Fall Guy

by Carol Lea Benjamin

  Maggie came downstairs dressed, her hair still damp. She accepted a mug of coffee, but she said she didn’t want any food. I didn’t think what I had to tell her would increase her appetite either. We sat outside at the table. I told her that Brody would come for her in half an hour, that he’d drop her off at Tim’s. I said I’d pick up boxes on my way there and pack up the rest of the things she was taking.

  She reached for my hand.

  “I can see why my brother liked you so much,” she said.

  I didn’t have the heart to tell her again that I hadn’t known her brother, that we’d been strangers. Besides, Dashiell was barking and running toward the gate. It was time for her to go.

  I sat in the garden for a while longer after Brody and Maggie left, thinking about Timothy O’Fallon, wondering if I’d ever have the answers I was looking for. I thought back to the beginning, to that day at Breyer’s Landing—Joey standing on top of the rocks, the cruel faces of his brothers and his cousins below. But the goading hadn’t been enough. Suddenly, from behind, his big brother gave him the push that sent him from this world down into the next, a pitch-black world of ice-cold water and unforgiving rocks. And then the other boys waited, jeering and laughing. And then they waited quietly. They waited for Joey to come up from where he’d gone down, his fair skin blue from the cold. But the water was still where it had closed around Joey, closed as fast as it had opened to accept him.

  How long had it taken for the panic to set in? How long before the horrible realization? How long to make up the story, the story that would become part of their family history?

  At day’s end, only one truth is known: that Joey is dead. And even when his limp body is brought out of that cold, black place, none of them break. No one confesses. And so they are believed. There is no punishment from without. But the punishment from within is relentless. Not only for Tim, for every last one of them.

  CHAPTER 26

  I stopped at the Golden Rabbit on the way to Horatio Street. They had two small boxes they said I could take. I dropped those off at Tim’s and went back to the little deli on the corner of Horatio and Washington streets. They had two more boxes for me. I wanted to be sure I could get everything packed before Maggie came and have an extra box or two in case she decided at the last minute to take something else.

  Taking things after someone died often had little to do with the intrinsic value of the items. People often want things they don’t need, even things they’ll never touch or look at again. The stuff becomes a substitute for love, and because of that, I thought that at the last minute Maggie might have trouble letting her brother’s things go, that she might need things to make up for the love she hadn’t gotten. And didn’t we all fall into that trap at one time or another?

  After I’d packed the pictures and the books that Maggie had set aside, I continued to work. I wouldn’t have trouble letting go of the things in Tim’s apartment. I wanted to be finished, to go on to something I could understand better.

  I decided to empty the desk, take the rest of the papers and records home and look at them there. I slipped the files into shopping bags, taking everything, even things I knew I’d toss later. Then I went back to the bookshelves and saw the little pot that had held everyone’s keys. I turned it over into my hand: three sets left. Spreading them out on the desk, I could see right away that one of the sets was Tim’s, spare keys to the apartment and the car. I put the car key with Maggie’s things and tossed the now useless apartment keys. But then I reached into the wastebasket and held them in my hand. The little pot of keys hadn’t been hidden. Anyone coming in here might have seen it. Parker certainly knew those keys were here. He could, in fact, have entered any of the other people’s apartments and stolen from them, too.

  As could any of the drifters he called his friends.

  What else did they know, the men Parker hung out with, the men I had played poker with? If they hung out with Parker, they might have heard, at one time or another, big and little details about Tim’s life, his schedule, his habits. They surely knew his work schedule because it was when he was at work that Parker would let them in, feed them Tim’s food, offer them free access to the contents of his liquor cabinet.

  They’d know about Parker’s Aunt Elizabeth. Perhaps they’d been in her apartment, too.

  Had they met her? Was there any way one of them could have called her and arranged a meeting? I tried to imagine this, one of Parker’s friends calling Elizabeth and saying he was hurt. She was sick of him, fed up with him. But he was still family. She wouldn’t have gone somewhere if he was broke. Broke? That was his middle name. But if he were hurt? Hurt was a different story. Hurt might have gotten her to the waterfront, to one more chance to bail out her nephew. Only it wasn’t her nephew who was there waiting for her. It was someone else. A bushy-haired stranger. Freddy Baker. Was that when the purse was nabbed? Had good old reliable Freddy taken her money? Had he taken her keys, thinking they’d be worth having, all the easier to implicate Parker in yet another crime, should that become necessary? Had he left the jewelry she’d forgotten to put back on after the show, something to indicate whose purse it was? Was that how it had happened?

  And did Parker’s buddies know about Tim’s family as well, pictures of them all around the room until yesterday? Did Parker ask who those kids were? And once he knew, did he tell his friends, “This is Dennis, Tim’s brother. He’s a Lexus dealer but his brother drives a piece of crap Toyota. This one’s Maggie, his kid sister, the one who got stuck nursing his sick mother.

  And if O’Fallon had been miserable enough to leak the truth one night, or if Parker had found the articles I’d found and, shrewd observer of human nature that he was, had put two and two together and figured out exactly what his benefactor was atoning for and why he’d gotten the leeway he did from a cop, of all people, if this had happened, might Parker have also said, “This little one here, this one’s Joey, the one Tim pushed off the cliff”? Did anyone ask what the hell he was doing telling Parker how to live his life when all Parker had done was rob a few people who had more than they needed and would never miss it anyway and Tim had killed someone? Did anyone see the irony of that?

  I dumped the keys back into the wastebasket and started to clean out the cabinets below the bookshelves, stacking the things for Housing Works on one side, the things I planned to take home on the other, a couple of books on crime detection and Tim’s notebooks. I thought Brody might want them, but I planned on reading them first.

  I’d only emptied one of the cabinets when I began to think about the poker game again and the motley crew that met at Irwin’s every week. What did they talk about?

  Because if Tim hadn’t killed himself and if whoever did kill him was doing a hell of a job of framing Parker, that would mean that that person not only knew enough about Tim to know his habits, but that he knew Parker well enough, too.

  I checked the time. Brody had said they’d be at least two hours. I decided to be rude instead of calling first. I motioned to Dashiell, clipped on his leash at the door and we headed upstairs.

  “Doll,” he said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Nothing special,” I told him. “I have to wait around for Tim’s sister to show. I thought it might be more fun to wait around with you, if that’s okay. It’s kind of creepy down there, what with what happened last week.” I shrugged. He stepped back. I stepped in.

  There were cards on the poker table, a game of solitaire set out. I pulled out a chair and sat. Irwin stood near the door for a moment, then closed it and took the seat next to me, the one with the pillow on it. I noticed that he didn’t look at me when he was struggling to do something I could take for granted. But once he was seated, he was all eyes.

  “You think about Tim much?” I asked.

  “I think about lots of things,” he said. He leaned forward and pushed the cards away with enough force that some of them went all the way across the table. “What makes you ask?”


  “I don’t know, Irwin, but going through his things, I just don’t get the impression of a man who would…”

  “You never heard of surprises, doll? You never had a man you loved insanely walk out on you? You never got slapped by Fate, hit with bad luck, dealt a bad hand?”

  “I have. And Tim had, too. Hell, anyone over five years old has had his share of bad luck.”

  “Some even before they get to be five.” He was holding his hands apart, as if he were about to catch a ball. “Crap happens. Crap abounds.”

  “And some people seem to be able to function anyway. I remember this old lady I used to visit with Dashiell. We do pet-assisted therapy.”

  He nodded, either because he knew what I was talking about or he didn’t but wanted me to get on with it.

  “She was ninety-one and senile. That’s why she was living in a home.”

  He raised his eyebrows, tilted his head.

  “An institution. She didn’t remember who I was from week to week, but since she was stuck somewhere in her own childhood and she enjoyed my visits, she figured me for a cousin, someone she liked and played with when she was a kid. She called me Viola.”

  “There’s a point to this, doll?”

  “Yeah, there is. Even in that shape, the woman ate like a horse. She was in a wheelchair, a tiny little bird of a woman, and she’d pack away her meals like there was no tomorrow. Survival. Some people just have the knack. No matter what hits them from behind, they find a way to go on. I think Tim was one of those people. I’m not saying adversity didn’t touch him, didn’t hurt him. But he got around it. Or he carried it with him and went forward.”

  “You’re saying?”

  What I had come to say to this man should have been obvious by now; it’s where the conversation had been heading all along. But since it wasn’t and I didn’t have all day, I decided to spell it out.

  “I don’t think he killed himself,” I said.

  Irwin blinked. He bent his head and scratched his red hair. Then he looked back at me. “Me neither,” he said. “I never did.”

  I nodded. Irwin bit his lower lip. For a moment, his eyes looked shinier than usual, not as hard as they often did, even when he was joking.

  “So what’s the plan, doll?”

  I shrugged my shoulder, lifted one hand, let it fall back into my lap. “Hey, I’m only the executor. I’m not the cops. I didn’t even know the man.”

  “So, what? This is just between you and me?”

  “I just wanted to know I’m not crazy, that’s all. But if you think the same thing…”

  “We could both be crazy, doll. Did that ever occur to you?”

  “It did,” I said. “That’s another possibility.”

  I thought he’d smile then, show me his choppers, make a little joke. But he didn’t. He drummed his fingers on the table. Then he pulled over the ashtray and the little dish next to it that was full of matchbooks, picking one of them up, then hesitating. He didn’t take out his smokes. He just sat there, turning that book of matches over and over in his hand.

  “It’s Parker, right?”

  “Who did it?”

  “Nah.” He shook his head. “What I’m asking you, is it because of Parker you came to your conclusion?”

  I didn’t answer right away and Irwin went on.

  “I’m thinking you figure that if Tim had this mission, this calling, that he’d stick around and keep going. That he wouldn’t quit in the middle.”

  I nodded, interested to see where he’d go with this.

  “Yeah, that’s what I think, too. Of course, he’d failed with Parker. Parker doesn’t believe in the work ethic.”

  “What does he believe in?”

  “Miracles.” He tossed the matches back into the little dish, “Parker’s hopeless. Well, if not hopeless, he’s surely not the best example of Tim’s work. There was this guy Harold, two years back. I took my keys back while Harold was living downstairs. That was a piece of work if I ever saw one. But Tim got him squared away, got him a job. It wasn’t brain surgery, but it did something for him, for Harold. He changed. It’s hard to explain it, what happened to him, but the point is Tim, right? When you get a success, even if the next one doesn’t work out, you don’t quit. You keep trying to get another success. You know it can be done. You know you can do it. It hooks you.”

  “Random reinforcement,” I said.

  “Say what, doll?”

  “If you feed a dog from the table, say, but just once in a while, not every meal, he’ll beg even harder than the dog who always gets a taste of your dinner. He’ll…”

  “He’ll know it’s possible. That’s a powerful narcotic, knowing that.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Still, people get depressed.”

  “They do.”

  “Then what makes you think Tim just didn’t get depressed?”

  “The way I met him.”

  “Which was?”

  “After 9/11. There was a post-traumatic-stress group for men at the church on West Eleventh Street. I was there with Dashiell, to help the men loosen up.”

  “And Tim?”

  “Was there. But didn’t.”

  “And you conclude what from this?”

  “He wasn’t there because of 9/11. He hadn’t lost anyone, had he?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “That’s what I thought. Of course, you didn’t have to. There were other reasons to be there. Lots of people were scared and stressed and needed some kind of help after the attack—counseling, or anti-anxiety medication. He had every right to be there.”

  “And?”

  “I think he was there, I think he did things like this, whatever he could, to help himself…” I stopped to search for the right word.

  “Survive,” he said. “That’s your theory?”

  I nodded.

  He banged the table with one hand. “It’s a good one, doll. I like the way you think.”

  I checked my watch. There was still plenty of time, and time with Irwin was what I wanted. It was what I believed would get me what I was after.

  “Let’s suppose you’re right,” he said. “And let’s suppose I’m right.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning Tim didn’t kill himself. Someone else did. But not Parker. Then the question is who?”

  “A better question might be why.”

  “Because if we knew why…”

  “We’d know who.”

  Irwin scooted back on his chair, reaching into his shirt pocket for a cigarette.

  “Allow me,” I said, sliding the dish with the matchbooks closer. I remembered all the matchbooks I’d pulled out of Parker’s pockets, one from every place he’d been, I thought. If something was free, why not take it. If it wasn’t free, why not steal it. I looked down at the dish, at the matchbooks. One from Hell. One from the White Horse. Matches from the Cubby Hole, the Blind Tiger, Hogs and Heifers. Six or seven others. One more interesting than the rest. I picked that one up, bent back the cover, took a match and lit it. I leaned toward Irwin, holding the flame to the tip of his cigarette.

  “You’re not going to tell me I’ll stunt my growth, are you?”

  Holding the matchbook in my hand, I smiled at him, the big one, the toothy one, the one I hoped would keep him talking. He smiled back, inhaling deeply, blowing the smoke up toward the ceiling.

  “Could have been anyone, you know,” he said. “You make the mistake of talking to Parker in a bar, you’re going to hear his life story.”

  “You’re saying he’s friendly?”

  “I’m saying he never knows when to shut up. He has no idea what’s appropriate and what isn’t. He has no sense of other people’s privacy. That’s what I’m saying. If anyone would listen, he’d tell them everything he knew about Tim. He’d invite them over for free drinks. It made him a hero, a big shot. He liked that.”

  “Where do you think he is now?”

  “With the cops looking for him? Not any
where near here. He’s gone. He had some money. Whatever his aunt had lying around, pfft.”

  “Cash?”

  “That’s a no-brainer.”

  “Jewelry?”

  “Gone. She had a lot of jewelry, too. Some really good stuff. He could be in California now. Or Florida. It’s off-season, cheap fares. He could be snorkeling in the Keys, looking for a sucker in that bar where Hemingway supposedly hung out.”

  “Wouldn’t the cops be checking with the airlines?”

  “The cops!” He snorted. “Under what name? These guys”—he swirled one hand in a circle, indicating the seats around his poker table—“they’ve got no end of names, ID to go with them. They change names like other people change underwear.”

  “Why do you hang out with them, Irwin?”

  It was a rude question. I knew it as I asked. There was so much more to him than to someone like Parker. So much less, too. Before he spoke, I had the feeling I knew just what he was going to say, not the details, maybe, but the crux of it. I could have said it for him.

  He pushed himself away from the table and jumped down to the floor. The pillow slid off the chair and landed somewhere next to him.

  “There’s a convention once a year,” he said, “the Little People of America. If that was my thing, I could go, hang around with people my own height, maybe meet a nice short girl who wouldn’t mind going out with me.” He shook his head. “The circus was good that way. We were all freaks in our own way. Ella used to say that.” He began to walk around the table. “She was a good egg. A terrific cook. You cook, doll?”

  I figured it was rhetorical. I didn’t respond.

  “Nah. You get taken out to dinner. You don’t have to cook. People like Ella, they can’t go out to dinner. They get a night off, they’re on the road. They get a break, they wouldn’t fit in the chairs at most restaurants. Maybe a booth would do it. She could have done that, taken a seat meant for two people. Or three. But then everyone would have been staring at her. That’s no way to eat.” He tapped his stomach. “Bad for the digestion. People like Ella have to cook. People like me…” He stopped at the side of my chair now, the side opposite the one where Dashiell lay, the matchbook I’d dropped between his paws. “People like me, we take what we can get.”