Fall Guy (11 page)

The box office at the Louise Lortell Theater didn't open until noon and when I knocked on the door, no one answered. There was no one named Bowling listed on the poster outside. But there was an Elizabeth Bowles among the cast names. Perhaps they were still hopeful she'd show up for the next performance with a whopper of a story about where she'd been. I wasn't so hopeful myself, not after what Brody had told me. And not after reading the article I found in the Metro section of the
Times
that morning.

I still had time before picking up O'Fallon's car and heading up to Piermont, so I walked over to O'Fallon's building and rang the bell for the apartment over his. The voice that answered was husky and I wondered if I'd woken him, if he'd been playing cards half the night and hadn't gotten to bed until the sun came up, letting my imagination run away with me.

I stated my name and business and he buzzed me in. I climbed the stairs and as I lifted my hand to knock, the door opened and there he was, looking up at me, a scowl on his face.

“I already talked to the police.”

“I know.”

“So what's the deal here? You a cop? No, doll, anyone can see you're not a cop. Your neck's not thick enough. And your shoes. Tuh. No way. Not a cop. So what the hell do you want?”

Beyond him, I could see the living room, the same size as O'Fallon's but very different in appearance. The wall facing me was covered with posters. Brody hadn't mentioned that Del Toro had had a varied and jaded career in show business, a stint with Barnum & Bailey, nightclub appearances, some TV work. In the middle of the room there was a traditional poker table, covered in green, eight chairs around it. I could smell the cigars from the last game even though the ashtrays had been emptied.

“I didn't see nothing. I didn't hear nothing. I don't know nothing. Case closed. Period. End of story.” He began to close the door. I put my hand out to stop it, feeling like a bully.

“No gunshot?”

“Not a one.”

“No fight?”

“Fight? What fight?”

“The day before. He had a fight with Parker and some of his friends.”

“Friends. You mean those freeloaders who used to come here, carry on, drink Tim's booze, trash his apartment?”

“Those very ones.”

“Has he eaten yet today?” Pointing at Dash.

I nodded.

“Good. Then you can come in.” He turned around and waddled toward the sofa under the windows, hiking his legs up with his hips as he walked. He took a little backward hop to get seated, his feet a good fifteen inches off the floor once he was up there. Looking around, I could see that even in his own home, everything was scaled too big for him. I figured there must be a stool at the sink, another in the bathroom, a stick with a pad on one end for reaching light switches—God knows what else to make the environment user-friendly.

I grabbed a chair out from around the poker table and turned it so that I'd be facing him. “I was hoping…”

“I don't bite,” he said. “You could sit here, doll.” He patted the couch cushion. Dashiell walked over to see what he wanted. I stayed where I was. He put a hand on Dashiell's head, gave it a pat.

“In my day, I worked with the big cats. It was a comedic thing, you know, big joke seeing a lit
tle person controlling them with a whip and chair. Got a lot of laughs. Got me a lot of money at the time. Funny or no, a tiger's still a tiger. Animals don't scare me. It's people you got to watch out for.”

“Mr. Del Toro, are you sure you didn't hear anything? I don't understand why no one heard the shot.”

“Where do you live, little lady? The suburbs? You think anyone in New York would single out a sound and say”—hands dramatically to his cheeks—“‘Jeepers, did you hear that, a gunshot!' Never going to happen. Could be I did hear it. Could be I thought what I heard was a car backfiring. Could be some other horrific noise was happening at the same time and my air conditioner was on, the TV, the water running, whatever. Could be I was in church, praying to grow taller. There are just so many jobs for leprechauns, pixies, elves and trolls. A person has to earn a living, no matter what the fuck his height is. You understand what I'm saying?”

“I do,” I said.

“Could be you can't hear much from one floor to another in this old building.”

“Is that so?”

He rolled his eyes. “Have I ever lied to you, doll? I mean, so far.”

“Mr. Del…”

“Good. Glad that's settled.”

I got up. Dashiell got up. Irwin got up. He walked to the door, then turned back to face me.

“You play poker?” he asked.

“No,” I lied. “Never have.”

“Perfect. Tonight at eight. Every Thursday at eight. You don't have to call in advance. Just show up.”

“Mr. Del Toro…” I said.

“Call me Irwin. Everyone calls me Irwin, at least to my face.”

“Irwin, if you can't hear much up and down, how do you know about Parker's friends coming here and carrying on and drinking Tim's booze?”

“Easy. A couple of them are buddies of mine.” He seemed to tilt his head to the wall with the posters. “No way they're going to drink and not invite me to join them.”

“You mean men you worked with?”

He scratched his head, as if he were trying to figure out how to answer me.

“Probably wrapped it in a towel. Probably didn't want to disturb anyone, especially on a Sunday morning.”

“But…”

“He was the most considerate man you'd ever want to know, doll. I felt tall around him.”

I looked at one of the posters, from a small circus, Gerber's Traveling Oddities. One of the pictures was of Irwin getting out of one of those tiny cars. Even with the makeup and the fake nose, you couldn't miss him, not with that bright red hair.

“What would you have done if you were?” I asked.

“Tall? High wire.” He stretched those short
arms out to the side, lifted one short leg, closed his eyes.

“You'd have been something, Irwin, really something.”

“I know. He always said that, too. He said I was a tall man stuck in a short man's body. He said everyone was stuck, one way or another.”

“When you talked to Tim, did you go downstairs or did he come up here?”

“Either way.”

“And did you drink, you and Tim?”

“You mean booze?” He screwed up his face, cocking his head like an attentive dog. “Me? Yeah. Tim? No. He drank club soda, or maybe coffee. You said you were taking care of his affairs?”

“I am.”

“What are you, with the bank or something? You his lawyer? What's the deal?”

“A friend.”

“No way, doll. Tim was dry, going on eleven years. You don't know that, you weren't a friend.”

“Correct,” I said.

He raised his eyebrows.

“I was more of a slight acquaintance.”

“I don't get it, doll.”

“Neither do I, Irwin. Neither do I.”

“What's he do?” He was pointing at Dashiell again. “I had a trick dog, I could get TV work. I can't just go on, make an ass of myself. It's not PC, you know what I'm saying. I'd get the fucking Little People of America on my case. You can't be an undignified dwarf anymore. But I could
make an ass of him. Don't worry, doll. You'd get a cut. I'm a fair man.”

He turned to Dashiell.

“Roll over,” he told him. “Speak.” Then he turned to me, palms raised toward the heavens. “Help me out here, doll. You must have taught him something, big dog like this.”

“Nothing fancy,” I said. “He sits and gives his paw.”

“Impressive.”

“Semper paratus,”
I told him. “Like you said, he's a big dog. I had to train him.”

“They get all the girls, you know.” He pointed up, at the ceiling. “The high-wire artists. People think it's the lion tamer.” He shook his head. “Not so. Never been so. You single, doll? You seeing anyone?” He raised his eyebrows, looked me up and down, as if I were a piece of merchandise he was about to bid on.

I raised my hand like a stop sign.

“A guy can dream,” he said. “You change your mind, doll, you know where to find me. Don't let my small stature fool you. I can show you a good time.”

He reached for the doorknob. I raised my hand again. “Open it,” I told Dash, indicating the door with a tilt of my head. Dashiell pushed in front of Irwin, grasped the knob, turned his head and backed up.

Irwin squinted at me. “Always something up your sleeve, eh? I like that in a woman. Don't be a stranger, doll. You hear me?”

I stopped at O'Fallon's apartment and dumped out the briefcase on his desk, refilling it with the
things I wanted to take to Maggie's house—one of the photo albums, the coin collection, the silver ashtray that Parker had tried to steal. I decided to take the file on the car as well, in case there was any trouble at the lot.

My cell phone rang as I was on the way to pick up the car.

“Alexander.”

“Rachel. I'm sorry I couldn't get back to you sooner. I was away.”

“Who is this?”

“It's Ted Hank. I was John's partner. I guess you hadn't heard.”

“Heard what?” I asked, though I thought perhaps I knew.

“John's dead, Rachel. He died of AIDS five months ago.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“He talked about you. And about Dash. He said he thought it was so weird, a private investigator doing pet therapy.”

I stopped in the street. Dashiell began to sniff at the wrought iron around a tree pit, coleus growing around the tree, a plastic water bottle lying on top of two of the rich red leaves.

“He knew that? I never told anyone in the group…”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I didn't mean to give you a double shock. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“No, just tell me how he knew.”

“I don't know. I figured you told him. Not so?”

I didn't say anything right away, so he kept on talking.

“No harm meant. No harm done, I hope. It's not some big secret, is it? I mean, in order for you to get work, people have to know, don't they?”

“Might he have told anyone else? Do you think he…”

There was silence on the line. Someone blew his horn on Washington Street. A dog across the street, a short-legged Jack Russell, all full of himself, began to bark at Dashiell.

“I couldn't honestly say.”

“No harm done,” I said a little too quickly. “I appreciate your calling, and I'm so sorry to hear about John.”

O'Fallon's car was a beat-up Toyota Celica. I was glad I'd brought along the file with his papers. The monthly fee for the lot was worth more than the damn car and was due the next day. I'd see if Maggie would agree to come in by bus on Saturday and then drive Tim's car home. If not, I could even pick her up. Either way, it would save the estate about three hundred dollars because I could just pay the day rate until then. One less bill to deduct from Maggie's inheritance, one less thing for me to worry about.

And one more. Had John told O'Fallon that I was a private investigator? If I'd been named executor because of that, it wasn't just curiosity I was feeling. I wasn't just acting out of habit. I was on the job. I was getting paid to discover something, to do something. The only trouble was, I didn't know what it was.

I opened the back windows halfway for
Dashiell. As I pulled out of the lot, I heard him sneezing, clearing the way for new scents, ready to pull the world in as fast as it was passing, trying not to miss a thing. It was a lesson that wasn't lost on me.

The house, along the Sparkill Creek, was one of the little saltboxes that faced a winding two-lane road, their long, narrow backyards sloping down toward the water. The O'Fallon house was painted gray with white trim. I parked along the road so that I wouldn't block Mary Margaret's car. She was at the open door as soon as I got out. She waited as we walked toward the house, asked if the dog was housebroken, then invited us in.

She had the kind of strong, trim body you often see on nurses and she was dressed in a trim, no-nonsense way as well, a pretty woman who did nothing to augment the gifts nature had given her. Her red hair was pulled back in a knot at the nape of her neck. She was in a pantsuit in shades of tan, no makeup, no nail polish, no jewelry. A little brown bird trying very hard not to be noticed.

Dashiell and I followed her inside. If I'd expected to be hit by the lingering odors of her mother's long-term illness, vaguely concealed by Lysol, Fantastic and Soft Scrub, I was pleas
antly surprised. The windows were open, sunlight pouring in, the living room bright and airy, everything in its place. The house had so much sparkle I would have bet Maggie made the beds with hospital corners, even here at home.

We walked through the living room to the kitchen. In New York City, it would be called an eat-in kitchen. But this was a house. Houses almost always had kitchens you could eat in. The table was set for lunch. She pointed to the place farther from the sink and refrigerator and asked me to sit. Then, surprising me, she took an old saucepan from under the sink, ran the water cold and filled the pot for Dashiell. She stood watching him drink noisily from the pan before really looking at me.

“Does he need something to eat? I could give him some turkey if he's hungry.”

“No, he's fine, thank you.” Again, a surprise. And then another. She had a full-time job and, until recently, another one at home, caring for her sick mother. I expected a tuna sandwich, perhaps a tossed salad with bottled dressing, but Maggie was taking eggs out of the refrigerator, then butter and cheese. That's when I noticed the omelet pan on the stove, the little pile of fresh herbs on the counter.

“I don't buy this nonsense about eggs being bad for you, do you, Rachel?” She was melting butter, whipping the eggs. “It sometimes seems there's nothing left to eat, if you read what's in the papers and take it seriously.” She grated just a touch of cheese into the whipped eggs, poured
the mixture into the pan and began to chop the herbs, her hand moving quickly, the rhythmic sound of the knife on the cutting board filling the kitchen.

“This is so kind of you,” I told her. “I didn't want you to trouble yourself like this.”

“It's no bother at all,” she said. “I haven't had time for company in a while. It's lovely to have someone here for lunch.” As if I were a neighbor or old school chum dropping by for a chat. As if I weren't here to talk to her about her dead brother.

During lunch, she talked about the gentrification of Piermont, all the new construction, the rising prices of the houses, even the small ones, like hers, along the creek. The old Victorian houses facing the Hudson River, once considered white elephants, were never on the market more than a week, she told me, and sometimes strangers would ring the bell, even along the creek, but most definitely along the river, and ask if this house or that might be going on the market anytime soon.

“Are you planning to sell?” I asked.

“Where would I go?”

I finished the last of my omelet, wiping the plate with a piece of toast, thanking her again for the delicious lunch. When I got up to put my plate in the sink, she flapped her hand at me.

“Just leave it, Rachel. We can have our iced tea out on the back patio. The dog might enjoy that better than sitting in the living room.”

Dashiell and I followed her out. I wasn't sure she'd believed he was house-trained. Some people who've never lived with a dog have trouble
believing a dog can be unobtrusive and appropriate, even in a living room. But it was cool outside under the shade of an awning, and in no time Dashiell was down at the water's edge, turning back to catch my eye in the hope I'd throw a stick for him to retrieve.

I put O'Fallon's briefcase across my lap, taking out the folder I'd brought along to convince the guy at the lot that it would be okay for me to take the car. But before I asked Maggie if she'd consider taking the car on Saturday, I thought of an even better plan.

“I was wondering if I could leave Tim's car here? The payment at the lot is due tomorrow. It seems an awful waste of money. I don't know if you can use the car, or if you'd want to sell it?”

Actually, according to the will, the car was now mine. But the last thing I wanted to contend with was Tim's old wreck of a car that might not even pass inspection without expensive repair work. I'd have to take the time and trouble to sell it, paying to park it at the lot until I did.

“Of course, if that helps. You can leave it.”

“Perhaps Dennis might be able to help you sell it.”

“Oh, I don't think Dennis would be wanting that at his Lexus dealership. The only kind of used car he'd sell would be a pre-owned Lexus.”

I shrugged. “I have all the papers here.” I tapped the folder. “I'll just need to know what you get for it if you sell it, for the final income tax form.”

“You don't even get away with that when you're dead,” she said. “You'd think…”

“The lawyer will take care of that,” I told her. “She seems very efficient and most helpful.” She must be dealing with all of this for her mother, too. Just the thought of handling two estates at once was overwhelming. I wonder if that had occurred to Tim, too. I wondered if that was why he hadn't named Maggie his executor, if it were that simple, nothing more than that he didn't want her to have to do this twice.

“How will you get back to the city?” she asked. “I don't think…” She was looking at Dashiell now, lying down on the slope of cool earth near the water's edge.

“I can take a car service back,” I said, thinking that if I hadn't been so preoccupied, I would have thought of this earlier, left Dashiell at home and taken the bus back to the city, a subway after that. But even if I ended up with a car service, it would be much cheaper than a month's worth of parking at the lot.

“I doubt they'll take you with a wet dog.”

Dashiell was wading in the creek. In no time, he'd find a reason to go swimming. I hadn't, after all, told him he couldn't.

“I see your point,” I said. “Well, I guess I could keep the car another couple of days. I could pay the day rate at the lot. It won't be so bad.”

“How about if I drive you over the bridge? You can grab a cab there. Would that be okay?”

“That would be great, if you don't mind.”

“No problem. It's on the way to work anyway.”

“Terrific.” I put my hand back into the briefcase. “Even though you're coming Saturday, I brought some pictures from Tim's apartment. I
thought you'd want them. I didn't see any reason to wait.”

Maggie looked, but didn't say anything.

“They're old ones,” I said. “The only recent one was of your mother.” I didn't have that one with me, the one Tim had left on the desk before taking his gun into the bathroom, before pulling the trigger on what should have been the rest of his life. “I was hoping we could look at some of the ones in the album and that you might tell me which one is Tim.”

“Of course.”

“I brought a couple of other things from the apartment as well. I'm sure there's more there you'll want.”

She nodded.

“I was thinking of sending the clothes and the kitchen things to Housing Works. The kitchen things are pretty inexpensive, not nearly as nice as the ones you have.” I decided not to mention the scarf and the sweater. Maybe that was a dumb idea to begin with, picking out things for a person you didn't know. “Is there anything special that you can think of that you want me to put aside, because I'll be working there again tonight, and all day tomorrow?”

“I'm not, I don't…”

“It's awkward, doing this. I'm sorry if…”

“Don't apologize. It's all got to be done. Let's look at the pictures now, and I'll show you which one's Timothy.”

I took out the album I'd brought along and placed it on the redwood table in front of us,
moving my glass of iced tea off to the side, flipping the album open to the middle.

“That's Tim”—her finger pointing to one of the grinning redheaded boys. “This one's Dennis.”

“The Lexus salesman.”

“Yes. And here's our Joey.”

“Joseph Patrick.”

“Yes. Bless his soul. And this one's me, of course.”

“The only girl.”

She looked up, her mouth open, as if she were about to speak, perhaps to tell me what that meant. But I already knew. It meant being the one stuck at home, taking care of your mother.

“Have you always lived at home?” I asked.

“I have,” she said. “And this is Liam. He was my first cousin. And this one's Francis. I had a terrible crush on him when I was eleven. Oh, I thought the sun rose and set on Francis Connor, I was that smitten.”

“Tim had some newspaper articles among his things,” I said. “One about Joseph. One about your father.”

“Dennis once said we were like the Kennedys, only without the money or the fame.”

“I—”

“Do you believe in curses?” she asked.

“I don't know. I've never thought about it.”

“Oh, you'd think about it a lot if you were in this family.”

I looked back at the pictures of the smiling kids, then back at Mary Margaret.

“No one knows why it happened to them either,” she said.

“To the Kennedys?”

“Yes, and it goes on and on. Like ours. It didn't stop with Jack or Robert or that terrible incident with Teddy. There was that rape trial, and the Skakel nightmare. On through the generations. I don't expect our troubles are over either.”

“You mean the accidents in your family?”

“My father used to say, ‘We're not here for fun. We're here for sorrow.'” She was looking straight ahead, watching Dashiell racing back and forth at the river's edge. “‘That's our lot here on earth,' he said before his accident. ‘Our reward comes later.'”

“Sounds as if you were raised to be a very responsible person.”

“I was, not like the kids coming up today, so self-involved—just me, me, me. Even the young nurses, fresh out of school. It's a service profession. Some of them, they're in it for the social life. They're in it to find a doctor to marry. You do what's right,” she said. “That's what I grew up with, what we all grew up with.”

“Were you and Tim close?” I felt as if I was treading on thin ice, expecting Maggie to break down and cry at any moment. But her eyes were dry. She was in control.

“Oh, I worshiped Timothy. We all did.” Smiling now.

“He was the oldest, wasn't he?” To keep it going.

“Yes, the firstborn. We all looked up to him. We all wanted to be just like him, to do everything he could do.”

She hadn't answered me at all, so I asked again. “So you were close? As grown-ups, too?”

Her back straight, her head high, she sat perfectly still, the sibling who'd stayed at home and nursed her mother, working full-time, keeping the house immaculate, taking care of the old lady as she slipped from one world to the next.

“So you saw each other often?” I asked.

“I loved him,” she said without looking at me. “We were family. Family's everything. But he was so busy with work.”

“And you were working long hours at the hospital and taking care of your mother.”

Do you see Dennis much? I wanted to ask. But I didn't. I thought I'd said too much already. I thought about the letter, the short note that had arrived after Tim had died. I didn't mention that either.

I gave Maggie the keys to the car, leaving the folder on the table. While she changed for work, I went to check the car, to see if there was anything in it I needed to take. There was the usual stuff in the glove compartment: empty and half-empty packs of cigarettes, the repair manual, a flashlight, a greasy rag, a package of Kleenex, an unopened roll of red Lifesavers and a plastic cup. The trunk was empty except for the spare, which looked brand-new, and the tool kit, the jack, flares, a few wrenches. I checked the floor in the back and came away with dirty hands, sand, cigarette butts, empty soda cans. I checked under the passenger seat and found more tissues, Scott this time, the box crushed on one side as if someone had stepped on it. And then I sat in the driver's seat and reached under it
as far as I could, pulling out the notebook. It was one of those the kids used to buy every fall for school, like the ones I'd found at Tim's apartment. Only this one was current. I took it inside, put it into the briefcase, then went into the downstairs bathroom to wash my hands.

I thought I'd sit outside with Dashiell until Maggie was ready, but then I remembered something from my first job as an undercover agent, when I worked for the Petrie Brothers before going out on my own. I was placed at a hospital on Staten Island, ostensibly working as a nurse's aide. In fact, I was there because of theft. Whenever I tried to take notes, the head nurse would open the bathroom door, see my white shoes and the pink uniform that was two sizes too big hanging down to my ankles. Then she'd yell at me to get back to work. In order to make notes so that I could write my daily report, I would stand on the toilet, then crouch down, using a little nib of a pencil and a folded three-by-five card to jot down names and things I saw. Then I'd slip the folded card and the pencil into a cigarette pack and go back to work. So I went back out to the car and looked inside the cigarette packs I'd seen in the glove compartment, but there was nothing there. I looked at the matchbooks, too, and this time I did find something. On the inside flap of one of them, written in pencil. It said, “Alexander.” And then my phone number. I slipped the matchbook into my pocket and went back to wait with Dashiell.