The sun silhouetted him so I had to squint in order to make out his angular face. Framing his countenance was coal black hair, worn as long as departmental regulations allowed. His dark eyes gazed out over high cheekbones, revealing little and missing nothing. It was impossible to look at him and not immediately know that he was full-blooded Native American.
“Whaddaya mean, ‘not actually’?” he huffed.
And with that, we officially had the ‘hook.’
On the fly, I dredged up an old childhood myth and applied my own twist to it. “What I mean is that you’re dead before you ever hit the ground.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Seriously. The fear of falling is so intense that your system overdoses itself on adrenalin. It pretty much shorts out your nervous system and causes you to suffer a heart attack as you fall, end of story. You’re a corpse before you ever hit the ground.”
I watched his rugged features as his right eyebrow furrowed. I could literally see him rolling what I had said over and over inside his head, trying to get a handle on it.
“Bullshit,” he retorted.
The one word comment wasn’t exactly what you would call swallowing the ‘line,’ but I’d known he would be a hard sell.
“Oh yeah.” I nodded vigorously as I spoke and offered up a bogus factoid to lend credence to my lie. “It’s a known fact. Now, of course, the fall has to be greater than twenty feet for the fear to reach that level and cause your system to dump that much adrenalin.”
He cocked his head to the side and gave me an unsure look.
I pressed on. “You know how when you fall you get that bizarre feeling in your gut like you just lost your stomach?”
“Like when ya’ top a hill on a roller coaster, you mean?”
“Exactly. Well it’s like that, but since you don’t fall far enough you don’t have the heart attack.”
“No way. Hills on roller coasters are way higher than twenty feet.” He shook his head as he argued.
“Sure, but that’s different. Your subconscious knows you are in a roller coaster.”
“You’re just yankin’ my chain.”
“Why would I do that?”
“So what about skydivers?”
“Parachute. Again, the subconscious knows.”
The look on Ben’s face told me that he was struggling with this sudden contradiction of perceptions. He wasn’t stupid by any stretch of the imagination, so I was actually surprised I’d managed to take it this far.
My friend slipped his hand up to smooth his hair and then allowed it to slide down and began to massage the back of his neck. He always performed this gesture when he was thinking hard on a subject.
“Really?” he eventually asked, giving his head a slight nod as he squinted at me.
Now, there was the ‘line.’ I thought about going for the ‘sinker’ as well, but I wasn’t feeling particularly ornery today, and I doubted my luck would hold out. Besides, it had only been one cliche, not to mention that he was bigger than me and he had a gun.
I gave it a long moment before finally answering him with a simple, “No.”
He shook his head and screwed his face into a frown. “Jeezus, Rowan, don’t fuck with me like that.”
“Hey,” I splayed my hands out in a ‘don’t blame me’ gesture. “You’re the cop here. Aren’t you supposed to be able to tell when someone is lying? Besides, I’ve never known you to be gullible. How was I supposed to know you’d fall for a line of BS like that?”
“Because it came outta your mouth,” he replied with a grunt as he stabbed a finger in the air toward me. “I EXPECT everyone else to be lying but not you. And, you got so damn much trivia runnin’ around in your head, I just figured maybe you knew somethin’ I didn’t.”
“Well…” I shrugged. “Maybe I do on some stuff. Sudden stops at the bottom, though, not really my area of expertise.”
“Yeah, mine either, but I’ve seen a couple of meat sacks sprawled out on sidewalks. The friggin’ stop at the bottom’s what did ‘em in. Trust me.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” I replied, consciously chasing away the visual his words had conjured, and then I paused for a moment before changing the subject. “So, I may be wrong, but I didn’t think we came here to discuss the physics of falling from tall buildings. Or did we?”
“Nope.” He shook his head. “But you were the one starin’ off into space over here.”
“I wasn’t staring off into space.”
“Yeah, Kemosabe.” He nodded. “Yeah, you were.”
I didn’t issue another rebuttal. It occurred to me that perhaps my earlier self-assessment was in error. Maybe these days heights did make me seize up after all.
“So, speaking of lying, are we at least here to go to lunch like you said when you showed up at my door?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “Why would I lie about that?”
“You tell me? It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve used a free meal as a carrot to get me somewhere.”
“C’mon, man, I told ya’ already. This is my day off.”
“I seem to recall you once telling me that you are never really off duty,” I reminded him.
“Jeez, what are you, a freakin’ tape recorder?”
I merely chuckled in reply.
“Yeah,” he continued. “Maybe so, but even when I’ve done that to ya’, I didn’t screw ya’ over on the deal.”
“You sure about that?”
“Hell yes.” He waved his index finger in the air to punctuate his comment. “I know for a fact that I still bought chow.”
“I wasn’t talking about the meal,” I said as we began walking along the inclined parking lot toward the glassed-in elevator enclosure.
He ignored the comment. “Well, to be honest, I do have somethin’ else I wanna do while we’re here, now that ya’ mention it. I need to hit The Third Place after we eat.” He offered the name of the tobacco shop we both frequented with what could have easily passed for reverence. “You good with that?”
“Yeah.” I gave him a nod. “I need to have Patrick order me some more CAO MX Two’s anyway. It’ll save me a call.”
“You and those damn double maduros,” my friend muttered.
“What’s wrong with MX Two’s?”
“Too strong, white man,” he told me.
“Hey, I like what I like.”
“Yeah,” he said as he tugged open the door to the glass enclosure and motioned for me to go through. “I just wish you’d like somethin’ else.”
I shook my head as I entered the somewhat air-conditioned waiting area. “What does it matter?”
His matter-of-fact reply came as he followed me through the door. “‘Cause I don’t like ‘em.”
“So?” I queried, stabbing the call button for the elevator then looking at him with a puzzled expression. “You aren’t the one smoking them.”
“Exactly,” he replied. “So if you don’t smoke the ones that I like, then it makes it kinda hard for me to bum them off ya’ now doesn’t it?”
“Ohhh, now I get it.” I nodded slowly. “You want me to smoke something you like so you don’t have to buy any.”
“Damn straight,” he chuckled. “Cigars are expensive.”
“So quit.”
My friend looked back at me like I had suddenly grown an extra head. “Yeah, right. I already told ya’ once today ta’ quit yankin’ my chain.”
A sickly electromechanical ding announced the arrival of the elevator car. The signal was followed by the scrape and groan of the doors parting down the center with a moment’s hesitation then sliding laboriously open. Looking through the widening gap, we could see the car still in motion as it rose the last few inches and then halted with a clunk and a shudder.
“Oh yeah,” Ben announced. “This looks real safe.”
“You want to take the stairs?” I queried.
“I’m thinkin’ maybe yeah,” he replied.
“The stairs are outside.”
“Yeah, so?”
I held my arms out and glance around. “Hot out there, cool in here. Well, cooler anyway.”