Fall Down Easy

by Laurence Gough

  Bradley gave him a cold look. “Almost nailed who?” Willows told him about the Pontiac that had turned down Ogden Road just before the shoot-out.

  Bradley said, “You saw the guy walk across the road and jump the fence into Ross’s yard?”

  Willows nodded. Parker was staring at him. This was news to her, too.

  Bradley said, “Why didn’t you bust him then?”

  “Because the way I saw it he was going to keep right on jumping fences.”

  “Break into Ross’s house.”

  “That’s what it looked like, Inspector.”

  “You think that would’ve been smart, to let him go inside? Especially when you’re alone — no backup. The guy carries a gun, he’s a killer. Christ. You could’ve had a hostage situation, anything … ”

  There wasn’t much Willows could say in his defence. Bradley was right, and he’d been wrong.

  After a moment, Bradley said, “Okay, the shooting spooked him and he split. What’s done is done. He see you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  Bradley said, “By now he’s found out the shooting was about a drug deal that went all sour and curdly, nothing to do with his little scam. Think he’ll be back?”

  Willows nodded. “The guy’s hit at least thirteen banks, thirteen tellers. Scored every time. What he goes after, he’s used to getting.”

  “Yeah, but he does banks, not houses.”

  Willows said, “As far as the bank is concerned, Ross is clean. So far, we haven’t worked out what Mendez was doing in Ross’s office. But the fraud squad is positive Ross hasn’t been operating a laundry for Panamanian drug money. I don’t know what Mendez had in that briefcase — maybe it was only his lunch.”

  Bradley checked the contents of his cigar box again. He smiled at Parker.

  Willows said, “The way I see it, loverboy’s shifted gears. He’s after the daughter. Some way of using her to get at Ross’s money. She fits the pattern — single, about the right age, easy to look at.”

  “You think he might try to snatch her?”

  Willows said, “He’s a heartbreaker, not a fighter. Being pushy isn’t his style, not with women.”

  Bradley said, “So what was he planning to do once he got inside the house?”

  “I don’t know, Inspector.”

  Bradley thought about it for a moment and then said, “Okay, assuming the guy you saw is the guy we’re after, and that he’ll be back, how do you want to set it up?”

  “Get rid of Ross and his daughter, fill in for them.”

  “Think he’ll go along with the idea?”

  “What choice does he have?”

  “None, from my point of view. Let’s hope he’s smart enough to see it our way. When are you going to talk to him?”

  “We’re on our way.”

  Bradley took another look in the box, selected the cigar he’d had his eye on all day long. “This time,” he said, “make sure you’ve got adequate backup.”

  Willows drove a pale green Caprice from the unmarked car pool. Parker, sitting bolt upright in the passenger seat, watched a two-ton delivery van pursue a chocolate-brown Mercedes through a red light.

  “Know what I’d like, Jack?”

  “Mandatory capital punishment for any moving traffic violation.”

  “That, too. But also a partner who let me know what the hell he was up to.”

  Willows said, “Look, I’m sorry. I got home last night, the house felt so empty. I poured myself a drink and I had this sudden thought — here I go again. You know what it’s like, Claire. I had to get out of there, do something.”

  “Find a parking lot somewhere,” said Parker, “hang out.” But Jack was right — she knew how bad it could be, walking into an empty apartment at end of shift. Maybe he had held out on her. But all he’d really wanted to do was kill some time.

  Willows parked in the customer lot behind Ross’s bank, lowered the sun visor so the POLICE VEHICLE card was clearly visible.

  Getting out of the car, Parker said, “How do you want to handle this, Jack?”

  “With tact, diplomacy and guile.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “Naked threats.” Martin Ross was in his office, crouched behind a desk littered with paperwork, staring out the window. Willows rapped the door frame with his knuckles. The banker kept right on staring out the window. Willows knocked again, so hard it made his knuckles sting. Ross blinked, turned his head. He stared at Willows and Parker but gave no indication that he saw them.

  Parker said, “Mr Ross.”

  Ross took a deep breath. He turned and glanced out the window again, as if there was something on the other side of the glass that fascinated and terrified him.

  Parker said, “Mr Ross, could we talk with you for a few minutes … ” She stepped into the office, Willows trailing along behind her.

  Ross smiled blankly up at the two detectives as they approached his desk. He adjusted the knot of his blue and gold striped tie, smoothed his silvery hair. From a distance, he didn’t look too bad. But up close, his skin was pale and slack, and there was a redness in his eyes. Ross had been crying, and recently. Parker was sure of it.

  Willows walked right up to the banker’s desk, leaned over him. Ross didn’t object — hardly seemed to notice the intrusion.

  Willows said, “You’re aware that there was a shoot-out in your neighbourhood last night, Mr Ross?”

  The banker nodded, but didn’t look up from his desk. “Yes, I read about it in this morning’s paper.”

  “Surely you heard the gunfire?”

  Ross hesitated.

  Willows pressed harder. “The shooting occurred half a block from your front door. More than a hundred rounds were fired. Eight people were killed. Do you expect me to believe you didn’t notice?”

  Ross’s face betrayed a mixture of anger, resentment, fear. He said, “What are you getting at, what’s any of this got to do with me?”

  “Narcotics officers were in the area at the time the shooting started, Mr Ross. They had advance notice that a buy was going down. There was intensive surveillance of the parking lot.”

  Parker said, “Do you know anyone who drives a late-model dark blue or black Pontiac four-door?”

  Ross’s red-rimmed eyes shifted from Willows to Parker and back to Willows. “No, I don’t. Why do you ask?”

  “One of the detectives on duty last night observed a vehicle of that description cruise slowly past your home shortly before the shooting began. The driver made a U-turn at the end of the block, came back and parked across the street from your house. He got out of the car and entered your yard. He was observed attempting a break-and-enter of your home.”

  Ross said, “I’m not sure I understand what this is all about.”

  “It’s about your daughter, Samantha,” said Parker.

  Ross’s eyelashes fluttered. His skin suddenly had a yellowish, freshly lacquered look. Willows had a feeling that the banker’s suit was the only thing that held him together.

  Ross said, “How did you find out?”

  Parker and Willows exchanged a quick glance which Ross, staring down at his desk, failed to notice.

  Parker said, “It was an accident, really. We just got lucky, I guess.”

  Ross shuddered, his upper body twitching as if a long-buried charge of dynamite had exploded somewhere deep inside him.

  Willows said, “Want to tell us about it?”

  A crystal-clear drop of sweat fell from the banker’s chin to his desk, smeared his signature at the bottom of a typed document. Ross wiped his face with a blue and gold striped handkerchief. He said, “It isn’t Samantha’s fault. She’s hardly more than a child. Mendez was such a charmer. He told her … ” As he spoke, Ross refolded his handkerchief and put it back in the breast pocket of his suit. Now he took it out again, wiped more sweat from his face.

  “Told her what?” said Willows. />
  “That he was divorcing his wife, and that’s why he was squirrelling money away in Canada, because he didn’t want her to get her hands on it.”

  “How much money?” asked Parker.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Did you know Mendez was a narcotics officer, back in Panama?”

  “No, certainly not.”

  “How did your daughter meet Mendez?”

  “He tried to involve me in his schemes. I made the mistake of telling her about it. Then, by chance, they happened to meet. But the attraction was strictly personal, believe me.”

  “Was Samantha helping Mendez launder his cash?”

  “What cash? This is all conjecture, isn’t it?”

  “We found a ledger in his hotel room,” Willows said. “Believe me, Mr Ross, there’s a lot of money out there somewhere.”

  “Well, Samantha didn’t have anything to do with it. She’s a headstrong young woman, but she isn’t stupid.”

  “But if she was handling his money, she’d be a very wealthy young woman, now that he’s dead, wouldn’t she?”

  Ross’s head came up. There was a snarl in his eyes. For the first time, Parker and Willows glimpsed a hint of the tiger crouched behind the pinstripes.

  “What are you implying, exactly? That my daughter hired a hitman to kill Mendez?”

  “Not at all,” said Parker smoothly.

  Willows said, “The thing is, the man who shot Mendez and grabbed his briefcase may believe that either you or Samantha has access to the money. I asked you if you knew anyone who drove a dark blue or black late-model Pontiac. We believe the car is owned by the man who shot Mendez.”

  “He was at my house?”

  Willows nodded.

  “My God, she … ”

  “The house is under surveillance.”

  Parker said, “Do you know where your daughter is now, Mr Ross?”

  “No, I’m sorry, but I have no idea”

  “Attending classes?”

  “She dropped out in the first month of the semester, told me she was bored.”

  “And you don’t know what she’s been doing with her time since then?”

  Ross said, “I was afraid to ask.”

  “What we’d like to do,” said Parker, “is set up a stake-out at your home. You and Samantha would spend the next night or two at a downtown hotel, at the city’s expense. How does that sound to you?”

  Ross fiddled with his Rolodex. After a moment he said, “Fine. It sounds just fine.”

  A small brass carriage clock on Ross’s desk chimed the quarter-hour. Parker glanced at her watch, saw that she was running a little fast. She smiled.

  Better to be quick than slow.

  Twenty-Two

  The morning after his joyride, Greg slept late but woke up in a hurry when the freight train muscled its way through the bedroom door, lathe and plaster flying, tons of iron and steel roaring and clattering down on him, the air filled with diesel fumes and smoke pierced through by an incandescent white light.

  His eyes popped open. Nightmare. Whew! But being wide awake wasn’t a whole lot better. Randy had really worked him over. It hurt like hell, just thinking about what had been done to him.

  He eased out of bed, stood up and checked himself out in the cheap full-length mirror fastened to the back of the bedroom door. He wouldn’t have believed it possible, but he looked even worse than he felt. As if he’d spent all night making love to a barbed-wire fence. The area around his kidneys was badly swollen and was the colour of an overripe plum. He had a plum-sized bump on the back of his head where he’d bounced off the concrete. His foot, the one he’d used on Randy, throbbed painfully. He was pretty sure he hadn’t broken anything, though, and it was just as well, because if there was one thing a man on the run didn’t need, it was a broken foot.

  And Greg would soon be on the run, his mind was clear on that much, at least.

  He took a long, slow bath, dressed in a soft flannel shirt and black cords, black Nikes. In the kitchen, he popped a couple of waffles in the toaster, made a pot of coffee. By the time he finished breakfast he felt wide awake, was thinking with both sides of his brain.

  He was pouring his third cup of coffee when Randy leapt up at him from the steaming black hole of the pot. Greg hit him with a left hook, struck him right between the eyes, drove his fist right through Randy’s forehead and out the back of his skull. Randy frowned, and went away.

  Greg knew damn well that you couldn’t make a genuine flesh-and-blood person dematerialize with a left hook, no matter how powerful the blow. He’d beat Randy to a pulp and watched him fall down a cliff, get sucker-punched by a locomotive, mushed by eighty-seven railroad cars. The guy was dead.

  But so was Greg — he was dead on his feet. The wall clock over the fridge insisted it was only a few minutes short of noon. The idea of falling asleep terrified him. Who knew what evil lurked in dreamland? But wasn’t it a lot smarter to take a nap in broad daylight? He went back into the bedroom, stretched out, aimed the remote at the rented Hitachi television squatting malevolently on the bureau. The range of entertainment was sparse. News. Game shows. Soaps. Soft-porn music videos. The real-estate channel, the shopping channel. And then he was listening to a deliriously happy guy on a massive yacht crewed by large-breasted women in small pastel bikinis assure him that he too could be a millionaire, if only he had the guts.

  Greg needed an omen, and there it was. He turned up the volume. The yacht was replaced by a house large enough to qualify as a mansion. There was a Rolls-Royce parked out front, a pool big enough to park the yacht out back. The babes were there too, smiling in a friendly way but silent, not even looking as if they had something in mind that they’d like to say. Full bikinis, empty heads.

  Cash cash cash! All you needed was the guts to take a chance. Chance chance chance!

  The guy was giving a series of seminars. He was a believer in free enterprise, and he wanted to spread the word. Soon, lucky for Greg, he’d be in Vancouver. The name of a suburban hotel flashed on the screen in big, easy-to-read block letters. The seminar was three hours long and it was free. Free free free!

  Now the guy was back, grinning at Greg from behind the wheel of a redder-than-hell Ferrari. A black Porsche 911 squatted beside the Ferrari, and beside the Porsche there was another Rolls, a white convertible. In the background were palm trees the colour of money and a blue-chip sky. But where were the babes? Right there, dozens of them, popping up in the Ferrari, the Porsche and the Rolls, all eyes on the happy guy as they waited for him to finish his pitch and get back to having lots and lots of fun fun fun!

  Back on the yacht, the happy guy told Greg again that getting rich wasn’t all that tricky — all you needed was guts guts guts!

  An omen, definitely.

  Greg slept all the rest of that day and deep into the night, woke up in darkness at twenty past ten. He turned off the TV. The red light on his answering machine was flashing at about half his pulse rate. He stared at it awhile, then rolled out of bed, went into the kitchen and snatched the last beer out of the fridge.

  Another omen. When you were out of beer, it was time to move on. He drank half the bottle, wandered into the living room. It entered his mind that if the cops showed up he’d tell them Randy had broken into his apartment and beaten him up and stolen the Pontiac.

  But he’d abandoned the stolen Pontiac several blocks away, poured gasoline over it and burnt it to a crisp. So — here’s a good question — how did Randy make it to Horseshoe Bay?

  Well, come to think of it, Randy and a pal had come to his apartment and knocked him silly and stolen his car.

  Another question — what did Randy’s pal look like?

  Greg formed a fairly accurate mental picture of Paul Newman. No, that wouldn’t do … He imagined a washed-up biker type, a chunky dude with thinning hair, salt-and-ketchup beard, round eyeglasses with copper-tinted frames perched hallway down a button nose, too much chest hair, a vinaigrette smile, stubby fin
gers squeezing a Camel cigarette to death. Great, but the cops would bust the apartment manager the minute they laid eyes on him. So what did Randy’s pal look like?

  All I saw was his fist, officer.

  Greg drank some more beer and lit a cigarette. He had a few grams of coke hidden somewhere in the apartment but couldn’t remember where. He started poking around in the living room, found a Charter Arms 44 tucked under the sofa cushions, a Hi-Standard 22 long semi-auto hidden behind the stereo system, and a stainless steel 357 Colt revolver in a vase full of dead flowers next to the fake fireplace. He stuck the Hi-Standard in the waistband of his pants and then went and stood at the window with the stainless in his right hand and the Charter Arms 44 in his left, the dead weight of the guns stretching his arms to the limit, ruining his posture. People had no idea how heavy a large-calibre handgun was, or what a nuisance it was to have to pack one around — the wear and tear on your clothes, for instance.

  He thumbed back the hammers. The Charter Arms was brand new and the action was stiffer than he expected; the hammer started to slip away from him before engaging the sear. But he recovered nicely, no shots fired. He went into the bedroom, rooted around for his coke until the answering machine caught his eye. The little red light was blinking in sequences of three — indicating the number of messages waiting for him.

  The first message was from Hilary. She sounded at first as if dumping him had been a big mistake. Then, suddenly turning into judge and jury, she told him it was almost midnight and Randy was way overdue. Then she went all melancholy again, her voice dripping with regret as she said goodbye. Didn’t ask him to call her, Greg noticed. The second message was a blind call from a carpet and upholstery cleaning company. Windows and chimneys, too, could be swiftly dealt with.

  Greg lit a cigarette, adjusted the Hi-Standard in his pants so the front sight wasn’t as intrusive.

  The third and final message was Hilary again. She sounded frantic, right on the edge. She was positive Randy had gone to Greg’s to get his pictures back. Where was her pretty boy? What had Greg done to him?

  Had she really said that? What have you done to my pretty boy?