[Georgia 03] Fallen

woman can run faster with her skirt up than a man can with his pants down.”
    Will hadn’t considered Faith’s teenage predicament beyond thinking it unusual she had kept the child, but it had probably rocked the neighborhood to have a pregnant fourteen-year-old in their refined midst. It was almost commonplace now, but back then, a girl in Faith’s predicament was generally suddenly called away to tend a never-before-mentioned frail aunt or given what was euphemistically called an appendectomy. A handful of less fortunate ones ended up in the children’s home with kids like Will.
    He asked, “So, the man in the expensive car is in his early sixties?” She nodded. “Did you ever see them being affectionate?”
    “No, but Evelyn wasn’t the showy type. She would get in the car with him and he would drive off.”
    “No kiss on the cheek?”
    “Not that I ever saw. Mind you, I never even met him. Evelyn would drop Emma off here, then go back to her house and wait.”
    Will let that sink in. “Did he ever go into her house?”
    “Not that I could tell. I guess people do things differently now. In my day, a man would knock on your door and escort you to his car. There was none of this pulling up and beeping the horn.”
    “Is that what he did—beep the horn?”
    “No, son, that was just a figure of speech. I suppose Ev must’ve been looking out the window, because she always came out as soon as he pulled up.”
    “Do you know where they went?”
    “No, but like I said, they were usually gone for a couple’a–three hours, so I assumed they were seeing a movie or having lunch.”
    That was a lot of movies. “Did the man show up today?”
    “No, and I didn’t see anyone in the street, either. No cars, no nothing. The first I heard there was trouble was when the sirens came. Then I heard the gunshots, of course, one and then about a minute later one more. I know what gunfire sounds like. Mr. Levy was a hunter. Back then, all the policemen were. He used to make me go so I could cook for them.” She rolled her eyes. “What a boring gasbag he was. Rest his soul.”
    “Lucky man to have you.”
    “Lucky for me he’s not around anymore.” She stood with difficulty from the rocker, keeping the baby steady in her arms. The bottle was empty. She put it on the table and offered Emma to Will. “Take her for a second, will you?”
    He put Emma on his shoulder and patted her back. She gave an unusually rewarding burp.
    Mrs. Levy narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been around babies before.”
    Will wasn’t about to get into his life story. “They’re easy to talk to.”
    She rested her hand on his arm before going to the closet. Will had been right. There was a darkroom set up in the small space. He stood in the doorway, careful not to block her light as she thumbed through a stack of five-by-seven photographs. Her hands had a slight tremor, but she seemed steady on her feet.
    She explained, “Mr. Levy never set much store by my hobbies, but he was called onto a crime scene one day and they asked if anyone knew a photographer. Twenty-five dollars they paid—just for taking pictures! The old bastard wasn’t going to say no to that. So he called me and told me to bring my camera. When I didn’t faint over the mess—this was a shotgun incident—they said I could do it again.” She nodded toward the bed. “That Brownie Six-16 helped keep this roof over our heads.”
    He knew she meant the box camera. It looked worn but well loved.
    “I moved into surveillance work later on. Mr. Levy had drunk himself off the job by then, and of course I’m a woman, so it took some time for them to understand I wasn’t there for flirting and screwing.”
    Will felt his face start to redden. “Was this with the Atlanta Police Department?”
    “Fifty-eight years!” She seemed as surprised as Will that she’d lasted that long. “I may be a bag of bones now, but there was a time Geary and his ass-kissers would’ve snapped to instead of brushing me off like a speck of lint on their shiny trousers.” She picked through another pile of five-by-sevens. Will saw black-and-white shots of birds and various household pets, all taken from a vantage point that implied they were being spied upon rather than admired. “This little so-and-so’s been digging in my flower bed.” She showed Will a picture of a gray and white cat with dirt on its nose. The lighting was harsh in the black-and-white print. The only thing missing