Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

by Judson, Daniel

  “How is she doing?” I said.

  Augie shrugged. “Good, as far as I can tell. She’s got this boyfriend now. You’ll meet him at Thanksgiving. You’re still coming, right?”

  I nodded. “Is he a decent kid?”

  “What’s decent these days? He’s polite, whatever that means. No piercings, no visible tattoos, no criminal record.”

  I smiled at that. “It surprises me sometimes just how much of a father you really are when you want to be.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing, Mac, if this kid doesn’t already have a chip on his shoulder about you, he will soon. All Tina does is talk about you, about you and her playing house, about how you saved her life, how you beat the crap out of the two guys who put her badass Daddy in the hospital. She’s a fan for life, we all know that, but this boy’s going to end up with quite a complex before she’s through.”

  “Somebody should explain to her the fragile nature of the male ego.”

  “She wouldn’t listen. I think she’s too busy trying to understand her own nature now. Besides, I want the kid distracted, for obvious reasons.”

  “You know how Tina is. It’s going to happen sooner or later, if it hasn’t happened already.”

  “I’m her father, but I’m not blind. I know how she can be. We both do. Hell, you probably know better than anyone. Still, I was spared all this bullshit worry while I was in the hospital. I knew you wouldn’t touch her, and I knew soon enough that she would have a crush on you, and that she wouldn’t go after anyone else for as long as she felt what she was feeling for you. I’ll tell you, that’s enough to make me want to check back in and deal with those asshole doctors every day.”

  “Where is she now, Aug?”

  “I didn’t want her home alone, so she’s supposed to be at her friend Lizzie’s house tonight. A sleepover. That’s where she’s supposed to be.”

  “If you want, after we knock off, I could take a ride around for you, see if I spot her places she shouldn’t be.”

  “No, Mac, thanks, but no. I’m just a father who isn’t so keen on becoming a grandfather yet.” He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, just the thought of it twists up my gut.”

  “I think it’s supposed to. But she’s a good kid, Aug. She’s got a good head on her shoulders, for a teenager.”

  “It’s not her head I’m worried about. See what happens when you’ve got too much time on your hands. I just kept walking around the house on this fucking cane, looking out the window and wondering if my sixteen-year-old daughter was taking off her jeans for some teenage Romeo with a shitbox Camero. I’ll tell you, I could never get used to being helpless. Never.”

  Augie took in a breath and let it out slowly. He was looking straight ahead, through the windshield, into all that dark cold out there. “I know you hate this job, I know it cuts against your grain, but this is what I do best, and I need to do it, because without it I’m a guy on a cane heading for a padded room somewhere.”

  Augie’s face was large, heavily boned, his hair buzzed to a crew cut. Even in the dark I could see him clearly. I knew every inch of his face by now. Back when I used to drink we would settle in at his kitchen table in the morning and finish bottles of bourbon while Tina was at school. That was when I heard all about his years in the jungles of Colombia with the DEA, about the guys he had worked with, the people he’d seen die, the death squads and machete squads, the government sanctioned murder. That was why he had no problem working for Frank, that the whole thing was a walk across the yard on a spring day compared to Colombia. Sometimes, when there was nothing left to talk about, Augie would tell me about Tina’s mother and the day that she was killed. Then I would tell him what I knew of my real father, an ex-town cop who sent me when my mother died to live with a rich family on Gin Lane and who not long after that disappeared without a trace.

  “Really, Mac, we’re in the same boat, you and me, if you think about it,” he said. “I can’t walk around freely because of my legs. You have to be careful where you walk because of the Chief and his boys. It’s different but it’s the same. You must get tired of walking that line, day and night. You must walk it in your fucking sleep.”

  I nodded once but didn’t say anything.

  “I know you don’t want to hear this, but for you Frank’s a good man to keep as a friend around now. He could prove helpful, if the shit starts coming down.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” I said.

  “If you two really have made peace, you might want to think about keeping it for a while this time. When the Chief does come, he’s going to want to do more to you than nail you for operating an uninsured vehicle. He’s going to come after you with all his boys and something that’ll stick you to the wall. You’re going to want more than me on your side then, Mac. It’s as simple as that.”

  I’d heard everything Augie told me, but there was no place in me for those words to take hold. I sat silent and looked at what I could see of his face in the dark.

  “You haven’t reconciled with Frank, have you? You haven’t buried the hatchet with him?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not. If things were reversed, I’d probably make a deal with the devil too, if I thought you were putting yourself in danger.”

  “Frank is your friend, Aug. I’m your friend, too.”

  Augie laughed once and looked away then, grinning with disbelief.

  “I’ll shove it up your asses,” he said softly. “Just watch me, Mac. Just watch me.”

  He turned his head then and fixed his eyes on the mirror mounted outside his door. We didn’t say anything for a while after that. The cab of the truck was warm now, a bubble of shelter in the middle of nowhere. Eventually something about the way Augie was sitting motionless told me that something had caught his attention.

  He stared intently at the mirror outside his window, then suddenly turned around and took up watch out the back window. He was looking hard but I don’t think he was really seeing anything, not anything that he could point to anyway.

  “What?”

  “There’s someone out there.”

  I looked from him to the rear view mirror. “Where?”

  “I saw someone run from one side of the road to the other, from the grass on the edge of that field there to those trees ten or twenty feet in from the shoulder.”

  I turned and looked through the back window but could barely see the shape of the bend in the road, let alone anything else. The trees were only visible where they stood against the shifting sky.

  “He’s out there, by that first tree,” said. “Give your eyes a minute to adjust. Look by the trunk.”

  “Who the hell would be out here running around in this cold?”

  “I can just see him,” Augie whispered. “He’s on our side of the tree, like he’s hiding from something in the other direction. What the hell is he doing? Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Do you see that?”

  “What?”

  “He’s moving. He’s away from the tree. It looks like he’s lifting something.”

  I looked but didn’t see anything but stationary shapes in the dark. And then, suddenly, my eyes detected brief motion.

  “Wait, now I see it. By that tree. I see something.”

  Augie was motionless.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  Augie didn’t answer. Something else had caught his attention in the dark behind us.

  “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “Headlights.”

  For some reason I turned and looked into the rear view mirror. I saw the grass that lined the side of the road light up suddenly, and then there it was, rounding the bend and racing past the tree where Augie’s man stood concealed. I could tell by the way the car flung around the curve that it was speeding, and I could tell by the way it hung the curve tight that it was a sports car of some kind.

  We heard the whining of the motor and sound of the exhaust tearing down the pipes
, but the pitch was lower than I had expected it to be. Before I could say anything about that, Augie announced, “It’s not the Fiat. It’s someone else.”

  And then it all went to hell.

  Without warning the car turned tail first into a spin and veered onto the shoulder, kicking dirt and clumps of grass into the air. Within seconds the nose of the car rounded forward and caught air and rose off the ground, and the spinning turned into a door-over-door tumble down the shoulder. It turned over several times in the matter of a second and seemed as light as a toy. After fifty feet or so the car caught the bank along the road like a boat catching a wave and went up and over it and was gone suddenly from our sight. All that was left of it was debris in the road and a faint cloud of kicked up dust.

  “Jesus Christ,” Augie said.

  He reached for his cell phone while I took hold of the gear shift and turned on the headlights and the floodlights mounted on the roof above. It was as if daylight had hit the road in front of us. I punched the accelerator and turned sharp onto the narrow road, made a U-turn, and sped us straight into disaster.

  The car had gone down a steep bank and landed in a sinkhole pond some fifty feet below the level of the back road. I could barely see from the top of the bank the tail end of it protruding out of the dark water. The ambulance and police would be here soon enough, but there was no shaking the thought that someone could still be alive in that car. Augie had made it to the bank, and I looked over at him and could tell by his face that he was thinking the same thing that I was thinking, that something had to be done and had to be done now.

  There was really nothing for us to discuss. I was up, that was all there was to this.

  I looked down at the pond again, fast, and then once more at Augie.

  “That water is freezing, Mac. You won’t have more than two minutes. After that you’ll sink like a stone. I don’t know what I’d be able to do for you.”

  I nodded to indicate that I understood, then went over the bank and down the slope. The degree of decline was severe, the ground frozen solid, and several times I stumbled in the dark and landed hard on my knee or slid and scraped up my bare hands trying to catch myself. At the bottom of the bank I tossed off my overcoat and threw it aside and then strode into the pond. A thin film of ice cracked beneath the soles of my workboots, and when I stepped down, the frozen floor of the pond felt solid, like cement. But it was uneven and cratered, and I waded over it as quickly as I could toward the center, where the car had landed. After a few steps the floor sloped suddenly, and all at once I was chest deep in the black water. My soaked shirt clawed at me, and my breath was knocked out of me instantly as if something heavy pressed upon my chest. I rose up on my toes to keep my heart and lungs out of it for as long as I could, but it didn’t do me much good.

  I realized that Augie was right, I couldn’t last long in this. Already I was unable to feel my feet, only the space where they should be between me and the hard pond floor.

  It took only a few more steps and then I was up to my chin. Not long after that I was forced to swim. I kept my head above the water as best I could, my eyes locked on the bumper that rose just a few inches out into the dark night air. The water around it was churning, bubbles and foam rising from the car breaking the surface. I stroked forward, as fast as I could, but my arms were suddenly heavy, as if the blood that moved through them was becoming lead. Before I was really aware of it my legs were dragging beneath me. My boots were filled with water and I wasn’t kicking. My breath was a burst of white that rose past my eyes, brushing my face, fleetingly warm. The bumper was still ahead of me, still visible. I thought that maybe the nose of the car had touched bottom and that the car itself was being kept upright by air trapped in the trunk. If this was so, I could grab onto part of it once I reached it and conserve my strength before tackling what was next.

  But before I got within two strokes of the car it started to slide and then sank beneath the churning surface. It went fast, and there was nothing for me to grab hold of anymore.

  I flung my weak arms through the water twice, and then once more. I barely moved the distance of a foot, but then I felt my legs bump into something solid. The car was only a yard or so below me. I felt a burst of strength and maneuvered my legs frantically and placed my feet hard on the bumper. The car wobbled. It was upright underwater, its nose resting on the bottom, unstable. Bubbles were still rising from the trunk, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before it was filled with water and the car would lean over to one side or another and sink to the bottom.

  I moved off the car and tilted my head back and gasped in cold air. My arms had to flail just to keep me up. I took in as much air as I was going to get, then held it and let my arms quit. The weight of my water-filled boots pulled me under and straight down.

  Water rushed in my ears and I felt a tremendous stabbing pain deep inside my head. I didn’t dare open my eyes and expose them to the freezing water. Besides, in the dark, and underwater, what would I see? I felt my way down the car as I sank, then stopped myself by kicking my tired legs when I found the door. I hung on with one hand and searched frantically for the door handle with the other.

  Already my lungs ached. When I found the handle, I yanked it, and the door swung downward and opened quickly. I swam partway into the car and felt the driver’s seat, then the passenger’s. Both were empty. I reached upward, into the backseat above, and waved my hand through the water. Something brushed past my hand and then was gone. I searched for it and found nothing for an intolerable moment but empty water. And then, again, it was there, drifting past the back of my hand. I grabbed what felt like an ankle and pulled it as I backed myself out into the open water. I tugged the body behind me, working it clear of the car interior. I made no effort to be cautious or delicate. I just pulled. My lungs were burning, my throat aching. I had lost all feeling beneath my waist. Still, I pulled and pulled, and once the body was clear of the car and I had it around the waist and against me, I clawed my way to the surface with one arm. It took all I had to keep from breathing till my head cleared and I felt the brutal cold air around me.

  It stung my face and tore my throat as I gasped. I took in water and coughed it out as I held tight to the body, its back pressed against my ribs. Its face was matted with long hair but through the mesh it made I could see to the bruises beneath, the cuts and blood, the staring, lifeless eyes. I saw no signs of consciousness, felt no movement from the ribs beneath my arm.

  I didn’t have the strength to keep us both up. Water rushed into my ears and splashed into my mouth as I tried to breathe. I was sinking back into icy cold, and there was nothing I could do about it. I could barely feel the water around me, it was like I was treading thin air. I tried to find the car with my feet again, and finally did, only to have it tilt over and sink fast beneath me.

  I felt myself getting drowsy. I was slipping under, and that was all there was in the world to know. I was seconds from breathing in cold water and drowning, and really maybe that wasn’t a bad thing.

  But then over my splashing and coughing I heard a rushing sound. I turned my head toward it. Only my nose and eyes were above the water now. I sucked in air through my nose and watched through blurry eyes as Augie’s pick-up truck backed suddenly into the pond till its front tires were all that remained on land and its rear bumper was well submerged under the black water. The truck stopped and Augie climbed out of the cab and into the tilted back bed and lumbered like a sailor on a rolling deck down into the water till he found the tailgate. He climbed over that to the back bumper and held onto the gate with one hand and leaned out, the water over his waist, and extended his free hand toward me. In it was his cane, and the curved handle hung in space just a foot from my face.

  The strain showed on his face. He was in pain. My hand burst from the water and snatched at the trembling handle. I hung onto it as Augie pulled us in toward him.

  He lifted the driver into the back of the truck like she was nothing and laid her fl
at in the bed. Then he grabbed me by the hand and hauled me in. I landed on my knees in the water-filled bed, coughing. Augie immediately checked the girl for a pulse, then began to work to resuscitate her.

  She looked to me to be maybe sixteen, no more than that. There was no getting around the fact that she was dead. Her pupils were fixed, large black holes in her head. I pulled myself up the slanted truck bed to the cab and climbed in behind the wheel. My legs ached as if I had just run miles. I shifted into first gear and pressed the accelerator. There was slippage, and then the tires caught and the truck bucked and pulled up onto land. I heard water rushing out of the bed behind me over the sound of the powerful motor. I shifted into park and got out and went around to the back side of the truck. Water was still draining. I opened the tail gate and let it all come rushing out onto the ground.

  I looked at Augie. He was knelt beside the girl and breathing hard into her mouth. I climbed up into the truck bed as quickly as my arms and legs allowed and knelt at the girl’s other side and began to press on her sternum with my hands. Augie leaned back and counted off each thrust.

  “One. Two. Three. Four … “

  He was winded already, panting as he spoke. My arms trembled with each downward push I made against the lifeless girl, and my breathing wasn’t any better than his. I really couldn’t think of anyone then more unlucky than this young woman.

  As I looked at her I felt betrayed by my own body, by the weakness of it, how the cold could rob me of strength and leave me infirm, unable to perform, useless.

  Still, I hung in there, pressing my palm against the girl’s chest, one, two, three, four, five, then resting, counting, “One, two, three, four, five,” while Augie pinched her nose and tilted her head back and breathed into her mouth.

  It was after several minutes of this that we heard sirens in the distance. There were blue-and-red lights caught in the tops of the bare trees down the road.

  This road was in the town of Southampton, and it was the Chief’s boys on their way now.