She touched my shoulder with her left hand. I remembered living for her visits to my room, living for the moments during her shift when she would stop and talk with me about really nothing at all.
I looked up at her face now. It was tanned and finely lined, showing her age. I nodded once. I hated the things in both our lives that made my feelings for her so ridiculous.
“I’ll see you, Mac.”
She turned, pulled open the curtain, and left. There was something about the way she moved that made me think of a person running away. With the curtain open and her gone, I was left again in clear view of the two waiting uniformed cops.
***
It took an hour for the doctor to make his way to me. He was young, new, didn’t know me. He barely looked at my face. I was stitched up, all the while being questioned by the cops for what was the tenth time. I had to speak in a full voice just to be heard over the chaos of the ER.
After the doctor was done and I was questioned a few more times, I was taken back to the Hansom House in a patrol car. The uniformed cop driving kept looking back at me in the rear view mirror. I didn’t care about that. I had lost track of Augie in the confusion and didn’t know if he was still at the hospital or not. I figured since I hadn’t seen him that the cops had released him with orders not to talk to me till I was questioned. I’m sure he went straight to Frank to tell him what had gone down.
The cop dropped me off outside the Hansom House. I walked up the path through the rain to the porch. The stairs were just inside the entranceway, to the left, and I went up them to my rooms. I picked a dry pair of jeans and T-shirt out of the dirty clothes pile at the foot of my bed, then went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the streaked piece of mirror. I peeled back the bandage and checked the stitches in my scalp. My face was hidden behind smudges of dried mud. I reapplied the bandage, washed up and changed, then grabbed a nearly empty bottle of Beam from the table by my unmade bed. I sat down on my living room couch and poured myself a glass.
The muffled sound of a reggae bass was coming up through the floorboards. With it was the sound of a trumpet being played by someone who had listened to his share of Chet Baker. I didn’t feel up to going downstairs, facing George and the women who came for his free drinks. I didn’t want to hear that the woman from this afternoon had come back, or was back, waiting in a dark corner for me. I wanted nothing to do with anything.
I lay back on the couch and took a long gulp of Beam, feeling it burn my chest as it went down. I needed the warmth. I still felt jittery from the fight, from that moment when I thought Augie and I were going to die. It wasn’t long before I started thinking of the kid, Vogler, bleeding to death on that rainy street.
I drank several glassfuls and then slipped into unconsciousness. It was like being underwater, down deep, the whole workaday world, silent and out of sight, far above me. It was the only peace I knew.
Sometime later I was conscious again. I was still on my couch, still in the dark. I had no idea how much time had passed, and I wasn’t certain why I had been awakened. But then I sensed that someone else was there in the room with me. I sat up fast and switched on my bedside lamp, then grabbed it as a weapon. The light threw drastic shadows across the room.
I felt the same riot letting loose inside of me, the same animal instinct to save my life at any cost. It ran through me like a fever. But then my eyes caught something and the fever suddenly ceased.
Standing at the foot of my couch, casting the largest shadow of all the shadows in that room, was Augie Hartsell.
“Easy there, partner,” he said.
I didn’t realize that I was holding my breath till I found myself letting out a sigh. I waited a second, then put the lamp back on the tabletop. The brightness of the sudden light made my eyes ache. I was still lit from the Beam and half asleep. I could barely sit up. I couldn’t help but recognize the fact that if it had been anyone other than Augie at the foot of my couch, I would have been deep in some serious shit right now.
“What are you doing?” I muttered.
“I came to check up on you. How are you feeling?”
I shrugged. “You?”
He nodded toward the bottle of Beam on the coffee table. “I might feel a little better if I had some of that.”
“I thought Frank didn’t hire drinkers.”
Augie smiled slyly. “It’ll be our secret.”
“Help yourself.”
He poured a few inches of amber into my glass, then picked it up by the rim. Holding it between his thick index and middle fingers, he downed its contents in two gulps.
He placed the glass back on the table and said, “You heard that a cop bought it tonight.”
“Yeah.”
Augie looked around my disheveled living room, then reached into his field jacket and removed an envelope. He dropped it on the coffee table beside the bottle of Beam. It landed with a solid smack.
I looked at it, then up at him. “What’s that?”
“It’s from Frank. He said to tell you he doesn’t normally pay in cash, but he thought you might not have a bank account. You that far off the grid that you don’t have a bank?”
“I have a bank. I just have nothing in it.” I didn’t take my eyes off the envelope.
“I’ll give one thing to Frank,” Augie said. “He takes care of his men. He paid both our hospital tabs, and he’s over at Village Hall right now telling the Chief to instruct his boys to cut you some slack, that you’re working for him now.”
Augie was looking around my living room again as he said this. The curtains on my three front windows were ratty and smoke-stained, the hardwood floor splintered and dusty. The coffee table on which the money and the Beam sat wobbled like a game horse. He nodded at what he saw, as though it made some sense to him.
“You like living like this?” he said.
“I don’t really think about it.”
Augie nodded again. “So, tell me, why are the cops not all that fond of you? I’ve heard some talk. But I’d like to hear your side.”
“I guess I made them look bad on occasion.”
“How?”
“I found a few people they couldn’t.”
“You’re good at that? Finding people?”
I shrugged. “Just lucky. And maybe I looked a little harder than they did. The people who come to me for help are usually on the wrong end of the tax bracket, if you know what I mean.”
“Things still like that here?”
“You’re from Southampton?”
“I left thirty years ago. I haven’t been back for all that long.” He paused. “So is it still like that here?”
“It depends who you’re talking to. It seems like that for some people.”
“Let me ask you, Mac, do you think the chief of police is on the take?”
“I don’t have any proof. And if I did, what could I do about it.”
“Frank seems to think he can do something about it.”
“Is that why you work for him? The two of you going to clean the place up.”
Augie didn’t answer. I looked at the bottle on my table, and the empty glass beside it.
“If you want a drink, pour yourself one,” he said. “Don’t be shy because I’m here.”
When I didn’t make a move for the bottle, he leaned down and pushed the glass toward me. I thought about it for a moment, then poured myself a few inches. I downed the bourbon in slower gulps than Augie had, then placed the emptied glass by the envelope of money.
“It’s amazing what gossip gets around, the things you hear,” Augie said. He was looking at my scratches. “For example, I’ve started asking around about you, and there’s more than one story on how you got those.”
I said nothing.
“It’s even more amazing what doesn’t get around,” Augie continued. “The secrets some people manage to keep while others aren’t so lucky. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, as far as I can see. It’s a random thing,
like sunken treasure from some ship lost at sea centuries ago. For every treasure chest found, there’s maybe hundreds that go unrecovered.”
He watched me for a moment. I pretended that I had no idea what he was talking about, but of course I did.
Frank Gannon had secrets. Augie had secrets. And Augie knew now that I had secrets, too. A past I had run from—and, for that matter, a present that I would run from, if only that were possible.
“Maybe that’s the wrong analogy,” Augie said. “Maybe you should replace treasure chests with land mines. That’s what this place is like. A minefield. Step in the wrong spot, and, boom, the shit goes off right in your face.”
It was only then that I realized Augie had probably had a few drinks before coming here.
“You might want to have a seat,” I said.
“We stepped into something tonight, Mac. You know that, right?”
“I sort of figured that out, yeah.”
“Frank and I grew up together. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“If I know one thing about him, it’s to never trust him. I knew it then, when we were kids, and I know it now. Maybe he didn’t know what we were walking into tonight, but I’d bet my life he did. Just like I’d bet my life he knew what he was doing by sending you to find that Weber girl. He’s a master manipulator, always has been. So I’m thinking that it might be smart of you and me to find out for ourselves what’s really going on.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“The guy who killed the cop is the one from the Caddy, so he saw us. And he knows we saw him kill Vogler. Maybe he’s beat it out of town, but maybe he hasn’t. His partner’s in custody, so he might be of some help, but if they’re pros, which I think they are, then I don’t think we should count on the cops getting much out of him.”
“What makes you think they were pros?”
“The Caddy was the kill car. They probably would have ditched it right way, a few miles out of town. The other car, driven by the other guy, was the shooter’s ride. It was a well-thought-out hit. They knew what they were doing.”
I thought about that for a moment, then Augie said, “You’re an easy man to find, Mac. Enough people know you. And I did just waltz in here now and catch you napping. So if the shooter isn’t long gone…” He didn’t finish his thought, didn’t need to.
“What did Frank have to say about tonight?”
“We didn’t have that much time to talk. But if he is up to something, we shouldn’t rely on anything he says, should we?”
“You really think he is up to something.”
“If you’re asking me if I think Frank would sell me to the devil for pocket change, my answer is yes, I think he’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“All right, Augie, let me ask you again: why are you working for him?”
“I spent twenty-five years in the DEA, most of it down in Colombia. Before that I did two tours of duty as a marine in Vietnam. I’m not squeamish, Mac, I’ve seen my share of shit. And I don’t have the…objections you seem to have to the kind of work Frank does. It’s funny, he tried to tell me that you were some kind of pacifist, which clearly you’re not, and thank God for that.”
“You told me earlier that your reasons for working for him were personal. Feel like telling me now what the reasons are?”
“It’s a long story. Maybe another time.”
“I don’t want to get caught in the middle of some old grudge between you two.”
Augie said nothing to that. I got the sense that maybe he was withholding something from me. But I knew better than to ask.
After a moment, he glanced again at the bottle of Beam. “I could use another belt.”
“You know how to pour.”
He gave himself a few more inches, then downed it.
“Maybe I will sit,” he said.
I nodded toward the chair by the window. Augie pulled it over and placed it across from me. He sat down on it and looked at me.
“Listen, I want to thank you for not leaving me there,” he said. “I was wrong about you. Frank’s wrong about you.”
I could see outside my three front windows to a rim of silver behind the clouded horizon beyond the bare elm trees. Morning wasn’t all that far off. I thought about another sip of Beam, but I was already too drunk.
“I think you and I are a lot alike,” Augie said. “We both rush into things without thinking. We might not be very good for each other.”
“You’re probably right.”
“But my right arm is yours. When you’ve gone through what I’ve gone through, you learn fast what men to trust with your life and what men not to trust.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. Finally I asked, “How long have you been retired from the DEA?”
“A few months. I moved back out here so my daughter and I could live the quiet life.” He paused, then said, “My best friend growing up was like we are. He had this exaggerated sense of right and wrong. It used to get him nothing but trouble. He was a good man, and I think it’s what finally got him killed.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think he tried to stand up to the wrong person and paid the price for it. He’s probably not the only one. It happens.”
“Who was the person he tried to stand up to?”
Augie shrugged off my question. “It was a long time ago.”
I waited a moment, hoping he might say more, but when he didn’t I asked him how old his daughter was.
“Fifteen.”
“Where’s her mother?”
“She was killed ten years ago. Murdered by a machete gang in Colombia. She was from there. It’s just me and Tina now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“How about you, Mac? Any family?”
I shook my head. “My mother died when I was young. And my father disappeared when I was seven. But you probably know all about me by now, don’t you?”
“Do you remember him at all? Your father, I mean.”
“Only vaguely.”
“What is it you do remember?”
“He chain-smoked. He was a cop. The only real memories I have are of us living in a hotel in Riverhead. I was a boy and as far as I knew he was the whole world.”
“Where’d you go after he disappeared?”
“He had arranged for me to be taken in by a family on Gin Lane. I guess he did this just before he disappeared. It must have been hard for him—a single father, and a cop on top of that, trying to raise a kid.”
Augie said nothing for a moment, then: “I’d imagine he thought he was doing the best thing for you.” He paused. “I doubt he just wanted to get rid of you.”
I shrugged. I still remember vividly being handed off to the man who would become my adoptive father. A man with an emotionally disturbed son my age in need of a companion and keeper. A man with an agenda, who, when I was old enough, decided that he would raise me to be the family bodyguard—protect his son and his wife when he was not around, protect all three of them when we traveled. I never saw my father after he had handed me over to this man, despite his promise that I would. Down on his knees, looking me straight in the eyes, he’d said, “I’ll come and see you in a few days, son. Okay?” It had felt as if something were being torn from me. But not long after that day, my father had simply disappeared. I didn’t know it at the time, was only told about it months later by the man who would eventually adopt me.
I was his son now, he’d told me.
I needed to change the subject, so I said, “Your daughter’s fifteen, right?”
“Yeah.”
“She must keep you on your toes.”
“She’s a handful. She’s her father’s daughter, whether she likes it or not. She saw her mother get murdered. She was left for dead, hid for three days before someone found her. She didn’t speak for almost a year after that. Trauma.” He smiled and shrugged. “Now of course she does nothing but talk. She’s not afraid of speaking her mind. She’s like her mot
her that way.”
“You two must be close.”
He nodded. “We take care of the ones we love, right?”
I had nothing to say to that, so I glanced toward my front windows again. Sunrise was definitely underway somewhere not far beyond the rain clouds.
Augie and I drank and talked till daylight was finally everywhere and the birds were singing and the rain had stopped falling through the trees. Together we listened to the church bell a half mile down North Main Street strike seven times. The bottle of Beam was empty and the twittering of the birds was like so much madness outside my windows.
I heard Augie saying, “We’ve got to find that cop killer before he has a chance to find us … Yeah, we stepped into it good, didn’t we … I’ll probably come back for you later on tonight … Thanks for not leaving me there …”
The next thing I knew I was alone in my living room and staring up at my ceiling from the dust-covered wood floor. I don’t know how I got there. But there was a steady ringing in my ears, and whenever I closed my eyes I saw a floating egg, blue-rimmed with an orange center. I felt as if I was being pulled along on the surface of a foaming river.
***
When I awoke it was light out and I was hungry. I looked at the bottle on my coffee table and saw that it was empty. I felt hollow and weak.
I had dreamed most of the night of the many ways of escape—the back roads out of town, and the secondary roads that bypassed the main highways and led off the island. I dreamed of the train tracks running from Montauk to Queens, mile after mile of metal rails and hard wood ties. I saw myself walking that straight line right out of here, away from everything I’ve ever known, counting each tie with the morning sun at my back.
I was awake now and still couldn’t shake that idea from my mind. Escape. The word echoed in my thoughts. But thinking and doing were two very different things. When I finally got myself up off the floor, I saw that it was three in the afternoon. I wandered into my kitchen but couldn’t find anything to eat, so I put on hot water for tea and stood at my window and looked at the train station.
The shutoff notice from the electric company was hanging on the refrigerator behind me. I didn’t have to see it to know that it was there. It reminded me of the money on my coffee table, the cash Frank Gannon had given Augie to give me.
The Poisoned Rose Page 5