The Long Fall

“Something like that,” he said.

We walked down the aisle of empty cubicles that led to my office.

“Why you got such a big place?” Carson asked as we went. “You never had anybody work for you in all these years.”

“It’s my imagination,” I said, moving behind the desk.

“What is?”

“My imagination,” I said again. “It fills up all these rooms. It’s the only way I can think.”

“Fatheaded, huh?”

Sometimes the policeman and I could go on like that for half an hour or more. We kidded each other to hide our hands. In reality I didn’t like him and he cared even less for me. But we were stuck with each other like coworkers on an assembly line. I’d punch out a hole in an iron plate and he’d sand down the edges, complaining that he had to work at all.

I don’t know how the NYPD works exactly, maybe nobody really does, but Kitteridge was on a list that got lit up every time the cops got a whiff of me. Usually when he appeared my name had been whispered and a few dollars had changed hands, or maybe a surveillance tape had caught my profile coming out of some bad guy’s lair. We hadn’t seen each other much since I’d been trying to straighten out, but once every few months or so he’d drop by just to let me know that I was still on their radar.

›t="g t

For him to show up so soon after Frank Tork and Norman Fell had been murdered could not be a coincidence.

“I got work to do, Detective,” I said, unable to continue our banter. “What is it you want?”

“Can you fix the Lotto?”

With all the bile between us, Carson Kitteridge could still make me laugh.

“Naw, man. But I could score you enough crank to make you feel like you won it.”

His grin downgraded into a smile, and then that was gone.

“I don’t believe in coincidence, LT,” he said, echoing my own thoughts.

“Neither me.” I was hoping that he had gotten word on me going to visit Tork in jail. I was willing to give up Fell’s pseudonym. But if they had something on me up in Albany, things might get close.

The policeman sat back in the blue and chrome visitor’s chair. He put his elbows on the arms and laced his fingers. His gray eyes were like a hazy afternoon sky, they were so light and distant.

“You remember me once asking you if you knew a fella named Arnold DuBois?” he asked.

Fear blossomed in my lungs.

“No.”

“You remember. There was that guy, Timmons I think his name was. Second-story man, lived across the street from a jewelry store got burglarized. We found some of the ice in his freezer. But the robbery division was sure it was some other guy. Pete the Finn. You remember. This DuBois guy was in Timmons’s building just the day before the tip came down. Said he was looking for clients.”

“I don’t remember,” I said calmly, hollering inside.

“I understand. That was seven years ago. We’d just started the criminal keyword database at that time. Thank God for Homeland Security.

“The doorman gave us a description that fit you to a T, LT. But we couldn’t tie you to the Finn, and Pete’s lawyer kept him out of court, so we had no excuse to bring you in. Even if it was you, that didn’t make any direct connection to the robbery.”

I should have had a pithy comeback. That was our shtick. But I was no longer the man he’d hounded. And all I could think about was what his visit meant.

“Why are you here, Lieutenant?”

Kitteridge’s eyes tightened. I’d never been curt with him on an exploratory visit. We had our roles to play and for the first time in nineteen years I was stepping out of character.

“Camilla Jones,” he said. It was almost a question.

“Who?”

“Roger Brown’s fiancée. He was supposed to meet her night before last at a club on Fifty-seventh. When he didn’t show she called him and he said that he was sick. She thought he sounded nervous but he said no. He didn’t call her all the next day and so last night she went to his apartment and rang his buzzer. Nobody answered. She had the key, decided to use it, and found him dead on the floor. Strangled and beaten like a dog.”

“So?” I whispered.

“So a few days ago the elusive Arnold DuBois left his card at Brown’s office.”

“So?”

“The next day some big white guy came there, looking for Roger. The receptionist, a Juliet Stilman, said that he threatened her. When Roger heard about the guy he begged her not to call the police and snuck out through a side door. He didn’t come to work the next day, and now he’s dead.”

I waited a few moments before asking, “Is that all, Officer?”

“Are you going to tell me what you were doing there?”

I shrugged and made a meaningless gesture with my hands. “Freedom of speech also lets me keep my mouth shut.”

Kitteridge’s furrowed brow darkened his light-gray eyes. He sat forward in the chair.

“It’s said around certain circles that you’ve changed jobs,” he said, suggesting something.

“Soda jerk?”

“Point man for the killer—Hush.”