Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

by Judson, Daniel

  I heard a shot and flinched violently. A burst of mist sprayed, colorless in the poor light, sprayed from the man’s head. I saw this but couldn’t at first make any sense of it. And then the man’s body dropped to the ground. It fell fast and landed in a heap at my feet. I could see another figure then, this one standing at the foot of the drop from the road. It was man, and he had a gun in his hand. It was aimed at me. And then whoever this man was lowered the gun and limped toward me.

  He knelt beside me and held up four fingers and asked me to tell him what I saw. I could hear the ocean clearly now. The headlights from the SUV up on the road stabbed my eyes, but I was able to count the digits. His hands clamped on my thighs firmly then and he asked me if I could feel anything. I told him I could. He moved his hands down to my knees, then my shins, then to my feet. I could feel each place his hands came to rest. Then he ran his hands over my ribs. I winced at his touch. When I breathed it felt as if tissue were rubbing against metal, as if something sharp and broken was shifting inside me. He looked at my face and studied my reaction, then moved up to my neck, then my head.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said. “Can you sit up?

  I nodded. He took my arm and helped me up to a seated position. My lips drew tight and I grunted.

  “I think you bruised a rib or two,” he told me. “You’re lucky they aren’t broken.

  “Help me up.”

  “How’s your head feel?”

  “Just help me up.”

  He braced himself under my right arm and lifted me to my feet. I could sense the world moving, rotating on its axis at a thousand miles an hour. The sand on which I stood felt like mud, though I knew it was dry. I couldn’t seem to find footing.

  “Go easy,” he said.

  I had to concentrate to stand. I felt drunk. I looked down at the body lying in a heap. Blood was flowing fast from its head, sinking down into sand. It was hard to imagine that just moments ago this heap was a walking, talking living being.

  “He’s dead,” I said. I slurred my words. There was no reason for my statement, but I said it anyway.

  “Yeah.”

  “Who was he?”

  “There isn’t time. Montauk cops have nothing better to do than cruise this road.”

  I nodded and we headed side by side up the slope to the road. We both moved with a limp; it was even in the same leg. I looked at the man as we climbed toward the pavement, studying the side of his face. The back of my jacket and shirt were soaked with my own blood. There was a chilled tingling in my forehead.

  “Why’d you help me?”

  He looked ahead as he spoke, at the crest of the hill and the bent beach grass that lined the road. I could smell his breath.

  “You saved my life,” he said. “Now we’re even.”

  “How did you know?”

  “I heard they were going to move against you. I picked up your tail just after East Hampton. I gotta tell you, you took the bait well.”

  “You said ‘they’. Who are ‘they’?”

  We crested the hill and reached the pavement. The earth didn’t feel anymore stable here. The LTD stood at the side of the road, it’s engine running. The man with the limp moved me quickly toward the passenger door.

  “Just forget about them. Do us all a favor and just forget about them.” He opened the door and helped me into the back. He swung my legs carefully in. I lay on my side across the seat, facing forward.

  “My plates,” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “My license plates. They can trace the car by the plates.”

  “They can just as easily trace it by the serial numbers on the engine and dashboard.”

  “I filed those down. The plates are all they’d have to go on. I can’t have any trouble with the law.”

  He hesitated, then leaned the seat back and opened the glove compartment. He dug through it and removed a screwdriver. Then he closed the door and disappeared for a few minutes. During that time all I could think about was the tank full of gasoline. When the man returned he had the two plates in his hands. He tossed them behind the front seat and climbed in and closed the door. He shifted into gear and made a U-turn, heading us back toward Southampton. It was now the last moments of night.

  He reached into the back seat and handed a rag to me. I put it to the back of my head, where my skin had split.

  He glanced back at me quick. “You okay?”

  “Who are they?”

  “Don’t waste your breath. I’ve stuck my neck out as far as I can.”

  “Who was that man back there?”

  “Just an asshole.”

  “Who hired him?” My own voice sounded weak, as if I was hearing it from across a distance.

  “They don’t tell you the name of the man who pays, and I don’t ask.”

  “I have to find someone.”

  “Listen to me, man, I can only take you as far as Bridgehampton. You’ll have to get to where you need to go from there. Do you understand?”

  I felt myself slipping toward unconsciousness. I wanted to ask him more but I lost track of words. I blacked out then, and when I came to my left arm was wrapped around his neck and he was beside me like a crutch, walking me. I felt cold air, and it took me a moment to realize that we were on the platform at the Bridgehamton train station.

  “You can catch the train to Southampton from here,” he said. He moved me behind the tiny station house and leaned me up against the wall, facing the tracks. We were out of sight from the street there.

  He stepped away to see if I would remain standing. I did, but barely. I looked at his face then. It hurt my eyes to focus.

  “Why was the Curry girl killed?”

  “Look, the biggest land deal this town has seen in four hundred and fifty years is about to go down. The Shinnecock Indians are selling their reservation, and it’s got a lot of people in town worried.”

  I looked at him. It took all I had to focus my eyes.

  “What does this have to do with the girl?”

  “This makes us more than even. Next time we meet, it’s business as usual. Understand?”

  He turned then and walked around the corner of the station house and was gone. I never learned his name.

  The westbound train came in about a half hour later. I got on with my plates in my hand and rode to the next stop, Southampton. A short trip, and the conductor didn’t even have time to come by and collect the fare from me. I got out and made my way down the platform and across the street and headed for the Hansom House. It was less than a block away.

  Parked out front was Eddie’s cab. I saw him talking with George. When they saw me they started running toward me. They helped me up the two flights of stairs to my rooms.

  Inside Eddie lay me down on my bed while George stood by the door. I didn’t know much anymore and liked it that way. All I knew was what the man with the limp had told me. Eddie asked me if I wanted a doctor. I told him no. I had him bring me silver duck tape from a drawer in my kitchen. I removed my shirt, exposing bruises the color of sunsets, and had him wind the tape several times around my ribs, tight. He watched my face each time I winced.

  I lifted my feet up onto the couch and propped my head up with several pillows. I had slept on this couch for three months when Tina lived here and for countless nights when I was too drunk to find my bed.

  “Do you think you should sleep, Mac,” Eddie said. George was still by the door.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll have George check on you every once in a while.”

  “Maybe that’s a good idea.”

  “Is your car somewhere? We could get it for you.”

  I shook my head.

  “Do you want anything, my friend?”

  “Just leave me alone. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Wait. Ask George if he would go over to Le Chef on Job’s Lane and explain to a guy named Bernard that I’ve been in an accident and would still like the job when I’m better.
Tell him I should be up and around in day or so. Can he do that for me?”

  “Yeah, I can do that,” George said. He took a step into the room. “No problem.”

  “Good.”

  “What’s going on?” Eddie said. He leaned close to me.

  I didn’t answer. Despite the fact that it was morning, darkness was closing around me. My eyes were weakening. Somewhere inside of me some part of me was still in that spinning car.

  “Any word on Augie?” I asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard. You want me to call him?”

  “No. Thanks for the help.”

  Eddie nodded. He and George left then and I lay motionless except for my breathing and counted the aches and pains that rushed my brain like children eager for attention. I fell asleep gradually, one stage at a time, as though I was falling through a series of floors, downward and downward. I dreamed of Southampton Village in a light spring rain. I dreamed of a world made by Camus and Hemingway. When I awoke again it was night and the only light in my apartment was from the streetlights outside. I lay awake, listening patiently to each ache and pain, till I realized gradually that there was someone else in the room with me.

  Chapter Five

  He was a tall man, long legged and wide through the shoulders. He was well over six feet and occupied a corner of the room much as a Christmas tree would; his head seemed just inches from my plaster ceiling. I knew who it was by that alone. I used to think as a child that he was like one of those mountain men out of the movies, all power and self-reliance. As I grew he did not seem to shrink at all. In high school we still feared him as much as we had in grade school. He was a physically imposing man, with wisps of thinning gray hair and a face deeply lined and gaunt, the grim face of a lifelong outdoorsman, or maybe that of a man trapped in grief that he held onto as much as it held onto him.

  His eyes were green and flinty, like two wet emerald stones. I could see them even in the dim light spilling in from the outside. I could see, too, that he was in uniform – he was rarely out of it. Under his hunter’s jacket his leather belt creaked once as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.

  I sat up fast, my bruised ribs protesting sharply. But I didn’t dare wince. I had no shirt on. The silver duck tape Eddie had wound around me showed up brighter than anything else in the room.

  I stayed there in the seated position, unmoving, and looked at him. He was standing by my front windows, looking down at me. His baton hung from his belt, sticking out at an odd angle. He turned on the standing reading lamp by the chair at my window.

  I took several shallow breaths and said, “Chief.”

  “When I saw your car I was certain you were dead. I was hoping you were inside it, twisted up like a pretzel.”

  I tried to ease my pain by adjusting my posture. I checked the tape, just to keep from looking at him. “What you are talking about, Chief?”

  “Oh, you don’t know?”

  “My car was stolen two days ago.”

  “Sure it was.”

  I swung my legs out and placed my bare feet on the cold floor. The bruise on my left thigh was spread like a tattoo that had faded from exposure and time.

  “Still breaking into people’s homes,” I said. “Find anything useful?”

  I reached for a T-shirt. The Chief took a step toward me.

  “You have your father’s build,” he said. “A lanky middleweight.”

  I pulled the shirt over my head and looked at him. The pain in my ribs was incredible. Before I could make any kind of response to the Chief’s comment, he took another step toward me and held up a slip of paper for me to see. I recognized at once the check for ten grand that James Curry had given me, which I had left on the table by the door.

  I looked at him, then started to tuck my shirt into my jeans. “You want me to endorse it over to you, Chief?” I said. “Is that what all this is about?”

  “Is this why you’ve been tailing the geologist?”

  “I’m not tailing anyone, Chief.”

  “This is my town, MacManus. Don’t think for a second that I don’t know what goes on in it. Sorry to break it to you, but I’m not the fool you think I am. So I’m going to ask you again. Why did James Curry give you a check for ten grand?”

  I stood up to finish tucking in my shirt. I could barely breath. Even though I moved slowly the Chief’s other hand went fast to rest on the handle of his nightstick. It seemed less of a blind reflex and more of a hope. I looked for a moment into his eyes.

  “I’m his new grounds keeper and house sitter,” I answered. “In case you haven’t heard, he got busted into recently.”

  “You’re telling me this is an advance for some yard work.”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  The Chief thought about that for a moment. “So how’d you get this job to begin with. Last I knew you didn’t want anything to do with the Halsey Neck Lane crew.”

  “I got it through Augie.”

  “I didn’t know Augie knew James Curry.”

  “I don’t think he does. But their daughters went to school together. Before Amy Curry got murdered, that is.”

  The Chief smiled at that and looked around the cluttered front room. “What makes you think she was murdered?”

  “What makes you think she wasn’t.”

  “I never said she wasn’t.”

  “So then why the shoddy police work?”

  The Chief finished his look around the room and said, “Your working at that frog place on Job’s Lane, aren’t you?” He looked at me squarely. His jaw was set hard, like it was ready to snap. I could see his hate for me in his eyes, in the way he stood, in the sound of his breathing. I could smell it on him. I had maimed his son for trying to rape Tina the summer before. Of course he hated me.

  “I just got hired there, yeah.”

  He nodded and looked straight at me. “You give me the excuse, MacManus, any excuse, and I’ll arrest. As you know, once I arrest you there’ll be about a half-dozen cops with night sticks waiting for you in the basement of Village Hall. We take care of our own. So, you jaywalk in this town and I’ll bust you. You take up with another fifteen-year-old, and believe me, I’ll know before the night is over and I’ll be here to bust you before she kisses you good morning. I’d prefer a big mistake, like what Augie did, but I’ll take what I can get. All I care about is seeing to it that you have to learn to walk all over again, just like my son had to. That you kiss whatever putrid dreams you have, if a lowlife like you has any, good-bye, just like he had to. My boy could be playing for Michigan. He was that good. Now he can barely take a bath without help.”

  I could sense that he was flexed under his clothes, flexing to keep his rage and hate from spraying out of him. The Chief was the kind of man who made an art out of sitting on his feelings and waiting for the right time to strike.

  “Do you want to take a swing at me, Chief? Is that what you came here for?”

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  “It’s just you and me here. You’ve got the stick, you’ve got the gun. I’ve got nothing.”

  He tossed the check on the couch. I left it there.

  “I grew up with Augie, you know that,” he said. “Frank Gannon, too. And, believe it or not, your father. The four of us were best friends. We played football together in high school. And your father was quarterback. He played in the Empire State Games. You didn’t know that, did you?”

  I knew little of my father, my real father, the cop from Southampton who left me with strangers after my mother died. I knew even less of her – shadows, smells, the sound of her voice but no words. I cannot remember her entire presence, but I can remember close to much of his – chain-smoking in a tiny hotel room in Riverhead on his afternoons off, sitting by the window in silence, in chinos and a white T-shirt, looking out, me watching him from my cot, smelling fried food from the restaurant below, hearing the voices of strange men in the hallways, only men’s voices except for Saturday nights when I hea
rd the laughter of drunken women and words and sounds I did not understand.

  I was seven when he left me in the care of a man with eyes like the sea. I do not remember my father dropping me off, I do not remember us saying goodbye. I have lost those memories, lost them a long time ago. I used to allow myself to imagine what it was like, but at some point in my life I gave that up.

  I thought of the Chief’s devotion to his son, however blind and misguided it may be. I tried to imagine a world in which the Chief and I were family, where Tommy Miller was my kid brother, where we all lived under the same roof and protected each other with fierce loyalty. It was too hard to imagine, nearly as hard as it was to try to imagine what my father was beyond the handful of memories and what I’ve always heard and what the Chief just told me. I wondered if Tommy Miller looked at his father and saw his own reflection, or some distorted aspect of it. How much of Tommy’s meanness was a reaction to his father, and how much was it a reaction against?

  I didn’t like that the Chief could do this to me, that he in some ways knew more about me than I did. He was my enemy. And yet he was one of the only two men in town I knew of who was present when my father disappeared, who maybe had seen my father the day he dropped me off, had seen the tears in his eyes, if in fact there were any, or the look of relief. Maybe he even heard in my father’s voice indications that he was having second thoughts.

  The Chief sized me up for a moment, then said, “Is that what’s eating you up inside, MacManus? Is that what makes you the creep you are? Your daddy gave you away to strangers and skipped town. You must think about it all the time. Maybe he’s alive, maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s a bum, sleeping on a heating grate somewhere and drinking Thunderbird out of a paper bag. Maybe he started a new life, with a new wife and a mentally balanced kid, one he doesn’t mind being father to. Maybe he thinks about you. Maybe everyday he’s glad he shook a little shit like you off his shoe. But the not knowing must kill you.”

  I took a step toward him and said, “What do you want, Chief?”

  He matched my step forward with a step of his own and said, “I’m here to warn you. I’m here to tell you that both of our lives are in jeopardy right now.”