Fall Down Easy

by Laurence Gough

  The windshield had fogged up. They sat quietly, waiting for the heater to clear the glass. Willows told Parker about Mendez’s penchant for White Spot hamburgers.

  Parker said, “It’s starting to slip away from us, Jack. Special sauce. You want to write that down in the report, that Garcia Lorca Mendez flew all the way from Colón to pick up ten gallons of special sauce? No wonder the Panamanian cops won’t tell us what he was doing here — they’re too embarrassed.”

  “Or don’t know. If they were involved in a money-laundering operation, you’d think they’d send somebody out here to clean up the mess. The way I see it, Martin Ross is the only person who knows anything about Mendez’s business in Vancouver. And Ross isn’t talking.”

  Parker said, “He’d talk if we squeezed hard enough. You can see it in his eyes. No guts.”

  Willows smiled at her.

  Parker said, “Something funny?”

  “No, absolutely not.”

  “What?”

  Willows said, “You ought to hear yourself — you sound tougher than a three-dollar steak.”

  “Don’t try to sweet-talk me, Jack. It might work, and then what would you do?”

  Willows gave her a fleeting, crooked smile. He had no business putting in unauthorized overtime or working a stakeout without telling Parker what he was up to, but he’d made detailed plans to spend the night huddled in his car, parked in the deep shadows of the Maritime Museum lot across the street from Martin Ross’s house. He’d while away the hours drinking lukewarm coffee out of a stainless steel thermos and listening to Coleman Hawkins and Sonny Rollins tapes, waiting for the man who’d killed Garcia Lorca Mendez to make his move on Martin Ross.

  Part of his problem with Claire was that after Sheila left him, he adjusted to living alone with a speed that surprised him. He relished the lack of routine, freedom from responsibility. But what he valued most was being able to roll out of bed in the middle of the night, grab his badge and gun and prowl the streets, come and go as he pleased.

  The sweet sound of sirens and saxophones wailing in his ears.

  Sixteen

  Greg inhaled deeply, lovingly pulled the last fat white worm of coke past the bushy filter of his false moustache and up into his nose. He dug his jewellery box out of the bureau and poked around in it until he found his favourite earring, a chip diamond a black slide guitar player named Jeremy had given him. He stuck the gold post through the little hole in his left earlobe, glared into the mirror like that singer whose name he couldn’t think of — dyed his hair blond and always needed a shave, wore black leather.

  Greg fumbled around in the closet, found his black leather, the superbutch model with the floppy lapels and too many zippers to count. He slipped the jacket on his otherwise naked body, shivered at the heavy touch of the cold leather on his skin. Was the coke all gone? Yeah, the coke was all gone.

  Greg pranced around the apartment, snarled viciously at his shadow, fell over laughing, jumped up and lashed out, bounced his knuckles off the wall.

  “Hey, Randy, that hurt, didn’t it?”

  Greg took another shot at his shadow. His knuckles were bloody. He left a smear of blood on the wall. The shadow crumpled. Greg kicked out, stubbed his toe.

  “Damn!”

  As he fought and played, he slyly checked himself out in the mirrors that were everywhere, admired his form. Eventually, he ran out of energy, tired of the game. He snatched a cold beer from the fridge, drank it down and then went back to the bedroom. He finished the beer and then ditched the leather jacket, slipped into a pair of black silk boxer shorts decorated with little red devils wielding tiny pitchforks, plain black silk socks, a black silk shirt embellished with leaping red and blue-striped largemouth bass, a single-breasted lightweight black wool suit with a split vent and onyx buttons. The suit had an Italian designer sweatshop label and cost him almost five million lira. Or about two thousand bucks, in domestic currency. He’d made a joke while the clerk was chalking him, asked how much for just the label. So funny. Greg tried to look down her neckline as she adjusted the drape of his pants, but she was wearing one of those tricky little numbers that clung tight in all the wrong places.

  He picked up the shaving mirror he’d used to chop the coke. Yup, it was all gone. No visible traces, anyway. He licked the mirror clean. His moustache fell on to the glass. Was he coming unglued? No way. Now what? He needed a tie, chose a dark green number patterned with wide open shark jaws — just the jawbones and teeth.

  Finally, he slipped into a pair of glossy black shoes with pointy toes and custom-built heels that raised his required clearance well above the six-foot mark.

  It was a few minutes past seven when, all dressed up and ready to go, he dialled Black Top. While he waited for the cab, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a large vodka on the rocks. He felt restless and edgy, full of anxious, high-impact energy. The park across the street, illuminated by sodium-vapour streetlights, was a verminous yellow along the perimeter, black where the vegetation was thickest.

  Greg drank most of his vodka. A taxi cruised slowly up the street, stopped in front of his apartment block. Greg saw the guy’s face in the cab’s window as he peered up at the rows and rows of windows. Greg stepped closer to the glass. He waved at the cabby as he finished his drink, then grabbed his Ralph Lauren trenchcoat, slammed the door shut behind him.

  Barbara lived in one of those big old houses that had been gutted and ruthlessly stripped of all its original charm, then internally subdivided, turned into fourplexes and rented out to the kind of people who were willing to pay a premium to live in a big old house that had been stripped of all its original charm. Barbara’s unit was number G-4. Greg found her ground-level apartment tucked into a corner at the rear of the house. He stabbed at the doorbell but heard nothing. He knocked. Listened to a little more nothing. He knocked a little harder, and heard a faint cry from within.

  He tried the door, walked inside. The combination kitchen-dining room was on his left, the combo living room-bedroom on his right. What you might call an open floor plan. A glass door offered an unobstructed view of the off-street parking. Greg walked down a short hallway and poked his head in the bathroom door.

  Barbara, leaning into the mirror, gave a little yelp of surprise, covered her breasts with her arms and told him she was almost ready, all she had to do was finish dressing. Obviously. What was he doing there, by the way? Had she left the door unlocked again? Greg smiled. Barbara asked him would he please stop staring at her like that? Greg said okay but didn’t even blink. She told him to go mix himself a drink, waved him away with little flips of her hand. He helped himself to another long, lingering look and then went into the kitchen to do as he’d been told.

  There was an unopened bottle of Black Label in the cupboard, squeezed in next to a family-size box of prefab croutons and a couple of tins of tomato soup.

  Greg dug a reasonably clean glass out of the built-in dishwasher, poured himself a fat slug of Scotch, filled a Winnie-the-Pooh soupbowl with croutons and went into the living room and stretched out on the sofa that you could turn into a bed whenever the time was right.

  He could hear Barbara tinkering away in the bathroom. She sounded pleased with herself, and why shouldn’t she be, with a body like that? Greg glanced idly around the apartment. He toyed with the idea of tossing the joint. There was no quicker way of getting to know a girl than pawing through her drawers. But what was there about Barbara that he needed to know?

  Greg gobbled a handful of croutons, washed them down with a mouthful of Scotch. He felt himself beginning to relax, slip into character. That was the way Neil dealt with life — gulped it down in handfuls and mouthfuls.

  He was looking at a picture of Cher in an old copy of People magazine with the name of a downtown dentist on the address label when he smelled perfume. He dropped the magazine and stood up. Barbara was wearing an ankle-length black dress and high-neck black sweater in a soft, fuzzy material that looked like ca
shmere. It was the kind of outfit you might wear to a job interview if you were trying to find work as a nun. Greg searched hard but could find nothing in the least bit provocative about the way she was dressed or her demeanour. The perfume had a strange effect on him, though. His nose seemed to have relocated in his groin.

  Smiling shyly, Barbara said, “How’s your drink — have we got time for another?”

  Greg checked his watch. “Yeah, sure.”

  She moved a little closer, took his glass. He tried for some touchy touchy finger touchy, but she was too quick for him. She said, “What happened to your moustache?”

  “It fell off.”

  She smiled, a little confused but being good-natured about it. “Are you really an artist, Neil?”

  “Don’t I look like an artist?”

  “Sure, but so does everybody else.”

  Trying out the artistic temperament thing, Greg made his face go all surly and said, “I don’t see why that has to be one of my goddamn problems!”

  “You make any money?”

  “More than I can bother to spend,” Greg said. He was starting to get the feel of Neil, slip under Neil’s skin. He said, “I’m famous and in demand because I’m real good at painting animals hanging around in the tundra, life-size stuff, big, the kind of art that looks best in carved oak frames that cost three hundred bucks a lineal inch. Everything I do is on commission. Corporations that specialize in the destruction of natural habitat hire me to cover their boardroom walls in the kind of art that soothes their greedy little consciences. And yeah, you’re right, I’m a cynic. But I’m a rich cynic, and I’m what I always wanted to be — an artist.”

  Barbara blinked twice and nodded and then went over to the kitchen counter, pulled another glass out of the dishwasher and poured them both a fat shot. Directly above Greg, the ceiling suddenly creaked as if under great stress. Barbara came towards him. She seemed to be avoiding eye contact and her hips might’ve been connected to a gyroscope — they hardly moved at all. She sat down next to him on the couch that was a bed. Close, but not too close.

  The perfume had something in it of every woman Greg had ever known. How was that possible? He buried his nose in his drink.

  Barbara said, “So tell me, what do you think of my apartment? Small, isn’t it?”

  Greg said, “What I’ve seen of it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Greg said, “Well, you haven’t given me the tour yet. I mean, I haven’t seen the bedroom … ”

  Barbara patted the sofa. “You’re sitting in it.”

  “Really?” Greg feigned surprise. His eyes skittered around the walls, which were decorated with unframed Salvador Dali prints and a strange dangly thing made out of yellow straw and woven roots and small white feathers, brightly coloured wooden beads. He said, “I like the way you’ve decorated the place.”

  She smiled. Her eyelashes fluttered and she looked away. “Neil, don’t tease me … ”

  “No, I’m serious. The nest thing, with the feathers and all those beads, it’s terrific.”

  “Come and look!”

  She laced her fingers through his, squeezed hard, eagerly pulled him to his feet.

  He’d guessed right. It was a nest, of sorts; a small whirlpool of straw laced with prickly strands of barbed wire. Huddled at the bottom of this still-life vortex were the bleached white bones, skull and all, of a tiny bird.

  Greg said, “Jeez … ”

  “Like it?”

  Greg nodded slowly, thinking about it. “Powerful,” he said after a moment. “Absolutely stunning.”

  “You wouldn’t just say that?”

  “Of course not, I’m a professional.”

  She sipped her drink, looked up at him. “I was so excited when you phoned. I’ve been taking night school courses since last summer. Do you know Peter Hologram?”

  Greg frowned. “The name seems familiar … ”

  “He teaches Mixed Media at Emily Carr.”

  “Right, right.” Greg was nodding so hard he was afraid his head might fall off.

  “I’ve been working on nests ever since I started. Such a powerful image. At first the birds were stuffed toys. Peter said they were silly and frivolous. So I went out to a farm in the valley and bought some live quail.”

  Greg said, “Live quail?”

  “Twelve of them. A dozen. I brought them home in one of those boxes you put your cat in when you take it to the vet. Peter lent it to me.”

  “He did, huh. Then what?”

  “Well, I guess what I did was blow out the pilot light and put them in the oven … ”

  “You gassed them?”

  “It wasn’t so bad, really.” Barbara knocked back her drink, poured refills for both of them. “The worst part was plucking and cleaning them. Especially the heads, emptying the skulls.” She smiled. “They’re so tiny, so fragile. I don’t know how many I broke before I finally got the hang of it.”

  Greg said, “Lots, I bet.”

  “Next I’m going to do a series of tiny houses, with nests in them.”

  “Houses made of little bones?” said Greg.

  “Oh Neil, that’s such a terrific idea!”

  “Keep it, keep it”

  “You don’t mind?” She led him back to the sofa, sat a little closer to him, this time. “You should’ve seen Peter’s face, when I told him I was seeing you.”

  Greg nodded, waited.

  “I explained it didn’t have anything to do with art, but I don’t think he believed me. I should’ve realized he’d be jealous. I mean, he teaches art, but you’re an artist. Big difference, right?”

  “A world of difference,” said Greg. “Peter knew my work, did he?”

  “Well, obviously.” Barbara drained her glass. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yeah, sure. I guess so.”

  “Before you came in, did you knock?”

  “Of course I knocked. I thought I heard you invite me in.”

  “You did?”

  “I’m sure I heard a voice.”

  Barbara raised her face to the ceiling. “It must’ve been that jerk upstairs.”

  Greg said, “Yeah?”

  “I hope you don’t think I planned for you to see me like that.”

  “Never entered my mind.”

  “Because I certainly didn’t.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.”

  “So don’t get any ideas.”

  “I’m full of ideas,” said Greg. “It’s a sickness.” He smiled. “I can’t control myself, from time to time.”

  It turned out that Barbara didn’t own a car because she was on a bus route to work, so why bother? Greg never drove his Pontiac when he planned to meet someone he knew, because it was a lot harder to change the way a car looked than to alter the appearance of the driver. Also, he didn’t know why, but people remembered cars. They’d forget your name, whatever lies you’d told them about how you made a living. But never in a million years would they forget you drove a Toyota or whatever, licence number blah blah blah.

  Barbara poured him another Scotch while he used her phone to call a cab. It had started to rain — there were dimpled puddles in the parking lot outside her sliding glass door. The dispatcher cheerfully told him there was a twenty minute wait, minimum.

  Barbara said, “Oh well. What can you do? Want another drink?”

  As it happened, it was close to half an hour before the cab finally arrived. Greg had a couple more shots of Black Label while he admired Barbara’s portfolio of water colours. Boy, did the time ever race past.

  Because they were late, the restaurant hadn’t held their table. The maître d’ was one of those skinny guys with smartass eyes, no lips. He wore baggy black pants and a white shirt buttoned all the way to the top. His hair was blacker than a raven’s heart, his skin pale and smooth as a fish’s belly. He suggested they retire to the bar for a drink. Barbara smiled and said she thought that sounded like a wonderful idea. She ordered a glas
s of Chardonnay. Greg told the waitress he might as well make it a pair. Then Barbara changed her mind, cancelled the vino and substituted a glass of water with a twist of lemon, or better yet, lime.

  Greg started to say maybe he’d have water too, but he didn’t want to seem cheap. And anyhow, from the way Barbara was slumped on her barstool, he figured he had a lot of catching up to do; she was obviously looped to the eyeballs.

  By the time they got a table, Greg was on his third glass of wine. He’d not only caught up with Barbara, he’d probably lapped her a couple of times.

  Barbara, studying a menu the size of a small tent, said, “When you made the reservations, Neil, did you have any idea how expensive this place was?”

  Greg said, “Not all artists are starving, Barbara.”

  “I know, but … ”

  “Whatever your heart desires,” said Greg, “is what I want you to have.”

  Eventually, Barbara settled on the lobster. Greg went for the roast duck. He ordered a bottle of whatever he’d been drinking by the glass. A wicker basket of miniature loaves of different kinds of bread arrived. Greg put his jaws to work. Barbara started talking about art. She used a lot of words Greg’d never heard of, or if he had heard of them, hadn’t the foggiest idea what they meant. Words like eclectic and multi-media. He ripped into the bread, theorizing that if he kept his mouth full enough, there wouldn’t be room to stick his foot in it.

  Eventually, Barbara ran out of wind. Greg told her if he was any judge of talent, she had a real bright future. He solicitously enquired about her lobster. Told her she was beautiful, in the candlelight. Topped up her glass, offered her a forkful of his duck.

  Pampered and flattered her to the very best of his ability, in other words.

  Manipulating women was something Greg was very good at. Making them feel special, feminine. Convincing them without ever directly speaking a word about it that, just as they’d always known, their lives were situated at the heart of something that mattered. A Holy Grail that only he could help them find.

  Barbara passed on dessert, hesitated, and with a show of reluctance agreed to have a cognac.