Long Fall from Heaven

by George Wier

  “Fine,” Muldoon said. “After seeing the inside of that whorehouse, I’d say I need to see the handiwork itself as opposed to the leavings.”

  “Suit yourself. You’ll see enough, I expect. Have you eaten?”

  “Are you kidding me? No.”

  “Good,” Foley said. “You shouldn’t until much later. Myself, I don’t think I’ll have anything at all for a few days.”

  • • •

  There were six tables. Each bore a body under a drab, grayish drop-cloth.

  Foley introduced Muldoon to the doctor, a fellow who looked to be in his mid-forties named Lester Street. Muldoon chuckled to himself—it would have been a good name for some thoroughfare on the other side of the tracks. Dr. Street’s assistant was a girl of perhaps twelve.

  “Who’s the kid?” Muldoon asked and jerked a thumb at the girl.

  “My daughter,” Street said. “Don’t worry about her. She’s already seen more than you’ll likely see in your entire life.” Street turned to the girl. “Does seeing dead people bother you, Molly?”

  “No, Daddy. Dead people can’t hurt nobody.”

  Dr. Street turned back and raised an eyebrow to Muldoon and Foley.

  “Fine then,” Muldoon said.

  “Let’s get started,” Dr. Street said.

  Street pulled the first cloth back to reveal a big, very badly cut-up body.

  “Turn the sound equipment on, Molly,” Street said.

  Molly reached over to a wheeled cart that bore a large AC Delco sound-scriber with a silver toggle-switch. The thing lit up slowly and began to hum. A recessed turntable began to rotate.

  “Today is November 28, 1943. My name is Dr. Lester Street of the Galveston County Coroner’s Office and I am performing the autopsies of the man and the women who were killed at Mattie Wickett’s whore— boarding-house…”

  Street’s monotonous voice continued with the name of the first subject, Hector “Bevo” Martindale. It detailed the body’s weight, measurements, temperature and pallor, after which Street began to describe Martindale’s injuries. The monologue lasted several minutes. Muldoon and Foley resigned themselves to an incredibly long day.

  Neither man got interested until Street, bending over the body, gasped, then swore softly, then peered more closely into the open cavity of Bevo Martindale’s chest.

  “Don’t crawl down in there, Doc,” Muldoon said. “We may have to send out a search party if you get lost.”

  “Shut up,” Dr. Street said. Molly raised her forefinger to her lips and made a shushing sound beneath a disapproving frown.

  After several minutes of intense quiet, Street stood up straight and turned slowly to the two men. He glanced over at Molly and drew his fingers across his throat, at which point Molly flipped the switch on the sounder-scriber, turning it off.

  “This big fellow,” Street said, “was killed slow. And whoever did it knew what…”

  “What?” Foley asked.

  “Knew what he was doing,” Street said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “I’m sorry,” Street said. “This is a bit of a shock for me. The killer is a surgeon, and a brilliant one.”

  “Alright,” Muldoon said. “So we’ve got a brilliant, murdering butcher on our hands.”

  “Wait a minute,” Foley said. “Dr. Street, you know the identity of the son-of-a-bitch who killed all these people?”

  “Yeah, I think I do,” Dr. Street admitted. He stepped away from the examination table and over to a shelf of medical reference books. He thrummed his fingers along the spines until he found the one he was looking for and pulled it from the shelf.

  “Surgeon is only one of his many talents,” Dr. Street continued. “He’s also one of the most intelligent men in all the sciences.” He handed the book to Foley, who was closest.

  Foley read the title aloud and then the author’s name. He handed the book to Muldoon.

  “Yes. I know who he is,” Muldoon said. “Yeah. You could say we’re in deep shit.”

  [ 24 ]

  Bonaparte Foley sat with Muldoon at a rickety table in a tavern on The Strand. The autopsies had lasted until the sun was down over inland Texas.

  Foley folded his hands together and pressed his forefingers to his lips, waiting.

  Muldoon ordered a gin and tonic. Foley was going to order a coke, but the Federal agent insisted on something stronger. Foley, with a wave of his hand, acquiesced and ordered a shot of bourbon.

  “Okay,” Muldoon said. “I’ll spill it.”

  Foley didn’t so much as bat an eye.

  “His nickname is Longnight. That’s the only name you need to know right now, and that about describes him. Crazier than a shit-house rat, that one. I’ve seen the file, and it’s a doozey.”

  Foley sat and listened.

  “There’s a little town over in Virginia. It’s nothing much to speak of, but there’s a government-run shrink shop there. It’s in an old country manor that survived everything the Civil War, Reconstruction and even the Depression could throw at it. That’s where they house the real nut cases—but only the interesting ones. You know the kind I’m talking about. The kind of people who can do calculus in their heads while they play tubas and shit. There’s one lady there who speaks thirty languages fluently, but she can’t tie her shoes. Half the time she forgets she needs to go to the john and messes up her clothes.”

  Their drinks came and Muldoon knocked his back and asked for another from the barkeeper, a tall, good-looking Irishman. Foley sipped his bourbon. Muldoon regarded the bartender with an odd smile. The fellow quickly moved away.

  “Into this place one fine day comes the maddest hatter of them all. This guy knows things. He knows things the German scientists never dreamed of. A hundred years ahead of his time. Right this minute there’s a team trying to make head or tails of some of the scribblings we lifted from his apartment in Ohio. I’ve seen them. I can’t begin to tell you how or why, but they have to do with magnetic resonance in the ultra-high frequency range where, theoretically, you can make something disappear. Also, he left some notes on hyper-communication using gravity. Instantaneous communication anywhere in the universe, if you can believe it.”

  “Sounds like science fiction,” Foley said.

  “Oh. It is science fiction. The only problem is, most of what he’s written down—at least the parts that our top eggheads can understand—makes perfect sense. So, the thinking is that the rest of it must…”

  “Must make perfect sense as well,” Foley finished for him.

  “Exactly.”

  “Except that he’s a cold-blooded murdering son of a bitch,” Foley said.

  “He is that,” Muldoon said, and began on his second drink, this time only tossing down half of it.

  “So where is he now?” Foley asked.

  “That I don’t know.”

  “Would you tell me if you did?” Foley inquired in slow, measured words.

  “No,” Muldoon said. “Not until I get your word you won’t kill him if you find him first.”

  “What makes you think I’d kill him?”

  “Please give me some credit. I know how the Rangers work in situations like this. You’re not about to leave a guy like this to the tender mercies of some halfwit jury. Not even a Texas jury.”

  Foley sat silent for a long moment. He reached out his hand, lifted the remainder of his drink and tossed it off in one whack.

  “What’s in it for Texas?” Foley asked.

  “America wins World War II,” Muldoon said.

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “There is a project going on—I can’t even tell you it’s name—where we are trying to make a bomb.”

  “We’ve been making bombs since the war began,” Foley replied. “Who cares?”

  “The world will care, once we’re done, if we do ever get done. This is a different kind of bomb. You must keep this under your hat, Ranger Foley—what I’m about to tell you.”

&
nbsp; Foley gave Muldoon a blank look. “I’m not the kind of fellow to run off and blab our secrets to the nazis or the nips. Out with it.”

  Muldoon waited.

  Foley sighed. He raised his right hand and spoke in a tired voice, “I solemnly swear not to divulge any secret to me entrusted which shall compromise the integrity of the United States, her defenses, or her allies. That good enough for you?”

  “It’ll have to do.” Muldoon leaned forward and crossed his arms on the table in front of him.

  Foley slowly leaned forward, but not too close to the man. It was clear that Muldoon wished to impart a secret, but Foley was struck by the intimate nature of Muldoon’s gesture. He waited.

  “This bomb…one bomb. It will wipe out an entire city.”

  [ 25 ]

  He had to see her again. The days and nights had blurred together. He was no longer certain how many he had cut up in an attempt to silence the voice. It didn’t matter. This time it was a voice without words calling him. It was her. She haunted him, if the living could be said to truly haunt, and he very nearly could not complete a thought for the intrusion of her face or her smell or her soft laugh or even her weak cry of pleasure.

  She was no more than sixteen, but at the same time she was as grown as they come. She was young and yet ancient. She was timeless. Like the Delphic Oracle, she recognized the power in him. She knew his unstoppable nature. And she stood at the center of the storm that was Longnight. She was the warm waters that fed him and gave him strength.

  This night, he walked from the Galvez down empty streets. He turned on Broadway Street as if by instinct and slowly paced the twelve blocks until he stood across the street from the DeMour house.

  This night the house was dark. Not a single candle flame flickered behind the black windows of the dark three-story facade.

  His black, double-breasted silk suit shushed as he stepped quick and cat-like across the wide street, his boots whispering quietly over the flat, even brick. He was Longnight. He was a force of nature. He was the soul of darkness.

  • • •

  Their first meeting had been a seven-course meal hosted by the girl’s father. Longnight could barely recall the man’s name. The man himself was unimportant—except, of course, in his own mind. All that Longnight could remember for certain was that the man was an architect who kept his offices in the Sealy Building down near The Strand. He was wealthy, he was singularly vapid and would look fine stuffed and mounted alongside the game trophies in his second-floor billiard lounge. That night before the meal, Longnight had played a round of billiards with the man, bested him twice—briskly—and then permitted the man to win by setting up the final ball for him while missing his own shot at the same time.

  At dinner, the girl, along with the rest of the family, sat at the far end of the table beside her sister. The sister was stiff and cold to him. He had no interest in her.

  Longnight sat next to the architect and opposite the architect’s wife, a small woman with delicate features and a hollow color about her, as if she suffered from anemia. Possibly she had inhibitions against eating.

  Despite the conversation, which was boring beyond belief, Longnight’s full attention was on the girl, though he very carefully did not allow his gaze to rest upon her. In the briefest of moments when their eyes first locked as she came into the room, he knew all he needed to know. The pupils of her eyes swelled to take him in. She cast her gaze away from him, quickly, but that brief instant was all he needed. He knew she was for him. And she knew as well.

  That first night, long after he said his goodbyes, Longnight had his first taste of real womanhood. And he savored every moment of it. He remembered the patterns in her face, the thrumming of her heart against his far greater weight. And he cherished her every whisper.

  • • •

  Tonight would be his final visit. He would soon quit the island. He would take his car to the ferry and then the mainland, would disappear into the dark beyond and whatever destination awaited him.

  He climbed the trellis in shadow. Her window was open and he slipped inside.

  “I’ve waited for you,” she whispered. “I’ve waited every night.”

  “I know,” he said softly. His eyes adjusted slowly to the gloom. She took his coat from him and placed it on the back of her bureau chair, then she came into his arms and kissed him.

  “Ssh,” she whispered. “My sister is in the next room.”

  He placed his hands against the small of her back and raised her up off the floor and into a full embrace.

  “Love me tonight,” she whispered into his ear as he pressed his lips into her neck.

  • • •

  Afterwards they lay together. Moonlight fell across the floor beside them and the music in his head was Debussy’s Clair de lune. Fitting and proper, it was.

  “I have a secret,” she whispered ever-so-softly.

  “Tell me.”

  “Not until I hear your darkest one,” she said.

  “Your price is too high,” he said. “The lone secret of a sixteen year-old girl against my darkest secret. Tell me your secret, and I will choose one of mine. And I promise, it will be far darker than yours could ever be.”

  “Done,” she said.

  “So. Out with it.”

  She placed her lips against his ear. “I am going to be a mother,” she said. “And you are the father.”

  At that moment the world seemed to shift on its axis. Now, no matter what happened, if what the girl said was true, there would be no stopping him. Not even if they killed him. His progeny would go on.

  “You have outdone me,” he said.

  “Your secret,” she said. “Tell me.”

  “Do you know of the murders on Post Office Street?”

  “Yes. It is all anyone can talk about. Are you here to investigate it?”

  “No. It was my work. I am the killer. I am the one they call Longnight. And now you know my darkest secret.”

  “Oh my God. Make love to me. Quickly. Before I scream.”

  “Hush,” he said gently and smothered her mouth with his.

  • • •

  The next morning when she awoke Longnight was gone. She found his gift for her on the dresser. It was a leather book. She picked it up and pressed it to her nose, drawing in the strong, yet pleasing odors of the tannic acid from which it had been cured. The leaves were a creamy white and cleanly cut. She ruffled them and saw strange figures there. Some she recognized as mathematics symbols. Others appeared to be of an electrical nature, as if the author had merged the two sciences into one with a deft hand. The lettering was cursive and spidery, and there were little drawings here and there, interspersed through the text as if graphically demonstrating some idea before going on.

  The daughter of Abraham DeMour sighed and her hand traced a slow circle around her bare naval.

  “My baby,” she whispered to herself. “My little Longnight.”

  The doorknob rattled and she started. She took three steps to the bed and slipped the book beneath the bed covers.

  [ 26 ]

  It was past noon, the day following Homer Underwood’s funeral. The sun was bright overhead. Not a solitary cloud to mar the forever blue bowl of sky.

  Micah Lanscomb would have given anything for a few days on any given ranch far enough away from the coast that you couldn’t smell the ocean air—a few good long days with a horse and lots of pasture land to run it on. He’d not ridden a horse in over ten years, but he couldn’t get the idea out of his head that if he were on horseback instead of at the wheel of a little Daihatsu pickup truck, he’d have time to think better, to work it all out better, and come upon something—or, for that matter, anything—that would send him off in the right direction towards the killer of Jack Pense and Homer Underwood. Or killers, if that was indeed the case. And he couldn’t shake the notion that the two were somehow related. Not that there was much evidence pointing either way. It was just that a certain conversation which
had occurred in front of a greasy spoon restaurant along the seawall hung with him.

  Micah’s mind kept going back to that doorway at the top of the stairs in the quiet, dark of the DeMour warehouse. It was Cueball’s oldest account, this he knew. But what he knew about the DeMours he could have fit on the cover of a matchbook with a magic marker. There was a name rattling around in his head. If he thought long and hard enough on it, he might remember it. Isaac? Abraham? Something like that. But the guy was long dead and gone. He’d been an architect and the patriarch of the Old Island family. Old money. There were three DeMour warehouses, the oldest of which was the one on the island—the one where Jack Pense had breathed his last. But then there were the two newer ones on the ship channel. Most of the business went through there. From Cueball’s stories, the dredging of the ship channel had meant the beginning of the end for Old Galveston. But the new warehouses, that was where the commerce came in. The DeMour offices were there. And—

  “God Almighty,” Micah swore under his breath. “We’ve been looking around for Old Island shit. What we need to be looking for is New Mainland shit.”

  Micah Lanscomb U-turned abruptly in the middle of Seawall Boulevard—what an old-timer such as Homer or Cueball might call a ‘Barney Oldfield’—and made his way back to the intersection of Seawall with the I-45 Freeway leading to the mainland.

  Possibly Cueball could wait a few days for a meeting with Vivian DeMour, which was what he appeared to be doing. And if such a meeting ever did occur—and the prospect seemed remote to Micha’s own reckoning—the two of them would be more likely to end up doing nothing more than reminisce about the old days and the old ways over old high school yearbooks while they emptied one bottle of liquor after another until they passed out on each other’s shoulders. In other words, immerse themselves head and shoulders in ‘Old Island shit’ and not get a damned thing done. But an old dog, now. An old dog such as himself? He had to do his own rooting around for his own bones. And such a dog couldn’t be made to wait for the nod of his master before doing so.

  Micah Lanscomb left the island, almost wishing he were on foot—or better yet, on horseback—and headed off into the blue horizon to God only knew where. But instead he got the little Japanese-made truck up to sixty along the long ride over the bridge to the mainland. Which was somehow just off-center of perfect.