The Long Fall (20 page)

“Roberto says they got fans going all over the restaurant until the air’s fixed. That ought to help cover the worst of the noise. Besides, it shouldn’t take long with the saw anyway.”

A minute later, just as Jimmy’s flicking the cigarette away, the door opens, and Roberto pokes his head out and spots Don. Roberto opens the door wider and disengages the deadbolt. He gives Don a hug. Jimmy figures Roberto for early twenties. He’s tall and thin and working mightily on a mustache.

When Don takes out the fifty, Roberto tells him it’s not necessary for such a small favor, but Don sticks the bill in the breast pocket of Roberto’s white shirt and tells him a young guy can always use some walking-around money.

Don and Jimmy gather the tools, and once they’re inside the door, the storeroom’s off to their right through another door that’s left unlocked until closing. Above the west corner of the storeroom is the open hole that normally would hold a grated ceiling panel. The air-conditioning crew hadn’t bothered to replace it. Jimmy sets up the extension ladder and climbs up with the saw and flashlights into the crawl space running the length of the strip mall and then leans over and takes the rest of the stuff Don’s carrying.

Don’s already red-faced and winded by the time he clears the lip of the hole. He squeezes past Jimmy, and Jimmy reaches down and snags the ladder. It’s a tight fit, but he drops the extension, shortening it, and is just able to angle it through the opening.

The crawl space is three and a half feet high, and the flooring is new plywood, which hasn’t been nailed down yet. The air’s close and hot, and Jimmy’s pretty much soaked through his shirt by the time they’re above the toy store.

Don locates an outlet along the wall with his flashlight and plugs in the saw.

Jimmy pulls back the plywood, exposing the rafters, then takes the saw and crawls out and begins cutting a long rectangular hole in the three feet of space between each rafter. Within the confines of the crawl space, the saw roars like a plane engine, and Jimmy’s breathing sawdust and plaster.

Don slides the ladder between the rafters, and Jimmy again worries the angle, and when he has enough of it through, he opens the extension and pulls up while the lower half falls and then locks into place.

Don tosses over the two boxes of trash bags, and Jimmy tucks the flashlight under his arm and climbs down into the Toy Box.

The front blinds are drawn, so Jimmy fires up the flashlight right away. The toys are laid out on a combination of shelves and tables. Near the cash register is a large aquarium full of small yellow fish with black vertical stripes darting and swarming like sparks from a welding gun.

The collection of retired Beanie Babies are along one wall in a large glass-enclosed case six shelves high. The lock’s strictly for show. Jimmy’s able to tap it out with a toy hammer.
Beanie Bucks,
Jimmy thinks. It takes five trash bags to empty the shelves. Jimmy carries them over to the ladder and passes them up to Don.

“Don’t forget the Furbys,” Don whispers.

“What the fuck’s a Furby?” Jimmy asks.

“It’s just what the name sounds like,” Don says, “and they’re about four inches tall. Pete said there’s been an unexpected run on them at the stores, and he can unload all we can get.”

Jimmy hunts down the Furbys and finds a table of them in the center aisle of the store. Under the beam of the flashlight, they look like gigantic hairballs with eyes. They come one to a box, and it takes three more trash bags to get them all. There are four of them out of the boxes on display, and Jimmy tosses those in as well.

It’s not long before Jimmy’s spooked. He’s hearing voices, but what he hears doesn’t make any sense. It’s just a bunch of shrill jabber, and he’s not even sure where it’s coming from at first.

“What the hell does ‘Doo-moh may-may kah’ mean?” he asks when he gets to the ladder. “These things sound like chimps in heat.”

Don grabs the first two bags, then the others, and pulls them through the hole in the ceiling.

“I’ll be just a second,” Jimmy says. He takes a quick look around and figures what the hell, jumping down and making a quick run through the store, loading up a couple trash bags with model dinosaurs, a magic kit, microscope, rocket set, B-B gun, and two baseball gloves.

“Man, what took you?” Don asks. “We need to get out of here.”

“Picked up a few things for the other kids,” Jimmy says, handing up the bags.

Jimmy drags the ladder back through the crawl space and angles it to the floor of the storeroom.

Roberto’s waiting for them. He glances at the pile of plastic bags and then checks his watch, telling Don that it’s almost time for the servers to take their last break of the night.

“A bunch of them like to step out back for a cigarette,” he says. “It would be a good idea for you to be loaded and gone before they do.”

Jimmy carries the tools, and Don two-fists a bunch of the bags holding the Beanie Babies, and they head out the door. Despite the time factor, things are looking good. Don tells Jimmy that Pete Samoa’s waiting for them at the Pawn Emporium. Once they drop the stuff off, they can head over to the Chute and catch a few rounds and celebrate.

They toss the stuff in the back of the Renzler’s Meats truck and hurry back for another load.

This time Jimmy picks up the bags holding the Furbys. They’re still going at it, jabbering away, one voice overlapping the other. He shakes the bags, but that only seems to make it worse, so he speeds it up. Don’s a couple of steps ahead of him.

One of the Furbys says, “Dah way-loh” just before the bag explodes.

Don starts to turn and then yells like he’s had his hand slammed in a door.

Jimmy’s barely had time to register the third shot when Don spins around and crashes into him, knocking Jimmy to the ground and falling on top of him.

There are a couple of more shots. They seem to be coming from the far side of the lot. Jimmy keeps his head low.

Don’s moaning, “Man, oh, man,” over and over again. Jimmy tells him they’ve got to get up and move. As in
now.

Don stops moaning and starts in babbling. He’s all over the map. He’s talking about Teresa’s chile rellenos, Gabriel and Gabriella’s first words, a dog named Chip Off the Block that had paid off at six to one, season tickets for the Suns, last month’s electric bill, the ceiling fans he still has to hang, and the way the incense at Sunday Mass always makes him sneeze.

Jimmy’s plenty scared. He keeps interrupting Don, telling him to get up, but all of Don’s weight is on Jimmy, pinning him against the wall.

The shots are coming from across the parking lot, the next north-south street over. Jimmy can hear people shouting.

“Come on, Don,” he says.

Jimmy starts pushing against him, trying to lever his way out.

The Furbys are screaming.

Jimmy pushes again.

Don’s arm tears free and comes off at the shoulder.

I
t was supposed to have been Jimmy Coates’s last night on earth. That’s what Aaron Limbe had intended. Somehow, though, everything had gotten away from him.

He’d killed a cop. And at least two others. There’d been witnesses. He’d shot as many of them as he could, but there’d still be someone who would remember something that would eventually place him. It might take time, but it would happen. Limbe was sure of it. He’d been a cop, after all, for twelve years and knew how witnesses and memory worked. Someone would remember something.

Aaron Limbe checks the rearview and then the speedometer. He’s right at the limit. There’s a large half-moon to the south, white as a thumbnail under pressure. Limbe is heading for the Mesa View Inn on the slim chance that Coates will double back and grab some of his belongings before he goes to ground.

He checks the rearview again and then unwraps and slips a breath mint onto his tongue.

Tonight was supposed to have been the night. He’d been ready. One clean shot, that’s all he needed.

Limbe had staked out the Mesa View Inn shortly after dark and then had followed Coates and Ruger to a diner on Van Buren and later to a strip mall on Indian School Road.

Limbe had taken the next street to the left and pulled into a convenience store lot and parked by a flat, hinged-top, green metal dumpster. Directly below him was a short grassy slope and then southwest, about fifty yards away, was the back of the strip mall. The white delivery truck was about ten yards from the back door to the Mex restaurant. At a diagonal to the truck was a small cluster of cars that Limbe figured to be employee parking. It was a small lot, and the rest of it was empty.

Limbe moved his car a half block up the street and then took the Marlin semiautomatic rifle from his trunk and walked back to the convenience store lot and climbed up on the dumpster and set up shop.

One clean shot.

His eyes had eventually adjusted to the light. One of the halogens behind him, near the street, was on its way out, and it had flickered softly and slowly like a thin stream of clouds passing across the face of the moon.

Limbe practiced sighting on the white delivery truck, then on the back door of the Mex restaurant.

When the back door to the restaurant opened, Limbe had reached over and clicked off the safety on the Marlin. Don Ruger came out first with his hands full of black trash bags, then Coates, who carried an armload of tools.

Aaron Limbe had been ready to pull the trigger when he’d been distracted by movement off to his left, a small flash of red and white that he registered on the periphery of his vision, and by the time he saw it was nothing more than a paper hat caught in a gust of wind, the clerk from the convenience store who’d lost it had spotted him on the dumpster and begun shouting, and Limbe had reflexively swung and fired and taken the kid out.

That momentary loss of concentration hurt, because when Limbe resighted the Marlin, he rushed the shots. Coates and Ruger had been making a second trip to the truck. The first shot hit one of the black plastic bags, the second caught Don Ruger in the shoulder, and the third spun Ruger around and into Coates.

The clerk started dragging himself across the pavement and yelling for help.

A guy at the self-serve pump pointed and shouted something Limbe couldn’t catch.

Then there’d been more voices and shouting as people spilled out of the store.

Limbe had expected Coates to break for the restaurant door or the truck, but he’d surprised him by zigzagging across the lot and then rolling across the pavement, taking cover behind the cluster of cars in the employee parking slots.

Limbe laid down a line of fire around and through the cars, keeping Coates pinned, and then ejected the clip and jammed in another.

Everything was starting to get away from him.

The clerk kept calling for help. Limbe shot him again so he wouldn’t have to listen to it.

Then he emptied another clip into the cars, hoping to flush Coates out.

While he was reloading, a patrol car pulled into the convenience store lot.

Limbe, at least, had the element of surprise on his side. The police had not been responding to a call. They were on break. They got out of the car and stood in the open while they tried to make sense of what the others were shouting about.

When the guy at the pumps grabbed the first patrolman and pointed in Limbe’s direction, Aaron shot him in the stomach, then swung and fired and caught the patrolman in the chest.

He got the second patrolman just as he’d been jumping back into the car.

Limbe emptied the remainder of the clip on the five or six witnesses as they scrambled for the front doors of the convenience store.

As if on cue, there’d been the long, low howl of sirens in the distance.

Limbe reloaded.

He knew Coates would hear those sirens, too.

Coates, though, outwaited him, and Limbe finally had to slide off the dumpster and run the half block north to his car, where he put the rifle in the trunk and then got behind the wheel, counting slowly to ten before he started the car and pulled out in traffic, forcing himself to drive south past the convenience store and slow and gawk like everyone else at the chaos of lights and bodies, and then he made the intersection of Indian School Road and drove west, carefully maintaining the speed limit.

Everything had gotten away from him. Coates was still alive. And Limbe had killed a cop.

He’d seen the second one being helped out of the patrol car when he’d driven past the convenience store, but one dead cop was enough, more than enough, to complicate everything.

Limbe can remember all too clearly the feeling among the rank and file when one of their own went down and the perp was still at large.

He needed to get out of town, but he must do it right, not just run and hope he can stay hidden.

He needs to disappear.

And for that he needs money. Enough money to do it right.

Limbe still has contacts in Nicaragua. They can connect him with people in various parts of Central and South America who have use for his services and talent.

But for that, he needs a stake.

By the time he’s made south Scottsdale, Limbe has figured out a way to get it. And the beauty behind the idea is that it will also give him another chance to finish Jimmy Coates.

Limbe scouts out a pay phone and makes two calls, both to the same number.

The first time he talks to Richard Coates and tells him that he’s the dispatcher for the Mesa Fire Department and that there’s been a fire at his dry-cleaning shop. He assures Coates that it’s under control, but adds that it might be a good idea for him to call his insurance company and then come out for a look.

Limbe then walks over to his car and waits five minutes. Then he dials Richard Coates’s number again.

Evelyn Coates picks it up on the second ring.

“I’m a friend of Jimmy’s,” Limbe says, “and he asked me to call you.”

“Is he all right?”

“Yes,” Limbe says, “considering what happened tonight.”

“I was just on my way to meet him,” Evelyn says.