The Long Fall (22 page)

He guides her picture by picture, lingering on each, one row after another, seventy-two photos in all.

“You’re still fighting me, Evelyn,” he says when they’re done. “I could feel the tension in your neck, the resistance the whole time. You still refuse to see.” For a moment, he sounds genuinely sorry.

Then he brings out the duct tape again.

His hand is back on her neck, hard.

“Look at the wall, Evelyn. That’s not making love. We’re not talking about love. It’s friction. Fucking. Fornication. It’s two animals in heat.”

When she tries to shake her head, his fingers lock on the tendons cording her neck. Small patches of white and yellow swim into her peripheral vision.

“Look at yourself in those photos, Evelyn. What you’re doing. Look at the way you spread your legs. Look at what you’re doing with your hands, your mouth. Look at what you let be done to you.”

No, she thinks.
No. This isn’t happening.

“Jimmy Coates ruins everything he touches, and you let him between your legs and took him inside you. He ruined you, Evelyn. You’re a fallen woman. That’s what people used to call someone like you when I was a child. Fallen.” He pauses, and she feels his breath as well as his fingers on her neck. “You’ll understand what Jimmy Coates is once you accept what you’ve become.”

No.

It’s the only word that makes sense, the one she repeats to herself while Aaron Limbe continues to talk,
No,
over and over, to the way he’s twisted things, because she knows who she is and what Jimmy and she had together, knows how passion can burn you clean of everything except itself and how there is a grace in the trembling of flesh before flesh and how in the moment of its joining you simultaneously find and lose yourself, and that’s all love has ever been or will be, the finding and losing of yourself in the touch of another, and that’s enough,

more than enough, and probably more than any of us deserve, and if she could, if it weren’t for the duct tape stretched tightly across her mouth, she’d scream the NO she’s been repeating to herself in Aaron Limbe’s face, a NO as stubborn, resolute, and defiant as she could make it, but right now she’s afraid because she’s having difficulty remembering what Aaron Limbe looks like, and she needs to remember that, to hold on to his image, because it’s easier to fight back then, but Aaron Limbe has slowly turned into his voice, and like the darkness it arises from, the voice swallows all contexts except its own, and Evelyn’s afraid to close her eyes because that would be like inviting the voice and the darkness in, but what light she’s left with only leads to the wall and the photos covering it, and because of that, everything has shrunken to the NO she’s holding deep in her chest like a breath.

By 3
P.M.
, a pot of coffee has sobered Richard up, and he’s showered, shaved, and changed suits and gone on to pick up the ransom money at the bank.

Jimmy’s sitting behind the desk in the second-floor office. He picks up the phone and punches out Pete Samoa’s number.

“Oh man,” Pete says after a moment. “This sounds like a local connection. Please tell me I’m wrong here.”

“Have the cops been around?”

“Of course. You left the Renzler’s truck three blocks away. What did you think? They’re all over the place on this one. A cop got killed. They’re not going to leave it alone any time soon. I was able to tell them you were out of town, keep everything nice and neat. And then what? You show up again.”

“Look, Pete, I need to talk to Ray Harp.”

“You’re out of town and clear. Then you come back. I’m still not believing this.”

“It’s important. I need to get ahold of Ray.”

“He won’t talk to you. Not now.” Pete goes on about Ray Harp’s troubles with Limon Perez and the Mexican gangs and Newt Deems getting shot and ending up in intensive care.

“It’s Limbe,” Jimmy says. “I need to talk to Ray about Limbe.”

Pete doesn’t say anything for a moment.

“Come on,” Jimmy says. “Give me the number.”

“It won’t do you any good. Aaron Limbe is AWOL. He doesn’t work for Ray anymore. He walked about four days ago, right around the time all the trouble started with Perez. That’s all I can tell you. No one’s seen him around.”

That’s it, Jimmy thinks, feeling his hope evaporate. Ray Harp was his best chance at curbing Aaron Limbe. Jimmy figured he’d offer Ray a cut from the ransom if he’d step in. Limbe was used to taking orders from Ray, and with the right leverage, Ray might have just been able to get Evelyn back unharmed. It was a bread-and-butter plan, a basic end run, the only thing Jimmy could come up with that might work.

Jimmy racks the phone and then looks down at his hands. After a while, he gets up from the desk and wanders down the hall. He stands in the doorway of the master bedroom, looking in, listening to the sound of his breath, until he hears Richard return.

The money is in a tan canvas bag. A pair of cuffs dangles from its grip. Jimmy sits down at the kitchen table across from his brother, and they wait for the phone and more instructions from Aaron Limbe.

Behind and to her left, Aaron Limbe talks about the true world and the ascendancy of form revealed in the universal hierarchy and about the nature and breadth of consequence leading to the works of a true and perfect wrath.

“There’s no room for forgiveness,” Limbe tells her. “There never has been. Jesus wanted to be loved. So he lied. A failed romance, that’s all the New Testament is. A second-rate love story.”

He steps over and places his hand on Evelyn’s head, his fingers lightly resting in her hair.

A thing is what it’s named,
he tells her.

Whore,
for example.

Adulterer.

Cunt.

Then his foot abruptly snakes around the leg of the chair and pulls it off center and out, slamming her to the floor. Evelyn lies on her side, sweat sheeting her, trying to take in enough air to keep from blacking out.

Limbe rights the chair with her still in it, waits a few seconds, and then kicks the leg out again. Her right shoulder takes the brunt of the fall this time.

She won’t cry. She won’t give him that.

She’s not sure how many times he repeats the sequence. She can’t anticipate how long he’ll wait before he steps in again and kicks the chair out and lets gravity claim her. Her right shoulder burns, and her spine aches. Her breath is three steps ahead of her.

When she looks at the wall of photos this time, it seems impossible that the body she inhabits in them had ever felt pleasure or joy or desire, in fact, felt anything beyond thirst, pain, and exhaustion. What she sees, over and over again in the rows, is flesh and its demands.

Limbe twists the neck of the lamp, adjusting the fall of light, the black-and-white photos disappearing and Evelyn’s chest, lap, and legs jumping into stark relief.

Limbe unties the ropes binding her wrists. Her hands are numb. He takes them and sets them in her lap.

He then peels away the duct tape, giving her voice back to her, but her words, like the feeling in her hands, have fled, and Evelyn’s afraid to open her mouth and do anything but breathe. She’s seized by nightmare logic, afraid that if she tries to speak, nothing at all will happen or that it will be Limbe’s voice and words that spill from her mouth.

Limbe drops a manila envelope in her lap and tells her to open it.

Evelyn can’t make her fingers move.

Limbe says something about a Laundromat, Jimmy owing money.

“Look at the envelope, Evelyn. Who it’s addressed to. Then look at the handwriting.”

He waits a moment, then says, “I took the envelope from your lover. He doesn’t know I have it. He was going to send it to your house, Evelyn. To your husband.”

Limbe reaches down and squeezes her right hand hard. “Open it.”

She bends her head and slowly works her nails under the flap of the envelope and tears it open.

She slips her hand inside.
No,
she thinks.
No.

“Meat,” Aaron Limbe says. “That’s all you are and ever have been to Jimmy Coates. Nothing more than a way of getting back at his brother.”

No,
she thinks.

“Tell me about love, Evelyn,” Aaron Limbe says.

She closes her eyes.

The manila envelope falls to the floor.

Montana was supposed to have been a blank page for both of them, she thinks.

She’s left holding a wadded pair of blue panties.

Evelyn remembers standing amidst the chaos of Jimmy’s room at the Mesa View Inn and lifting one leg, then the other, as Jimmy peeled them off, then later that night, looking for them as she dressed to go home.

And then she’s crying.

Despite everything she’s told herself, Evelyn’s crying, great chest-wrenching sobs that run into each other like waves and come from some place far off that she now can barely remember.

She holds the panties tight in her fist and cries. She can’t stop. She doesn’t even try to.

Aaron Limbe adjusts the lamp again. The north wall of the living room and the photos swim back into focus and hold.

Evelyn bows her head. She’s still clutching the panties.

After a moment, Aaron Limbe reaches over and lifts her chin.

“Tell me what you see, Evelyn,” he says. “Then you can get dressed, and we’ll take a little ride to West Dobbins for the big reunion.”

“He wouldn’t let me talk to her,” Richard says. “He wanted to make sure I had the money. I don’t even know if Evelyn’s alive. It’s going on nineteen hours.”

Jimmy looks at the canvas bag sitting on the kitchen table. His brother crosses the room and draws a glass of water. “He said you’re supposed to go someplace called the Chute at five, and he’d call you there with the final instructions.”

“Keep it on his terms,” Jimmy says. He can hear the subtext creeping into Richard’s voice. “No cops.”

“But they know how to handle things like this. They’re professionals. He’s given us an opening, mentioning the Chute.” Richard sets the glass down on the counter. Behind him, the bay window opens onto the afternoon sky. It’s filled with sour yellow light, different from the usual late-summer haze of thermal inversions, and reminds Jimmy of a piece of old newspaper.

“He’s testing you,” Jimmy says finally.

“Why should I believe you?”

“Because I know who we’re dealing with. You don’t want to do something like that, believe me, with this guy.”

There’s a long pause, and then Richard says, “I don’t like the idea of Evelyn’s life being in your hands.”

“It’s not. It’s in yours, Richard. And if you bring in the cops, her blood will be on them. I guarantee it.”

There’s another long pause, and Jimmy can sense Richard’s about to go self-righteous on him and decides he’d better shut him down quick.

“You’re forgetting something else, Richard. You hired the guy to kill someone. You really think it’s a good idea to get the cops involved? You ready to face what might shake out if they catch the guy?” Richard checks his watch. “I’m going with you then.”

“No way,” Jimmy says.

“I have to go. I can’t count on you to follow instructions.”

Richard points at the canvas bag. “That’s a lot of money, and it’s the only thing that’s going to get Evelyn back.”

Jimmy lets out his breath. “You’re not in charge here, Richard. You keep forgetting that. You can’t change the conditions for delivering the ransom at the last minute.”

“Why you?” Richard asks. “Anybody but you.”

He turns briefly away, then turns and steps in and hits Jimmy. It’s a straight sucker punch. Jimmy’s head snaps back. A second later, he’s tasting blood.

Richard hits him again, catching him on the side of the face. Jimmy’s flailing his arms and trying to set up, but Richard has the reach, those long arms of his, and catches him again, and this time Jimmy’s on the floor.

Richard stands over him, opening and closing his fists like gills.

Jimmy slowly gets up and heads for the sink and splashes some cold water on his face. Drying up, he notices a pair of steel barbecue tongs in the dish rack. He looks over his shoulder at Richard, then slips the tongs in the back pocket of his jeans and pulls his T-shirt over them. He walks back over to the kitchen table and picks up the canvas bag.

“I need to be going,” Jimmy says.

“Anybody but you,” Richard says again, but lets him past.

On the way to the Chute, Jimmy conjures up Evelyn. They’re on their way to Montana. She’s sitting next to him, her feet up on the dash, and at a glance, Jimmy can take in the small bright splashes of red nail polish and the long lines of her legs, the inverted
V
they make.

The reverie, though, quickly sputters out.

Jimmy tells himself he has to stay focused on what needs to be done, but the self-doubts and panics keep crowding him. At best, he has a couple of ideas that, taken together, don’t quite add up to a plan. Aaron Limbe’s holding the patent on everything else.

At the Chute, Jimmy takes a stool at the end of the bar near the pay phone. He’s got the canvas bag handcuffed to his left wrist. Leon Glade is tending. Jimmy looks around, then reaches into his back pocket for the stainless steel barbecue tongs.

“Hey, Leon,” Jimmy says, clicking them twice. “I need to talk to you for a minute.”

A
aron Limbe set the meet at Jimmy’s grandfather’s place, the old farmhouse on West Dobbins. Jimmy’s parked his pickup a hundred yards from the entrance to the driveway, figuring that given the condition of the truck’s exhaust system, anything closer would have been the equivalent of hiring a marching band to announce his arrival.

The wind has picked up, and the sky is the color of butter gone bad. The signs have been following him around all afternoon, and Jimmy’s been tracking the progress of the storm in his rearview, a half-mile-high wall of dust, all swarm and roil, sweeping in from the east and spreading across the entire Maricopa Valley. He figures he has fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes before it catches up with him.

The gate at the end of the drive is closed but not locked. The house sits about a quarter of a mile in on a flat rise, the four-acre stretch that had once been the front yard now completely feral, dense with vegetation and thicket-ridden, strewn with scattered outcroppings of rock and junk the locals have dumped over the years.