Fall Guy (9 page)

It was hazy, hot and humid out, but not in O'Fallon's apartment. With the air conditioner humming, I couldn't hear any street noises, nor was it too warm. The shutters were the way I found them, closed on the bottom and partly open on top, letting the late-afternoon light filter gently into the room.

I tried the cabinets under the bookshelves next and found them locked. No matter, I thought, you could open those locks with a nail file. Instead, I went back to the desk to look for a key, not finding it. I sat in O'Fallon's chair, trying to slip inside the man who used to sit there. Wasn't it James Thurber who said, “I hate women because they always know where things are”? Hands flat on the desk, eyes closed, like a fortune-teller minus the crystal ball and the weird outfit, I dowsed for keys. Nothing. I looked over at the bookshelf nearest the closet door, scanning the shelves for something that might hold keys, though, Lord knows, a cop should know better. It was on the highest shelf I could reach, a little tan honey pot with a lid. I took it down, feeling the heft of it, and put it on the desk. Then I took off the lid and found it was filled to the top with sets of keys. The key to the cabinets, one key fits all, were on a ring with the rest of O'Fallon's keys, one of which was no longer viable now that the locks had been changed. I had two sets of the new keys. I thought I'd give one to Brody, if he had any use for it. If Maggie wanted a set, I'd have mine copied for her. I could ask her at lunch.

There were papers in some of the cabinets, notebooks with notes from old cases. I checked
the dates. There were ten years' worth of notebooks, stopping a year earlier. I would have loved to read every word, but couldn't do that now. I thought I'd keep those, if Maggie didn't want them. The next cabinet had records and CDs. O'Fallon had a couple of movies, too, ones he'd taped from the TV,
Red River
and
Dog Day Afternoon, The Godfather
and
Star Wars,
a small, odd collection. There wasn't any porn, nor any porn magazines. Not so far.

The next cabinet held the liquor. Again I thought about how easy these locks would be to pick. Unless Parker had found the honey pot with the keys as readily as I had. There was some of everything, but none of the bottles had much in them and some were drained and wrung out, not a drop left to drink, but put back anyway. Which one of them had been that thirsty? Or was this something they did together? I thought about all the empties that had been in the kitchen when Brody first brought me in here, the bottles he himself had bagged and thrown away. Mostly beer, but some booze as well. That mess was most likely left over from Parker's last party. But that didn't tell me whether or not Tim and Parker had enabled each other, talking about AA between drinks.

I thought about where the bullet had destroyed the tiles, the place too high on the wall for the shooter to have been seated, the place that had been repaired. Perhaps all the empties were O'Fallon's doing; maybe drinking with or without company was something he did in an attempt to numb his feelings, to wash away his sadness,
finding that, over time, the drinking only made things worse or that it took more and more of it to do the job.

I needed some fresh air, even if the fresh air was bound to be as thick as soup. I took Dashiell around a couple of blocks, stopping to pick up an iced tea at Florent, heading back to O'Fallon's thinking I'd get more of the cleanup done before I called it quits. But when we got back and opened the doors, when I found myself in that depressing hallway, I kept going straight. No harm sitting in the garden while I sipped my cold drink. No harm postponing the kind of job no one liked to do.

As I passed the first door on the other side of the hall, I heard a baby crying. I headed for the garden, finding the door unlocked even with no one there. I sat at the round table and watched Dashiell explore the garden, seeing with his nose in a way I couldn't even imagine. I wondered often if he saw the scents in color or if he pictured waves of gray, wishing that, for just a moment, I could live in his skin and know the world as a dog.

The door we'd just come out of opened and there was the squalling baby in the arms of her nanny, a Caucasian child, a nut-brown caretaker, cooing to the unhappy little girl as she walked outside.

“She's teething,” she said, rocking the baby in her arms, a short, squat woman with a round, flat face and black hair that caught the light. The baby, who was blond and fair-skinned and looked as if the world were about to end, had her fist in her mouth.

“I'm taking care of Detective O'Fallon's affairs,” I volunteered, apropos of nothing, I suspected. This woman did not seem the least bit concerned about who I was or why I was there.

“I know,” she said. Then, “Shh, Emma, it'll be okay.”

“Jin Mei mentioned me?”

She nodded, looking suspiciously at Dashiell, her shoulder toward him, shielding Emma as if Dash were about to leap at her and end her teething problems forever.

“Do you have a moment to talk?” I asked.

“About?”

“Detective O'Fallon.”

“I didn't really know him. Anyway, I already spoke to the police. I told them, I don't know anything.” Looking frightened.

No green card, I thought.

“It's sort of personal,” I told her, “just for me.”

“I still don't know anything, no matter who it's for.” A bit too loud. Who was she playing to? I wondered.

“I have to change her,” she said, again too loud. “You can follow me if you want to.”

I did, up to the kitchen door of the apartment across the hall from O'Fallon's.

“You have to leave
him
in there,” she whispered, indicating Dashiell, then the door to O'Fallon's kitchen. I had more important things on my mind than showing her that Dashiell meant no harm, that it wasn't his fault his breed had a history of dogfighting or that it was the breed of the moment, still, for guarding illegal drug stashes.

I opened the kitchen door and sent Dashiell in
side, telling him to wait so that he'd know I'd be back very soon.

“Netty Land,” she said when we got inside baby Emma's apartment, the door safely closed.

“Rachel Alexander,” I told her.

“I know,” she said.

The layout of the apartment appeared to be a mirror image of O'Fallon's, also two units combined, a large studio apartment with two doors. I wondered if both buildings had been renovated that way, top to bottom. I followed Netty into the front room that served as living room, bedroom and nursery. I thought Netty would take Emma to the changing table but she sat on the tan leather couch instead, putting the baby down on the rug.

“I don't usually work on Sunday,” Netty told me. “But I needed the money. I was here that whole weekend. They went away, to Amish country. They don't spend a whole lot of time with the baby, not if they can help it. It's good for me, anyway. My son is still in Peru, with my mother. I want to bring him here, but I don't have enough money yet. It's expensive,” she added, in case I was too dull to get the point.

“Perhaps I can help you a little,” I said. “Perhaps we can help each other.”

“That would be good. I was here since Friday night. They left right after work.”

“Can you hear anything, from across the hall?”

Netty shrugged. “Shouting. I'm sure he heard them plenty, too. She says it's this place, Miss Helene, that they fight all the time because it's too small. She says that's why she can't give me a raise, because they're saving up
for a house. She says, Miss Helene, that's why she and Mr. David need a weekend to themselves, because two adults and one baby in this place, it's driving them crazy. ‘You don't want us to get a divorce, do you, Netty?' That's what I get instead of a raise.”

“I see,” I said, giving her problems not much more sympathy than her employers did, wanting to get back on track. “So did you hear any shouting that weekend, from Detective O'Fallon's apartment?”

Netty nodded. “First there was the party. His friends, Mr. Parker's. A bunch of bums, freeloading off Mr. O'Fallon when he wasn't even home. I heard that. I was in the garden most of the afternoon. The baby likes it out there. She watches the birds. I saw the men running out the back when he came home, Mr. O'Fallon. They went through the garden and out the far door, by Jin Mei's apartment. Can you imagine? Grown men acting like that. And then I heard the shouting. He told Parker his free ride was over.” Netty leaned toward me, whispering again, the baby asleep on the rug, sucking her thumb. “And then it was quiet, all of them gone. Except him.”

“What about Sunday morning? Did you hear the shot?”

Netty shook her head. “The police told me the time. I forgot. Eight something, I think. She was screaming. The teeth, the teeth. And no mama here. I told them, if I heard anything, I figured it was a car, not a gunshot. Who expects to hear a gunshot?”

“You told the police this?”

“I did,” she said. “I answered all their questions.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

Netty nodded. “I saw him come back and break the kitchen window, the snake.”

“You mean Parker?”

“Yes. I saw him crawl in through the window.”

“When was this?”

“Late Sunday morning. Or maybe noon. I was going to give her the bottle outside, hoping she'd fall asleep. I was going out when he was going in through the window.”

“So you saw him entering Detective O'Fallon's apartment?”

Netty nodded.

“But not actually breaking the lock?”

She shook her head. “But he did,” she said. “The palette knife was right there on the ground where he dropped it.”

“Jin Mei's knife?”

“Yes.”

“Jin Mei was out painting when Parker broke the lock?”

“No, she forgot the knife the day before. She left it on the table. No matter. No one else uses the garden. Even the others”—she pointed to the ceiling—“they hardly ever come out. Maybe if there's a party for the two buildings, once a year. Otherwise, it's just the first floor.”

“What about Detective O'Fallon?”

She shook her head. “Not that I saw. He was at work all the time, not sitting in the garden.”

“Did you see or hear anything else? Anything unusual?”

“I told them the same. I didn't see anything
else. I mind my own business. I take care of Emma.”

“And you weren't out in the garden earlier, like around eight?”

“I was in here. I didn't get her out until around noon, maybe twelve-thirty.”

“And with the air conditioner and the TV…”

“I didn't hear the accident.”

I went back to O'Fallon's apartment and got two twenties and my business card from my wallet, taking them back across the hall.

“If you think of anything else, would you let me know?”

“I thought you didn't know him,” she said, screwing up her face. “I thought he's not your family. Why are you asking these questions?”

“He asked me to take care of things for him. I don't know what it is he wanted,” I told her. Her dark eyes looked blank. I don't think Netty Land understood what I was talking about. I wasn't sure I understood it myself. I heard the baby starting to cry. Netty put the money in her pants pocket and closed the door.

I went back into O'Fallon's, going straight for the bathroom again, hoping the contents of his medicine cabinet might speak to me, hoping for an answer from anywhere. I picked up some of the ordinary things I found there, holding them in my hands, putting them back where they'd been: aspirin, Tylenol, Irish Spring soap, razor blades and razor; a bristle brush without a handle, the kind men used to use in pairs; Band-Aids, deodorant; and a prescription bottle, Alocril, the same as I'd gotten from my eye doctor on October
11, 2001, to help me with my irritated eyes, the detritus of the Twin Towers still blowing up to Greenwich Village when the wind came north. Next to that, the same as in my medicine cabinet—artificial tears. Despite the real ones, you had to wash your eyes out several times a day, the irony of that not lost on anyone.

He was waiting at the gate that led to my garden, moving nervously from one foot to the other, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. I saw him in profile first, his black hair pulled back into a long braid that went nearly to his waist, twisted with some kind of cord or string, a feather hanging near the end. He had perfect skin, a straight nose, a strong chin. When he turned, I saw his eyes, a rich, deep brown, more the color of bittersweet chocolate than Turkish coffee, and more lucid than they should have been, given what I'd been led to believe. I knew who he was before he said a word.

“Mr. Bowling, I presume.” I didn't offer my hand. Actually, both hands were full, but I wouldn't have offered one anyway.

“Rachel?” He slid the cigarette from his mouth and held it for a moment between his long, thin fingers before tossing it into the street, as if he were reading my stand on his habit before deciding whether or not to waste a perfectly good smoke. I had the feeling he could
seduce the gold bars out of Fort Knox without lifting a finger.

I looked at the ember, still alive after the sparks went out, and walked over to crush it with my shoe. I knew I was just being a bitch. No dog was headed our way, Dashiell was nowhere near it and it would have gone out in less than a minute on its own.

“What is it you want?” I asked, not taking out my keys.

“I thought you might want to talk to me,” he said, bending closer so that he could lower his voice to a near whisper and I'd still hear him over the traffic from Hudson Street and the whir of the air conditioners.

“Did you?”

He'd said his piece. He waited. The truth was, I did want to talk to him, but I didn't want to say so.

“And you're hoping to get your things,” I said.

“I am. The police said that you…” He stopped and smiled, showing me his perfect white teeth and the half-dimples his smile made in his cheeks, visible even beneath the artful one-day growth of stubble. I thought about Nick's unshaven face and how different that looked, the real thing versus the fashion statement. “Look at me,” Parker said. And I did. Slowly, from head to toe. “I've been wearing the same things for days.”

But of course that wasn't true. His chambray work shirt, another affectation unless you count hustling as a blue-collar profession, was immaculate. His jeans were just this side of pressed. Even his shoes, scuffed boots, seemed chosen to com
plete the picture rather than what he'd been stuck with. His hair was picking up the light from the lamppost. He could have done an Herbal Essence ad with hair that thick and shiny. Whatever it was he needed so badly from Tim's apartment, it wasn't a change of clothes.

“You shouldn't have come here. You should have called,” I said.

Parker smiled and nodded. “I did. You were never home.”

“You should have left your number.”

He looked away and sighed. Then he took a step closer. I felt Dashiell, close to my left leg, inch forward and angle himself so that his head was between Parker and me. Had Parker wanted to come any closer, he would have had to push Dashiell out of his way.

“Look, I didn't know what else to do. I thought if I came here, I might be able to make you understand. I mean, I was living there, it was my home, and when the cops came and said I had to get out, they didn't let me take anything. Not one thing. I was hoping…”

I shook my head. “I'm sorry. I'm very busy settling Detective O'Fallon's affairs and you didn't leave me a number, so I couldn't call you back,” remembering the cell phone number in O'Fallon's book as I said it. “I just got into the apartment myself and I need to gather things for O'Fallon's attorney. You'll have to wait another day or two.”

“That's Tim's, isn't it?” Pointing to the briefcase.

I looked down at the briefcase and back at Parker.

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“I didn't know you'd be taking anything out.”

“You mean before you got your things?”

He nodded, clearly upset, moving from one foot to the other. I wondered how long he'd been standing there and if I'd adopted Brody's attitude before ever talking to Parker myself. He didn't look scary now, just pitiful. Tim had taken him in, hadn't he? Was he now my responsibility, too?

“I can pack up your clothes, if that's what you need. Yours is the closet to the left, isn't it? The one with the shrine?”

“Look, I…”

I glanced across the street. “I can drop them off at the Sixth,” I said. “You can pick them up there, from Detective Brody.”

He began to shake his head again. Not the clothes. Not the shrine. Then what?

I looked across the street again, thinking about those newspaper articles, thinking about talking to Brody about them, old stone face, as if that were going to do me any good.

But Parker might talk, especially if he thought there was something in it for him.

“How about a trade?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You said you thought I'd want to talk to you. The truth is, I do. I need information. You tell me anything you can about O'Fallon, I'll make sure you get into the apartment sooner. Deal?”

“Sure, okay,” he said, those intense eyes watching me. “When?”

“Right now.”

“We're going to Tim's now? Great.”

But the more he wanted in, the more I wanted to keep him out, at least until I'd had the chance to check everything out on my own. “Let's take one step at a time,” I said. “I haven't eaten all day. You don't want to bargain with a hungry woman.”

“We're going in?” he asked, indicating the gate with a nod of his head. The man was shameless.

“Not hardly. We're going to grab a burger.”

Parker shrugged. He'd waited this long, he could wait another forty-five minutes, an hour if I ate slowly.

I was going to ask if he was hungry, too, but then I didn't. He looked as if he'd been starving all his life. I just didn't know for what.

I wasn't getting the picture Brody had tried to give me, nor the one Jin Mei had painted of Parker Bowling aka Dick Parker, Richard Lee Bowling and Parker Lee. I needed to sketch one of my own. Most of all, I needed to see what O'Fallon had seen in this man. I needed to understand why he had taken him in. Even if I had to cut what Parker told me in half, and then in half again, I'd still learn something about O'Fallon's life and that's what I wanted to do now, more than anything.

I headed back to Hudson Street, Dashiell on one side, Parker on the other. We walked over to the White Horse, where we could sit outside. There'd be lots of people there and no one minded a dog being there as long as he was on the outside of the fence. I thought the rule ridiculous. I thought the way the French did it made more sense. But we were in New York, not Paris, and the rules about dogs in places that served
food were getting tighter all the time. Some places cared. Others didn't. But the White Horse was close and cheap and there was an empty table near the rail. It would do.

We ordered burgers and Cokes. I had the feeling that Parker would have liked something a bit stronger than a Coke. I thought he was trying to impress me with his sterling behavior and that was okay with me.

“So how did you meet Timothy O'Fallon?” I asked, not one for beating around the bush.

“He arrested me. Petty larceny. I was flat broke and I ate in a restaurant and tried to leave without paying. The waiter tripped me, then the owner punched me and called the cops.”

I began to laugh. “No shit? Sounds like the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

“I thought so, too,” he said, flashing me a grin that seemed to light up the whole block. “Especially after I told him that I was temporarily unemployed and had recently lost my residence and he said I could bunk with him until I got back on my feet. He said he'd help me out. I couldn't believe I was hearing that from a cop. It was too good to be true. And you know what they say, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

“You mean living with O'Fallon wasn't all you expected it to be?”

Parker reached out, as if to cover my hand with his, but stopped and put his hand down in the middle of the table instead. “It's not that he didn't help me. He did. And I'm grateful to him for it.”

So grateful that while he was lying dead in the bathroom, you were stealing his stuff, I thought.

“But it was hard to live with him.”

“How so?”

“His depression. It was relentless.”

The waitress came with our burgers and fries. She had a ring in one eyebrow, another in one nostril, a chain tattooed around her upper arm. Her hair was half yellow and half green. By the time she set down the plates, the fries were half on the plate and half on the table. I thought it might be a good idea to slide to the far side of the bench when she brought the drinks.

Parker took a bite of the burger as if he hadn't eaten in weeks.

“He was depressed all the time?” I asked.

“Anyone drinks the way he did would be. Practically nonstop when he got home from work until he went to bed.”

“Did you drink with him? Was that something you did together?”

“I'd have one drink, you know, to be sociable, but not like Tim.”

“Funny, I thought his letting you live there had to do with
your
addictions.”

He took another bite of his burger.

I waited.

“I've had my problems. I'm not denying that. And I did slip a couple of times. But that was on the table, if you know what I mean. My using was up for discussion. His wasn't.”

“Was it the job? Was that what was getting him down?”

Parker shrugged and picked up a handful of
fries, dipping them in the pool of ketchup he'd made on his plate. “He wasn't going to talk to me about police work.”

“Right.”

“I just know it was bad. He was one unhappy dude. It didn't surprise me, what he did. Well, it did. But not really.”

“Tell me why you went through the window.”

For the first time, Parker was caught off-guard, but he recovered almost immediately. Practice makes perfect.

“Lost my keys.”

“How, Parker?”

“You're starting to sound like him now and I gotta tell you, it's not attractive.”

“Right. Didn't you lose your keys because O'Fallon finally got fed up with your behavior?” I asked. “Didn't he take them back and ask you to leave?”

“Look, I didn't do anything wrong. If I did, I'd be in jail now, not sitting here and eating this burger.” His steady gaze bit into me, making sure I got the point. “He was hot under the collar, you know. I had a couple of close friends over and he didn't like that. I thought, big deal, he wasn't home, what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him.”

I didn't interrupt to tell him what a lying sack of shit he was. I was sure he'd been told before.

“I figured, have a few friends in, then get the hell out before he came home. I guess we lost track of time, you know what I mean?”

I nodded. I knew exactly what he meant. I'd seen the decimated liquor cabinet and the emp
ties everywhere, the cans and bottles Brody had bagged and carried out.

“He was pissed, irrational. It was just a few guys having a beer, shooting the shit. Cops.” He shook his head, took a few fries, passed them through the ketchup, opened his mouth wide and dropped them in.

There was something sexual about the way he did that, his eyes on me and not on the food, everything in slow motion. I thought it was a survival response, trying to seduce anything that moved to get whatever it was he needed at the time—a smoke, some money, a place to live, his possessions. But it wasn't working on me and I didn't think it had worked on Tim. I didn't know Tim's motive for taking Parker into his home, but whatever it was, I didn't believe he'd been fooled into it.

“He was really pissed, huh?”

“You better believe it. He just blew up and shoved us out the door. No one could get a word in edgewise.”

“Same as the cops the next day, not even letting you get your stuff?”

He nodded.

“Only Tim took the keys before he kicked you out.”

“No, he didn't. He was too angry to think about something like that. I really lost them. I mean, maybe I left them in the apartment. I don't remember what the hell I did with them after I unlocked the door. You never have trouble finding yours?”

“So what fucking choice did you have, right?
You needed your stuff, you had to break the window to get in?”

“I called him, you know. I figured he had the night to calm down, get over himself. I figured at least he'd let me get my stuff. Worst-case scenario, I figured he'd pitch it out the door.”

“But there was no answer.”

He nodded, his expression never changing. He was playing the sincerity gambit, portraying himself as the aggrieved person, doing so without a trace of irony. And as far as I could tell, sitting across from him, there was no sign he didn't believe every single word he was saying.

“I figured, even better, you know what I mean? He didn't want me there, fine, to hell with him. He must have gone back to his sister's house, caught an early shift, whatever; I could get in there, grab my stuff and get out, not even have to see him.”

“But it didn't work out that way. First, you get there and you stick your hand in your pocket, and there aren't any keys.”

He sat back, smiling. “I rang a few bells. Someone always rings you in.”

“And the door to the garden was unlocked.”

“Usually is.”

“Then you pried the window with Jin Mei's palette knife.”

“Lock was a piece of shit,” he said, “just for show.”

“And then what?”

“I went in to get my stuff. What do you think?”

“I think you had a terrific shock when you went for your toothbrush. That's what I think.”