Long Fall from Heaven

by George Wier

  Longnight dropped a glance at Underwood. The man sat back in his chair across from him and likewise tapped the table to the compelling beat.

  Underwood was a closet homosexual, this Longnight understood upon his first meeting with the man. It was plain to see in his face, if not in his mannerisms. He found Homer engaging and brutally honest, but for the necessarily secretive nature of his proclivitites. Longnight liked the man.

  This was their third and final night out on the town together.

  It had been a week since Longnight felt the hot blood on his hands. The Ranger and the FBI man were too close to catching him. It was his chance meeting with Underwood that had saved him. After a few drinks at the Balinese Room their first night on the town, Underwood leaned forward and whispered, “Can you keep a secret?” Pulling the rest of it out of him had been effortless. Underwood needed company—someone to talk to and who would listen, and who was above all his intellectual peer. The story came out in confidential whispers. Muldoon was an FBI Agent on the island tasked with finding the killer who had cleaned out Mattie Wickett’s whorehouse. For some reason, Muldoon wanted to capture the man alive. Bonaparte Foley, on the other hand, was after blood. The fact that Muldoon had spilled all of his secrets to Underwood implied the existence of a relationship between the two men—likely a dangerous one. Their talk had almost certainly been pillow talk.

  Longnight, to his credit, had listened raptly to Underwood, feigning disbelief where appropriate so as to draw out more and more information. That first night he was satisfied he knew all he needed to, with the exception of how close the two lawmen were to catching the killer. For that, another night on the town had been required.

  This would be his last night in Galveston. Here, in Hanny’s Place, he would listen to the music, breathe in the final quaff of cigarette-laden salt air. Later, when the two men returned to the hotel, Longnight would bid goodnight to Underwood and take a final stroll along the beach beneath the seawall in the dark and hear the waves break against the shore.

  In the predawn hours he would take the Packard and drive west, leaving Galveston and the girl—the mother of his child to be. New Mexico and Arizona had loomed large in his thoughts of late, but the need to escape was far greater than the allure of mere exploration. He must leave the United States for good and all. Possibly he would turn south at El Paso and cross over into Mexico at Juarez. Central and South America beckoned to him. He would disappear, forever, into the night.

  It was fitting. The night was his only true friend.

  A shriek erupted from near the club entrance and the music ground to a halt.

  Longnight and Underwood turned to look at the same instant.

  “Oh shit,” Underwood said.

  Standing inside the doorway, thirty feet away, was Muldoon. And he had a gun in his hand.

  • • •

  The crowd began pouring out of the front entrance. The band laid down their instruments carefully. The old black harmonica player sat in his chair and regarded Muldoon. After a moment he looked over to Longnight and Underwood, who likewise kept their seats. The old man nodded to the two men and then gestured toward Muldoon, as if to say, “This is your problem, not mine.”

  Another man stepped up beside the harmonica player. Longnight pegged the man for Hanny, the place’s namesake.

  “I’m Hanny Blake. Guns aren’t allowed in my club.”

  “Out,” Muldoon said.

  Hanny looked to Underwood and Longnight. Underwood nodded.

  “If there’s any damage to my club, I’ll demand to be reimbursed for it.”

  Homer nodded again.

  Hanny helped the muscian down from the stage and they made their way out the front door.

  The room was empty and motionless, but for the slowly revolving ceiling fans. Most of the smoke had left with the crowd. Muldoon waited until Hanny and the musician exited and closed the door behind them. He turned the door lock and slid the bolt home.

  Muldoon walked over to Underwood and Longnight’s table.

  “Why don’t you have a seat, Denny?” Homer said.

  “Is this your new flame?” Muldoon asked Underwood and gestured to Longnight.

  “Flame? Oh!” Homer laughed. “No. This is my friend. Mr. Talos, this is Denny Muldoon. He’s FBI.”

  “It’s nice to finally meet you, Mr. Muldoon,” Longnight said, and offered to shake hands. It created an awkward moment of long silence. It was clear Muldoon wasn’t the least interested in shaking anyone’s hand. To add to this, Muldoon’s right hand held a revolver of some large calibre. The gun, however was still aimed at the floor.

  “Do you have any idea who this man is?” Muldoon asked Underwood.

  “He’s my friend. That’s all I need to know.”

  “Talos, huh?” Muldoon said, managing a gruff laugh through his glowering countenance. “His friends, though. They call him by his nickname. They call him Longnight.”

  In the speechless silence that ensued, the three men heard the report of a gun going off outside. The inside door handle skittered across the empty dance floor trailing splinters of wood.

  It was Muldoon’s turn to say it.

  “Shit.”

  [ 38 ]

  “There is no way in hell,” Cueball said, “that I’m going to let you use Vivian DeMour as bait.”

  “Not me,” Micah said, “Us.” He took a forkful of pancake and tracked it through the small harbor of syrup on his plate.

  “Not you, not me, not anybody,” Cueball said. “We could wind up getting her killed. It’s too much of a risk.”

  “So is letting Lynch go on killing,” Micah said. “I need you to listen to me for once, C.C.”

  “Alright,” Cueball said, his arms braced against the bar. Micah sat on a barstool opposite him and gobbled his pancakes. It was the way Micah did everything—with a quiet yet rapid relish. “I never said I wouldn’t listen to you. That I’ll do. But I do reserve my veto power.”

  “Fine,” Micah said. “Now, let’s assume that Lynch has figured out that Lindy DeMour was his mother. He knows she’s dead. Also, he must know by now that Longnight is his father. That explains all the correspondence with Hub Bailey, the fact that the DeMours have been paying for all the silence about their relationship with a killer by keeping his prisoner account full.”

  “How do you know about that?” Cueball asked.

  “Found that out from Hub Bailey. By the way, I had to make up a little white lie. Something about fifty-thousand dollars dropped off to you in cash from someone in the State House. The refund from Lynch’s prisoner account. Remember Sheer saying Lynch had that much in his commissary account.”

  Cueball laughed. “I’ll have to figure my way around that one when he comes asking for it. But do go on.”

  “So. Lynch thinks he can wipe out the DeMours. Maybe he imagines he can come into the family money. I think he was trying to get to the family papers when he opened that safe after he killed Jack. I think he forced Jack to tell him everything he knew, including where the family papers may have been. Then he killed him.”

  “That makes sense,” Cueball said.

  “And there’s only one way I know of to make him come running.”

  “Vivian.”

  “Yeah.” Micah said, “And to do this right, we’ll have to get word to Hub Bailey that Vivian DeMour is meeting you to pick up the fifty thousand dollars in person. I can tell Bailey that you decided to go around him and take the money directly to Vivian.”

  “All this presupposes that your buddy Hub Bailey is feeding information to Harrison Lynch,” Cueball said.

  Micah was mildly surprised his boss had let him get so far along with this particular line of thought. He decided to press onward and damn the torpedoes.

  “How else could Lynch know within a day of getting to the Island where the family papers would be, where Jack Pense was, and maybe even how to find Homer.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Cueball said and slapped the counter
with one meaty hand. “There seemed a little too much coincidence all along here. Jack Pense was on my payroll and guarding a warehouse owned by the DeMours. It wasn’t just a safe and a warehouse. It was the safe in the warehouse.”

  “Right,” Micah said.

  “Okay. Go on.”

  “So to do this right, we need not only Vivian, we’ll need you and me and we’ll need somebody I sure as hell don’t relish including. Our other musketeer.”

  “Leland Morgan,” Cueball said. “And the Galveston police force.”

  “Right. We’ll need some backup for this operation.”

  • • •

  Micah left for the ASG building.

  When he got there, Hub Bailey was doing some filing. From what Micah could gather, the entire third floor filing room, a good chunk of the third floor space, was Bailey’s own bailiwick, and he didn’t trust anyone to file anything for him. Micah had met people like that before: methodical to a fault.

  “Mr. Bailey?” Micah called back into the dim space.

  “Hello! Back here!”

  “It’s Micah Lanscomb.”

  Bailey’s glasses were pushed up onto his forehead. He had a stack of papers in his hand. He was sorting them into a row of smaller stacks on a tabletop in front of a long row of four-drawer file cabinets.

  “Oh! Mr. Lanscomb! I was hoping you would come by. I hope you brought a check with you.”

  “No such luck,” Micah said. He positioned himself opposite Bailey with the table between them. “It appears that Mr. Boland is delivering the money to Ms. DeMour himself.”

  “Oh my God! He mustn’t do that. She’ll only make matters worse.”

  Micah had to suppress a smile.

  The man was clearly agitated. He dropped the stack of papers on his desk and started to walk away, but then turned and regarded Micah as if seeing him for the first time.

  “When is this meeting supposed to occur? And where?”

  • • •

  The sun was hidden behind a bank of clouds that outlined the Island in shadow. The Gulf gleamed brightly. Leland Morgan pulled up in front of Nell’s Diner and nodded to Cueball and Micah through the plate glass window.

  He came in and took a seat. Micah handed him a menu and Morgan batted it away. Cueball laughed.

  Nell came over and took their orders anyway. Then she disappeared into the kitchen.

  “I want your assurance that Vivian DeMour will not be in any danger,” Cueball said.

  “My men will be watching. Archie Ransom will be on the roof of the automotive store next door.”

  “The sharpshooter?” Micah asked. “Good. I like that fellow.”

  “No,” Cueball said. “No sharpshooter. No shooting Lynch.”

  “I don’t get you, boss,” Micah said.

  “You don’t have to. All you have to do is what I say. And Morgan, are you and I also clear on that?”

  “Clear as can be. But I want to know why.”

  “Maybe after this is all over, I’ll tell you. Not now. And just so we have all this straight, Viv is to pull up to the motel room door, get out, unlock the door and go inside.”

  “Right,” Morgan said. “She’ll be wired and she’ll be listening and we’ll tell her if it looks clear for her to do so.”

  “What if you see Lynch?” Micah asked.

  “I’m counting on that,” Cueball said. “I’m going to be there.”

  “My initial plan,” Morgan said, “was that if we were to see Lynch first, we would take him down. Now you’re changing all that. It makes the whole situation far more dangerous. For my men, for you and Micah, and for Ms. DeMour.”

  “I don’t care what you think about this or anything,” Cueball said. “That’s the way it’s going to shake down.”

  “Why not just shoot him through the heart?” Micah asked. “Or the head?”

  “Shut up, Micah,” Cueball said. “The subject is closed. Alright, Morgan, so the minute Viv goes inside, what’s your plan?”

  “I’ll have my men inside. They are to get her into the bathroom and close the door. She’ll be shielded there.”

  “Your men will be in the room?” Cueball asked.

  “They’ll be there.”

  “Good,” Micah said.

  “You going to pin Lynch for killing Jack Pense?” Cueball asked.

  “It’s a done deal. The District Attorney is preparing the indictment as we speak. I’ll have the warrant in the next couple hours.”

  “In my experience,” Cueball said, “the first casualty in any battle is always the plan of battle. You just protect Vivian, Leland. If anything goes wrong, I’m holding you personally responsible.”

  “What would you do to me, do you think? Feed me to the crabs?” Morgan chuckled.

  Cueball fixed Leland Morgan with a cold stare. “That sounds far too merciful compared to what comes to mind.”

  [ 39 ]

  “I never did have any use for waiting,” Micah said.

  “You want to go get him right now? He’s got to take the bait we’ve offered. If we screw this up, he walks. But you know that.”

  Micah leaned forward and pressed his head into his hands. The sun was beginning its downward climb somewhere behind the house. The shadows in the front yard lengthened.

  “I need to replace that bulb over there,” Cueball mumbled to himself.

  “How do you do it, C.C.?”

  “Do what?”

  “Just sit there and think about replacing light bulbs?”

  Cueball ran one leathery hand along his jawline. “I’m just like you and everybody else,” he said. “I don’t like waiting either, but when a fellow has got to do something he had better get after it, whether it’s waiting, dancing or playing mumble-peg.”

  “Or killing,” Micah said.

  “Or killing,” Cueball said. “Which, in this case, is not going to happen.”

  “I still don’t understand it,” Micah said and ran his hand through a long shock of hair, wiping away the sweat.

  “Why don’t you go home and get some sleep. I can call you when the time comes. There’s several hours left to go and one of us should get some sleep. Five-thirty a.m. comes early.”

  “Can’t,” Micah said. “Too keyed-up.”

  “Well then, why don’t you go out? You know? It’s only eleven o’clock at night. You could find a nice young filly somewhere and—”

  “Sow some wild oats?” Micah finished for him.

  “Something like that. Or not. Hell, I don’t know and I don’t care. But anything beats watching you punish yourself since time immemorial. You need a woman, Micah. A good woman. There are some still out there. Women like that Minnie. Muldoon’s nurse.”

  “Now how the freaking hell did we get on this topic?”

  “It always comes to it,” Cueball said. “Women.” Cueball took a long pull on his glass, eased back and sighed.

  Micah paused, letting it soak in. He thought of a reply, then thought better of it.

  “You know,” Cueball began, almost offhandedly, “you never told me the whole story about you. And Diana.”

  “Yeah. I know. There’s only that one girl for me, and she’s resting right now.”

  “In a cemetery, my friend. In a cemetery.”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Cueball twisted the lid off the bottle and filled Micah’s cup.

  Micah studied the filled glass. He picked it up, drained it in one long pull, and sat back, waiting for the world to begin spinning. When it didn’t, he laughed out loud.

  “Okay, C.C.,” he said. “I’ll tell you. Your damned eternal patience is an abomination before the sight and mind of God.”

  So then and there the story came out—about how a wandering man, stranger to his own home and life, trekked across America in search of… something. About how he found comfort and solace when he returned home in the arms of a Juilliard harpist. The story came from the tall, wiry man without any recrimination, without tears, and without a br
eak. To his credit Cueball Boland listened to every word. By the time he was done, it was time to get ready for their early morning appointment.

  [ 40 ]

  Micah Lanscomb had brought more guns with him than the two of them would ever need, including a Remington 12-gauge riot gun, his first pick, an AMT Hardballer .45, satin-finish, adjustable trigger pull, triple-safety. After that there was the Remington 22-250, a deer-rifle/sniper rifle with the Starlite scope. And one of Micah’s favorite guns—a British .303 Enfield. A beauty of a rifle, the wood polished so that the tawny-brown grain had a lustre to it and the black, hardened steel smooth and cold to the touch. A gun without remorse, without conscience. A killer of a gun.

  Micah was hoping he would get the chance to take down Harrison Lynch. Cueball or no Cueball.

  Cueball Boland was sitting in his truck when Micah pulled up. “We won’t need any of this firepower, Micah. Like I said before, no one shoots Harrison Lynch.”

  Micah didn’t comment.

  • • •

  The parking lot was empty, except for a lone sedan parked down at the end. That would be the room that Lynch would enter.

  The Bayside Motel had seen better days. In its tourist court heyday, it had seen the likes of musicians who played at the Balinese Room and even in the clubhouse at the Galvez. Ultimately, it had made its money when the big hotels were full in a time when the Island was packed shoulder-to-shoulder and there was spillover to be had. Now it was a seedy, shabby, run-down shadow of its former self, a haven for transients.

  Cueball and Micah parked at the small lumber supply place next to the motel, got out and walked around the corner of the building where they could see the street and part of the Bayside parking lot.