The Long Fall

I made it through maybe thirty percent of the pictures; after that I lost heart. If I hadn’t incriminated myself by calling Duffy I probably would have waited and killed Bitterman myself. But the feeling passed and I went into the hall and down the stairs. I retrieved Bug’s cross-box from the basement and then came up to thank Peter. I told the doorman that everything looked good.

“You sure you’re an electrician?” he asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

“Yeah. Why?”

“I don’t know,” Peter said, leavening his tone. “I never known one’a you guys not to come up with some kinda five-thousand-dollar job.”

“Duffy likes Joe,” I said. “He told me to go easy.”

I don’t even remember how I got back to the Tesla Building.

Ê€„

41

Twill, I thought while unlocking the many bolts on my outer office door, was a perfect person. Maybe not a model citizen or a particularly΀… productive member of society, not a law-abiding churchgoer with God always on his mind; but in spite of all his social failings, Twill was capable of making flawless decisions about what he would do and why. His resolution to kill Leslie Bitterman was one of absolute sensibleness. I wanted to kill the man myself, but I wasn’t perfect like my son. I worried about consequences even if I knew the act in front of me was correct.

Whether you killed the finance expert for past acts or to stem future threats, there were few people who would condemn or even question the act itself. The problem was that those few worked for the state of New York and wore black robes.

But Twill’s perfection didn’t matter. Once I was in possession of the facts, making a plan to save my son would be easy. I had resolved that problem and so was feeling good. There were other knots in the cord of my life, but they would unravel, too—I was pretty sure.

I was sitting in the new chair behind my receptionist’s desk, something I often did while reading the mail.

I was hardly even worried when there came a jiggle on the doorknob followed by the sound of the buzzer. I considered going back to my office to consult the monitors, but then I said to myself that I couldn’t live my life worrying about what awaited me every time I heard a knock or ring. That path led to madness.

HE WAS ON the short side and smelled of a thin layer of lilac spread over an acre of sour sweat. In his left hand he held a battered black briefcase. My visitor was dressed in a well-cut dark-blue suit, but his wiry frame undermined the effect. Who knows what genetic background stamped out his oddly long but, then again, flat white face?

“Mr. McGill?” he asked, his lips approximating a smile.

“Who are you?”

“Timothy Moore.”

“Can I help you?”

“Are you Leonid McGill?”

I hesitated. So many things were going on that I wasn’t even certain about answering this simplest of questions. I didn’t like the way Moore smelled but maybe he had some kind of glandular problem. I was busy but no one was paying me, except if I set up a constitutionally innocent man for a mob hit.

“Yes, I am,” I said. “Come on in, Mr. Moore. Have a seat.”

I backed away, letting him into the front office. I decided to meet with him out there. That way I didn’t have to turn my back to enter the codes for the inner sanctum.

I sat down behind the desk and gave Tim Moore my blandest expression.

“Nice office,” he said, lowering tentatively across from me. “Great building.”

He was nervous but that didn’t necessarily portend anything sinister. Unfaithful wives made men uncomfortable; thieving employees sometimes did, too.

“What’s your business, Mr. Moore?”

“I’m an office manager,” he said. “I work for Crow and Williams.”

“I mean, what is your business with me?”

A smile flitted across the little man’s sensuous mouth. This wan grin soon became a grimace.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m not used to these things.”

“You’re here now,” I said. “Just say it—one word after the other.”

“I’m being blackmailed,” he said at half-capacity.

He took out a cigarette.

“No smoking in here,” I informed him. After all, I hadn’t had one since visiting Toolie in the prison infirmary.

He looked at the white paper roll in his hand and then returned it to the pack, put the pack in his jacket pocket, and inhaled deeply as if he were smoking anyway.

On the exhale he said, “I’m married to a wonderful woman, Mr. McGill. I’ve been in love with her for sixteen years.”

I almost believed him.

“You got a photograph?”

He leaned over on one buttock, lifting the other in the armless ash chair. He could have been going for a gun, but since my debacle with Willie Sanderson I had moved a pistol to the outer-office desk; it was in my hand at that very moment.

But all he came out with was a wallet. He flipped it open to the picture of a mousy-looking brunette with big eyes and a painted-on smile. She was in her thirties when the picture was taken. I didn’t believe that he would have gone this far to prepare a lie.

I nodded and he put the wallet away.