Fall Down Easy

by Laurence Gough

  A maniac coming off the bridge at speed leaned on his horn as he stormed past in the outside lane. Greg loved that crazy Doppler Effect, but gave the maniac the finger anyway, because he had it coming. Then saw that the car was a full-size four-door model outfitted with blackwall tires and an extra antenna.

  The ghost car had no time for Greg. Engine howling, it shot past him and continued down Cornwall, past the red brick elementary school and out of sight.

  Greg made an illegal left turn across double solid yellow lines, headed for the Burrard Street Bridge and the downtown core. The light went from red to green as he approached the intersection in front of the brewery. A lucky sign. He drove at a sedate thirty miles an hour up the gentle slope of the span. At the crown, traffic in both directions had slowed to a crawl because of the carnival of light down by the Maritime Museum. Greg continued slowly over the bridge, cruised past the big electric torches that flickered a corny red and yellow, hit another green light at Beach Avenue.

  He turned on the car radio, stabbed at the presets, worked his way up and down the dial as he tried to tune in some news on the gunfight. He was just driving into the parking lot beneath his apartment building when the radio told him that there’d been a shooting at Kits Point and a news team was live on location, please stand by.

  Greg pulled into his slot, turned off the lights but left the engine running. He learned that several members of a local Vietnamese gang had attempted to sell a large quantity of cocaine to an unknown buyer, that gunfire had erupted and that the names of the dead had not yet been released. The investigation was continuing. More news at twenty past and twenty minutes to the hour.

  Then — the disc jockey’s idea of a sophisticated gag — the Cowboy Junkies cover of ‘Sweet Jane’.

  Greg turned off the engine, climbed wearily out of the Pontiac.

  He smelled alcohol. Gin. He turned and Randy kicked him in the belly, the steel-clad toe of his boot sinking deep. Greg doubled over, his sails flapping. Randy spun him around and pushed hard, shoved Greg’s head through the Pontiac’s side window. Shiny glass pebbles tumbled across the upholstery, on to the floor. Blackbelt Randy grabbed a handful of shirt and yanked Greg out of the car and back into the real world. He punched Greg in the belly, with a left hook that came out of nowhere.

  Greg’s knees buckled.

  Randy propped him up, drove his fist into Greg’s belt buckle, cursed and sucked his bloody knuckles.

  Greg tried to slip away, lost his footing. The back of his skull smacked against the concrete, made a hard wet sound, like somebody belly-flopping into a pool from a great height. Concentric waves of pain rippled through him. It felt as if he’d been run through with a lightning bolt. He cried out, made a sound like a slab of cold meat dropped on a redhot frying pan.

  Randy squatted in front of him, his body perfectly still but his head moving in and out of focus. Randy’s lips were moving. What was he saying? Randy broke into a smile, his teeth a white blur. A moment later, the bad news filtered through.

  Randy had said, “Just taking a breather … not done with you yet … ”

  Greg’s head throbbed. Concussion. What he needed was a plan. He tried to crawl under the Pontiac. Randy hauled him back, straddled him, pinned him down, growled like a rabid puppy with his favourite slipper. Greg wriggled and squirmed, got an arm free and drove his thumb into Randy’s eye, wiped away that manic grin. He jabbed at the other eye and Randy fell away. Greg rolled over on him, punched him in the throat, hard. Somewhere inside Randy a small bone snapped with a clean, decisive sound, like a dry twig.

  Greg stumbled to his feet.

  Randy just lay there, staring up at the grey froth of insulation clinging to the ceiling.

  Greg booted him in the kidneys. Randy’s head lolled to one side. Greg kicked him a couple more times. He said, “How’d you find out where I live?” and stomped on Randy’s knee. Randy didn’t even blink.

  Greg said, “ ’Scuse me, buddy, I believe I asked you a question.” He placed a foot on Randy’s chest, jiggled him. Now Randy’s mouth was open. Time was passing and he still hadn’t blinked.

  Greg went quickly through Randy’s pockets, found a sheet of BC Tel stationery with his unlisted telephone number and address on it, together with the name Greg had used to rent his apartment. There was also a personal note to Randy from a woman named Deb, who told Randy he owed her a big one and better pay up fast. There was a lipsticked kiss beneath her signature.

  Randy still hadn’t blinked. The possibility that Randy’s blinking days were over slowly oozed into Greg’s seriously concussed brain. He made his way over to a rusty BMW, ripped the sideview mirror off the car and dropped to his knees beside Randy, held the glass up to Randy’s gaping mouth and willed him to breath.

  Randy wasn’t having any of it. Randy was a man who liked to go his own way. Randy was through with all that breathing stuff Randy’s breathing days were apparently done.

  Greg said, “Well, to hell with you, then.” He stood up, lit a cigarette. He walked over to the Pontiac and unlocked the trunk. Randy was a pretty big guy, but if he was folded up like a firehose, he might just fit … Greg grabbed Randy’s belt, pulled hard. Randy’s heels left unsightly black streaks on the concrete, but in a day or two, they’d be gone.

  Inch by inch, Greg dragged Randy’s limp body towards the Pontiac, levered upwards and pushed hard. The trunk lock opened a deep gash on Randy’s forehead, but the cut bled almost not at all. Greg slammed the trunk lid down. The metal bulged where it had made violent contact with Randy’s skull.

  Greg drove through the downtown core, down Georgia and through the Stanley Park causeway, over the Lions Gate Bridge into West Vancouver, up Taylor Way to the highway. He drove slightly above the limit, reasoning that to do otherwise was to stand out in a crowd. He had no clear idea where he was going, except it wasn’t to turn himself in. The city was off to his left and far below him; a bright grid of lights that curved gracefully into the horizon and vanished.

  A horn blared. Greg saw he was straddling two lanes. He pulled over and a red sports car swept past. Somebody in the Pontiac’s backseat started singing. Except there wasn’t anybody in the backseat.

  He checked the radio, twisted the knob to make sure it was off, turned it on and then off again.

  The singing continued. It was an a cappella version of ‘Help Me Rhonda’.

  Greg gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles glowed a luminescent white. It wasn’t ‘Help Me Rhonda’ that he heard, it was Randy crying help me over and over again.

  Help me help me help me … Greg had to take a peek, couldn’t stop himself. He turned on the dome light, adjusted the rearview mirror. A hole big enough to let a man crawl through had been slashed in the backseat where it separated the interior of the car from the trunk. Scraps of material and foam stuffing littered the back of the car. Greg wondered how in hell the damage had been done, too late remembered the machete he’d left in the trunk.

  In the mirror, Randy grunted like a pig as he lunged forward, stabbed and slashed.

  Greg stomped down on the gas pedal. The car shot forward, raised a welter of sparks as it bounced off the low concrete divider that separated the highway’s north and southbound lanes. He could feel the point of the knife stabbing deeply into the back of his seat, hear the material ripping. He risked another look in the mirror. Randy’s face and his hand and wrist and arm to his elbow were covered in blood. He was snarling like a large dog with a too-small bone, his eyes wide and his teeth sharp and white, glistening with pink saliva.

  All that kept him at bay was the backseat’s woven net of steel springs.

  Greg yelled, “Get back where you belong, you stupid bastard!”

  Unaccountably, Randy did as he was told, withdrawing like a tame bear so far into his hole that he disappeared from view.

  Then he was back, coming out of nowhere, bigger than life and twice as mean, the Pontiac shuddering under the force of his onslaught a
s he unleashed a long scream of frustration so high-pitched and shrill that Greg expected the windshield to shatter.

  He felt something warm trickle down the back of his neck. Slapped at himself. Blood.

  The rearview mirror was empty. Nothing there but a raggedy black hole, spark of wire.

  The singing started up again. Help me, help me, help me … Then, suddenly, there was a fierce animal howl of anguish and rage that destroyed Greg’s ability to think, seemed to suck the brains right out of his skull.

  The Pontiac was full out now, the big eight-cylinder engine at maximum revs, the speedometer needle motionless against the pin, the car vibrating as if it would fly apart.

  Greg was using all of his side of the highway, both lanes. He was barely able to keep the car on the road as he fought the wind, a neglected wheel alignment problem, terror so deep it congealed the blood in his veins.

  The machete stabbed at him again, pricked the small of his back.

  In a voice that was not recognizably human, although a trick of the imagination allowed him to hear the words reverberate in his fevered mind, Greg began to sing:

  Help me help me help me … And there was Randy again, returned from his sheet metal grave so abruptly that it seemed as if he’d never been gone. His teeth chattered like a semaphore as he bit at the steel wire, fought to get free of his cage. He grunted in triumph as a support bracket bent and the seat shifted forward an inch or two. He withdrew into darkness and then lunged at Greg, tried to decapitate him, chop off his head and make him die. The machete’s long blade made a snaky hissing sound as it slashed the air, nicked the back of Greg’s neck.

  Help me help me help me.

  But now Greg and Randy were both on the same page, singing the same tune.

  Help me help me help me … Greg kept the gas pedal on the floor all the way out to Horseshoe Bay, the Pontiac burning up the highway with the speedometer needle lying flat against the pin, the car shaking and juddering, sounding as if it was about to explode.

  He kept a loaded gun in every nook and cranny of his apartment. But the Pontiac had been relatively clean; the only firepower he’d had in the car were the two semi-autos and the machete, which he’d forgotten about and in any case he had a hunch Randy wasn’t about to give up.

  Randy had been silent for about ten dashboard clock minutes now. Maybe he’d impaled himself. Or had a heart attack — it was his turn, for sure.

  Greg ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth, lubricating himself so he could speak. He said, “How you doing back there, Randy?”

  More silence, and plenty of it, thick as maple syrup.

  “Mind if I smoke?” Greg managed to light up, inhaled deeply. “What’s the problem — cat got your tongue?”

  Randy muttered something Greg couldn’t even begin to understand, that sounded like a bunch of words shoved up tight against each other after all the vowels had been yanked out. Suddenly he reappeared in the mirror, bulging eyes and snarling teeth filling the frame, bloody fingers tearing at the flimsy sprung steel cage that confined him, held him captive. He was foaming at the mouth. His left ear streamed blood. Or was it the right ear? Greg tried to remember how mirrors worked, the tricks they played. Randy’s eyes were like a couple of wildly spinning, out-of-control Ferris wheels. His face was the colour of wet cement, and he was spraying sweat.

  Then he withdrew into his cage, was gone.

  Greg lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the last. He had a front row seat at the bear pit, and there was no other seat to be had. The speeding Pontiac rocked from side to side. Greg heard a meaty thud. What was Randy up to now? The highway curved right. Suddenly Greg was bearing down on Horseshoe Bay. There was a ferry, a big one, all lit up, in one of the slips. Cars coming off it from two ramps.

  Greg swerved into the righthand lane, away from the ferry terminal. The Pontiac’s rear tires broke loose and the car went out of control, drifted across the road and on to the gravel shoulder. Cursing, Greg fought the wheel. The road had suddenly become twisty and narrow, walls of sheer rock on his right and a steep drop on the left. Randy started screaming again.

  Greg yelled, “Hey, cut that out!”

  The machete poked at him from the darkness, sliced a little stuffing from the seatback.

  Greg yelled, “That’s not what I meant!”

  Funny.

  He giggled, wiped a tear from his eye. The Pontiac was on the wrong side of the road again. Greg saw the slanting wall of rock a split second before he hit it. The impact jerked the steering wheel out of his hands. The splintered remains of a small tree skittered across the hood. The car was off the road and then back on it again, spun in tight circles across slick black asphalt. A few more trees died, and then the Pontiac was cruising down the road at fifty miles an hour, and a dogleg turn was coming up fast.

  Greg took his foot off the gas pedal, hit the brakes. Up ahead, on the far side of the road, there was room to pull off — a tourist viewpoint made safe by a four-foot-high stone wall.

  Greg spun the wheel. The Pontiac shot across the highway, skidded to a stop in a rising cloud of dust. Greg put it in reverse and stomped on it, drove the rear end into the stone wall. His head snapped back and his spine bottomed out. He drove forward thirty feet and stopped, found reverse gear and floored it, slammed into the wall again. And again. The rear bumper fell off. The tail lights shattered but the wall held. One more time.

  And again.

  Sheet metal crumpled. The trunk lid popped open. Randy didn’t take advantage, though. All that bouncing around, he’d have been turned to mush even if he’d been packed in an American Tourister hardshell suitcase.

  Greg got out of the car. He lit his last cigarette, tossed away the empty package. Walked around to the back of the car and raised the trunk lid a little higher, for a better look inside. Randy snapped wearily at him with the stumps of his teeth. One of his eyes had gone and the other was focused on the doorbell to hell.

  Greg hauled him out of the trunk, managed to shove him over the wall. In the dim light from the ferry he could see Randy rolling and sliding towards the ocean, gathering a crowd of loose stones as he continued to lose altitude.

  When he finally rolled to a stop, he was a long way down, and his body was sprawled across two shiny parallel lines of steel.

  A railway. Greg was sure of it, because there was the train, half a mile or more away, barrelling down the tracks.

  A few minutes later, Randy’s body was bathed in the unromantic glow of five thousand candles. The shriek of the train’s whistle ripped the night air like a stone hurled through a window. Randy’s leg twitched. Or was it a trick of the light? The whistle howled again, and the hard-packed gravel shook beneath Greg’s feet. Randy seemed to float up into the hard pure light, and then the light swallowed him whole.

  Greg counted eighty-seven cars. No caboose.

  Twenty-One

  Homer Bradley said, “That isn’t the way I heard it, Jack.”

  Willows was exhausted. It had been a long night, and it wasn’t over yet. Bradley and Claire Parker had both believed that Willows had been shot in the Maritime Museum parking lot. Bradley was restrained, but furious. Parker was more furious than restrained. Willows, his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket, leaned against Bradley’s office wall as if it had been built specifically for his convenience.

  Bradley wasn’t finished, wouldn’t let go of it. He said, “I heard something entirely different. I heard you almost got yourself shot.”

  “Nobody was aiming at me, Inspector.” Willows was on the defensive, and he was a little annoyed. Bradley knew damn well that the shootout had been between Vietnamese gang-bangers and a couple of half-bright kids from the suburbs who’d tried to buy a lifetime’s supply of coke with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars printed on a Canon laser copier. Willows said, “I doubt if they were even aware that I was in the parking lot.”

  Bradley said, “I’m not talking about the punks and dealers, Jack. Th
e shot I’m referring to was fired by the female narcotics officer who put a round through your flashlight. Which, correct me if I’m wrong, was resting on your head at the time said round was fired.”

  “Put my lights out, didn’t she?” Willows smiled, but Bradley didn’t join in. The officer had been one of the group of joggers he’d seen earlier, huffing and puffing their way across the park from the Planetarium. Bradley would never know how winded the narc had been, the way the muzzle of her revolver had wandered across the city’s skyline as she struggled to catch her breath, the look on her face when she accidently pulled on him.

  Bradley said, “Very funny, Jack. Make a pretty good headline, too, wouldn’t it? Cop shoots cop” He flipped open the Haida-carved lid of his cigar box, didn’t like what he saw. “The point is, what the hell were you doing there in the first place? Nobody authorized you to camp out on Ross’s front porch.”

  “I was working on my own time, Inspector.”

  “Sure you were. But what if that cop had shot your lights out? Who pays the freight then?”

  Willows leaned a little harder into the wall.

  Bradley said, “There are guys around here who make a point of keeping track of this kind of stuff. Five years down the road, all they’ve got to do is push a button and sit back and wait for the printout. It’ll all be there, Jack. Every single time you’ve screwed up, every last detail. So I’m telling you, don’t put in one more minute of unauthorized overtime, understand?”

  Willows nodded. Almost as an afterthought, he said, “I came this close to nailing him,” pinching thumb and index finger together.