Fall Down Easy

by Laurence Gough

  Greg rewound the tape and played it again.

  Yup.

  He took a last hit on his cigarette, squashed the butt into the carpet with the heel of his shoe.

  He picked up the phone, punched Hilary’s number. She answered on the fifteenth ring, her voice blurred, as if she’d been counting logs or sawing up sheep.

  Greg said, “I wake you? What happened to that fun-loving insomniac I used to know so well?”

  “Randy?” Hopeful. Perky.

  “Once-upon-a-time, honey. But not any more.”

  “Greg?” Depressed. Disappointed. Deflated.

  Greg said, “Just returning your call.”

  “Have you seen Randy?”

  “Not since the last time.” Or was it the time before last, when I caught the two of you in the sack? He said, “What makes you think he might’ve been here?”

  “I don’t know … ”

  Whew!

  “I’ve been phoning around … ”

  Greg’s voice, when he spoke, was tough as a cowboy’s leathers, slippery as wet silk. “Oh baby,” he said, “I miss you so much.”

  Hilary sighed deeply into his ear. Slammed down the phone.

  Greg spent some time lurching around the apartment, kicking the furniture and muttering vile oaths. After a while he ran out of steam and collapsed on the sofa.

  In the bedroom, the telephone rang three times and then the answering machine picked up.

  Greg smoked a cigarette, checked the message. It was Samantha. Daddy was out of town on business. Could he come over and play? About midnight would be nice.

  Greg resumed his search of the apartment and found eleven loaded handguns and a sawed-off twelve gauge Purdy shotgun he hadn’t realized he owned, a box of shells, enough coke to fuel another twenty-four hours in the fast lane. He packed a duffel bag with his makeup and then gathered all his other possessions that were of value and couldn’t easily be replaced, stuffed it all — including the Mac’s software and files, a wire coathanger and a brand-new roll of duct tape, in a single black canvas flight bag.

  Except for a few clothes, everything else he owned, rented or leased went down the garbage chute or into the dumpster via the service elevator. Soon the apartment was empty except for the larger pieces of furniture; the sofa and bed, a coffee table and a few other odds and ends, all those cracked and shattered mirrors. Everything was rented under the name of the dead guy who technically owned the Pontiac. The collection agency hounds would find nothing to chew but a heap of dusty old bones.

  Greg snorted a couple of lines of low-cal energy and vacuumed the hell out of the carpets, wiped clean every surface that might conceivably take a fingerprint. He moved after every caper so it was a familiar routine, one he’d performed a dozen times before. When he was done with his chores he stripped and took a long, hot shower. Then he hauled the duffel bag into the bathroom, slapped an eight-inch scar diagonally across his throat, taped his ears flat, gave himself a little more chin and a slab forehead, bushy eyebrows. Finally, he doubled the width and breadth of his nose and carefully applied gold foil to his upper left front tooth.

  Whoever he looked like, it was someone else. The face that smiled back at him from the fractured depths of the mirror belonged to anybody but him. But then, wasn’t that always the case?

  He dressed in a three-piece Hugo Boss black silk suit, sparkling white dress shirt and shiny grey silk tie, black laceups, an Yves Saint-Laurent trenchcoat. He admired himself in the hall mirror and then gave the glass a vicious kick, broke himself up.

  It took him fifteen minutes to walk the five blocks to the nearest bank with an ATM. There was a bus stop within twenty feet of the machine. Greg lit a cigarette and mimed waiting for a bus. Half an hour and two buses and three burly male ATM customers later, a woman in a white Toyota pulled up against the curb.

  Greg watched as she got out of the car, not bothering to turn off the engine, and hurried across to the ATM. She was in a rush, apparently. Too much of a rush to take a quick look around and make sure nobody like Greg was waiting to pounce.

  She punched in her four-digit security code, fingers dancing across the ATM’s keyboard.

  Greg said, “You must be a secretary, huh? Do a lot of typing?”

  Startled, she glanced over her shoulder, registered the weird-looking dude in the Yves Saint-Laurent. A tad nervous, she peered up and down the street.

  Greg moved right up to her, slipped his arm around her waist. “What’s your limit, sweetheart?”

  “Get away from me!” It was a whisper of denial, not an outraged shout.

  “In a minute, okay?” Greg told the ATM he wanted five hundred dollars. The woman squirmed and wriggled in his grasp. He said, “You trying to turn me on, honey?” She became very still. The ATM screen informed him that five hundred exceeded his limit. He tried for three. The machine’s grim steel mouth clanked open and it spat a wad of twenties at him.

  Greg asked the woman what her name was. Lorraine Flaviani. Greg said he was pleased to meet her. He put away the gun, grabbed his duffel bag and the flight bag and duck-walked Lorraine back to the Toyota, opened the driver’s door and shoved her right across the seat, tossed his baggage in the backseat and climbed behind the wheel. He said, “How d’you adjust the seat, Lorraine? Never mind, I got it.” He gave himself as much legroom as possible, put the Toyota in gear and hit the gas. The little car’s acceleration surprised him, snapped his head back. Grinning, he said, “Peppy, huh?”

  Lorraine stared out the windshield, making a point of not looking at him.

  Greg said, “You married?”

  She shook her head, no.

  “Live alone?”

  This time, her head moved in a vertical plane. Her hair was auburn, with reddish tints. He said, “Where do you live, Lorraine?”

  She yanked at the door, kicked it open. The Toyota was doing 55K, the legal limit. Greg made an unscheduled lane change as he grabbed a handful of hair, pulled hard, reached across her and slammed shut the door. She tried to bite him on the wrist.

  Greg showed her his big one, the Colt.

  “Ever see any Dirty Harry movies, Clint Eastwood and his three fifty-seven magnum, can blow up whole buildings or knock an airplane out of the sky with one shot?”

  She nodded, rubbed her shoulder where the frame of the door had bruised her.

  Greg said, “Here’s the deal. Why should I want to hurt you when I don’t even know you? I need your car for a few hours — but I don’t need you. So what am I gonna do, take you down to the beach and bury your head in the sand? Wouldn’t you rather be tied up in the comfort and safety of your own home, Lorraine?”

  She blinked. Crying a little, but otherwise holding up pretty well, considering. Tough cookies, secretaries. A wild bunch, all in all.

  Greg said, “You got a VCR?”

  She nodded, still peering out the windshield, almost as if hoping to divine her future, somewhere up the road.

  He said, “I’ll slip in a movie, you’ll probably fall asleep watching it.” He smiled. “You can look at me if you want. What’re you thinking — that I might bump you off so you can’t identify me? Relax. I’m wearing a ton of latex, a wig.” He took her hand. “Push your finger against the tip of my nose, Lorraine. See what happens? Now I look like Karl Malden, don’t I?”

  Lorraine lived in a ground-level suite in a house on West 19th, just off Cambie. Greg checked the bathroom, let her freshen up and then used almost the entire roll of duct tape to fasten her to an oak rocking chair. He made a noose of the wire coathanger, slipped it around her neck and tied it to the back of the chair, explained in lurid detail how she’d be putting herself at risk if she struggled. Finally, he asked if there was anything else he could do for her, would she like a cookie, glass of milk … Apparently not.

  Greg knelt beside her, rested a hand lightly on her knee. “Relationships are built on trust, Lorraine. Will you promise not to yell for help, the minute I’m gone?”

  Lo
rraine thought about it for a moment, weighing the risks, trying to figure him out.

  Greg said, “Think about it, okay?” He used the last of the duct tape to seal her lips, then turned the TV on and inserted a tape marked The Cosby Show into the VCR, got it rolling, adjusted the volume.

  While Lorraine watched the Huxtables, Greg went into the kitchen and laid out a couple of fat white lines on the counter. He inhaled the coke, his nostrils feeling like they’d turned into afterburners, bent and licked the counter clean. Mr Huxtable was funny as only Mr Huxtable could be, but Lorraine didn’t seem even slightly amused.

  Greg said, “You seen this already? I could fast-forward.” Lorraine ignored him. Caught up in the plot, maybe. Laughing on the inside, perhaps. He let himself out of the apartment, locked the door behind him. Things were looking up. He had a bundle of twenties, a Toyota with a full tank of gas, a heavy date and a plan.

  What more could a guy ask of life?

  Twenty-Three

  At six o’clock, when the bank closed for the day, Martin Ross handed Willows the keys to his Chrysler and took a taxi downtown, checked into the Ritz and headed straight for the bar. Several hours earlier, Samantha Ross had been intercepted by an unmarked car within a few blocks of her home. Parker arrived on the scene within minutes and briefly explained the situation. Unlike her father, Samantha turned down the offer of a paid hotel room. She told Parker she had friends at Whistler, a ski resort about ninety minutes north of the city, that she’d been meaning to visit for months.

  Willows had driven to Ross’s house in the Lincoln, confident that loverboy wouldn’t be able to identify him through the car’s tinted windows even if he was watching the house. Willows parked in the garage next to Parker’s rented Samurai, deliberately left the garage’s automatic door open.

  Parker was already inside the house. Together, she and Willows went through the building room by room, made sure all the doors and windows were shut and locked, and that the security system was functioning. Later, Parker raided the fridge and put together a plate of cold roast beef sandwiches while Willows made a pot of coffee. In the Maritime Museum parking lot, Orwell and Oikawa were concealed in the back of a Parks Board pickup truck, crouched down beneath a blind made of boughs slashed from a fir tree. Across the alley from Ross’s house, Farley Spears had taken a concealed position in a neighbour’s garage. Both Orwell and Spears were in radio contact with Willows and Parker.

  Parker and Willows ate their sandwiches in the den. The TV flickered, but the sound had been turned off. Parker’s gun lay on the arm of her overstuffed leather recliner. Willows was reading People magazine. The house was quiet. Parker watched Willows as he paged through the magazine, the way his eyes moved, the play of shadow and light upon his face.

  It had been a long day, and it was going to get longer. There was nothing Parker wanted more at that moment than a hot, leisurely shower. Was loverboy going to show up, or were they wasting their time? The ensuite bathroom in the master bedroom had recessed lighting, gold fixtures, a gold dish full of scented soap in the shapes of small birds, fish. She wondered how Jack would feel about a shower, if she asked.

  In the back of the pickup truck, Oikawa seemed to have fallen asleep. Orwell hoped he was just resting, that his fellow detective was ready to leap into action at a moment’s notice. It was cold and damp down there by the water. He’d zipped himself into his sleeping bag. Now he was snug and warm in his red plaid cocoon. But the zipper had jammed, trapping him. Orwell knew he should get Oikawa to help him with the zipper, but he also knew that the detective would never stop laughing, if he found out Orwell was stuck. Cops. Every last one of them had money troubles, and a twisted sense of humour.

  On the far side of the alley behind the Ross house, Farley Spears sat on a fat bundle of newspapers he’d found near the rear of the garage and packed over to the open doorway by the lane. He was reasonably comfortable, except for a stray cat that had fallen for him, wouldn’t leave him alone. Spears had an allergy. Dogs were fine but cats drove him crazy. He’d pick the cat up and forcefully hurl it into the alley and a couple of minutes later it’d be back in his lap, lashing his face with its tail.

  Spears’ eyes could have watered a lawn. His nose was running fast enough to qualify for the Olympics. Each time he tossed the cat into the alley, he put a little more effort into it.

  The cat couldn’t seem to get enough of Spears. The animal was endlessly playful and very smart, kept coming at him from different directions. The last time it had sneaked up on him, it’d crept along the rafters over his head and dropped on him from about eight feet up. He’d yelped with terror, grabbed the creature by a hind leg, spun it around like a discus thrower and flung it high into the darkness.

  That had been ten minutes ago, a record, and Spears was starting to have second thoughts. Was a runny nose worth killing for? So he had an allergy, so what? The cat was only trying to be friendly. And now, poor helpless creature, it was lying out there somewhere with a shattered spine or lethal internal injuries, wondering what in hell it had done to deserve such a horrible fate.

  Spears’ knees creaked as he stood up. He stepped out of the shelter of the garage, knelt and whispered, “Here kitty kitty, puss puss puss … ”

  The cat was somewhere behind him, in the garage. It meowed softly. An eye glinted, a tooth gleamed. Spears picked up his MAG-LITE, flashed the beam quickly around the garage. He said, “Kitty kitty kitty … ” and then the beast leapt straight at him, into his face. Spears raised his hands to intercept its flight.

  Greg hit him right between the eyes with the heavy barrel of his Charter Arms 44. The detective dropped as if he’d been shot. Greg grabbed a handful of coat and dragged Spears’ limp body across the oil-stained floor of the garage. Kitty kitty played with the detective’s shoelace as Greg relieved him of his revolver and walkie-talkie, extremely thin wallet, a gold Mont Blanc pen that had to be worth a few bucks.

  Exhausted by his labours, Greg slumped down beside the unconscious or possibly dead cop. His skull bouncing off the concrete during his tussle with Randy must have left him with a priority one concussion. Now it felt as if there was a high-speed motorboat race going on inside his brain. All those propellers churning the grey matter into froth sure made it hard to concentrate.

  He flipped open the wallet. The cop was carrying six dollars in cash and an expired American Express card with a bunch of holes punched through it. Well, what did he expect, mugging a cop. To get rich?

  He tried the flashlight. It cast a beam bright enough to illuminate a surgery. He unzipped the duffel bag, rummaged around until he found his scalpel, slashed Spears’ overcoat into strips and bound and gagged him. Then, just for laughs, he spent a few more minutes on the unconscious cop — gave him a little something to remember Greg by.

  Finished, he stuffed the tools of his trade back in the duffel bag. This one, Farley Spears, was gone for the night. The cop hidden under the pile of shrubbery in the pickup truck was no threat unless Greg waltzed up to the front door and rang the bell. Would there be more cops waiting for him inside the house? It was hard to think clearly with all those motor-boats racing around in his head, but he thought probably there were. Samantha wouldn’t set him up. There’d been a spark between them, he was sure. But her daddy was different. Daddy was the kind of guy who’d mortgage his soul if the price was right. So, yeah, there’d be a couple of cops in there, waiting.

  The way Greg saw it, he still had the advantage. He knew where they were — but they didn’t know where he was.

  The element of surprise, that’s what he had going for him. Plus a ruthless nature. And plenty of charm … Greg knew he should blow Samantha a kiss, turn around and walk away. Problem was, the happy guy was right — if you wanted to get rich you had to have guts guts guts. And there was the fact that he sensed he was running out of time and luck. Despite everything, he was in a cheerful, careless frame of mind. It was the concussion and he knew it, but somehow knowing didn’t he
lp. If he didn’t break into the house, what would he do instead? He had no idea. He found the plastic bag containing his stash, spilled the contents into the palm of his hand, pinched a nostril shut and snorted hard, whinnied like a horse.

  Inside the house, Willows checked his watch, frowned. He reached out, turned the walkie-talkie towards him and verified that the battery warning light was off. He said, “What time have you got, Claire?”

  “Quarter past.”

  Willows picked up the radio, thought it over for a minute, and then pressed the transmit button and softly spoke Spears’ name.

  “Farley?”

  A burst of static, then silence.

  “Farley? You there, Farley?”

  Nothing.

  Parker said, “You want dependability, I’d rather have a length of string and a couple of empty soup tins. See if you can raise Oikawa.”

  Willows pressed transmit. “Danny, you read me?”

  Oikawa came back immediately. “Loud and clear. Want me to take a look?”

  “I’ll do it.” Willows watched his Seiko beat ten seconds to death, then tried Spears again.

  More silence.

  Willows drew his snubnose 38. He swung out the cylinder and checked the load. Parker followed him out of the den, down the hall and into the kitchen. She said, “Take it slow, Jack.”

  Willows nodded, used his left hand to open the front door. The 38 was in his right fist, pointed in front of him and down. He said, “Be right back,” and reached out and lightly touched her arm. Then he was gone.

  The two-car garage attached to Ross’s house was so wide that the outer wall butted up against the neighbour’s fence. Greg scrambled up on top of the fence, waited until his head cleared and then hoisted himself up on the garage’s gently sloped roof of cedar shingles. He stayed low, straddling the ridgeline, as he made his way towards the frosted-glass window that he figured would give him access to the second-floor bathroom. As soon as he’d finished crossing the roof, he leaned towards the gutter and was violently ill.