The Long Fall

When I looked up, the sun was setting. Twill always gave me both worry and wonderment. He was the only person I’d known who met me halfway in life.

AT ABOUT 8:30 I walked across from the Tesla to the East Side and took a subway up to Eighty-sixth Street. From Lexington I walked two blocks north, and east for three. There I came to the Crenshaw, an exclusive little hotel that catered to an upscale clientele.

The doorman, clad in a red coat and black trousers, gave me a look like Juliet had at Berg, Lewis & Takayama. I smiled as pleasantly as I could, walked past him, and made my way to the bar. It was a dark room of red lampshades and dark-stained wood. I was half an hour early but Ambrose was already there at a small round table near the high bar. He was seated in a spindly chair with his hands clasped on his lap. I remember thinking that he was just sitting there, not reading a newspaper or a book, not searching his BlackBerry for e-mails and text messages. He wore a dark-gray suit with a bright-red vest and a checkered blue-and-white ascot. His glass frames werganss frame small and rectangular, and his blue, blue eyes didn’t miss a thing.

“Mr. McGill,” he said through a meaningless smile. “Have a seat.”

He gestured at a sturdier chair across from him.

I sat, putting an elbow on my left knee and a palm on my right. I took that position to let Thurman know that I meant to get down to business.

“Wonderful weather, isn’t it?” he said. “They talk about global warming but every year seems more moderate than the last, cooler and more habitable.”

“Why does your client want these names?” I said.

Ambrose swiveled his head slowly, making sure that no one was listening.

“Why does anybody want anything?” he asked, moving his shoulders in a kind of bound-up shrug.

“I do it for the money,” I said. “But not if it causes trouble for somebody who doesn’t deserve it.”

Ambrose smiled.

“I’m not joking with you, man,” I said. “I need to know what you’re going to use this information for.”

Thurman was in his forties but looked older. He was bulbous, with a receding hairline and pudgy, pale hands. He used his little mitts to pull down the Ben Franklin spectacles, peering over the frames at me through the gloom of the posh bar.

“I was told that you were the kind of man who did a job with no questions asked,” he said.

“Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter who it was. What matters is that I seem to have been misinformed.”

“I used to be a heartless kind of guy, Mr. Thurman,” I said. “If a job needed me to be cold-blooded, cruel, or blind I was willing to oblige. But today I need to know what you plan to do with what I give you.”

“Are you trying to up your remuneration?” he asked, missing the honesty in my tone.

“Not really.”

Thurman pushed his foppish glasses up and sat back in his chair. Considering me, he took in a deep breath through his nostrils.

“A person, the name doesn’t matter, had a son who died tragically and comparatively young. It was one of those quick and terrible diseases that come out of nowhere and leaves a happy home bereft.

“This person, the parent, was once a rough-and-ready sort with no money and few prospects. They lived on the Bowery and raised their son there. These atthere. young men were his friends. Next month will mark the first anniversary of the boy’s death, and my client, the boy’s parent, wishes to include his old friends together in the memorial service.”

“Why would your client need all four names or none?”

“It was a promise they made to themselves. I’m not sure but I believe there’s more than a little superstition involved.”

“Names?” I asked.

“No names, Mr. McGill.”

It was a plausible story. Whoever was looking for the young men hadn’t known them since they were teenagers. Roger was upset by someone knowing about his old life, not someone who might be after him today. And, anyway, I was broke and the rent was due.

“It cost me twelve hundred dollars to get this information,” I said. “So before I hand it over to you I need to see eleven thousand, two hundred dollars, right here, right now.” I tapped the table in a fast two-finger tattoo, like some bongo drummer from the fifties.

“Here?” Thurman said, gazing around.

There was no one else except the bartender in the room. She was a young thing with red hair and a sharp nose.

“Have you got a room upstairs or do you have people meet you here just to impress them?” I asked.

Ê€„

7

There were two dark-wood elevator doors next to the front desk. Ambrose pressed the button and we stood there in silence, waiting for a car to come. Two very young women wearing extremely short and sheer party dresses were talking to the dour, gray-headed man who stood behind the reception desk. The girls were shadowed by two older women, one wearing a fox stole, in June, the other attired in a coral Chanel dress, the cost of which would have paid my office rent through Christmas. The older women were visibly disturbed by the particular manifestation of youth before them.