Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

by Judson, Daniel

  But I wanted it back.

  As I closed the paper I glanced at the headline about the Curry girl being killed in an auto accident. There were quotes from the Chief expressing his sympathy to the family and his frustration at the senselessness of it all. I read all that I could stomach and then put the paper down and placed my feet up on the sill and drank my tea till it was gone. I tried not to think about anything, especially Amy Curry dead in my arms.

  At one I showered and dressed and left for Augie’s house. I was expected to bring nothing and had exactly that.

  Inside Augie took my coat and offered me a drink. It was, despite my concerns, good to see him. He walked with his cane less than before. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. Part of his physical training had included weights, and he looked larger than I remembered. I sat on a couch and nursed an apple juice. I couldn’t really look Augie in the eye.

  Tina was in the kitchen, putting together the dinner. Every so often she’d come out and place something on the table. I had never seen her in a dress before. She looked very different. Her boyfriend had yet to arrive but was due any minute.

  “You okay?” Augie asked. He was holding a tumbler of straight Jack.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry I didn’t call last night. I got in late.”

  “My lawyer says the D.A. won’t deal. He’s going for manslaughter two. It’s going before a Grand Jury the beginning of next week. He’s pretty certain it’s going to go to trial, unless something new pops up.”

  I said nothing to that. I looked down at my glass.

  Augie said, “He had a gun, I saw it. It was aimed right at me. I’m no greenhorn. I took him down and went down for cover. The other guy, his partner, took off. I could have shot him in the back but didn’t. There was a gun, I know it. It had to have disappeared some time between the shooting and the cops arriving.”

  “You called for the cops from inside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So the partner was out of your sight for a while.”

  “You think he came back for the gun?”

  “It’s possible. So when we find this fucker, let’s hope we find the gun.”

  Tina came out of the kitchen and placed a small plate of cranberry sauce on the table.

  I glanced toward her as she moved back into the kitchen. Augie followed my line of vision. He watched me for a moment; I could feel it. Then he said, “This could go bad for me, Mac. We both know that. All I seem to do is impose on you. But I was wondering if things don’t work out for me that you’d take care of her. I have no one else, and it would mean a lot to me, knowing she was safe. No one can keep her from harm better than you.”

  I said nothing.

  “Will you do that for me, Mac? Will you take care of Tina again, if this goes bad?”

  I lifted my head and looked at him. I didn’t know what to say. Augie read my face and his expression shifted quickly to one of concern.

  “What’s wrong, Mac?”

  My mouth opened but nothing came out, not even air. Finally, I muttered, “Frank thinks the Chief is behind all this, that he’s covering something up. I think he thinks these men were working for the Chief.”

  A moment went by, and then Augie said, “You’re hiding something, Mac. What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I closed my eyes tight, then reopened them again.

  “Mac?”

  I shifted in my seat. There was no way out of this. I managed to look at Augie, but only briefly. It took a while before I said, “I went to look for the man who sacked me. I was hoping he would lead me to the man who sacked you. I found him and brought him to Frank.” Augie watched me, looking puzzled. “But before Frank could get anything out of him I let him go.”

  “What?”

  “I let him go.”

  “Jesus Christ, why would you do that?”

  I said nothing. I had nothing to say for myself.

  “You let him go? You let the only man who could save my ass go? You chose his fucking life over mine?”

  “That wasn’t the choice I was making, Aug.”

  “What choice were you making?”

  “It seemed like Frank was more interested in killing the guy than finding out who the second man was.”

  “You’re not Gandhi, Mac. In fact, you’re far from it.”

  “We don’t kill people, Augie, we don’t do that, not unless we have no choice. And it seems that even if it is in some way justified something bad always ends up coming out of it.”

  “So you’re going to let me go to jail?”

  “No.”

  “Then what exactly are you going to do to stop that from happening?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  “You know, in jail, when people find out I’m ex-DEA, I won’t last very long. I could do the time; I’ve been in worse places. But if I go to prison I won’t live to finish my sentence.”

  “I swear to you, Aug, I won’t – “

  “ -- Get out, Mac.”

  Tina came out of the kitchen then and looked at us. She had an oven mitt in her hands.

  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “Get out.”

  I looked at Augie. I could feel the rage moving along his nerves as well as if it were moving along my own. It caused some places in me to throb with currents of electricity and others to contract, as if gotten by snakes. Augie and I looked at each other, wordless. I had taken us over a line. When it was clear there was no point in me staying, I put my glass of juice on the coffee table and stood. Tina came into the room and placed herself in the middle of it all.

  “Mac’s staying for dinner, Augie,” she told him.

  I have seen them stand toe to toe many times before. I have yet to see her concede or back down.

  I started toward the door. Tina came after me and put her hand on my shoulder. I turned and looked at her. She opened her mouth to speak but said nothing. She knew my face almost as well as she knew her father’s.

  I continued toward the door, leaving them both to their silence. I felt very tired. I walked out and hit the cold air and started across the lawn. At the halfway point I realized someone was approaching me. I glanced up and saw a well-built teenager walking full stride toward the house. He startled me from my thoughts. I assumed he was Tina’s new boyfriend, the one Augie had told me about, the one she tortured with stories about me, of what I did for her and how much I meant to her, of admiration and heroics and other such shit. I knew by the way he looked at me, with something close to the deep hate Augie had just thrown my way, that she had done a good job making me a threat to his budding ego. I actually felt bad for the kid.

  We passed each other without a word. We were all hard stares. But really I wasn’t in the mood for this, so I looked away and passed him by and headed for my LeMans. The radio, like so much of it, didn’t work. I drove home through the cold night in silence.

  I sat in my chair at my living room window and watched the November sky darken and night rise up like a flood of black water. I fought the urge to go downstairs and have a drink. I tried not to think about much but it wasn’t easy. Augie was the only friend I had. He and Tina were the only family I knew. I had let him down, but I knew if I had to I would do the same thing again. Nobody dies. When it reached full night out I thought of all of them out there: the man with the limp, the dead man’s partner, Amy Curry’s father, whomever had ransacked her room, Frank, the Chief – all of them out there with their feet touching ground somewhere on the East End. I could almost sense them moving around, feel the waves their motions caused in the cold night air. I sat there in my chair for hours, not moving, staring at the train station and thinking. I thought of Augie extending his cane to me just as I was about to go under in that icy pond. I thought of the afternoons back when we first met that we spent drinking Jack at his house. Then I remembered Tina after the Chief’s son and friends had tried to rape her, when Frank had come by to tell us that Augie was out on a job and long overdue. This wa
s the night I found Augie almost beaten to death in his study. I remembered the look on Tina’s face after Frank left. I remembered telling her I would find her father.

  I knew nothing, only that something was going on in my town, that a girl was dead and that Augie was in a jam. I felt helpless, and you would have thought I would have gotten used to that by now.

  I had my own life to get back to, my own problems with which to deal, so some time after midnight I lay out on my mattress and caught some sleep. When I awoke it was just after nine in the morning. I drank some rice milk and ate a pear, then showered and dressed and drove to Job’s Lane. I went around to the back of LeChef and found one of the owners, a thin Frenchman with black curly hair and frowning mustache. His name was Bernard. The other owner, whose wife I had known in college, was not in yet. The Frenchman interviewed me on the back steps leading to the kitchen. It was warmer than it had been the days before, a spring like chill in the air. The only cloud in the sky now was a menacing mass to the south, a dark bank of unfinished steel riding the low East End horizon.

  “You’ve washed dishes before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Prep work?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked me over, thinking about it. “Minimum wage and staff dinners,” he said flatly.

  “That’s fine.”

  “We cater, too, so there’s a lot of prep work.”

  “I know how to cut,” I said.

  “Can you work doubles on the weekends?”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Do you speak any French?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much?”

  “I’ll understand what I hear.”

  He eyed me closely. After a minute, he said, “I’ve seen you in the papers. I don’t want any trouble in my restaurant.”

  “I’m just a guy who washes dishes,” I said.

  He nodded as if that was what he wanted to hear. He seemed content with my assurance. “When can you start?”

  “Right away.”

  “Be here at six tomorrow morning. We’re catering a party for some real estate people. We’ll be busy.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “Expect to stay till around midnight or one. If you have a problem with that tell me now.”

  “I need all the hours I can get.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll feed you. We treat our staff like people. I started out as a dishwasher in Paris. They treat you like shit there, but I tell you there is no kitchen that wouldn’t fall apart without a good dishwasher. And who knows, maybe over time we will teach you to cook.”

  “When’s payday?”

  “Saturdays. Can you make it till then?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  I nodded. “Tomorrow.”

  I rode home with the driver’s door window half down. It must have been fifty degrees out. I didn’t need a jacket at all. The air that blew in smelled clean. But it was the air that rides ahead of rain.

  By four the rain began. One minute there was nothing, the next it was pouring heavy and fast. I sat at my window and watched the rain fall, listening to it drill through the leaves on the ground and patter off windows and spill from the leaky gutter. From above me I heard a deep and steady hiss of the rain falling on the roof. I watched the rain till night came and the streetlights came on. The drops that smashed onto the light covers burst into a mist that hung suspended in the air, creating a grainy presence that drifted down and then churned slowly under the bright white glow.

  I kept thinking of calling Augie. After a while I decided that I had to go back and talk things through with him, and I was on my way out, pulling on my sneakers, when someone knocked on my door. I answered it. George the bartender was standing in the dark hallway.

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s someone here to see you.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Some guy.”

  “Did you get a name?”

  “Cory. Cor-something. He’s wearing expensive clothes, he’s clean shaven.”

  “Curry,” I said.

  “That’s it.”

  “What does he want?”

  “He just said he wants to see you.”

  “Is anyone else with him?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It’s dead down there. Everyone else there I know.”

  “Did he say why he wants to see me?”

  “He said something about his daughter.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. I could feel George watching me.

  “Do you want me to tell him you weren’t home, Mac?”

  “No, send him up. Do me a favor though, wait five minutes and then give me a call.”

  George nodded. “Gotcha.” He left and I closed the door. I went to my living room window and looked down on Elm Street and wondered what it could be Amy Curry’s father wanted from me, or how he even knew about me, or where to find me.

  After a few minutes there was a knock at my door. I stayed with my back to the window. I said, “Come in,” and waited as the door opened. A man in a Brooks Brothers shirt and L.L. Bean trousers stepped partially in and stopped.

  “I’m looking for Declan MacManus,” he said. He was polite and well mannered. Over his arm was a brown leather jacket, slick from the rain.

  “You found him,” I said.

  He slipped the rest of the way in and closed the door behind him. He glanced at me for a moment, then took a quick look around.

  “Have we met?” I said.

  “No. Sorry. My name is James Curry.”

  We nodded to each other. I stayed by the window and he stayed by the door. For some reason the room between us felt necessary.

  “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Curry?”

  “James, please.” He hesitated, then said, “Do you know me? I mean, have you heard of me?”

  I waited, then said, “Yeah. You live out on Halsey Neck Lane. You’re rich.”

  “I’m rich,” he repeated. He looked around my living room again. “And you’re not,” he said. “No offense.”

  “It’s plain to see.”

  “Maybe we can help each other, then.”

  “I’m not sure I’m following you.”

  “Sorry. I’m not myself.” He took in a breath. “The other night my daughter was killed in an auto accident. You might have heard about it.”

  I nodded.

  “Her mother is ill. She’s in a hospital in Westchester. She’s not … well. Amy was all I had. She was beautiful. She was a good student. Popular. The worst thing you could say about her was that she took my Corvette out for a spin every time I left town.” He smiled at that, but it shifted quickly into a kind of grimace.

  “A friend of mine’s daughter is a junior at the high school. She knew Amy. She said she was a nice girl.”

  “I should have sent her to a boarding school, like her mother wanted, but I wanted her near. I can guess how you feel about the rich, Mr. MacManus, just by the way you’re looking at me, but no amount of money can protect you from the pain of such a loss.”

  “Call me Mac. And I never thought money could protect a person from anything, except cold and hunger. And I don’t hate the rich.”

  “I don’t think that’s true, Mac. I’ve heard things about you. I’ve been asking around. I heard how you grew up on my side of town, that you lived with the Van Deusen’s on Gin Lane.”

  “I’m familiar with the story.”

  “He was a madman. The man who adopted you. He was a son-of-a-bitch, but I guess you probably know all about that, don’t you?. His boat sank, didn’t it? He and his wife and their crazy son drowned, wasn’t that what happened?”

  I said nothing to that.

  Curry took a step toward me. “I guess what I’m saying is, I see maybe why you can hate the rich the way you do. Van Deusen and his Pittsburgh crowd, well, let’s just say they were bad news. They bo
ught and sold people. And they were the worst kind of capitalist. Some say they had too much coal dust in their lungs, that it chipped away at their sanity. I don’t think I’ve met a more cruel man in my life than your father.”

  “He wasn’t my father.”

  “Sorry. I mean, your adoptive father. If I were you I’d probably think twice about crossing south of the highway, too.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have told you, I’m on my way out.”

  Though I didn’t move he held up both hands as if to stop me. “Please, hear me out.”

  “Whatever you’ve come to say, leave my biography out of it. Okay?”

  He nodded. “You help people, I’ve been told.”

  “You’ve been misinformed.”

  “You found a Town Justice’s son when no one else could, you found that Mary Anne Rose girl, you found the Bishop girl. I’ve seen the newspaper clippings in the morgue at the Southampton Press.”

  “Those were favors for friends.” It was a half lie, and I could hear the falsity clear in my voice.

  “Well, I’m willing to pay you for your time.”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “I’ll pay you ten grand right now. And another ten if you find out what I want you to find out.”

  I looked away from him. “Sorry. Sorry, I’m not your man.”

  “You’re the only one in town who can help me.”

  “You want help, go to the police.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the thing. I think the police are the problem. And I know that you’re about as fond of them as you are of rich people.”

  “There’s a private investigator here in town, he’ll help you out.”

  “I’m not all that interested in landing in someone’s pocket, and it seems that this gentleman you’re referring to works as much for himself as for his clients. I’d like to hire someone I trust.”

  “What makes you think you can trust me?”

  “You didn’t jump at the money. That says a lot to me.”

  “I wish I could help you. Really.”

  “You’re a dishwasher, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much do you make an hour?”

  “I make minimum wage.”

  “Do you get by on that?”