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.

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.