The Long Fall (23 page)

Near the top of the drive, Jimmy locks the cuffs on the canvas bag to his left wrist and takes out a Smith & Wesson 3904 from the waistband of his jeans. The gun’s a Pete Samoa special, a third- or fourth-generation pawn, the serial number filed down, the grip secured with electrical tape, a nine-millimeter auto that’s basically a collection of lethal scrap masquerading as a firearm, but it’s the only thing Jimmy could come up with on short notice.

He leaves the drive, ducks through a tangle of mesquite and creosote and tarbush and works his way toward the front of the house. The wind kicks in stronger, leaves and branches rattling and chattering with each sustained gust, the air darkening.

He needs to make sure Evelyn’s in the house. Jimmy’s under no illusion that this is a standard-issue kidnapping. No way he can walk in with the cash and walk out with Evelyn. Not with Aaron Limbe calling the shots.

Jimmy edges along the east wall of the house. Limbe’s car is parked out back on the wide gravel apron fronting the orchard and storage shed. From what Jimmy can tell, the front of the house is empty.

The air’s turned grainy, and the wind hisses like the rush of a faucet opened wide.

He seals off the part of his brain setting odds that Aaron Limbe has already disposed of Evelyn’s body.

He keeps checking windows.

He finds her in the dining room off the kitchen. She’s tied to a chair in the middle of the floor. All the furniture has been moved and pushed off to the side. In the corner are a large toolbox and a pile of power tools. Evelyn’s staring straight ahead, toward the front of the house. There’s no sign of Limbe.

Jimmy remains crouched at the bottom edge of the window and reins in the urge to tap on the glass. The dust is blotting out the afternoon. The wind driving it feels like someone’s jabbing him hard in the back of the neck with the stiff end of a broom.

Evelyn doesn’t glance his way once.

Jimmy finally breaks from his crouch and sprints to Aaron Limbe’s car. It’s unlocked. He slips inside and hot-wires it. Once the idle has smoothed, he reaches up and puts the car in gear and lets it roll slowly down the gravel apron toward the driveway. Jimmy jogs along with it, keeping the car between the house and him.

Come on,
he thinks.
Come on.

He leans through the driver’s window and taps the horn twice.

A few seconds later, the kitchen door opens.

Jimmy raises the Smith & Wesson.

The world disappears in a gust of wind.

Everything’s reduced to a muddy-brown churn and choke. It’s as if he’s trapped inside an immense vacuum cleaner.

The car stalls out.

Something moves off to his right.

Jimmy fires. He wants to end it and end it now, to footnote Aaron Limbe and take him right off the page.

The back windshield of the car explodes.

The earth and sky tear themselves apart.

Jimmy fires again. He keeps his finger on the trigger and swings his arm, trying to space and place his shots. Limbe’s ghosting every one. Tracking him through the storm is like trying to step on your own shadow.

“That’s eight,” Limbe calls out.

Jimmy drops next to the left front tire. He kicks out the magazine on the 3904 and starts scrambling through his pockets for reloads. He’s got dirt in his eyes, and he’s fighting the urge to rub them, knowing that will only make it worse, but his vision’s the equivalent of a mud-streaked windshield. There’s no teamwork among his fingers either. He’s dropping bullets everywhere.

He suddenly thinks of his buddy, Don Ruger, dying in the parking lot of a toy store.

Jimmy’s started talking to himself, anything to slow that long slide into pure panic where there’s nothing but nerve endings and no excuses or help.

Right now, he’s floating hope like a loan.

He manages to thumb two bullets into the magazine.

When he looks up, Aaron Limbe is standing next to him.

W
ith all the furniture pushed aside, the house has an off-balance, lopsided feel to it, as if Jimmy were stuck inside a ship that had run seriously aground.

Evelyn’s still in the chair. Aaron Limbe is standing behind her. He’s holding Jimmy’s Smith & Wesson auto in his right hand.

Jimmy barely recognizes Evelyn. Her face is drawn, battered from lack of sleep, and her eyes are raccooned, her posture crushed. The rumpled white T-shirt and jeans hang on her frame. Everything about her looks punished and diminished.

Limbe places his hand on top of Evelyn’s head. “We’re going to finish this now, Evelyn,” he says softly. “It’s time. You understand that, don’t you, even if Jimmy doesn’t.”

Limbe drops his hand to the back of her neck. “Where we are now,” he says, “is what happens any time Jimmy Coates steps into someone’s life.”

“Evelyn,” Jimmy says, but she won’t look at him. Her shoulders start to shake, and she lowers her head.

“You never know if love’s true unless it’s tested,” Limbe says. He tosses the Smith & Wesson over to Jimmy.

After catching it, Jimmy kicks out the magazine. It’s empty.

When he looks up, Limbe’s holding a nine-millimeter bullet between his thumb and index finger.

“One shot,” Limbe says. “I’m giving you a chance to save her.”

He walks over and sets the bullet on the counter separating the dining room and kitchen.

“Come on,” Limbe says. “You love her, don’t you, Jimmy?”

Jimmy takes a couple of steps, hesitates, then stops. He looks around the room and then back at Aaron Limbe. The bullet’s ten feet away. “I don’t get it,” he says.

Limbe pulls a .38 from the small of his back and waves his arm, pointing the gun in Evelyn’s direction, then Jimmy’s. “You’ll do it if you love her.”

“What?”

“Kill her,” Limbe says.

“You can’t be serious.” Jimmy hears his voice breaking. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Sense is not something you make,” Limbe says. “It’s something revealed to those who have prepared themselves.”

He’s got hands like a kid,
Jimmy thinks. He’s not sure why he’s just gotten around to noticing that. With Aaron Limbe, it had always been the eyes that snagged you first, that pale gray dead-end stare that unnerved and spooked you, the rest of Limbe taking a backseat to those eyes, leaving him with the generic bearing of a mortician during calling hours, a presence you registered but never quite fully took in.

“You’re both going to die,” Limbe says. “That’s not the point. The point is who goes first.” He pauses, then adds, “A chance to save her is what I’m offering you.”

“I still don’t get it,” Jimmy says. “I’m supposed to kill Evelyn to save her? From what, exactly?”

“From what I’ll do to her if I end up having to kill you first.”

Limbe’s smiling now, waiting for Jimmy to work out the exact dimensions of what they’re looking at.

“No way,” Jimmy says finally. “No way I’m going to do something like that.”

Limbe turns and picks up an electric belt sander from the pile of tools in the corner, then walks over to Evelyn and rests the sander along the inside of her upper left thigh.

“Think about it,” he says.

Despite himself, Jimmy does. He can’t help it. His gaze keeps traveling from the sander and then down the length of Evelyn’s thigh to the knee of her jeans and back again, Jimmy not able to do anything but think about that wide black tongue of sandpaper and Limbe’s finger on the switch.

Limbe tosses the sander back on the floor. “What’s it going to be, Jimmy? Do you love Evelyn enough to kill her or not?”

Evelyn lifts her head and looks at Jimmy for the first time. She mouths the word
Please.

“That’s all you need,” Limbe says. “Love and one correctly placed shot.” He reaches over and touches the base of Evelyn’s neck.

Evelyn won’t break eye contact now. She’s looking straight at Jimmy. It’s the same look she’d given him on those nights when she’d stood in his room at the Mesa View Inn and started to undress.

Jimmy walks over to the kitchen counter. Aaron Limbe follows, standing behind him as Jimmy picks up the bullet and thumbs it into the magazine of the Smith & Wesson and they walk back into the middle of the dining room.

Here we go,
Jimmy thinks, lifting the pistol.

He places the Smith & Wesson against his right temple.

“Wait a minute,” Limbe says. “What are you doing?”

Jimmy hefts and shakes the canvas bag handcuffed to his wrist. “You screwed up, Aaron,” he says. “How do you know the money’s all here? What if I stashed it somewhere else?”

Limbe doesn’t say anything.

“It’s your turn to think about it,” Jimmy says. “Fifty thousand bucks. What if it’s not here, and I shoot myself? What are you going to do then?”

“You fucker,” Limbe says quietly.

“Let her go,” Jimmy says, “and we deal.”

“No,” Limbe says. “That’s not acceptable. She stays. She can ID me. We finish it.”

“How far are you going to get on what’s in your pockets, Limbe? You killed four people, one of them a cop.”

Limbe shakes his head. “Where we are is nonnegotiable, Coates. I said no.”

For a while, the only sound is that of wind pushing dust and the creak of rafters.

Jimmy keeps the Smith & Wesson 3904 wedged against his temple. Limbe has the .38 pointed at Jimmy’s chest. They wait each other out.

A little Hollywood Logic, Jimmy thinks.

That’s what he’s counting on, some Hollywood Logic, what Howard Modine, his philosophy prof drinking buddy, used to rail about at the Chute over some cold ones, Modine going on and on about how the Citizens based their lives on Hollywood Logic, an unswerving belief that the Big Script, no matter how bad things looked, always held the ending they wanted.

Howard Modine, though, never had to stare down Aaron Limbe. Sometimes Hollywood Logic was all you had.

Jimmy decides it’s time to ride it out.

He glances over at Evelyn, giving Limbe the opening he’s been waiting for and trying not to be obvious and italicize it.

Limbe quickly drops his arm, feints to the left, then abruptly cuts right and knocks Jimmy off his feet. Limbe grabs the Smith & Wesson and tosses it against the wall. He pins Jimmy to the floor, one knee on his chest, the other on the bicep of his left arm. He puts the .38 in Jimmy’s face and with his left hand pulls over the canvas bag handcuffed to Jimmy’s wrist.

On the periphery of his vision, Jimmy sees Evelyn slowly lower her head.

Limbe keeps the gun and his gaze trained on Jimmy while he reaches over and unzips the bag. Jimmy begins to deejay it, slipping into a soft, fast patter, hoping the words he’s running will be enough of a distraction.

Limbe works his hand inside the bag and smiles.

“Nice try, Coates.” He pulls out a stack of bound bills and drops them on the floor, then reaches inside the bag again, riffling deeper this time.

And then it happens.

Jimmy can read it in Limbe’s face even before he yells out.

Limbe jerks his hand free of the bag. The sidewinder from the Chute comes with it. The snake’s a foot and a half of writhe and venom and has its fangs embedded in the underside of Limbe’s wrist.

Limbe’s yelling and trying to shake the sidewinder off and shoot Jimmy at the same time.

He rocks back, his center of gravity shifting, and Jimmy’s able to throw him off balance and grab the arm with the gun. He brings it down upon the floor hard, then scrambles for the .38.

He hears the sidewinder’s rattles going somewhere above his head.

Jimmy begins hitting Limbe with the pistol and keeps hitting him until Limbe rolls off and onto the floor.

Jimmy’s on his feet fast. “Where is it?” he asks Evelyn. “Where’d it go? The snake?”

“Over there,” she says, nodding in the direction of the wall with a section of floor molding missing. “I think it crawled under the house.”

Aaron Limbe’s rolling slowly around on the floor and mumbling some hybrid threat and curse. He keeps lifting his left arm and throwing it at his right leg.

Jimmy unties Evelyn. She picks up the .38 and hands it back to Jimmy.

“Finish it,” she says.

She turns and crosses the room, stopping at the kitchen counter, where she takes a large manila envelope and checks its contents, then walks back over to Jimmy and tells him she needs to borrow his lighter. After that, she heads for the kitchen door and outside.

Jimmy’s circling the dining room and Aaron Limbe. He keeps glancing down at the gun in his hand and then over at the missing piece of molding at the base of the west wall. He’s got the sweats.

“Finishing it” has never been one of his strong suites.

Limbe’s trying to sit up. His eyelids are fluttering. There’s a pocket of whitish drool gathered at the corner of his mouth.

Jimmy steps up and points the .38 at the back of Limbe’s head. One small electrical impulse, he tells himself, one zap to the right set of nerve endings, a flashpoint, and then his finger will move and finish it for him. Simple. Nothing more elaborate than snagging and pulling the pop-top back on a can of beer.

Except Jimmy can’t do it. As badly as he wants to, as much as he knows he needs to, he can’t pull the trigger on Aaron Limbe. It just isn’t in him.

Limbe’s having trouble sitting up and maintaining his balance. He keeps throwing his left arm toward his ankle. He’s mumbling something Jimmy can’t catch.

Jimmy tucks the pistol into his pants and moves fast, not wanting to think too long about what he’s going to do. He unlocks and removes the handcuffs from the canvas bag, then turns and knocks Limbe back to the floor, grabs him under the arms, and drags him into the kitchen.

Limbe fights him, but Jimmy eventually gets one end of the cuffs around Limbe’s right wrist and the other around the knob of the pantry door and snapped closed.

Jimmy steps back. Limbe pulls against the cuffs, setting off a long rattle. “You’ll see,” he says between breaths.

“What, see?” Jimmy asks.

Limbe keeps rattling the cuffs. His face is blotchy and damp. “You’ll see,” he says again.

Jimmy heads for the kitchen door.