The Long Fall

45

It was a nice day and I was loath to go back into the close atmosphere with Hush. So I went to a deli on Seventh Avenue and had pastrami on rye with raw onions and hot French mustard. I didn’t order fries, but as long as they came with the meal I felt an obligation to eat them.

I got back to the Lincoln just before four. My knock on the darkened glass of the limo was answered by the click of the locks releasing.

I climbed into the backseat and Hush handed me the laptop.

“I had to power it up with the cigarette lighter,” he said. “It should have a few hours now.”

And so we sat, the semi-reformed hit man and me.

“IT COSTS EIGHTEEN thousand dollars to make a body disappear in Manhattan or most of the boroughs,” Hush said a little over an hour later. “Some parts of New Jersey, too. There’s a discount for Staten Island. You kill somebody in Staten Island and it’s only fifteen thousand. Guy named Digger can be anywhere in the city in two hours or less.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“I thought maybe you’d like to know,” he replied dispassionately. “You’ve got to be in some serious trouble if you called on me. Serious trouble might need serious help. With somebody like me on the case, Digger just naturally jumps to mind.”

“I don’t need him,” I said with as much certainty as I could muster.

AT A QUARTER to five I took a small briefcase and made my way toward the back of the building, where I was supposed to meet Timothy Moore’s blackmailer.

I went to apartment C on the fifth floor and turned on my second computer. I tuned in to the boring transmissions from two floors below and settled in.

“I’m in,” I said into the Bluetooth phone hooked around my left ear.

“I hear you,” Hush replied.

And for the next hour or so nothing happened. I sat in the darkened room with my screen focused on another, even darker, room.

It was eerily peaceful sitting there in the gloom, staring at an image of darkness. There was no sound to distract me and no image to divert my attention. I was wide awake, fully aware, but in a stasis of sorts. I wasn’t thinking about anything, and that was a continual relief, like the monotonous beauty of a cascading waterfall.

“THERE’S THIS BIG guy who looks kinda familiar and the one you showed me the picture of walking up the stairs,” Hush said at seven minutes past six.

“Timothy Moore?”

“If that’s the picture you showed me.”

A few minutes passed and a bright flare burned its way into the room on my computer screen. Two murky figures were revealed by the backwash of radiance from the big utility flashlight. One of the figures closed the door, turned on a portable fluorescent lantern, and then doused the flashlight. There was Timothy Moore in a black, long-sleeved T-shirt and black pants, along with a bigger guy, also in dark clothes. They looked around the room, seemed satisfied at what they didn’t find, and then set up little aluminum-and-nylon stools facing the door. The big guy then took a black sack from a shoulder strap hanging on his left side and began to assemble a stripped-down rifle. I couldn’t tell the caliber because the fiber-optic lens wasn’t that clear. It was like watching an old-time TV show that had been captured on ancient decaying videotape.

The men were speaking, but my bug didn’t come with a microphone. I didn’t need sound to gauge their intent, however.

“What’s happening in there, LT?” Hush asked.

I told him.

“You got thirty-six thousand dollars?”

“No.”

“Wanna borrow it?”

“No.”

“Well, come on down,” he said. “Let’s go get us some steaks.”

“I want to wait and follow ’em,” I said.

“No need. I remember the big guy. His name is LouBob Georgias. He used to do work with the unions.”

“You know where to find him?”

“If he’s in the life, I can find him any hour of the day or night.”

“Okay. I’m comin’ down.”

ON CENTRAL PARK WEST near Seventy-second there was a steakhouse called Riff’s that I’d never heard of. They had bone-in rib eyes that were aged for forty-five days. I ordered a scotch and soda to wash it down. Hush had plain water with no ice to accompany his steak and baked potato.

We hadn’t talked much on the way up, nor did we speak through most of the meal.

“So tell me about this LouBob,” I said after we’d both refused dessert.

“A brawler,” Hush said. “Made his way in by getting into fights. I never took him for a pro.”

“How do you know him?”

“He was a bodyguard for a guy I had paper on once. Later on we met when I was introduced to his boss’s boss’s boss. He was standing at the outside gate upstate somewhere.” Hush said. “While you were coming down I called a guy I know and he told me where you can find LouBob most nights.”

“They were going to kill me,” I said.

“Yeah. Sure were.”

The check came and I paid.

FROM THE RESTAURANT we went to a place called Little Ron’s Piano Bar on the ground floor of an apartment building looking out on Central Park West. Hush got us seats in a corner against the wall where we had a good look at the bar.

The piano man was practicing his Fats Waller so I was happy with my scotch.

Hush then engaged me in unexpected small talk. He knew I liked boxing and so asked me what odds I gave the light heavyweight Antonio Tarver against the man who currently held the title, Chad Dawson.

“Tarver’s almost forty,” I said, “past his prime. Dawson is younger and fast, but he’s also a natural middleweight. It’s a toss-up.”

Hush and I had to maintain a conversation so as not to look suspicious. I kept it up but it felt spurious, like trying to concentrate on a leopard’s spots when he’s leering down at you from an overhead branch.

Relief from this torture came when LouBob Georgias walked in at a little after eleven. He was wearing a green suit and a black hat with a yellow feather in it. He was very big, as broad and as tall as Willie Sanderson. He had a friendly face and smile. He joked with the bartender and the waitress who had served us.

“Want to brace him outside?” I asked.

“Just wait,” Hush said.

Maybe a quarter of an hour later a voluptuous brunette came through the front door. In her late twenties, she had a figure that certain men and most twelve-year-old boys dream of. Her dress, what there was of it, seemed to be made from multicolored confetti, and her tanned skin glowed like rose gold.

LouBob put his hand at the small of her back and lifted her off the ground to give her a sloppy kiss. Every eye in the bar was on them. Even the piano man missed a note or two.

Our conversation had ended with the ó€nded witentrance of the woman. Hush was watching them like a cat. I sat back and studied my friend, hoping to learn something beyond my ken.

LouBob and the woman settled at the bar and ordered drinks.

They were on their third round when Hush said, “Come up on the other side of him after the girl leaves.”

He got to his feet and walked toward the bar.

Once again I had the picture with no sound. Hush walked up behind LouBob. For a moment I was afraid that he was going to come out with his pistol and shoot the guy behind the ear. It was an irrational panic that subsided after he tapped the big man’s shoulder.

The fright moved from me to LouBob when he saw Hush standing there in his medium-black suit and thin green tie. My would-be killer’s spine seemed to freeze, and the brunette became curious.

LouBob said something to the woman and she reacted angrily. Hush didn’t seem to notice and LouBob turned away. A moment later the woman stormed out of the bar. Hush gave her the briefest glance as she left. It struck me that the ex-assassin got some sort of sadistic pleasure out of humiliating the big man in front of his woman. I filed that little bit of information away and then went over to flank LouBob Georgias.

“Hey, Hush, LouBob,” I said when I rolled up on the other side of my would-be killer.

Georgias gawped at me openmouthed but didn’t say anything.

“This is my friend Leonid McGill,” Hush said and the fear in LouBob’s eyes deepened.

The big man was still looking at me while he addressed Hush. “I didn’t know he was your friend, man.”

“Sit down,” Hush said and we all three perched on gilt-and-red-vinyl barstools.

“Can I get you guys something?” the bartender asked from somewhere off to my right. He’d come up from the other end of the bar when he noticed our approach.

“Three black Russians,” Hush told him. I think he meant that as some kind of joke about my name.

The bartender, a white man who was maybe sixty and had spent some time in the sun earlier in life, moved back a bit when he observed the deadness in Hush’s eyes.

“You got it,” he said.

“What’s Timothy Moore’s real name?” I asked LouBob.

“Far as I know that is his real name.”

“Tell us about him,” Hush said.

“He, he did a nickel in Attica for bein’ stupió€or bein’d, and since then he’s worked for this rich guy now and then, doin’ odd jobs. He’s got a straight job somewhere too, in an office, I think.”

“What’s the rich guy’s name?” I asked.

“I dunno. He never said. We met over this union beef his boss had. It was a strike gonna come down with the hotels before a big convention. We was supposed to talk this guy into puttin’ it off. I never knew who hired him. He just said he did work for a rich guy. A rich guy. I don’t know his name.”

LouBob was sweating but I didn’t feel any contempt for him—Hush’s stare would open the pores of anyone who had sense.

The bartender came up and put the three drinks down and left without a word.

When he was gone I asked, “How much?”

“For what?” LouBob stammered.

“How much they pay for you to kill me?”

“Six, sixty-five hundred.”

“Dollars? Not even euros? You’d end a man’s life for pocket change?”

LouBob swallowed hard but stayed silent.

“Where does Tim live?” Hush asked then.

LouBob rattled off an address about a hundred and fifty blocks to the north.

“You got a house on the beach north of Miami, don’t you, Lou?” the assassin said.

“Yeah?”

“You look pale. I think you should fly down there—tonight. And listen, don’t make any phone calls. None. You hear me?”

“Yeah. I hear ya, Hush.”

Ê€„