The Shadow Box

by Maxim, John R.

  “Was another that you wanted to keep that gun?”

  “Yes, it was, Doc. Enough was enough.”

  He had walked toward Central Park, and into it, because to go straight home would have been foolish. One of those witnesses might have followed and then told the police where he lived.

  Once in the park, he did have second thoughts about the gun. If the police were to find him, it might be hard to explain. What did you intend, Mr. Fallon? A little more hunting? Otherwise, who in his right mind would walk through Central Park at night? Seen too many Charles Bronson movies, Mr. Fallon?

  “Would they have been right?”

  “Doc . . . I don 't know.''

  “The truth, Michael.” `.

  “If someone had come at me ... ƒ guess so, yes.”

  “You guess what? Say it.”

  “l would have killed him.”'

  And that was what scared him.

  The person who came at him might just have been some poor homeless slob startled out of his sleep. It's why Moon has never liked guns. With guns, you do more damage than you have to. He knew that he'd done more than enough already. While in the park, his heart still pounding, his hands balled into fists to keep them from shaking, he did consider ditching it. Maybe throwing it in the lake. But he didn't.

  He exited the park well above 82nd Street, doubled back, then watched the entrance to his building for a while. No police cars appeared. At half past eleven, a tenant pulled up in a taxi and the doorman helped her with her bags. Fallon seized that moment to enter the building through the parking garage, using his magnetized card.

  Should anyone ask, the doorman could not say when he arrived or even be sure that he'd been out. Nor would he see the blood that glistened on Fallon's sleeve.

  He ran cold water on it, scrubbing clots with a toothbrush. Some blood had splattered the plaster cast. He washed it off as best he could and used Clorox to bleach out the rest. His wrist throbbed painfully. The cast had cracked. He dried it and secured it with masking tape. That done, he washed and examined the gun. A Colt Python, 357 Magnum. If he'd shot that man in the leg as he'd intended, this thing would have blown it off at the knee.

  He emptied a Weight Watchers dinner package, concealed the Python in it, and placed it in his freezer. The package bulged considerably but it would serve. He poured himself a scotch and turned on the television, searching for a local news program.

  There was nothing yet, of course. There might be something in the morning. In this city, a mugging is hardly headline news but this one, he thought, might get a mention. The media likes victim-turns-the-tables stories.

  He sipped his drink and flipped through the channels. On one of the cable stations, he found a program about boxing. He watched it for a while. Oddly, it calmed him.

  He did not see boxing as violence. Not mean violence. Not random violence. He saw it as a fair test of skill and courage between two men, well witnessed, with a referee ready to step in should one have too great an advantage. He was more than a fan. Fighting, he supposed, was rooted in his genes.

  His great-grandfather, according to family lore, had been bare-knuckle champion of three counties: Cavan, Roscommon, and Meath. His grandfather, the first to emigrate, was more of a saloon brawler, but his father, Tom Fallon, had gone eighteen and two as a light heavyweight and had been promised a shot at Billy Conn before they drafted him to fight the Germans instead. He became a tank commander. Fought with Patton's Third Army through half of France, all of southern Germany, and well into Czechoslovakia. Won several campaign medals plus a Bronze Star for valor and two Purple Hearts for shrapnel wounds. Fallon could never understand how a man like that, so strong, so brave, could decide that life was too hard and kill himself. Or maybe now he could. A little.

  Uncle Jake had never fought in the ring. But he had been a fight judge, served on the boxing commission, and helped to promote some major bouts. These, however, were sidelines. Full-time, he was a Brooklyn Democratic Party boss and deal-maker who seemed to know every police captain and headwaiter in the city.

  As for Fallon himself, he had hoped to enter the Golden Gloves tournament as soon as he turned sixteen. Get Moon to train him. But his Uncle Jake told him to forget it.

  “That string ends with your father. You, you're going to be a gentleman.”

  “Uncle Jake . . .”

  “Tennis is good. We'll get you started on tennis.”

  “Not polo?”

  “Don't get smart. But golf is good too. They have summer camps these days where all you do is learn golf.”

  “Uncle Jake, what's wrong with learning how to handle myself first?”

  “That's all you want?”

  “I've been beaten up twice. Twice is plenty.”

  Jake thought about this for a day or so.

  “Tell you what. A good street fighter will take a boxer every time. Moon says he'll teach you street fighting.”

  ”I know street fighting. That's where I got beat up.”

  “Yeah, well, Moon's never even been down. A guy needs to be hurt, Moon gets it done quick. Ten seconds or less.”

  Young Fallon made a face.

  “What?”

  “Nice to know I'm going to be a gentleman.”

  “Ten seconds, Michael. It's a kindness if you can think of it that way. Less damage needs to be done.”

  Fallon poured himself another scotch.

  The boxing program was about Jack Dempsey. Dempsey had lost his title to Gene Tunney because he couldn't get used to the neutral corner rule, which was still fairly new. He had Tunney down. The referee kept pointing to a neutral corner but all Dempsey wanted was to run and club Tunney the instant he tried to get up. So Tunney got his famous long count and he was able to recover. Before that rule, if you knocked an opponent down you could stand over him waiting to hammer him as soon as his knee cleared the canvas. What Dempsey did to Willard, for example, was horrendous. He broke every bone in Jess Willard's face.

  New York is like Dempsey. There's no neutral corner. You let down your guard and it drops you.

  He had a bad night.

  Twice he dreamed about the two muggers and woke up in a sweat. Being awake, in the dark, was worse. That knife. What if he hadn't turned when he did? What if he hadn't moved first as Moon had drilled into him? What if those two weren't muggers at all? And that drunk on the subway platform. What if he wasn't so drunk? And that burglar who killed Uncle Jake. What if he was’t ...

  Fallon cursed.

  He saw what he was doing to himself and it was stupid. They're all on someone's payroll, right? Someone who hates him. Which, if we believe Brendan Doyle, means Bart Hobbs. Okay, then what? Did Hobbs have that man follow him from the Algonquin just in case it snows and he decides to take the subway? If so, wouldn't he have picked someone a little bigger to try to push him in front of a train? Big enough, for example, that he wouldn't get the shit kicked out of him by a woman like Lena Mayfield?

  And those two muggers. For them to have been on someone's payroll, for them to have been out there waiting for him, they had to have known he'd be coming. But he'd gone to see that movie on a whim and he took a cab to get there. What did he think? That someone had a whole surveillance team out there watching his every move? Here he comes. Uh-oh, he's heading home on foot. Let's go to Plan B. Call in the fake muggers.

  No way.

  All it is, it's this rotten city. Predators on every street corner and behind almost every desk. He'd been one himself. On Wall Street when he started out. The way they all start out. Making a hundred cold calls a day pushing stocks that he knew damned well almost no one but himself and his brokerage house would ever make a nickel on.

  Maybe that's what it is. Justice. The city . . . God . . . somebody . . . handing him a bill. But he couldn't start thinking like that either because next thing he knows he'll be afraid to leave the building without that Python in his belt. And God didn't kill Uncle Jake and Bronwyn just because Michael Fallon sold stocks tha
t went south.

  Mr. Doyle was right about one thing. What Michael Fallon needed was to stop moping. Start seeing some people. Get a job and keep busy. There were at least three firms that had been trying to recruit him for years.

  But not anymore.

  They were polite enough. They were sympathetic. They said let's get together, we'll have lunch. But they never called. He'd try them again and they suddenly weren't in.

  No brokerage firm, no bank, wanted to touch him. He tried as far west as Los Angeles and as far east as London. Two or three people leveled with him, after a fashion, and strictly off the record. They said what Brendan Doyle said.

  “Mike . . . even if you're clean, even if you win your lawsuit, we just don't need that kind of baggage.”

  “Baggage? I was a top producer at Lehman-Stone. You guys have hired traders who were under indictment.”

  “True, Mike. But nobody ended up dead. People who get close to you have a way of getting killed.”

  “Who? My uncle? Bronwyn? What did that have to do with me?”

  “Mike ... do yourself a favor. Go buy that boat and see the world.”

  That was as much as anyone would say. That and “We hear things. What we hear is bad. But no one's going to spell it out for you because no one wants to put his hand on a Bible. Sorry, Mike. Buy that boat.”

  It also struck him, at about this time, that his phone had developed an echo. And hang-up calls became more frequent. Sometimes twice an evening.

  Chapter 6

  And there were more bad nights.

  After a while, it was getting hard to tell where the nightmares ended and reality began. In his dreams he'd see people he knew . . . from Wall Street and from the neighborhood as well . . . going about their lives as if he weren't even there. These had been his friends. A few of the women had been more than that. But now they didn't want to know him. And he couldn't find out why.

  But always, lurking in the background, watching, is this man who wants to kill him.

  Fallon had no idea who he was. The face kept changing. You'd think it would be Bart Hobbs but it never was. In one dream it was even his father. In another it was Bronwyn. Most often, it was a face or faces that he'd never seen before. But there was never any doubt, in these dreams, that it was always the same man underneath.

  This man wants to kill him but not right away. He wants to destroy him first. See him lose everything. Every friend he ever had. Every dollar. Get evicted. Slink out of town with his tail between his legs and find a bridge to sleep under. That's when this man will come walking up and start smashing him with a bat. With Michael helpless, bleeding, but still conscious, the man will drag him to a grave and throw him in it. That's when he'll show his real face. He'll tell Fallon why as he's pouring gasoline over him. Then he'll strike the match.

  “Listen to me, Michael. This isn't all that unusual.''

  “What isn't?”

  “Feeling isolated. Feeling that no one wants to know you. Ask anyone who's ever lost a job.”

  “This is different.”

  “Of course it is. You've also lost two loved ones, both to violent deaths, and you've been extremely moody ever since. People are genuinely sympathetic but they just don't know what to say to you so they keep their distance.''

  “What about being blackballed?”

  “That's probably nonsense.”

  ”They were ducking me, Dr. Grèenberg. I didn't imagine it.”

  “No, you didn't. But would you hire you? In your present state of mind?”

  ”I was a top producer, Doc. These guys would hire Jack the Ripper for the kind of commissions I generated”

  Fallon and Dr. Greenberg agreed on at least one point. He, Michael T. Fallon, was getting seriously screwed up. What ultimately made him decide to bail out, however, that final straw, was something else. The police were looking for him after all.

  On the evening of the day before he ran, he had walked to his local dry cleaner. The shop was on Columbus Avenue, three blocks south of his apartment and some eight blocks north of where the encounter with the muggers took place. The owner's name was Stanley and he was sort of a friend. For the past two summers, Michael had played softball with him in Central Park. Stanley brought out his shirts and took him aside. He asked if Michael, by chance, “had anything to do with carving up two jigs a couple of weeks back.”

  “Me? Why are you asking me?”

  A grimace, a raised hand. The gesture said don't waste your breath. Two detectives, he said, have been around asking if anyone knows a well-dressed white male, middle thirties, about six-one, who, at the time, had his right arm in a cast. The dry cleaner hooked a thumb at the four inches of plaster sticking out of Michael's sleeve.

  “The story,” said Stanley, “is that this white guy, armed to the teeth, suddenly attacks these two jigs. Or maybe one's a semi-jig. Anyway, this guy goes after them, a knife in one hand, this chrome-plated cannon in the other. For a change, the jigs had nothing. White guy cut and pistol-whipped the first one, turned the second one's knee into rubber and then smashed his face in with the gun butt. Next he grabbed the first one's leg and made a wish.

  “Basketball's loss,” Stanley added.

  “This white guy,” the dry cleaner went on, “was about to finish it, blow them both away, but some woman screamed and he took off. Cops got there. Two ambulances. Cops said it was drug-related, which they always do, which in this town it almost always is. They figured that's two less of them on the street and they wouldn't have made a big deal. But the mayor's office got wind that they never found any drugs or weapons on those two, said it must have been a racial thing and made a stink. Fucking liberals. Guy should get a medal. For the time being, however, the heat's on to find him so he should probably make himself scarce.”

  Fallon took his shirts and left.

  So much for eyewitnesses, he grumbled, walking home. He could understand, he supposed, why they thought the gun was his. He was the only one seen with it and those two would hardly admit that he'd taken it from one of them. But he had never actually touched the knife. It would have the bald one's fingerprints on it. But they must not have found it. Maybe it was still under that car the next morning. Maybe someone else found it and kept it. All the bald one saw of it, he would have said, was when that crazy white man reached out and cut him with it.

  Would the cops have bought all this? White assailant has a weapon in each hand and still manages to toss these two around? When one of those hands is injured? Has a knife but doesn't stick anyone with it? Has a gun but only uses it as a hammer? Fallon didn't think so. But his temples were pounding all the same.

  In his mind, he saw the police appearing at his door, pushing their way in, going straight to his freezer. He saw himself in handcuffs. Mobs of reporters in a feeding frenzy. Stalked by tragedy, Fallon nephew snaps . . . Turns vigilante . . . Next on ‘Current Affair.'' He saw the Reverend Al Sharpton leading a march to his apartment house. He saw two bedridden thugs, their legs in traction, pointing fingers at him. And then telling their friends where he lives.

  He reached 82nd at Columbus and started across. A car turned the corner, no headlights, tires squealing. It barely missed him. The driver lowered his head and kept going. It's nothing, he told himself. Happens every day. But by the time he reached his building, he was looking over his shoulder. He saw that, behind him, a man had rounded the corner and then stopped. Ahead, in a car double-parked at the curb, he saw the glow of a cigarette. Even the doorman was looking at him strangely.

  He walked through the lobby to the elevator. The doors opened as he approached. A man stepped out, Fallon didn't know him, he didn't live in this building, but Fallon thought he saw a flash of recognition in his eyes. The man looked away and hurried on.

  Fallon stepped into the elevator, then hesitated. An elevator was a perfect trap. They could be waiting as it opened. He took the stairs instead. Reaching his floor, he found no one on the landing, no one in the corridor, but it struck him t
hat they might already be inside.

  Michael . . . don't do this to yourself.

  He knew that he was as near to mindless panic as he had ever been. He forced himself to stop, take a minute to settle down. He found his keys, worked one lock, then the other. He pushed the door open and, on a sudden impulse, threw his shirts into the middle of the room.

  No one shot at them. No one leaped on them thinking they were him. He felt his color rising. Embarrassment more than fear. He shut the door quickly and walked through to his kitchen. He opened the freezer. The Colt was still there in its Weight Watchers box. He pulled it out. The cold steel stuck to his fingertips. He dropped it and it fell to the floor. He used a dish towel to pick it up, then stepped to a window to see if that double-parked car was still there. It was. He rushed back to bolt his door.

  He sat, watching the door, the heavy Colt across his lap. If the police did come, they would knock. They would show identification. But if anyone else came ... if they tried to force the door or pick the lock ... he would . . .

  “Michael. . . make a long story short.''