The Long Fall

by Lynn Kostoff

  EIGHT

  You were fine,” Evelyn tells her husband, lightly placing her hand on his chest. “Relax, okay?” A part of her listens for any false bottoms to her words, because the truth is he was less than fine tonight, their coupling never quite in sync, Evelyn struggling to meet and match his rhythm, and by the time she’d adjusted, feeling a small welling start deep inside her, Richard had already finished, his orgasm tearing a low groan from him, just before he dropped his face into the pillow. A few moments later, he pulled out and rolled over on his back.

  “It’s just that things have been kind of tense lately,” he says as his breathing evens. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. And tonight didn’t make anything better with Jimmy showing up out of the blue.”

  “Like I said, relax. It’s not like I was timing you.” Though that, too, was not strictly true. Evelyn had looked over at the clock.

  For most of their marriage, Evelyn had no real complaints about their lovemaking. Richard was a patient lover, methodical and attentive, skillful if not as passionate as Evelyn sometimes hoped for, but true to course, both of them early on in the marriage having discovered the basic elements of what gave each other pleasure and staying with them. There may have been few surprises between the sheets, but there were equally few disappointments also.

  Evelyn had been looking forward to having more time together after she quit the airlines, but everything in their lives had quietly shifted off center after her father-in-law died. With Richard, the dynamics of their lovemaking turned lopsided. Its frequency increased but became increasingly shadowed by something else, a small rift, Richard not quite there even while he moved between her legs, Evelyn sensing it even in his kisses, something purposeful and resolute channeled into affection and attraction, as if even his own pleasure had become secondary, subordinated to the importance of delivering sperm.

  Because that’s finally what drifted between them, shadowing them both in and out of bed—Richard’s desire for a child. He saw starting a family in the same terms as starting a new business. You made plans and put those plans into action. You applied yourself. You stuck to your goal. You made things work.

  It’s not that simple, Evelyn wants to tell him, but she can’t. He can’t or won’t talk about his father, and she can’t or won’t tell Richard that she’s continued to get her birth control prescription filled.

  It should be simple. After all, they know each other better than anyone else. They’ve made a good life together. They should be able to talk things through. They’re two rational and sensible adults.

  Except Evelyn’s also discovered something. She’s finding it easier and easier to lie. Each lie is like opening a window. She’s not sure if she’s letting something in or out, and for now she’s not sure it matters.

  Richard rolls over, presses his lips lightly on hers, and gets out of bed. It’s the beginning of another ritual she’s accustomed herself to over the years: Richard’s postcoital shower.

  Tonight, though, he hesitates, standing naked by her side of the bed, and Evelyn gives him a smile, pursing her lips, a little test run to perhaps getting him back in bed for another try. She still feels the faintest outline of the orgasm she was headed toward earlier.

  “He’s got to learn to help himself,” Richard says. “There are limits. Everything has limits. Even forgiveness. Maybe especially forgiveness. Jimmy still has to learn that. He would have lost the farm unless I stepped in. I did what I had to. That’s never easy.”

  Evelyn can still hear it: the long lean on the doorbell. She and Richard had been out back on the deck, Richard grilling salmon steaks, so she had answered the door and found her brother-in-law on the front steps, looking like he’d been mauled, Jimmy unshaven, in dirt-stained jeans and a beat-up Phoenix Suns T-shirt ripped along the seam of the right shoulder, a tuft of hair poking through, his skin blotchy and red and his eyes almost swollen shut. He’d stumbled past her into the house, saying over and over in a raspy voice that he needed to talk to Richard.

  Richard had closed the sliding glass doors to the deck, and Evelyn had stood in the kitchen with her glass of white wine, overhearing snatches of conversation.

  I’m begging you, Richard.

  Never change. Your own good.

  I’m jammed.

  Has to stop sometime.

  Don’t understand. What they did and what they’ll do if.

  Dad’s problem, he didn’t.

  Will you listen to.

  Same thing. All your life.

  Evelyn hears the shower going, and Richard talks as he adjusts the water temperature. “What’s right is never easy. Nobody seems to understand that anymore, Evelyn.”

  Her hand has drifted down over her stomach. She closes her eyes. She bows her legs so that her feet are touching, sole to sole. The water drums the shower walls, shrouding her husband’s voice. Evelyn moves her fingers through her pubic hair. Her breath catches as she finds herself.

  NINE

  The master plan’s up and running except for when Jimmy puts in a call to Don Ruger, and Teresa, Don’s wife, picks up, and as soon as she hears Jimmy’s voice, immediately hangs up.

  Call number two. Ditto.

  On the third, Jimmy says as quickly as he can, “Come on, Teresa. Let me talk to Don.”

  A little hesitation and enough silence for Jimmy to lever in with, “Otherwise I’ll have to come over there. I really need to talk to him.”

  Teresa bangs down the receiver hard, but the connection’s open. Thirty seconds later, Don’s on the line. Jimmy can hear Teresa in the background bringing down a bilingual string of curses upon his head.

  Jimmy doesn’t waste any time. “I got something lined up, Don. Something solid.”

  Don clears his throat a couple of times.

  “Did you hear what I said? I got a job I could use some help on.”

  More silence and throat-clearing backdropped by Teresa’s wrath.

  “Is there a problem?” Jimmy asks. “I mean, besides Teresa’s ongoing desire to castrate me?”

  Jimmy figures the guy who climbed Mount Everest, that was tying shoes compared to trying to get on Teresa’s good side. In her eyes, Jimmy was a direct emissary of El Diablo, and whose sole purpose was to devise ways to lead her husband astray. No way Jimmy’s ever going to change the color on that picture. Teresa’s first generation, but the family taproots are still in south Mexico, and she’s a starter for the Pope’s team.

  “When you planning to do it?” Don asks finally.

  “Today.”

  “Oh man. Today? The thing is, I gotta hang a couple ceiling fans, and then I promised the kids I’d take them to the Hall of Flame museum, look at all the fire-fighting stuff.”

  “Excuse me,” Jimmy says. “I must have the wrong number. I thought I was talking to Don Ruger, this guy I know who the other night at the Chute was begging, practically hands and knees, the guy begging to be let in if something came up on account of this guy is going crazy punching the clock at Renzler’s Meats and watching his paycheck go up in Pampers and having to do stuff like hang ceiling fans. This guy, Don Ruger, was looking for a little supplemental income, no withholdings, and enough action, get the juices flowing again, to remind him that there’s more to life than cutting rump roasts and going to eight o’clock Mass and doing ring around the rosary.”

  “Oh man,” Don says again. “It’s just that I ran into Pete Samoa yesterday, and Pete was saying it might not be a good idea—even though you’re my friend and all, Jimmy—to hang out with you right now. Pete’s hearing that Ray Harp’s plenty pissed at you and that’ll extend to anyone in the vicinity.”

  Jimmy sighs. “Don, what do you think the point of this job is? I’m going to use my cut to settle with Ray. Ray’s not interested in you. Besides, he’ll never have to know you were in on it. You’re clear as far as that’s concerned.”

  “Maybe,” Don says. “It’s today, you said?”

  “This afternoon. We need the morning to get organize
d, set things up. Are you in or not?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “You’re in, we’re moving. I’m at the Mesa View. Get over here as soon as you can. If Teresa says anything, tell her you got to take me to the doctor, and they’ll probably have to run some kind of tests afterward.”

  “What for?”

  “Who cares? Tell her anything. She’ll be happy enough just to hear I’m sick.” Jimmy pauses, about to hang up. “Oh, I almost forgot. Bring your ATM card. We’re going to need some up-front money.”

  “You didn’t say anything about front money before.”

  “I know. I just said I almost forgot. That means I didn’t think of it until now.”

  “How much you talking about?”

  “Four Bens.”

  Don’s back to the throat-clearing routine. Either that or the line’s sprouted some serious static.

  “It’s a stake, Don,” Jimmy says, unsuccessfully keeping the impatience from his voice. “Christ sake, this job’s a cherry. You’ll get the front money back before we do the split. The thing is, if you’re in, we need to get moving. I’m talking both-feet commitment.”

  “Okay, okay,” Don says. “I’ll see you in a half hour.”

  Jimmy then puts in a call to Pete Samoa for two pistols, Jimmy explaining no heavy artillery, just something that makes a simple statement, a Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter, say, or a Colt Cobra, Pete of course bitching about the short notice, Jimmy for his part bitching about Pete’s prices, but the thing’s in motion by the time he hangs up.

  Don’s outside the Mesa View in his yellow Aries, and Jimmy hops into the passenger seat, and they head for Baseline, driving west until they spot an ATM, Don extracting the four Franklins, his feet wet now and his mood improving. He’s nodding his head and grinning. Jimmy turns on the radio, catches his favorite oldie, Van Morrison growling his way through “Gloria,” and that just sweetens the pot.

  “I got to tell you,” Don says when they’re back on Baseline. “After I hung up talking to you, I unpacked one of those ceiling fans. I still wasn’t sure, you know, and I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, me doing something regular around the house, helpful regular stuff, you know; but then I’m looking at this clump of wires, and the instructions are in three languages, and Manny’s got the cartoons blaring and Nina’s crying and Gabriel and Gabriella are playing around in the toolbox, and I’m trying to figure out what color wire is the ground, and then I’m just looking at the picture of the ceiling fan on the box, the thing, it’s hanging down from a bunch of white puffy clouds, lots of blue sky around, and the next thing I know, I’m in the Aries on my way to the Mesa View.”

  “The Big Itch,” Jimmy says. “It’s there, you got to scratch it. That’s what fingers are for.”

  They hit a strip mall anchored by a Target. Jimmy likes the store’s logo, that red bull’s-eye. They buy a package of thin latex gloves, two canvas bags, some allergy masks, a couple of baseball caps, two pairs of wraparounds, and a large blue bandana that Don can twist headband-style to cover the bruises and stitches on his forehead from getting clotheslined on the front steps of his house by Teresa when he’d come in late from the dog track.

  “Some different wheels,” Jimmy says. “That’s what we need now.” Don backtracks, going east on Baseline, to a place Jimmy noticed on the way in, Westfield Automotive, a bread-and-butter repair shop sandwiched between a Wendy’s and a florist’s.

  If Jimmy’s going to boost a car, he’d just as soon avoid messing with the mechanics of the new antitheft devices or scouting row after row in a mall parking lot for a careless shopper.

  He tells Don to park a couple of slots down from the entrance, out of sight of the doors, and Jimmy gets out and saunters in.

  The woman behind the counter is in her early fifties with some mortuary-quality makeup. Nothing in her face moves when she smiles and asks what Westfield Automotive can do for him. Her hair is a shade of brown a decade behind her eyes.

  Jimmy tells her he has a sick pickup and he’s shopping around, looking for a rebuilt engine.

  The woman nods and says she’ll get Mac. He’s the one Jimmy needs to talk to.

  As soon as she leaves, Jimmy scans the wall to the right of the cash register. It’s full of invoices and dangling car keys. Jimmy spots an Acura he likes and grabs the paper and keys, stuffing them in the front pocket of his jeans.

  Then he stands at the counter and discusses the availability of rebuilt engines with Mac and says he’ll get back with him soon.

  Jimmy exits Westfield Automotive and heads for the gravel lot behind the shop, spotting the gold Acura in the second row and nodding to a mechanic taking a cig break at a back bay, Jimmy pulling out the invoice and keys and walking over to the car. He gets in and fires it up.

  He drives back to the Target parking lot. Don Ruger shows up a few minutes later. He takes the essentials from the Aries and moves them to the Acura.

  They’re off, Jimmy checking the dash clock and seeing they’re ahead of schedule, then cranking up the air in the Acura, chasing down a decent radio station, hitting a drive-through for a couple of sodas, and heading north toward Pete Samoa’s.

  It’s a fine day, the sky a soft blue, sweet as an open billfold, temp in the low nineties, Jimmy feeling it, that point where luck turns a corner and it’s all systems go. There’s not a cloud in sight for at least one hundred miles.

  The radio’s playing the Stones.

  Pete has the goods ready. An Astra Constable .32 for Don, a Charter Arms Pathfinder for Jimmy. Pete tells them both handguns have been around the block a few times so it’d be a good idea to wear gloves and dump both guns the same day.

  Jimmy takes Route 10 to the Hohokam Expressway then north to Scottsdale. Jimmy hangs a right on Chaparral Road. He’s thinking about two nights ago, going to his brother for help, Jimmy hating the memory of the pure need in his voice, the unabashed begging that Ray Harp’s ultimatum after their little session in the desert had reduced him to, Jimmy hating that need in his voice even more than he hates Richard refusing to listen and shutting him down.

  The sound of yourself begging, no one should have to hear that.

  So you start at the beginning. That’s the plan, Jimmy tells himself. You start at the beginning.

  A half mile down Chaparral, Jimmy pulls into the lot for a video store. Less than a block away are the sign and logo—a two-armed saguaro crested by a bright yellow sun—for Frontier Cleaners. It’s the one featured on the calendar, the first of the seven stores in his brother’s chain.

  Jimmy runs through the moves one more time for Don Ruger. The Acura in the employee parking lot, out back. Usually seven people per store, five with the machines, a manager roaming, a cashier. Don going in the rear door, herding the employees into the break room. Jimmy through the front, locking the doors, taking the cashier, Don watching the manager until he or she opens the safe, then moving the manager and cashier to the break room, locking all of them in. Jimmy cutting the phones. Don and Jimmy leaving through the back door.

  Simple and straightforward, that’s the ticket. Minimum surprises. Jimmy knowing the layout of the store and the workstations from his short stint delivering for Frontier after his brother locked down a contract with a nursing home franchise. As far as jobs went, it wasn’t too bad, Jimmy getting to know a couple of the RNs at the homes who knew some fun ways to compensate for an eight-hour face-to-face with mortality, Richard constantly on Jimmy’s back about being on time and having to let him go in another object lesson for Jimmy’s own good.

  Jimmy’s smiling now, though, getting out of the driver’s and moving to the passenger seat, putting on the baseball cap and sunglasses, looping the allergy mask around his neck, tucking the Charter Arms in the waistband of his jeans and pulling the Phoenix Suns T-shirt over it. The canvas bag is between his feet. He’s ready.

  They wait until there’s a break in customer traffic, then Jimmy’s out and through the front doors, locking them, flip
ping over the CLOSED sign, and pulling down the blinds before the cashier registers what the sequence is leading to. Jimmy can hear Don in back, rounding up employees.

  Jimmy drops the canvas bag on the counter and points toward the register. He has his right arm bent, the Charter Arms pointing at the ceiling.

  “Everything,” he says.

  “The coins, too?” the cashier asks.

  “I said everything, didn’t I?” Jimmy thinking this is more than a holdup. It’s a little object lesson for Richard as well.

  Everything.

  Don walks the manager up and takes over watching the cashier while Jimmy moves the manager to his office and the safe. The manager’s a dapper silver-haired guy, starched white shirt and conservative tie, who has the irritating habit of repeatedly pointing out the obvious.

  “This is wrong,” he says over and over. “Wrong, I’m telling you. To come in here and do this, it’s not right. Criminal activity is wrong. This is a respectable business. We’ve never been robbed before. This is not right, what you’re doing. There’s no way you can pretend otherwise. It’s simply not right.”

  Jimmy finally has to give the guy a close-up of the Pathfinder to get him going on the safe.

  When they’re done, Don locks the manager and cashier in the break room with the others. Jimmy cuts the phone lines.

  They’re out in less than seventeen minutes.

  Jimmy tells Don to take Hayden Road north toward Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard.

  Jimmy sets the canvas bag on the floor. Don drives them through Old Scottsdale. He’s a driver’s-ed teacher’s dream—no speeding, Mr. Rules of the Road.

  The deejay on the radio is everybody’s friend.

  Even with the car windows closed, Scottsdale smells of money. Every blade of grass has a price tag.