The Long Fall

54

I took a cab straight from the police station to the Hulls’ house.

The two brawny guards in size fifty-six suit jackets didn’t surprise me one bit. They were both white guys, but the coming conflict between us would have nothing to do with race.

I hobbled up to the space between them and smiled.

“Move on,” the one on the right said. He had a shaved head and crystalline blue eyes.

“Can’t,” I replied brightly. “Here to see Bryant Hull.”

“Not in,” the darker-hued titan on the left said.

“Tell him it’s Leonid McGill.”

“You better be moving on, little brother,” Blue Eyes warned.

“Call him,” was my reply.

I wasn’t afraid of them. They had too much confidence, and I fought dirty. And anyway, I had defeated Willie Sanderson, the Frankenstein monster of the twenty-first century.

The darker guy pressed a button on his earpiece and said a word or two.

A few moments passed before the release for the gate made its n¶€t

THE MAN WHO let me in wore a black suit. He was slender but more deadly than the bruisers at the door. The only muscle you could see was in his hands. I was glad that I wasn’t planning any mayhem. He saw what I was in just a glance.

“Hurt your foot, Mr. McGill?”

“Yes sir.”

“There’s an elevator to Mr. Hull’s office at the end of this hall. Let me show you.”

We walked in silence and waited for the elevator, both of us mum and without expression. The car arrived and we both got in. It was another posh elevator, carpeted, and with a seat in the corner. It reminded me of the Crenshaw when I’d taken a ride with the two party girls, Tru and Frankee, and Norman Fell, who was now deceased.

The door opened and we entered into a dark-wood library with a big desk off in a corner.

“Mr. McGill,” Bryant Hull said as he rose from behind the desk and made his way around to see me. “I’m surprised that you’re up and around so soon. They said you collapsed after your fight with Sanderson.”

“Did Hannah survive?” I asked.

Bryant turned to his man.

“You can go, Mr. Jacobs.”

The security chief hesitated.

“I think it would be better if I stayed, sir.”

“No.”

“You don’t know this man.”

“I’ve been around men like this since before I could walk,” he said.

I believed it. I’d met his father.

Jacobs stalled for a beat or two more, but in the end he was just hired help. He fixed me with a warning stare and went back to the elevator. Hull didn’t speak again until the security expert was gone.

“Let’s go over here, where we can talk, Mr. McGill,” the billionaire said.

He guided me to an L-shaped piece of furniture in a corner. Where the seats met there was a table with a lamp on it. Hull turned on the lamp and I eased my backside onto one of the seats.

“Hurt your foot?” he asked.

“Hannah,” I replied.

I let out a breath that I had been holding for a very long time.

After a second exhalation I had a question.

“How could that be?”

“You saved my daughter’s life.”

“You’re not following me,” I said. “I met Sanderson before. He could break that child’s neck with no exertion whatsoever. He had more than enough time to kill her while I was running up the stairs.”

“You don’t understand me, Mr. McGill. The first time you went up against Sanderson you hit him in the head with a heavy chair. That’s what the DA said.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Apparently you caused some kind of brain damage. The doctors think that he wasn’t able to use his full strength to close his hands as a result. He was choking Hannah but did not have his full range of motion. He could hit and kick, but choking was beyond him.”

“Damn.”

“I love my daughter, Mr. McGill. She is the one good thing in my life.” I wondered where that left Fritz. “I can never repay you.”

“Where were you when Sanderson busted in?” I asked.

“On the way to Albany. I had to commit my wife and father to an institution up there.”

“They confessed to you?”

His left shoulder rose an inch or two.

“Lana told me what she had done after you left today. She said that when she found out that her son might have been murdered while she was living her life, making no effort to get in touch, well, she lost her mind and hired Sanderson to do those terrible things. She’s getting help.”

“How does your father fit into this, Mr. Hull? You know he tried to have me killed.”

“When Sanderson overheard Fell talking to your answering machine he went after you. After he was arrested, Lana confided in my father. They knew each other from the sanatorium, too. He still had his old contacts, and access to money. That’s over now. I have receivership over all his assets, and he will not be allowed to contact anyone outside of Sunset.”

“So your wife has four people murdered, and your father tries to kill me, and all they get is a ticket to the country.”

“They’re my family, Mr. McGill. I met Lana at the sanatorium when my father was first there. She was—she is the most beauti»€€m" ful being I have ever known. What would you do if you were me?”

The same thing. Only I didn’t have millions to burn.

We sat there together in silence, both of us slumming in different ways.

“What can I do for you, Mr. McGill?”

“I don’t need anything,” I said. “Your father’s man gave me a briefcase full of cash already.”

“I want to do something for you,” he said, “not buy you.”

I pretended to think for a moment but I already knew what I was going to say.

“There’s a little red-and-gold painting by Paul Klee you have in a hall downstairs,” I said.

“Yes?”

“Hannah says that it belongs to her.”

“It does.”

“She said I could have it.”

“It’s priceless.”

“And yet, I’m told, your wife bought it.”

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