The Long Fall

by Lynn Kostoff

  Jimmy cracks a cold one and hands it over. He hesitates, waiting for Ray to offer him one, but it’s snake-eyes on that idea, so Jimmy replaces the lid and watches Ray drain the beer in one long swallow.

  You can’t take the biker out of the businessman, Jimmy thinks. Ray’s in his mid-forties with thick salt-and-pepper hair fanning over his shoulders. He’s wearing a metallic blue three-piece suit but no shirt and a pair of needle-nosed ostrich-skin cowboy boots.

  Ray’s the kind of guy who could make Darwin blush—an ex-biker with just enough smarts, luck, and muscle to oversee a significant cut of the crank trade in Phoenix and the surrounding region, Ray organizing the biker gangs into a loose confederation and then franchising the action, going on to clean up the labs, too, shutting down the half-assed amateur operations, upgrading equipment and coordinating the distribution of chemicals, establishing something approaching quality control for the product and thus keeping the prices regulated, Ray then buttressing his power base by working out some admittedly shaky but still mutually beneficial live-and-let-live deals with some of the more vicious Mexican crank gangs and going on to buy up enough local and state law enforcement officials to keep things running.

  The driver keeps the Continental pointed south. They cross Baseline, headed toward the South Mountains, sticking to back roads. They pass weathered trailers up on blocks, run-down stucco and adobe farmhouses, faded tract homes set on bare lots, the space between things slowly opening up, the landscape bisected by the spine of the Western Canal system. In the distance, puncturing the skyline above the mountains is a tall cross-hatched cluster of radio and television towers.

  The woman shapes and rounds Ray’s nails into perfect crescents. Her head’s bent, the wall of straight black hair hiding most of her face. She’s wearing a shiny green miniskirt that looks like it’s made of plastic and a pink-and-white-striped elastic tube top. Above it is a thin silver necklace with dangling pendants of the four phases of the moon. Her nails are the color of new dimes.

  “Crazy weather, huh, Jimmy?” Ray says, gesturing out the window. “Here it is, June already, and it’s like everything’s out of balance. One week spring, the next summer, then back again. No middle ground.”

  Ray drops the empty on the floor of the Continental. “You look outside and then at the calendar, you can’t make them match. You notice that, Jimmy?”

  “Now that you mention it,” Jimmy says.

  “I was wondering if maybe that was the problem,” Ray says, “why you keep forgetting to pay me. You know, if the weather’s got you confused. As of today, you’re past due for the third time.”

  Jimmy takes it slow, laying out the details for Ray, keeping their sequence straight, starting with his plan to get the taxes on the parcel paid but then detouring into some R&R with Marci, the waitress who eventually introduced him to the friend of her brother who worked at America West with the Suns and had the inside dope on Penny Hardaway’s injury, Jimmy’s bet on the point spread against the Lakers, the bet backfiring on him, Jimmy taking the job at Big and Bigger Jones’s Old Wild West Park and getting fired, Jimmy regrouping, deciding to swallow his pride and ask his brother for a loan to pay off the back taxes on the Dobbins parcel, Jimmy figuring he could then put the place up for collateral and secure a loan that would let him pay off what he owed Ray, and that all disappearing when his brother pulled his fine-print power of attorney number with the paperwork on the place, Jimmy right back where he started when he got out of Perryville and went to Ray in the first place.

  After Jimmy’s finished, Ray’s quiet for a long time, appearing to think over what he’s heard. The woman remains bent over Ray’s left hand, her movements small and delicate as she works on each nail. In the background is Duane Allman’s doomed voice.

  With his free hand, Ray raids the cooler for another beer. “Ninety percent of business,” he says, “is image. People believe what they think they see.” Ray pauses to crack open the beer. “Take the Mex crank gangs, for example. Took me a long time to work out the agreements, get them to trust me and work together. Everyone’s making money, but still they’re suspicious of each other—of me, too. It’s the nature of things. Something like trust, it’s very fragile and complicated. That’s where image comes in. You got to make people believe what they think they see. Otherwise you’re tomorrow’s lunch.” Ray pauses again and looks at Jimmy over the top of his beer. “I don’t intend to be on anyone’s menu, Jimmy.”

  Jimmy reassures Ray that he’s not interested in becoming an entree either.

  A couple seconds later, Jimmy realizes they’re on Dobbins Road. He starts waving his arms. “Ray, up there in a little bit, on your right, that’s what I was telling you about, my grandfather’s property. Twenty acres. I don’t have to point out the development potential to you. Like I said, the city’s moving south. It doesn’t have anywhere else to go.”

  The farmhouse is a faded brown stucco a couple hundred yards off the road. It sits on a flattened crest of a long, irregularly inclined slope dense with overgrown interlocking thickets of mesquite and brush. There’s no other house for a half mile on either side of it.

  Jimmy yells, “Hey, I said slow down, okay?” He glances up and catches the driver’s eyes in the rearview.

  Oh shit, Jimmy thinks.

  No one who’s ever met Aaron Limbe forgets the eyes. They’re the palest of gray and empty, absolutely empty. No life in them at all. None. Zombie peepers.

  “Heard about your old man,” Limbe says, waiting a couple beats before adding, “I’m glad he’s dead.”

  “Aaron’s two-fisted when it comes to holding a grudge,” Ray says. “He wanted to kill you the first tick past the repayment deadline.”

  Again, the blank eyes in the rearview. Jimmy looks away, at the back of Limbe’s head, the sharp square lines of his haircut, the tendons on either side of his neck corded like twin stalks of broccoli.

  Aaron Limbe’s grudge came down to this: He blamed Jimmy for getting him kicked off the Phoenix police force. That might have been technically true, but it hadn’t been personal on Jimmy’s part. Expedient, yes, since Jimmy had been in some tight circumstances at the time.

  He’d just been nicked for grand theft auto and ended up making a deal with the police commissioner to get the charges dropped in exchange for info that directly implicated Limbe in a politically charged case involving the murder of a prominent Mexican American attorney and twelve illegal aliens.

  It wasn’t like Aaron Limbe didn’t deserve what happened to him. As far as Jimmy was concerned, Limbe was the worst breed of cop. Not corrupt, but bent, badly bent.

  The thing Jimmy had never counted on was Aaron Limbe finding out that it had been Jimmy who snitched him out. In addition to dropping the grand theft charges, the commissioner had promised Jimmy anonymity for anything he brought to the table.

  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.”