The Shadow Box (6 page)

Witnesses told of a thirty-ish male, Hispanic, smelling
of alcohol, who had been dozing against a platform pillar.
The train came in. The roar jarred him awake. He suddenly
lurched into Michael, shoving him into the path of the
oncoming train. A large black woman, God bless her, slammed a forearm across Fallon's chest and then clawed
at his hair. She slowed him, almost stopped him, but one
arm had flailed out and the lead car struck it. The impact
snapped his arm at the wrist.

Fallon was knocked to the platform. The drunk, they
said, tried to slip away. The black woman grabbed him, told him to wait for the police. He threw a punch at her.
She smothered it and proceeded to slap him silly until two transit policemen arrived and, seeing a large black woman
swinging a smaller white male by the hair, ordered her to
let him go.

She and other witnesses tried to explain. But the cops
pulied the smaller man free and threatened to arrest her. The man bolted for the stairs but another subway rider
tripped him, and the woman pounced on him again. The
transit cops then seized her, pulled her off,
and cuffed her
hands behind her back. Other riders, most of them black,
tried to intervene and were threatened with arrest. The drunk, the man who caused it all, disappeared in the
confusion.

Fallon knew that the woman had tried to help him, but he was too dazed, in too much
pain, to make himself clear.
He was taken to the emergency ward at St. Vincent's Hospital, where he spent most of the night waiting for a
lull between stabbing and shooting victims so that his arm
could be treated. But his head had cleared and he used
the time to find out where the woman had been taken. He
was reluctant to wake Brendan Doyle over a broken arm.
A hospital orderly told him how to post bail, by phone
and credit card, for the woman who had probably saved
his life. Her name, he learned, was Lena Mayfield, forty-
six, a widow. She worked part-time at four different jobs.

He called Doyle the next morning. A week later, they
went to court with her. Fallon spoke before the judge, and
the charges were summarily dismissed. Fallon wrote out
a check and asked Mrs. Mayfield to take it. She whistled
when she saw the amount but shook her head.

‘Taking money for doin' right,” she told him, “crosses
out the doin' of it.”

He was determined to find some way to thank her, to
at least make up for the clothing she ruined and for any lost earnings. But he didn't get the chance. New York
wasn't finished with him yet.

Chapter 5

Only
three
days after the hearing, while his fore
arm was in a cast, two muggers decided that Michael
looked easy.

He had gone to see a movie near Lincoln Center. The
weather had turned milder and he chose to walk home. It
was just after ten, not late; Columbus Avenue was well
lit and he could see other people out walking. By the time he reached the mid-seventies,
however, there was no one
within two blocks of him except two approaching black males. They had crossed from the other side of the street
and came toward him from the opposite direction.

Fallon tried to believe that they meant him no harm.
They were black, but so was the woman who had saved
his life. Nor did these two look especially dangerous. They
were not young kids on a prowl. These two seemed close
to Fallon's own age and they looked too healthy to be
junkies. He'd be damned if he would cross the street like
some frightened tourist from Toledo.

But as they neared, he realized that he was probably in
trouble. The one on the curb side, his hair worn in dread
locks, was looking around, glancing over his shoulder as
they walked. The other, his head bald or shaven, thick
mustache, would be nearer to Fallon when they passed.
That one kept his eyes straight ahead, both hands in his
pockets. His skin was the lighter of the two. Perhaps not a black man after all. But not Hispanic either.

The bald one, Fallon knew, would walk past and then
suddenly turn. He would aim a sap or a fist at the back
of Fallon's neck and then throw him to the pavement. He
would ask, “You okay?” as if speaking to a fallen drunk.
He would strip him of his wallet, search for any separate
cash, and then look in vain for a watch. The other would
be waiting, standing lookout, ready to kick him if he re
sisted. They would be finished and on their way within
ten seconds.

Fallon didn't wait. The bald one was abreast of him
when Fallon wheeled, his left arm out ready to parry, and swung the cast on his right. The bald one had indeed been
turning. The rough plaster cast thudded high against his
cheek. It tore the flesh open. He yelped and raised both
hands to his face. The right hand held no sap or weighted
glove. It held a knife. The long thin blade glistened at his
ear. Fallon lashed at it with a downward backhand blow
of his cast, driving it into his assailant's face. It cut him
terribly. The knife slipped from wet fingers. He tried to
call to his companion for help. Air and blood blew through
his cheek.

The one in the dreadlocks was clawing at his belt. Fal
lon spun the bald one and shoved him at the other. He followed, low, and aimed the edge of his shoe at the sec
ond man's knee. The hard chopping kick tore at his ten
dons. Fallon heard them pop through an agonized shriek.
The man was going down but a gun had appeared in his
hand. A revolver. Big, heavy, chrome-plated. Fallon
moved in quickly. In a single motion he jammed one shoe
against the gun and raked the man's eyes with the rough
edge of his cast. Another scream. With his good hand he
seized the revolver, gripping the cylinder so that it couldn't be turned. He wrenched the gun free. He brought it down
across the nose of the man who would have shot him and
then against his collarbone. A third blow broke his jaw.
He stopped when the one in dreadlocks could no longer
raise his arms.

He turned to the bald one who was on his back, rolling,
trying to hold his face together. As Fallon approached,
this one tried to kick up at him. Fallon seized the kicking
leg, placed a foot on the other, and heaved upward as if
to tear the man in half. Another shriek, cut short, and then
a high-pitched hooting sound. From across the avenue, a
woman's voice said, ‘‘Someone call the police.”

Fallon turned the gun in his hand and cocked it. The bloody knife was at his feet. He kicked it under a parked
car then stood over the one in dreadlocks. He was semi
conscious, moaning. The other now mewed like a cat.

Fallon pointed the gun at the second man's leg. A voice
in his mind said,
Cripple them, Michael. No use doin' this
twice.
But the woman was still yelling and suddenly, in
the distance, he saw the strobe of blue lights.
Time to go,
the voice told him.
Just walk away slow.
Fallon obeyed.
He reached the next corner and turned toward Central
Park.

“Michael .
.
. where did you learn to do that?”

“Do what?”

“
‘Hurt people.''

“
Moon. Moon taught me.''

He supposed that he should have waited there. And
explained what
had
`happened. But he'd had enough of the
police. Enough of the media.

Doyle had been right about that. Fallon had, over a
period of eight weeks, figured in two major homicides.
He'd had microphones stuck in his face at Uncle Jake's
funeral and again after Bronwyn was killed. He had man
aged to duck them after the subway incident but that one
made the papers all the same. And they were waiting for
him outside the courthouse when he appeared for Mrs.
Mayfield. A reporter asked him whether he had considered
that there might be a Fallon curse.

The next day, that same reporter's tabloid ran a photo
it had found in its morgue. The photo was a shot of his
parents' old apartment house. On it, they had traced a
dotted line from a sixth floor window to the sidewalk
below, showing where another Fallon had leaped to his
death.

He didn't need them hearing about this new episode.

  
He didn't need to see his face on a television screen, an
object of pity. Some street reporter wondering aloud how
one man could attract so much trouble. Or how it was that
he took those two so easily. Those were his main reasons for not waiting.

“Was another that you wanted to keep that gun?”

“Yes, it was, Doc. Enough was enough.”

He had walked toward Central Park, a
n
d into it, because to go straight home would have been foolish. One of those
witnesses might have followed and then told the police
where he
lived.

Once in the park, he did have second thoughts about
the gun. If the police were to find him, it might be hard
to explain. What did you intend, Mr. Fallon? A little more
hunting? Otherwise, who in his right mind would walk
through Central Park at night? Seen too many Charles
Bronson movies,
Mr. Fallon?

“Would they have been right?”

“
Doc . . . I don 't know.''

“The truth, Michael.”
             
`.