Walter Mosley - The Long Fall

Standing at the high commode, I sniffed at a sour tickle way back in my nasal passage.

I knew that tickle.

The man who had introduced himself to me as Ambrose Thurman was crushed into the bottom of the deep iron tub, eyes wide and lips drawn back over the small rounded teeth. The fingers of his left hand had all been broken—probably by a single blow. I couldn’t tell if he died from strangulation or the broken neck, but there was no question that he had died violently. He was wearing a dark-green suit with a checkered black-and-red vest. His socks bore holes at the big toe of either foot. I considered searching him but thought better of it.

I gazed into his face for a good long time before deciding he had nothing to say.

JIMMY WAS STILL on his stool when I got back to the Gray Wolf a few minutes before two. I returned the screwdriver and he set the elevator to take me to the fourth floor of the landlocked cruise ship.

I didn’t sleep that night, knowing for certain there’d be plenty time enough for rest when I was dead.

Ê€„

18

Igot off on the seventy-second floor of the Tesla Building four minutes past eight o’clock the next morning. The leftover nervousness from the flight was nothing compared to the growing possibility of spending a couple of decades behind bars. Men were dying and all I had gotten out of it was a paltry wad of cash.

I found the seven locks that secured the outer office undone and the door ajar. I hovered in the hall a full thirty seconds, wondering if I should turn around and run to Brazil. I had one offshore account that was inviolable, and Twill could secret himself, and his mother if she wanted to come, down to Mexico for a rendezvous . . .

It was the thought of Twill that anchored me that morning. I had to stay around long enough to save him from his own nature.

The locks weren’t broken so I pushed the door and walked in quickly.

Carson Kitteridge stood up from one of the golden chairs usually inhabited by phantoms visiting my non-existent secretary.

“Lieutenant,” I said.

The cop smiled but there was no mirth in his eye.

In his late forties, Kitteridge was short and balding, slim and very white—pale. His eyes were gray, as was his suit and machine-washable tie.

“LT,” he replied.

We’d known each other nearly twenty years and not once had we shaken hands.

“How can I help you?” I said, refusing to ask how he got in.

“Just stopping by.”

“What? You were investigating some kinda buggery on the fifty-fifth floor and said, ‘Hey, why don’t I drop in on old Leonid?’” By this time I was entering the combination to my inner door.

“Something like that,” he said.

We walked down the aisle of empty cubicles that led to my office.

“Why you got such a big place?” Carson asked as we went. “You never had anybody work for you in all these years.”

“It’s my imagination,” I said, moving behind the desk.

“What is?”

“My imagination,” I said again. “It fills up all these rooms. It’s the only way I can think.”

“Fatheaded, huh?”

Sometimes the policeman and I could go on like that for half an hour or more. We kidded each other to hide our hands. In reality I didn’t like him and he cared even less for me. But we were stuck with each other like coworkers on an assembly line. I’d punch out a hole in an iron plate and he’d sand down the edges, complaining that he had to work at all.

I don’t know how the NYPD works exactly, maybe nobody really does, but Kitteridge was on a list that got lit up every time the cops got a whiff of me. Usually when he appeared my name had been whispered and a few dollars had changed hands, or maybe a surveillance tape had caught my profile coming out of some bad guy’s lair. We hadn’t seen each other much since I’d been trying to straighten out, but once every few months or so he’d drop by just to let me know that I was still on their radar.

›t="g t

For him to show up so soon after Frank Tork and Norman Fell had been murdered could not be a coincidence.

“I got work to do, Detective,” I said, unable to continue our banter. “What is it you want?”

“Can you fix the Lotto?”

With all the bile between us, Carson Kitteridge could still make me laugh.

“Naw, man. But I could score you enough crank to make you feel like you won it.”

His grin downgraded into a smile, and then that was gone.

“I don’t believe in coincidence, LT,” he said, echoing my own thoughts.

“Neither me.” I was hoping that he had gotten word on me going to visit Tork in jail. I was willing to give up Fell’s pseudonym. But if they had something on me up in Albany, things might get close.

The policeman sat back in the blue and chrome visitor’s chair. He put his elbows on the arms and laced his fingers. His gray eyes were like a hazy afternoon sky, they were so light and distant.

“You remember me once asking you if you knew a fella named Arnold DuBois?” he asked.

Fear blossomed in my lungs.

“No.”

“You remember. There was that guy, Timmons I think his name was. Second-story man, lived across the street from a jewelry store got burglarized. We found some of the ice in his freezer. But the robbery division was sure it was some other guy. Pete the Finn. You remember. This DuBois guy was in Timmons’s building just the day before the tip came down. Said he was looking for clients.”

“I don’t remember,” I said calmly, hollering inside.

“I understand. That was seven years ago. We’d just started the criminal keyword database at that time. Thank God for Homeland Security.

“The doorman gave us a description that fit you to a T, LT. But we couldn’t tie you to the Finn, and Pete’s lawyer kept him out of court, so we had no excuse to bring you in. Even if it was you, that didn’t make any direct connection to the robbery.”

I should have had a pithy comeback. That was our shtick. But I was no longer the man he’d hounded. And all I could think about was what his visit meant.

“Why are you here, Lieutenant?”

Kitteridge’s eyes tightened. I’d never been curt with him on an exploratory visit. We had our roles to play and for the first time in nineteen years I was stepping out of character.

“Camilla Jones,” he said. It was almost a question.

“Who?”

“Roger Brown’s fiancée. He was supposed to meet her night before last at a club on Fifty-seventh. When he didn’t show she called him and he said that he was sick. She thought he sounded nervous but he said no. He didn’t call her all the next day and so last night she went to his apartment and rang his buzzer. Nobody answered. She had the key, decided to use it, and found him dead on the floor. Strangled and beaten like a dog.”

“So?” I whispered.

“So a few days ago the elusive Arnold DuBois left his card at Brown’s office.”

“So?”

“The next day some big white guy came there, looking for Roger. The receptionist, a Juliet Stilman, said that he threatened her. When Roger heard about the guy he begged her not to call the police and snuck out through a side door. He didn’t come to work the next day, and now he’s dead.”

I waited a few moments before asking, “Is that all, Officer?”

“Are you going to tell me what you were doing there?”

I shrugged and made a meaningless gesture with my hands. “Freedom of speech also lets me keep my mouth shut.”

Kitteridge’s furrowed brow darkened his light-gray eyes. He sat forward in the chair.

“It’s said around certain circles that you’ve changed jobs,” he said, suggesting something.

“Soda jerk?”