Page 74 of Take the Fall
Inspector Richard Beaumont. 52 Division. The unit commander who’d been my commander once, back when I was the golden boy with the future, and who had stood very still and said very little while that future got taken apart around me. Mid-fifties, good coat, the easy weight of a man who’d never once been the one left in the gutter. He was leaning by the elevators like a man who’d happened to be passing, which, in that building, on that morning, no one ever was.
“Ryan!” Both hands out, warm as a host meeting an old friend at a wedding. “There he is. I heard first thing this morning and came straight down. Hell of a thing, the whole business. I always said it would come right in the end. Didn’t I always say it.”
He had not always said it. He had not said it once.
“Inspector.”
“Walk with me.” He didn’t wait for a yes. He never had to, and he put a hand to my shoulder and steered, like the corridor was his and I was a guest in it. “I’ll be straight with you, because we go back. There’s a posting open at 52. Detective, your old desk near enough. And between us, I had to do some pushing to keep it open through all of this. People wanted it filled. I told them to wait. He’ll be back, I said, he’ll be cleared, and when he is, that door stays open.” A small smile, pleased with the picture of himself in it. “Better work than you’ll ever see at 51. Better files, better people, a better promotion spot for a man with your talents. Public Services inside the year, if you want it. Come home, and we draw a line under the unpleasantness, and everybody moves on. I’ll see to the promotion myself.”
Come home.The exact words. I almost admired it.
Here is what I actually remembered, standing there while he told me how he’d kept my chair warm.
When it came down at 52, when Voss’s story landed and the papers started sniffing, Beaumont signed me out of his division in a single afternoon. He didn’t call. He didn’t ask me for my side of it. He stood in his glass office and watched me clear my desk through the blinds, and the only thing he put on paper that week was a memo about protecting the good name of the unit. He hadn’t kept a seat warm for me. He’d taken the fastest road to making me someone else’s problem. And now he stood in a corridor rewriting the whole thing to his own face, certain I’d be too grateful to remember.
I remembered all of it.
And I’ll be honest about the next part. For about two seconds I thought about exactly how it would feel to put my fist through that easy, satisfied face. My hand actually closed in my pocket.
Then I let it go. He wasn’t worth my badge on the morning I got it back. He wasn’t worth one thing of mine.
I would have dreamed of coming back to 52. Not because I wanted it. Because a man like Beaumont handing me my place back would have felt like the world finally getting the math right, and I’d have walked into 52 grateful and never once asked who’d opened the door or what it cost.
“It’s a generous offer,” I said. “I’m going to pass.”
The smile held but the eyes did the small recalculation. “Ryan. Think about it before you.”
“I prefer 51.” I kept it level. His own register, the flat one. “There’s less glitter at 51. The cops are better.”
“That’s a sentimental way to throw away a career.”
“Maybe. Here’s the rest of it.” I stopped walking, so he had to. “Staff Inspector Murphy fought for me when no one else did. He took me in when I landed in his division a disgrace, and he kept a hand over me the whole time. When it got hard, you signed me out in an afternoon and wrote a memo about the good name of the unit. So I’ll spend the back half of this job with the man who fought for me, not the man who filed me and called it housekeeping.”
I let that sit between us, because it was for him, and he was good enough to know it was for him. For a second the host went out of his face. Then it came back, because his sort always keep a spare.
“He’s not going to thank you for the loyalty,” Beaumont said, mild, finding his feet again. “Men like Murphy never do.”
“I’m not doing it for the thanks.” I put my hand out. “Good to see you, Inspector. Give my best to the club.”
He shook it. Of course he did. Manners are the last thing to go in his kind, long after the rest has rotted. I watched the easy warmth come back down over his face, a man already arranging the story so it flattered him, and I thought, you have no idea what I’m carrying in a drawer at home, and you’ll never have to, as long as you and yours leave me and mine alone.
I took the stairs down. My hand was still half a fist in my pocket, and I made myself open it. I wanted the air.
I came out the College Street doors into a cold bright morning, and Luke was across the road, leaning on a parking meter with two coffees, like the last thing left in the world that made any sense.
I stopped on the step.
He hadn’t told me he’d come. He was off the clock, in the gray coat, the bruise long gone from his collar now and the careful way he’d been holding his ribs for days finally easing out of how he stood. He saw me see him and lifted one of the coffees an inch, the smallest salute, and the whole morning, the windowless room and the badge and Beaumont and the word that never came, all of it went quiet at once.
I crossed against the light. A streetcar had to slow for me and I didn’t care.
“You’re meant to be working,” I said.
“I took the morning.” He handed me the coffee. Our fingers met around it and neither of us hurried the handoff. “How’d it go.”
“They gave me my badge and didn’t say sorry.”
“You were expecting too much, but I like the idea,” he said.
