Walter Mosley - The Long Fall

I was wrong.

There was nothing ordinary about that flight. From the moment we took off the airship was buffeted like a dead leaf in white water. My head struck the window and only the seat belt prevented me from bouncing across the cabin. I kept my eyes closed but that wasn’t much help. The plane veered left and then suddenly went right. I knew that couldn’t have been the pilot’s intention. We bounced and shook for what seemed like a very long time, but when I peeked at my watch I saw that we were only nine minutes into the flight.

I looked around the cabin, expecting to see terror in the eyes of the other passengers. I was wrong there, too. Two ladies were having what seemed like a pleasant conversation. One guy was reading his newspaper, and the man next to him was sleeping.

The world outside my window was the same blue of the sky in my dream. For some reason the memory of the nightmare partially negated the terror of the flight.

At some point I was further distracted from my fear when an errant thought entered my mind. I remembere sd. ifyd that I didn’t even know what Roger Brown looked like. I had maybe doomed a man without ever seeing his face.

The flight banged on like an old truck without shock absorbers making its way down a rutted country road. But the tumult and roar receded in my mind. I’d never been in the armed forces, but I had been through a war or two. This ride, I came to feel, was little more than one of my cold showers, a prelude to a weeklong day of adversities. I grinned at the fear roiling inside me. I didn’t owe it anything but my company.

Ê€„

14

As soon as I got off the plane my hands began to tremble. The fear that I’d held down blossomed, forcing me to walk slowly so as not to stumble. It was a small airport with a magazine rack and a hot dog stand but it felt like nirvana to me.

Zephyra had reserved a car at the best rental service. Somehow she had pooled the various credit-card air miles and rent-a-car points of all her clients so that we usually got good deals on flights, rentals, and even some hotels.

A pleasant young man with pimples and big teeth gave me a map and the keys to a downsized red SUV. I sat in the driver’s seat for a long time, studying the city streets. I’d been to Albany many times before because that’s the state capital and a large percentage of your politicians are crooks. I’d done cover-ups and smears across the board up there but I didn’t know the city the way I knew New York, so I took the time to refamiliarize myself with the general lay of the town.

The car radio was playing “Smooth Operator” by Sade when I turned my attention from map to match-book. It was a wonder to me that with all the searching by security experts they couldn’t come up with a book of matches. Luck, more than anything else, is what saved you up in the air.

Oddfellows Pub, the matchbook’s advertiser, was on the north side of town. It seemed like a straightforward deal: I’d go to the bar, flash Ambrose’s card along with a story, and they would have some memory, allowing me to get that much closer to this pretender’s throat. But there again I was mistaken.

That stretch of North Pearl Street was lined with businesses that were slowly being crushed by mall culture. There was OK Hardware with its cracked glass door held in place by reinforcing wire, a dowdy chain convenience store, two dress shops, some squat brick office buildings, and Oddfellows Pub. The bar had a plaster façade pretending to be bricks that were too red and mortar that was toothpaste white. There was a small window with a blue-and-red neon beer stein that shivered as if it wanted to complete the circuit of some long forgotten animation. The front door had a regular knob on it, making it seem as if you were entering a private residence rather than a place of business; that was my first misgiving.

Opening the door, I heard Patsy Cline singing pure notes through a scratchy jukebox needle.

There was no Confederate flag hanging over the bar, but then again, neither was there any love lost in the eyes of the patrons. They became aware of me entering their dingy domain the way an owl suddenly no vthetices a snake moving in the grass below. The men, all of them white, had stopped their drinking and conversation to fix me on the pinboards of their minds. I counted eleven, including the bartender, and if it hadn’t been a matter of life and death I would have turned around and walked out immediately.

It wasn’t 2008 everywhere in America. Some people still lived in the sixties, and others might as well have been veterans of the Civil War. In many establishments I was considered a Black Man; other folks, in more genteel joints, used the term “African-American,” but at Oddfellows I was a nigger where there were no niggers allowed.

As I said, I knew the right move was behind me but instead I walked into the dark room and up to the Formica bar, just a tourist stopping for a quick beer. The pale bartender was bald like I am, but taller. He wore a shirt with thick red stripes on white, strapped over by dark-green suspenders. There was an old Pabst Blue Ribbon name tag pinned to one strap. The tattered badge read, “Hi, I’m Jake.”

Jake didn’t like me.

“Whatever you got on tap,” I said.

The bartender, who was about my age too, smirked and turned his back. As he moved away down the soggy corridor behind the bar I decided that, even if he did serve me, I would not drink.

But I didn’t have to worry. I wasn’t going to receive service in 1953 Albany. Jake moved down the bar, stopping at a customer who was sitting at the far end. They shared a few words, glanced in my direction, and then laughed.

In some ways the objective of the private detective is similar to that of the beat cop. You have an aim—the end of your shift—but there are many distractions along the way. You have to live completely in every moment, because if you get beyond yourself something will certainly blindside you and leave you face down in the street.

I wanted to save Roger Brown, which meant locating, and maybe dislocating something on, Ambrose Thurman. But before I could do any of that I had to get through Oddfellows. I considered walking around the room, asking if anyone had seen the face on the fake business card. But I rejected that approach. A room full of half-drunk men who wouldn’t like you in the best of circumstances could easily ramp themselves up into a frenzy.

I decided that this was a dead end and that I should move on.

I had been in the pub for no more than three minutes.

Just as I was about to turn a tall and hale redhead stood up from a table in the corner. He was young, maybe twenty-five, and had the look of a kid who had just taken a dare. He smiled broadly and walked in my direction, so I put off my exit for one minute more.

“Hey,” the young man said, grinning and friendly. He was handsome like a fifties TV child star who had grown up losing nothing of the boyish charm that got him through.

“S’hap {izet gpenin’?” I replied, deciding to be who he thought I was.

“What you doin’ here?” he said, still showing teeth. It was almost as if there was no threat in the room at all. Almost.

“S’posed to meet a guy.”

“What guy?”

I took Ambrose Thurman’s card from my jacket pocket and handed it to him. His fingers were pale and thick. The nails had some dirt under them, which made me like the person he might have been.

He studied the photo and name.

“Know him?” I asked.

He handed the card back to me.

“What’s yer name?” was his reply.

“Bill. What’s yours?”

“Jonah.”

“Like with the whale?”

The kid smiled. We might have gotten along in other circumstances . . . on some far-flung planet. He glanced around, as if the eyes on us were about him.