The Poisoned Rose

by Daniel Judson

  I went to it, opened the envelope, and counted through the bills. It was more money than I had seen in a long time. It was almost as much as I had made in my best month last summer, when Jamie Ray and I had managed to do three painting jobs in one six-day week of working seven in the morning to eight at night.

  I closed the envelope and dropped it onto the coffee table. The teakettle whistled back in the kitchen and I went to it and took it off the stove and dropped my last bag of ginger tea into a mug and poured the water over it. Then I pulled the chair Augie had sat in most of the night back to its position in front of my living room windows and sat on it backwards and looked down on Elm Street.

  I thought about the chances that I could start a new life here and even made of list of errands to run, followed by a promise to myself to actually get out and run them. But before I could get too far with that I started to think of Vogler bleeding to death on that rainy street. From there it was a short trip to thinking about almost being killed out on Noyac Road. And it wasn’t long after that that I remembered the scratches on my face. I touched them with my fingertips, recalling the woman who had left them there, the fear that had coursed through her body. I had thought I was helping her, preventing her from making a mistake by running.

  I had thought wrong.

  I’d been told by a woman who lived with me for a month years ago that all things have a right to live. I believed that, I believed her, all evidence to the contrary.

  It didn’t take much for me to start looking through my place for unfinished bottles of Beam. I found one under my sink that had a few shots left in it. I emptied the bottle into a glass and settled in. I drank slowly to make what I had last. But it wasn’t enough. Around nine I was out of what I had scrounged together and nowhere near numb enough, so I headed downstairs for a few on George. I didn’t care anymore who was looking for me. I remembered Augie saying something about coming to get me tonight. I wasn’t sure if I was going downstairs to make it easier for him to find me or more difficult. But I didn’t really care about that. The threat of my starting to remember again grew with each minute I went without a drink in my hand.

  And anyway, I was hungry, and George served food over the bar.

  I don’t remember her face or much of anything about her, really. She sits beside me in the dark corner at the end of the Hansom House bar and we drink together. It is loud, the place is crowed, there is a great hum around us, chatter and music. I lose a lot to this noise—a lot of what she is saying to me—but it doesn’t seem to matter. She smiles a lot and laughs and I nod at things I don’t really understand. It’s the smiling and laughing and long eye contact that tells me what I need to know.

  We eat and drink, then go upstairs to my dark apartment. She opens a window and the curtain lifts and blooms like a restless ghost. The air coming in fills the room fast, too fast. It is a rush of cold and dark, a rush of outer space. I begin to shiver. She comes to me, presses her body against mine, wraps her arms around me. I smell her with each breath I take.

  And then we are lying down. Her body radiates heat. I pull it close to me out of greed. I can see the vague shape of her by the streetlight coming in from outside. Her hair is shoulder length and straight. I smell it, smell her skin, the Quervo on her cool breath. She is drunk, too. She laughs. It’s a laugh that comes from deep in her gut. She climbs on top of me and straddles me and leans down so her soft hair brushes my face and makes a cozy little cave for us. We kiss that way for a long time. She laughs and smiles as we do this. She is almost giddy. There is warmth in her smile.

  We undress each other, clumsily. There is joy in our fumbling. Finally, we’re both naked, and she straddles me again, reaches between her thighs and guides me inside her. She lowers herself down slowly till I am all the way in. We both gasp. Then she begins to rock back and forth, her back straight, her palms on my stomach. I watch her.

  Afterward she is standing at my bedroom window, wearing nothing but an old army surplus wool blanket around her shoulders. Her feet are bare. The floor must be cold. I tell her this but she says it’s okay. She stands in that pale light and tells me that I’m a hard man to get to. I’m not sure what she means. Then she says something else, says it several times before I finally hear and understand her. I realize she is asking me if I will help her. I hear myself tell her that I can’t help anyone. She says something about how he’ll think twice about hurting her if he knows we’re together. I don’t know who “he” is, but I don’t ask. I tell her I can’t see her face with her back to the light. I ask her who she is. I have asked that before. She tells me that she is Rose. Don’t I remember? I say nothing.

  She tells me that I am drunk. There isn’t any hint of recrimination in her voice. It is just a fact that she for some reason needs then to state. She tells me that she’s drunk, too. Confused, I tell her that I wouldn’t be of much help. I’d only make things worse. She seems reluctant to believe me. She goes on to say that he pays men to hurt people. I stop listening. Or maybe my mind can’t hear anymore and shuts off. I feel the cold without her near me. I focus on that. I can smell her, us—I focus on that, too. I remember her face above me, the way she laughed like we were just two kids at play. I want to be back in the cave made by her long hair, I want her laughing again, I want to be beneath her, lifting my head off the pillow to meet her face as it descends toward mine.

  I tell her to come back to bed. But she won’t. I don’t remember her, she says. She says she thought I did but that I don’t. She says her face has changed, that he broke some bones and she had to have surgery. And anyway it was such a long time ago that she barely recognized me, too.

  She is dressing now, suddenly modest. She turns her back to me as she gathers her clothes off the floor. I ask her something but I don’t even hear my own words. I don’t know what I just said. She tells me to go to sleep. Go to sleep, Mac, she says. Go to sleep.

  Then she is dressed and standing in my bedroom doorway. She lingers there, is looking into my living room at something. The light in that room is on. It is a dim light. She stares at something in there for a long while before looking back at me.

  She tells me to take care of myself. Before I can ask her to stay she is gone. I don’t hear my apartment door close right away, though. I wait for it, watching the bedroom doorway, waiting for her to return to it. But she doesn’t. I finally hear my apartment door close and follow as best I can the sound of her footsteps as she moves down the hallway toward the stairs. I follow her sound till it is gone. Then there is nothing but darkness and silence. I linger in it, utterly alone, till even that is gone.

  When I awoke it was day and somewhere down Elm Street a dog was barking. I got up and pulled on a pair of jeans as I tried to shake what was left of that dream from my head. That had to have been a dream. It felt like a dream. I had dreamed worse things than that. But I was in no condition at the moment to dwell on it. I needed something in my stomach. I found leftovers in my refrigerator and sat at my kitchen table and ate them. I could remember going down to get some food from George, but not much after that. But this really wasn’t anything new. I didn’t know what day it was, though, not off the top of my head. But I knew sooner or later, one way or another, I’d figure that out.

  Eventually I remembered that my phone was shut off. I knew that if I went down to the phone company and paid my overdue bill in cash they would restore service today. With all that was going on, a phone would be a good thing to have. I went into the living room to get the envelope Augie had dropped on my table. My legs and back were stiff and sore. It was as if I had run miles in my sleep. I found the envelope on the table, right where I had left it, except it looked empty. I picked it up and knew by its weight that there was nothing in it. I did a quick scan of my apartment. I thought maybe I had dropped the money at some point during the night. But it wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I was into the start of an all-out search when I saw my old army blanket on the floor by my bedroom window and it came to me suddenly.
>
  I remembered her standing in my bedroom doorway, staring back at something in my living room. I remembered the moment’s pause between when she left the doorway and when I heard my apartment door close. I remembered this well enough to know what had happened. But what I didn’t know—still didn’t know—was just who the hell she was.

  Not long after this there was a knock on my door. I went to answer it, hoping it would be her, that she was bringing back my money. I opened the door and saw Augie standing in my hallway. When he stepped into my door, he easily filled it. He was looking into my apartment, as if for someone.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  There was a shopping bag hanging from his left hand.

  “I came by last night,” he said, “but you looked a little busy, so I didn’t bother you.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I don’t think you were seeing much of anything but her, to be honest.”

  “Did you see her face?” I asked quickly.

  “No, her back was to me. Why?”

  I didn’t answer, decided to drop the matter. Anyway, by the look on Augie’s face, he had something on his mind.

  “What’s going on?”

  “The town is buzzing with cops,” he said. “You can feel the panic. The good news is, the killer dumped the cop car in Jersey, so he’s out of the state, for now anyway. The bad news is, he looted the car—shotgun, ammo, everything. He took the cop’s handcuffs and mace, even got his wallet and badge. Cool head, whoever the hell he is.”

  “Any comment from Frank?”

  “None. No big surprise there. He did offer us another job, though. He did it as if nothing had happened. Business as usual. I’m thinking we should take it, Mac. I think we should stay as close to him as possible. And I think we should stay together. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, if you know what I mean.”

  I did. “What’s the job?”

  “It’s a two-man tail. I told Frank to put you on with me for a few more jobs because you had a lot to learn. He was more than willing to believe that.”

  I thought about that, then nodded and said, “Yeah, okay.”

  “After I left here last night I went back out to the Dead Horse to poke around. I asked a few questions but no one had anything to say.”

  “What about the man who hired Frank to scare off Vogler? Maybe we could find out something from him.”

  “You saw the same file I did. Trust me, if I knew that man’s name, I would have talked to him already.”

  “So what do we do now?”

  “We work for Frank, stay close to him. And we keep our eyes and our ears open. Do you think you can do that?”

  I nodded again. “Yeah.”

  “It might get…ugly. You might see some things you don’t want to see. You going to be okay with that?”

  I told him I would be, and immediately regretted saying that. But I kept it to myself.

  Augie placed the shopping bag onto the floor near my feet. “Here,” he said. “I brought this for you.”

  I picked up the bag and reached inside.

  “It’s November now, so it’s only going to get colder,” he said. “You lost yours, so I knew you’d need a new one.”

  Inside the bag was a brand-new Navy pea coat. I pulled it out and held it up. It was made of heavy wool, was heavier even than my wool blanket.

  “It’s a good winter coat,” Augie explained. “Nothing like wool for keeping out the cold.”

  I looked at the jacket, then at Augie. I wasn’t sure what to say. Finally, I said, “Thanks.”

  “Listen, I tend to think everything happens for a reason. It’s the closest thing to faith that I have. Without it, I would have curled up and died after Tina’s mother was killed. I would have drank myself to death. So because I think everything happens for a reason, I’m pretty sure we were brought together for a reason. Maybe by hanging around with me you’ll start to believe that, too. Maybe you’ll come to understand why you’re here—living in this apartment, living the way you do. There’s a reason for it, I promise you. Till you figure that out, though, know this: your problems are my problems. My right arm is yours. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

  I told him that I did.

  He sighed and looked me in the eye. “Good.” He paused, then said, “So, c’mon, try the jacket on.”

  I dropped the bag and put the jacket on. It fit perfectly, with plenty of room for a sweatshirt or sweater.

  “A coat like that won’t slow you down,” Augie said.

  The inside liner was pleated. I put my hands in the deep outer pockets and pulled the jacket closed. I could already feel my body heat collecting inside.

  “You like it?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “Tina helped me pick it out.”

  “Tell her thanks for me.”

  “I will. Listen, I’ve got some things to do. I’ll come back for you tonight. I’ve rented a car—a nice sedan with comfy leather seats. We’ll do the tail and keep Frank relaxed. We’ll watch each other’s back and make some money in the process. Don’t worry, sooner or later we’ll find out exactly what Frank is up to. We’ll know everything we need to know.”

  Chapter Three

  Augie and I worked for Frank Gannon for two weeks—three nights the first week, five nights the second. I made more in those two weeks than I’d made in the best two months of my life. I got squared away with the utility companies and paid upfront for a six-month insurance policy on the LeMans. I bought half a dozen cases of rice milk and three cases of dried fruit from the whole food store in town. I stocked my cupboards with teas and canned goods. I had enough food to last me a month.

  The first job had Augie and me tailing a cheating husband. We caught him kissing another woman in his car and got it all on videotape. Then we followed another husband to a bar in Wainscott, where he met his much-younger male lover. After that we tailed a well-off married woman and mother of two to Patchogue, where she stripped for tips in a blue-collar joint on Montauk Highway. Men were throwing money at her—she knew most of them by name—and she left with what had to be a grand, easy. Augie caught it all with a high-tech hidden surveillance video camera that belonged to Frank Gannon. The lens was fitted into the bridge of a pair of black-rimmed glasses, the recorder stowed in the pocket of Augie’s field jacket. I stayed by the door and watched Augie’s back. I could tell he didn’t like the work any more than I did. But compared to what he had been through in Colombia, never mind his two tours in Vietnam, it was all just a walk in the park for him. He had a perspective I didn’t, and probably never would. He wasn’t as affected by suffering the way I was, he didn’t pity people as easily. I could understand that. I even envied it. This was just business to him, nothing more. And, to his mind, everything happened for a reason.

  He never commented on the character of the people we followed. He never called them names or made jokes about them. They weren’t stupid or greedy in his mind, just people making mistakes. Every tape we made he labeled carefully, logged in a notebook, and then handed over to Frank. I could tell as he did so that he was aware of what was going down, of the significance of it, the lives that would not be the same come morning.

  When we weren’t working, we were sleeping. When we weren’t sleeping, we were drinking, sometimes in bars but most often in his kitchen during the day, when his daughter was at school. We’d sit at his table and drink Beam neat and talk. I left always just before Tina came home, driving back to the Hansom House in the middle of the afternoon in my newly insured car, as lit as a match. Sometimes he and I didn’t get home from a job till morning and we’d start our drinking then. Augie and I were together day and night. Even on the days when there wasn’t work we usually met up at some point. On the day his check from the insurance company for his wrecked pickup finally arrived, I drove him to Riverhead to buy a new truck. He chose one of those giant Ford rigs with lights everywhere, a cockpit like a jet fighter, and the biggest motor in produ
ction. He drove it home that afternoon, me tailing behind in my rust-bucket LeMans. It was only a twenty minute drive but we stopped twice along the way for drinks. After the second bar, turning onto his street, Augie nearly took out a neighbor’s mailbox.

  I liked the money I was paid, but the job was getting to me. I began to lose sight of the strategic importance of keeping Frank feeling safe. It was during our eighth job for Frank that the shit finally hit. He’d been hired by a suspicious fiancé to tail a young woman on the night before her wedding and sent Augie and me out on the job. We videotaped the woman bar-hopping with girlfriends, drinking too much and dancing with a half-dozen different men. Later on we caught her in a car in a lot behind the bar, rolling around with what turned out to be an ex-boyfriend. When the groom-to-be saw the tape the next morning he flew into a rage and went to his fiancé and beat her with an antenna he broke off a truck. It cut her face and hands and arms like a whip. She was taken to Southampton hospital and he got himself hauled off to the Suffolk County Jail, while in the meantime 150 guests were driving to the church where their wedding was supposed to be.

  That was all I needed. That was all I could take. I was ready to ditch, and Augie knew it. He could see it in my face. He tried to calm me down but I wouldn’t have it. This was just all wrong to me. What could possibly be the reason for such destruction? For so much pain? I went home that morning but couldn’t sleep. My phone rang all day but I didn’t answer it. Eventually at some point I grabbed the thing off the coffee table and flung it across the room. The cord tore the jack out of the wall, but I didn’t care. I bought a bottle of Beam and came back with it and got drunk alone on my couch. I watched shadows move across my living room floor and then up the walls as morning became afternoon. I looked out my windows watched late afternoon gel into evening. Then I watched evening bleed off into night. Sometime after dark someone knocked on my door. I didn’t answer. The knock turned into pounding. Then someone started calling my name. It was Augie. I ignored him. Finally, the door burst open. Bits of lock and wood flew across the room like shrapnel. I just sat there and stared toward my three front windows and the night beyond.