Fall Down Easy

by Laurence Gough

  Willows said, “He’s hit banks and trust companies and credit unions all over town, east side and west. What’s he do, toss a dart at the yellow pages?”

  Parker toyed with her salad. The sparrow made a sound like Michael Jackson clearing his throat.

  Answering his own question. Willows said, “I don’t think so. He had a reason for hitting those particular banks. He picks his spots. Those banks don’t appear to have anything in common, but they do — they’ve all got something in common, something that appeals to him. We just haven’t found out what it is yet.”

  Willows tossed another piece of meat out the window, and the bright-eyed sparrow gobbled it up.

  Bait. What they were looking for was the right bait. If they found the right bait, the shooter would pounce, and then it would be their turn.

  Nine

  The night of the shooting, Greg spent several hours poring over the spreadsheets — taking a break now and then to raid his date’s liquor cabinet. The sun came up at a few minutes past seven. Now that he could see where he was, Greg had to get out of there. He used a phone that looked like a miniature rocketship to summon a cab.

  In the bedroom, Sylvia called his name and the sheets made a wet, slithery sound.

  By the time Greg hotfooted it down to the street his cab was right there, gliding up to the curb.

  Fifteen minutes later he was standing in the lobby of a downtown motorhotel, scrawling somebody else’s name on the registration card, paying sixty-eight dollars plus tax for a room with a sixty-eight cent view.

  The motel was a three-story cinderblock walk-up, the kind of place that didn’t count on a whole lot of repeat business. Parking was at the rear. On the registration card Greg wrote that he was driving a brown Ford Taurus, vanity plate HOT. He asked for a room overlooking the parking lot, said he was a lingerie salesman, his samples were in the vehicle, he liked to be able to keep an eye on it. No problem.

  Was the clerk interested in anything? Greg thumped the briefcase down on the counter. He was about a size fourteen, right? Hey, just kidding.

  Now he was lying on the bed in his room, the window open just wide enough to take a header through, should such drastic action be required.

  The badge in its leather case lay heavy on his chest, scrawled thin, silvery lines of reflected light across the ceiling as he breathed, his chest rising and falling.

  He lit a cigarette, rolled over on his side. He’d spent a pound of change at the motel’s newspaper vending machines, bought all the local papers. There was nothing in the Globe & Mail. The Sun had a sidebar, maybe fifty words. No mention of Hilary.

  The Province, a tabloid-format daily, had a blurry front page colour shot of Garcia Lorca Mendez lying right where he’d dropped. He looked like he was taking a nap, except for all the blood, the bullet hole, and the fact that his eyes were wide open.

  Greg hadn’t noticed the sunglasses tucked into the breast pocket of Mendez’s coveralls, or the white shirt and gaudy tie he was wearing under the coveralls, or the bushy eyebrows, expensive haircut … There were a lot of things about Garcia Lorca Mendez that Greg hadn’t noticed — not that he was an unobservant fellow. It was just that it had all gone down so fast. There’d been time enough to pull the trigger and that was about it.

  Greg had always liked the Browning, the go-to-hell look of it, and the lovely shape and weight and balance of it as he held it in his hand. The magazine, packed with fourteen rounds, was a thing of beauty. He liked to turn it in his hand and watch the play of light and shadow on the rounded snouts, staggered brass cartridges. He took sweet pleasure in the strength required to rack the slide, and the crisp metallic click when he manually cocked the hammer was a musical note so pure it was like the song of some sweet bird.

  Sure made a racket when you popped a cap, though.

  The silvery line of light skittered faster and faster across the ceiling as Greg remembered the shoot-out, silk ripping in his ear as Garcia Lorca Mendez wasted a round, the Browning doing a happy little jig in Greg’s hand as he returned fire, missed repeatedly without understanding why, frustration and terror building in him, Mendez’s second shot thumping into his chest. For a split second there, he’d forgotten he was wearing the Kevlar.

  Man, that had been a bad piece of time. He’d felt the bullet rip through him.

  But he’d kept shooting and missing and shooting and missing and shooting and missing until suddenly an enormously complicated look came into Mendez’s eyes and his arm was swinging wide in a sloppy, half-assed salute.

  The twins were bathed in blood. Mendez, his dark eyes full of regret, began to fall. The fight leaking out of him … And Greg, the Browning the only part of him that was under control now, couldn’t stop himself until he’d fired once more; Garcia Lorca Mendez shrugging massively as the 9mm round drilled into him, smacked him down.

  Underneath the photograph in The Province it said — story on page 32A.

  Greg turned the pages, found himself in one of those “no news is good news” situations. Nobody knew who the victim was. Nobody knew what he was doing in the bank. Nobody knew anything about him.

  There was a short, uninformative interview with the bank’s manager, Martin Ross.

  Now you know his name, thought Greg. He skimmed through the rest of the article — lots of guesswork but not much in the way of hard news. No mention at all of the shiny black briefcase, but that didn’t mean anything.

  Greg smoked and watched TV and dozed through the morning. At a little past one he went through the brochures he found in the top drawer of the motel’s blond oak-veneer credenza, settled on a nearby pizza joint and used the phone to order a small anchovies and green pepper and mushrooms, a six-pack of Diet Coke.

  He ate the food standing by the window, looking down at the empty parking lot, melted cheese dribbling on to the mud-brown carpet.

  He guzzled three Cokes, washing down several slices of pizza. The anchovies made him thirsty. Or maybe it was all that heavy brain work. Thinking, maintaining concentration, was hard labor. He’d rather dig ditches.

  He went back to the credenza, pulled out a battered copy of the Metro Vancouver White Pages, AKA phone book. He found the name Ross on pages 1298 through 1300. There were 43 listings for M Ross, a Maria and a Melville, but no Martin squeezed in between.

  The motel charged fifty cents per for local calls. A string of bad luck, he could blow twenty-five bucks. He picked up the phone, put it back down again.

  What was he going to do, say, “Hi, this is Greg, you might’ve caught my act yesterday, I’m the guy who … ”

  Before he made the call, he had to decide who he was. Or rather, who he was going to be.

  The name Tod Erickstad came to him. He thought about it for a minute, and then remembered that Tod was a Ford salesman Greg had met while cruising a lot on Southeast Marine, about nine months ago. Greg wanted to test-drive the five-litre Mustang and see if it was a useful getaway vehicle. He had a hunch the rear-end was too light, and he was right; had ended up stealing a LeBaron.

  Anyway, Erickstad. It’d been mid-February, one of those days when it might rain and it might snow, and in the meantime there’s a wind off the sea and the air is grey and clammy, miserably cold. So Erickstad spots him kicking tires, probably the only living customer in the hemisphere, and he comes roaring out of the showroom with his afterburners on full power and his tie flapping in the wind. He’s wearing a cheap suit that’s about the same shade of brown as the motel carpet, his hair is cut shorter than a graveyard lawn and his baby blue eyes are bright with a lifetime accumulation of stupidity. He’s got a great smile but his breath smells of diesel fumes. His name is Tod. But much worse than all of that is his relentless, unfocused optimism. It cuts through Greg like a dull knife.

  So Greg tells Tod he’s been thinking about a new five-litre Mustang and notices there’s a nice moss green cabriolet on the lot, how much?

  Tod avoids numbers. He walks Greg around the car, shows him the inter
ior, stereo system and intermittent wipers, all that chrome and glove leather.

  Want to take her for a spin?

  Sure, says Greg.

  Tod trots back to the showroom for the keys.

  Greg slips on a pair of black pigskin gloves. Turns his back on the showroom windows to check the load in his 357 stainless.

  Yo, six rounds.

  Tod’s back, winded from jogging across at least fifty feet of asphalt. He unlocks and opens the door, reaches inside and hits a button that unlocks the passenger door.

  Greg gets behind the wheel. Tod reminds Greg to fasten his safety belt.

  They turn on to Marine Drive. Tod asks Greg is there anywhere in particular he’d like to go.

  Costa Rica, says Greg. Tod loves it, cracks up. He actually slaps his thigh. Greg, staring at him, says he just wants to cruise around. He lights a cigarette. Tod powers down his window. The wind is Arctic. Greg turns the heater on full blast. He fiddles with the radio, finds some rap and cranks it.

  Tod asks him does he like rap music. He has to yell, to make himself heard above the blast of noise.

  Greg ignores him.

  After a couple of blocks they turn up a side street. Greg accelerates, brakes hard. By now Tod’s a little worried. Greg powers into a blind corner, the Mustang’s tires smoking as the car slides nicely into a four-wheel drift.

  Tod says, “Okay, that’s enough.” Not so jolly, all of a sudden.

  Greg nods and power-shifts from fourth gear straight into first. The Mustang’s nose dips and the engine howls but hangs together. Greg swerves sharply up to the curb. They’re in a working-class neighbourhood dating from the fifties. Picture windows and single car garages, stucco. Greg hits the trunk release. The lid pops open. He turns off the ignition and tosses Tod the keys, says, “Get in the trunk, stupid.”

  Tod’s jaw drops, but the rest of him doesn’t move an inch.

  Greg points the 357.

  After more than a quarter-century, Tod has finally learned something worth knowing. His eyes are a little darker now — the baby’s leaking out of his blue.

  Smiling, Greg dialled the first number in the phone book. He introduced himself to the woman who answered as Detective Tod Erickstad of the Vancouver Police, asked to speak to Martin Ross.

  Told that he had a wrong number, Greg disconnected without a word.

  And dialled the next number. And then the next.

  Now it was his turn to have what you might call a learning experience. The third number he dialled, there was a fight going on in the background, he could hear glass breaking, people screaming. The fourth number he was treated to a very abusive X-rated answering-machine message. Next up was a guy who worked night shift. No bank manager, he. Then an elderly woman who claimed she was hard of hearing but was actually deaf as an India-rubber plant.

  Greg lit a cigarette. He dialled eleven more wrong numbers. It was surprising how many people were home in the middle of a working day. Unemployment. A hysterical woman who’d backed her car over her daughter’s pet rabbit assumed he was the veterinarian, returning her call.

  “Never mind the fucking bunny!” yelled Greg, losing patience. “Is your husband a fucking bank manager — yes or no?”

  The woman assumed he doubted her credit rating, and matched him oath for oath.

  Greg waited until the snuffling died down and said, “I heard from the woman lives across the street, owns the little black poodle, that you got a little behind, Sears had to repossess your fridge.”

  “What?”

  Greg said, “I said I heard you had a little behind, lady. But even if it isn’t true, I’ll tell you this much for free — if the bunny dies, your daughter’s pregnant.”

  And hung up. It had taken him most of the afternoon to make, let’s see now, eighteen calls. He counted the M Rosses that he hadn’t used his ballpoint pen to draw thin black lines through. Twenty-seven calls to go.

  Greg lit another cigarette, popped the tab on a lukewarm Coke. He went over to the window and looked out at the parking lot.

  There was a black stretch Lincoln down there, late-afternoon sunlight splintering off glass and chrome. As Greg stared idly down at the car, the rear door swung violently open and an anorexic blonde clutching a huge champagne bottle staggered out of the car. She tossed back her head and drank, holding the bottle with both hands, sparkling rivulets streaming over her breasts.

  Greg sipped his Coke, leaned into the windowsill for a better view. A soft and careless breeze played with the blue smoke from his cigarette.

  The woman lowered the bottle, lost her balance and fell against the gleaming black flank of the stretch, finally noticed Greg looking down at her. She smiled and blew him a kiss, then lost her nerve and scuttled back inside the limo. He heard laughter. The door slammed shut.

  Greg went back to making cold calls, his mind full of backseat sex and radically flattened rabbits, the sharp and salty smell of anchovies and the watery look in Tod’s eyes as Greg slammed shut the lid.

  The next three numbers he dialled, all he came up with was a busy signal. He flexed his dialling finger, saw that he was out of smokes.

  Greg went down to the lobby and got change for the machine. He noticed that most of the brands available were American, and asked the clerk why.

  The clerk shrugged. Greg said, “Maybe to avoid the taxes, somebody makes a midnight run across the border every once in a while, huh?”

  The clerk got busy with his paperwork.

  Greg punched up a softpack of Camels and went back to his room. He ate a slice of cold pizza and dialled the next M Ross in the book.

  A woman picked up on the third ring and Greg identified himself as Detective Tod Erickstad and said he wanted to speak to the wife of Martin Ross, the bank manager.

  The woman said, “Mrs Ross died quite some time ago. I’m his daughter, Samantha. Can I help?”

  Her voice was soft as a feather pillow, sticky-sweet as the world’s biggest lollipop. Greg neglected to dwell on the fact that she’d offered to help, instead of merely take a message.

  He asked would it be okay if he dropped by for a few minutes, he just had one or two questions he needed to ask about yesterday’s hold-up. Half an hour later, the front door opened and there she was, a slim blonde with waffle-iron hair, the kind of body you usually only got to see by ripping shrink-wrap plastic off a five-dollar magazine, eyes the same deep, steady green as offshore water, a smile that’d dazzle a blind man’s dog.

  Greg, loping up the walk, smiled back.

  She said, “Detective Erickstad?” He nodded, and she smiled again and moved away from the door to let him in.

  Greg said something about appreciating her seeing him on such short notice. Then flashed his new badge at her, taking sudden unexpected pleasure in her reaction, the way those deep-water eyes widened in a kind of low-level shock. He caught a whiff of her perfume as she shut the door behind him.

  The house was even larger than it had looked from the street, the spacious entrance hall dominated by twin stairs on either side that curved up to the second floor.

  Greg glanced around. “Nice.”

  “Paul Tabler designed it for us.” She saw’ the name didn’t mean anything to him, added, “When it was built, Paul was the hottest thing in residential architecture. You pretty much had to let him have a free hand and hope you could live with whatever he built for you.”

  “Seems to have worked out,” ventured Greg.

  She gave him another one of those killer smiles and led him into the living room, which was situated to take advantage of the view of the park. It wasn’t much of a park, as parks go. More like an oversized boulevard — lots of green grass and a few maple trees. Beyond the park there was an unseen drop to the beach, the Burrard Street Bridge and Coast Guard wharf; private mooring for a few hundred sailboats. Across the harbour was Sunset Beach and then the West End’s picket fence of highrises.

  Before parking in front of the house, Greg had driven around the
block, down the lane at the back. The house was red brick, surrounded by a low red-brick wall topped with black-painted wrought-iron spikes. The building had lots of arches that led nowhere, fake turrets, a steeply pitched slate roof and a front door made of thick slabs of varnished wood. The door had a wrought-iron peephole and massive wrought-iron hinges. The security system was state-of-the-art, though, high-tech electronics and fibre optics, twenty-four digits, green and red lights, a nine-number code that offered a thirty-second response window and a direct line to a top-notch security company.

  Greg made himself comfy on the sofa. Coffee for two was laid out on a silver tray. He admitted he wouldn’t mind a cup, watched her closely as she bent to pour. She carried her own cup to an upholstered chair on the far side of the room, about fifteen feet away. Greg watched her hips move under her skirt.

  There were cookies, too, crumbly thin wafers with white chocolate linings. He helped himself, chewed and swallowed, saw she was openly staring at him and almost wiped his fingers clean on his pants leg, remembered his napkin just in time.

  She said, “I’ve never met a policeman before. Not a detective, I mean … ”

  “Uniforms,” said Greg. “You snag a lot of traffic tickets, I bet.”

  “What’s that, a lucky guess?”

  Greg said, in a mock-official voice, “I happened to observe the shiny white Samurai in the driveway, ma’am.”

  She cocked her head to one side, smiled, ran her finger through that ripply hair. Her ring winked hard blue fire at him. She wore a suede skirt that was a delicate shade of green, a stone-wash black silk blouse, matched diamond earrings and a thin gold ankle chain. No shoes, or nylons or pantyhose, either. Greg’s mouth suddenly felt as if it had been sponged dry.

  He drank some coffee.

  Samantha Ross said, “I know what you’re thinking — how can a bank manager possibly afford a house like this? Am I right?”

  Greg nodded, even though that hadn’t been what he’d been thinking at all.

  “Daddy’s extremely good at handling his own money as well as everybody else’s,” she said. “You should see him play with a calculator. It’s almost erotic.”