The Long Fall

32

After leaving Coney Island I was at sixes and sevens, as my foster aunt Moth used to say. I didn’t want to set A up for a hit, but he was a dead man whether I did or didn’t. If I was still in the life I might have been able to turn Tony down; I’d’ve had other clients who could block his demands. But as it was, I had no protection. And I didn’t have much room to move in either; there was other pressing work that had to be done.

I dropped by Gordo’s Gym to work off some of the frustration.

Gordo gave me that grin again when I came through the door. He shifted his gaze to a lithe young fighter shadowboxing gracefully against the far wall.

Jimmy Punterelle was a handsome white kid with thick brown hair and a dark-blue tattoo of Rocky Marciano on his right shoulder. He was already stripped down and warmed up, so when Gordo introduced us it was the easiest thing in the world to suggest that we have a friendly sparring match. The kid sneered, then became a bit suspicious when Gordo told me that I wouldn’t need protective headgear.

Jimmy should have run.

He had a good jab and natural upper-body movement, but, despite my height, I have a long reach, especially when it comes to the ribs.

Jimmy lowered to one knee in the middle of our third round. It took everything I had not to hit him when he was down.

THE NEXT MORNING I drove up to the Larchmont Correctional Facility. Christian was right: I came to the admittance gate and was ushered in like royalty. They didn’t even search me.

After offering me really bad coffee, the two guards, whose names, TOMI and Peters, were stitched over their hearts, took me to a special floor in the infirmary.

“Why’s he here?” I asked the younger Tomi.

“Somebody stabbed him,” the white kid said. “You can hardly blame ’em. Nilson’s a fat fuck.”

Peters, a full-figured black man, grunted.

They didn’t ask why I was there. I was a VIP whom the warden’s betters had sent in for reasons of their own.

They had given Toolie a private room for the interrogation. Peters asked me if I needed someone to stay with us but I said no. Toolie had been stabbed, and even if he hadn’t I doubted that the four-hundred-plus-pound convict could have moved fast enough to give me reason to worry.

He was propped up in the double-sized cot with his bulging legs stretched out and his back leaned at an angle against the wall. His dress was festive: bright-yellow pajamas with a few dozen red X’s scattered around.

They had lashed two single beds together to accommodate the fat man’s size and weight. Toolie was like a big black walrus beached just that many feet too far from the sea. His breathing was labored and his bloodshot eyes suspicious. Toolie was bald and stuffed with fat everywhere: his hands and fingers, jowls and the back of his neck.

I wondered how a man could get so obese on prison fare.

He watched me as I came in, as I pulled a chair up next to his bed.

“Cigarette?” was my first question.

“Can’t smoke,” he said. “They got sick people all up in here.”

“They’ll make an exception in our case,” I said, proffering him the pack.

He took the whole thing. (That was how I gave up smoking for the sixth time.) I gave him a light.

“Who stabbed you?” I asked.

“What’s your name?” he parried.

“Greely. I work for a guy in the city. He needs to know something and thought maybe you could help.”

For some reason these words reassured the giant. In reply to my question he pulled open his yellow pajamas at the breast, showing me a thick bandage surrounded by puffy, bloodstained black skin.

“Mothahfuckah tried to kill me,” he said.

“Who?”

“I nevah saw him before. White dude. They had to transfer his ass, ’cause my homies woulda killed him daid.”

“When did this happen?”

“Day before yesterday.”

Damn.

“You didn’t do anything to him?” I asked.

“I nevah even seen ’im. He just come ‹€ He justoutta nowhere and went for my heart. What the fuck you care, anyway?”

Toolie smoked his cigarette in a very particular way. He’d take the smoke into his mouth and then, folding his lower lip over the upper, express the fumes into his nostrils while inhaling.

I asked him about the three friends of his youth.

“B-Brain split when he was still in high school,” Toolie said. “His mama an’ them thought we was a bad influence. I used to see Jumpah an’ Big Jim from time to time, but Big Jim took a shot of pure H and killed his ass.”

“Jumper was killed a few days ago,” I said. “Roger Brown, too.”

“Both of ’em?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn.”

“And now there’s you.”

“Me? I ain’t daid.”

“Come on, Mr. Nilson,” I said. “You got some dude you never knew tryin’ to cut you open. That’s too much of a coincidence.”

“Who wanna kill three niggahs like us?” Toolie complained. “I ain’t seen Roger in seventeen years at least, and I didn’t have nuthin’ to do with Jumpah—not really.”

“Maybe it was something from back when you all four ran together,” I suggested.

“Like what?”

Suspicion was reemerging in the fat convict’s eyes. The news I was bearing was tough even for a hardened criminal. The fact that a hit had been arranged in prison made him vulnerable. If the price was high enough even one of his homies might stick a knife in his back.

“I could put in a good word to protect you,” I said.

“Why you wanna do that?”

“Tell me about Thom Paxton.”

“Who?”

“You used to call him Smiles.”

The fat around Nilson’s eyes contracted down to a puffy squint. He maintained that stare for nearly a minute.

“That was a accident,” he said at last. “Even the cops said so.”

“What happened?”

Toolie swiveled his head before speaking. He’d lived long enough to know the truth of Anything you say can and will be used against you.

“If I walk out of here without the story, someone is gonna kill you,” I promised.

“I ain’t done nuthin’.”

“Neither did the others.”

“What I do, man?” he whined.

“What happened to Smiles?”

“Well, you know,” Toolie said, unconsciously raising a defensive shoulder. “Me an’ them used to go to this construction site to get high.”

“Smiles, too?”

“Yeah. Back then that white boy was our nigga. Smiles could hang. But you know, in the summer he’d go upstate to be wit’ his father an’ them. But then he’d come back down in the fall ’cause he had a scholarship to this private school.”

“He lived with his father?”

“Yeah.”

“What about his mother?”

“She was sick or sumpin’. Maybe she was daid, I don’t know.”

“What school?”

“I’on’t know, man. But Georgie Girl’s brother worked there an’ she met Smiles through him.”

“You mean Georgiana Pineyman?” I asked.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Was she there at the construction site?”

“Naw, man. It was just us. Jumpah had some blunts and we was gettin’ high. That’s all.”

“How did Smiles die?”

Toolie gave me a sharp glance. He knew that he couldn’t push the truth too far out of shape.

“Can you really help me, like you said?” he asked.

I nodded. “Now tell me what happened.”

“That was Big Jim’s fault. I mean, it was a accident, but if Big Jim didn’t keep on runnin’ his mouf it wouldn’ta been no accident.”

“What did Jim say?”

“He kep’ sayin’ how B-Brain was keepin’ Georgie Girl company in the summah when Smiles was upstate. He kep’ sayin’ it an’ Smiles got hot. He was white an’ all, but that boy was tough. Roger tried to laugh it off but Smiles was high an’ wanted a fight. He came at B-Brain but that niggah runned.” Toolie laughed at the memory. “He ru‹€memory. nned up a ladder and climbed out on one’a them—what you call ’em—them girders. Roger could move. But Smiles was mad an’ so he went after him. So Roger went higher an’ higher an’ then when he was about six floors up he jumped on this elevator platform one floor down. Smiles tried to do it, too, but he fell. Broke his neck.

“We tried to run but somebody musta called the cops so they arrested us. We was in jail two days but they called it a accident an’ let us go.”

“You know his mother’s name?” I asked.

“Roger’s?”

“Smiles’.”

“Naw, man. Smiles lived with his old man, like I said. Upstate.”

“Albany?”

“How the fuck I know? So you gonna help me?”

“Do you know his father’s name?”

“Naw, man.”

“Yeah,” I said to the big wheezing convict, “I’ll help you.”

I was thinking that the best thing I could do for him was to hide his knife and fork.

Ê€„