The Long Fall

“You’d think so, but Kitteridge doesn’t work like that. He might be the only truly honest cop in the whole city. Imagine that? One clean cop and his major goal in life is putting my ass behind bars.”

“He wanted the combination to the inner door but I told him I didn’t have it,” she said.

Aura and Twill were the only ones who knew the access code to my inner doors.

“Don’t worry, babe. Tryin’ to stop the law is like holding back the rain. It’s what they call an exercise in futility. If you’d made him wait in the hall he would have probably taken it out on me.”

“What does he want?” she asked, her bronze visage somber yet calm. It wasn’t what an aficionado would call beautiful, but still it was the kind of face that gave you hope.

I told her everything, about my search for the four young men and the three ensuing deaths. Talking to Aura was like opening a vein.

The first thing you learned in my line of business was that you never give up any information that you don’t absolutely have to. Katrina knew nothing about my business. But Aura represented a whole new movement in my life. The time I spent with her was painfully honest. I never lied, except about my recurring dream. Sometimes, when something was just too secret to share, I’d say, “I can’t talk about that, babe. So please don’t as£pler lk me.”

“WHAT ABOUT THE dream?” she asked after I’d told her about coming upon the corpse of Norman Fell.

Her question had a two-tiered design. First, she was telling me that she accepted my story and was on my side. Secondly, since I seemed to have let her deeper into my life, she wanted to know more.

“I’m in a building,” I said, relieved to finally put the nightmare into words. “It’s burning, burning, and I’m running from room to room. I think that maybe I’m the last man left alive but that doesn’t matter because soon I’ll be dead, too . . .” I told her about the window and the long fall. “It’s like my life is one long tumble off the side of a mountain. I’m falling through the air and certain to die. There’s no way that I can be saved. No cushion or twist or turn.”

Aura took one of my hands in hers and squeezed.

“I love you, Leonid McGill.”

“I don’t understand that.”

“You don’t know what love is?”

“Maybe I do, maybe not. But what I don’t understand is how you can listen to all this and still have any feelings for me whatsoever. I left you for another woman. I caused the deaths of at least two men. And you know I’ve done much worse in years gone by.”

Aura’s smile was in another place than the one I was addressing. She nodded at something, not what I’d said, and then waited as this unspoken knowledge settled around us.

She took my other hand, leaned forward, and kissed my lips lightly.

“You are a man on the road,” she told me.

“What does that mean?”

“My father murdered many men back in his country. But I would have still loved him if only he could face what he had done. Instead he lied and blamed others for his crimes. He ran off the road, out of the sun. But you are right out there in the light of day. That’s all I want from my man.”

Her man.

I took in a breath but it didn’t work. I took in another.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Twenty after one.”

“In the afternoon?”

Aura nodded and gave me that enigmatic smile.

“I’ve been sleepin’ since nine?”

She nodde£e=">

“How long have you been here?”

“I came up a little while after the policeman left,” she said. “At first I just wanted to make sure that you were okay. Then I stayed to watch over you while you got some rest.”

Ê€„

20

Aura kissed me again. It would have been the perfect moment for us to come together once more if it wasn’t for the madwoman running around the couch, shrieking at the top of her voice. That madwoman was my life.

Aura stood up, pulling my hands and bringing me to my feet.

“I’ll be in my office if you need me,” she said.

Watching Aura leave was never an easy thing. But I didn’t have the time to brood.

THE ILLITERATE NORMAN FELL kept pretty good bookkeeping records. Most of the entries were expenses. He knew a few awkwardly spelled words, like “offiss supplys” and “offiss expens.” Now and then he took in some cash. There was a four-hundred-dollar payment from someone designated as TR. Another, two hundred dollars, was attributed to Jo M. The fees were all paltry except for those received from one set of initials.

Norman had received four payments of twenty-five thousand dollars, the last of which was paid on the day, or maybe the day before, he died. The initials next to these entries were simply VM—except for the first entry, where, next to the VM, there was a BH in parentheses.

I imagined the joy the untutored Fell must have felt when he could use a symbol like the parentheses. I would have felt sorry for him if it hadn’t been for Gordo’s hammer.

It was a story the boxing trainer had told thirty-some years before.