Fall Guy (15 page)

I had thought I'd wait until Saturday before asking Maggie anything more, before I mentioned the letter she'd written that Tim hadn't lived to see, before I tried to find out what was going on with this unlucky family. But reading Tim's notebook made me change my mind. When I woke up on Friday morning, half the day was gone. But Maggie might still be home. I pulled out her letter and read it again. Then I picked up the phone and made the call.

“It's Rachel,” I said when she picked up.

“Is there something wrong?”

I didn't know if it was her mind-set making her ask, her recent experience, or the tone of my voice. Whatever it was, hearing the fear in her voice, I couldn't go on. It was true that there was no more time for beating about the bush. I had to understand more of what was going on before seeing Parker again. That would be the next day, if not sooner. But I couldn't push Maggie, not over the phone, not after all she'd been through. I was going to have to find out what I needed to know on my own.

“Oh, nothing at all wrong,” I told her. “I was just confirming tomorrow, to make sure you're coming.”

“I am, yes.”

“And I wanted to tell you that Tim's neighbors are having a memorial in the afternoon, out in the garden. They asked me to be sure to invite you and Dennis.” The truth was, I'd forgotten to call either of them. “I was going to call him next.”

“A memorial, how lovely of them.”

“I'll call Dennis,” I said, hoping she'd tell me she'd do it. But she didn't.

I looked up the number of his Lexus dealership and dialed, waiting for a secretary to pick up, but it was the same voice that I had heard on my answering machine, the call I'd never returned because Maggie had said she'd do that herself. I was feeling the weight of speaking to another grieving relative. I was thankful he was at work so that I could make it short.

“It's Rachel Alexander, Dennis.”

“Oh, yes.”

“The reason I'm calling is that Tim's neighbors are having a memorial for him tomorrow at four, in the garden behind his apartment. They asked me to be sure to ask you to come.”

“Tomorrow at four?” he asked, sounding distracted, perhaps working on the computer as we spoke.

“Yes, just a small group. I imagine people will share some memories of Tim. And while you're there, if there's anything from his apartment you'd like to have…”

There was an awkward silence.

“I hope you can make it,” I said.

“Of course, of course,” he said. “At four?”

“Yes, four.”

“Um, can you give me the address? I don't know that I have his latest.”

I wasn't sure exactly how long Tim had been in the apartment, but from his low rent I knew it was at least fifteen years, probably longer. I gave his brother the address and instructions on how to get there. I told him I was looking forward to meeting him. Then I hung up, thinking again about why Timothy William O'Fallon had thought a stranger would be better able to handle his estate than a blood relative, starting to understand his decision.

I felt knots in my shoulders and when I looked down at my own lap, both my hands were resting against my thighs, balled into fists. I was in no shape to deal with Tim's brother and sister, with reading the rest of O'Fallon's notes, with much of anything. I decided that Jin Mei had hit the nail on the head, but instead of meditating in a garden, I'd do it where I did it best, in the pool at the McBurney Y. I fed Dashiell and took him out for a long walk. Then I grabbed my swimming gear and one other thing and headed out.

 

Floating on my back in all that blue, I couldn't have thought about the O'Fallons had I wanted to. There was something about being in the water that emptied my mind and let it float as free as my body did. I had done twenty-five minutes of lap swimming, concentrating only on my breathing and feeling my body moving in the water. I
had stretched my legs at the shallow end. And now, floating, my eyes closed, I felt at peace. I took a hot shower, got dressed, and feeling relaxed for the first time since I'd heard of Timothy O'Fallon's death, I began to walk home.

On the way home, I remembered that I was out of fresh vegetables for Dashiell's meals. I stopped at Integral Yoga and got a couple of bags of food—carrots with the tops on, dandelion greens, green and yellow squash, and some fruit for me. Then I headed to Horatio Street, but not to O'Fallon's apartment. I opened the bag with my swimming gear and took out the plastic bag and a spoon. Then I bent next to one of the few tree pits that weren't planted with summer flowers, dug a little hole and dumped the extracted teeth into it, covering them with dirt and tamping it down. Picking up my groceries, I headed home to go back to work. But just a block away, there was a dead pigeon lying against the curb. You don't see that very often, considering the number of pigeons living in the city. So I decided to make good use of this poor soul. Looking around, hoping no one was headed my way, I knelt, slipped a dog bag over one hand like a glove and plucked a couple of feathers from one bent wing. Then I took a detour, a third of the way down Jane Street, made another hole in another tree pit and buried the feathers there, a possible false find to sharpen Dash's training.

There was a notice in the mail saying O'Fallon's body had been released. When I got inside, I called the funeral home he'd designated in his will and arranged for them to pick it up. He'd re
quested cremation, but he hadn't specified what was to be done with his ashes. Perhaps he assumed that I could figure that out as well.

Instead of doing more work, I took Dashiell for a long walk along the river. When we got home, I thought I'd better make Dash's food before going back to O'Fallon's notebook, have it ready when mealtime rolled around. I put on the radio, a Bach concerto was playing, and spread the greens out on the counter. Chopping dandelion greens and carrot tops and grating squash and carrots was another form of meditation for me, something that kept me in the moment, that kept my mind free of the buzz that usually filled it. When I was finished, I stirred in some yogurt and put the mixture in the refrigerator, taking out some ground turkey to defrost so that I could add it to the vegetables at mealtime.

Finally, I sat on the couch and picked up the notebook, but I didn't open it. I started instead to go over the things I'd learned, to think about them—about Maggie's letter, about the location of the tile that had been replaced in O'Fallon's bathroom, about Parker's aunt who had gone missing, about how distracted Dennis O'Fallon had been on the phone. When I opened the notebook, I noticed a small red smear on the corner of the page I was about to read, as if O'Fallon's thumb had been bleeding when he'd turned the page to continue making notes. I wondered if he'd cut his hand in a work-related incident or if he was tense and bit his cuticles, the way my ex-husband used to—cool on the outside, knotted up within.

And then I started to think about Maggie again. She'd seen her brother at their mother's funeral service and written him that evening, not long after he'd left her home. What was that all about?

There was a list of items stolen, meticulously recorded on the left-hand page, items taken by Parker. Maybe Tim didn't care about his things, only about trying to give this man he'd taken in a chance. His life didn't seem to be about material possessions. It's hard to believe he would have become a cop if he had cared about money and possessions. But still, you'd hate to have your things just disappear, to look for a cigarette lighter, a pair of cuff links, a watch, and find it isn't where you left it, to realize that it wasn't misplaced, that it was gone forever.

It was late, but the turkey was still frozen and Dashiell needed a walk anyway. I had thought to leave the teeth for him to find in the morning, but decided to give it a try then. It was eight-thirty. The street wouldn't be crowded. People were already home from work and the transvestite hookers who worked the meat market and used Horatio Street as an outdoor hotel were not yet on the job.

I grabbed the leash, my keys and some pick-up bags. Dashiell was already waiting at the door. As soon as I opened it, he ran to the wrought-iron gate, then back to me, then back to the gate. His ears were back and there was a manic look in his eyes, all the enthusiasm in the world balled up and shoved into the very idea of a walk around the neighborhood, one of the many things I loved about dogs. And one other, the joy they got from
working. Of course Dashiell didn't know he'd be working on this walk. He didn't know that until we got to Twelfth Street and I told him to find bones. I tapped the closest tree pit, this one planted with pink impatiens, and repeated the command. He checked it out in no time, moving on to the next and then the next. We snaked down one side of the street, back up the other, staying between Greenwich and Washington streets, working our way to Horatio and the tree pit with the buried teeth.

When we were coming around the north side of Jane Street, Dashiell stopped, his head hanging over the tree pit with the buried feathers. I thought he'd turn to look at me, that I'd tell him, “No, leave it, find bones,” but that's not what happened. He bent his head over the earth that covered the feathers, shook it once and then headed for the next tree.

I decided to keep my mouth shut and let him work. I could see the alertness in every muscle in his body. He didn't need to be interrupted with praise or petting. I had no doubt that he knew exactly what he was doing. I had no doubt he'd stop at the tree pit where I'd buried the teeth, sit, turn to look at me and bark once. Which is what he did. “Piece of cake,” he might as well have been thinking. “Next.”

I didn't have the spoon with me, so I used a plastic pick-up bag to scoop away the earth. I let him peer down the small hole. I told him he was the greatest dog ever born. And then I picked out the teeth, turned the bag inside out and made a knot in it, dropping it in my pocket.

I was only a couple of doors away from O'Fallon's building. When I stood, I saw a young couple coming out, the man carrying a baby stroller down the steps and placing it on the sidewalk, the baby screaming at the top of her lungs. It seemed Emma was still having teething problems. He was very tall, a chunky man with an awkward gait. His wife was small with something steely in her posture, a determination in her stride, even when she was accompanying a yowling baby. I was going to introduce myself, but they headed the other way, perhaps in the hope that a walk along the river would put the unhappy baby to sleep.

The house on the corner of Horatio and Greenwich streets was being renovated. We walked under the sidewalk bridge hung with dusty plastic sheets. The first-floor windows were covered with opaque plastic to keep the dust out. Or maybe it was to keep it in. If that was so, it wasn't doing a very good job. I could feel the grit of construction debris under my shoes and taste the dust in my mouth as we walked between the ghostlike building and the long, low Dumpster at the curb.

Back at home, I mixed the ground turkey into the vegetable mix and gave Dash an extra large portion. He'd finished eating before I put away the rest of his food. I didn't feel like cooking for myself, so I picked up the phone, called Pepe Verde and ordered chicken Milanese, and while I waited for my food to arrive, I laid out the things I wanted to take with me in the morning. It was going to be a long day, Maggie there early, then the memorial, perhaps dealing with Parker and the things he'd
left behind, some of which, as he had apparently figured out, would not be where he'd left them. I thought I'd put him off again, at least until Maggie had gone home. I didn't think Maggie O'Fallon needed to deal with Parker Bowling on the day of her brother's memorial service.

I planned to go to bed right after eating, get up early and get to O'Fallon's. I needed to make sure the shower curtain was closed. I thought I'd throw some towels over the rod, too, make it less likely the curtain would be opened. I had no idea how curious Maggie would be, how much she'd want to know, or to face. Perhaps in her heart she already knew the truth. Perhaps she knew more than I could guess.

I decided to sit outside for a few minutes before going to bed. As it turned out, I sat in the garden until all the lights in the neighboring buildings had gone out. And then I sat there even longer. There was a cloud cover and I couldn't see any stars. Even the moon was difficult to make out, a shadowy crescent, pale and undelineated. Instead of lying under the oak tree or poking his big head into the ivy, looking for God knows what, Dashiell sat with me on the top step. He leaned against my side, his cheek against mine, as content to be in my company as I was to be in his. It must have been nearly two before I locked the door and followed Dashiell up to bed.

Even then, sleep wouldn't come. Just a few days earlier, I hadn't recognized Timothy O'Fallon's name. Now I was unable to get it—or him—out of my thoughts even when all I longed for was to go to sleep.

I got to O'Fallon's apartment at eight, two hours before Maggie was due to arrive. I decided to tackle the kitchen first. I wanted to get rid of that mound of dirty dishes before she came. I put on rubber gloves, ran the water as hot as it would get, and then stood there looking at the mess Parker and his buddies had left. Then I shut off the water, drained the sink and began to double-bag the musty ashtrays, the cheap unmatched glasses, the plates and platters and pots and pans that nobody would want, carrying them to the trash cans out front, two bags at a time. I saved two glasses and two cups, in case Maggie and I wanted water or tea, and a large bowl that I filled with water for Dashiell. I began to go through the kitchen cabinets next. I didn't think either Maggie or Dennis would want an open box of Ritz crackers, almonds from the year one, half a six-pack of diet ginger ale, Cheerios, enough Campbell's tomato soup for a small army, an open box of linguini.

The shelves were grimy. If the place were a
condo or a co-op, I would have called Maria Sanchez to come and clean everything before it went on the market. But it was a rental, and cleaning up before re-renting would be the responsibility of the landlord. I merely closed the empty cabinets and scoured the empty sink.

There was more to do in the kitchen but I wanted to make sure the bathroom was taken care of before Maggie came. The bathroom, I thought, trumped everything.

I found some towels and a bath mat at the very top of Tim's closet. I took those down and filled the empty rack with hand towels. Then I closed the shower curtain, hoping it would stay that way. And thinking it might discourage Maggie from moving it, I hung two large bath towels over the shower-curtain bar, as if they'd been put there to dry. I put the mat in front of the sink, then opened the medicine cabinet and dumped everything into a garbage bag. The less time Maggie spent in the bathroom, the better.

I still had forty minutes left. I'd left the couch pillows upturned. I put them back the way they should be, smacked the couch in a few places to give it better shape, tightened the cover on the daybed, opened the shutters to give the room more light and then started on the desk. I'd left a lot of papers there, things I wasn't finished with. I stacked those neatly and slipped them into the briefcase, wiping the dust off the desk with a paper towel. Now all that was left was a cup that held pens and pencils, a small bronze statue of a horse, the small purse I'd found in the corner of Parker's closet and the photo of Kathleen O'Fal
lon, the one the police had found on Tim's desk at the time they found him dead in the bathtub.

I wasn't sure what to do with the photo. I surely didn't want to tell Maggie the circumstances under which it had been found. But it was a lovely portrait and I thought she might want it. So, as a compromise, I propped it up against the books on one of the shelves adjacent to the desk.

When I looked back at the desk, there was one more thing to put away, that small purse. So I stood it on the shelf, right next to the photo. But when I looked back at it, I realized I'd made a little shrine of my own. So I took the purse and dropped it into the bottom desk drawer, out of sight.

For a moment, I thought about emptying out my mother's apartment. My sister Lili and I would take turns dredging up some of the awful things our mother had said to us when we were growing up, laughing at the memory of them, as if they hadn't cut to the core at the time. And then we'd realize, as if for the first time, how final this departure was and we'd begin to cry. Sometimes it was an object that got to us, like the shoe box we found with pictures of us as kids. “She loved us,” Lili had said, as if that were a complete surprise to her.

I sat in Tim's chair, looking at his mother's implacable face. Maggie looked very much like her, someplace to the west of placid. Perhaps “unfeeling” was the right word, though it seemed cruel. But if she had closed herself off, who could blame her? We all did what we had to in order to survive.

I wondered if the facade would hold up when
she got here, when she was in the place where her brother had lived and died, a place, as far as I could tell, where she'd never been. I wondered what sort of surprises Maggie would discover among her brother's belongings, and if she'd cry the way Lili and I had, tears we thought would never stop.

I wondered if she and Tim had said anything beyond hello at the wake because it was that very night that Maggie had sat down to write her brother the note I had found in the mailbox the first day I was here. “We have to talk,” she'd said. Why hadn't they talked that afternoon? Even with a house full of people, they could have found a moment to themselves, surely he could have stayed later, if that was what it would have taken.

Tim's closet was nearly empty, the clothes and shoes packed up for Housing Works. I decided to put those bags and suitcases into the bottom of his closet, to get them out of the way. It was ten to ten. I walked through the apartment feeling pleased. I thought that aside from the wear in the living room rug, the dust I was sure was on all the books, particularly those on the higher shelves, and the fact that the place could have used a paint job, it might pass muster with Maggie. I sat on the couch to wait for her to come when my cell phone rang.

“Success the other night?”

“You mean the bone? Yes, he found it.”

“Any problems?”

“None at all. Thanks for this. It was just what he needed, what we both needed.”

“Good,” he said, “that's good. And the false hides, did either of them fool him?”

“You did that, too? No. He pretty much went straight for the bone. An ulna?”

“A radius.”

I didn't think I'd get an answer had I asked him where he'd gotten it. So I didn't. I waited, wondering what he had to say that couldn't have waited. I was going to see him in a few hours, unless something came up at work. Was that what he'd called to say?

“I'm at Tim's apartment,” I told him. “Are you still planning on coming later, for the memorial?”

“Yes, I am.”

“But?”

The bell rang. I went to the intercom and hit the button that unlocked the front door, thinking I should have asked who was there, even though it was ten, the time Maggie had said she'd be here. Though I hardly knew her, I couldn't imagine her not showing up on time.

“We found Parker's aunt.”

There was a knock at the door.

“Where was she?” I asked, opening the door for Maggie. I held up one finger, to tell her I'd be off the phone in a minute.

“In the Hudson,” Brody said. “I wanted you to know before you read it in the paper.”

I waited, but he didn't continue. “What would I find, if I read about it in the paper?”

“Not too much.”

“Some details about her career, I imagine.”

I heard a phone ringing on the other end, someone yelling.

“But not that she was dead when she went into the water,” he said.

“Oh.”

“Her neck had been broken first.”

Maggie was still standing in the doorway, just looking. I motioned for her to come in, then closed the door behind her.

“Was there ID? Did they know who it was right away?”

“Yes. And yes.”

“Odd.”

“Not as odd as you think.”

“How did, um, she get found?”

“Is someone there?”

“Yes. Exactly.”

“Mary Margaret?”

“Yes, that's right.”

“There was a mark on one ankle. Someone had tried to weigh her down but the rope didn't stay tied.”

“Someone? You mean Parker?”

He didn't answer me right away. I heard him strike a match. “The putz couldn't even do that right,” he whispered. “How hard is that, to tie a knot that stays tied?” I pictured him shaking his head, taking a drag on the cigarette, the ashtray on his desk brimming over. Or maybe he'd just dumped it. Maybe there was a cloud of ash rising from his wastebasket as we spoke. “She'd been in the water about a week, time enough in this weather for her to come back up to the surface. A civilian spotted her, called it in on his cell.”

“So it seems Parker had a place to stay the very first night.”

“So it seems.”

“He told me he'd stayed with a friend.”

“Told us he'd gone drinking with his buddies, that they'd stayed out all night.”

“He ought to get his stories straight.”

Maggie was holding the picture of her mother, standing with her back to me. I turned around, too, facing the door, and lowered my voice.

“Where is he now? In jail?”

There was another silence on the line, this one longer.

“Michael?”

“Believe me, we'll find him.”

This time I was the one who had nothing to say.

“The closets at her apartment were full of his things, most of them new,” he said.

“Freshly shoplifted?”

“Could be. He had a nice little shrine set up on the coffee table. There was almost nothing of his aunt's personal effects in the place. You'd think he had been there for years, that it was his apartment, not hers.”

“He threw her stuff out?”

“When the detectives spoke to him earlier, he claimed she went on a trip, took her things with her. He said she left him a note to that effect, saying he could stay there until she got back.”

“Let me guess. He neglected to save it.”

“That's what he said.”

“And he had nothing to do with…” I turned around to see if Maggie was listening, but she
was gone. That's when I heard the shower curtain being ripped back.

“I've got to go,” I said, ending the call and running toward the bathroom.

The door was open. She stood in the middle of the room, staring at the tile wall, her body so still I thought she might no longer be breathing. But then she made a little noise, almost like a cough but not quite. When she turned around, her face was composed.

“Where shall we begin?” she asked. As if nothing out of the ordinary had happened here, as if she didn't understand the meaning of what had been right before her eyes.

“Maggie, I—”

She waved a hand at me, took a deep breath. “Are there any other photographs?” she asked. I stepped out of the way and she walked past me, through the kitchen and back to the living room. I put some water in the kettle and lit the stove. “I gave this to Timothy just last week,” she said, holding the photograph of Kathleen, the one that had been found on his desk the afternoon he'd been found dead in the bath. She looked around for a place to put it. I figured she'd take it, take all the family pictures.

“Let's put the things you want to take on the daybed for now.”

She walked over to the daybed, Tim's bed, carefully smoothed the cover I'd smoothed less than an hour before, and put the photo down. Then she began to look at the pictures hanging on the walls.

“It's all the family,” she said, her hand to her lips. “When we were young.”

I followed behind her. Dashiell did, too, staying at her side.

She began to take the photos off the walls and I went to get the paper towels, so that we could dust them off, wishing I'd thought to bring some boxes so that she had a place to pack them. While she dusted and stacked the framed photos of herself and Tim and Dennis and Joey, I made two cups of tea and set them on the table. Then I picked up the briefcase from the floor near the desk, taking out the letter Maggie had written to Tim after seeing him the week before.

“Come in the kitchen. Let's have a cup of tea,” I said, walking to the table ahead of her, the blue envelope in my hand.

“What's that?” Standing behind her chair.

“I've been collecting Tim's mail,” I said. “The lawyer for the estate, Tim's lawyer, pays the bills and sends me the checks to sign. She'll take care of all that. But this was in the mailbox the first time I came.”

I pulled out my chair and sat. Maggie remained standing.

“He never read it then?” She pulled out the chair and sat, putting her hands around the mug. “No, of course he didn't. I didn't mail it until Saturday night. He couldn't have read it, could he?”

“No, he couldn't have read it.”

I took the letter out of the envelope and handed it to her. She moved her cup aside, wiped the table with her hand to make sure it was dry, and put the letter down in front of her, smoothing it flat with her hands.

“Will you tell me about Breyer's Landing, Maggie?”

She took a sip of tea, looking into the cup after she'd put it back on the table. “They say hot tea cools you off in summer,” she said.

“There's not much here. It was either tea or water.”

“This is fine. I always find a cup of tea comforting, don't you?”

Dashiell lapped some water from the bowl I'd put down, then sighed and slid down noisily next to Maggie's chair. Then there was only the sound of the air conditioner, the compressor cycling on.

“It's up on Clausland Mountain, in Upper Nyack. The boys would ride their bikes up old Tweed Boulevard and then hike in to the swimming hole. It was forbidden to go there, of course. For one thing, it's part of the army's property. For another, it was dangerous. It was a deep hole in the mountain where the water would collect from melting snow, rain, any sort of runoff. Of course there was no lifeguard, no supervision of any kind. It was just a hole filled with icy water, surrounded by rocks, inside and out. All the parents made a point to tell their children not to go there, but they all did. All the boys, anyway. That's how they'd prove themselves, by jumping in,” she said, her voice cracking. “It was the way they'd show how brave they were, how little they valued life. Or so they thought.”

“You couldn't be cool if you didn't do it.”

“Exactly. Of course, they didn't invite me. They didn't want girls there. If a girl jumped in, it would spoil it. It would no longer be considered
a brave thing to do if a girl could do it.” She stopped to sip her tea. “There was a rumor that this girl Nancy Shapiro went once and dived in. She was a Jewish girl, from over in Orangeburg. We didn't know her. And I only heard it was so. I couldn't swear to it.”