AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Jackson Shaw. He owns The S Gallery in Hoboken.”
“He visits Maxton House?”
“On occasion,” he replies. “Shaw is a discreet collector. Only shows up when something very unique comes our way. And on occasion, he uses my services to sell something also very unique. I don’t appreciate the loss of his business. But he knows the rules. Risk exposing us, and you’re out. Expose us, and you’re dead.”
“Harsh rules,” I retort. “Glad I never joined.”
“Making money is risky.”
“It’s possible he’s not aware he’s lost the ring,” I offer. “It would be beneficial if it remains that way. Besides, you have the ring now. No harm, no foul to you. Wait a couple of weeks before you boot him out.”
He makes a noise that sounds a lot like a snort, though I can’t see a man like him doing that. “I hope you’re as quick to repay the favor as you are to make demands. You have two weeks.”
* * *
Jackson Reed Shaw lives in a renovated townhouse on the corner of Hudson and Ninth. He made his money as a restaurateur in Manhattan, then sold his businesses and opened the gallery in New Jersey.
He’s got a kid named Emily. Justin sent me a picture he found floating around on social media. A photo that had once been posted by Shaw’s estranged wife.
Kid’s cute. Eight years old at the most, with eyes too blue to have not been enhanced by some filter and a short mane of red curls.
Squeezed between her parents, she grins, proudly displaying her missing front teeth. Her fair skin is sun-kissed and dusted with hundreds of tiny freckles.
There’s something about the joy in her youthful gaze that has me staring at her for a long while. My brows pinch tightly as I study her, wanting to pinpoint what exactly it is about her that leaves me unable to glance away, mesmerized. Is it her eyes? Her uninhibited, carefree grin, as if she’s so full of happiness, it lights her up like a firework from the inside?
I’ve never seen anything like it. Certainly never experienced it. There’s not a single picture taken of me when I was that age that shows that kind of happiness.
Maybe the reason I continue to peer into her face is the niggling in the back of my mind, thetap tap tapof guilt wanting to take root in my conscience.
If I determine that the man standing beside her, his lips on her plump cheek, is the one responsible for my father’s death, I will kill him. I will in one pull of the trigger or slash of my knife dim the light in her pretty blue eyes. All that joy I see in her face now will be erased.
According to Justin, the wife, Zoey Shaw, disappeared a year ago. As in, packed up her shit and left. If she hadn’t filed for divorce a month later, I’d assume Jackson had killed her. But there’s proof that she’s alive and well, living somewhere in Missouri.
A few months later, Jackson was arrested for money laundering. With no family left, Emily went into the system for nearly a year before her father’s charges were dropped.
There was a time that I went into the system. It was before my father married Sylvia, and it was only for a month. My experience would have undone a grown man.
I look at the young girl again. Her mother signed away her custodial rights. Wanted no part in her life. She suffered who knows what at the hands of strangers while her father was locked away.
If I were to find a picture of Emily Shaw now, would she still display the same amount of joy? Or would the scar tissue left behind by abandonment hinder that pretty smile?
She’s already lost one parent,the niggling presses.You’ll destroy her.
Fuck you,I tell it.I’ve lost both. And if I don’t do something, I’ll lose Sylvia too.
I have a solid lead, and not even bright-blue eyes will deter me now.
4
NOAH
The S Gallery is on Sinatra Drive, conveniently located within feet of the Hudson River, if you wanted to dump a body into it.
I stand across the street for a long while, watching the arrival of people dressed in their finest polished outfits, tight black dresses, and tailored suits.
They’re all here to experience the exhibit of the newly popular painter, Bejü Mah. That’s what the poster situated beside the tall glass doors reads.
As for me, I’m here to scope out the place I believe my father was killed in. To pinpoint exactly where Jackson Shaw shot him.
