The Long Fall

AN ICE-COLD SHOWER numbers among the most painful experiences I’ve ever willingly experienced, but it does wonders for hangovers and fear. I came out of the stall shivering like a wet dog and ready for the hunt.

ON BROADWAY AT Ninety-first at a few minutes shy of seven I was smoking Ambrose Thurman’s last cigarette and reading about Frank Tork’s demise. He didn’t make the New York Times, or even the Daily News, but they had Frankie on page eight of the Post.

Bail was filed in the early afternoon through an online system from a bail bondsman in the Bronx. Along with the article there was a shadowy digital picture of a man with a wide-brimmed hat taken from above. This allegedly bearded man paid ten percent of Frank’s bail in cash: thirty-seven hundred, fifty-nine dollars, and thirty-two cents, including fees.

The body was found at ten in the evening (three hours and twenty-two minutes after his release) by a homeless woman rummaging through trash cans in an alleyway off of Maiden Lane. The young man was badly beaten before being strangled. The man in the hat had given the name Alan Rogers. He was required to show a valid ID with a picture, but the system, the bondsman said, had somehow broken down; either that or the benefactor had used a fake ID.

I stopped by the Coffee Nook on Eighty-first to get some caffeine. I bought a new pack of Camels on the way there. After my fifth cup I pulled out my wallet and rooted around, coming up with the card that Ambrose Thurman had given me the first time we met.

It was a yellow card with a high gloss, a little smaller than regulation size. There, smiling brightly, was Thurman’s pear-shaped mug. It was a younger Ambrose, an Ambrose with a little more hair and a little less sag. Vain men irritate me.

I noticed for the first time that the address given was a post office box. It was printed in blocky address fashion in exceptionally small characters.

Using the pink phone I’d gotten from Bug I called Thurman’s number—it was no longer valid. Next I tried Albany information. There was no Ambrose Thurman listed in the city, either as a residence or a business. The same was true for the outlying areas.

No Ambrose Thurman had ever been registered at the Crenshaw Hotel. I tried to sweet-talk the operator into remembering the chubby guy in the three-piece suit but she told me that they didn’t give out information on their guests.

I called Roger Brown’s office and got the automatic system. It guided me to the young man’s answering machine, but I didn’t leave a message.

Thurman had played me like a drum. It was my fault. I could feel that there was something wrong in looking for those four men. Who paid that kind of money to find drug add k filt.icts and low-class career criminals? Who would take on a job like that? Me. And I did it just to pay last month’s bills.

I WALKED DOWN Broadway until getting to Forty-second Street and then cut over to Sixth. The police could find out about my visit to Tork in the Tombs. They could wonder, but there was nothing they could prove. The guy who bailed Frank out was white. I might get questioned but they couldn’t pin anything on me.

I was clean in the eyes of the law, but the problem was that I had promised myself not to do this kind of work anymore. I had been made to betray my pledge by a man who had disappeared completely.

It was a nice touch showing me a business card with a picture on it. That way I felt that he’d given me a way to contact him if I ever needed it. It was a trick that I might have used myself if I were doing work in another city.

I called Roger’s office again.

“Berg, Lewis & Takayama,” a young woman’s bright voice sang.

“Roger Brown, please.”

The phone went silent as if a mute button had been pressed and then, out of electronic nowhere, a young man’s voice said, “Mr. Brown’s line.”

“Arnold DuBois for him,” I said.

“Mr. Brown isn’t in at the moment, Mr. DuBois. Would you like his answering machine?”

“Um . . . wow. He’s not in?”

“No, sir.”

“Roger told me that he always got in to work early.” He hadn’t told me any such thing but it was possible that a kid from the hood worked harder to make sure that he kept up with the rest.

“That’s right. He’s usually here by seven-thirty, but not today. I guess he had a meeting or something.”

“Really?” I said putting feeling into my voice. “Did he have a meeting scheduled? I mean, I’m not trying to get into his business but I had a morning phone conference set up with him from last night.”

“I don’t have anything written down,” the helpful boy said. “Maybe he forgot.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Have him call me, will you?”

“What’s the number?”

“He has it.”

WALKING USUALLY HELPS me work out difficult problems, but that day nothing came. I was in my office by 8:45, but Frankie Tork was still dead and Roger Brown unaccounted for. Ambrose Thurman had vanished, k ha I as had my new leaf.