Sedona Law 6 by Dave Daren (best non fiction books of all time .TXT) 📗

that I might have rendered him more than just unconscious. But I didn’t have time to contemplate, considering Roy was right behind me, and he wasn’t so easy to take down.

By the time I took down Tony, Roy had me by the neck, and I elbowed him in the gut. Unfortunately, given his decades of being a hard partying rock and roll manager, he had quite the beer gut, and my blows simply hit the extra padding.

Roy slammed my body into the wall, and he pinned me by my throat while he grunted into my face.

“You think you’re the big tough guy around here?” he said. “You think you know everything?”

“Fuck you,” I spat.

I still had the crowbar and delivered a swift blow to the side of his knees. He grimaced in pain, and his grip on my neck loosened, but not enough for me to wiggle away.

I felt a blinding flash of pain and struggled for breath as I realized he had just punch me in the stomach. The intensity of the pain, caused me to lose the grip on the crowbar, and it clattered to the ground. Roy lunged for it. But I kicked him in the knee I had hit with the crowbar, and he lost his balance and teetered long enough for me to stand up, and deliver a hard right hook right into his jaw. He cried out and then I pinned him against the wall, and grabbed the crowbar and held it inches from his face.

“You want to end up like your compadre there, punk?” I threatened.

Roy chuckled sarcastically. “You see, you know what your problem is?”

“What is my problem?” I mused. “Enlighten me.”

“Your problem is you’ve got no foresight,” he said. “You think you’ve got me by the short and curlies, because maybe you do here. But what happens tomorrow? What happens when you get home?”

“What are you talking about?” I spat at him.

“You see, Irving,” he chuckled again. “You’ve got no business in crime. You don’t have the stomach for it. You’ve got too much heart...AJ, Saffron, Moondust, Phoenix, Harmony, Vicki...all just to start. I’d just have to pull on your heartstrings, and I could make you do whatever I wanted like a puppet. Like a marionette.”

I laughed coldly. “You see, all of those people have already been threatened. And it didn’t shake me one bit.”

“Ah,” he said. “Maybe there was a little scare, a little break in. But, I know where your heart really is. I wouldn’t take you much for a fetish man, but you never know. That little Asian chick would look super sexy in some schoolgirl porn--”

I didn’t even realize that I had reacted at all, until Roy crumbled to the ground, and I stood holding a bloody crowbar.

“Now,” I stooped to his prone body on the ground. “Tell me why you killed James.”

“I didn’t kill James,” he choked out.

I stood, reared back, and delivered an excruciating kick to his gut.

“Why did you kill James?” I asked again.

“I didn’t,” he mumbled.

“Why did you smuggle the elephant tusks in?” I switched to a more relevant topic.

“Money,” he moaned.

“Money,” I said and I put my phone on record and stuck it in my pocket. Granted under these circumstances it wouldn’t be admissible in court, but it would serve to get Kelsi exonerated.

“What did you need money so badly for that you smuggled in elephant tusks?” I asked.

“The band,” he gasped. “I paid the band.”

“Why did you need money so desperately to pay the band?” I asked.

“Because,” he moaned. “Kelsi is the love of my life.”

“But she was married to another man,” I said.

“My greatest regret,” he gasped in pain, “was letting her go. I lost her once when I went to Tokyo, I was determined to get her back.”

“So you were going to ruin her marriage?” I asked.

“She never loved James,” he said.

“Then why did she marry him?” I asked.

“Because of Elias,” he moaned.

“Her son?” I asked.

He nodded. “Elias was mine. But, I was stupid. I was so stupid and foolish. I said I wasn’t ready to be a father, as if I had some choice in the matter. So I ran away. When I was gone, she married James so that he would have a father. I realized my mistake years later and tried to come back. But, it was too late.”

“She had moved on,” I said.

He nodded. “She had a perfect family, and was happy and it pained me to see it, and pained me not to see it. I couldn’t win either way.”

“And so you thought if you sent her to prison for a smuggling frame job, it would make it all better?” I asked sarcastically.

He shook his head. “I needed to pay the band. I sold the contraband and poured it into the shop, and paid the band out of the shop. Then, the band would stick around, and I could have time to make James famous. If I could make James famous, then I could make Kelsi happy at least. If I made James famous, I could stay with James and I could still be in Elias’ life.”

“Did James know that Elias was yours?” I asked.

“Not until the end,” Roy said. “He always knew Elias wasn’t his. But, he didn’t know he was mine until the end.”

“How did he find out?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. But that was irrelevant anyway.”

“And that was why he was going to leave Kelsi,” I concluded.

“Right,” he said.

“And the contract with Arista?” I said.

“I didn’t know about that until the night he died,” Roy said.

“He kept it from you?” I asked incredulously.

“He kept it from everyone,” he said. “The band, Kelsi, no one knew. They still don’t.”

“But you knew,” I