The Long Fall

“Not at all,” I replied, tacking my sail to her whim. “A woman is a woman until the day she dies.”

“My family doesn’t agree with you,” she said. “There I was, sixty-seven with a husband limp as a popped party balloon—and I was still young in my heart. And not only there.”

Her tone was both suggestive and engaging. I liked her.

“Do you want to get out?” I asked seriously. She seemed sane to me and I was always looking for work, no matter how bad things got.

This question grabbed the old girl’s attention. She heard the earnestness in my tone, just as the guard at the front gate had heard the lie.

“No,” she said. “I’m getting older, and I find it easier to get what I need right here.”

This reply seemed to punctuate the end of something. I took the opportunity of this lull to ask my question.

“Did you know Willie very well?”

“Is he dead?”

“No. But he is in the hospital.”

“Oh my. What happened?”

“He got into a fight.”

“He liked to fight,” she said, nodding. “He was a nice boy but he had a bad temper. No, I didn’t know him very well. We weren’t the kind of friends that I›€friends would have liked. But he was close with Bunny. She and Willie were friends even before he came here. He brought her love. Not in the carnal way, mind you. Willie kind of worshipped Bunny.”

“Is Bunny around here somewhere?”

“Oh no. She only stays for a little while. I think she was in for a long time once, but that was years ago. Since then, every once in a while she has a little kind of nervous breakdown. They bring her in, but she can leave whenever she wants to.”

“What’s this Bunny’s last name?”

“Hey, you!” a definitely masculine voice commanded.

The tone frightened my new friend.

I turned to see two well-proportioned staff men coming toward me. One was brown, the other a darker brown. They both had me, and only me, in their sights.

I stood up and, through the miracle of peripheral vision, saw the old pagan woman scuttle off under the portable shadow of her semitransparent pink parasol.

“What you doin’ here?” the darker attendant asked.

“It’s a beautiful day,” I replied as if that were a perfectly acceptable answer.

For a moment the two men were stymied by my easy demeanor.

“This is private property,” the other male nurse/enforcer informed me.

“And I’m a private detective,” I said, “here trying to get a line on a guy name of Willie Sanderson.”

The men looked at each other and then back at me.

“This is private property,” the lighter of the two repeated.

“Let me speak to your boss,” I said.

Six magic words that roil deep in the bowels of anyone collecting a paycheck on a biweekly basis. It’s like winking at a leprechaun: he has to give up his pot of gold, and yet no one knows why.

Ê€„

35

The two brutes brought me to an office that seemed oddly utilitarian for such an affluent institution. It was at the far corner of the main hall of what I thought must have been the administration building. We walked into the shotgun office without a knock or pardon-me. A middle-aged man in a too-green suit was sitting behind a gray metal desk at the bottom of the long room. Behind him was a big window looking out on the idyllic quad.

The man was leaning over a long and wide ledger page, making small marks here and there, giving me the impression that he was checking details and changing ž€…them to fit his needs.

When the man raised his head I was startled. Director Theodore Gorling (which is what his nameplate read) was the only man I ever met who had more throat than he did face. His neck was a great bulging stalk of a thing while his head was like a seedpod that had not yet reached maturity.

“Yes?” he asked the darker guard.

“This guy was hangin’ out in the yard. Says he’s a detective.” The guard handed over the false card that I had given to prove my half lie.

Gorling moved his small head from side to side, taking the few simply printed words in from differing angles. Then he put the card down in the center of the neat desk. His movements were both mechanical and fleshy. He seemed somehow dangerous, like a priest one might find on the wrong side of redemption.

“I’m looking for information on Willie Sanderson,” I said when it became obvious that Gorling had no intention of asking why I was there.

“Why?”

“He’s been killing people, seemingly at random. He murdered a young man name of Brown in Manhattan and the parents want me to find out why.”

“This says that you’re from Newark,” Gorling said, tapping the card with the middle finger of his left hand.

“So are my clients,” I said. “But their son lived on the Upper West Side. He was trying to make it as an actor while working as a model. Was your man Willie Sanderson gay?”

“Why do you ask?”

“The son was making his living as an underwear model,” I said, sticking out my lower lip in a knowing way. “I thought maybe the murder could have been a sex thing.”