“What did you do about it?”

“I did the worst thing I could possibly think of doing. I told my little brother.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Just what I heard, what I saw. I didn’t tell him to do anything, but I told him, and I knew what he was. So when Tommy Greeley came up missing, I had little doubt what had happened.”

“That’s it?”

“Isn’t that bad enough?”

“You didn’t tell him where, when, what he’d be carrying?”

“What are you talking about?”

“There has to be more.”

“I told my brother. My brother was a drug-crazed maniac. Tommy disappeared. What more is there? Later, in a panic, I went to him. I asked him if he had anything to do with Tommy’s disappearance. And what he said, Benny, what he said was ‘Don’t worry about it. You just keep hitting them books.’ He was always so protective, so proud, my little brother, and that’s what he said. And he winked. And I knew.

“And what was it all for? Tommy Greeley was just the first. I confronted my wife about it. In her studio, and she was unapologetic, defiant even. ‘What do you know of art?’ she said. She accused me of giving up art for mammon. ‘You made your choice, fine, but don’t come in here and judge what I must do to fulfill my artistic destiny.’ My wife was exploring the depths of her sexuality, the depths of what it meant to be a woman. And she told me it would continue and it was none of my business. That was the last time I ever entered her studio.”

“So why do you stay with her?”

“Love, sex, beauty, art, purpose. Whatever she was, whatever she has become, she is a part of me I am unable to deny, the better part of me, Mr. Carl. I had aspirations to be an artist myself. Now I have Alura. I can’t bear even the thought of losing her.”

“And what about the baby she was carrying?”

“You know? How?”

“I can see your wife in her.”

“She’s quite beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Yes, Kimberly is.”

“I meant Alura.”

“Okay.”

“We couldn’t keep it. She didn’t want it. Whatever she is, Alura is not maternal. And how could I bear to raise this symbol of betrayal in my own house, to see her smile every day, the same smile of the man who humiliated me at every turn. When Alura came to me it was too late for an abortion. She had the child, we put it up for adoption, that was the end.”

“But it wasn’t the end, was it?”

“I couldn’t leave it at that. I felt responsible for her. I helped support the family, I was able to arrange her acceptance into Penn, I paid her tuition. It was hard on a government salary to support Alura and the baby both, but I felt I owed that, at least, to the child of my wife and the man for whose death I was responsible.”

There was sincerity to what the justice had just told me that I found striking, an utter honesty, and part of it was that his story made him out to be about the biggest weenie on the planet. I mean, here he was, tolerating a wife who felt totally free to sleep around and humiliate her husband all in the name of art. And at the first sign of trouble, instead of dealing with his wife himself, he went running to his little brother, the same little brother that had undoubtedly protected his big brother’s butt in the schoolyard. Yes, if a statement against one’s penal interest is considered reliable by the courts, what about a statement like the one the justice had just given me, which you could say was baldly against his penile interest. But it wasn’t just that which convinced me he was telling the truth. His story meshed perfectly with everything else I had learned, and it pointed perfectly at the person who had truly set up Tommy Greeley for his brutal encounter at the river’s edge.

“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.