The Fall

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  The operator printed out copies of the final composite, which she gave to both Gray and Minorini. They walked back to the reception desk in silence. When they turned in the borrowed IDs, Gray said, “I’ve got to be going. I’ll take Ms. Lessing home.”

  “That’s okay,” Minorini said. “I’ll take her.”

  Gray thrust out his hand and Minorini shook it. “Tomorrow, then.”

  Minorini nodded. Joanne watched with him as the Northbrook detective disappeared. Then Minorini said, “Since I’ve screwed up your evening, let me buy you dinner.”

  It wasn’t like being asked on a date, Joanne thought. It was purely quid pro quo. She’d been cooperative, if not particularly helpful; he’d feed her, probably at the taxpayers’ expense. She was hungry and tired, and the thought of the half hour—or more at this time of day—drive home on an empty stomach was more painful than the thought of having to make small talk with this stranger. She said, “Sure. Thanks.”

  He took her to Cavanaugh’s, sandwiched between the John Marshall Law school and a city parking garage south of Jackson. He parked in a no-parking zone. The restaurant was noisy and crowded with lawyer types.

  They found seats in a corner where they could easily see the door but wouldn’t be obvious to everyone who came in. Minorini pulled out a chair for her that faced the wall, then sat opposite, with his back to it. The waiter appeared and stood by attentively.

  “Drink?” Minorini asked.

  “Yes. Chardonnay?” The waiter nodded.

  Minorini said, “Guinness. Thanks.” When the waiter went away he asked, “How long have you been a photographer?” She could barely hear him above the noise.

  “Five years.” He waited. “I only turned pro three years ago, when we moved here.”

  “Where did you live before?”

  “California.”

  “What made you decide on Chicago?”

  “I wanted to get away from my ex.” She’d told him earlier she was divorced, during the Q and A of his initial interview. “And I have family in the area.” Before he could ask something else, she said, “Are you from around here?”

  “Philadelphia.” He didn’t have an accent she could detect.

  “Did you choose Chicago?”

  “It was the best of the options I was offered.”

  She watched him studying the menu. He seemed all impervious surface—gorgeous, smooth as polished granite. The waiter brought their drinks and took their dinner order—a Reuben sandwich for Joanne, a burger for Minorini. While they waited for the food, he answered the questions she put to him about the Bureau and his career. His responses seemed straightforward, but he managed to keep his recital as impersonal as a resume, no feeling for the work, no delight or boredom. If he felt any disappointment over her failure to identify the hit-and-run driver, who—she was convinced—had murdered her anonymous neighbor, he gave no sign.

  The food was good and plentiful. It came and went while they made further conversation. When Joanne tried to get any information of substance—about his work, the mob or the current investigation—he put her off with tact and skill. He was the perfect host, courteous and attentive, but as interesting as tax law. She accepted coffee but declined dessert and found herself studying the contours of his face as if for a portrait. In the dim light, he looked like the romantic lead in a movie—tall, dark, exquisitely masculine. But was he the hero or the antihero? Or worse, was he a polished version of Howie?

  “What were you saying to Jones about a photographic memory?” he asked.

  Jones must be the Identisketch operator.

  “In one of his books, Rollo May accused people of using cameras to store up the events of their lives, like treasures, without really experiencing them. I’m afraid I’m guilty of that. Film ‘remembers’ detail so much more accurately than memory, I don’t often bother to notice details of what I’m shooting—I just concentrate on getting the perfect composition and exposure, and the proper focus.”

  He was staring intently at her as she spoke. Howie used to stare just so when he wasn’t paying attention because he was concentrating on how to get in her pants.

  She felt a vague disappointment. Agent Minorini was just making listening noises.

  Then he seemed to come back to the present. “Bottom line,” he said, “would you recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The small talk had petered out and an uncomfortable silence settled in. This was the point at which—in the romances and the movies—there was a cut to later action.

  “How did you get into this line of work?” she asked to fill the void.

  “I majored in English. While I was bouncing from job to job after college, the Bureau seduced me with promises of adventure and romance. Besides, someone’s got to do it.”

  “Someone’s got to do it? Didn’t they warn you, in English, about clichés?”

  “The real stuff dreams are made of.” He laughed without apparent amusement. “Back in those days we were the Good Guys. Remember I Spy?”

  “Our hearts are pure because our cause is just?”

  He smiled. “Just, but not innocent.”

  “There are no innocents.”

  “You, my dear lady, are an innocent.”

  Six

  He as good as said that I’m totally naive!” Joanne told her friend Jane Kendall. “He called me an innocent!”

  “Not everyone would find that insulting,” Jane said.

  They were sitting cross-legged on Joanne’s couch, drinking Chablis. Since Joanne’s car still wouldn’t start, Jane had brought Sean home and had stayed for a drink. Sean was installed in his room, insulated from the world by a cocoon of music. At least what he called music.

  “There must be some correlation between being a jerk and being a gorgeous male,” Joanne said. “He’s certainly gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, well,” Jane said. “Remember that reggae song about marrying an ugly woman? It goes twice for ugly men. You’re better off with some guy who doesn’t think he’s God’s gift.”

  “It’s moot anyway. They’ll never get the killer, so I’ll never see Special Agent Minorini again.”

  “What’s special about him?”

  “He’s very photogenic.” Jane laughed. “But as far as I can tell, all FBI agents are called special agents. Who knows why?” Joanne finished her wine and said, “Want another?”

  Jane thought about it and said, “Oh, why not?”

  Joanne gathered the glasses and walked to the kitchen.

  When she came back, Jane waved a copy of the latest Chicago Magazine at her. “You didn’t tell me about this.” She sounded hurt.

  Joanne didn’t have to look to know what she meant. “I didn’t really believe it till I got my copy.”

  Rick had sent her to get pictures to accompany a feature on shoplifting. He was charging for a week of her services and he more or less gave her carte blanche. It had taken her nearly the whole week to master the technique of indoor hunting, two days to actually capture the suspects.

  She’d gotten the first sequence—a series of shots before, during and after a theft—by setting her camera on a tripod in the camera department and becoming part of the display. When she noticed a man watching the sales clerk, she’d focused her camera at an f-stop that would allow sufficient depth of field, and waited with remote in hand.

  Her quarry turned his back to the store’s security camera and watched the clerk, watched Joanne, too, though not as carefully. She must have seemed to be a customer or an employee occupied with setting up a display. Joanne dropped out of his sight and watched him in the mirror of a display case glass. She could see him well enough. After the camera he’d been inspecting disappeared beneath his coat, she’d stepped casually behind the service counter to call security.

  The thief considered other purchases. Joanne had readied her F1, uncapped its telephoto lens and calculated the exposure for the indoor light. The man gave her plenty of time. W
hile he bought film for the camera he’d just boosted, she substituted one of the store’s Nikons for her own Minolta that she’d put on the tripod. She’d slung the Minolta under her arm and put her coat on over it while the sales clerk packaged the thief’s film. By the time the shoplifter was ready to leave, Joanne had the F1 around her neck, over her coat, and was ready to follow him.

  She’d caught the climax in the parking lot, as the security guards arrested the man getting into his car, and the finale when the Northbrook Police bundled him into a squad car.

  There were two other sequences, similarly shot, identical except that one included the expression of despair on the face of the shoplifter’s accomplice when she realized her partner had been caught. And there was an individual shot, captioned “Booster!”, showing a woman slipping imported champagne into a false-bottomed box. The Booster’s look of triumph was priceless. Joanne’s name and copyright notice appeared below that picture. She’d snapped it at her local Osco, a year before the shoplifting assignment.

  “And I haven’t seen you since it came,” Joanne told her friend.

  “These are fabulous. You’re too good to be true.”

  “Howie had me brainwashed forever into thinking I was lucky just to be his wife.” She’d gone along with him, taking whatever he dished out. And then she’d discovered photography.

  The camera had saved her sanity during the breakup. Learning to use it was like getting glasses for the first time when you’ve been nearsighted all your life. Photography had taught her control, had taught her she had choices and that art is about choosing what to control. Camera and lens, whether to use a flash or filters, aperture, shutter speed, even when to hold the camera vertically or horizontally. To quote Feininger, Good photographers rely on choice, not chance.

  The problem of how to live with Howie or live without him had been forgotten as she focused on the problems of fixing line and form and color. One day she’d discovered that Howie mattered not at all. She smiled, remembering. “I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop.” She knocked wood on the coffee table.

  Jane laughed and held up her glass. “To independence!”

  Joanne touched her glass to her friend’s. “And choice.”

  Seven

  In the year and a half that Minorini had been assigned to Chicago, he’d had occasion to attend three autopsies at the Robert J. Stein Institute of Forensic Medicine—Cook County Morgue. He parked west of the modern white stone facility, next to a Chicago PD squadrol, in the Official-Business-Only lot. He entered through the intake door on the loading dock. The two Chicago cops assigned to the wagon were kibitzing with the morgue employee on intake duty as he weighed and photographed his latest customer.

  The body—young, male, black—was laid out on a man-sized stainless-steel tray topping a gurney parked on a scale built into the floor. The cops and the morgue guy were wearing latex gloves. Like the victim, they were black. The morgue guy looked up just long enough to take in Minorini’s ID and to nod. No one seemed the least concerned about the dead man. So much for racial solidarity. But maybe they didn’t see the deceased as one of them. Maybe he was just a dead lowlife. Gangbanger or not, Minorini thought, he’d been family to someone. Minorini was suddenly glad he didn’t have any kids.

  The morgue guy began undressing the body. “Who you s’posed to see?” he asked.

  “Whoever’s doing the post on Albert Siano.”

  “That’d pro’ly be Doc Cutler. He do all the biggies. Know where ta go?”

  Minorini nodded, realized the man wasn’t watching him, and said, “Yeah,” but didn’t move. The spectacle of the preparation held him. There was a large-caliber hole below the victim’s left cheek bone and one through the lower, fleshy part of the right side of his nose.

  The younger cop, who looked a lot like Walter Payton, said, “They say bangers favor Tech Nines cause they don’t get much practice in, an’ they’re all lousy shots.”

  The older cop laughed. “Like our shooter, here?”

  Minorini turned away.

  There were three autopsies underway when he entered the postmortem room. Detective Gray, gowned in blue like the ME and his assistant, was standing at the naked feet of Albert Siano, chewing gum as he watched them examine Siano’s remains. Gray said, “Minorini.”

  “Detective Gray,” Minorini said. “Doctor.”

  The medical examiner nodded at Minorini and told his assistant, “They’re going to make a Federal case out of this one.”

  The assistant didn’t get it. Cutler shook his head. Gray chuckled without smiling.

  They watched as the ME’s photographer pushed a wheeled ladder to the foot of the gurney and climbed the ladder to get a full body photo of Siano. She advanced the film and repositioned her perch for close-ups, first without, then with a ruler to show scale. Like the young gang member, Siano had taken two shots to the head, but in Siano’s case, they were small caliber and close range, the work of a professional killer.

  The ME gave the word, and his assistant rolled Siano over and began to open his head. Once the skull was cracked, so to speak, the ME took over. And the photographer worked with him, recording the damage.

  “I brought you what we’ve got on Siano,” Minorini told Gray.

  Gray nodded.

  Judging by the tiny amount of gunshot residue on the face, a right-handed gunman had ended Siano’s career with a bullet through his left eye. The contact wound to the temple, with its star-patterned tears and characteristic circular burn mark, was just insurance. Ever since Ken Ito, the pros didn’t take chances.

  The rest of the autopsy was anticlimax. Siano had been sixty-two, with a failing heart and iffy liver, but he’d been robbed of the few years he’d had left, and Minorini was sworn to make someone pay for that. He’d do his best. He looked at Gray and decided that the grim-faced detective probably felt the same way.

  Eight

  “Joanne,” May said, dropping a pile of notebooks on the counter in front of her. “Be a lifesaver and take these in to Rick. If I go in there I’m gonna kill one of ’em.”

  She frowned, and Joanne thought again, as she had many times, that May should have been a model. She was as tall, slender, and poised as the best. She had a perfect oval face, flawless skin—just darker than coffee with cream, huge obsidian eyes, tiny nose, and a sensuous mouth. Her hair, today, was braided in tight cornrows, each ending in a gold bead, and she wore gold Laurel Burch earrings. Her taste in clothes ran from flamboyant African-inspired to tight jeans and sweaters. Today she was dressed up.

  “Who’s he with?” Joanne asked.

  “Rita. Who else?”

  Rita was Rick’s ex-wife. She’d been named, or perhaps she’d changed her name—Joanne wasn’t sure—for Rita Hayworth, and Joanne secretly believed that Rita had married Rick for his name. From what Rick said, rage had been the dominant emotion while they were married. The excitement their fights created seemed to have become a drug they both still craved. Rita owned forty percent of the company—not a deciding percentage, but enough to give her some rights that she used as an excuse to pick fights when she was bored.

  “Why didn’t she ever come around to bother us when she was married to him?” Joanne asked.

  May sniffed. “Too busy spendin’ his money. Guess now she can’t do that, she figures to stop him making any.”

  Hancock stuck his into the room to add, “Yeah, and us, too.”

  “He’s got to do something about her,” May said. “This’s getting to be a real drag.”

  “What’s he s’posed to do,” Hancock said, “put out a contract on her?” Joanne knew she’d reacted badly to that suggestion when he added, “Oh. Sorry, Joanne.”

  Joanne knocked lightly, then opened the door before Rick could tell her to go away. “Excuse me,” she said, and walked over to put May’s notebooks on the desk. She looked Rick in the eye and said, “You’d better go talk to Hancock.”

  “Oh, Jesus! Just what I need now.” Rick got
up and hurried out, the better to head off the storm she’d just conjured in his mind’s eye.

  As Joanne started to follow him, Rita said, “You’re Joanne Lessing, aren’t you?”

  Joanne stopped and nodded.

  “The Joanne Lessing? The one who did the bikers on the Tribune Magazine cover?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, I’d kill to have someone do something that flattering of me. I don’t suppose that’s possible.”

  Joanne shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Rick’s orders?”

  “No. It’s just that—I’m not afraid of you.”

  “What?”

  What made the pictures unique, Joanne explained, was that she’d been terrified of the bikers. Getting close enough to make their portraits had given her a high that was like what she imagined for cocaine. It was reflected in the results.

  “You’re putting me on!”

  “No. Really. It’s how I deal with anything I’m afraid of. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s like whistling a happy tune, or maybe I just get used to whatever it is—like getting desensitized to a phobia. I don’t know.”

  Rita shook her head. “That’s the damnedest thing I ever heard. You’re as crazy as Rick. You fit right in here.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand, and Joanne escaped into the hall.

  Rick was just coming out of Hancock’s office. “Cute, Joanne.”

  “Don’t start on her!” May popped her head out of the darkroom doorway and gave him a mock scowl. “I axed her to get you outta there. You got clients waiting.”

  Rick rolled his eyes, shook his head and muttered, “Damned conspiracy,” but headed off in the direction of the conference room.