Fall Guy (7 page)

The locksmith's name was Nick. It said so on the front of his shirt. On the back it said “Nick's Locks,” in case you caught him going instead of coming. As I unlocked the first door, I explained the deal with the locks, that the upper and lower ones used the same key. As it turned out, all four cylinders used the same key.

Nick began shaking his head. “No good, lady,” he said. “Anything you think of, the thieves thought of it two weeks ago. You know those bicycle locks, supposed to be foolproof?”

I nodded.

“Freezing jewelry in the ice tray? Coin collection in a sock? Hollowed out book? Clint Eastwood blew that one in
Escape From Alcatraz
. No, wait, maybe that was what's-his-face in
Shawshank Remdemption
. No matter. It was one of them, right?”

“Tim Robbins,” I said.

“Whatever. Emerald ring hidden in a fake light switch? That was a good one, for five minutes. I even had one client built a hidden room. Cost him a pile. Did it work?”

I had the script. I shook my head.

“I rest my case. Nothing beats good hardware. Plus, one of those couldn't hurt none.” He was pointing at Dashiell.

Nick had that five-o'clock-shadow look that Don Johnson popularized back when
Miami Vice
was must-see-TV, having a renaissance now with the under thirty set and gay men of any age. Only Nick's, I was sure, was the real McCoy, even at ten-thirty in the morning.

“Another thing,” he said. “These things?” He held the cylinder from O'Fallon's front door in the palm of his hand, more like a big paw the way I saw it. “Worthless crap.”

In fact, it looked to be the same kind of worthless crap that had kept the cellar door locked before a homeless woman had decided that sleeping in a town house would be preferable to sleeping in the street.

O'Fallon's attorney had told me that whatever I spent would be reimbursed by the estate, that all I had to do was to send her the receipts. Much as I didn't want to be frivolous with Maggie O'Fallon's money, given the long line of untrustworthy men who had lived in her brother's apartment, replacing the locks seemed like a good idea.

“What do you recommend?” I asked.

The bill came to $380 before I noticed the jimmied window. Luckily Nick was still there, writing out the bill at O'Fallon's kitchen table. The bathroom door was still closed. I noticed that, too, but I wasn't in a rush to go in there. I was curious, but more than willing to put it on hold.

The plants and the watering can on the sill had
blocked the damage to the kitchen window. Now that the plants were gone and I had just moved the can so that I could open the window and let some air in, I saw the crack in the wood. I had to stand on one of the kitchen chairs to check the lock. There wasn't any. Instead there was a little rectangle with a different color paint, old faded paint, and two holes where the screws had attached it to the top of the bottom window. I called Nick over to have a look-see. He climbed up on the chair with me, then asked if we could go outside. I told him we could. From the garden, the damage was completely clear, pry marks at the bottom of the window, dents in the wood, probably done with a garden tool, impromptu.

Nick added another thirty-five dollars to the bill and then began to check all the other windows inside and out to be sure the apartment was safe. When he headed toward the bathroom door, I told him to skip that one. He'd checked the window from the garden and it looked pristine. He'd even tried to open it, but the lock held. Plus, I was still postponing that event. I thought I'd function better if I saved it for last, just before I was ready to leave. Or until my bladder insisted otherwise, whichever came first.

The front windows were untouched and had bars on them anyway, another New York phenomenon. You paid a fortune to live here and then, if you lived on the ground floor, your apartment resembled the primate digs at a politically incorrect zoo.

“You want I should throw a new lock on that door to the garden? Piece of shit, the one that's on
it. Wouldn't keep out a three-year-old. I'll give you a break on that one, seeing as you're doing a lot of work here, keep the whole shebang under five hundred. Not bad for the peace of mind it'll give you.”

I didn't think a three-year-old would be able to reach the doorknob, but didn't say so. I thanked Nick, but told him no, thanks.

“How do you think that kitchen window lock got pulled out?” Nick asked. “Someone wanted in here and had no trouble getting past that one, getting into the garden.”

“I understand that,” I said, “but there's a limit to what I want to do,” thinking my job was to protect O'Fallon's property, not the trees and flowers outside. “I don't even live here,” I told him.

Nick screwed up his face. Wouldn't be the first time a locksmith was called to change the lock on an apartment the caller didn't occupy. A scam the thieves thought up two weeks before the locksmiths figured it out, I could have said, but decided to keep my big mouth shut. He was busy trying to figure out if this job was legit or not. I'd handed him the keys that had unlocked both doors. Still, Nick's face was in a knot.

He pulled out his cell phone. “I'm this close to losing a good fee and having to undo all this work, lady. Can you prove you have a right…”

I opened O'Fallon's briefcase and took out the will, showing him my name as executor. Then I pulled out my wallet and showed him my driver's license, complete with a picture that made me look as if I lived in a trailer and never ventured out during daylight.

Nick nodded. “Sorry about your loss,” he said.

I thanked him. No point in keeping him here an extra half an hour telling him what the story was. Besides, I didn't know what the story was. I was still wishing someone would explain things to me. But dead men don't talk. And while I was sure the ME would disagree with that, the information I wanted wasn't available via organ weights or the path a bullet took ruining someone's young life. I needed words. Why me and not Mary Margaret? That's what I wanted to know.

He must have had his reasons. Maybe the medical examiner would say that, too.

When Nick left, I thought I'd try Brody, ask him about the jimmied window. From the looks of it, it wasn't all that old. Nick thought it had happened a day or two earlier.

He'd looked up at the sky, thinking. “No rain last week, am I right?”

“You're right,” I told him. I was getting pretty good at this.

“Could have been longer then, but not more than a week. You see the color of the wood here?” He'd pointed to one of the places where the wood had been fractured, the exposed wood pale and raw-looking. “See the color? If we'd had any weather, it wouldn't be so light.” He'd nodded, agreeing with himself.

I picked up O'Fallon's phone, then put it down. The place was tight again, safe. The question could wait until later. I was sure there'd be more of them. For now, I wanted to get to work.

I leaned over the sinkful of dirty dishes to open the window, wondering if whoever had jimmied
the window had managed to get in this way, scrunching himself into a ball and then stepping over the sink. You'd have to be a contortionist. I wondered if it was O'Fallon, if he'd forgotten his keys, had a neighbor ring him in, then broke his own window latch to get inside.

I pushed the knob that closed the drain, squirted in some Dove and ran the hot water. No use trying to deal with the dishes until they'd soaked for a while. Doing the dishes was another task I was happy to postpone, especially since there was no dishwasher.

When I turned off the water, I heard a voice in the garden. I couldn't see anyone outside the window. I decided to go out and see who was there.

He was on his cell phone, talking loud. He seemed to be upset. He was about my height, maybe an inch or two shorter, in his fifties, his gray hair slicked back with so much goo it appeared to be wet but I was sure it wasn't, that it was just the wet look he'd been after. He was dressed all in black, perhaps to minimize the potbelly that rested tenuously on his black belt. Alligator, probably faux. Even the rims of his retro eyeglasses were black. He used one thick finger to push them back up to the bridge of his smallish nose. His skin was pale but his cheeks were flushed. Perhaps the yelling had accomplished that.

“Okay,” he shouted into the phone. “I hear you. It's an emergency.” I was about to tell him about the new technology, that he didn't have to shout to be heard, but I didn't get the chance. “Five. Got it,” he said, slamming the phone closed and sighing heavily.

“You'd think being a waiter would be a low-stress, easy job, wouldn't you?” he asked me. “Rob's going to have a cat. We have reservations at Lupa, for God's sake. What are you doing for dinner?” I opened my mouth, then closed it again. This, like his other questions, was no doubt rhetorical. I wondered if he was related to my locksmith or if it was just the luck of the draw. He took a step in my direction. “Rachel?”

“Yes. How did you…?”

He put out his hand, not sideways, as if to shake, but palm down and limp, as if he expected me to kiss it. I didn't notice a tiara, so I disappointed him.

“Kevin. Kevin Bell? Jin Mei said she'd met you.” He dropped his voice to a stage whisper. “She said you're here because of…” He indicated the door I'd just come out of with a nod of his head.

“Yes. I'm taking care of Detective O'Fallon's affairs,” I said.

“I don't think he had any,” Kevin said. “Not that I wouldn't have been interested, a man with handcuffs and a nightstick. It's got a certain
je ne sais quois,
don't you think?”

“I suppose so, if that's your thing.”

“Let's not go there,” he said. “We've only just met.”

He had a nice smile. Smiling, he didn't look a day over forty-five.

“So you're saying he was gay?”

“O'Fallon? No way. But a boy can dream, can't he?”

“What about Parker?”

“Sweetheart, where are you from, Queens? First of all, this is the Village, not Chelsea. And even there, not
everyone
is gay.”

“I didn't ask if everyone was gay. I've only asked you about two people,” thinking I was starting to sound like Brody, that I better lighten up. Kevin wasn't obliged to tell me anything.

“Two so far.”

“Correct.”

“Curious little thing, aren't you?”

“Just trying to understand. I didn't know Tim well. In fact, I hardly knew him at all. I'm trying to…”

“That's
très
weird. How'd you get stuck with this?”

“Exactly my point. I don't actually know.” I shrugged.

“So, Parker? I'd say whatever you want him to be, that's what Parker is.”

“A chameleon.”

“Honey, if you want this conversation to continue…” He rolled his eyes. “Did anyone before
moi
ever tell you you're no fun?”

I nodded. “Everyone,” I said. “That aside, I haven't met Parker yet. Hard to trash someone you never met.”

“Oh, sweetie, you're not giving yourself nearly enough credit. It's not as hard as you think. Especially when we're talking about Parker. I'll start. First of all, he's a total bitch. Cold as ice, as if
we
were the interlopers. You know what I mean?” Kevin had stepped closer now, as if there were people around and he didn't want them to overhear him. “And with Tim? Don't ask. He was like
butter wouldn't melt in his mouth in front of him and just did whatever he pleased behind his back.”

“Like, for instance.”

“For instance bringing all his street cronies into Tim's apartment after he was told not to. Repeatedly.”

“He did that?” I thought of all those dishes in the sink. Tim hadn't even been there the day before. He'd been at his mother's funeral.

“Oh, please. We'd hear them all the way over to our place.” He pointed. “On the other side of Jin Mei. Now
she's
a hoot, you know what I mean. But that's neither here nor there, is it? Parker's the one we're disgusting—oh, I mean discussing—and I can tell you, that boy showed up with his trashy friends, we'd have to close the windows and put on the AC.”

“Loud parties?”

“Whenever possible. But would he invite
us?
”

“Never.”

I was a quick study. Kevin beamed.

“Rob said it would be a cold day in hell before
he
'd take in someone like Parker.”

“And what did Tim do, about those parties?”

“
Tim?
He was furious. He threw Parker out more than once. But Parker would come back, promise never to do it again, and Tim would take him back. He can be very convincing, that Parker fellow. That's how he survives. You might say that being convincing is his profession.”

“Did that happen a lot, the back-and-forth thing?”

“Three times that I know of. Last time was the night before Tim's accident. I think that time he
meant it, too. We were out here, having salmon
au beurre noir
. I was a chef, before 9/11. Now I'm a waiter. But that's another sad story. Everyone has one. If I had the time, I'd ask you yours. But I don't.” Standing too close, his voice way too loud. “Instead of being served tonight, I have to smile and say, ‘And how would you like that prepared, madam?' As if I give a shit. How annoying is that?”

“So Tim got mad at Parker often?”

“Especially this last time. You couldn't miss the shouting. Tim told Parker to pack up and go. He said he was sick of broken promises, of lies, of all the stealing. He said he didn't think Parker was even trying. And that was the point of all this, he said, that Parker put in some effort on his own behalf. Something like that. It's not that we were trying to listen. You couldn't help overhearing. And I said to Rob, ‘Like
hello
. I could have told him that months ago. This one's a loser, period.' The funny thing is, Tim had no idea how bad it was, how many men were actually at his place, poor lamb. Half of them had come out this way”—pointing to the door I'd just used—“and gone that way”—pointing to the door on the west end of the long narrow garden, the one he and Rob and Jin Mei used. “Rob and I were so upset, we couldn't finish eating. I said, ‘We should talk to him.' And Rob said, ‘No, we shouldn't. We should butt out.' He's very…He's got more dignity than I do. I would have told. But then the next day it was all too late. Tim had that terrible accident. It was an accident, wasn't it?”