The Long Fall - Walter Mosley

Once again I was in motion. After three staggery bounds I leaped upon the killer’s back and rained down fists upon his head and shoulders.

At first it felt as if I’d jumped on the back of one of Rodin’s bronze masterpieces. Willie’s body didn’t even sag under the weight. But the accumulation of blows finally got to him. He stood up, throwing me off with the motion. I thought that he was going to come after me but instead he wobbled and then sat down, his back against the railing.

He was staring at me with disbelief on his face. I agreed with him. It made no sense that I could have beaten him even one time.

Sanderson closed his eyes as a thick trickle of blood snaked out from his left nostril.

I looked over at the body of Hannah Hull and made a sound that I didn’t know lived inside me.

An overpowering exhaustion spread out from my chest all the way to my fingers and toes. The yellow bird fluttered up and landed between Hannah’s lifeless form and her killer. My last conscious thought was that if Willie got up I was a dead man.

Ê€„

53

I don’t remember the journey to the dimly lit and gray interrogation room. I just opened my eyes and found myself sitting there with elbows on the table and pain coming awake at various points in my body. My left foot felt tight in its shoe, and I had pulled an upper-back muscle somewhere along the way.

Willie Sanderson came into my mind and I had the fear of a boxer who connects with his best punches but his opponent keeps on coming, round after round. But the fright didn’t last long. Sanderson was a reminder of the girl-child who had offered me a treasure. She was rich, but she had suffered, too. I was too late to save her. I caused less damage when I’d done piecework for killers and thieves.

I don’t know how long I sat there or if those thoughts came quickly or slow.

The door to the room opened, allowing Bethann Bonilla and Carson Kitteridge to enter. She was wearing a buff-colored dress suit and he was clad in a shabby green, single-button two-piece that he had owned for at least the last five years.

The homicide sergeant’s face was mostly impassive. She seemed distant and maybe just a touch confused. Carson’s attempt at a poker face, on the other hand, could not mask the fact that he expected to win the pot.

They pulled up chairs opposite me and settled in.

I wondered if I could walk.

“Lana Hull,” Kitteridge said. “Her first name is Veronica but I guess she prefers her middle name.”

“That supposed to mean something to me?”

“Her maiden name was Maxwell, but she lived with a guy named Paxton for a while. Her son was Thom Paxton.”

I didn’t care. My face, I was sure, revealed that fact.

“We know that she hired a detective named Norman Fell to find the men who she blamed for her son’s death.” Carson could not repress the smile.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“Why do you say that, Mr. McGill?” Bonilla asked.

“Kid died seventeen years ago. How come all of a sudden outta nowhere she’s gonna start looking for those men?”

“She didn’t know until recently,” Carson said. “When Thom was young, just a boy, she was committed to a mental institution by her parents and the father of her child. They say she’s a schizophrenic. Her boyfriend, Lloyd, moved away and kept the boy. Later on, when Thom died, the father, through Lana’s mother, let her know that he’d succumbed to pneumonia. But when the father died, six months ago, he left a letter for Lana. In the letter he told her what he remembered about the boy’s death. There was a letter of explanation from the detective in charge of the investigation.

“It wasn’t much. But I guess it was enough for you to find them after Fell fed you the nicknames. How did you manage to get into sealed records, anyway?”

I wasn’t going to incriminate his disgraced partner but I’m sure he suspected.

“Fell gave the names to Lana Hull and she told Willie,” Carson continued. “They had become very close when she was at the nut-house after a relapse.

“Willie killed three of the men outright and had his cousin pay somebody to knife the one they call Toolie in prison. Toolie’s dead, by the bye, he had a heart attack. They’re calling it homicide anyway.”

“Mr. McGill?” Bonilla said tentatively. There was a hesitance in her tone, as if she hoped that her question would go unanswered.

“Yeah?”

“Why?”

“That’s a big question.”

“Why risk your life like that?”

I opened my mouth but that was as far as I could get.

“He might not say it,” Carson interjected, “but you better believe that old LT has an angle.”³€€ he

I could see that Kitteridge was smitten with the homicide sergeant. She, on the other hand, was not convinced by his cavalier indictment.

“Why am I here,” I asked, “instead of at home, in my bed?”

“You know,” Kitteridge said.

“No, I don’t.”

I gazed into Sergeant Bonilla’s eyes and she glanced away.

“Fell,” Kittridge said.

“I know a guy named Thurman.”

“Three other dead bodies, four if you include Willie.”

“Sanderson’s dead?” I asked.

“Brain hemorrhage. You finally got him, LT.”

I only had a high school diploma but I knew my numbers. There should have been five corpses even if the security guard under the flower arrangement had not died.

I looked up at Carson and his eyebrows rose an eighth of an inch.

“Am I under arrest?” I asked. I was feeling better.

“No. The DA is concentrating on Lana Hull, but he can’t get to her.”

“Why not?”

“She’s up in Albany, institutionalized again. Her father-in-law, too. You know the old man was knee-deep in gangsters since he was in his teens. We think he might have helped the wife but they got more lawyers than a teenager’s got pimples. If it ever comes to trial, you will be asked to testify.”

“I’ll keep my calendar open,” I said, grabbing on to the table and hoisting myself up.

I put some weight on my left foot and almost fell back into the chair.

“Should I get you a crutch?” Bethann asked.

“No need,” I said.

I took a step and stopped, took another step. The pain didn’t ease but I was coming to understand it. I limped to the door, grateful for the knob, and then lurched out into the brightly lit, light-green hallway. I had taken half a dozen steps when Carson called to me. Gratefully, I rested my hand against the wall and waited for him.

“Thanks for the save,” he said. “You did a good job out there. I should’ve sent a squad car up to the Hulls’ place. I wasn’t that worried because I figured they were rich and had some kind of security system.”

³€€ updiv height="1em" width="1em" align="justify"“They had a good gate,” I said. “How did Sanderson get in?”

“It wasn’t clear but he probably had the combination to the keypad.”

“Lana would have given it to him—if they were friends.”

“Probably. Anyway, LT, you saved my butt there. If it had gone wrong, I’d probably be out of a job or writing parking tickets on Staten Island.”

He held out his hand.

I accepted the capitulation.

“My son was surfing the Net the other day,” I said, “looking for porn, I guess. Anyway, he came upon this site called zebramanonthehunt517.com. You should take a look at it. I think that it’ll get you some brownie points with the brass.”

Carson frowned.

“What?” I asked him.

“This doesn’t let you off the hook, LT,” he said. “I still plan to put your ass in stir.”

“What’s a little jail time between friends?”

Ê€„

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.”

Ê€„

55

Mrs. Selma Guttman was in San Francisco visiting with her daughter for three weeks. Through a website advertising temporary rentals that Zephyra kept tabs on I was able to get her a place for that time. It cost two thousand dollars but it was worth it.