The Poisoned Rose

by Daniel Judson

  The cottage was set maybe a hundred feet back from the road and fifty feet from the bay. It was in an open lot surrounded on three sides by rows of trees. I walked close to the shore, close to the tall reeds that grew along it. I waited till I was directly in front of the cottage before I cut to my right and climbed the inclining lawn toward the front door.

  There were wraparound windows on three sides of the cottage. As I approached it I could see the reflection of the smoky night sky in the wide panes. I moved quietly to the front door, then stopped and listened hard. I heard nothing but my own breathing.

  I started up the short steps to the front door. I noticed at once that it was ajar by a few inches. I eased the door open with the back of my hand, moving it just enough so I could pass through. I took one last look behind me and slipped inside.

  It was dark but I didn’t take out my flashlight. I stood there inside the door for a while, trying to make out what I could. The front half of the cottage was an open room, part living room, part office. The back half was divided into two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom. The bedroom door was open. Eventually, when my eyes adjusted, I made out an unmade bed in that room and a bare wall beyond it.

  I took a few steps into that front room. The planks beneath my feet were wide and sturdy, but still they creaked. The entire cottage seemed well built, tight like a ship. The wraparound windows offered a nice view of the bay. But they gave me the feeling of being exposed, a feeling even all this dark around me couldn’t quell.

  Eventually I made my way deeper into the cottage. I went to the bedroom door and peered in to make certain no one was there. Then I looked into the kitchen. It was empty. There were dirty dishes in the sink, though, and the lingering smell of recent cooking.

  There was a back door in the kitchen. I went to it and opened it a few inches, just in case I needed to go through it quickly.

  I went back into the front room. Since there was no one around for me to ask the whereabouts of the Welles woman, I decided not to waste the trip and take a look around and see what I could find. Maybe I could get lucky and come across an address or phone number or something and get out of there. That would be enough to get Frank off my back for good.

  On the office side of the front room was a desk. I went to it and took out my flashlight and carefully searched through the drawers. I stayed down low, under the windows, out of sight. I found bank statements and bills and notices of payment overdue from the Bank of the Hamptons. I found a payment book with the tear slips for April, May, and June still attached.

  On top of the desk was an electric typewriter with a piece of paper in the roller. I aimed my dying light at it and saw what looked like prose, part of a story of some kind. I read a few lines. It was a first-person narrative that seemed concerned with the look of a rose in a vase on a window sill at first light. I didn’t read anymore.

  I opened the desk drawer directly under the typewriter and searched through it. There was nothing but paper clips and disposable pens and tubes of correcting fluid. There was a filing cabinet near the desk, but its drawers were locked. I took a look around the room, making a sweep with my dull light, searching for something, anything that might help me. In the other half of the room, the living room half, was a bookcase with a few dozen paperback books spread out on the shelves. I started to cross toward it, passing a door I hadn’t seen before, a door set between the kitchen and the bedroom. It was cut into the wall panels, invisible except for its black hinges and small handle. It must have been a closet door. I stopped at it and waited a moment and listened, then reached for the handle. But before I could touch it the door flung suddenly open. I jumped back, the swinging door missing me by an inch, the rush of air its motion created brushing past my face.

  Suddenly there was movement, footsteps and a lot of rushing around. A man with a chrome-plated .357 revolver lunged out at me, the gun aimed at my head. I took a few steps back, out of blind reflex, and raised my hands. He took as many steps forward. He pulled the hammer back with his thumb. There was maybe six feet between us. I thought about moving, about what I’d been trained to do when faced with an assailant armed with a gun. But before I could do anything, another man came rushing in from the kitchen. He held a smaller revolver with a dark finish in his outstretched hand. It, too, was aimed directly at my head.

  He came in closer than the first one and pressed the muzzle against my temple. I knew by this that he was an amateur.

  “Don’t make a fucking move,” he said.

  The other one stepped toward a table near the door, reached down and switched on a lamp. He kept his eyes on me as he went, his gun raised and aimed at me.

  Above and below the lamp a circle of white light shone, but the rest of the room caught only the soft yellow light cast through the heavy lamp shade. The wraparound windows went dark then, the night beyond them now invisible. The windows became like mirrors, reflecting from three sides distorted images of everything inside that small room.

  The man by the lamp was looking at my face. He appeared puzzled, almost surprised. The barrel of his gun lowered, drifting down. Suddenly, he seemed preoccupied, troubled.

  The man directly beside me was a kid, maybe twenty, maybe less. He was still caught up in the excitement, still riding the commotion. His breathing was fast and shallow. He ordered me to hand over my flashlight. I let slip from my hand instead. It fell to the floor with a thud. He stooped down to pick it up.

  The man by the lamp had a shaved head and Fu Manchu beard. Dark tribal tattoos covered his forearms. He seemed concerned by the sight of me, as if he were uncertain just what my presence here meant.

  “I know you,” he muttered.

  The kid beside me had the flashlight in his left hand. He went to press the barrel of his revolver once again against my temple.

  “Is this the guy?” the kid asked.

  “No,” the bald man answered. “It’s someone else. It’s another guy.” He paused, then said to me, “How the hell did you find me? What the fuck do you want?”

  “I’m just looking for money.” I said. “That’s all.”

  “Bullshit,” the bald one said. “I’ve seen you before. You don’t remember me.”

  “I don’t want any trouble.” I held my hands up at shoulder level. “I didn’t take anything. Let me walk out of here now and you’ll never see me again.”

  “Let’s just fucking waste him and get out of here,” the kid said. His voice was increasing in pitch. He was getting wild with fear. “Let’s just take him out back and pop him.”

  The bald one was calmer. He looked at me curiously and said, “He sent you, didn’t he?”

  “Who?”

  “The brother. Her brother. He sent you, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Whose brother?”

  “Let’s just fucking pop him and go. They know where to find us, man. Let’s just take him out back and pop him.”

  “Are you working with someone else or alone? Was that you outside?”

  “What?”

  “We heard someone outside, coming through the woods.”

  “No, that wasn’t me, man.”

  “How did the bastard know where to find me?”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “That rat bastard brother of hers. How did he know where I was?”

  “I was just looking for money.”

  “You’re no thief.”

  “Let’s just fucking pop him and get out of here,” the kid insisted. His knees were drawn together, as if he had to piss badly.

  “First I want some answers from our friend here,” the bald one said.

  “I’ve told you, I don’t know any brother.”

  The bald one lost his temper. “Bullshit! How did you find us?”

  The kid waved his hand suddenly to get his partner to look at him. We both did. He raised his index finger to his lips, then whispered, “There’s someone else. He’s out back. I can hear him mov
ing around.”

  The bald one looked at me. But before anyone could say anything more a cracking sound came from outside, a hard, brittle snap that was followed immediately by the sound of a window shattering.

  My knees buckled and I dropped quickly to the floor. The kid beside me did the same, but he landed hard. The bald one—the one who looked puzzled by my presence—came down last.

  I expected more gunshots from outside but heard nothing except the labored and panicked breathing coming from myself and those around me. After a minute the guy with the shaved head got up into a crouch, ready to stand, ready to fight. He held his gun with both hands, the muzzle pointed upward.

  “Stay down,” I whispered.

  He shot me a look as if to tell me to shut up. He was wired, his eyes wide.

  The kid was still on the floor beside me. He hadn’t moved since he took his hard fall. I was about to reach down and take his revolver away when I felt something warm under my hand. I lifted it fast and saw that there was blood on my palm.

  I scrambled up into a crouch. Blood was spreading all around the kid. He was flat out on his back, his eyes open and blinking, his mouth working as if he were trying to speak.

  Only he wasn’t trying to speak. He was trying to breathe. I heard small gurgling sounds come from him then, and deep wheezing. Fine streams of blood were spurting into the air. They rose, arced, then fell in long drops down to the floor.

  I could see that a bullet had sliced his throat open. Where blood wasn’t gushing, it flowed, running fast like hot motor oil.

  “Fucking shit,” I said. I went to him and knelt beside him and pressed both of my hands against the open wound in his neck, trying to stop the flow. I felt warm blood spray against my palms and spread between my fingers. But I stayed there, leaning with my weight on the wound.

  The blood wouldn’t stop flowing, though. I was kneeling in it, it was everywhere now, it just kept coming.

  I said to the one with the shaved head, “Get me something to stop the bleeding.”

  But he didn’t move. I looked at him. He was frozen, breathing fast, a glaze of sweat covering his face.

  “I need something to stop the bleeding,” I told him. “A towel, anything. C’mon, don’t just sit there, do something. You want your friend to die?”

  It took him a moment, but then he crawled to the couch, pulled off a blanket and brought it to me.

  I told him to fold it up. He did, then handed it to me. I grabbed it and applied it to the kid’s throat, pressing my bloodied hands on it and leaning forward, my elbows locked.

  “Call an ambulance,” I said.

  Again, he didn’t move. He just looked at me.

  “Call an ambulance!”

  He watched my face and shook his head from side to side. “I can’t be here when the police come,” he said. “Neither can you, right?”

  I said nothing. He was not at all familiar to me, and yet he seemed to know about me. I was thinking this when he said the strangest thing to me.

  “I think this makes us even, man. Take care of yourself.”

  He looked toward the broken window, then rose and moved, bent at the waist, to the front door. He paused there, his .357 held in both hands, and looked back at me. Then he broke into a run, bolting out the door.

  I listened to his hard run across the grass till I could hear it no more. I braced myself for more gunshots but none came. All I could hear was the sound of the bay tapping the shore fifty feet down the sloping lawn and the last few feeble breaths of the kid.

  His face was expressionless, his mouth hanging open dumbly, his eyelids half closed. His skin was white, his forehead already waxy. I eased back on the compress and removed my hands. Whoever this kid was, he was dead, and whoever the guy with the shaved head was, he was long gone. It was time for me to go, too.

  I pulled off my T-shirt and wiped down the desk and the filing cabinet. Then I used it to wipe my hands. I got them as clean as they would get for now. I picked my flashlight up off the floor, then grabbed the bloody blanket and went to the front door. I paused there to listen.

  The yard was still, quiet. I listened for a good minute, listening for the sound of someone in the woods, for the sound of sirens approaching. But I heard neither of these things, just a night so quiet I couldn’t tell whether to feel at ease or rise to my toes.

  Eventually, I did what the guy with the shaved head did. I bolted through the door and out into the night. I ran down the lawn toward the street. Before I got into my car, I took off my blood-covered sneakers, wrapped my shirt around them, then folded the blanket over that. I sat the bundle on the floor beneath the passenger seat and flung my flashlight over the high grass and out into the bay. The water swallowed it with a gulp.

  Back in my apartment, I tossed the blanket and its contents into a garbage bag, then removed my jeans and tossed them in, too. I took a quick shower, scrubbing the blood off my hands and from under my nails. Then I dried off and put on clean jeans, another T-shirt, and my work boots.

  It wasn’t even eleven o’clock and the Hansom House was already in full swing. People were coming, some going. I waited till it was as clear out front as it would get and left with my garbage bag. I walked to where I had parked my car far down Elm Street, in a patch untouched by streetlights.

  I got in behind the wheel, cranked the ignition, and headed west on Sunrise Highway. I rode out of town, over the Shinnecock Canal and past Hampton Bays, into the pine barrens of Quogue. On a long stretch of deserted highway I pulled over and got out with the garbage bag. I walked into the pines, to where the dirt was soft, and dug a hole deep enough to take the bag. I covered it with dirt and pine needles and ran back to the edge of the woods. There I took a good look around. The highway was a long stretch of emptiness and dark. I was sweating from the heat. I ran back to my car and got in and took off for home.

  Back in my apartment again, I was too riled to sleep. My heart was racing. It was only midnight. I had eight hours to wait till I would see Frank and maybe get some answers about the bald-headed guy and the brother he kept mentioning, not to mention the shooter in the woods, whose arrival at the cottage, so close to mine, seemed just a little too coincidental. I could hear the lazy reggae rhythm rising up from the bar two floors below, the steady thumping of the drums and the bass. I didn’t feel their call now, though. What I needed I couldn’t find in a bar.

  I was still awake at closing time and listened as everyone left. I heard voices rise up from the street. I heard car doors shut and engines start. I was awake, too, at dawn, when night drained into morning. At seven I left my apartment and drove down Halsey Neck Lane to the lot and waited there by the hissing waves and bickering gulls for Frank, just like we had arranged.

  I waited almost an hour but he didn’t show. I went home through town but couldn’t spot his Seville anywhere. I called his pager from a pay phone outside the camera shop on Cameron Street and waited for a call back. None ever came.

  I decided that maybe it would be better for me to get off the streets. Something was going on I didn’t understand. I needed to lay low. It was, after all, what I did best. I drove back to my apartment and sat at my window and waited. I ran through everything in my head, over and over. Everything Frank had said, everything the guy with the shaved head had said. But I was getting nowhere.

  I realized that today was July Fourth. I checked my watch. It was after four. Southampton Village would be crowded now as summer people came in off the beaches to eat and shop. Elm Street itself was quiet, except for when a train from the city would pull in and late-arriving guests would be met by their hosts and driven off to some waiting party.

  Around five I thought about calling Augie, but I resisted. He had problems of his own. And he didn’t know that Frank had called in his favor. Evening was coming, and I wasn’t any closer to any answers than I was this morning. I smelled charcoal burning somewhere down Elm. I heard the voices of excited children as they played. I heard the whistle and pop of
a few early bottle rockets.

  At 6:55 another train from the city pulled in. Six people got off and met waiting friends and hurried into cars. Eddie’s cab was there. He drove away with two passengers. The station was empty even before the train had pulled out again.

  The next thing I knew it was dark outside. I must have dozed off. Fireworks were whistling and snapping somewhere out in the distant night. I sat up and listened and knew it was probably the big display over Lake Agawam, in the park off Job’s Lane, not too far from the library.

  The bursts sounded a little like gunfire. I looked toward the sounds but couldn’t see anything in the black sky above the dark trees.

  It was somewhere around this time, during the fireworks, that my phone rang. I answered it on the second ring.

  “Yeah.”

  I expected Augie or maybe Frank on the other end, but the voice I heard wasn’t immediately familiar.

  “MacManus?” It was a man’s voice.

  “Who is this?”

  “This is MacManus, right?”

  “Who is this?”

  “I have a friend who wants to meet with you.”

  “Who is this?” I demanded.

  “She wants to talk to you. You know Long Beach Road in Sag Harbor.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Get there as soon as you can. Come alone.”

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “It’s your new best friend, from last night. I could have killed you but I didn’t. I hope you’re smart enough to appreciate that. I hope for both our sakes you remember what I did. And what I said.”

  “Do you have a name?”

  “Some people call me Skull.”

  “Skull?”

  “Just meet my friend at eleven. I think you might have heard of her. Her name is Marie Welles. Anyway, she’s heard of you.”