The Long Fall

12

I didn’t sleep long. Frank Tork kept entering my dreams, asking me for twenty dollars or maybe a lifeline.

“I ain’t got no idea where B-Brain is, man,” he’d said in the visitor’s cubicle, and also in the dream. “Georgie Girl said that she seen ’im that one time but he could be dead for all I know.”

That phrase roused me at 5:34. My body wanted either to be sick or allowed to return to sleep—I didn’t give in to either urge.

AN ICE-COLD SHOWER numbers among the most painful experiences I’ve ever willingly experienced, but it does wonders for hangovers and fear. I came out of the stall shivering like a wet dog and ready for the hunt.

ON BROADWAY AT Ninety-first at a few minutes shy of seven I was smoking Ambrose Thurman’s last cigarette and reading about Frank Tork’s demise. He didn’t make the New York Times, or even the Daily News, but they had Frankie on page eight of the Post.

Bail was filed in the early afternoon through an online system from a bail bondsman in the Bronx. Along with the article there was a shadowy digital picture of a man with a wide-brimmed hat taken from above. This allegedly bearded man paid ten percent of Frank’s bail in cash: thirty-seven hundred, fifty-nine dollars, and thirty-two cents, including fees.

The body was found at ten in the evening (three hours and twenty-two minutes after his release) by a homeless woman rummaging through trash cans in an alleyway off of Maiden Lane. The young man was badly beaten before being strangled. The man in the hat had given the name Alan Rogers. He was required to show a valid ID with a picture, but the system, the bondsman said, had somehow broken down; either that or the benefactor had used a fake ID.

I stopped by the Coffee Nook on Eighty-first to get some caffeine. I bought a new pack of Camels on the way there. After my fifth cup I pulled out my wallet and rooted around, coming up with the card that Ambrose Thurman had given me the first time we met.

It was a yellow card with a high gloss, a little smaller than regulation size. There, smiling brightly, was Thurman’s pear-shaped mug. It was a younger Ambrose, an Ambrose with a little more hair and a little less sag. Vain men irritate me.

I noticed for the first time that the address given was a post office box. It was printed in blocky address fashion in exceptionally small characters.

Using the pink phone I’d gotten from Bug I called Thurman’s number—it was no longer valid. Next I tried Albany information. There was no Ambrose Thurman listed in the city, either as a residence or a business. The same was true for the outlying areas.

No Ambrose Thurman had ever been registered at the Crenshaw Hotel. I tried to sweet-talk the operator into remembering the chubby guy in the three-piece suit but she told me that they didn’t give out information on their guests.

I called Roger Brown’s office and got the automatic system. It guided me to the young man’s answering machine, but I didn’t leave a message.

Thurman had played me like a drum. It was my fault. I could feel that there was something wrong in looking for those four men. Who paid that kind of money to find drug add k filt.icts and low-class career criminals? Who would take on a job like that? Me. And I did it just to pay last month’s bills.

I WALKED DOWN Broadway until getting to Forty-second Street and then cut over to Sixth. The police could find out about my visit to Tork in the Tombs. They could wonder, but there was nothing they could prove. The guy who bailed Frank out was white. I might get questioned but they couldn’t pin anything on me.

I was clean in the eyes of the law, but the problem was that I had promised myself not to do this kind of work anymore. I had been made to betray my pledge by a man who had disappeared completely.

It was a nice touch showing me a business card with a picture on it. That way I felt that he’d given me a way to contact him if I ever needed it. It was a trick that I might have used myself if I were doing work in another city.

I called Roger’s office again.

“Berg, Lewis & Takayama,” a young woman’s bright voice sang.

“Roger Brown, please.”

The phone went silent as if a mute button had been pressed and then, out of electronic nowhere, a young man’s voice said, “Mr. Brown’s line.”

“Arnold DuBois for him,” I said.

“Mr. Brown isn’t in at the moment, Mr. DuBois. Would you like his answering machine?”

“Um . . . wow. He’s not in?”

“No, sir.”

“Roger told me that he always got in to work early.” He hadn’t told me any such thing but it was possible that a kid from the hood worked harder to make sure that he kept up with the rest.

“That’s right. He’s usually here by seven-thirty, but not today. I guess he had a meeting or something.”

“Really?” I said putting feeling into my voice. “Did he have a meeting scheduled? I mean, I’m not trying to get into his business but I had a morning phone conference set up with him from last night.”

“I don’t have anything written down,” the helpful boy said. “Maybe he forgot.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Have him call me, will you?”

“What’s the number?”

“He has it.”

WALKING USUALLY HELPS me work out difficult problems, but that day nothing came. I was in my office by 8:45, but Frankie Tork was still dead and Roger Brown unaccounted for. Ambrose Thurman had vanished, k ha I as had my new leaf.

I gave it another hour, searching the Internet for Ambrose Thurman, Albany detective, while calling Roger’s office twice more. Once I tried to disguise my voice but I think Bobby, his assistant, knew it was me.

Finally I called Zephyra Ximenez on my dedicated “800” line. Zephyra was an exotic young woman—Dominican mother, Moroccan father—who lived somewhere in Queens. I met her one night at the Naked Ear. She was at the bar, waiting for her girlfriends. Zephyra was tall and coal-colored. Her face wasn’t exactly beautiful but it certainly put pretty to shame. I’d had a few drinks and tried to convince her to ditch her friends and have dinner with me. She said no but kept talking.

Zephyra told me that she was a TCPA, a telephonic and computer personal assistant.

“What’s that?”

“I try to maintain ten to twelve clients,” she said, “who need services I can provide pretty much exclusively over the phone and Internet. I make reservations, answer calls, order anything from takeout to a new washer-dryer, or take care of bookkeeping and data-file maintenance. I charge fifteen hundred a month, plus expenses, and I’m available on a twenty-four hour basis in case of emergencies.”

“What if somebody were to call you right now?” I asked.

“I have a cell phone and an OQO minicomputer in my purse,” she said. “It’s my office away from the office.”

“Wow.”

“What do you do?”

I told the young woman a little about my services.

“I never had a private dick before,” she said. I think I might have blushed a little. “Do you need someone like me?”

“ZEPHYRA,” SHE ANSWERED on the third ring. “Leonid Mr. McGill’s office.”

“Hey, Z.”

“Oh, hi, Mr. McGill. What can I do for you?”

“I need a flight to Albany by mid-afternoon. Sooner if you can do it.”

“Only puddle jumpers this time of day,” she said in a friendly tone. “You told me you had claustrophobia issues.”

“You haven’t heard from issues.”

“I see.” There was a pause, and then she said. “I can get you on a flight from LaGuardia at three sixteen.”

“Book it,” I said.

“You have some voice mail on the machine here,” kach="1she said before I could hang up.

For her other clients Zephyra listened to the messages, typed them up, and delivered them as a kind of running narrative of their phone life. We decided rather early on that she should probably leave my messages alone, that she shouldn’t even listen unless I asked her to.

“I’ll get to ’em later.”

“Do you need a limo to the airport?” she asked.

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Your usual?”

“No. I don’t need Hush for something so simple. Anybody cheap’ll do.”

“Answer your phone while you’re gone?”

“Might as well.” When people spoke to an actual person they were less likely to say something incriminating. “I’ll forward the calls from the office and the cell.”

Getting off the phone, I felt like I needed another cold shower. Hell, I needed a dip in the Arctic Ocean.

Ê€„