The Falling Man Page 2

  The doorbell rang again, more insistent this time, and it occurred to Dick what bothered him about the cable van. He had gone for a walk two days ago to work some kinks out of his legs, and to get some beer at the general store about a mile down the road. On the way back he had glanced in one of the windows of that house where the van was parked. Just a glance, no more than one or two seconds, but that was enough. The house was empty. Stripped to bare wood inside. There weren’t even any curtains on the windows. Nobody was living there at all.

  “Sam!” he said. “Don’t open that door.”

  Dick stepped out of the bathroom, and Sam bolted past him, moving fast for a big man, his eyes wide, his mouth gaping like a fish on a hook.

  “What is it?”

  BOOOOM! The front door blasted off its hinges, sending huge wooden splinters flying just inches from Dick’s face. The door came to rest on the carpet, and he blinked at the dusty haze that remained in the air.

  “AVON CALLING!” someone shouted, and half a dozen cops burst into the room. They were big guys, with short hair and bulletproof vests. Their vests were black. They carried shotguns and baseball bats, and wore baseball caps on their heads.

  Dick looked back at Sam, who had managed to wedge himself halfway through the bathroom window, then get stuck there, no chance of sliding his fat ass through that tiny opening. His legs hung down, his feet dangling off the floor.

  Dick glanced past the cops, through the kitchen and out the back window, catching a last look at the green and brown hills sloping gently down to the Pacific Ocean. The water was a dark, sparkling blue. The whole peaceful scene might as well have been on another planet, or in a painting. That’s how far out of reach it was. Fifteen minutes before, he could have walked out there and enjoyed the view as much as he liked. He could’ve even strolled down to the beach and gone for a swim. Three cops stood out on the back deck now, peering through the sliding glass door.

  Dick turned his back on what might have been.

  He stepped into the living room. He toyed briefly with the notion that he might be invisible to these cops. The pot in his brain told him it might be so. It seemed the only explanation as to why they hadn’t grabbed him yet. Already, they had pulled Sam down from his perch, and slapped the cuffs on him. Already they had put some clothes on Chili, and were leading her out. Dick alone remained free, and nobody noticed.

  A young cop leveled his shotgun.

  Dick looked into the cop’s beady eyes, squinting down over the enormous barrel of his weapon.

  “Hands on your head,” the cop said. “Or I blow it off.”

  Dick laughed, and the sound seemed natural. He felt good. Business was over. Now that it was gone, he already didn’t miss it. A new chapter was starting right in front of his eyes. He put his hands on his head. The cops swarmed him, and he made no attempt at resistance. They handcuffed him, and the cold steel of the cuffs bit into his wrists. They sat him down on the couch.

  At some point, a young guy, pimply, skinny, maybe in his late teens, walked through the open front door. He carried a red imitation leather pizza warmer and a sixty-four-ounce bottle of Pepsi. He navigated his way through the giant cops. He looked around in wonder.

  “Anybody order a pizza?” he said.

  The cops looked at him, then looked at Dick. Dick nodded. “Here.”

  “Whaddya got?” said an older cop, a guy with a graying flat-top haircut, like a Marine.

  “One large pepperoni,” said the kid, poring over the order slip like it was a final exam. By the looks of him, he was none too bright. “And one large with onion.”

  “We’ll take them.”

  The head cop reached over onto the coffee table and picked up one of the hundred dollar bills lying there. A couple of the other cops guffawed and clapped each other on the back. Fucking cops. They knew Dick was looking at a mandatory five years for possession with intent, and that the judge would have very little leeway in sentencing. They knew he was going to sit for the next two days in a county lockup with nothing to eat except lukewarm baloney on stale white bread, and nothing to drink except orange-colored sugar water. The cops were all the same. They’d steal the pizza from a condemned man.

  “Looks like it’s your lucky day,” the cop said to the kid. “Keep the change.”

  THREE YEARS LATER…

  CHAPTER 1: ANGELS IN THE SNOW

  Dorothy Racine’s life flashed in front of her eyes. So this is what it’s like when the end comes, she thought. They show you pictures.

  Images appeared and disappeared in her mind, sepia-toned with age, much like the old slide photographs that her family would project on the living room wall when she was a child. Here I am when I was small. See how happy I was? Everybody said I was a happy child. Here I am at twelve, precociously long and leggy. The high school boys were already watching me, you bet they were. Here I am when I was Queen of the Prom. Dig that Farrah Fawcett haircut. And the King? Let’s just say he didn’t measure up. Look, there I am as First Runner-Up in the Miss Ohio Pageant, 1982. There’s Miss Ohio. Boy, I hated that fake bitch.

  Dorothy was about to die.

  She knew it just by looking in her rearview mirror. The heavy snow kept falling and the strange car was still there, some kind of big SUV. It kept back about twenty yards now, its headlights shining bright, its grillwork like a malevolent smile. A moment ago, it had accelerated and smashed into her rear bumper, throwing she and her boyfriend Dick Miller around like straw dolls.

  She glanced over at Dick now. Good old Dick. He called her Dot. Sure, everybody did. Dick sat slumped in the passenger seat. Dick could handle a tough situation, but there was something not right with Dick just now. He was passed out, his head lolled to and fro, and once in a while he would come awake and start raving at her. It was like he was very drunk, but Dot had seen him handle more alcohol than he had tonight. A lot more.

  Dick wasn’t drunk, Dot decided. He had been poisoned. Heck, she had been poisoned herself just a few months ago, right? Back when everything started going haywire? That’s what the doctor told her, and she believed it. She knew who had done it, too. She couldn’t prove anything, but she knew.

  She recalled how sick she had been after that episode. It had lasted for days – the headache, the nausea. Oh yeah, and the amnesia. Even now, she couldn’t remember what actually happened. Just the aftermath, and that was bad enough. From the looks of things, Dick was going to be hurting tomorrow. Being poisoned was no fun. Dot could vouch for that.

  The drinks she had knocked back at the office party tonight had burned off. The light, pleasant pre-Christmas buzz was gone. A headache and a churning knot in her stomach were the only party favors left. God rest ye, merry gentlemen. Mortality will do that to you.

  Who was back there? It wasn’t a car she recognized, but that hardly mattered. The face of the killer didn’t have to be one she knew. It could be anyone. They could have hired someone.

  “What?” Dick said, his head rolling, his eyes half open. “What?”

  Dot checked the rearview again. Still there. The bastard had edged closer. Why didn’t he make his move? The snow came down heavier now. There was no one on these darkened streets except her and that car behind her. She glanced at the pocketbook at her side. Her gun, the little snubnose .38 that Dick had given her, poked its snout out the top of the bag.

  “That’s nice, Dick,” she said. “What makes you say that?”

  “Unnnh,” Dick said.

  Big Dick Miller – who refused to carry a cell phone because cell phones caused brain cancer. Okay, not the brightest bulb in the package, but damn good-looking. A man’s man – ex-convict with less than four months out of the slammer, pride of the jail to work program, delivered by that program into Dot’s loving arms. Now reduced to babbling incoherence in the passenger seat. She glanced at him again. They must have slipped him a whale of a dose, because he was a mess.

  The heater in this big car was working overtime, and Dot felt a trickle of sweat run down the back of her neck. It was Dick’s car, a Pontiac or Oldsmobile or some other goddamn prehistoric beast of Detroit steel. The snow made the car slide all over the road. Dick had some kind of patriotic mental block about cars. He had to drive an old American car with rear-wheel drive, even though front-wheel drive, or God forbid, all-wheel drive was better in all types of weather.

  What made matters worse than the car they were driving was the fact that they were headed in the wrong direction. They should have come to the bridge over to Brooklyn by now. Ten minutes ago, maybe twenty minutes ago. This was Dot’s city – her city – and she had no idea where she was going. And this bastard behind her meant she couldn’t turn around.

  Well, soon the deep snow would force her to stop altogether. Then they would see what was what. The thought made her heart skip a beat.

  Dot Racine, forty-two-years-old and still beautiful, still sexy, still ripe and randy and ready for anything, was afraid. The chickens had come home to roost. They were roosting in that car back there, the one with the sinister purpose, the one she had always known would be there one night, the one that the Dick Millers of this world were supposed to keep at bay.

  Dorothy Racine: Daddy’s little girl. Head Cheerleader. Prom Queen. Beauty Queen. Trophy Wife. These were the titles from the first thirty years of her life. But there had always been something missing. When all the vivacious chatter died down, when all the fabulous guests went home, boredom awaited. Melancholy lurked just below the bright white, all-American smile she flashed at the world. Beneath the sparkling surface, there was only emptiness. She knew it. She was beautiful – she wasn’t dumb. She was one chesty, leggy, drop-dead bombshell of a babe who knew some things. And what she knew was her life, and the lives of those around her, meant nothi
ng.

  Country club chatter. Investments. Charity fundraisers. To hell with all that. She wanted action. She wanted excitement. She yearned for it. She positively burned for it. When her husband Ray died, she decided she was going to get it.

  The next dozen years were the ones where she hit her stride. Merry Widow. Adventurer. Executive. Embezzler. She had been all these things and more. But that last was the major thing, wasn’t it? Chief Embezzler in Charge at Feldman Real Estate. She and her young sidekick Lydia had stolen quite a lot of money. The thought of it – of all that money and what they had done to get it – sent a tingle down Dot’s spine. She was president of the company and Lydia was the office manager – all business and propriety on the surface, all crime all the time when no one was watching.

  Tonight was much too soon for it to end.

  “Dick,” she said. “Can you still fight?”

  His head slumped to his chest. He hadn’t heard her.

  “Dick!”

  His head came up, a small, sexy curl of hair hanging down onto his forehead. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked at her, uncomprehending.

  “Can you run? Can you even run?”

  He looked away, out the window, at the snowflakes falling.

  The knot tightened in her stomach. Dick was going to be no help at all. As much as that frightened her, it also liberated her. There was no strong man to step in here, to run interference for her. That had always been her strategy – to have the man do it – but when that failed, she did have one last thing to fall back on:

  Herself.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to end this right now.”

  They were on a long, gradual down slope. To the left, across the East River, the towers and canyons of Manhattan twinkled in the snow, so many lights it was incredible. Up ahead, giant shapes loomed. They were sculptures. Yes, she knew this place. There was a park here on the water with all these industrial sculptures – monstrosities made from scrap metal, airplane parts and steel girders salvaged from the wrecked old hotels of Atlantic City.

  They wanted a showdown? They wanted high noon? They were going to get it, and this alien landscape was the perfect place for it. Her formidable resolve kicked in, a thing that seemed to have a life and a mind of its own, and she realized that she didn’t feel too bad at all, thank you. As a wise man once said, “bring ‘em on.”

  The hill grew steeper near the bottom, and she lost control about two-thirds of the way down. The car slid, turning sideways into the unplowed snow, moving in slow motion. At the bottom was a parking lot. There were no cars here at all. Away in the snowy distance was an old building – it might have been a factory.

  The other car came slowly down, tires easily gripping the snow. Sure, it was some kind of SUV, probably with all-wheel drive. The two cars faced each other, twenty yards apart, the SUV’s higher headlights shining in Dot’s eyes.

  Dot pulled the gun from her bag. It was small, and fit snugly in her small hand.

  “Come on, Dick. Let’s go see who’s here.”

  Some awareness must have still been awake in him, because he opened his door and tried to clamber out. When his feet hit the ground, he slipped in the snow and fell. He lay next to the car, his hands on the door.

  Dot climbed out, holding the gun low and out of sight.

  Across the way, the driver’s side door of the SUV opened. The strains of the stereo greeted the cold night air. A man climbed down and slammed the door. The music died. The man was slim, probably not very much taller than Dot. He wore a sheepskin jacket buttoned tight, black driving gloves, and a bright orange ski mask over his face. His eyes lurked back inside the mask, bright and sharp. It made him look like a Jack O’ Lantern.

  “Nestor?” Dot said. It was a reflex to say his name – Nestor Garcia was the classic ex-boyfriend from hell, the one they made down at the factory, knew they could never improve upon, and so broke the mold afterwards. He was the demon that old peasant women the world over told stories about to frighten young children. Dot remembered how dangerous it had felt to be with Nestor – she had never considered how dangerous it would feel to not be with him.

  Men were supposed to serve their purpose, then go away. But Nestor didn’t see it that way. If this man – the pumpkin man – wasn’t Nestor, he ought to be.

  In one gloved hand the pumpkin man held a gun, much larger than Dot’s, a long silencer attached to the end. The effect of it was fearsome – this person, this Halloween nightmare, came to do business. The man’s eyes regarded Dot as he trod through the snow toward where Dick was slumped next to the car. This was a very small man, Dot realized. Was Nestor this small? Could be yes, could be no. Dot’s fevered mind couldn’t focus long enough to decide. Still watching Dot, the man placed the muzzle of the gun, that big silencer, against Dick’s head. Dick mumbled something to himself. A plume of breath came from the ski mask.

  Under there somewhere, the pumpkin man frowned, or seemed to.

  Dot brought her gun up, pointed right into the intruder’s chest. Her arms extended across the hood, the gun held in that two-handed grip Dick had always said was best, the man only a few feet away from her muzzle. She wouldn’t miss, not at this distance. She was ready. She was going to blow a hole in this asshole, then four more.

  “I will fucking kill you,” Dot said, her voice loud and strong. “If you shoot him, I swear to God I will kill you.”

  The eyes watched.

  Slowly, the gun came away from Dick’s head.

  “That’s right, you bastard. You understand.”

  But the gun kept coming. It came up, pointing at Dot across the hood, the hood wide across like a football field from her high school days, and she madly turning cartwheels, blonde-brunette-blonde (wasn’t that the old joke?) as Andrew Jackson High ground down their opponents, one after another after another. The two guns came closer. They were inches apart now, and the maw at the end of that silencer was like a tunnel, like a cave, like the abyss itself. She had never been at the point of a gun. A lifetime, but never this experience before. She could not take her eyes off that black hole – it would swallow the entire world.

  “Drop it,” she said, but her voice was smaller now.

  The gun went nowhere. If anything, it inched closer, and now the two guns were so close they could almost touch. They were like two nervous lovers, coming together for their first kiss.

  “Drop that fucking gun!” she screamed, her voice dampened by the snow.

  Light flashed at the end of the tunnel. And again. The gun moved a bit, hardly at all. Dot heard a clacking sound like that of a staple gun. She pulled her own trigger and the sound was loud in her ears, deafening. She pulled it again. And again.

  Her ears rang and it was like her head was inside a helmet stuffed with cotton. The only sound was the ringing. Again she pulled the trigger but now there was no trigger or gun and she stared up at the night sky, bright with the nearby lights, snow falling around her.

  She used to make snow angels when she was a girl, lying back like this, spreading her arms and legs, nice and toasty warm inside her big parka. And then she would stop and close her eyes, open her mouth and wait for a great big drop to land on her tongue.

  *

  The first thing Dick Miller knew the next day was pain.

  Searing pain throughout his head, with waves of nausea – not like a hangover, not even like the morning after a concussion – but something worse. Dick had taken a concussion in high school when he played tight end for a Franklin K. Lane team that didn’t know how to pass the football. The quarterback had a habit of hanging Dick out to dry by lofting the ball just beyond his fingertips. One time, while Dick was in the air, an opposing linebacker had speared him head-first to the turf – hard enough to put Dick on Queer Street for three days. But even that didn’t feel like this.

  The phone rang, so loud it made Dick sit up with a start, his eyes popping open. His stomach lurched. The room spun around him and he didn’t see the phone right away. The ringing got louder and he put his hands over his ears. There it was – right there next to the bed.