“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.”