Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

by Judson, Daniel

  “Do you know where she lived?”

  “Halsey Neck Lane.”

  “Money.”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  “What else can you tell me about her?”

  Tina seemed reluctant then to say what was on her mind.

  “What?” I urged.

  She shrugged. “I didn’t remember till now, till you asked me where she lived. I don’t know why I just thought of it.”

  “Of what?”

  “There was a list that went around school a while back. Before last spring. Before … you know … I was attacked. Before you hurt Tommy Miller. It was a list of all the girls he was supposed to have done it with. On it were the girls he had … forced himself on, and the girls who had done it with him willingly. Supposedly Amy’s name was on the list. I don’t know if she was one of his victims or not. No one believed it, but then supposedly there was a video he showed to some people of him and her together. That’s all I heard. No one said if he was hurting her or not on it. Anyway, there were supposed to be fifty names on the list. He was a monster, everyone knows that. He deserved everything you to did to him, and more.

  “Maybe this isn’t so bad, what’s happening to my father, I mean. If it is payback for what you did, then maybe this is a chance to put an end to this once and for all.”

  I said nothing to that, just looked at her.

  “Let them see what they get when they mess with our family,” she said. “When they mess with you and me and Augie.”

  “Is today a school day?”

  Tina nodded. I got up and picked up the phone. Tina told me the number and I dialed it. It rang twice and was answered by a woman. I said, “This is Augie Hartsell. Tina’s ill and won’t be in today.” I hung up and looked down at her.

  “Stay here till you hear from your father,” I told her. “Call Eddie for a ride home once Augie’s back. Tell Augie to sit tight till he hears from me. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Try to get some rest while you wait for his call. No shame in resting. Hartsell’s rest, too.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I need to find someone. There’s nothing to worry about. I’ll call your house by dinnertime, at the latest.”

  I went into the kitchen then and took a few gulps of rice milk from the carton in my refrigerator. It, aside from a container of yogurt and some leftover noodles and tofu, was all there was on its shelves. I had a few bucks in my pocket and nothing in the bank. I would need the few bucks for gas to look for the man whose knee I had popped. I put the nearly empty carton of rice milk back in the fridge and closed the door, then went back into the living room and took the Galliano bottle standing by the door and left. Tina and I looked at each other as I closed the door behind me. I locked the deadbolt and then headed downstairs to George’s apartment on the second floor. I knocked and it took him a moment to answer the door.

  He was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing when I saw him a few hours ago. I could tell he had been sleeping in them. He leaned against the doorframe, his eyes swollen. I smelled whiskey on his breath.

  I handed the bottle to him and said, “What happened to my friend?”

  George whispered, “He lay there on the porch for a minute, then got up and limped to an old LTD and drove off. That was all I saw. It was too far away. I didn’t see any plates.”

  “Did you call the cops?”

  “Yeah. They showed up about ten minutes after he left. I told them what happened, but I kept your name out. I figured that was the wise thing to do. They said there wasn’t much they could do. Then they left.”

  “Did you notice what color the LTD was?”

  “It was dark, maybe black, maybe blue, maybe green. But it was definitely a dark color.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah. The cops didn’t seem all that interested. They told me it wasn’t worth their filing a report. Apparently some asshole zapping customers with a stun gun outside my business is something to be expected nowadays. I don’t know. I pointed to our PBA sticker in the window but they weren’t impressed.”

  “Listen, George, do me a favor. If you see this guy again, let me know, okay? Don’t call the cops. If he leaves before I get here, just let him leave. Catch his license plate if you can, that’s all.”

  “What’s going on, Mac?”

  “It’s nothing. Go back to sleep. I’ll see you around.”

  I left him before he could ask me anymore questions. Even though it was daylight I took a good look around before I started toward my car. Once I was inside I cranked the ignition till the engine caught. As it warmed up I counted the bills in my pocket. Eight dollars. After a minute I shifted into gear and headed in my uninsured car toward the Texaco station on the corner of Sunrise Highway and North Sea Road.

  Chapter Three

  It was warm inside Southampton Hospital, the air dry and distinctly serene. I took in as much of the warmth as I could as I headed for the reception desk. The woman sitting in a low chair behind it looked up and eyed me uncertainly as I approached her. Being a gargoyle, a scarecrow, a grotesque, I was used to this. I gave her the warmest smile I could muster up, but I could tell it did little to ease her. By the time I reached the half circle barrier-counter that separated us there was much in the way of defensiveness, even hostility, in her posture.

  “Can I help you?”

  I placed both my hands palms down on the counter top. I did this sometimes to put people at ease, to show them that I was nothing much to worry about. But I don’t think she even saw my gesture; she didn’t take her eyes off my untended hair and the five-day-old stubble scattered across my face like some indication of class or nature. Some people just didn’t like the sight of me.

  I told her I was looking for a nurse named Gale Nolan. Her guard didn’t lower in the least.

  “And what is your name?”

  “Mac.”

  “What?”

  “My name is Declan MacManus.”

  “May I ask what this is in regards to?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “She’s very busy right now. Perhaps you should come back after lunch.”

  “It can’t wait till then. It won’t take long.”

  “I’m sorry, but she’s very busy working right now.”

  “Look, I’m a friend of hers, okay? I look like hell because I’ve been through hell. It’s important that I see her right away.”

  “I’m sorry, unless you’re here to see a patient – “

  I moved around the counter, starting toward the bank of elevators behind it. The receptionist stood up fast, as much indignant as surprised. She was an authoritarian whose authority was slipping. “Excuse me, you can’t enter without a pass.”

  I ignored her and headed toward the elevators. I didn’t have the time or patience for this. Still, I moved slowly, in no real hurry, careful not to seem threatening or appear too crazy. Never run, never run. I had learned this a long time ago. From the corner of my eye I saw the receptionist reaching for her phone. She picked it up fast and called for security. Before she even hung up the phone a large uniformed black man emerged from the gift shop on the other end of the small lobby and moved casually toward us. I stopped and waited for him. He moved as slowly as I did, his eyes fixed on mine. The elevators were ten paces away.

  The guard reached the desk and I recognized him then. He looked at the receptionist, then at me, then at the receptionist again and asked in a Georgia accent, “What’s the problem here, Carol?” Her hand was still on the phone, poised, I knew, to dial 911 if necessary.

  “This man refuses to register,” she explained. “He would like to visit a nurse on duty and I told him she was busy now.”

  The guard looked at me. There was smile at the corner of his lips, as if he was trying to suppress the expression of his delight.

  “Why do you want to do that, Mac? Not sign in.”

  I nodded and said, simply, “It’s good to s
ee you, Reggie.” A few years ago he had been a bouncer at the Hansom House for a summer. I had once pulled a drunk couple, punching man and clawing woman, off his back as he pinned their boozed-out, bottle-wielding friend to the hardwood dance floor. Reggie was a big man, easily two hundred and eighty pounds, and could all by himself lift the front end of a car and turn it so it was facing the other direction. His hair was short, a few weeks shy of bald, and he would have been in the marines a long time ago if he wasn’t on lithium for his mood swings.

  That night I had pulled that couple off his back we sat at the bar after closing and drank till sunup. He was well read and knew more about Albert Camus than anyone I had ever met. He had always on him a tattered copy of The Stranger. We had talked for hours about Meursault and his way of living and taste for things – salt water, chocolates, Marie. When the summer ended and Reggie left for school I was sorry to hear that he had gone. That was maybe three years ago. I looked at him now and wondered if somewhere nearby lay something written by Camus.

  “Someone you know laid up in here?” Reggie said.

  “No. I’m looking for Gale.”

  “Hell, she’s up on the second floor, where she always is. Go on up and see her. I’ll sign you in.”

  “Thanks, Reg.”

  “How’s Augie Doggie doing?”

  “He’s okay,” I lied. I decided then not to wait for the elevator. I headed instead for the stairs at the far end of the corridor. I didn’t look back at the receptionist, but I could imagine the sour look on her face. As I walked toward the door I heard Reggie say to her in a plain but accusing voice, “Don’t you know who that is? That’s the guy you go to when you got trouble.” I cringed.

  It wasn’t easy being in this place. I don’t know if it was the smells or the general, deadly silence, but I felt uneasy in hospitals. There is something almost supernatural about that place – men and women in white coats and green scrubs speaking a secret language all their own, colored pills, the assuring but vaguely ominous half promise of recovery and the ever-present threat of not recovering. It still seemed so medieval to me, polished on the surface but barbaric just beneath it, as much religion as science, as much faith as fact.

  Augie recovered when no one said he would. A world-famous artist in for an appendectomy died on the operating table, fifteen minutes into the operation. A while back I had gotten shot in the shoulder when I tried to find the missing daughter of an old girlfriend. I spent almost two months in this hospital, observing as I lay and waited to heal. I learned not to trust hospitals, not to be lulled into the silence or distracted by the clean smells.

  During both of these times, my recovery and Augie’s, Gale had been our nurse – on the night shift during my stay, and the day during Augie’s. I knew really very little about her, though I remember laying up nights waiting for the sound of her sneakers in the hallway and guessing the details of her life beyond these walls. What I did know about her was that she was ten years older than I, that we had gone to the same high school, and that she was married to a veterinarian but had no kids. She had about her a tenderness I’ll never forget.

  She was tall and slender, built like a tennis player, and had short dark hair that I used to watch grow until she’d come in one night and it was cut back, and then I’d start watching it grow all over again. Her face was lined prematurely – she lived in the sun -- but I think it only added to her looks. She was wearing nurse scrubs and the same short haircut as usual when I spotted her down the long, bright corridor. She was at the nurse’s station, talking, and stopped mid-sentence suddenly and abruptly left when she saw me. She walked down the long corridor to meet me, surrounded by a glare that came in through the large picture window at the other end of the corridor. The light was almost blinding.

  I started toward her, my hands in my pockets. We stopped just a few feet short of each other.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. Her reaction was a mixture of happiness and deep concern. “You look like hell.”

  “A long night.”

  She thought about that, eyeing me closely. She was never fond of the way I lived. I could smell her now – a mixture of rose water and hand cream. These smells grabbed at me like two powerful hands.

  “You okay? What’s going on?

  I didn’t know what else to do but say it.

  “Augie was arrested last night.”

  “My God, what happened?”

  “He was attacked outside his house. He shot someone, killed him.”

  “I don’t understand. It sounds like self defense. Why -- ?”

  “Augie saw a gun but the cops couldn’t find one on the scene. There’s some kind of shit going on.”

  “When isn’t there?”

  “They’re charging Augie with manslaughter.”

  “Jesus, Mac. Jesus. What can I do?”

  “Around the same time he was getting jumped, someone jumped me outside the Hansom House. I cracked his right knee hard with a bottle of Galliano. I need to know if anyone came through the emergency room last night with a busted knee.”

  “I can find that out for you. Is Augie in jail now?”

  “He should make bail and be home by this afternoon.”

  She nodded thoughtfully for a moment, then said, “You know, I’ve never seen anyone make the kind of recovery he did. He’s a tough man.”

  “That’s why we keep him around.”

  “It’s good that you two stick together like you do. You need each other, I think.”

  “They’re stacking the deck against him,” I said, “and I need to find out why and who. The man with the limp is all I have to go on. He’s my only chance at clearing Augie.”

  “I’ll find out what I can.”

  “Thanks, Gale.”

  She reached up then and gently touched my shoulder with the palm of her left hand, touched it where the scarred-over bullet wound was. I remembered all those nights talking to her as I lay in bed, listening for her in the hallway, the smell of her lingering after she was gone, her presence in my room. I remembered staring at the ring on her finger and wondering why my luck was so bad. It was painkillers and sleeping pills causing my mind to rotate into a downward spiral of self-pity, but I spent most my nights damning my life and waiting for her to walk in, and after she left, I waited for her to come back again and fought for sometimes hours against sleepiness and hopeless desire.

  After a moment Gale removed her hand and said, “How’s Tina?”

  “She’s fine. She’s her father’s daughter, I see that more and more each day.”

  “I remember how she’d come by everyday after school, around the time Augie was getting out of physical therapy. Most of the time he’d be in a bad mood and try to take it out on her, but she’d just give it right back to him, both barrels.” She smiled and laughed at that. “They deserve each other.”

  “Definitely.”

  “Your taking care of her made it easier on him, you know. I think that’s why he got better so fast. One less worry, you know. One less thought keeping him awake in the night.” She paused, then said, “Where is she now?”

  “My place.”

  “Once more unto the breech, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  Her eyes squinted, her lines colliding. She had once nursed me back to health and protected me from reporters and the eyes of the curious. I could only imagine how different my life would have to be to have her in it.

  “Take care of yourself, Mac,” she said.

  “I will.”

  “On my break I’ll find out what I can. I’ll call you as soon as I know something.”

  I thanked her. A part of me wanted to stay there with her for a while longer, just to be near her, but what would be the point? We looked at each other, and then finally I turned and left her there in that long, sterile corridor. The only sounds to be heard were my own footfalls. I could feel her watching me as I walked toward the stairs. I could see in my tired mind that face of hers and al
l that white glare burning around her like the light that awaits at the moment of death.

  ___

  I knew something Frank didn’t. This was clear to me. I knew the identity of the dead girl. With that in mind, I steered my ancient LeMans through Southampton Village, down Hill Street, and onto Halsey Neck Lane, the part of town where the filthy rich lived.

  I didn’t like parts south of the highway and avoided them as much as I could. As beautiful as they were, I didn’t much like those wide, tree lined streets, tunnels running under a canopy of woven branches and green leaves. I knew the arrogance that came with these houses, with great wealth, the power and the inevitable seduction, the germ and the disease it wrought. I never knew someone with money who didn’t expect, in the end, to be treated differently from those of us with little or none. I do better when I ignored this part of town. Amy Curry’s home was a mere mile from mine and a whole world away.

  I knew exactly where the Curry house was. I knew pretty much all the families in this part of town, at least by name and estate. If they had ever known me, if I had ever played with their children, I was forgotten now, and glad for it. One of the reasons why Frank wanted me to work for him was that I knew the East End at least as well as he did, and in some crucial ways better.

  I rode down Halsey Neck Lane, careful to obey the speed limit, and then after a minute there was the Curry house before me, one of the few houses on that wide street not fortified by a hedge, as if it had nothing to hide. It was a turn-of-the-century nautical with a loop gravel driveway out front and a well-kept yard and ancient trees. The house ran nearly the width of the flat lot. There were no cars in the driveway, no sign of anyone. The house was eerily still. Most of the houses out here were like that this time of the year. I looked at it for a while and the still houses around it and then decided to push my luck a little and get out and take a look around. I still wanted to see it coming, whatever it was, to be ahead of Frank on this, and this drove me now like a compulsion.

  I passed the house and pulled over to the shoulder of a neighboring yard and got out of my car and walked back to the open gate at the end of the hedge-lined driveway. I waited, studied the house a moment, then took a step through. It felt like stepping off the branch of a tree into darkness. I hated this work and always have. I didn’t let myself think much about the risk I was taking; there was too much at stake not to take this gamble.