Fall Guy (10 page)

Parker drummed his long fingers on the table.
“I've seen dead people before,” he said. He picked up his glass and took a long drink. “He need anything?” He was looking at Dashiell. He picked up a fry, danced it up and down in the ketchup and dangled it over Dash's head. A glob of ketchup landed on Dashiell's white fur. Parker shrugged and dropped the fry back on his plate. “So when can I get my stuff, Rachel?”

I took my napkin, dipped it in the water glass, told Dashiell to put his paws up on the fence and wiped his head.

“Where were you Saturday night? Where did you stay?”

He shrugged. “With a friend.”

“Does the friend have a name?”

He shook his head. No name. Not one he was about to tell me. Or not one he'd thought up yet.

“What about now? Where are you living these days?”

“My aunt's apartment. Why, you got a better idea?”

“Lucky you,” I said, “you always end up with a place to stay, one way or another.”

“Yeah, it worked out okay. But I need my stuff.”

“Give me the number there. I'll call you, okay?” He wrote the number on a napkin and passed it across the table to me. I opened O'Fallon's briefcase and dropped it in.

“I won't take but five minutes,” he said.

“Okay. Friday afternoon, between one and two.”

“Not tomorrow?”

“You don't want to be there tomorrow,” I told him, not wanting to tell him the truth, that I wouldn't be there tomorrow.

“Why not?”

I waited for him to draw his own conclusion.

“The cops? Shit.”

I picked up my burger, broke off a piece for Dashiell, took a bite of what was left.

“I thought they were done with it. I thought that they'd released it. I thought that's why…”

Even the cops were allowed to lie to people in order to get the information they were after. What's good enough for New York's finest was surely good enough for me. “Like I'm going to tell them,” I said, as sincerely as I could, “sorry, boys, it's not convenient. You can't come back, check around again, see if you missed anything.”

I could see him thinking, trying to work out a way around this new information. The check came. He took out his pack of cigarettes, tapped the bottom, offered me a smoke. I took out some money, but Parker held up his hand. He reached into his pocket and took out some bills and counted them, scowling. “I'm a little short,” he said, putting the money back in his pocket. “I'll grab it next time.”

I paid the check and walked around to the outside of the fence to untie Dashiell's leash.

I turned to leave, then turned back.

“Did you go into the bathroom?” I asked. “Or did you just stand in the doorway?”

Parker stared up at me, then looked around at the other people eating there—young women with halter tops and work boots, couples with baby strollers next to their tables, a couple of guys with tattoos having beers. He got up and came out the exit, as I had just done, coming over to where I stood with Dashiell.

“Let's get away from here,” he said. “I don't think anyone else wants to hear this.”

The air had cooled off a bit. The humidity was down and there was a breeze. Parker indicated the way he wanted to walk with a nod. We headed uptown, neither of us saying anything. In a moment, I saw where he was going. We walked into Abingdon Square Park, where I had once met the most unusual clients I'd ever had. The park was empty except for a homeless man and his shopping cart at the far end. We sat on a bench and Parker finally lit his cigarette.

“Start with opening the bathroom door,” I said.

“The shower was running, the room all steamed up, the shower curtain closed. I think, shit, he's here. He's going to go ballistic when he finds out I broke the lock on the window to get in. I'm about to close the door, leave the fucking toothbrush and the razor, and I would have, except for the water coming over the lip of the tub. It's on the floor, about a half inch high, not quite enough to get over the door saddle. And it's red.” He took a puff on his cigarette, blowing the smoke off to the side.

“So what'd you do?”

“I grabbed the towels first and threw them down on the floor so that I could walk in. I still got the shit all over my shoes. I pulled the curtain back and saw him. He was sort of crumpled, on his back, underwater. The gun was near his right hand. The wall, you don't want to know. Looked like fireworks, you know, starting in the middle and exploding out. Only it was blood and bone and brains.” Parker shook his head and inhaled
deeply on the cigarette. “I shut off the shower. I was going to move his foot and the washcloth off the drain, but it was way too gross in there to stick my hand in. Then I remembered that there was a plunger under the kitchen sink, so I went out and got that.”

I pictured the wet, bloody footprints going from the bathroom to the sink and back.

“I used the plunger to move the foot and the washcloth so the hot soapy red water could drain. It took me a minute or so, all that water holding it down. Then I called 911.”

“And you packed your things while you waited for them.”

“Fat lot of good that did me.”

I wondered why he hadn't just grabbed his stuff and left. Perhaps he'd noticed Netty in the garden and knew he'd been seen. Perhaps he knew it would go worse for him if he fled. Perhaps he was really stunned by what he saw, going on automatic when he packed, that's what he'd come for, after all, not thinking clearly. And who could blame him if that was the case?

“When the paramedics came, what happened next?”

“The cops got there first, two young ones. The white one, he went into the bathroom and a minute later I heard him puking. Must have been right out of the academy, his first dead body in a bathtub.” Parker grinned. “Looked like shit when he came out of there, even whiter than when he went in. So the black one, another jerk-off, he's like, ‘You can't leave that shit in there, not if you want a job tomorrow.' At first, he didn't want to
go back, see the body again. But he did. He picked up the bath mat, the towels, dumped them in a garbage bag, puke and all. Then he started in with the Fantastic. Sprayed so much, his partner was coughing in the living room. As soon as he's finished in the bathroom, he tries to light up, the poor bastard. His hand's shaking so much, it takes two matches. He's trying to keep it all together, you know what I mean. But he can't. He's just standing there while his partner starts going through Tim's desk.”

“Were they wearing gloves?”

“Gloves? Oh, I get it.” Parker laughed. “No, no gloves.”

“I see. What next?”

“The paramedics.
They
wore gloves. Knew a guy once, he was a paramedic. He was always afraid of catching something. He wore double gloves. I go, ‘Why don't you pick another line of work, asshole, one where you're not dealing with all those dangerous fluids?' You know what he says? He says, ‘You tell me what's not dangerous and I'll do it.' That's what he says.” He shook his head. “So I go, ‘How about being a clerk at a 7-Eleven?' And he goes, ‘Right, like that's not going to get me shot.' And I go…”

“The paramedics?”

“Yeah, yeah. They go into the bathroom, they stay—what, two seconds?—and they come back out. They go hang out in the garden, smoking, waiting to be told what to do. I mean, you talk to them, it's like they're doctors. It's like they're better than doctors. But then you see them in the flesh, it's more like slapstick. They don't know
their ass from a hole in someone's head. If not for me, O'Fallon would have still been lying underwater.”

Parker tossed his cigarette across the park. I thought about the Crime Scene Unit showing up, finding the integrity of the scene destroyed, everything trampled, touched, contaminated. But did it really matter when someone took a gun to his own head?

“The cop who was going through the desk,” Parker said, “he began to ask me a lot of questions—who I was, what was I doing there, like that. Then the other one looked through my bag and said I couldn't take it. That's when the detectives showed. Man, it was standing room only in there. One of them took me outside, to the garden. He's like, ‘You can't stay in the apartment, it's got to be sealed pending investigation of the accident.' Some accident. The man wanted to be dead. He got tired of waiting, took things into his own hands. I don't have any argument with that. He's better off now, far as I can tell.”

It was hard not to react to that. But if I did, Parker didn't notice. He was on a roll and he just kept talking. “I'm telling you the God's honest truth,” he said, looking toward Hudson Street. “It's what he wanted.”

He stood and reached for my hand. I shook my head. “I don't need any help getting up,” I told him.

Parker sat down again.

“And I don't need company.”

“No, it's not that. It's something else. It's about the town house.”

“What town house?”

“The one on Tenth Street. The one you take care of.”

“What about it?” Wondering which neighbor he'd wheedled that out of. Why not? Endearing himself to strangers was his single talent. In that, it seemed, he was the quintessential con artist.

“If you need any help, you know—painting, repairs, like a live-in super—I could be of use to you, just until the Siegals come back, of course. When are they due back, by the way?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“You don't have to worry. I'd work for my keep. I could cook for you, clean the house, do the wash. I'd do whatever you needed, Rachel, whatever you asked.” He leaned a little closer. “You might feel safer having a man nearby, for protection.”

Had his aunt given him a time limit? Or was he always looking ahead, knowing nothing lasts forever? This time I got up. And so did Dashiell. Parker started to get up, too, but I put my hand out to stop him. “Don't move,” I said. “Don't even think of moving. Because I already have someone who does whatever I ask him to and I'm thinking of asking for a little favor right now.”

His forehead pleated, Parker looked confused. That's when he seemed to notice Dashiell, as if it hadn't registered before that he was standing there, his eyes locked on Parker's, his tail straight out behind him, barely stirring the air.

“Just sit here for a while, Parker. Don't get up. And for God's sake, don't speak.”

I was out of the park and doubling back toward home when I heard him, the weasel.

“You won't forget your promise, Rachel, will you? I told you everything, just like you wanted. You won't forget about Friday?”

“I never forget a promise,” I said, thinking of the promise I'd somehow made to O'Fallon even though I wasn't aware I was making it at the time.

The leash in one hand, O'Fallon's briefcase in the other, I took a long way home. Weaving up and down some of the dark, narrow streets between Bleecker and West Fourth streets, I peered into the tall, lit-up windows of town houses, wondering what the lives of the people who lived there were like, people with chandeliers and grand central staircases, with libraries and formal dining rooms, people with money and jobs they could actually talk about. Passing their elegant homes, I wondered if the people who lived there ever thought about people who lived half in and half out of the gutter. People like Parker, O'Fallon, people like me.

When I was two blocks from home, my cell phone rang. The conversation was short and one-sided. “I'm on Perry Street,” I said. Then, “Yes.” And “Yes” again.

Once again there was a man waiting at the gate that led to my cottage, smoking a cigarette, this one standing with his back to me. But this one wasn't jiggling around. He was standing perfectly still and I had the feeling he was used to waiting. I had the feeling he could do it for a long, long time, no problem.

There was a weariness in his shoulders and something about him that made him look shabby and used. I wondered what it was he had to tell me. I wondered what could be so important that it couldn't wait, and why he'd crossed the street to wait for me rather than asking me to stop by the precinct. When he turned around and I saw the mileage on his face, the wear and tear, I knew that whatever it was he'd come to say, it wasn't good.

He didn't smile when he saw me, lift his hand, toss away the cigarette, take a step in my direc
tion. He stood his ground, waiting until I was standing next to him, waiting for me to talk first even though this meeting had been his idea.

“What happened?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose with two fingers, let his hand drop. I thought it would go right back where it had been, to his side, but he put it around my arm instead. “Where can we talk for a minute?”

I thought about the way I'd felt a couple of hours before, not taking out my key, leading Parker away from where I lived, from where I felt safe. Then I took out the keys and opened the gate. Brody held it, closing it behind us, stepping aside to let me lock it, then testing it to make sure, a careful man. We walked down the tunnel made by the town house I took care of and the one next door, brick all around us, our footsteps loud and hollow, coming back at us as we walked. The only light in the garden was the one on a timer, at the back of the Siegal house. The house lights were on, too, a ploy to induce people into thinking that someone was at home, a ploy that hadn't even fooled a homeless woman who'd barely had her wits about her. My lights were off, the cottage dark. No one could see it from the street. Lights on, lights off, it didn't make a dime's worth of difference.

We walked over to the steps. I moved the key toward the lock. Brody took my arm again.

“Let's stay out here,” he said. “This is nice.”

We sat on the steps. I leaned the briefcase against the rail and unhooked Dashiell's leash. There was a blue ceramic bowl outside, nearly as
dark as lapis. He walked over to it, took a noisy drink, checked the perimeter, then lay down in his favorite spot, under the oak.

There were lights on in some of the apartments that backed onto the garden, and air conditioners making a white noise, so that aside from an occasional horn or passing motorcycle, we couldn't hear the traffic on Hudson Street.

“I had no idea this was back here,” Brody said.

“That's one of the things I like about it. That, and this, being able to sit outside, think my own thoughts, look at the stars without worrying about getting mugged.”

“You just let a strange man in here. You're much too trusting.”

I turned to look at him. “A man with a gun.” I reached out to touch it through his jacket, changing my mind before I did. “But you're not going to mug me with your service revolver, are you, Detective? You're going to do it with words.”

He unbuttoned his jacket, letting it fall open.

“Have you spoken to Parker yet?”

“Yes, why?”

“When did you speak to him?”

“Tonight. Just before you called. I found him waiting for me when I got home. He wants his stuff. He seems real anxious to get it.”

“You didn't bring him in here, did you?”

“No, Detective. I thought he might be armed.”

“This is serious, Ms. Alexander.”

“Right. And I understand that cops never make jokes to ease the tension. I'll try to behave myself. He was here, standing at the gate, like you were.
I had no idea he'd show up here, but I thought I'd take the opportunity to ask him some questions. I have a lot of questions, Detective, and I haven't been getting a lot of answers. We went over to the White Horse, had a burger. He talked about breaking into the apartment on Horatio Street, finding Tim in the bathtub, the shower going. He told me about the two rookie cops who contaminated the crime scene and handled everything in sight without gloves. And he stuck me with the check.”

“So he hasn't been back to Tim's place yet?” Deadpan. Had I thought I was going to rattle him, I'd have been severely mistaken.

“No. But he's been calling a lot. That's why he showed up. I never seem to be here to answer his calls. What's up?”

“Did he tell you where he was staying now?”

“Yes, he did. With an aunt.”

“And did he give you a number where you could reach him?”

“Yes. He wrote it on a napkin. Why? Do you want it?”

He shook his head. “She's been reported missing,” he said, his expression not changing.

“By Parker?”

Brody laughed. Well, perhaps it was more of a snort of derision. “No, ma'am. She's an actress. She had a small part in an Off-Broadway play, right here in the neighborhood.”

“At the Louise Lortell?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Detective?”

“Yes?”

“I think you ought to be calling me Rachel.”

He nodded.

“Would you like a beer?”

He shook his head.

“So, she didn't show up for work?”

“She missed the Sunday matinee. They called and couldn't reach her. They left a message. I don't know what they figured, but they put the understudy on, Sunday night as well. The theater is dark on Monday. They tried to call her Tuesday. Same thing. No luck. So today they called it in. It's not like her, they said. She's never missed a performance. A real pro. At it since she was eleven.”

“Has anyone talked to Parker?”

“He told one of the detectives he was going to live with an aunt of his, that he'd lived with her before and she'd agreed to take him in again when we took him out of Tim's apartment.”

“He told me the same thing.”

“Tonight?”

“Yes, this was the only time I talked to him.”

“So he hasn't been to Tim's?”

“No. I already told you that. If you're not going to believe me, you can go back to calling me ma'am.”

“Yes, ma'am. Just trying to get this straight.”

“I told him he could come on Friday, that that's the soonest I could do it. So did anyone talk to him after you heard his aunt had gone missing? What did he say? Did he say where she was?”

“He says she went to Europe. He says she gave him the keys and said he could stay at her place until she gets back.”

“Europe? In the middle of the run of a show? I wouldn't think so.”

“We asked Parker where we could get in touch with her and he was quite vague, said he had no idea where she might be, not even what country she went to.”

“Let me guess. There's no record of her on any flight.”

“Correct. And her passport? Expired over two years ago.”

“Are you looking for Parker? Is he going to be charged?”

“With what?” He ran a hand through his short hair. “There's no body, no evidence he did anything wrong.”

“But you think he did.”

“You don't want to know what I think of Parker.”

“Did Tim?”

“Ma'am?”

“Did Tim want to know what you thought of Parker?”

“No, ma'am. He never asked.”

“So, now what?”

“We're looking into the aunt's whereabouts. I just wanted you to be aware of this. The offer holds. If you want me to be there when you let Parker take his things, I will. Unless you have a boyfriend who could…”

I shook my head. “Ex. I don't think he'd fly in from California for this.”

“I'm sorry,” he said. I thought he meant it, too.

“I wanted to talk to you, too. I saw where the tile was replaced. Tim wasn't cleaning his gun.”

Brody didn't move.

“It wasn't an accident.”

“There's no need for Mary Margaret to hear that.”

“None at all.”

“And no need for you to repeat what you just said to me, not to another living soul.”

“No need.”

“That's good. A man's career shouldn't have to end on a note of shame.”

“I understand. But, of course, Parker knows.”

He nodded.

“He said Tim had been…” I stopped, not thinking he'd want to have this discussion, not thinking there was anything I could tell him about job-related depression, about cop suicide, that he didn't already know.

“I'll take that beer now, if you don't mind.”

I got up and unlocked the door, picking up the briefcase and dropping it onto the table outside the kitchen. I opened the refrigerator and took out two beers. For some strange reason, when I turned around, I expected Brody to be standing right behind me. But it was only Dashiell who had followed me inside, his tail thumping against the cabinets now that I'd noticed him, now that I'd gotten the message.

I put down the beers, opened the refrigerator and took out the plastic container with Dashiell's food—raw turkey, brown rice, a medley of grated vegetables. There was only one portion left, so I put the container down, checked his water bowl, gave him a pat on the head and took the beers outside.

“It's a funny thing, the way people do things,” Brody said.

“What do you mean?”

“There was this woman a few years ago, lived on Charles Street, not too far from here. She decided she'd had enough, decided to take her cat with her.”

“How do you know that?”

“We found her clothes down on the old pier, all folded just so, as if she were going to put them back on after her swim, the shoes lined up, socks balled up and stuffed in the shoes, cat's collar on top of the pile.”

“How do you know it didn't belong to a small dog?”

Brody grinned, opened the beer, dropped the pull-tab into his pocket, pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“Well, first off, there was a box of Friskies at her apartment, a litter box in the john, one of those jungle-gym things covered in carpet in the living room. There were a couple of catnip mice under the bed, a couple of small balls, one made of crunched-up foil, in the bottom of the closet, one of them in one of her shoes. And two, we found the cat.”

“And the collar fit?”

“Not after eleven days in the water.”

He took a long pull on the beer. I popped my can and did the same.

“Did you meet the dwarf yet?” he asked.

“What dwarf?”

“The redheaded one, lives upstairs from Tim.”

“Not yet,” I told him. “But I have a feeling I might get lucky tomorrow.”

“Not if you play cards with the dwarf, you won't. He'll ask you, guaranteed. You say no, he's going to make out like it's personal, like you have something against him.”

“Because he's got red hair?”

Brody smiled.

“And if I say yes?”

“You'll lose your shirt.”

I could see the Big Dipper in the dark sky. “Don't worry about Friday,” I said. “About Parker. I'll be okay.”

“Don't underestimate him, Rachel.”

“I won't,” I said. “Anyway, I have a gun.”

“I know.” He looked at me, searching for a telltale bulge. “Where do you keep it?”

“Bedroom closet, top shelf, way in the back.”

“And the bullets?”

“In the kitchen cabinets, behind the ziti, I think.”

“Handy.”

Now I was the one who was deadpan.

“You any good?”

“I am,” I told him.

“But?”

“I don't like them. It makes it too easy when things are rough.” I shook my head. “He's not going to give me a hard time. It wouldn't get him anywhere. It can't get him the apartment back. And if he gives me a hard time, he doesn't get to collect his possessions. He's going to be slimy, he's going to be manipulative, but he's not going to be dangerous.”

“But…”

“No poker with the dwarf. It is poker, isn't it?”

Brody grinned this time.

“Poker it is,” he said.

There was a little can with sand in it at the side of the path. He got up and pushed his cigarette into the sand. He turned and handed me the empty beer can. I called Dashiell over and tossed him the can. He walked toward the tunnel, dropping the can into the recycling container at the near end.

“Good trick,” Brody said.

“We're full of them.”

I walked him through the tunnel, thanking him for taking the time to let me know what was going on, unlocked the gate with the key and pulled it open.

“You forgot to tell me his name.”

“Doesn't matter. You'll know him when you see him.”

“Short arms. Short legs. Red hair.”

“Irwin Del Toro.”

“Yeah, right.”

“He swears it's real.”

“You're much too trusting,” I told him.

“No woman's ever said that to me before.”

“Now
that
I believe.”

I started to close the gate. He put his hand out to stop it.

“If you change your mind about Friday…”

“I can call anytime, day or night.”

“I didn't understand it before. But I do now.”

“Understand what?”

“Why Tim chose you.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He pulled the gate closed behind him.

“Why, Michael?” I put my hand on top of his. “What did he want me to do?”

He shook his head, slid his hand from under mine and headed across the street, back toward the station house. I stood there watching him leave, Dashiell at my side.