The Long Fall by Lynn Kostoff Page A

to be seriously sick,
Delgado had said.
Please.
    Just before he tossed Delgado’s insulin works out the window, Limbe had winked at him and said,
No, you’re going to be seriously dead, Ramon, and very soon.
    Limbe had then driven to the safe house. Along the way, he carefully explained to Ramon why he had to die.
    Limbe had been so intent on laying things out for Delgado that he narrowly missed rear-ending a battered white pickup that had stalled beneath a traffic light.
    Before he could pull around, a short dark-haired guy was at the driver’s window waving some cables and asking for a jump. When the guy started to poke his head through the window, Limbe pushed him away. Delgado began yelling for help. Limbe threw the car in reverse and got out of there.
    Later, he would remember his surprise that the guy had been white. The battered pickup had pure Mexican written all over it.
    There had been one man watching the safe house. A skinny little guy with a Walkman, who stupidly opened the door on Limbe’s first knock.
    The rest of the beaners were in the back of the house, sequestered in a windowless addition. Twelve of them.
    Limbe dragged Delgado into the room and had him repeat the explanation Limbe had given him earlier. If you’re going to die, it’s important to understand why. Every death is a lesson.
    Delgado, though, was shaking and sweating and slurring his words and losing track of what he was supposed to say.
    Limbe made him start over and ran him through the explanation until he got it right.
    The beaners began crossing themselves.
    Limbe left Delgado in the back room with them and boarded the door shut.
    Then he set the place on fire.
    Limbe himself called it in. He assumed—correctly as it turned out—that there’d be witnesses who could place him or his car in the Mexican quarter. He kept his story simple: He was supposed to meet a snitch in the lot of the Hibiscus Club, but the guy never showed. Limbe drove around for a while looking for him. He spotted the fire, called it in, and waited, keeping the civilians away, until the trucks and ambulance arrived.
    The press and television people latched onto the fire, turning the twelve beaners into martyrs.
    A few reporters also started taking a closer look at him.
    He stuck to his story.
    The newspaper people found a leak and got access to Limbe’s personnel file and arrest records, and there were the usual claims of a long-standing pattern of intimidation and brutality and the usual clamor over departmental cover-ups and looking the other way.
    The mayor felt the public pressure and eventually got involved, leaning on the police commissioner, who set in motion an IAD investigation.
    Aaron Limbe was temporarily suspended.
    He stuck to his story, figuring he could ride things out. The evidence did not go beyond the circumstantial. It was everybody’s word against his.
    Limbe was waiting for the city to tear itself apart. He had shown people where they lived. What they were. Reestablished the pecking order. There’d be no room or need for forgiveness after that.
    It might have worked, too—Limbe the agent of a truth worthy of the city’s namesake—if Jimmy Coates hadn’t gotten picked up for grand theft auto.
    At the time, Limbe had not been able to foresee, let alone prevent, what happened.
    While locked up in city, Coates began reading the newspapers and recognized Limbe and Delgado. Instead of playing to the DA or IAD, Coates made noise to the chief, who then called the commissioner, and Coates went on to cut his own deal. He wanted them to lose the paperwork on the grand theft auto and explained about the jumper cable incident, italicizing the fact he could place Limbe and Delgado together the night of the murders.
    The chief and commissioner saw the opportunity to quickly clean house and avoid the fallout from the publicity of a trial. Limbe was called in and the situation laid out. The chief and commissioner had already signed his resignation