Fall Guy (5 page)

When all the plants were placed out in the garden, with Jin Mei's considerable input, I walked back inside, Dashiell following, Brody bringing up the rear. I still hadn't looked him in the eye. I'd only glanced at the ground as he passed me with the corn plant, noticing that the shine on his shoes had gotten messed up by the wet soil in the communal garden. I wondered if he'd noticed. But he probably shined them every night, no matter what.

When he closed the kitchen door, I could no longer hear the birds singing. And there was that smell again, reminding me of where I was, and why. The only sound in the house was the cylin
der of the lock clicking into place. And the sound of Dashiell, his nose welded to the bathroom sill.

I followed Brody to the couch. We sat on opposite ends, as far apart as possible without breaking off the arms. I didn't lean back on the blanket. Neither did he. As if death might be catching from the things the deceased had left behind. I thought I'd bring rubber gloves with me when I came back. I was sure I wouldn't be sorry to have them.

“The apartment should be unsealed by late afternoon tomorrow,” he said. “Or Thursday at the latest. I'll call you tomorrow and give you the exact time. It'll be okay to”—he turned and looked toward the kitchen—“to use the bathroom then.”

“I only came by this morning to see where it was,” I said, my forehead as pleated as Dashiell's gets. “I could see the garden from the front door, so I walked through. By. And went out. That's how I met Jin Mei. I didn't go into the apartment, of course.”

Brody nodded. “No problem.”

So why was I acting as if I'd been sent to the principal's office? I wondered. He wasn't even wearing a uniform, so it couldn't be that.

“Isn't what Detective O'Fallon did a bit unusual,” I said, “cleaning his gun in the bathroom rather than at his desk or at the table?”

“No, ma'am. Not particularly.”

“But…”

“One could sit on the edge of the tub, have the kit on the vanity, avoid the chance of getting oil on the carpet.”

One could
? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

“So you're saying he was fastidious?”

“Ma'am?”

“Rachel'll do,” I told him. “I was asking if he was…” And then I stopped, shook my head, changed my mind. I wanted to know which way he fell after he was shot, whether he fell backward and hit his head—and did it matter at that point?—or if he crumpled forward, landing on the bath mat or the tile, the gun skittering across the floor, stopping when it hit the door. But what difference did any of that make now? He cleaned his gun at the desk, he cleaned his gun in the bathroom. The man was dead. I needed to inform his sister of his untimely demise, get her here to pick up whichever of his possessions she wanted to keep, settle his estate and get on with my life. I didn't need to be here torturing Brody with my questions. Except for one more.

“What's with the gym bag?” I asked. “Was he going somewhere? I mean, was he planning to, before?”

“That's Parker's. Or so he says. When the uniforms arrived, he was busy packing that with his things.”

“Before they told him he had to leave?”

“Yes. And when one of the officers examined the contents of the bag, they found some things they suspected didn't belong to Mr. Parker.”

“Such as?”

“A silver ashtray, some gold coins, two wristwatches, a small silver box with the initials ‘T.W.O.,' and some clothes that may or may not have belonged to Parker.”

“And the winter coat?”

“I imagine he'd planned on taking that as well.”

“He and Tim were the same size?”

“Wouldn't matter to Parker.”

“You mean he had sticky fingers? It was there, he'd take it.”

“
Has
sticky fingers,” he said. “Don't turn your back when he's here packing up. And don't be afraid to question anything he claims is his. Anything you're unsure of. Anything that has value.”

What difference would it make if he took Tim's clothes? I thought. Tim didn't need them any longer. But for Brody, it was the principle of the thing. So I didn't bother to voice my opinion.

I stood and whistled for Dashiell. Brody stood as well. I picked up the briefcase and Dashiell's leash. Brody took the garbage bags. I walked out ahead of him but he didn't come right out. I waited on Horatio Street. I wasn't sure why. It seemed the polite thing to do.

When he came out, a few minutes later, I opened a garbage can for him and he dropped in the bags. He'd bagged the empties, tying the tops of the bags as I had. It sounded like an explosion when they hit the can.

“If there's anything else I can help you with, don't hesitate to call me. I put my cell phone number on the back of the card I gave you. Don't worry about the time. It's always on.”

I took out one of my cards and gave it to Brody. “Same here,” I said. “My cell phone number's on there, too, in case you think of anything else I should know.”

I turned to leave, but curiosity got the best of me once again.

“Was he your partner, Detective?”

He blinked once.

“No, Ms. Alexander. He wasn't.”

He pointed east, his eyebrows raised. I shook my head and pointed west. I'm sorry for your loss, I thought as I watched him head up the block. I was, too. For all the loss he saw.

Even though it was out of the way, I headed toward the river. I'd wanted to get away from Brody and his unspoken grief. And from O'Fallon's apartment. At the moment, I was wishing I weren't quite so curious or quite so stubborn.

Walking south along the Hudson, the breeze felt good on my face. Dashiell seemed to have forgotten the scents that had wafted toward him from under O'Fallon's closed bathroom door. He was now occupied with new smells, the air redolent of the fish and birds that populated the shoreline. My thoughts were still back in that apartment and I was barely aware of my surroundings. I didn't think Brody was being particularly forthcoming with me, which came as no surprise. I hadn't exactly been George Washington myself. Had Jin Mei not been out in the garden, I wouldn't have mentioned having been there earlier. Nor had I bothered to mention Mary Margaret's peculiar little note. I thought I'd speak to her first and find out what it meant, then tell Brody. Or not.

I was thinking and acting as if I were on the job, a habit that had become a way of life for me, something I had in common with Timothy O'Fallon, never mind that it was something he never knew about. He hadn't told me he was a detective
and I hadn't told him I was a private investigator. In fact, when someone else in the group had asked me what I did besides pet therapy, I'd lied, the same lie I'd told Brody, the same one that was on the business card I'd just given him. “Research,” it said. Perhaps that was more of a half-truth than a lie. No one had asked what it meant and I hadn't volunteered anything further.

Carrying O'Fallon's briefcase and lost in thought, I followed behind my dog, not paying any attention to where we were going. We ended up all the way down at Houston Street before I noticed, turned around and headed home.

The answering machine was blinking. I hit
play.

The first message began with someone coughing. “Be quiet. I'm on the phone here. Rachel, this is Parker, um, Parker Bowling. I need to get my things from Tim's apartment. I guess you're not home. I'll call you later.” I could hear some noise in the background, as if he were calling from a restaurant or a bar.

“Ms. Alexander, this is Maggie O'Fallon returning your call.” There was a long pause, just short of disconnecting the answering machine. “You sounded…it sounds as if this is something important, but you didn't say what it was about.” Then she hung up.

“Rachel, it's me again. I'll try you later.” This time he must have been outside. I could hear the sound of traffic, a dog barking, a snippet of a passing conversation. “Not tomorrow,” someone said. I heard Parker strike a match. And then he hung up.

“This message is for Rachel Alexander. This is
Dennis O'Fallon calling from Paramus Lexus. You didn't say what you were calling about, whether it was business or personal.” He sighed. An impatient man. Then he repeated his name again and left the work number and an extension, saying both twice.

There was a call from someone who wanted to handle my investments, someone who had a method for clearing up my credit card debt who was surprised I hadn't responded to his last three calls, and from someone who said I had been selected to have a free weekend in Florida. I hadn't won any dance lessons or the lottery. But Parker Bowling had called twice more. And he was starting to sound annoyed.

I dialed Maggie O'Fallon and got her machine again. This time I told her I was home and that I'd be staying home. Just in case she called while I was walking Dashiell, I left my cell phone number as well. I couldn't return Dennis's call. He hadn't left his home number.

Parker Bowling hadn't left a home number either. No matter. I wasn't in any rush to talk to him.

I decided to work downstairs, where it was cooler. The brick cottage I rented was small, but had three floors. There were two small bedrooms upstairs, one of which I used for an office, and the bathroom was there, near the top of the stairs. The living room and tiny kitchen were on the ground floor, and there was a large room downstairs that I rarely used. I had a dining room table there but never seemed to invite enough people to dinner to use it. Sometimes I thought I had better skills with dogs than with
people. Sometimes I wasn't sure which kind of company I preferred.

I thought about cooking something, but I wasn't in the mood, so I ordered a pizza and took the briefcase to the round table just outside my kitchen. I took out O'Fallon's checkbook first, starting at the latest check in the register and going backward. He'd not only recorded his checks and deposits, but his ATM withdrawals as well. Unlike the way I kept my checkbook, with more than one item on a line—a check and a deposit or a check and an ATM withdrawal—he gave each item a line of its own.

The checks were fairly ordinary—his rent, his electric bill, his phone bill. There were regular checks to a Marie Sanchez, fifty dollars every two weeks. I guessed that she was his cleaning lady. She'd gotten a check the Thursday before. I'd have to make sure to call her sometime before she showed up again.

There were checks to several liquor stores, a recent check to a florist, one to a doctor, or dentist, a small amount meaning it was a co-pay. There was a check for twenty-five dollars to Rob Rosen. Tim had written “garden” after Rob's name. The deposits were evenly spaced, one a month, always the same amount of money. It was the ATM withdrawals that interested me. There had been seven in the last month, totaling $820. On the line adjacent to five of the eight withdrawals, there was a notation: “For Parker.” Three hundred and seventy-five dollars in cash had gone to Parker in June.

Tim had an IRA at the bank where he had his
checking account. There was $41,654 dollars in the account, not an awful lot to show for twenty-one years of service, but there must have been a retirement account connected to the job as well. I wondered if he'd thought of retiring. So many police suicides seem to occur around that time and he'd put in his twenty years-plus.

The bell at the gate rang. I grabbed some money and Dash and I headed through the garden to fetch our pizza. The delivery kid handed me a card from the pizzeria. Ten of them, he told me, and I'd get a free pie, regular, nothing extra on it. I was sure I'd qualified for several already.

When we got back inside, I put three slices on a plate to cool for Dashiell and pushed O'Fallon's papers aside to keep them clean. Dash watched me eat, a bit disappointed. Maybe even resentful. He usually ate a souped-up diet of raw meat and grated raw vegetables, except when I ate pizza. But he never seemed to remember that each time he had to wait for his slices to cool.

After I had finished two slices, I walked out into the garden, putting Dashiell's plate down on the ground. No sense having to clean up the living room floor when he'd be just as happy eating out-of-doors.

There was a slight breeze. I could smell the lavender growing near the path, the basil from the herb garden. I sat on the steps and thought about what I had to do, hoping again that I could get the attorney to do most of the paperwork. I'd call her first thing in the morning. I wondered if Maggie would want to come into the city and help me sort things. According to the will, only the money and
certain named valuables were going to her. The rest of O'Fallon's possessions had been left to the executor, me, to dispose of as I saw fit. I thought this was done when there was no family to pick and choose what they wanted to keep. Perhaps O'Fallon knew better. Perhaps he knew, or thought, that Maggie wouldn't want most of his things. Still, it seemed strange for me to be doing this when he had at least two living blood relatives.

I went inside to look at the photo album, those same kids again, the pictures faded, some even a pale brown, the images on their way to disappearing altogether. I was only on the third page when the phone rang.

“Is this Rachel Alexander?” she asked.

“Yes. Is it Maggie?”

“Yes, it is. I only have a moment. I'm on my break. But your voice sounded urgent and I was wondering what it is you called about. I hope I haven't made a mistake. I hope this isn't one of those calls to ask me to switch to A T and T.”

“No, it isn't. I wish it were.”

“Oh,” she said. “Then what?”

I took a breath. “It's about your brother,” I said.

“Dennis?”

“No, it's about Tim. There's been an accident, Maggie. I'm so sorry to be the one to tell you this. Tim is dead.”

I heard her inhale sharply.

“He was cleaning his service revolver,” I said. “On Sunday morning. I'm sorry this has taken so long, but I didn't hear about it right away.”

“He's dead? He shot himself? Mother of God. This is all my fault.”

“No, no,” I said. “It was an accident.”

Mary Margaret was silent.

I wished I could comfort her, but there was nothing comforting to say. I could have told her that her brother went quickly, that he didn't suffer long, or said that at least there was no wife left behind, no young children orphaned, things people say in situations like this. But to what avail? She'd lost her mother last week and her brother this week. There wasn't anything I could say that would erode even the smallest bit of her grief. I'm sorry for your loss, I thought. That's what people said, because what else was there to say?

“Maggie,” I said. Then: “I'm so sorry.”

I could hear what sounded like a bell ringing, again and again.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Are you with the Department?”

“No, I'm—”

“Then why are you the one calling me?”

“That's the weird thing,” I said. I'd walked outside with the phone and was sitting on the steps outside the cottage. There was a three-quarter moon and the sky was cloudless, a kind of inky blue with more stars than you usually see in the city. “I barely knew your brother, but he named me as executor of his estate. It came as—”

“He named you? What does that mean?”

“That his will designated me as—”

“But you just said you barely knew Tim? I don't understand.”

“He must have had his reasons,” I told her, repeating what Brody had said to me. I told her how I'd met Tim and what he'd said that last day.
I probably should have told her about the tears, but now didn't seem the time. “That's all I know,” I told her. “I'm as puzzled as you are. I guess he never mentioned—”

“No, never. I have to go,” she said. “I'm at the hospital.”

“Oh, I'm sorry,” I said again.

“It's not that. It's my job. I'm a nurse.”

“Can we talk again, Maggie? I'd like—”

But the line went dead, leaving me with the feeling that I'd botched an important task. I put my head down to my knees, feeling awful. And then, I can't even say why, I went inside, picked up Brody's card and called his cell phone.

“It's Rachel,” I said. “I just spoke to Maggie O'Fallon.”

I felt a tear rolling down my cheek, glad this was a phone call and not a face-to-face meeting.

“That'll do it every time,” he said. “It went badly?”

“It was terrible.”

“It always is. No matter how they react, it's always terrible.”

“She says it's her fault.”

“That's a common reaction, Rachel. We all like to think we're more powerful than we are. If only
we
had done this or hadn't done that, things would have turned out differently. It's human nature.”

“Then…”

“You did the best you could. You know what they say about the messenger?”

“Yes, I do. But she was mad at herself.”

“Not at you?”

“She was mad at me, too. Very mad.”

“Give her a bit of time. Try her again in a day or two.”

“Okay,” I said. “I will. Detective?”

“Yes?”

“How do you…?”

“Long story. I'll buy you a drink one night and tell you all about it.”

“I'm sorry if I bothered you.”

“You didn't bother me at all. I'll call you tomorrow, when I hear about the release.”

As soon as I put the phone down, it rang again. But I didn't pick it up. Instead, I took the stairs two at a time to the office and listened to the machine pick up, Dashiell barking, my outgoing message and then Parker Bowling, sounding impaired and frustrated.

“She's still not there,” he said. “What now?”

Another voice, farther away from the phone, said, “Who am I, fucking Martha Stewart, I got the answer to everything?”

“Bitch,” Parker said.

I wasn't sure which one of us he meant. Then I heard the disconnect.

I went back downstairs and poured a glass of wine, sitting at the table where I'd left O'Fallon's album. There were adults in some of the pictures and those same kids again, and again, and again, in different combinations. Family, I thought. So Tim had a brother, too. Dennis. But he hadn't been mentioned in the will. What was that all about?

I paged through the rest of the album, thinking I'd see those kids growing up, thinking I'd be able
to figure out which one grew up to be Tim. But they all stayed frozen in time. In the beginning of the album, the kids were ten or eleven through fifteen or sixteen. At the end, the same. Same kids, same ages, same goofy smiles, funny haircuts, high energy, high jinks and, every once in a while, a grown-up in the picture or a more formal shot, the kids dressed up and looking as if they hated it. Nothing written in the album. It didn't say “Tim's fifteenth birthday” or “Aunt Colleen's wedding.” No dates, either, no “Summer Vacation, 1979,” nothing like that. And no one was holding up a newspaper, the way hostages do so that you know they are alive on a certain date. I could only guess from the fading and my assumption that Tim was one of those boys, that Maggie was the little girl, that the contents of the album were around twenty-five years old, give or take a year or two in either direction.

After looking at the end and seeing that no one had aged, I paged through rather quickly, but near the end of the album, I found a lumpy page. It wasn't a real photo album, the photographs held on by those little black corners my father had used in ours. This was a loose-leaf book with plastic sleeves and a sheet of black paper in the middle of the photos. The lumpy page had two black sheets so that whatever was between them didn't show through from either side. I slipped in two fingers and pulled it out, a newspaper article. It had oxidized to a yellowish-brown color and the paper was very dry. I unfolded it very carefully, noting that it had been folded and unfolded many times. The
creases were torn right through in several places. The name of the newspaper wasn't there, but the date was. The article had been published twenty-nine years ago. I began to read.