“How’s that?”
“Find him,” Fox said. “Shaw.”
Chief Reynolds shrugged.
“And I really don’t think there much chance of that happening,” Fox said.
“Why’s that?”
“Well, if he is alive, he’s anonymous.”
Epilogue
It’s my gravestone, thought Jerry Shaw.
Standing before it that morning were his father and his sister, Joan. His father was bent over, using a cane, looking even more frail and tired of life than he had been at Jerry’s funeral nearly two years ago. They were oblivious, of course, to the fact that Jerry was watching them from a Toyota Corolla parked about fifty yards away along one of the narrow paved roads crisscrossing Holy Cross Cemetery. A small metal box containing the urn with Jerry’s supposed ashes had been buried in Jerry’s space of the plot. A week after Holly’s sentencing, her lawyer had handed over the urn to a paralegal from the DA’s office who, in turn, had delivered it to Joan.
Today was Jerry’s thirty-third birthday, six months after Jeff’s conviction and the dust had seemed to settle on the case. Jerry had driven up from Florida with Jade to visit his gravestone. Jade thought it was a morbid way to spend Jerry’s birthday and the life his anonymity had left behind, but she had finally relented. She recognized that his anonymity weighed down on him at times, and he needed to reconnect, however tangentially, to the land of the living. Jade had stayed back at the hotel. She had told him she wanted no part in grieving over his former life.
Jerry noticed that Joan had lost a decent amount of weight since Jeff’s trial and was looking good for someone who has just turned forty. Jerry missed their occasional calls to her and he would have liked to have told her about Jade, that he had found someone to replace Holly, and how Jade had saved his life.
Holly was remanded to the county jail after being extradited back up to Buffalo until she was called to testify against Jeff. Judge Pratt stayed true to his word and sentenced Holly to a minimum term of seven years imprisonment. With good behavior, she could be out in five years or so, but without a dime to her name, she’d have to figure a way to survive financially once she was paroled. At first, she’d probably go back to work, get a job as a secretary somewhere in some far away city. Jerry imagined she’d find some older guy, a sugar daddy of some kind, and use her acting skills to convince him that she really loved him. And so, in a way, she’d become an actress, and a whore just like Jade used to be.
For his part, Jeff kept quiet about his end of money, over two million dollars. Even though Judge Pratt had sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole, Jeff had convinced himself that someday he would indeed get out and that when he did, he’d have a pile of Global’s cash to make his remaining few years happy ones, at least. And if not, he’d have the satisfaction of keeping it from Holly.
All that seemed like ancient history to Jerry now, like a dream that faded with every waking hour.
Joan tugged at her father’s arm and they turned and trudged out of the section back to Joan’s car. Jerry watched them drive off, feeling sad, and walked to the gravestone. He stood before it, said a silent prayer in memory of his mother, and touched the top of the stone. Then he stepped back and regarded his name, and his date of birth, today, thirty-three years ago, and the date of his fake death. He laughed to himself because that date was now truly his birthday, his re-birthday, the start of his new life in anonymity.
“Happy birthday,” a voice from behind Jerry said.
Jerry swung around. Standing no more ten yards away down the narrow path between gravestones was Jack Fox.
“Jerry Shaw, right?” said Fox in a calm, even voice. “I had a hunch you’d come here today.”
Jerry thought for a moment of running for it, getting to his car. But Fox would likely call the police. The gig was up.
“Don’t worry,” Fox said. “I’m not going to turn you in.” Jerry frowned. He wondered what this old, clever coot was up to.
“I quit Global right after Jeff’s trial,” Fox went on. “Enough was enough.” He laughed. “Now I’m writing crime novels. I may use what you, Holly, and Jeff did as a premise.”
He stepped forward and got within three feet of Jerry and stood eye to eye with him.
“And anyway, justice has been served. Flaherty’s in jail— not for killing you, granted. Not for cheating Global. But he killed the medical school worker who got you the body. Right?”
Jerry nodded.
“You weren’t in on that.” It was a statement, not a question.
“No,” Jerry said. “That was after I left town. He and Holly planned it. The guy was blackmailing them.”
“And you were the one who gave the widow Robinson a hundred grand, weren’t you,” Fox said with a nod and a wink.
“So you found out about that,” Jerry said with an admiring shrug. “Yes. I got it to her anonymously, of course. The least I could do. Actually, Willie Robinson wasn’t a bad guy. Just looking out for his family.”
“One thing I have to know,” Fox said, “is how you operate. I mean, as an anonymous man. Even Batman had his Alfred.” Jerry smiled.
“Well, let’s just say, my Alfred’s much better looking than that Alfred.”
“I see,” Fox said. “Jade Martin is your Albert’s name.” Again, Jerry shrugged.
“So you’re really not going to report me?” he asked.
“I said I wasn’t. Consider it your birthday present.”
“Well,” Jerry said after a time. “It was nice chatting with you.”
Fox nodded. With a wave of the back of his right hand, he gestured for Jerry to get going. And Jerry did not hesitate.
A couple weeks later, Fox received a thick envelope in the mail. There was no return address. He tore open the top of the envelope and pulled out some kind of homemade comic book. And that was it. There was nothing else, no letter, no invoice.
Fox turned the comic book over in his hands and examined the cover for a time. There was a guy who vaguely resembled Jerry Shaw with his arms stretched out like a Christ figure looking upward into the title of the comic book and Fox smiled to himself when he saw what the title was:
The Anonymous Man.
More from Vincent L. Scarsella
Lawyers Gone Bad (A Lawyers Gone Bad Novel)
About the Author
Vincent L. Scarsella is the author of speculative, fantasy, and crime fiction. His published books include the crime novels "The Anonymous Man" (2013) and "Lawyers Gone Bad" (2014), as well as the young adult fantasy, "Escape from the Psi Academy", Book 1 of the Psi Wars! Series released in May, 2015. Book 2 of the series, “Return to the Psi Academy”, is slated for publication by IFWG Publishing in the summer of 2016.
Scarsella has also published numerous speculative fiction short stories in print magazines such as The Leading Edge, Aethlon, and Fictitious Force, various anthologies, and in several online zines.
Scarsella’s full-length play, “Hate Crime,” about race relations in the context of a legal thriller, was performed in Buffalo on September 13, 2016 and is scheduled for a reprise in late May, 2016. “The Penitent,” about the Catholic Church child molestation scandal, was a finalist in the June 2015 Watermelon One-Act Play Festival.
Scarsella has also published non-fiction works, most notably, "The Human Manifesto: A General Plan for Human Survival," which was favorably reviewed in September 2011 by the Ernest Becker Foundation.
Contents
Part One First Betrayal
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapt
er Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Part Two - Second Betrayal
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Epilogue
More from Vincent L. Scarsella at Digital Fiction
Copyright
About the Author
Contents
Copyright
The Anonymous Man
By Vincent L. Scarsella
These stories are a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in the stories are either the product of the author’s imagination, fictitious, or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or lawyers, living or dead, would be coincidental and quite remarkable.
The Anonymous Man – by Vincent L. Scarsella: Copyright © 2016 by Vincent L. Scarsella. Cover Image: Copyright © Adobe ID 86025300 designelements. This version first published in print and electronically by Vincent L. Scarsella.
All rights reserved, including but not limited to the right to reproduce this book in any form, electronic or otherwise. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book or the individual stories contained herein via the Internet or any other means without the express written permission of the publisher or author is illegal and punishable by law. This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be copied and resold or copied and given away to other people. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Please support and respect the author’s rights.
The Anonymous Man Page 23