The Long Fall (8 page)

Somehow Aaron Limbe had found him out. It had taken awhile, but he had.

By that time, Jimmy had been popped for the black-market saguaros.

Limbe had shown up twice at Perryville Correctional during visiting hours. Jimmy had been afraid he was going to go Jack Ruby on him, but he made no reference to the case involving Ramon Delgado or the twelve dead Mexican Americans. All Limbe did was watch him with those dead eyes and utter a single sentence each time before he left.

No mercy,
he’d said.

That’s it. Nothing more.

Then Aaron Limbe dropped out of sight.

Jimmy had heard rumors he’d left the state and hooked up with one of those fringe militia groups. He hadn’t expected Limbe turning up working for Ray Harp.

The woman gathers her instruments and folds up the tray, her hair falling away when she sits back in the jumpseat and takes the beer Ray offers her.

Her green plastic skirt crackles when she crosses her legs. Jimmy gets his first look at her. She’s not the biker chick he’d earlier assumed. She’s a Native American. More than likely a Paiute.

“Is there going to be much blood with this one?” she asks, opening the beer. Her voice has the flat tones of a telephone recording.

Ray Harp leans over and turns up the Allman Brothers.

They leave Dobbins and head farther south into a stretch of no-man’s-land between the South and Estrella Mountains, a little side trip into a landscape that’s full of dry washes and lunar outcroppings of rock, the vegetation completely feral, stunted and twisted in some places, tangled and overgrown in others.

Aaron Limbe taps the brakes and takes a left onto the ghost of a dirt road. Newt Deems follows in the Camino. They’re headed in the direction of the Gila River.

The road dips and twists and then unexpectedly opens onto a large clearing of flat hardpan ringed in boulder-strewn rubble and creosote bushes.

“Okay,” Ray Harp says.

Limbe parks the car and throws the trunk latch. Jimmy watches Newt and him take out a folding table and a large beach umbrella. They unfold and set up both a few yards from the car, then return for a wicker picnic basket and the cooler in the back seat. Newt goes back to the trunk for some folding lawn chairs. Limbe carries a square black box and sets it on the hood of the Continental.

“Ray, I’ll get you the money,” Jimmy says. “Gospel. I just need a little more time.”

Ray and the woman get out of the car and walk over to the beach umbrella and table and sit down.

Newt Deems pulls Jimmy out of the car and ties his hands behind his back with a piece of nylon rope.

Aaron Limbe comes over, a black strip dangling from his hand, and fastens it around Jimmy’s neck. In his other hand is a remote control.

Limbe reaches over and touches something beneath Jimmy’s chin. There’s a click, then a series of short, low, evenly spaced beeps.

Limbe snaps his fingers and Newt takes Jimmy by the elbow and leads him a good thirty yards out in the desert, then turns and walks back to join the others.

Jimmy’s standing out there, fronting the table.

Aaron Limbe hands Ray the remote. The dark-haired woman begins passing out sandwiches and beer.

Ray points the remote control at Jimmy.

“It only takes one,” he says. “Just one deadbeat to put the wrong signals in the air and pretty soon everyone’s tuned to the frequency, all of them thinking, ‘Ray’s not on top of his game anymore. He’s getting soft.’ The next thing I know, I’m looking at a groundswell movement. The Mexicans, nobody has to take Ray Harp seriously anymore. Just ask Jimmy Coates.”

The sun’s tattooing Jimmy’s head pore by pore. The thing below his chin is softly humming, like the sound a refrigerator makes late at night when you hear it from another room.

A cloud of yellow and white butterflies whirls past. His shadow looks like it’s painted on the hard-packed earth. A swarm of red ants roils at the base of a stunted yucca a couple feet to his right. His throat feels funny, a slight but persistent tickle spreading upward from its base.

Jimmy’s ears suddenly pop, and he’s knocked to his knees.

He gets up, and a couple seconds later the same thing happens. The fingers of his bound hands begin to twitch.

Jimmy backs off, but gets no further than a couple of steps before the air implodes. His breath is torn from him. His insides squeezed. He’s back on his feet, but barely.

“What the hell?” he yells, but doesn’t recognize his voice. It’s raspy and dislocated, like a bad ventriloquist’s trick.

He looks down. He’s standing in the swarm of red ants. The inside of his mouth tastes singed. His ears pop and buzz. He’s sweated through his clothes.

“What the hell?” he says again.

Ray waves to him from under the umbrella and calls out, “Did Aaron ever tell you he’d done some Special Forces work down in Nicaragua and Honduras before he joined the police?” Ray pauses to take a bite of his sandwich. “Those Special Forces guys, they’re a pretty resourceful bunch. They’ll take something basic, like one of those electroconvulsive dog collars, say, and modify it so that it can be put to any number of interesting new uses.”

Ray hands the remote to Limbe and goes back to his sandwich. Next to him, the woman palms and tilts a compact and readjusts the lines of her lipstick.

Jimmy takes three steps back, and he’s off his feet again. It feels like someone’s taken a hammer to his spine. He rolls around in the dirt for a while.

Then he’s on his feet and running. West. Toward the Estrella Mountains. Away from them all. The ground keeps shifting under his feet and he’s dizzy and it’s hard to maintain his balance because his hands are tied behind his back, but he’s doing the only thing that makes sense: running.

This time it’s insects.

He feels like a dense roiling swarm of bees has replaced his skin, and they’re clustered on and crawling over his nerve endings.

Jimmy’s lying flat on his back with the sun in his eyes. It takes a long time to get back on his feet.

He’s conscious of the dog collar and of each step he takes now. He braces himself, trying to anticipate the moment when space and light will collapse into pain, but he’s walking blind, no idea anymore how long he’s been out there, the heat squeezing him, reference points starting to melt, the landscape hiding from itself, a snake catching ahold of, then methodically swallowing, its tail, the twisted yucca and creosote around him losing definition, thin lines now, like stray pencil marks against the light, Jimmy moving carefully across the hardpan, sweat in his eyes, muscles jumping, everything in the landscape fleeing or melting or shrinking except Jimmy, who’s stuck in his skin.

They’re watching him from under the umbrella, all of them except Newt Deems, who’s standing off to the side and flipping his buck knife into the air, where it disappears into the light and then magically reappears in his hand.

Aaron Limbe raises his arm, levels it at Jimmy.

Jimmy stops, hesitates, then takes another step.

This time it’s like getting thrown through a windshield.

Jimmy’s breathing glass, choking on it, flailing about on the ground, trying to find his center of gravity and get upright again.

His right cheek is scraped raw from the fall, and his vision’s distorted, eyes almost swollen shut, thin slits now, full of dirt and sweat.

He’s reduced to a howl of outrage and pain. A howl intended to fill hundreds of square miles of desert and bring the sky down. A raw, protracted howl that comes from some place deep inside him that Jimmy never knew existed.

He senses movement, that Ray and the others have moved closer, and still howling, he rushes them.

Space and light refuse to yield. He’s knocked down over and over again.

He hears Aaron Limbe saying something about doing judgments.

Jimmy’s eyes have swollen shut.

He staggers in wide, sloppy circles, the howl having leaked away into a dry rasp.

He stumbles, stops to regain his balance, and then the ground is pulled out from under him.

Ray Harp’s voice searches him out. It seems to come from all directions at once.

“You ever have a pet, Jimmy?”

The insides of his eyelids are burning. His body feels like pain has moved from rental to homeowner status.

“I asked you a question, Jimmy. Did you ever have a pet?”

Jimmy croaks out an affirmative.

“I thought so.” Ray’s voice is disembodied and cloudy. “I bet it was a dog, right? A mongrel, one of those loveable mutts, a United Nations of breeds, a little of this and that, we’re establishing the dog’s cute and adorable, a boy’s best friend, right?”

When Jimmy nods, the pain simultaneously runs the length and width of his body.

“I figured so. We got this established then. You had your basic mongrel, a loveable pet, but we still don’t know his name.”

“Trevor,” Jimmy rasps.

Aaron Limbe’s voice barrels down. “That’s a real asshole name, Trevor.”

“My brother named him,” Jimmy says.

“Well, we’re making headway here,” Ray says. “We have Trevor, and he’s a loveable mutt. A regular part of the family. Jimmy and his brother’s boyhood companion.” Ray’s voice disappears for a moment. “I’m betting your brother named the dog, but you saw him as yours. I’m also betting Trevor, as adorable as he was, was also what we’d call ‘spirited.’ Too much energy for his own good, had a hard time following commands, got into some scrapes around the neighborhood, am I right? Chasing cats, digging up flowers, barking all night, leaving dumps in people’s front lawns, maybe growling and nipping at the mailman. Would it be fair to say, Jimmy, that Trevor had a reputation for doing things that caused trouble for himself and others?”

Jimmy’s hands and wrists are going numb, and the sun’s in his face, but when he tries to shift position and roll onto his side, Ray puts his boot on Jimmy’s chest and pins him where he lies.

“Now I’m sure,” Ray says, “you worked with Trevor. You didn’t want to see him get in any more trouble. You disciplined him, right? Made sure he understood what he was and was not supposed to do. You established some rules and guidelines, I’m saying, correct? All designed to protect Trevor from his own worst impulses. Trevor, of course, wants to please you. He tries. But it’s just not in him. He’s spirited. He can’t help himself. He crosses the line, and the next thing you know, Trevor has no use for oxygen anymore. One of the neighbors, they shoot him or stop by the house and lay it out for your old man and he shoots him, or the neighbor, he calls the pound and they pick Trevor up.” Ray pauses, then asks, “Am I close on my take here, Jimmy?”

The pressure of Ray’s boot on his sternum makes Jimmy start coughing. Until it subsides, he’s afraid his bones are going to fly apart.

“What finally happened to Trevor?” Ray asks.

“He got run over by a car,” Jimmy eventually gets out. “Trevor liked to bite tires.”

“Nothing pretty about a squashed dog,” Ray says. “You bury him, Jimmy?”

“No. My brother did.”

“That’s good,” Ray says and leans down so that his voice seems to touch Jimmy’s face. “Then he’s used to it, in case he has to do it again. Because you got one week to get the cash you owe me. One week.” Ray pauses for a moment. “We clear on that, Jimmy? Otherwise, you’ll get the chance to see how resourceful Aaron Limbe can be with some vise grips and a soldering gun.”

Y
ou were fine,” Evelyn tells her husband, lightly placing her hand on his chest. “Relax, okay?” A part of her listens for any false bottoms to her words, because the truth is he was less than fine tonight, their coupling never quite in sync, Evelyn struggling to meet and match his rhythm, and by the time she’d adjusted, feeling a small welling start deep inside her, Richard had already finished, his orgasm tearing a low groan from him, just before he dropped his face into the pillow. A few moments later, he pulled out and rolled over on his back.

“It’s just that things have been kind of tense lately,” he says as his breathing evens. “I’ve had a lot on my mind. And tonight didn’t make anything better with Jimmy showing up out of the blue.”

“Like I said, relax. It’s not like I was timing you.” Though that, too, was not strictly true. Evelyn had looked over at the clock.

For most of their marriage, Evelyn had no real complaints about their lovemaking. Richard was a patient lover, methodical and attentive, skillful if not as passionate as Evelyn sometimes hoped for, but true to course, both of them early on in the marriage having discovered the basic elements of what gave each other pleasure and staying with them. There may have been few surprises between the sheets, but there were equally few disappointments also.

Evelyn had been looking forward to having more time together after she quit the airlines, but everything in their lives had quietly shifted off center after her father-in-law died. With Richard, the dynamics of their lovemaking turned lopsided. Its frequency increased but became increasingly shadowed by something else, a small rift, Richard not quite there even while he moved between her legs, Evelyn sensing it even in his kisses, something purposeful and resolute channeled into affection and attraction, as if even his own pleasure had become secondary, subordinated to the importance of delivering sperm.

Because that’s finally what drifted between them, shadowing them both in and out of bed—Richard’s desire for a child. He saw starting a family in the same terms as starting a new business. You made plans and put those plans into action. You applied yourself. You stuck to your goal. You made things work.

It’s not that simple, Evelyn wants to tell him, but she can’t. He can’t or won’t talk about his father, and she can’t or won’t tell Richard that she’s continued to get her birth control prescription filled.

It should be simple. After all, they know each other better than anyone else. They’ve made a good life together. They should be able to talk things through. They’re two rational and sensible adults.

Except Evelyn’s also discovered something. She’s finding it easier and easier to lie. Each lie is like opening a window. She’s not sure if she’s letting something in or out, and for now she’s not sure it matters.