The Poisoned Rose

by Daniel Judson

  Augie’s side of the truck had impacted with the tree. The driver’s door window had been shattered by the side of his head. The force of the sudden stop had flung me so hard against my seat belt that I thought I may have popped a rib.

  Augie was dazed. His eyes looked glassy, and his lids blinked a lot. He looked surprised, and there was blood in the creases in his forehead. I heard a car skid to a stop on the rainy road above. But I couldn’t see anything. The windshield had shattered and popped out, and there was rain in my eyes. The car on the road above was certainly the car that had rammed us from behind.

  I looked over at Augie. Both his arms were up and out in front of him, like he was trying to find his way in the dark. We didn’t have much time.

  “Augie,” I said. “Augie.”

  He looked at me but I don’t think he saw me.

  “Can you move?” I reached down for my belt and undid the buckle. It came free easily.

  From the street above I heard a car door open and close. With the windows gone the rain sounded louder. Fine drops bounced up from the dashboard and into my face.

  I reached over and fumbled for Augie’s seat belt.

  “Can you move?” I said.

  He looked at me. It took a moment for his eyes to focus on me. He nodded once. I undid the belt and heard voices coming from the street above. We didn’t have time.

  “Are you hurt?” I whispered.

  He said nothing. I reached up and took hold of his large head with both hands and looked at the cut on his forehead. It looked superficial to me. I aimed his face at mine and checked his eyes. He looked at me, and there was a degree of cognition.

  “We have to move. We have to move now.”

  My words seemed to reach him then. I could see it in his eyes. He nodded again. This time there was more certainty in it.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “My 1911. Where is it?”

  I looked at the glove compartment. It was open. The gun was nowhere to be seen.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Find it.”

  “We don’t have time. We have to move.”

  I grabbed the passenger door handle and jerked it up. The door swung open on a creaking hinge. I slid out and reached for Augie. He was looking around for his gun, feeling the seat covered with broken glass. I grabbed him by his jacket and pulled him toward me. My rib protested sharply. Once he was across the seat, I pulled him through the door. It became clear to me fast that I wasn’t going to be able to hold him. But before either of us could do anything he fell. I went down with him. He was as heavy as a refrigerator and landed on top of me. Most of his weight was on my legs. I was pinned and couldn’t move.

  We heard two voices up on the street then and waited where we were, listening. The voices belonged to the driver of the Caddy and the driver of the car that had rammed us from behind. I could hear only some of their words clearly through the rain.

  “It went down this ditch … Over here … They saw the whole fucking thing … No … Over here …”

  I scrambled out from under Augie and got up. I tried to pull him to his feet. He did what he could to help. We fumbled but he finally got up. I moved in next to him and wrapped his left arm around the back of my neck. Side by side we stumbled through the mud and around the truck. Augie was still too dazed to walk well, and he was too heavy for me to shoulder and carry. After a few feet we dropped to the ground again behind the tree into which the pickup had crashed. I landed on a root and felt it dig hard into my side. I was out of breath already, my chest heaving. Augie seemed to be struggling toward consciousness, like someone trying to wake up quickly from a deep sleep. There was nothing we could do but lie there together in the mud by the base of that tree and wait.

  I looked around the tree and spotted the first man as he appeared at the top of the bank. He was just a silhouette in the rain. He looked down at the truck, then glanced over his shoulder and waved someone behind him to follow.

  “Hurry,” he called.

  A second man appeared then. He held a flashlight in his hand. The first man took it, switched it on, and shined it down at the wrecked truck.

  The drops of rain looked like tiny blurs in the beam of light. The first man shone it on the opened passenger door and into the cab. The inside of the truck seemed evenly divided between bright light and sharp shadows, both of which moved with each motion of the man’s hand. He led the second man down the mud bank. They looked inside the cab, then under it. It only took them a minute to spot the foot prints. I saw then that the second man had a gun in his hand. I saw small drops of rain bouncing off it. But I couldn’t see either of their faces, only the shapes of them in the night, the flashlight, and the gun.

  I looked at Augie and held my index finger to my lips. He nodded. One of the men whispered, “They couldn’t have gotten far.”

  The other said, “Forget about ‘em.”

  “They saw the whole fucking thing.”

  I was unarmed, and Augie’s .45 was somewhere in the truck. For all I knew it may have flown through the shattered windshield. But either way there was no time to look for it. I felt around the muddy ground for a stone but found nothing but the soft earth. I scrambled up to my hands and knees and searched more. I found nothing. I had no way of knowing which side of the truck the men would come around, the front, the rear, or both. I looked back and forth between the two frantically. I found a few pebbles but nothing that would give me an edge, nothing that would make a difference when thrown at a man. Finally I found something, a stone, its top barely sticking out of the ground. I dug around it with my fingers. It was an act of desperation, and probably a waste of time, but it was all I could do. I kept looking toward the front of the truck, then the rear, all the while digging. But I was getting nowhere and finally gave up. I turned to search elsewhere for a weapon and in the process looked Augie in the face. It was dark but I could see him well enough.

  He nodded his head to the right once. I knew right away that he was telling me to go. He looked exhausted, his arms hanging at his sides, like a boxer who had lost twelve out of twelve rounds. I said nothing, just looked back at him. He nodded again, this time with his eyes closed. The blood on his face was watery from the rain. He was covered with mud. I waited till he opened his eyes and was looking at me again. Then I shook my head from side to side. I held up my finger, telling him to wait. Then I turned and went back to the buried rock and began to dig again with my fingers. I didn’t think about the pain and just dug, tearing the dirt away. I looked toward the front of the truck, then the rear. Nothing, but I knew they would appear somewhere soon. I felt the under-curve of the rock and wedged my fingers deep beneath it. I hooked my nails against the rough surface and leaned back. The rock gave, but only a little. I readjusted by grip and leaned back again. It broke free and moved a few inches out of the ground, only to stop again. I readjusted the grip one more time and leaned back. The rock pulled free. The sudden give sent my flying backward. I landed on my back next to Augie, the rock on my chest. It was a little bigger than a grapefruit and hit me hard enough when it landed that it knocked the wind out of me. I grabbed the rock with both hands and sat up just as one of the men came around the front of the truck. My eyes searched frantically for a gun but I didn’t see one. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. I looked and looked, time ticking off in my head. And then there it was. The bright beam of a flashlight crossed the ground fast and hit me in eyes. It cast painful shadows inside my head.

  “They’re here,” he called.

  I turned just as the second man appeared behind the truck. I didn’t wait and with my right hand flung the rock at him with all I had. The throw tore my shoulder and I grunted. My eyes found the gun the instant I let go of the rock. The man saw it, saw something coming and flinched, trying to bob like a boxer. But he wasn’t fast enough, and the rock caught him solid on the left side of his face. I heard a good thud followed by a surprised grunt. Then the man’s legs buckled an
d he dropped to the ground.

  When I turned back to the first man he was rushing me. The flashlight was in his left hand now, a knife in his right. I rose to my knees to meet him as he took a wide swipe at my face. I slipped it by fractions of an inch. I could hear the blade moving through the air as it passed my eyes. Before he could take a backhand slice at me, I lunged toward him and hugged him around the waist, trapping his knife hand between us. I lunged forward, knocking him back. He landed hard and grunted. I landed on top of him and scrambled to grab hold of his knife hand. I wrenched his wrist till he cried out and dropped the knife. Then I grabbed a handful of his hair and struck his nose three times with my open palm. My heart was bursting in my chest. After the palm strikes I grabbed the flashlight and stood up fast. It was a Maglite, three feet long and heavy as pipe, as much club as flashlight. I swung it into his ribs like I was chopping wood, reloaded my swing, and swung it down across his right knee.

  Then I turned to where the second man, the one with the gun, had fallen. It felt as if too much blood was pumping through my veins. I felt lightheaded with fear and fury and rushed to the second man as he tried to stand. The gun was in his hand still. I wasted no time and swung downward like an executioner with the Maglite and smashed his hand with it. He cried out as the gun flew from his grip. I kicked it away and swung with the exact same trajectory a second time and clipped the man’s collarbone. But he was still trying to stand, grabbing at me for support, so I laid the Maglite across the side of his head. He was dazed but still grabbing at me, so I laid it again, this time across his face. He dropped then, and I stood over him and rained down blows on his legs. I couldn’t stop. My heart was pounding beats ahead of me, and my mind raced. The more anger I felt, the less fear I felt, and somehow each strike I landed on this man made me more angry. I hit him a half dozen times after he had stopped fighting back, but it wasn’t till I sensed someone behind me that I stopped and turned.

  I was face to face with Augie, bloodied and covered with mud. I froze. He could barely stand and looked at me as if he had never seen me before. I lowered my hand, and he reached out and eased the Maglite from it, then dropped it to the ground.

  He just looked at me. The blood that washed from his face by the rain was replaced almost immediately by even more blood. I looked at him, conscious of my rapid breathing, and listened to the hiss of the rain around us.

  It took me a while to come back. He gave me the time I needed. It was a few moments before my heart became anything less than a riot of fear and hate.

  Finally I was able to speak. “You need to see a doctor,” I said.

  He nodded toward the right side of my head. “You, too.”

  I didn’t know what he meant at first. Finally, I touched that part of my head and brought away blood.

  “You must have knocked your head when we hit the tree.”

  I looked at the blood on my fingertips. It looked as black as oil in the dark. It shimmered. Without realizing it, I muttered, “So much for the easy night, huh?”

  Augie took a quick look around us, at his wrecked truck and the two men sprawled out on the ground.

  “We’d better find a phone and call the cops.”

  “They’re not all that fond of me. I’ve had run-ins with them before.”

  “It’ll be all right, son,” he said. “You’re with me.”

  Chapter Two

  An ambulance arrived not long after the police. I watched the red and blue lights play hide-and-seek in the tree tops. Eventually a few of the town cops recognized me, but Augie stuck to his word and told them I was with him. He showed them something in his wallet and mentioned that we were working for Frank Gannon. They didn’t give me trouble then. Augie and I rode away from the scene in an ambulance. I felt light-headed and my limbs were weak. I said nothing about my ribs or shoulder. Augie sat across from me and just stared at me the whole way. The paramedics tended to our cuts and took our stats. Then we were asked our names.

  “Hartsell, Augie.”

  One of the paramedics nodded and wrote Augie’s name on a form attached to a clipboard. Then she looked at me.

  “Declan MacManus,” I said.

  She wrote that down. As she did, Augie said, “You’re last name is MacManus?”

  He seemed surprised by this. He seemed, too, a little concerned.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Mac is short for MacManus. Why?”

  He shook his head but didn’t say anything.

  It was only a five-minute ride to Southampton from North Sea. We spent it in silence. Once we reached the hospital, we were taken right in to the ER. I knew this was because our attackers would be brought in right after us and that Augie and I would have to be kept separate from them.

  I was led to an examination area by the paramedics and helped up onto the bed. They did the same with Augie, only they took him to the other end of the ER so we couldn’t talk. After a few minutes two uniformed cops approached Augie. I watched as he talked to them for a while. Every now and then he nodded toward me, and whenever he did the cops would glance over their shoulders at me, then turn back to Augie. Eventually an ER doctor in green scrubs showed up and the cops stepped away. The doctor drew the curtain closed around himself and Augie. The cops just looked at me then, till finally they started toward me. Before they could get to me, though, someone came into my area and drew the curtain closed around me, cutting them off.

  I expected a doctor, but instead it was a nurse named Gale Nolan.

  She had short dark hair and was taller than I by a few inches and older by ten years. She had been my night nurse a few years back when a slug from a .45 crushed my collarbone during the last of my foolish favors for people. I’d made the papers then, and Gale kept the reporters away for the month I was laid up in the hospital. She was big on celebrity gossip and visited me often and talked to me about people I had never heard of. It was nice to just listen, to be with someone and not have to talk. She seemed accepting of me, more so than others, and she didn’t ask a lot of questions about me or my past. I got the sense that she knew enough.

  “Gale,” I said.

  “I thought I told you I never wanted to see you again,” she teased. She stepped directly in front of me to examine the cut on my forehead.

  “I stayed away for as long as I could.”

  “I’m a magnet, aren’t I?” She lifted the bandage, her eyes squinting as she studied the wound. “You play too rough. Mac.” She removed the bloodied bandage and then tossed it into a garbage can. It landed inside with a light slapping sound. “You’re going to need a few stitches. There are easier ways to see me, you know.”

  “I don’t have any money, Gale. I can’t pay.”

  “Actually, your big friend over there says Frank Gannon is paying. Is that true? Are you mixed up with Gannon? I thought you were smarter than that.”

  “I’m not mixed up with anyone, Gale.”

  “But you’re working for him?”

  “It was just a one-time thing,” I lied. “I needed the money.”

  “I can get you a job here, you know that. We need orderlies, especially in the emergency room on weekends.”

  “I need more than what that kind of job would pay. You know what it’s like out here.”

  She unwrapped a fresh gauze, then carefully pressed it to my cut. I felt a sharp pinch.

  “Just when I stopped worrying about you, you waltz right back in here and get me started all over again.”

  “I hardly think I waltzed, Gale.”

  She paused, busying herself with examining my wounds, then said, “Someone told me you saw someone get killed tonight, and that you almost got yourself killed in the process. Is that true?”

  I nodded.

  “You play too rough, Mac. Have I mentioned that?”

  “Like I said, it was a one-time thing.”

  “I take it you haven’t heard, then.”

  “Heard what?”

  “The cops were talking. One of their own got killed to
night.”

  “When?”

  “Just a little while ago, as they were bringing in one of the men who ran you off the road. The guy had a broken hand or something, his wrist was all swollen, so the cop didn’t cuff him. On the way in the guy started convulsing in the back, and the cop pulled over to check him out. But it was a trick. Somehow the guy got hold of the cop’s gun and killed him. They found the patrol car a few minutes ago, empty. Every cop in town is out on the road now, looking for the killer. They’re going to want to talk to you, find out what you know about this guy.”

  “I don’t know anything. I never even got a good look at him.”

  “Who’s your big friend?”

  “His name is Augie.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  “Not much. Why?”

  “He’s got two healed-over gunshot wounds. That’s one more than you. In my book that makes him double trouble.”

  “In my book it makes him lucky.”

  “Maybe. One thing I’ve learned from this job is you can gauge a man’s judgment by the condition of his body. So my guess is you might want to stay away from him, find a new friend to play with.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, Gale.”

  “Somebody’s got to look after you. I’m serious, though, Mac. Stay away from him, okay? Do you understand me?”

  I nodded.

  “I’ve got to get back upstairs. You caught us on a bad night. There were two other car crashes right before yours, and some high school girl was raped. They brought her in a half hour ago. So bear with us.”