Fall Down Easy

by Laurence Gough

  The worst part, of course, was that there was no way of knowing what he’d lost.

  The phone rang, a soft and melodic warbling that he liked to believe drove Marilyn half-crazy with jealousy.

  He stumbled over to the unmade bed, let himself fall across it, a spring creaking under his weight. Snatched at the phone.

  Someone said, “Is that you?”

  It was as if he’d been lying face-up far below the dark surface of a still-water pond, and a sudden gust of wind had unexpectedly swept aside all the small green things that grew upon the surface. Despite the booze, his mind was clear. He could see forever, even beyond the horizon.

  He said, “Bobbi?”

  But it was too late — whoever he was talking to had already hung up.

  Thirteen

  Eddy Orwell extended his muscular arm, locked his elbow, aimed carefully and squeezed the trigger. A fine spray of Windex pebbled the rectangle of glass, frosted the anodized aluminium frame. He put the plastic bottle down on his desk and wiped the glass clean with a paper towel stolen from the washroom.

  Eddy Jr beamed up at him. The kid didn’t have any teeth and he was a little out of focus, but he sure had a nice smile.

  Farley Spears, peering over Orwell’s brawny shoulder, said, “His eyes are set even closer together than yours, Eddy. You must be proud, huh?”

  “Piss off,” said Orwell, not looking up. His desk was cluttered with five framed snapshots of his newborn son, two more of his wife and child together. Every morning, Eddy fouled the air with the vinegary smell of window-cleaner as he sprayed and wiped clean each of the photographs in turn. The daily ritual ate up at least fifteen minutes of his time. The other detectives had found his antics amusing, at first. After a few weeks, though, Orwell’s mindlessly cheerful routine started to get to them. When Spears suggested that someone fill the Windex bottle with urine stained blue with vegetable dye, nobody volunteered. But nobody vetoed the idea either.

  Eddy picked up another picture. Gazing fondly down at it, he reached for the Windex bottle.

  Parker said, “Eddy, would you mind pointing that in another direction?”

  “It bothers you?”

  “Just a little.”

  Orwell said, “You oughta be ashamed of yourself. “

  Willows abandoned his paperwork, leaned back in his chair, smiled at Parker. Dan Oikawa stopped sharpening his pencil. Spears said, “Why is that, Eddy?”

  “Ask yourself a simple question — what’s wrong with a father having a little pride in his family?”

  Parker said, “That isn’t the issue.”

  “Yeah?” Orwell’s blue eyes focused on Willows’ desk, the dusty school photographs of Sean and Annie squeezed together in a single frame.

  Oikawa said, “Air pollution’s what we’re concerned about, Eddy. Not filial love.”

  “That’s your story, huh? Well then, you’d better stick with it, hadn’t you?”

  Smiling moodily, Oikawa finished grinding his pencil to a needle-sharp point.

  Linda, one of two civilian secretaries who worked the squadroom, walked briskly up to Willows and handed him a sheaf of flimsies. A lengthy fax. He thanked her, glanced at the top page. Parker was watching him. He said, “Colón finally got back to us. In English, too.”

  According to the fax, Garcia Lorca Mendez was born 18- 11-48. He’d been with the Colón police department since 1970, served the past five years as a sergeant in the drug squad. During his career as a police officer, he’d been promoted regularly and received three citations for meritorious conduct. He had been shot once, during a drug raid. He had been on an official leave of absence at the time of his death. His reason for travelling to Vancouver was to attend the funeral of a younger sister. He was survived by a wife and five children.

  Parker, indicating the printout, said, “Did they give us the sister’s name and address?”

  “Sure did.”

  Orwell said, “Five kids. Jeez.”

  “It must’ve taken him half his shift to Windex all those pictures,” said Spears.

  Nodding, Oikawa said, “Hard to imagine how he found time to get any work done, isn’t it?”

  Orwell gave him a sour look.

  Willows said, “She lives on Fraser, the six hundred block. Her married name is Springway.”

  “Is there a phone number?”

  Willows shook his head, no.

  “Kind of an unusual name. Can’t be that many in the book.”

  “Probably not.”

  Parker had spent most of that morning since getting back to the squadroom on the phone, laboriously working her way through the more than fifty limousine services listed in the yellow pages. Her ear needed a break. She said, “Your turn, Jack.”

  Willows bent to yank open the bottom drawer of his desk, pulled out the Metro phone book.

  There were only three listings for Springway, none of them on Fraser Street. The deceased sister’s first name was Maria. Willows started dialling. No one answered his first call; the second and third were wrong numbers. He shoved the phone book back in his desk drawer. “Let’s drive out there, see if anybody’s home.”

  “Or if they’re all at the funeral. Any instructions from Panama regarding the disposal of Mendez’s body?”

  “The family wants it shipped home.”

  “Who’s paying the freight?”

  “Not me, I’ll tell you that much.”

  Parker said, “I’m going to sign out a car. I’ll meet you out front in about ten minutes.”

  Willows, concentrating on his paperwork, nodded but didn’t look up. It appeared that the prosecutor’s office was prepared to accept Karen “Honey” Wallace’s defence of reasonable force in the stabbing to death of her pimp, Chet Russell. The autopsy had determined that the night clerk, Wendell Sharp, had died of asphyxiation, and that the various injuries he’d sustained were consistent with the circumstances of his death. An inquest determined that he’d leapt from the Rialto’s window of his own accord. Honey was going to walk.

  Parker signed a pale green Ford out of the car pool, drove around to the front of the building. Willows was waiting for her, climbed into the car. Parker headed up Main to King Edward and made a left.

  Willows glanced at her, back out the window. “Where are you going?”

  “Six thirty-five Fraser, right?”

  “Should’ve stayed on Main.”

  Parker said, “This way I can make a left on Fraser and we can park right in front of the house, don’t have to cross the street.”

  Willows nodded thoughtfully. “That’s important to you, is it?”

  “That’s a busy street, Jack. Four lanes, it’s a miniature freeway, and you can walk a mile before you find a marked crosswalk.”

  Willows said, “Why is that?”

  Parker said, “Because of the graveyard. It’s fenced all the way around, the only way in is via four or five access roads … ” She gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles showed white. “Dead sister’s funeral, my ass.”

  Willows narrowed his eyes against the sun as they turned a corner. They drove past a gap in the cypress hedge that surrounded the graveyard, open black iron gates that framed a view of a narrow asphalt road and close-cut lawns that gently rose and fell, slabs of stone and rare bright splashes of wreathed flowers.

  Parker scanned the house addresses on the far side of the street. “How’re we doing — we must be getting close … ”

  Willows said, “Pull in behind that blue pickup.”

  Parker eased her foot off the gas, pulled up against the curb. The pickup’s tailgate was down, and the bed was hidden in soft drifts of fine grey sand. She turned off the ignition, dropped the keys in her purse, checked the side mirror for traffic, and pushed open her door.

  635 Fraser was a squat cinderblock building with a flat tar-and-gravel roof, iron-barred dusty plate-glass windows and a rusting sheet-metal door. A small sign, faded black letters on a grey background, hanging over the door s
aid, Terminal City Memorials Ltd Est 1943.

  Willows said, “Is this what’s called getting the last laugh?” He tried the door. It wasn’t locked.

  Inside, the air was cool and dim, and the film of dust on the window bled all the colour out of the long, narrow room.

  A heavy workbench ran the length of the far wall. On the bench there was a heavy-duty upright drill press and a number of smaller power tools whose purpose Willows was unfamiliar with and could not easily divine. A thin layer of fine grey dust covered everything except the man slouched in a wooden captain’s chair near the rear door.

  The man was short, muscular, balding. He wore a grey sweatshirt, faded black pants, heavy black boots, glasses with black plastic frames. His pants were smeared with dust. His worn boot heels rested upon a slab of polished granite. A hand-rolled cigarette dangled limply from a corner of his mouth, and a twisted worm of smoke crawled slowly up the side of his face and was swallowed in the greyness of the air.

  Willows said, “Mr Springway?”

  The man’s head tilted towards them. He coughed. Ash fell from the cigarette, exploded on his chest. Willows realized he’d been caught napping. The man’s eyes were a soft, milky blue.

  “Mr Springway?”

  The man stretched, yawned, lifted a booted foot and scratched his leg. He picked up a power drill, squeezed the trigger. The drill’s motor whined shrilly and the sharply pointed bit spun so fast it was a blur. “Who’s asking?”

  Willows showed Springway his badge.

  Parker saw that the slab of polished granite was a blank headstone, realized that the drifts of grey dust were powdered stone carved from monuments to the dead.

  Willows said, “Are you married, Mr Springway?”

  The milky-blue eyes were calm, but the cigarette-end glowed brightly. Springway exhaled a stream of smoke, coughed. “Yeah, I’m married. Kind of.” His voice was soft, barely audible, as if his lungs and throat were clogged with the grey dust that lay everywhere, covered everything.

  Willows said, “Is your wife’s maiden name Mendez?”

  Springway nodded. He removed his glasses and wiped the lenses on the grey sweatshirt, put the glasses back on and took another look at Parker. “You’re a cop too, right?”

  Parker admitted it.

  Springway said, “You want to know about her brother, is that it?”

  “Garcia Lorca Mendez.”

  “Nice guy. I saw on TV what happened to him, that he was killed in that bank hold-up. What a rotten break.”

  Parker said, “Why didn’t you get in touch with us, Mr Springway?”

  “Too damn busy.”

  Willows, indicating the workbench and machinery with a sweep of his arm, said, “Carving headstones, is that what you do for a living?”

  Springway laughed harshly, fumbled the cigarette out of his mouth, coughed, spat into the dust. “There’s no handwork done anymore. Used to be, but not any more. I got an office over on Commercial — a sample book like if you were looking for wallpaper. All I do is take the order, farm it out to a company in Burnaby. They got standard-size slabs, machines you wouldn’t believe, can carve a stone in minutes. Computerized. Anything you want, they can do it. Hearts and flowers, gorillas and goldfish … ” He smiled at Parker. “Custom work, too. You’d be surprised, the weird stuff people want written on their stones. Like the name of a favourite pet, for example. Once in a while you’ll run into someone, always a woman, who’s after revenge. But the nasty stuff, you got to say no, because they won’t let you stick it in the graveyard anyway … ”

  Willows said, “Have you been drinking, Mr Springway?”

  “Yeah, a little. Why?”

  “Could we speak to your wife?”

  Springway dropped his cigarette butt on the floor, stomped on it with the heel of his boot. “No way.”

  Parker waited until Springway had finished rolling another cigarette, then said, “Is she in the house?”

  Springway laughed harshly. He wiped his face. The milky eyes were wet, glistening. His pale flesh was smeared with grey. He said, “Cops! You got a strange sense of humour, lemme tell you!”

  Willows said, “What’d you mean?”

  “What d’you think I mean? Of course she’s in the house. Where else would I keep her, in the trunk of my fucking car?”

  “Good point,” said Parker. “We’d like to talk to her.”

  “Tough.”

  “With or without your co-operation,” said Willows.

  Springway stood up, kicked the chair out of his way and unbolted a door at the back of the shop, led them up a flight of crumbling stone steps and across an unmowed, weed-freckled lawn and into the house.

  Maria Springway was in the living room, perched on the mantle over a dead fireplace, in a brass urn shaped like a rocketship. Springway picked up the urn, handed it to Willows. He turned and looked out the window at the soft green landscape of the graveyard.

  A match flared. Willows smelled the fire, smelled the brimstone.

  Springway, his back still to them, said, “Go ahead. Ask her anything you want.”

  Parker gave Willows a look.

  Willows hefted the brass rocketship and said, “Was your brother on the take — a crooked cop? What was he doing in the bank?” Willows raised his voice a little. “Tell me something,

  Maria. Was your brother laundering Panamanian drug money?”

  There was a small silence.

  Willows said, “I don’t think she can hear me.” He gave the rocket a quick shake. “I think we better let her out. How do you get this open — unscrew it?”

  Springway spun on his heel, reached out and yanked the urn out of Willows’ hands. He said, “Garcia visited us once, about two years ago. Arrived in a stretch limo with a couple of bottles of champagne, flowers. The big reunion. He stayed long enough to tell us what a hero he was, about all the bad guys he’d put away, show us a scar on his leg where he’d been shot, get drunk and throw up all over the sofa. I was helping Maria clean up, didn’t even notice him leave. Like I said, that was almost two years ago. I never heard from him since.”

  Willows said, “He told his superiors in Panama that he was flying out here to attend the funeral.”

  “Well, he didn’t.”

  “How did he know Maria had died?”

  “I called him on the phone.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “No, I left a message.” Springway was staring out the window again. A fractured halo of cigarette smoke hung in the air above his head.

  Parker said, “How did Maria die, Mr Springway?”

  “On a marked crosswalk. Some kid in a stolen car hit her. She was killed instantly.”

  Parker made small, muted sounds of sympathy.

  Willows said, “They get the kid?”

  “He hit a bus. Totalled the car and waltzed away without a scratch. He wasn’t even wearing a seatbelt — the fucking airbag saved his worthless life.”

  The rocketship had extra wide fins for stability. Springway put it back on the mantle. “Sometimes I think she’s up there somewhere, drifting among the stars.”

  Parker couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Springway said, “Garcia was probably up to something, but I don’t know what it was. If I did, I’d tell you.” He flicked his cigarette into the fireplace, and started to cry.

  Willows left his card on the mantelpiece, well away from the urn.

  “Now what?” said Parker as they walked back to the car.

  “More of the same, and then we die.”

  Parker said, “Sooner than later, if you don’t cheer up.”

  Willows smiled. “I’m a little less fatalistic, on a full stomach.”

  “Then you must be awfully hungry, most of the time.”

  Willows watched Parker fumble in her purse for the keys to the unmarked car. After a moment he said, “Want me to drive back?”

  Parker said, “I wouldn’t trust you behind the wheel of my hearse, Jack.”<
br />
  Fourteen

  Greg’s eyes felt as if Mr Sandman had taken the night off, and his good buddy Mr Glueman had worked his shift for him. And their pal Mr Sledgehammerman had joined in, put in a solid eight hours on Greg’s head. He forced his eyes open a little wider. He had no idea why, but he felt an overwhelming sense of dampness. Bright round beads of sunlight glinted on the shiny chromed links of a chain. Pink tiles glistened. Greg blinked twice, and everything suddenly came into focus. He was in the bathroom, curled up in the tub. The tap leaked. He had a wet towel for a pillow.

  He struggled to a sitting position. His knees ached. His head throbbed mightily. He stood up, promptly lost his balance, snatched at the plastic shower curtain and tore it to shreds, sat down hard on the edge of the tub.

  One of his suede penny loafers lay half-submerged in the toilet. He suspected its mate had flown out the bathroom window, which had a shoe-sized hole in it.

  He rested for a little, collecting his thoughts, then climbed weakly to his feet and made for the medicine cabinet above the sink. He gobbled a near-lethal dose of aspirin, splashed the cobwebs from his face. His head felt as if it had spent the entire night being repeatedly dropped upon an unyielding surface from a great height.

  He retrieved his shoe from the toilet, urinated and flushed, turned on the shower. A spray of water pebbled the linoleum floor. He swore, but without much energy or conviction. The ruined shower curtain was heavy-gauge blue plastic decorated with a repeated pattern of groups of naked women huddled under red umbrellas. It was one of the few things he owned, and it hadn’t come cheap. On the bright side, though, it was so ruthlessly tasteless that he was confident that when it wore out he wouldn’t have any trouble finding a replacement.

  Taking his time, making no sudden movements or loud noises, Greg showered and shaved, slipped into a shirt fresh from the dry cleaner’s, faded Levis. By the time he finished his third cup of coffee he was starting to feel human again, and the world had become brighter and more vulnerable.

  Good thing, too, because before he’d set out on the previous night’s journey into drunkenness, he’d added up the wad of crumpled bills hidden in the fridge in a box of frozen waffles. He was worth less than three grand. Twenty-eight hundred and fifty bucks to be exact. Add in the cash in his wallet, he had enough money to last about a week, if he stayed home nights and watched TV.