held him. “Oh, Jackson, my darling, Jackson.”

I stepped over to the charming scene and took hold of the keys she still held in her hand. She gave me a bitter glance before she released her grip. I went through them quickly and found the smallest ones. It only took me three tries to fit one neatly into the suitcase’s lock. With a quick click I opened it, unlatched the latches, pulled up the top.

A few old shirts, old socks, a yellowed undershirt thrown into the suitcase with haste, and then, within the fabric, three bundles of cash. The bills were old, the denominations varied, the bills like the shirts packed up in haste. I went through them quickly. Twenty, thirty thousand maybe. I took the bundles out of the suitcase and showed them to her.

“Those are mine,” she said, staring at me even as she clutched at her husband. “Put them back.”

“I don’t think so.”

“How dare you?”

“I dare. How much was there when you first opened it up. Enough to pay for this room of your own for twenty years, along with the drinks, the clothes, the affairs, all the former lovers you continued to support. Lovers like Curtis Lobban.”

“Remember what I said about being too clever, Victor? Give me the money.”

“You stole enough,” I said as I slipped the bills into my jacket pocket, along with the suitcase key.

She let go of her husband. “So now you’re taking your cut, is that it?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s it. But it wasn’t the money you were really after that night, was it? That was just a lucky pull. You were looking for something else. Something that’s been gone since then. Until now. The photographs.”

“Yes.”

“And your damn notebooks.”

“You found them?”

“That’s right,” I said.

“You have my notebooks?”

“Yes,” I said, but when I said it I noticed something muted in her reaction. Before, whenever she mentioned her missing notebooks her eyes had lit with excitement, and the need to seduce them from me. Now the excitement had been dimmed, the need weakened, as if she already knew that I had the notebooks, as if she already knew how she was going to get them.

“Your notebooks?” said Jackson Straczynski, standing straighter now. “You had my brother kill Tommy for the notebooks?”

“I foolishly gave some to Tommy for safekeeping. I didn’t want you to find them. But then I realized without them there was a gap.”

“They’re just words.”

“They are my life’s work, Jackson. Don’t minimize what you don’t understand.”

“So you used my brother to fill the gap.”

“He wasn’t supposed to kill him,” she said.

“All for you precious notebooks.”

“They are my life,” she said. “You know that.”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

He traced his fingers gently over the cover of one of the journals perched high on a pile. “Your journals,” he said as he caressed another, gently touching the skin of the cover as one would touch a lover, brushing it with the tips of his fingers, stroking it with the softest touch. “Your precious journals.”

And then he gave the pile a light shove.

The stack teetered for a moment, teetered, and then collapsed, the notebooks falling one upon another, some skidding across the floor, splayed open.

Alura Straczynski gasped, as if it was she who had been pushed to the floor.

He pushed another pile to the floor, and then a third.

“What are you doing?” she said.

He turned to stare at her as he gave another pile a quick kick, sending a stack of books sliding and then collapsing onto the floor, the volumes spreading open in the air, their pages flapping from the force. The sight of the books sprawling open was almost obscene.

Alura Straczynski rushed to her husband and called out “Bastard,” as she shoved him away from the journals. She fell to her knees, picking up the notebooks, her notebooks, and placing them carefully in her arms. She picked up as many as she could possibly hold and clutched them to her chest, rocking them almost as if she were easing their pain.

“They’re a curse,” he said.

“They’re my life’s purpose,” she replied, without looking at him.

“They should be burned.”

“Touch them again and I’ll kill you,” she said, her lack of affect positively chilling.

“Alura?”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Alura.”

“Shut up,” she said.

And he did, and they stayed there for a moment in the pathetic tableau, she mothering her journals as if they were a child, turning her back on the husband who loved her far too foolishly and far too well. And he, trying to explain himself to a woman who cared not a whit for anything but the jottings of an inner life that was warped by the very process of its saving. The unexamined life might not be worth living, but the examined life is pure murder.

“All right,” I said, finally, “are you guys through with your marital drama here, because any more and, frankly, I’m going to puke all over the bed.”

The justice stared at me for a moment and then at his wife, still
kneeling with her journals, still holding them tight to her chest. Then he looked around at the whole of the studio, the scattered books, the photographs of his wife taken by her lover, the mess of clothes I had thrown about in my search, the great bed sitting like a lurid whale in the middle of the space, and on top of the bed, Tommy Greeley’s suitcase.
This is my private place, as private as my soul,
she had said.
You have no business meddling here.
She was wrong about him having no business there, but it seemed clear, as he looked around, that he couldn’t bear to stay there any longer.

“Don’t worry, Mr. Carl,” he said, his face twisted with disgust. “I am finished here.”

And then he walked out of the studio, passing by his wife as if she were made of stone, slamming the door closed behind him, the rusted metal banging shut with the solid echo of a cell door.

Alura Straczynski seemed to slump at the sound, and then, without looking my way, started placing her notebooks back in their stacks, checking each one for the date, sorting and arranging. I looked again at the pile of folded book cartons in the corner.

“Where is he?” I said.

“I don’t know.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“Because you are a cynic, Mr. Carl, as well as a coward. I want my notebooks.”

“You’ve made that clear to me, and to him too, I’m sure. Are you going to leave with him this time?”

“I’m a married woman, Mr. Carl.”

“Not for long, I figure.”

“Oh, I’m not so easily rid of.”

“Sort of like syphilis. But still you are packing.”

“I haven’t yet decided my future path for certain.”

“Can I ask you something? One thing that’s still not clear to me.”

“Ask what you want.”

“Were you the one who bashed Lonnie in the head that night?”

“The motorcycle man? I only found out at the last moment that he would be guarding Tommy and the suitcase. There was no telling what could have happened had he spotted Benjamin’s men at the meeting place.”

“So you cracked his head open.”

“I was a switch hitter in softball.”

“Oh, I bet you were.” I closed the suitcase, pulled it off the bed. “Do you know where he is?”

“No.”

“Do you want to tell me where you’re meeting him?”

“No.”

“He’s a selfish psychopath out to further his own rotten ends.”

“He always was.”

“Okay, then,” I said as I walked toward the door. “Just tell him if anything happens to my partner I’ll never stop until I destroy him.”

“That’s between the two of you.”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “You’re smack in the middle of it and so I’m holding you responsible too. You know, I must say, Mrs. Straczynski, I look at you and I am stumped. I have no idea of what makes you tick.”

“I’m a simple girl, Victor, with a simple view of the world. Everything on this earth exists only for the purpose of providing either for my pleasure or my art.”

“Well,” I said, “I guess that explains it.”

I
PLANNED A
quick visit to the hospital, just to say hello to my father, to spread some cheer, to banter like a bantamweight, and then I’d be free to finish my preparations. I had planned a quick visit, but Dr. Mayonnaise had different ideas. She was behind the desk at the nurses’ station on the fourth floor and when she saw me leave the elevator she nearly jumped out of her chair.

“Victor, I’m so glad you’re here. Have you spoken to your father? Have you heard the news?”

“No,” I said. “News?”

“Good news,” she said, her face bright, her blue eyes shining. “Great news.” She stepped out from behind the desk, took hold of my arm, started leading me down the hall. “We’ve scheduled your father for tomorrow.”

“Scheduled? You mean his release?”

“No, Victor. His operation.”

“I thought his condition had to be stabilized first.”

“But it has. His response to the Primaxin has been terrific. There’s no reason to wait. And you’ll be really happy to hear that a hole opened up in Dr. Goetze’s schedule and she’s agreed to do the operation.”

“Dr. Goetze?”

“She’s brilliant. Really. Amazing. The top pulmonary surgeon in the region. Your father’s very lucky.”

“Lucky lucky lucky.” I glanced at the door to his room, partially opened. “Does he know yet?”

“Of course.”

“Has he met Dr. Goetze?”

“Just this afternoon.”

“And?”

“And what? Victor, trust me. If you need someone to surgically resect your lungs, you want it to be Dr. Goetze. She practically invented the procedure. The operation is scheduled for tomorrow morning. Your father is fasting now and we’ll gently sedate him tonight so he gets a full night’s rest. He’ll spend the next couple days in intensive care and then, after a few more days of recovery, you can take him home.”

“It all sounds so easy. So tell me, Karen, how did a hole open up in Dr. Goetze’s schedule?”

She squeezed her lips together. “Oh, you know,” she said. “Things happen.”

“Yes, they do.”

“Good luck, Victor. We’re all very hopeful.”

“I’m sure all indicators are promising.”

My father was lying in his bed, his eyes closed tight, his arms placed at his sides. It was as if he was already in position for the coffin. I think all the death we see, all the funerals we attend, are in some ways practice for the day we bury our fathers. I should have been prepared, I should have been overprepared, but still, to see him there, lying peacefully, without his anger or bitterness, without his prickly personality, without everything that had made him my father, brought me to tears. I don’t think I would have felt like that before he entered this hospital, before he started to tell me his story about the girl in the pleated skirt, but something had changed, something in me, and now grief at the possibility of losing him overwhelmed me.

I closed the door behind me, sat down by his bed, leaned my head back, tried to gain control of myself. That was when something started shaking in my pocket.

Yes, I know, no cell phones in hospitals, but I was in the middle of an emergency, dammit, and so I hadn’t turned my phone off, just set it on vibrate. I grabbed it out of my jacket pocket and snapped it open.

“Is that you?”

“Yes, it’s me,” I said softly. “Where are you, Phil?”

“Still outside that damn studio. She went out for a bit of errands, had a drink at that bar of hers, and then went back to her building. You said she had a bed in there, right?”

“That’s right.”

“It looks like she might spend the night. How long you want me to stay out here.”

“Until morning if you have to. If he shows up, call the FBI at the number I gave you. If she goes somewhere, follow and then call me. If we can take care of this tonight, that’s what I want to do.”

“All right, mate. It’s your call.”

“We have to find her, Phil.”

“I know we do.”

When he hung up I raised my chin and let out a great sigh of fear and frustration, and it was that sigh, I think, rather than my conversation, that woke my father, because when I looked down again there he was, eyes open, staring at me. It gave me a start, like a corpse coming to life, and I jumped a bit.

“You look like you seen a ghost,” said my father.

“Well, you woke up,” I said. “How are you doing?”

“Lousy. I’m hungry. Go get me a candy bar, why don’t you?”

“You’re not allowed to eat.”

“The hell with their rules.”

“You’re having your operation tomorrow.”

“The hell with their operation.”

“Your operation. How do you feel about it?”

“All of a sudden you care about my feelings? Well, this is what I’m feeling, I’m feeling hunger.”

“I heard the doctor came in and spoke to you.”

“Yeah.”

“What did you think?”

“Seems to know what goes where.”

“So you’re okay with the surgeon.”

“One can kill me as well as the next.”

“I thought you might, you know, not be thrilled that the surgeon is a woman.”

He let out a bark. “For the whole of my life, women been slicing me up and taking out pieces. Why should this be any different?”

“Well,” I said, patting his hand and starting to stand up. “You need your sleep.”

“What, you in a hurry?”

“No.”

“You look nervous, you got a date tonight?”

“No.”

“With that doctor of yours?”

“We’re just friends.”

“So where are you off to?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Then don’t go so fast. I’m getting cut on tomorrow. Don’t go.”

“All right, Dad.”

“All right, then.”

“So maybe we can talk,” I said.

“Don’t get carried away.”

“Why don’t you tell me about your hopes, your dreams, your aspirations?”

“Screw off,” said my father.

“Okay.”

“You want to know, really?”

“Sure.”

“They’re the same they been every day of my life. To make it past tomorrow.”

I sat and thought on that for a moment. “By that standard, at least,” I said, “your life has been a roaring success.”

He laughed at that, my dad, and I laughed with him. We laughed together, laughed at the strange and wondrous fact that he was still here, sitting with his son, with enough breath in his lungs to be able to laugh. In the middle of it I thought back and wondered when was the last time I laughed with my father. I couldn’t remember. We never had anything to laugh at before, but now we did. He was still alive.

“So go on with the story,” I said, when our laughter had subsided and his disposition returned to his natural state of grump.

“I told it,” he said. “It’s over.”

“No, it isn’t. You were there, in your apartment, with the girl’s head on your chest and the box of coins sitting on the bureau. What happened the next morning?”

“She woke up,” he said.

“Go on.”

“She woke up, she stretched, she sat up in the bed.”

She wakes up, she stretches, she sits up in the bed and the blanket falls off her chest and her shoulders are smooth, her breasts are free, her smile, when she spies him sitting in the chair across the room, is iridescent. And her eyes, her wide moist eyes are as innocent as the morning. She is the very vision of loveliness, she is the very vision of perfection, she is all he ever wanted. Yet as she wakes up and stretches and sits up, as the blanket falls to reveal her proud breasts, a shiver goes through him.

Come to bed, she says, her voice still slow with sleep.

No, he says.

Then let’s go somewhere. Where do you want to go first, Jesse? Anywhere but here. New York. Chicago. Hollywood. Someplace we can be somebody.

We can’t go anywhere, he says, his voice flat. There’s a man dead. He is connected to you, and through you to me. If we leave they will know it was us.

But then let’s buy something. We can sell one of the coins and buy something marvelous, something we could only dream about before.

We can’t buy anything, he says. If we buy anything they will know it was us.

She pouts, sticks out her pretty lower lip, then bites it. Okay, she says. Maybe you’re right, for now. But let’s just look at what we have.

She climbs out of the bed, naked, her legs strong, her hips, the pillow of her belly, her breasts rising as she raises her arms over her head to stretch some more.

Let’s just look at what we have and dream about the future, she says. Dream about all the things we’ll buy. She moves about the
apartment with the excitement of a schoolgirl, searching. Where are they, Jesse? she says. The coins. Where are they? And why are you dressed already?

I’ve been out, he says.

Where?

Just out.

And the coins. Where are the coins?

Gone.

What did you do? she says, her voice rising. What the hell did you do?

I buried them.

Dig them up.

I can’t.

They’re mine, she shrieks.

No, they’re not. They’re his. If they link them to us they will know what we did. If they link them to us we will go to jail. Separate jails.

You had no right.

It was the only thing to do, he says. The only way.

Where are they?

I don’t know.

Dig them up.

I didn’t make a map. They could be anywhere.

Without those coins you have nothing. You are nothing. You cut lawns for a living for God’s sake.

There’s no crime in that.

Get them back.

This is the only way, he says.

Where’s the shovel?

Remember? Together forever?

Don’t threaten me, you bastard. Where’s the damn shovel?

They’re gone.

Get them back. Get them back. Get them.

“What could I say?” said my father, in his hospital bed, the night before they were going to slice open his chest and hack out pieces of his lung. “What could I do? I turned away. Closed my eyes. And what did I see? You know what I saw. I saw her, but she wasn’t
naked, she wasn’t standing over me, bent in anger, shouting at me, hitting me on the shoulders, the neck, the chest. I saw her, and she was dressed in white, and she was walking down South Street, her pleated skirt swaying with every step, walking down South Street, walking to me.”

I stayed until they gave him the shot. He barely grimaced as the needle slipped into his flesh. I stayed until the shot took effect, and his eyes widened and then closed and the tremor in his hand eased and he was overtaken with blessed sleep. It was almost as good, that shot, as his Iron City, and after he fell asleep I stayed for a while longer. Visiting hours were long gone, but they didn’t disturb us as I stayed with my sleeping father the night before the operation he would most likely not survive. It was coming to a head, the whole Gordian knot Joey Parma had laid at my feet, it would all come to a head very soon, but I waited a moment more as my father lay peacefully now in his bed, his arms once again at his sides. I waited with him as the hour grew late and the night deepened and quiet fell hard over that room.

My pocket started shaking, like an electric toothbrush gone off.

“She’s on the move,” said Skink. “Caught a cab. I’m following.”

“Probably going home to patch things up with her husband.”

“I don’t think so, mate. She’s headed in the wrong direction for that.”

“Which direction?”

“East,” he said. “Toward the river.”

“Of course she is. All right, let me know.”

I stood up and started pacing back and forth in the little room, pacing back and forth until I lost track of time. All I could think about was Beth, pulled out at gunpoint, Mr. Beretta that bastard Colfax had said, pulled out at gunpoint and taken somewhere, probably tied up, probably scared. She was tough, Beth, tougher than I ever could claim to be, but still she certainly was scared. And in danger. And all because I had taken this stupid case, I had decided to find out what happened to Joey Parma, I had started taking things personally. It was my fault, she was my responsibility.

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.