Fall Guy (18 page)

“He knew you loved him,” Jin Mei said, her arm around Maggie's shoulders. “He knew we all loved him. Now let's eat some food, drink some wine and celebrate his life.”

I went inside and brought out the little pot with all the keys, letting everyone pick their own. Jin Mei hesitated. “Now if I'm locked out, I'll have to call a locksmith.”

“I know a good one,” I told her. “I'll give you his number.”

“It's not that,” she said.

I nodded. “I know.”

“It's the end of something good.”

I nodded again, out of words for the moment.

“Did you keep his keys as well?”

“He didn't need keys to get in.” She mimed picking a lock.

I started to smile at her joke, but Jin Mei was dead serious. I thanked her for all the work she'd done and went to join Maggie.

“I'm so glad you came today.”

“So am I.”

“Can you stay a while longer? I thought I'd run out now and get some more boxes and then we can have some supper before you drive home.”

“I'd like that, Rachel. Do you want to ask Tim's partner to join us?”

I turned around too quickly so that she wouldn't see the expression on my face. Someone had put a box in front of the tables for Irwin, who was filling a plastic plate with Jin Mei's treats. Kevin and Rob appeared to be arguing at the far end of the garden. Bill was talking to Helene, who was now holding Emma. Jin Mei was standing all by herself, looking very small and lost. I looked for Brody, but he was gone.

I borrowed a stepladder from Irwin so that Maggie could take down the books from the top shelves. I put out two rolls of paper towels so that she could dust the books she wanted to take and handed her the extra set of keys, but that made her shake her head, as if I'd handed her something too hot to hold. She put them on Tim's desk and I was pretty sure they'd be there after she left for home.

I remembered the pretty beaded purse then, wondering why it had been on the floor of Parker's closet. Had he been about to steal it when Tim had come home earlier than expected, or when the cops arrived? I took it out of the drawer and put it on the daybed with the things Maggie had gathered to pack and take home. There wasn't much there—a dozen or so framed photos that had been hung around the room. With the walls empty and the rectangles of paler paint exposed, the room looked really depressing. No wonder Maggie didn't want a key. I was starting to wish I didn't have to come back again either.

She was up on the ladder when I was ready to leave. I thought I'd head the other way, toward Greenwich Street, then over to D'Agostino's. Large grocery stores that delivered orders to their customers always had boxes lying around and they usually let people take a few if they needed them. I thought three more would do the trick, and three would be all I could manage with Dashiell along. I grabbed the leash and told Maggie I'd be back soon. Up on the ladder, a book open in one hand, she was reading something. She didn't turn around. She only waved her free hand.

The moment we were out of the house, Dashiell began searching the tree pits again. I was about to tell him to knock it off when I realized how bored he must have been, spending the day surrounded by grief with no way to work it off. After a pet-therapy session, I'd always take him for a long hike or play ball with him. I weighed the disappointment he might feel at not making a find against the search itself and let him continue. It wasn't a bad idea for him to understand that not every search would be successful. It was one of the many realities he'd have to deal with eventually.

He checked each pit, putting his nose between the plants and sniffing the earth below deeply. Each time he decided there was nothing there to warrant his attention, he went quickly to the next one, on and on toward the sidewalk bridge surrounding the corner town house. There was a hole cut into the bridge for the tree next to the house, but the tree pit had been covered with plastic. Someone probably thought they were being kind,
protecting the tree from construction dust, but they were also protecting it from getting water. It was anyone's guess whether or not the tree would survive the amount of construction dirt on top of the bridge and the lack of sunlight below.

It was still light out. It wouldn't get dark until after eight this time of the year. The air had started to cool off a little, but the temperature must have still been in the high eighties. Under the bridge, it was permanently evening. The opaque plastic meant to protect the lower-floor windows made the house look haunted instead of temporarily vacated, and the plastic sheets that hung down from the sidewalk bridge made the sidewalk into a gritty tunnel for the length of the house.

Dashiell was finishing the last planted tree pit before the construction. I waited, wishing I had those teeth in my pocket so that I could give him a successful find for his trouble. But when we walked under the bridge, everything changed.

Dashiell stopped at the side of the huge Dumpster and froze, his head up, his tail out and rigid like a rudder, the muscles in his back tense beneath his short white fur. There was a sound next, not the single bark he used to signal a find. This was something Dashiell did when he felt it was imperative to get my attention, something he did when my mind was elsewhere, when I wasn't getting it. It was a song of sorts from deep in his chest, halfway between a moan and a bark. When I looked at him, he held my eyes, then turned to look at the top of the Dumpster, then back at me again.

It might have been anything, I thought. After all, I hadn't asked him to search. I'd only assumed he was doing what we'd just done the other day on this very block. There might have been the remains of the workers' lunches in the Dumpster—leftover pizza, chicken bones. People tossed all kinds of things into the Dumpsters, sometimes trash that was too big to put out for normal collection, furniture they no longer wanted or an old shopping cart with a missing wheel. People parked and cleaned up their cars, tossing everything in with the construction debris. Or they tossed in the dirty diaper they had been carrying in the pocket of their stroller since leaving the playground, having waited for just such a golden opportunity.

There might have been, in fact, rodents in the huge bin. It was a construction site and this was New York City. I listened for their sound but heard nothing. Still Dashiell was insistent. He approached the Dumpster now, smelling along the seam nearest us, then along the side, the sound of his breathing audible and strong. When he sneezed, he was so close to the Dumpster I could see dust blossom out in front of him. He stood on his hind legs, his front paws against the Dumpster, head up, mouth open, eating the air. He was totally absorbed, but I had left Maggie alone, promising I wouldn't be long. I was just about to ask him to move along when he sat, turned to look at me and barked.

I know I shouldn't have, but I tugged the leash and called him to come along. Dashiell wouldn't budge. Again, he looked at the Dumpster, his
nose in the air, pointing toward the top of it and he barked once more, his front legs coming off the ground, the sound thundering down the deserted street.

The last thing I wanted to do was to climb up on something and peer inside. And then what? If there were rodents in there, or sandwiches, they wouldn't be sitting neatly on top. In order to be a good trainer, would I have to go Dumpster-diving, the way the homeless did? On the other hand, I didn't want to mess up Dash's training. I looked around, wanting to make sure no one was nearby, figuring I could stand on the bumper of the car parked behind the Dumpster and take a look inside. But Dashiell moved first. From a standstill, he landed on the hood of the car, but he didn't stay there. He barely glanced it and then he was in the Dumpster. I could see his back rounded, his shoulders moving. He was digging. Then he looked over the edge, his brow crushed with concern, and he began to whine, not stopping until I'd grabbed the end of the Dumpster and stood on the bumper of the car behind it so that I, too, could see what had gotten him so excited.

And a moment later I did. Dashiell's digging had bunched up a piece of the plastic sheeting, pulling it from what it had been covering. He was sitting close to the feet of a well-dressed man in his forties whose head was at an unfortunate angle and whose chest was no longer moving. I was about to hoist myself up to the Dumpster to see if there was any identification in his pockets when that became no longer necessary. As I reached for the edge of the Dumpster, I noticed
something across the street that made me change my mind.

Then I noticed something else. Lying next to the body, there was a key ring. That was odd, I thought, because there were only three keys on it, none of them a car key.

I stepped back down to the sidewalk and called Dashiell. He put his front paws on the edge of the Dumpster and jumped down to the sidewalk. I took his face in my hands and looked into his eyes. “You're the greatest,” I wanted to tell him, but when I tried to speak, the words wouldn't come. I sat on the curb, my arm around my dog, until I was able to swallow again. Then I stood, pulled out my cell phone and dialed Brody's.

“Where are you?” I asked.

“Rachel?”

“Where are you?”

“I'm at the house,” he said. “What's wrong?”

“I'm on the corner of Horatio and Greenwich Street,” I said. “Dashiell just found a body in the Dumpster next to the corner building.”

“I'll be right there.”

“Michael.”

“Yes?”

I looked back at the car parked directly across the street. It was hard to miss, a brand-new, shiny gold Lexus with dealer's plates.

“It's Dennis O'Fallon.”

Is that you, Rachel?” she called from the kitchen.

“Yes, it's me.” I unhooked Dashiell's leash and dropped it onto the little table right near the door.

“Did you have trouble? You were gone a long time.”

I walked back to where the voice and the smell of Soft Scrub were coming from. The cabinet doors were all ajar to let their spotless shelves dry. You could have eaten off the counters. Maggie was on the floor, on her hands and knees, a small bucket with soapy water next to her. She was wearing a pair of rubber gloves and working on a particularly stubborn scuff mark.

“Almost finished,” she said. “I didn't want to leave all this hard work to you. You said you hardly knew Tim. It just doesn't seem fair.”

Dashiell started toward Maggie. Anything, or anyone, on the floor belongs to the dog, and having just worked his heart out, he was ready to press his cheek against Maggie's and get a little ear scratch for his troubles. I stopped him with a
hand signal, watching Maggie trying to scrub away her grief, thinking about how we all did that, one way or another, thinking mostly of what I was about to tell her.

“There,” she said, looking up for the first time, her face damp and flushed with pleasure. “That's much better now.” She sat back on her heels. There was a dish towel tucked into her waistband, another under her knees to keep her slacks clean. “Did you get the boxes?”

“No, I didn't, Maggie. I never got to the store.”

She pulled off the gloves and stood, picking up the pail as she got up. She turned and walked into the bathroom, dumped the rest of the water in the toilet and flushed. Then she put the pail down and came back out, pushing some tendrils of wet hair off one cheek.

“I don't understand.”

But looking at her face, watching her watch me, I had the sinking feeling she did.

“Let's go in the living room and sit down,” I said, holding out a hand for her to take.

“No,” she said. “I don't care to sit down. There's work to do here.” She turned toward the sink now, hoping for a miracle, a pile of dirty dishes to wash, a pot to scour, some way she could exchange her sweat for the truth to come.

“It's Dennis,” I told her. “He did come for the memorial. We found his car across the street.”

She faced me now. “What do you mean, you found his car?”

“Dashiell alerted near the corner. There's construction going on there and—”

“Alerted? What does that mean?”

“It means he indicated that he'd found something.” I bit my lip, unable to deliver the next blow.

“He found Dennis? You mean he's hurt? Something fell on him?” Maggie pulled the dish towel from her waistband and without looking tossed it onto the counter, wiping both cheeks with her hand as soon as it was free. “Where is he? Is he in the hospital?”

I shook my head. “I'm so sorry, Maggie. He's dead. It wasn't an accident. Someone killed him.”

She opened her mouth and roared, not a human sound at all. Her hands flew into her hair, tearing at it. I closed the distance between us with one step, putting my arms around her, squeezing her close, feeling her body shudder and convulse. “No,” she cried, “it can't be. It can't be.”

I got Maggie into the living room and sat her on the couch, going back to the kitchen to get her a glass of water. But when I offered her the water, she knocked my hand away, the water spewing out onto the carpet, the glass flying from my hand and bouncing twice before it hit the daybed. I sat with my arms around her while she sobbed. I don't know that I'd ever seen a person cry like that, decades of grief and pain pouring out of her, her body trembling, hot at first, then cold, then hot again.

After a long time, her head on my lap as if she were a child, my hand stroking her back, Maggie fell asleep. I sat there without moving. Night was coming in the windows now, blue-gray light, and I could hear the sounds changing, too. The birds
were no longer singing and traffic had picked up, people coming to the Village for dinner or to go to a club were cruising around looking for a place to park. I heard a motorcycle pass and then, for a long while, the only sound was Maggie's ragged breathing.

She awakened and sat up nearly an hour later, her face swollen, her eyes red and puffy. I got up to make some tea. When I got back to the couch, Maggie hadn't moved. I offered her the cup of tea but she didn't seem to see it. Or me. I put it on the desk and sat down on the other side of the couch, not quite sure what to do.

“It was the push,” she said, staring toward the windows, “it's been killing off the lot of us.”

“What are you saying?”

She took a deep breath and let it back out and then she turned to face me. “I lied to you. I've been lying all my life. It's the way my family functioned. Lying wasn't only encouraged. It was the only thing allowed.”

There was a softness in her eyes, beyond what you see after people sob their hearts out. Without the false smile, the stiff upper lip, the squared shoulders, without her mind rewriting history even as it happened so that her real feelings would be buried and only pleasantries would emerge, she looked naked. She looked, in fact, as if she'd just been born. Mary Margaret O'Fallon was here in the world, at last.

“I did follow the boys up to the top of Clausland Mountain that day. That part is true.”

“Twenty-nine years ago?”

She nodded. “And I did hide my bike behind
some bushes, farther up the road from the boys' bikes. Then I went into the woods and wandered around until I heard their voices. I bent low, following the sound. It got louder and louder—shouts, jeers, catcalls, the most cutting comments a boy could hear. ‘Come on, you little pussy,' Dennis was shouting, hands at the sides of his cruel mouth. ‘Jump, faggot.' He turned to Tim and whispered something I couldn't hear. Then they all started to shout. It was like that horrifying crowd mentality when people see some poor soul up on a ledge and those below start shouting the same thing, ‘Jump, jump, jump.' I don't understand the human race. Honestly, I don't. I know they were only boys, but still, they should have known better.”

I waited for the rest. I might have thought it was the teasing that sent Joey off those jagged rocks to meet his maker at the green age of twelve, except for what Maggie had said earlier. “It was the push,” she'd said. And I didn't think, not now, that she meant the push of words, the push of contempt, the push of thoughtless cruelty. I had the awful feeling, the insistent feeling, that she meant a literal push.

“Who did it?” I asked. But as soon as I did, I no longer needed Maggie to answer me. I knew.

“I could have stopped it. I could have shown myself. I could have said I'd tell on them. I could have…” She buried her face in her hands and wept again, but there was no sound this time, just the shaking of her shoulders and the tears falling onto her slacks. I moved closer and put my arm around her shoulders. She looked up, shook her
head, wiped her eyes with her fingers. “They were all still shouting up at Joey when he left. He went around the back way, through the trees. And then we could all see him, coming out on top of the rocks, right behind Joey. ‘Give him a hand,' Liam shouted and then he began to laugh. And they all did. They were laughing when it happened.”

“When Tim pushed him off?”

She nodded.

“Say it.” I took her hand.

“When Tim pushed Joey off.”

“Have you ever said it before?”

“Not until last week.”

“What happened last week?”

“After the wake, I went to the priest. I told him what I saw. I told him that no one knew I'd been there, that I crouched there frozen while they waited for Joey to come up from the dark well. They were laughing at first, then silent, then terrified. I watched it, the fear coming over them like the shadow of the mountain when the sun drops behind it. It was gradual at first, just a little shadow spoiling their fun. And then it covered them, made their world pitch-black, made their souls ache. Was it too much time already? No one had a watch. No one knew. Tim came back down and he and Liam jumped in. I was there each time they came up, gasping for air, blue with cold, but without Joey. I saw them huddle together and whisper. They hadn't saved Joey. Now they had to save themselves. They needed a story. We always needed a story back then. We couldn't have survived without our stories.

“I waited, flat on the ground, until Francis ran for help. After he'd gone, I ran, too. I ran back to my bike and went home the long way, through Nyack, just in case any of them might be back out on the road, just to make sure no one saw me or knew what I'd seen. It took me an hour and a half to get home. And another hour and a half for everyone else to get back to the house with the news that they hadn't been able to find Joey, that he'd disappeared in that cold, black pit, that he was gone forever. That's when I heard the story, again and again and again, of how they'd begged him not to jump, of how he'd gone and done it anyway, that he'd been a foolhardy boy and that he'd paid the ultimate price. That he'd done it, he'd gone ahead and jumped off that high place with them begging him not to all along. That's what they all said. That's what my parents believed. And I never said a word to the contrary, nor told a soul what I had seen, not until I told Father Jack last week.”

“Why now, after all these years?”

Maggie got up and walked over to the windows. She stood there for a while, not answering my question. I thought about the note she'd written Tim that night. After she'd spoken to the priest.

“I knew that if I confessed my sin to Father Jack, he'd tell me I should tell my mother what I'd seen, what really happened. I couldn't do that. I wouldn't have done that, so there was no point. But once she'd died, I had a burden I wanted to put down. Once she was gone, I thought it would be safe to do that. Now look at what I've gone and done.”

I was behind her in a moment, turning her to face me. “No, don't say that. Don't do that to yourself. This wasn't your fault, not any of it.”

“I could have stopped them.”

“Maybe. Maybe you could have, that time. But that only would have postponed it. It would have happened another time at another place, somewhere you wouldn't know anything about.”

“That's what he said.”

“Father Jack?”

“He said it wasn't my fault.” Maggie's lips turned into a thin line.

“And what else did he say?”

“That I had to tell Timothy that I'd been there, that I knew.”

“Is that why you wrote him that note?”

Maggie nodded. “He said I had to tell him.”

“Yes?”

“And that I had to forgive him.” Her fists were clenched now, her face flushed. “He said he understood why I hadn't come to confession.”

“Because you didn't want to tell your mother, because the truth would be so painful for her?”

She nodded, her face lined with concern.

“And because I didn't want God to forgive Tim. I was that angry at him.”

“And when you wrote the note?”

She waved a hand in the air, dropping it limply back to her side.

“You'd worked it all out. You let it all go.”

“I did. You have to believe me, Rachel, I only wanted my brother back. I only wanted to say how sorry I was for the anger I'd held in my heart all these years.” The tears were streaming down
her face as she spoke and she reached for my hand, holding it tightly in both of hers. “I was that cold to him at the wake that he didn't ask for anything of our mother's. He didn't feel at home in his own house.”

“But you gave him the photograph of your mother, didn't you? You didn't send him away empty-handed.”

“I did give him the photograph, but not out of generosity. I wanted to remind him of what he'd failed to do.”

“Meaning?”

“Never being there for her, leaving it all to me. He should have helped me. He was her son. He should have been there, too.”

Except that he no longer felt at home, I thought. He didn't feel welcome there.

“I barely spoke to him. But Father Jack made me see that Timothy didn't mean the harm he caused. He didn't know what would happen then. Or after.”

“After? You mean Liam's suicide?”

“And my father's.”

“You're saying both were related to Joey's death?”

She nodded. “They were.”

“Tell me, Maggie.”

“Liam was going to become a priest. That was his wish, since he was a small boy. And his parents' wish, to give their oldest son to God. But that day, he'd been part of it, not just a bystander, the jeering first of all, and the lying afterward. How could he have become a priest after that, with all that blackness staining his soul?”

“And you think that's why he killed himself?”

“I do.”

“And your father? You think his death had to do with grief over Joey's accident? Because you said he believed it was an accident, that he never knew the truth.”

She got up and walked over to the daybed, looking down at the pictures. “What's this?” she asked, picking up the beaded purse.

“I found that here. I thought it had belonged to your mother and that you might want it.”

She weighed the purse in her hand and walked back to give it to me. “Why would Tim have a purse of my mother's?”

I shrugged. “People keep all kinds of mementos. I just thought…”

“No, it wasn't hers. I've never seen this before.”

I watched her walk around the room now, looking at books, at the pictures she'd put aside, then coming back to Tim's desk and picking up the statue of the horse.

“This was my father's,” she said. “I didn't know Tim had it.” She moved the horse from hand to hand.

“You'll want that then?”

But Maggie put it back on the desk. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “There's too much there already.”