Walter Mosley - The Long Fall

This voice came from across the aisle. The speaker was the male head of a young black family, which included a mother and child. The boy was no more than four years old and could have been younger. His father hadn’t been in his twenties very long. The mother, a gentle and plain-looking woman, glanced in my direction and smiled apologetically. The boy’s head was bowed under the heavy criticism of his father.

They were all the same dark-brown color.

“Are you listenin’ to me?” the father asked his son.

I picked up my newspaper, looking for an article to distract me. The main story was about some midwestern governor arrested by the FBI for paying prostitutes to cross state lines. It was hard for me to concentrate on the article, partly because it reminded me so much of the kind of work I had once done to bring down otherwise good men, and partly due to the fact that a nearby article said that the Left was claiming that the death toll in Iraq was nearing a million while, by some calculations, we would end up spending a trillion dollars on the effort. That meant, by the end of our Middle Eastern folly, that we would have spent a million dollars for each death. The front page was a kind of triple obscenity . . .

The boy mumbled something to his mother.

“Why you askin’ her for water?” the father said. “Does she look like she have water for you? Sometimes you just got to be thirsty. I’m thirsty. Do you see me goin’ around askin’ people for water?”

I gathered my things together and stood up. The man’s idea of pedagogy was too much for me to bear.

I guess my body language betrayed my feelings.

“Where you think you goin’?” the young father asked me as I lugged my bag toward the door between cars.

“I need quiet in order to think.”

“What’s so important you got to think about?”

I should have just moved on.

“I think about a lot of things,” I said. “Just now I was thinking that a child needs to laugh and have mother-love in his life, otherwise he’ll turn out to be a little man pushin’ children around to make himself feel like he knows somethin’ smart.”

That said, I went through the door and into the next car.

THERE WAS NOTHING to distract me in that section. One guy was yak-king on his cell phone, but I wasn’t bothered by that.

The release of anger had put me into a free-floating state of mind. I stopped obsessing about the girl’s unbidden, unconscious forgiveness and started wondering about the connection between the Hulls, Willie Sanderson, and the murders that I was implicated in. Certainly there was some connection. And beyond that I had Tony the Suit to answer to, and Twill to save from his own dark heroism.

Everything was flowing together and so I began coming up with ideas that might fit anything. I considered talking to Twill, telling him that I knew what he was up to and offering another way out. I seriously entertained the idea of telling Tony where A Mann lived. The guy was dead anyway. Was that what Harris Vartan was asking me to do?

I had just begun wondering about the Hulls’ cleaning lady when a voice sounded at the other end of the car.

“Hey, you!” the young father from another lifetime shouted.

For a brief moment everything had made perfect sense: I wasn’t confused or worried at all. It was the kind of moment that never lasts, but it feels permanent for the few seconds it’s there.

I stood up as the young father rushed down the aisle. I could see in his face that he’d been stewing over my words.

The guy on his cell phone said, “I’ll have to call you back.”

My nemesis was in no mood for talking, either. As soon as he came within range he threw a punch. I caught it like a seasoned coach catching a Little Leaguer’s first toss, pushing the fist back at its pitcher. He wasn’t daunted by my obvious superiority and threw another. This time I backed away to let the punch go wild. A woman yelped and I pushed against the man’s chest with both hands. He fell on his butt. I could see by the look on his face that he had finally understood my strength.

The young father jumped to his feet, but he was no longer sure what to do. I had already blocked one blow, slipped a punch, and dropped him on his ass. He knew that the next response would be even stronger.

He hated me, wanted to beat me down into submission, but that was not to be and we both knew it.

“Fuck you!” he yelled, clenching his fists and hopping an inch or so off the floor.

When I didn’t flinch he turned around and stormed back to his poor, unsuspecting family.

I felt bad about humiliating the father. He couldn’t help what he was, and I hadn’t helped, either. At least his son wasn’t there to witness his defeat. At least that.

I gathered my things again and moved down a few cars more. That way if he found more courage, or a weapon, I’d be somewhere else and he’d have a few extra moments to think about consequences.

In my new seat I wondered about what kind of father Fritz would make. Then I thought about my own father, who indoctrinated and then abandoned me. It seemed that there was a whole world of wounded, half-conscious sires picking fights and losing them.

Ê€„

40

When you have no answers, ask different questions,” my father once said to me. He was quoting a man who had been a minor official on the fringe of Joseph Stalin’s inner circle toward the end of the madman’s reign.

I had rejected all of my father’s ideology, but his logic remained with me. So about fifteen miles out from Manhattan I called a man I knew in the electricians’ union. His name was Duffy and he’d had a hard time of it for a while there when one of his rivals wanted to unseat him from a plum position. I balanced the scales, so to speak. I did such a good job that Duffy and his rival became good friends.

“HELLO,” A YOUNG woman answered.

“Let me talk to Duffy.”

“He’s in a meeting.”

“He’s always in a meeting. Tell him it’s Leonid McGill.”

He was on the line ten seconds later.

“What’s up, mutt?” He gave the same line to everyone, so it was no insult.

I explained that I needed to root around a building. I didn’t say why.

“Sure,” Duffy said. “What name you usin’?”

“Richard Siles.”

“You need keys?”

“No. I got my own.”

He gave me a line to give the super and I committed it to memory.

“What time?” Duffy asked.

“One today.”

“Done.”

“See ya later,” I said.

“Not if I see you first.”

I WENT TO my office, changed into a pair of coveralls I kept in a closet, and loaded up my toolbox with a few gadgets, a jumbo ring of master keys, and some electrician’s tools. I also grabbed a coat in spite of the fact that it was eighty-five degrees outside. Then I took a cab up to a big gray apartment building about fifteen blocks from my apartment, a block off Broadway.

The building was twenty-eight stories high and dominant among its peers.

“What can I do for you?” the blue-jacketed doorman asked.

“Richard Siles,” I said, holding out a hand. “I’m the electrical contractor they called about.”

“Oh, yeah,” the chubby, pink-skinned guardian replied, “Joseph said you might be around.”

He was a big man, in his sixties. When he was young he must have been ready with his fists. You could see the pale ghosts of scars on his face and knuckles.

“Peter Green,” he said, introducing himself. “What’s this all about, Dick?”

“Layoffs on Wall Street. City revenues are down this year,” I said. “At least they’re worried they might be. They’re checking all the big Manhattan buildings for violations. Wanna make up some of their losses on fines. So a couple’a guys are doing some early checks to maybe save you guys some fines and get us some work on the side.”