I thought of the trail of bloody footsteps I had left through Augie’s house.
“Apparently, he shot from his front door an unarmed man standing on his lawn, twenty feet away.”
“Augie said the man drew a weapon.”
“Well, the Chief’s boys are saying different. They found no weapon, nothing, not even an empty holster. I’ve sent a lawyer to meet Augie for the arraignment. I think we should be prepared for the worst, considering the personalities at play here, considering what’s going on behind the scenes.”
I turned my head and looked at him then. “Have you talked to Augie?”
“Briefly. He called me when they booked him. He said they questioned him for maybe twenty minutes and then the word came down to book him.” He took another sip from his coffee and rested the cup back on the desk top. He was wearing dark wool pants and densely knit fisherman’s sweater and dark shoes. None of them looked cheap.
“Is he okay?”
Frank shrugged. “Yeah, he’s fine. He’s been in worse places.”
“Do you know about the accident?”
“The girl, yeah. I was told Augie pulled her out of the water, but I assume you were there and just took off before the boys showed up.”
“We went back afterward to look around. Augie was convinced the police did a half-assed job investigating the scene. He said it seemed to him that they were cleaning up more than anything else.”
“What do you think?”
“I didn’t see anything, except for what looked like the marks left by a spike strip.”
“Anything else?”
“After Augie dropped me off I got jumped by someone who tried hard to convince me to mind my own business.”
“And when Augie got home the same thing was waiting for him. Except for him they sent two.”
“It seems so.”
“Did you get a look at the guy who jumped you?”
“Not at his face, not enough to recognize him if I saw him again. He’ll probably be walking with a limp for a while, that’s all I can tell you. Do you have any idea who the girl in the Corvette was?”
“Not yet. From what I’m told they haven’t notified next of kin. So they either don’t know who she is or they’re not saying just yet. Whatever the case, there’s an awful lot of running around next door for what little seems to be getting accomplished. I’d like to find out why that is.”
I turned my head again and looked back out at the sky beyond the bare branches of the old trees lining Main. I had no interest in town politics, or benefiting from the suffering of others. To Frank every misfortune that befell another was a potential point of leverage for him to use as he saw fit. It was hard for me to think of the young girl Augie and I had tried to save as some kind of gift to Frank. I could remember clearly now the point I had reached last year, when I turned Frank’s office upside down. I was a drunk then, and that contributed to my rage. It also explained what I was doing working for him in the first place. But I wasn’t a drunk now. I could see things with bare attention, I could see things for what they were. I could see clearly where this meeting was going, and that I had no desire go there. All I had to do was tell Frank to go to hell and walk away and spend today washing dishes for an unhappy and ill-tempered boss.
But I also knew he wouldn’t make it that easy for me to do that. Augie needed help. Frank would know what to do. I wouldn’t.
“One thing about the girl,” Frank said. “She was wearing a high school ring. From Southampton High. The date on it makes her a senior. Maybe someone knows her. Flashy car like that, she probably doesn’t go unnoticed.”
It was obvious what he wanted from me. But I didn’t see how using Tina to identify the dead girl would help Augie. I could only see how it might help Frank.
“You know that girl can only bring you trouble by the truckload,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that she’s sixteen now. Maybe I’m all wrong, maybe you really aren’t banging her like you say. But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter what I think. Whether it’s innocent or not doesn’t matter. You’re still asking for a fall by keeping her around.”
“What do you want me to do, Frank? Stick her in a motel?”
“Send her off to someone. Anything. Her being there is exactly what the Chief is looking for. You know that.”
“I’m on top of it, Frank.”
“Yeah, I bet.”
“You’ve got a dirty mind.”
“Me and everyone else in town. Just because you’re known around here doesn’t mean people won’t be willing to believe whatever shit they hear. Trust me on this. You’ve made the papers, MacManus. The minute they put hero by your name, everyone began waiting for the first hint to that flaw which proves conclusively in the scheme of things you’re really no better than they are. It’s human nature; it’s the way of the world. You might want to wise up to it fast.”
A few years ago I had found the kidnapped daughter of an ex- girlfriend of mine, when no one else could. It was just luck. Since then people have sometimes come to me for help, mostly out of desperation. I was never comfortable with that, and I often wondered what freedom might come from having that status Frank spoke of stripped from me forever.
“I’m just a guy who washes dishes, Frank,” I said. “That’s all I am. It doesn’t mater to me what anyone thinks.”
He sighed, then shook his head. He eyed me skeptically for a moment. I caught the smell of him then, the smell of his expensive cologne and the fabric of his well-tailored clothes.
“Do you want to make trouble for yourself?” he said.
“Just the opposite.”
“Do you want to keep living like a criminal, crawling around like a rat?”
“I didn’t choose this life, Frank,” I told him.
“I don’t believe that. Not for one minute. You know, I take that back, MacManus. You don’t live like a criminal at all. You live like a man who’s got something to hide, like a man with a secret he’s keen on keeping buried. That’s what you look like to me. That’s what you’ve always looked like.”
“Believe what you want to believe, Frank. It’s what you’re good at. It’s what you get paid for.”
“We’ve all got secrets we want to keep, kid. We’re all alike in that way.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He shook his head from side to side. “You think no one knows what really happened on that boat.”
“No one can know but me.”
“But they can think they know, and in the end, in this town, that’s all that matters.”
“What do you want from me, Frank?”
“It’s not just what I want. I’m fairly certain that if you had the chance to get rid of the Chief you wouldn’t pass it up. Even to your way of thinking survival is the top priority.”
“What does the Chief have to do with all this?”
“Someone’s pulling his strings. The whole thing looks too much like a puppet show to not be a fucking puppet show. Someone owns the Chief, that’s common knowledge. We find out who, we get proof, and the Chief’s history. And you get your life back.”
“I didn’t know I lost it.”
“Knock off the Gandhi shit for a second, MacManus, and take a look at the big picture for once. The man is as corrupt as a man can get. We’d live in a much better town without him as chief of police. If you’re looking for a higher road, I can’t think of one any higher than that.”
“What I don’t understand is how my destroying the Chief is going to help Augie’s case?”
“I don’t know what Augie’s told you, but he’s not all that well off. He works for me because he has to, not because he’s bored. His pension is enough to live on if he lived like you, but most humans prefer not to live like that. Tina’s college-bound in a few years and Augie’s scared, and rightfully so. I can put up his bail, but he’s looking at some steep attorney fees, and I can’t help him there. I’ve seen a lot of innocent people bled dry
proving it. If Augie’s going to win this case, he’ll need a good lawyer, and a good lawyer’s going to cost him everything he’s got, and probably everything he will have for a long time to come.”
I looked down at the street again. A second patrol car backed away from the curb and headed north, too. I hadn’t heard its door close or its motor start up.
Frank said, “I’ve known Augie most of my life. He’s not the kind of man to pop somebody for no reason, I don’t care what happened to him last May. A temporary insanity defense will keep him out of jail, but I don’t believe Augie shot a man just for standing on his lawn, not for one second. Find the man who jumped you. If all this is what I think it is, he’ll lead us to the man pulling the Chief’s strings, and to the partner of the man Augie killed. Between them we just might be able to find the truth about what happened on Augie’s lawn last night. If we’re lucky maybe we can convince one of them that it’s in his best interest to help Augie out. It’s a long shot, but it’s the only hope we have to keep Augie’s life from going down the tubes. I’d dig under every rock in town if I thought it’d help. Wouldn’t you?”
I glanced at Frank again, then looked out the window. I wondered if Augie was next door still, or if he had been remanded already to Suffolk County Jail. I guess it didn’t matter if he was near or far. Nothing mattered except that he was in trouble. The pieces were slipping out of place, and there was nothing I could do about that.
“What do I do exactly?”
“Find the man who jumped you, find out who he works for. He’ll lead us to what we need.”
“And that’s all?”
“If that’s as far as you’re willing to go, yeah, that’s all. I have to admit, I’m surprised. I thought you’d do anything for your friend. I would have thought that we were the same in that way.”
I said nothing to that. I was tired of words and what they did. I was grateful that winter had come; I wanted the quiet that it brought out here, the harsh stillness. I craved silence, days of it, days of sitting at my chair by my window, watching Elm Street and the train station, listening and seeing but thinking of nothing.
On Main Street now a uniformed cop climbed into the third patrol car and backed away from the curb. He made an illegal reverse U-turn, paused, then started forward, passing below the window of Frank’s office. The car turned left onto Meeting House Lane and headed in the direction of the hospital.
“Just find the guy who jumped you, MacManus,” he said. “Find him and bring him to me, if that’s all you’re willing to do. I’ve never been afraid of doing what has to be done. Now’s no exception.”
I kept my eyes on the street and said, “I’d be, if I were you. I’d be very afraid.”
“That’s the difference between you and me.”
“That’s one of them.”
“Is it really that cut and dried from where you sit, MacManus?”
“I don’t spend my days thinking I’ve fooled everyone.”
“Not all of us have the advantage of abject poverty like you do.”
“You might want to give it a try some time, Frank.”
“I prefer my stomach full, thanks.”
“It must be terrible for you when you get hungry.”
“I do my best not to.”
“Everyone gets hungry, Frank.”
“If this is how you think, I can see why you hate me. It must be sad living in your ivory tower all alone.”
“I don’t hate you, Frank. And I’m not afraid of you. You hurt people, not because you need to, but because it suits you. I don’t like what you do, but there’s nothing I can do about that. Still, someday someone’s going to put a shitload of bullets in you, and I want to be as far away from you as I can get then. I’ll find the partner of the man Augie shot. I’ll find him and tell you where you can pick him up. That’s as far as I go. After that we’re done. Do we understand each other?”
Frank didn’t answer. After a moment I turned and looked at him. He nodded and said, “Perfectly.” I waited a moment more, then turned toward the door. Once through it I went down the steep steps to the street. The cold air felt suddenly like freedom, something I had but Augie didn’t.
Someone once told me that there are only three states of mind, those of greed, hate, and delusion, and that every action any of us make has, as its origin, one of these three states. But I see it more simply than that. I see fear at the heart of everything we do. I see fear of not having at the heart of greed and wanting. I see fear of facing what is at hand at the heart of delusion. I see fear in the heart of hate and anger, prejudice and despondency. It’s what keeps the t.v. on late into the night, the liquor stores in business, and it’s what keeps us running blind from day to day.
Most of the people I know are too poor to be greedy. What they want they want out of need. There is no greed here, but there is fear. It’s in Tina when she grasps, in Augie when he ignores facts that displease him, and in Frank when he stabs at an enemy. The Chief’s desire for revenge against me comes from the fear of bearing in his heart the pain of a son crippled by a nothing like me. And when I face my own reflection in my dirty bathroom mirror, fear is what I see looking, cold and hungry, back at me.
This was with me as I walked back from Frank’s office. I wondered about the state of mind of the men who attacked Augie and me, and then of the mind of whoever had hired them. From what fear were they acting? Greed, hate, delusion? Was there something they wanted to pull close to them or something they wanted to be rid of? Or were they just panicked and confused into recklessness, into frantic and desperate action?
This was the only line of thought I knew to follow. I knew nothing about investigations, nothing about the criminal mind, beyond what a nearly ten-year-old degree in criminology from a lesser-known college could offer. I barely knew my own mind. This philosophy was all I had to go on. It was the only way I knew how to help Augie.
Tina was asleep on the couch when I entered my apartment. I didn’t bother to take off my jacket. She awoke when I picked up the phone. I dialed work. I should have been there fifteen minutes ago. I looked out my window at the train station and thought about everything Frank had said. My boss answered on the third ring. His voice was abrupt, unhappy.
“Pancho’s.”
“It’s Mac.”
“You’re late.”
“I should have called sooner.”
“Don’t even think about calling in sick. It’s delivery day and I’m short a cook. I need you to prep.”
“Something’s come up,” I said. “I’m not going to be in for a few days.”
“I don’t fucking believe this.”
“There’s something I have to take care of. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t come in today, you’re fired, okay?”
“Maybe I’ll only need one day--”
He hung up before I finished. I waited a moment, then returned the receiver to the cradle. I was out of work again. I was broke and out of work and winter was here. Jobs were scarce. I looked down at Tina. Her eyes were glassy and red from sleeplessness, her face puffy from her short nap on the couch. She seemed to me almost surprised that she had in fact fallen asleep.
I sat down on the couch beside her. Somehow it didn’t seem unsafe to be near her now. Or maybe I just didn’t care anymore if the Chief walked in or not. We had dug past that strata of trouble and grief.
“Your father’s been arrested,” I told her. “He’s being charged with manslaughter.”
She didn’t say anything, just watched my face carefully, as if she might see something in me that would help make sense of this.
“Frank’s bailing him out. He’ll be home later today. You okay?”
She shook her head from side to side.
“I’m going to do what I can for him. You should stay with him when he gets home, okay? Somebody has to keep an eye on him. Augie can sometimes be his own worst enemy. You know?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s going to be okay.
If this goes to trial, he can beat it pretty easy, we think. But it’ll cost him. So I’m going to do what I can to make sure it doesn’t come to that, okay?”
“You’ve got troubles of you own, Mac.”
“It doesn’t matter. And anyway, I’m not convinced the two matters are unrelated.”
“You think the Chief is trying to get to you through my father?”
“I’m not sure. In any case, I can’t sit around and watch your father bleed dry. I’ve got to do something.”
“What can you do?”
“The girl who died in the accident last night was from your school. She was a senior. She was driving an old Corvette. I need to know who she was.”
A look came over her face fast. She said, “I know … Oh my God. That’s Amy Curry. She’s dead?”
I nodded. “Was she a friend of yours?”
“Not really. I just knew of her. Everyone knew her. She was one of the prettiest girls in school. She’s dead?”
“Did she have the Corvette at school yesterday?”
Tina nodded. “I saw her take off in it during lunch. The seniors just got their rings yesterday. They handed them out at lunch. She must have grabbed hers and ran.”
“She drives a car like that to school every day?”
“It’s her father’s. When he’s away she drives it.” She thought for a moment. “She was a puzzle, you know,” she said. “She got good grades, didn’t date, didn’t do drugs, all her teachers loved her, she was on every committee. But when she got in that car she’d go crazy. She was an accident waiting to happen. Everyone said that.”
“The thing is, Tina, your father doesn’t think it was an accident. Do you know of anybody who’d want to hurt her or maybe even kill her? A boyfriend, anyone?”
“I told you, she didn’t date?”
“Anyone who wanted to date her and she turned down, anything like that.”
“She wasn’t like that. She didn’t call attention to herself. She was pretty, that was it, but most of the boys go after the easy girls, not girls like Amy. She wasn’t into anything, except her committees and her schoolwork.”
Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard Page 6