The Long Fall

by Lynn Kostoff

  Evelyn’s lying on her side, propped on an elbow. The sheets have slipped to the rounded curve of a hip. Her hair’s falling in her eyes, and she’s practicing a pout, the sexy kind that Jimmy always associates with French women, though he’s not sure exactly why, since he’s never met one.

  “You were talking in your sleep,” she says.

  Jimmy lifts his head from the pillow. Across the room, morning’s burning in the window. He remembers sitting behind the wheel of his brother’s silver Lexus, coming back into the house and having a couple of drinks, but beyond that, nothing.

  “Who’s Debbie?” Evelyn asks, pinching him. “A rival for my affections?”

  Jimmy frowns, then shakes his head. “Mystery woman. Can’t place the name or the dream.”

  “You sure?” Evelyn’s smiling, her hand slipping under the sheets and moving south. “You sounded a little lovesick, Jimmy.”

  The fingers of the hand she’s slipped between his legs have turned into tiny bustling hives, and suddenly the name’s there.

  “Debbie Greene,” Jimmy says.

  He laughs, looks over at Evelyn, and then jump-cuts to the fifth grade. He tells her about his first official boner. Not the generalized or unfocused boners that came from the texture of flannel pajamas or the chaos of wet dreams, but a boner with a point, though one that Jimmy only dimly understood at the time, sitting with his opened lunchbox in the school cafeteria a table over from Debbie Greene and her wild red hair punctuated with yellow butterfly barrettes. Jimmy had been sitting with Don Ruger and Larry Talbert and unsuccessfully trying to cut a deal involving Cheetos and bologna sandwiches when he saw her glance his way. Once, just once.

  But it had been enough.

  Jimmy felt the sudden confusion in his jeans as the deal for the Cheetos fell through and Debbie Greene sat giggling with her friends a table over, Jimmy taking an orange out of his lunchbox and beginning to peel it, slipping his finger under the rounded navel, the skin giving away, his fingers finding pulp and juice, the smell of the orange mixing with the smell of warm milk from the small waxy container setting next to his elbow.

  The boner had still been tenting the front of his pants when lunch period ended, Mrs. Lidd, his fifth-grade teacher, coming over and getting on his case about finishing on time, Jimmy not wanting to get up from the seat, Debbie Greene and her friends walking by and giggling as they got in line, Mrs. Lidd hovering over him, Jimmy slipping a piece of the orange peel in his shirt pocket as his boner reluctantly subsided and Mrs. Lidd loudly cataloged the various problems Jimmy had in the attitude and discipline departments and made dire predictions about his suitability as a future citizen of the republic.

  Evelyn laughs and asks what happened to her.

  “Mrs. Lidd?”

  “No,” she says, still laughing. “The girl with the butterfly barrettes.”

  “Oh,” Jimmy says. “I only saw her a couple of times after that. Her old man was a manager at the Motorola plant in Chandler and they transferred him out. I think Denver.”

  Evelyn doesn’t have anything to say to that, and in the silence that suddenly crops up between them, Jimmy finds that he doesn’t either.

  NINETEEN

  There’s a lopsided moon outside the kitchen window and a stillness to the night, a kind of space between breaths, that reminds Aaron Limbe of his stint in Nicaragua.

  Six years in the army, the last four in Special Forces, then twelve years on the Phoenix PD, the last seventeen months working for Ray Harp, all of it leading up to where he is standing now, in the kitchen of his childhood home, a tilted quarter moon in the window, and Aaron Limbe holding an eight-by-ten of Evelyn Coates in a white half-slip, one bra strap loose and slipping over her shoulder, her head tilted so that her hair swings free, as she leans into the kiss from Jimmy Coates.

  Coates, shirtless, has his hand resting against her neck.

  Aaron Limbe carries the photo from the kitchen through a small foyer leading off to the front door and into the living room. He adds the photo to the others. Thumbtacked on its north wall in precise floor-to-ceiling rows are seventy-two black-and-white photographs of Coates and his sister-in-law.

  He then walks down the hall toward his bedroom, his footsteps echoing in the narrow space, the light dim from the single ceiling fixture.

  Limbe pulls a black footlocker from under his bed and, with effort, carries it back to the kitchen.

  He works the combination and takes out a Marlin .45 semi-automatic rifle, a Sig Sauer P239, a Charter Arms revolver, and Taurus auto-pistol and places them on the kitchen table. He then sorts through the locker matching ammo to each. He dismantles the guns one at a time and starts cleaning them.

  The phone rings. Limbe has disconnected his answering machine, and he lets the phone ring itself out.

  Limbe swabs out the barrel of the rifle and then attaches a night scope. At his left elbow is a compact pyramid of stacked ammo boxes.

  Aaron Limbe is coming to judgment.

  The waiting’s over.

  Limbe has waited, because that’s what he’s learned, the true weight of time when you placed it on the scales and waited for them to right themselves and balance.

  He is approaching an absolute and true clarity, the same kind he found in the middle of the night in a small cement block room in a nondescript building on the far western outskirts of Managua. It was the kind of clarity only an interrogation room could produce.

  Aaron Limbe knows this: Tie someone to a chair in a bare room, and with enough time and enough questions, you eventually come down to one essential truth—every heart is a crime scene.

  Limbe finishes cleaning the Marlin semiautomatic and starts on the Sig Sauer and Charter Arms.

  The phone again. Sixteen rings before it cuts off. Two more than last time.

  Above the house is the low rumble of an F-15 making its approach to Luke Air Force Base.

  If he closes his eyes, he can see the exact sequence of photos he’s thumbtacked to the north wall of the living room, eight rows down and nine shots per row, seventy-two black-and-whites of Coates and his sister-in-law doing what his master sergeant had called the Gland Dance.

  Limbe massages the back of his neck. That’s where they always start, the headaches, just below the base of his skull.

  Gathering the evidence had not been difficult. Coates and his sister-in-law were as predictable as lab rats. After some of the reconnaissance work he’d done in Nicaragua, tracking two amateur adulterers obsessed with each other’s orifices hadn’t been a stretch. They didn’t see Limbe, because they weren’t looking for him. He’s been following them for over a month and a half now.

  Limbe sets down the Charter Arms and picks up the Taurus. It’s one of two throw-down guns he’s kept from his time on the police force. The Taurus is light, just a little over twelve ounces with a nine-shot .22-long magazine, and easily concealed and therefore handy in tight or unexpected situations.

  Within the next three days, he will kill Jimmy Coates.

  He’s waited patiently, very patiently, for two conditions to manifest themselves. One is that Jimmy Coates must not see his death coming. It must be totally unexpected, something he cannot prepare for or prevent. The second condition was trickier. His death must rob Coates of something important. Coates had to die right at the point where he’d found something that mattered to him.

  His death, in other words, had to duplicate what he’d done to Aaron Limbe when Coates had cut the deal with the police brass, claiming he could put Limbe and Ramon Delgado together the night of the safe-house fire, and Limbe had been forced to resign from the force.

  With a loser like Coates, the first condition had been easy from the start. Coates had never been able to see anything coming. His whole life was a testament to faulty wiring. The second condition was another story. From what Aaron Limbe could see, Jimmy Coates had the complexity of an amoeba. Everything about his life was insignificant. Nothing had ever mattered to him.

  Noth
ing, that is, until the sister-in-law. The last six weeks have proven that.

  When he’s done cleaning the weapons, Limbe wraps each in a piece of cloth and returns them to the footlocker.

  He drinks two more glasses of water, then leans against the sink and closes his eyes. He feels a great still point taking shape within him.

  He’s been dreaming Nicaragua.

  There was a drain in the center of the floor.

  The cement block walls had been painted with lime and were always damp.

  A thing is what it’s named.

  Insurgents, for instance. Rebels.

  You asked the questions, and after a while, you were in the mouth of God.

  Every death is a lesson.

  There were women, locals, who came in and cleaned up afterward.

  Within that interrogation room, Aaron Limbe rediscovered what he’d always known: There are only two worlds, the true world and the fallen world, and in the true world everything has its true shape and true fit, which form and complete the true universal hierarchy, which is forever and untouched by history.

  In the fallen world, there is no clarity, and a thing cannot recognize its own shape. The fallen world is bloat and buzz and everywhere form without purpose.

  The phone starts in again. Limbe takes his time answering it. He knows who it is.

  “Aaron?” Ray Harp asks. “Where in the hell have you been?”

  Limbe enjoys the mix of anger and panic in Harp’s voice.

  “What do you want, Ray?”

  “I want you over here. As in an hour and a half ago. I want you watching my back.” He pauses. “One of Limon Perez’s boys shot Newt Deems. He’s alive and in one of those ICU places, but it doesn’t look good.”

  “I told you trusting Perez was a mistake.”

  “If he’s happy,” Ray says, “the other Mexican gangs go along. They look up to him. We negotiated. Perez wanted a larger cut of the action. The way I figured it, there’s enough green to spread around, so I said okay. Next thing I know, Newt’s in emergency surgery. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Packs of hyenas, Limbe thinks, all of them—Ray Harp, his biker pals, the Mex crank gangs. All of them, nothing more than teeth and fur and the smell of blood in the air.

  “I got the word out to my brothers,” Harp says. “If Newt dies, we’re going to hit Perez hard. Make a counterstatement. I’ll need you to coordinate things.”

  “You waited too long, Ray,” Limbe says. “You should have let me take out Perez six months ago.”

  “Just get over here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Limbe says.

  “Quit dicking around. You heard what I said.”

  “You keep them in their place, Ray,” Limbe says. “You show them their place, then you put them in it and you keep them there. It doesn’t matter if it’s taco-benders or niggers or losers like Coates. You don’t negotiate with them. You draw lines. You hold those lines. That’s all they understand.”

  “Listen to me,” Ray says. “I figure I’m going to need some round-the-clock here until we see how things play out. I want to be ready this time.”

  “You’re already speaking from the grave, Ray,” Limbe says. “It’s over. Limon Perez won’t stop now. You had your chance.” He pauses, then adds, “You’re done. And I’m out.”

  “What’s this shit, out? You work for me.”

  “Not anymore.”

  Harp’s laugh sounds more like a bark. “Who do you think’s going to take you on? You’re a sick motherfucker, Limbe. I gave you a place. No one else will. You’re too fucked up.”

  Limbe has no time for the welter of appetites governed by biker logic that Harp calls a life. He hangs up the phone.

  Then he takes a deep breath and rips the whole unit out of the wall.

  Aaron Limbe knows this: He is coming to judgment. He is untouchable.

  He walks down the hall and unlocks the door to his mother’s bedroom. He’s converted it into a darkroom, and hanging on a thin wire above the pans of developing solution are nine black-and-white shots—reprints of the center row of photographs on the living-room wall. He checks to see if they’re dry and then takes them down and carries them back to the kitchen and sets them on the table in front of his chair.

  He looks over at the pale rectangle between the refrigerator and calendar where the phone had hung.

  Then Aaron Limbe hunts down his Exacto knife and returns to the kitchen table.

  TWENTY

  Hey, Leon,” Jimmy says, “you got a problem with your hearing? A little wax buildup maybe, something along those lines?”

  “You want another?”

  “I do,” Jimmy says, “but that’s not what I was asking you.”

  He watches Leon rack down a new glass and tilt it against the draft spout, four inches of churning foam running and rising to its lip.

  The fact that Leon’s got a new pair of glasses hasn’t improved his skill as a bartender. He sets the draft in front of Jimmy and goes back to work on the model airplane he’s got spread across a sheet of newspaper on the bar top.

  Leon’s turned the inside of the Chute into a regular air show. Suspended from the ceiling at varying heights are scale models of bomber and pursuit planes, a floating arsenal of Bearcats and Mustangs and Spitfires and P-47s and 51s and B-17s and 29s slowly bobbing under the ceiling fans like a horde of oversized exotic insects. Leon’s even got one hanging in the crapper, a fat submarine-sandwich-sized B-24.

  “Don Ruger was in earlier looking for you,” Leon says. “I’m not sure if I told you that or not.”

  “You did,” Jimmy says. “Now you can add memory loss to your hearing problems.”

  “He said it was important,” Leon adds.

  A few stools down a couple of the regulars start launching peanuts at the aquarium tank holding the sidewinder. The snake, thick as Jimmy’s forearm, lifts its head and strikes the glass twice.

  “Hey, Gene, knock it off, okay?” Leon says. “The snake’s mean enough as it is.”

  “Wasn’t me. Pete was shooting the nuts.”

  “Don’t care which one of you’s doing it. Just stop it.” Leon points down the bar with part of a P-38 tail section.

  “You got no sense of humor, Leon,” Pete says. “That’s a real liability in a bartender.”

  “Speaking of which,” Gene says, “you hear the one about the two cowboys decided to become bounty hunters?”

  Jimmy waves him off. “Not right now, Gene. Leon and I were having a conversation.”

  “Tell it or not,” Pete says, “Leon won’t laugh. He’s like that wooden Indian in the Hank Williams song. You know, ‘Poor Old Caligula.’ ”

  “That was a titty movie with Romans,” Gene says. “Remember? We watched it on Cinemax After-Hours.”

  Jimmy keeps trying to get Leon’s attention and the conversation back on track, but Leon’s hunkered over the bar, working on matching the seams in the tail section of the P-38.

  Jimmy finally reaches over and lightly taps Leon on the shoulder. Leon starts, and his thumb slips. There’s a tiny plastic snap, and then a piece of the tail section’s dangling.

  Leon curses and stomps off for a fresh tube of epoxy and more toothpicks.

  Pete gets up and heads off to the men’s room.

  Gene slides down a couple of stools. He’s got a gray crew cut, six Slim Jims marshalling the breast pocket of his shirt, and a rough red rash covering his wrists and forearms. He and Pete work for an exterminating outfit, and they’re a little lax with the gloves and masks when they’re spraying.

  “This one’ll kill you, Jimmy,” Gene says. “See, you got two hard-luck cowboys named Toby and Earl. They’ve done a little of everything, but it’s tough times and they’re broke. Can’t get a job. Then they hook up with this guy tells them he’ll pay six dollars for every Indian scalp they bring in.”

  “I think I’ve heard this one,” Jimmy says, but Gene won’t give it up. He rattles through Toby’s and Earl’s new
career as bounty hunters. The first time out they surprise a hunting party of Comanches and are forty-eight bucks to the good. The next time they scalp six. The time after that, twelve. They’re doing pretty well and thinking about branching out to Apaches.

  “So Toby and Earl, they’ve been tracking this band of Indians for five days,” Gene says, “and they’re ready to make their move. They set up camp at the base of this bluff and turn in for a good night’s sleep.”

  “Okay,” Jimmy says. “I got the picture.”

  “Anyway,” Gene says, unwrapping a Slim Jim, “the next morning Toby’s the first one up. He opens the tent flap and steps out, and what he sees is Indians everywhere. Toby and him are surrounded. Thousands of Indians, one horizon to the other. Toby, he just stands there, taking it all in. Then he starts hollering for Earl to wake up.”

  Gene leans closer, waving the Slim Jim in Jimmy’s face. “Toby’s dancing around yelling to Earl, Take a look at this. We made it, man. The big time. Six bucks a head. WE’RE RICH!'”

  Pete comes back from the men’s. Gene points out he forgot to zip his pants. Pete reminds Gene they still have one more job, a harvester-ant infestation at an apartment complex in Encanto Park, before they punch out for the day.

  Before they leave, Gene tells Jimmy that Don Ruger had been in looking for him earlier.

  Leon takes their empty glasses, douses them in the rinse basin, and reracks them. He draws Jimmy another beer without him asking. Jimmy knows that’s Leon’s way of saying leave him alone.

  The problem is, Jimmy can’t. He needs to know if Leon’s talked to his buddy in Montana. The guy owns a bar, and Leon was supposed to put a word in for Jimmy about a job.

  A regular one, strictly straight-time.

  Jimmy’s trying to work something out, and that’s how he needs to play it. He can’t afford to screw this one up.