The Long Fall

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.”

I find in my profession that it behooves one to appear ignorant, or, better yet, stupid, to the people you interrogate. It gives them a feeling of superiority, of having a mental leg up on you, so to speak.

“Have a seat, Mr. Trotter,” Gorling said. Then to the men in gray and white, “Wait for us outside.”

When the underlings had done his bidding, Gorling turned his throat to me.

“I have no idea what Mr. Sanderson’s sexual preferences are,” he said of his own volition.

I grimaced. “No? You see, these people hired me to find a reason for their son’s death. The cops don’t care because they got him on evidence. I thought maybe you guys up here would know something.”

Gorling had small hands. He raised them to indicate his helplessness.

“Willie was an employee, not a patient,” he lied.

“But the lady outside told me that he had been a patient before he got his job.”

“What lady?”

“The one with the pink parasol.”

I should have said “umbrella.” Better yet, I should have left the sheltering apparatus out completely. Using accurate language always puts people like Gorling on alert. I don’t even know if he realized it but his attitude toward me changed. His little face got rigid.

“Oh yes,” he said. “I had almost forgotten. That was so long ago, before my time.”

“What was his problem?”

“That’s a medical matter, Mr. Trotter. We are prohibited by law from giving out that kind of information.”

“You can’t even tell me if he was here because of the threat of violence?”

“I look at this institution less as a hospital and more like a university for the besotted and bemused,” he said with something like a smile. “The people here are learning their various lessons over and over, one step at a time. We coddle them and care for them, and never betray their trust.”

The alien hospital administrator blinked at me with smug satisfaction.

“So if I was to go to the Browns and tell them that their son was murdered by a man who had been put in here for manslaughter and then let out without the proper supervision, you wouldn’t open up your records like a dirty old man exposing himself to little kids on a crosstown bus?”

That pushed Gorling back into his chair.

“It’s not our responsibility to make a man take his medication,” he said.

“That, my friend, is for the lawyers to decide.”

This aggressive tactic was my second misstep. Gorling looked soft and corrupt but he had the reflexes and instincts of a club fighter. He wasn’t going to go down just because I showed him something. He was made from sterner stuff.

“Cedric!” he called out.

The two orderlies came immediately back into the room. They seemed ready to take physical action.

“I think it’s time that you leave these premises, Mr. Trotter,” Gorling said.

He stood up and, after a moment’s hesitation, I followed suit.

I didn’t like it but I had lost that particular bout. I had a few grains of knowledge, but without help I couldn’t make any sense of them.<£€ them.

GORLING AND HIS HENCHMEN walked me through the hall toward the front of the administration building. There were no patients and few employees there.

“You’ll find that threats don’t work on us out here, Mr. Trotter,” Gorling instructed as we went through the double doors out into the beautiful summer’s day. “This is a place where we help people. That given, we aren’t responsible for them after they leave our care.

“By the way, how did you get in here?”

“Told the guard that I was applyin’ for a job where I get to wear a gray T-shirt and cotton pants.”

“I’ll have to instruct him to keep a stack of application forms at the gate. Is your car in the lot next to the personnel building?”

“Sure is. Should I give one of your boys here my key so he can run and get it for me?”

I hated myself for underestimating Gorling. Sometimes being a New Yorker brought on a feeling of false superiority that made me slip up badly.

“That won’t be necessary,” Gorling said. “They will escort you to your car.”

I took a step down to the path, turned, and held out a hand like a good sport. Gorling didn’t want to touch me but that didn’t matter. When I looked up into his Adam’s apple I saw the dedication chiseled into the wall over the door: BRYANT HULL HALL.

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