Swindlers

by Buffa, D. W.

  I was almost used to his reaction, the way, quite without his meaning to, his mouth tightened at the corners and his eyes went dead, as if he had given up hope, as if he knew that there was not any use, the story was not going to change. No matter how many different ways I told it, the ending stayed the same.

  “You don’t want me to tell you the rest?” I asked, ready to give up myself.

  Tommy got to his feet and with that athletic step of his crossed over to the railing, a few feet from where I stood. He blinked into the morning the sun, reminding himself to stay patient.

  “No, tell me. I want to know. But the way you started – it’s all wrong. There wasn’t any choice like that. You were out there, all alone, in the middle of the night, off the coast of North Africa, and they were about to kill you. St. James had just turned his back; Danielle had the gun in her hand.

  I could not help myself. It made me angry, this refusal to remember - or remembering, believe – what I had told him so many times before.

  “Yes, damn it! She had the gun in her hand. More than that, she was pointing the damn thing right at me. I thought she was going to kill me, all right. The look in her eyes! – The sheer excitement! - The thought of murder seemed like sex to her. And then, suddenly, before I knew what was happening, she gave the gun to me - shoved it into my hand - and then stepped away. She was looking at Nelson, and I could not stop looking at her, frenzied, maniacal, her eyes on fire, telling me, over and over again, ‘Do it, do it - Do it now!’ Nelson turned, saw her - saw that look of hatred, saw how much she despised him. He started toward her, reaching for her; ready to strangle her if he could. He did not even look at me. If he saw the gun he did not care; he did not care if he was going to die, as long as he could kill her first. That’s when I fired, that’s when the gun went off, because for a moment – until he staggered backward – I did not know I had done it, - murdered Nelson St. James!”

  “But you didn’t murder him!” protested Tommy. “They were going to kill you – He was going to kill you! He had given her the gun. She gave it to you -”

  “Because she wanted me to do it, kill her husband.”

  “He was going after her. You just said it. He would have killed her if you hadn’t stopped him.”

  “You think I wouldn’t have shot him, killed him, if he hadn’t moved; if he had just stood there, waiting to see what I would do? You forget how much I wanted her, how much I wanted him out of the way. No, it wasn’t self-defense; it wasn’t the defense of another. It was none of those lawful excuses. The truth is what I told you. If I didn’t think about what I was doing, if I didn’t even know I had done it until the blood came pouring out of his chest, it was only because I didn’t have to think about it: the decision had already been made. The decision had been made, maybe not with my conscious mind, but made by that someone I really am. You don’t stop and think when you dash into traffic to save someone: it’s who you are. I didn’t think when I fired the gun, when I killed St. James: it’s what I was – what I am - a murderer, plain and simple.”

  Tommy’s eyes were tired, and full of sympathy. A half-hearted smile started across his mouth and then vanished at once. He started to speak but had to clear his throat; and then, when he was able, his voice had a low, husky rasp.

  “If you were ‘a murderer, plain and simple,’ you wouldn’t have done what you did next; you wouldn’t have done any of the things that happened later. You would have stayed with Danielle.”

  I tried to smile, to pretend that none of it was of any consequence, but I felt the tears start to come and I had to look away.

  “Maybe I should have,” I said when I could finally look back. “Maybe it would have been better. But something happened that night, when I murdered St. James: something broke inside.”

  “You tried to kill yourself,” Tommy tried to remind me.

  “You give me too much credit. I jumped, but I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I didn’t care what happened. I didn’t know if I could make it to shore – we were a little less than a mile off the coast – I didn’t care if I drowned; all I knew was that I had to get away, get away from what I had learned about myself, the evil in my soul. I loved Danielle, more than I thought I could ever love anyone, and I hated her as well, hated her for what she had made me into. But more than anything, I hated myself for letting her do it. I jumped because in that moment I knew that if I stayed with her I was lost.”

  “You’re not a murderer,” Tommy kept insisting. He seemed to think that everything would change if only he could convince me that he was right about that. In my awkward way, I tried to cheer him up a little.

  “You mean, because no one believed me when I tried to confess?”

  He glanced at me with the kind of disapproval that cannot begrudge a certain degree of admiration. Though he thought that what I had done had been the right thing, he wished I had not done it. But we both knew that it would not have made any difference, that the same thing would have happened if instead of going first to the district attorney, and then, when that did not work, to the judge, I had kept it to myself. I would still be here, retired from the world, living in peaceful seclusion instead of back in the city, practicing law.

  “Of course, I didn’t think so at the time, but it really was quite funny. Poor Franklin. You should have seen the look on his face - I should say the looks, because he must have had a dozen of them, one right after the other, an escalating series of curiosity, disbelief, and then alarm – as I told him that the trial had been start to finish a gigantic hoax, that Danielle had not killed anyone, that Nelson St. James had not been murdered, that they had staged the whole thing, and then sailed off to Sicily, changed their names to Orsini, painted the yacht – that really made his eyes pop open! – painted the yacht and changed its name. ‘It’s the Midnight Sun, now; not Blue Zephyr.’ That I found them, that they were going to kill me, but that, at the last second, Danielle gave me the gun and instead of becoming the victim of a homicide I became a murderer, and that I was there in his office, come to make my confession.”

  Exchanging a glance with Tommy, I laughed softly; remembering with what at the time had been puzzlement but was now something close to affection, the kindness Franklin had tried to show me.

  “He told me he was sorry about everything I had been through, and that the best thing I could do was to go home and try to get some rest. ‘After a few days,’ he said as he led me out of his office, ‘things will be better.’”

  I shrugged helplessly, and though Tommy was right in front of me, just a few feet away, I stared right at Robert Franklin, watching the embarrassment, and more than that, the genuine sense of concern, spread across his countenance. When he said goodbye, I heard him stutter through the final words.

  “And then you had to go tell Brunelli,” said Tommy, bringing me back to myself.

  “Yes, then I had to tell Brunelli.” I shook my head with shining eyes, eager not to tell him again about my last meeting with a judge. “It’s nice here, isn’t it?” I asked, surprised that this passing thought just came out. I made a vague gesture with my hand, meant to take in all of it: the long drive, the stately trees, the well-tended garden. “Nice as any place, I suppose.”

  “Alice Brunelli.”

  I looked at Tommy, for a moment not sure what he meant.

  “Oh, yes – Alice Brunelli. I think I was in a state of shock. Franklin did not believe me. I had told him everything, and he refused to believe it. Can you imagine? I confess to murder, and all he can say is that I couldn’t have killed St. James because he had been killed a year earlier. Now, Brunelli, to give her credit, took me much more seriously. She listened – did not say a word – let me tell her everything. She didn’t show any emotion, no reaction of any kind. She was just like she is in court: her face a perfect mask. Then when I was finished, when I told her that I murdered St. James, she quite calmly began to ask me questions. Questions about a lot of things, and not all of them about the things I had just fin
ished telling her.

  “We must have spent an hour in her chambers. She told me that she knew I was telling her what I thought to be the truth, but that because there was no evidence, nothing to prove that Nelson St. James had been alive, nothing to prove that I had killed anyone, she wanted me to talk to someone else, a friend of hers, who was quite good at finding out things like this. She meant an investigator, I was sure of it. And she did mean that – an investigator, though a different kind than what I thought. Anyway, after a while, after I talked to a few more people, I began to realize that no one was ever going to believe me, and that I had to make some changes, that I had to leave the city, stop practicing law, and come up here, away from all that madness, and live a quiet life.”

  When it was time for Tommy to leave, I asked if he had been able to find out anything about Danielle. The last time I had seen him, a few months earlier, he had told me he would look into it.

  “Nothing definite. You were right about Sicily, what you said someone told you: that it’s always full of rumors – rumors, secrets and lies. The new owner of the Midnight Sun is someone supposed to be rich and reclusive, a South American who, according to one rumor, won it all from Orsini one night at cards. There is another rumor that says Gabriella Orsini was in love with him, that her husband found out, and that in the argument they had she shot him to death and that his body was never found. There are even those who insist that they – Gabriella and her new lover – were in it together, and that he was the one who, in order to have her, murdered her husband one night at sea. All anyone knows for certain is that the new owner, whoever he is, painted the Midnight Sun a different color and gave her a different name. There is one other thing. They say that the new owner is married to one of the most beautiful women anyone has ever seen.”

  I stood on the porch and waved as Tommy got into his car and drove away. I watched as he went down the long, narrow drive and out through the gate and the two stone pillars, out past the sign for the Napa State Hospital. I watched until there was nothing left to see.

  That night, after I had had dinner and taken my medication, I dreamed, the way I often do, of a beautiful woman and a long, elegant yacht, Danielle St. James on board the Blue Zephyr, sailing down the California coast on a sunlit summer night. I watch as it moves farther and farther away, until it becomes a tiny speck on the horizon, caught for a fleeting moment in the scarlet light before it finally and forever vanishes out of sight. And then I see myself, staring at the empty sea, wondering what will happen to me now that I am safe on land and all alone.

  A Note from the Author:

  Thank you for reading The Swindlers. Please let me know your thoughts about the book. You can send me email, sign up for my newsletter and get updates about new releases by visiting my web site at www.dwbuffa.net.

  - D.W. Buffa

  OTHER BOOKS BY D. W. BUFFA

  The Defense

  The Prosecution

  The Judgment

  The Legacy

  Star Witness

  Breach of Trust

  Trial by Fire

  The Grand Master

  EVANGELINE

  Rubicon

  (Released under the pen name

  ‘Lawrence Alexander’)