“Hello,” I called out. “Anyone home? Victor Carl here, and I have a delivery.”
Chapter 72
THERE WOULD BE a sword fight, of course there would be a sword fight, how could there not? Isn’t that how all great revenge stories end, with a sword fight, and wasn’t Tommy Greeley aiming to make his revenge into a great story, casting himself in the leading role? So there would be the inevitable sword fight, yes, but before that stirring duel we had to deal with Colfax, who stepped out into the hallway, glowering, in his hand a gun, matte black with a wooden grip. Mr. Beretta, I assumed.
“What are you two doing ’ere?” he said.
“I didn’t want to wait,” I said and then jerked a thumb at the justice. “He came for his wife.”
“You want ’er back?” he said, his voice wide with astonishment. “I figured you were the only one making out ’ere.” He peered beyond us along the hallway and into the stairwell. “Who’s with you?”
“No one. We came alone.”
“You’re not really that stupid, are you?”
“Yes,” I said cheerfully. “Yes, I am.”
Colfax glanced down at the suitcase, glanced over at Straczynski. “You brought everything?”
“Everything I have.”
“Bring him in, Colfax,” called Tommy Greeley from the lighted room. “Don’t make us wait.”
Colfax looked at us for a long moment, checked again the hallway, and then shook his gun at us, indicating we should step through the doorway.
It was a large stark room, divided by white stanchions, and well lit from spotlights hanging from overhead steel girders and hooked up to a large battery on a table. The room was stripped like the rest of the ship, but with some homey touches remaining. The floor was black, with a few scattered linoleum tiles, and there were the remnants of a curved, art deco bar, posts of bar stools lined before it, some of the seats still in place. Standing by the bar was Alura Straczynski; sitting on one of the remaining stools was Tommy Greeley. He was dressed all in white, white shirt, pants, bucks, like some wax model of Gatsby that had been left out in the sun. His shiny face was too immobile to show interest, but his eyes behind the lifeless flesh were focused intently on the justice. On the bar were charts and maps and, off a bit to the side, a large black cloth.
“Ah, Jackson, Jackson, Jackson,” said Tommy. “You’ve gained some weight, I see.”
“Hello, Tommy,” said Justice Straczynski. “I thought you were dead.”
“I was. And I suppose Victor’s bringing you here means you were responsible. But after you killed me, as in all great stories, came the resurrection.”
“You always did have delusions of grandeur.”
“What are you doing here, Jackson?” said Alura Straczynski.
“I came to take you home.”
“By the hair?”
“If necessary.”
“Tell me, Jackson,” said Tommy Greeley. “How do you like my ship? Quite a thing, yes? I’ve been on the committee to save this old relic for years. I’ve always been one to conserve the past. Sorry about the condition, but they found a bit of asbestos and were forced to strip it bare. This was the tourist-class lounge. I prefer first-class accommodations, but this room still has its original floor, the original bar. How did you find us?”
Colfax waved his gun at Alura. “They followed ’er.”
“Ah, yes, of course. How careless of you, dear.”
“I did everything exactly as you said,” she complained. “I obeyed all your instructions. I checked repeatedly. There was no one.”
“See, the problem with birds like you,” said Colfax, “is you’re oblivious to anyone but yourselves.”
“Who are you again?”
“I’m the ’ired ’elp,” said Colfax. “All right now. Enough of our tender reunion. Let’s ’ave a look.”
He grabbed the suitcase out of my hand and hoisted it onto the bar. Then, standing to the side, as if afraid of a booby trap, he opened the latch and lifted the top. With the point of his gun, he rummaged around.
“Let’s see,” he said. “Old clothes, looks like they could use a wash, with plenty of bleach, mind you. Some old notebooks.”
“They’re mine,” said Alura Straczynski.
Colfax heard something in her voice, some sense of desperate longing. “Are they now? What’s in them? Something valuable?”
“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.”