Fall Down Easy

by Laurence Gough

  He wasn’t sure he understood why, but during the past two months his relationship with Parker had deteriorated. Maybe it was being thrown together with the children, the sudden domestication and unacknowledged tensions of such a temporary reality.

  Before the summer, he and Parker had spent most of their nights together, usually at his house, less often at her apartment. But more and more, recently, Parker had preferred to spend her time alone.

  Parker nudged his arm. “Enjoy your nap?”

  Willows said, “I don’t know — I slept through most of it.” They were at the comer of King Edward and Main, waiting for the light to change. He said, “Wasn’t it Will Rogers who said, ‘I’ve never met a nap I didn’t like’?”

  Parker nodded. “Want to drop in on Alain Bernard?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  When she hit the yellow pages, Parker discovered to her surprise that there were fifty limousine services in the city. White Shadow had been very close to the bottom of the list. It was a one-man outfit. When she questioned him, Alain Bernard had admitted, with just a hint of regret, that he’d worked for the dead Panamanian.

  Willows hadn’t sounded very enthusiastic. Parker said, “You got a better idea?”

  The light changed from red to green. Parker waited for strays. Her patience wasn’t wasted. A delivery van sped through the intersection against the light. On the far side of King Edward, a pale blue Honda disappeared in a cloud of burnt rubber as the driver hit the brakes. She thumped the steering wheel. “What a jerk!” Turning to Willows, she said, “Remember when it used to be safe to drive in the city?”

  “Not really.”

  Parker said, “You used to get red hot about guys like that, cowboys.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t change anybody’s driving habits. So I quit.”

  Parker made her left, drove down Main. “You don’t seem too enthusiastic about talking to Bernard.”

  “You think Mendez confided in his chauffeur? A guy like him, he probably wouldn’t give his lawyer the time of day.” Parker braked for another red. Willows watched a kid in raggedy jeans and a black leather jacket sidle up to a glossy black 5-series BMW worth seventy grand. The kid pointed something at the car. The alarm chirped as it was deactivated.

  The kid unlocked the door, climbed in. Sensing that he was being observed, he turned and glanced behind him, saw the unmarked four-door with its blackwall tires and cheapo hubcaps. He grinned at Willows, waggled his keys.

  Parker said, “When I started out in this business, I used to put guys like him away. Now that he’s made his bundle, he’s gone straight and we can’t touch him.”

  Willows nodded. It was as if she’d been reading his mind. Again. He said, “The light’s green.”

  Parker checked the intersection, left and right. It was clear. She hit the gas.

  Willows said, “The limo guy, what’s he like?”

  *

  The limo guy had a dead cigar in his mouth and dead-smelling feet up on his desk. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, but then, neither was he wearing any socks. A crumpled newspaper rested in his lap, but it was only a prop — unless he’d learned to read through his eyelids.

  The office door was open. Parker followed Willows inside, saw Alain Bernard flinch as Willows reached out and flicked his big toe.

  Bernard opened his eyes one at a time, seemed more interested in Parker than Willows.

  Willows said, “I don’t know which one of these little piggies went to market, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t buy any soap while he was there.”

  Bernard smiled. “You’re callous and abusive, but you ain’t family. So it must be cops, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Here about Garcia Lorca Mendez, right?”

  Parker nodded.

  “Well, if I seem a little nervous, it’s because I am. And I got plenty of reason, believe me. I mean, aside from being questioned about a guy I worked for got shot to death.”

  “For instance,” said Parker.

  “Drinking in the limos. Sex in the limos. Too many passengers in the limos. Sex in the limos. Drinking in the limos … Am I repeating myself? No wonder, since it keeps happening over and over again. And it’s going to keep on happening. There’s nothing I or anyone else can do about it. Know why?”

  “Human nature,” said Willows.

  Bernard pointed the cigar at him. “Ask an expert. An expert’s always got the answer.” He leaned forward, pulled open the top drawer of his desk. His socks were long and black. Parker looked out the window as he put them on.

  After a moment Willows said, “It’s okay, you can turn around, he’s decent.”

  “When I’m dead and buried,” said Bernard. He used a disposable lighter to fire up his cigar, blew smoke at the world. “And maybe not even then.”

  Willows said, “You and Mendez got along pretty well, didn’t you?”

  Bernard squinted up at him. Was it the smoke that narrowed his eyes? “What makes you say that, copper?”

  “Your sense of humour. Mendez was a real prankster, from what I hear.”

  “Well, my friend, you heard it wrong.”

  Willows said, “What was he like?”

  Bernard smiled at Parker. “A mouse with an accent. Very quiet.”

  “No sex in the limo?” said Parker.

  “No sex, no drugs, no sticking his nude behind out the window. Didn’t smoke, either. But then, nobody’s perfect.”

  Willows said, “You drove him from the airport to his hotel. Where else?”

  “Wherever. If it was on a road and Garcia wanted to get there, that’s all I had to know.”

  “Garcia?” said Parker.

  “He was an informal kind of guy. Liked people to call him by his first name.” Bernard studied the sludge at the end of his cigar. “See, he’d gimme a call from Colón about a week before he was due in, tell me what flight he was on and how long he was gonna be in town. I’d pick him up at the airport, he’d pay me in advance, cash, for the duration.”

  “You’re telling us you worked a twenty-four-hour day?” said Willows.

  “I ate in the limo, slept in the limo, read the paper in the limo, burped in the limo and dreamed sweet dreams in the limo. When you come right down to it, there were only two or three things I didn’t do in the limo.”

  “Where else did you drive Mendez, other than to his hotel?”

  “I got a list here … ” Bernard shuffled the papers on his desk. “Had it a minute ago … ”

  The cigar was making Parker nauseous. She said, “Has the limo been in use since Mendez’s last trip?”

  “Nope.”

  Willows said, “You drove him to the bank, didn’t you?” Bernard held out his hands as if he expected to be cuffed. “You got me fair and square, copper. Colour me guilty, guilty, guilty.”

  “What happened, you were waiting in the parking lot, heard the shots and hit the gas?”

  “No way. Garcia told me he wouldn’t need me for an hour, said to pick him up at six. I figure, about the time he got blasted I was into my third beer, easy.”

  “You went off somewhere for a drink?”

  “The Waldorf.”

  “Anybody likely to remember you?”

  “Yeah, my brother. He’s a waiter, served me the beer.” Willows said, “Did you get a look at the guy who did the shooting?”

  “The boxer.”

  “Yeah, the boxer.”

  “How could I, when I was knocking back the suds at the Waldorf?”

  Bernard glanced at Parker, rolled his eyes. Parker said, “Has the car been cleaned since Mendez used it?”

  “I don’t know. I got some people come in and clean the cars on a regular basis, except they’re not all that reliable. So it could go either way. Why, you think he might’ve left a clue?”

  “Evidence,” said Parker.

  Bernard dug deep in his pants pocket, tossed Parker a key ring. “The oval gold-coloured one gets you inside, the square-ended gold one fits
the ignition. The blue one’s my house on East twenty-ninth, I’m in the book.” He winked at Willows, “You find any money fell between the seats, we’ll split it down the middle.”

  Twirling the key ring around her finger, Parker left the room.

  Bernard turned to Willows, saw the look in his eyes, swallowed his bon mot, busied himself riffling through the untidy mess of paperwork on his desk. “That list, I got it somewhere, here we go … Willows rested a hip on Bernard’s desk as he studied the limo’s worksheet. He pointed at a column of figures on the righthand side of the sheet. “This represents distance travelled?”

  “Roundtrip, in kilometres.”

  “Is it accurate?”

  “Yeah, sure. Fairly. I got a trip odometer. Once in a while I forget to reset it, but not often. If the numbers don’t add up, I just don’t bother to write ’em down.”

  If the limo’s log was to be trusted, Springway had told the truth when he’d said that Mendez had not visited him in the recent past. Glancing down through the list Bernard had prepared, Willows saw nothing of particular interest. Mendez had a weakness for shopping malls and restaurants. The only location he’d made a repeat visit to was the White Spot restaurant on Robson Street — he’d been there on three separate occasions, twice during his first full day in the city.

  Willows said, “He meet anybody at the White Spot on Robson?”

  “Not a soul.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “I went in with him. That wasn’t routine, usually I waited outside, in the car. But this, as you can see by the times, was for breakfast and lunch. Both times we were there, he ordered a hamburger platter. He was nuts about that special sauce they put on the burgers.”

  Willows said, “Did you make up your own mind, or did somebody tell you I was an idiot?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Mendez was crazy about White Spot hamburgers; that’s why you went there twice in one day and again the morning he was shot.”

  “Yeah, right.” Bernard was having too much fun to be lying. He spat a chunk of cigar at the wastebasket, and missed.

  Willows said, “Did you talk to anybody while you were there?”

  “The waitress. Waitresses. They was different, each time.”

  “Anybody else?”

  “Yeah, one of the cooks. The last two times we was there, we went into the kitchen. The first time, Mendez and the cook had a long talk. I couldn’t hear what about because I was standing next to the deep-fryer. But they shook hands when we left, so I know everything was okay. Also, the next morning, after breakfast we went back in the kitchen again, and Mendez bought a big plastic bucket of special sauce. Ten gallons. Paid the cook a thousand bucks, I saw the money change hands. We went right back to the hotel, put it in a fridge in the kitchen so it wouldn’t go bad.”

  Bernard saw the look on Willows’ face. He said, “No, really, it’s the truth. Mendez had two hamburgers for breakfast, three more for lunch. Five in one day, and he had extra sauce on all of them. Triple-O, they call it. The stuff was all over the place, gooping out of the bun when he bit down on it, splattering all over his hands, the plate. You think you’ve been around. Lemme tell you something. You ain’t seen nothing until you see Mendez lick his fingers. Totally disgusting. Totally.”

  Outside, a car door slammed shut.

  Bernard said, “That’s the limo. Left rear. I drove him to every White Spot in town. There’s ten locations, plus three more out in Burnaby. He offered the managers five grand for the secret sauce recipe, and every single one of them turned him down. That ten gallons we bought? I had to stick it in the trunk, drive Garcia back to the hotel, haul the stuff into the kitchen and stand there like a dummy, holding it in my arms like I was in love, while he paid a chef to make room in the fridge so it wouldn’t go bad.”

  The way Bernard wielded his cigar reminded Willows of Bradley — the cigar was both a sceptre and a weapon.

  “You see where we’re going with this, Detective? We are going absolutely nowhere. I mean, this was the way Mendez liked to spend his time, eating hamburgers. Take a look at his social life. Boring. The only people he met were waiters and bellboys and sales clerks. He liked to eat things and he liked to buy things, and that was about it. The perfect consumer.”

  “What kind of things did he like to buy, Alain?”

  “Clothes, lots of clothes. This suit — you like it?”

  “Very nice,” said Willows. And it was. Or might have been. “Garcia bought it for me. A thousand bucks, and it don’t even come with an extra pair of pants. But what he most loved to buy was ties. That was his favourite thing, buying ties. I’d limo him to one of the malls, Oakridge or Metrotown or whatever. Know where he felt relaxed, at home? The upscale menswear shops. Harry Rosen’s, places like that. Ever shop at Harry’s?”

  Willows shook his head, no.

  Bernard said, “Garcia, he’d wander over and pick up a tie, ask me what I thought. Places he shopped, you got maybe ten seconds and bingo! there’s a salesman in your lap. Mendez’d tell the guy to hold out his arm, hang as many as fifteen, twenty ties on him, using the arm for a tie rack. The salesman’s standing there, sweating from muscle fatigue, trembling all over, smiling away, buried in miles of silk at eighty, even a hundred bucks a yard.”

  Bernard grinned at Willows. “That’s another thing, he always bought silk, nothing but silk. And the colours were real noisy. Let’s say you were staying at a hotel and the guy in the next room had a tie Garcia’d bought? You wouldn’t get a minute’s sleep, believe me. Loud”

  Bernard’s cigar had gone out again. He said, “The salesman’s arm feels like it’s going to fall off, you can see it in his eyes. But so what? He’s on commission, getting rich!” He re-lit the cigar, puffed hard.

  Willows said, “What happened if Mendez chose a tie and you didn’t like it?”

  Bernard tilted his head as if there was something in his ear that was bothering him and he hoped would fall out. He said, “How’s that again?”

  “You said Mendez would pick out a tie and ask you what you thought. What I’m asking you is — what happened if it was an ugly tie and you said so, advised him to take a pass?”

  “I tried that twice. The first time, he ignored me.”

  “And the second time?”

  “He went around behind me, wrapped the tie around my neck, stuck a knee in the middle of my back. I was down on the floor, I couldn’t breathe. We’re standing behind a rack of cashmere winter coats. Nobody can see a thing.”

  “What’d the salesman do?”

  “Garcia tells him don’t worry about it, him and me got an understanding. He starts telling him a joke about a farmgirl and an octopus. They’re laughing their heads off. By the time the punchline rolls around, I’m barely conscious, ready to black out.”

  “Why’d you keep working for him?”

  “Because now we understood each other. The nature of our relationship. And also because of the money.”

  “And the coke,” said Willows.

  Bernard’s eyes widened in horror. His cigar glowed red. “Whoa, wait a minute. Coke? No way. Garcia was a hamburger freak. He might’ve had a cholesterol problem, but that’s it.”

  Willows said, “Want to read the coroner’s report?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Mendez’d snorted a snowstorm, the day he went down. C’mon, Al. You really expect me to believe he kept his nose clean while he was in the limo?”

  Bernard shrugged, looked away. “He might’ve done a few lines. It ain’t part of my job to spy on people. I’m a pro — I mind my own business. Whoever’s in the back is the guy who’s paying the bills. Okay?”

  “Where’d Mendez score his product?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “What side of the counter was he on, Al? The buying side or the selling side?”

  “I wish I could help. But really, I got no idea.”

  “He give the tie salesman a taste, just to ca
lm him down?”

  “Like you say, calm him down.”

  “And you never took him anywhere except to malls and restaurants.”

  “Plus his sister’s place just that one time, and back and forth from the hotel, airport.”

  “What about his girlfriend — what’s her name again?”

  “He never got around to making introductions.”

  “How many times you pick her up?”

  “Lots.” Bernard showed his teeth. “Must’ve had a special sauce of her own, I guess.”

  “Where did you pick her up?”

  “Always at one of the town’s more decent watering holes. The Ramada, Bayshore, places like that. He’d go in, be gone a couple of minutes.”

  “Then what, she’d spend the night with him?”

  “Never happened. Usually he saw her during the day. Sometimes she was with him at night, but not very often. And she was always out of there by eleven-thirty, and in a hurry. Like if she didn’t get home by midnight she’d turn into a pumpkin.”

  Willows said, “Tell me what she looked like.”

  Bernard had a good eye. He described the woman in such detail that Willows knew he’d recognize Mendez’s girlfriend the moment he saw her. He asked Bernard a few last questions and then said, “If I find out you’re lying or holding back … ”

  Bernard lifted his pudgy white hands to the ceiling. “You got the whole truth and nothing but the truth, I swear it on my soul!”

  Smiling, Willows said, “Don’t think for a minute I’d let you off that cheaply.”

  Outside, Claire Parker was sitting behind the wheel of a black stretch Rolls-Royce, toying with the stereo’s controls. She powered down a deep-tinted window. Alain Bernard was standing at his office window, so motionless he might’ve been a cardboard cutout; the before picture in a weight-loss program.

  Willows said, “Find any clues?”

  “Not a chance. The damn car’s been vacuumed to death from stem to stern, and you can still smell the cleaning agents.”

  Parker left Bernard’s keys in the ignition. She and Willows walked across a span of oil-stained asphalt to their unmarked police car. Parker tossed Willows the keys. “You mind driving?”

  “Yeah, sure. You okay?”