Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

by Judson, Daniel

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The man you’re looking for is named Townsend.”

  “What man?”

  “The partner of the man Augie shot. I assume that’s what this is all about. His name is Townsend. He’s part Shinnecock Indian. He lives on the reservation. On Cemetery Road. Number 54.”

  I looked at the Chief but said nothing.

  He said, “I’ve done something for you, and now I want you to do something for me in return.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t enter the reservation unless it’s an emergency. Nor can any of my men. I want you to go there and keep an eye on Townsend. If he’s not home when you get there, I want you to search his place, find out whatever you can.”

  “Like what?”

  “I want you to find out who’s paying his salary. You need him to save Augie. If he disappears, neither of us gets what we want.”

  I felt my face twist and my head cock slightly with surprise.

  “Just don’t let Townsend go far. You’ll figure out why sooner or later.”

  Something deep inside me reacted to that. This seemed to me too much like bait to be anything else.

  “Everyone needs to be careful on this one, MacManus, even me.”

  His leather belt creaked. I could hear his breathing, I could smell the mints on his breath, I could feel the warmth of it, he was that much into my apartment now, that close to me.

  “As unpleasant as it is for both of us, it seems we’re bound together till all this is over.”

  “How differently would things be if I hadn’t been on that road when Amy Curry crashed into the pond? There’d be no one right now bothering to try to find out who killed her. We’re all bound together in a town like this, Chief. In a small pond you feel every ripple.”

  The Chief had nothing to say. He just looked at me.

  I said, “You’d think a man as rich as James Curry wouldn’t have to come to someone like me for help. As I’ve always seen it the people with all the money in this town get preferential treatment.”

  “You have no idea what’s going on.”

  “Why should I do this, Chief?”

  “Because I know how much Augie means to you. And because you have no choice.”

  “What are you talking about, I have no choice?”

  “There was dead body near your car. A male Caucasian. Shot in the back of the head. Leaving the scene of an accident is bad enough, MacManus, but this, this is a whole different thing. The Montauk Police are going to want to talk to you. They’re going to take one look at you and your story about your car being stolen two days ago will be shot to shit. That is, of course, unless someone was to come up with a police report that corroborates your particular take on things.”

  Even though I had taken the plates and the serial numbers had been filed down, my car was the only twenty-year old shitbox LeMans on the East End. And the Chief was right, one look at me and it was all over. It was as simple as that.

  I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me, though I wasn’t really surprised by that. I had no way of seeing just what he was setting me up for, if he was in fact setting me up at all. Everything I had left was telling me not to go. But he was right. I had no choice. The trouble I had left behind in Montauk could burn me bad. I’d be just as useless to Augie in that town’s jail as I would be in Southampton Village Hall. I had to keep one step ahead, even if that step brought me that much closer to the edge.

  “Well?” he said finally.

  “Okay, you write me out a report and I’ll do what you want.”

  The Chief nodded. “It’s already done. There’s a copy in my car. I’ll leave the report downstairs with that bartender friend of yours on my way out.”

  The Chief walked past me then. I didn’t move, even after I heard the door close, even as his footsteps faded down my hallway. I just stood there and let everything fall away till only one question remained.

  In all the time I had known Augie, why hadn’t he said anything to me about having known my father?

  I borrowed George’s Volkswagen Bug and in it drove to the 7-Eleven on Sunrise and bought a pair of cloth work gloves. Then I headed west on Sunrise Highway, turned left at the college onto Tuckahoe Road, and turned left again at the end of that, heading east on Montauk. The reservation was on the right.

  The muffler on George’s Bug was shot, and it sounded more like a Harley than the tiny car it was. I kept telling myself that this wasn’t my game, that this wasn’t the kind of thing I did, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference. I felt like a stranger to my own life. The Volkswagen felt powerless compared to my old LeMans, and that seemed only fitting.

  Somewhere in the dark East End, under the broad sky, in one of those contemporary houses built on potato fields or one of those great mansions standing on the primary dunes of the long stretch of beach between Southampton and East Hampton, the rich were playing their game. I knew too well the cruelty that can come with wealth.

  My adoptive father had made it clear often enough that I was more servant than a son, more playmate and protector to his own troubled son than brother or son. I was free labor, trapped in a world I did not belong, and it took a boating accident and more than I care to talk about to set me free of them. I was twenty when I finally escaped, a criminology major at the college and broke. I turned my back on that unreal world and never looked behind me. I worked my way through my senior year tending bar at an Irish pub in Hampton Bays. I slept on the couch in a professor’s office in the Humanities wing of the Fine Arts Building for a month till I moved into an apartment over a real estate office across from the IGA in Hampton Bays with a dark-haired and beautiful business major named Catherine. At night we slept in a tangle of limbs and blankets in a room that overlooked Main Street. The only furniture we had was a kitchen table, three folding chairs, and her bed. We stayed together for a little more than a year, till she took a job in New York and moved to Queens with a girlfriend of hers who had never liked me all that much. During that year everything took a dive. My grades slip and I began to drink. I barely managed to graduate and was nonetheless accepted into the police academy, though I never ended up making it there. I had learned the hard way that I was the last person who deserved to carry a badge and a gun, let alone much else.

  The reservation was mainly wilderness, the least affluent part of the East End, though the property, south of the highway bay front and undeveloped, was worth a fortune. Its roads were narrow, some of them just packed dirt, and there were no street lights, just rows of cottage after cottage. Townsend’s place was small and set on a treed-in lot on Cemetery Road. It was a single storey, box shaped nautical with a glassed-in front porch. Its windows were dark and looked to me like a row of blank faces staring back at me.

  There was a small pick-up in the driveway, new. The hurting business always did pay well, and Frank Gannon wasn’t the only one who prospered by it out here.

  I passed the cottage and parked on the shoulder of the tree lined road three houses down. The sky was overcast, and the darkness outside the windows of the Bug was complete. I turned off the motor and the headlights and waited for my eyes to adjust to the blackness and my heart to stop its violent spasms in my chest.

  When I was ready I put on the gloves and stepped out, closing the door quietly. My denim jacket was nowhere near enough. I backtracked up the dark street and stepped onto the lawn, then walked carefully toward the cottage. I reached it and took a look through one of the front windows. All I saw was a narrow porch cluttered with old furniture and piled cardboard boxes.

  I could see that the front door to the house was blocked by an upended and battered couch. I looked behind me to see if anyone was passing on the road, then I walked around the side of the cottage to the back door. I took another look around, then tried the knob with my gloved hand. It turned smoothly and the door eased inward.

  I stood there and listened for a long time. I could sense nothin
g, no movement, no breathing, nothing. The cottage felt empty to me. I waited a moment more and then took a few steps inside. I was in the kitchen. It was clean and neat, so much so that I began to wonder if anyone had been here in a while. Everything seemed too ordered to be lived in.

  The air was stale and smelled sharply of must. I walked through the kitchen and down a narrow hallway, past the bathroom, and into the front room. I moved slowly, a step at a time. The floorboards creaked several times. I winced at each one. When I reached the end of the hallway I stopped. I could barely see through the darkness, but after a moment I made out the shape of someone lying on the couch.

  My eyes were better in the dark now. I saw on a coffee table in front of the couch a near-empty bottle of Cutty Sark. On the wood floor below it a plastic glass lay on its side, as if it had been dropped and then rolled. I got close to the figure and took a smell of his breath. It reeked of Scotch. But I realized quickly that the smell was coming out his pores. There was no breath. I could see the shape of a small lamp in the corner of the room and went to it and switched it on. The bulb was dull, the lamp shade thick. Yellowish, muted light filled the small room.

  I looked down at the man lying dead on the couch. He had short black hair and a broad face. He looked no different from anyone I had met in the past few days. I guessed that he was maybe a light-heavyweight and not much taller than I. He was lying on his left side. The cushions beneath him were soaked with blood that looked fresh. It was clear that his throat had been cut. I could see the bulge of his wallet in his right back pocket. I reached for it with my gloved hand and pried it free with my fingers and opened it.

  He had a New Jersey driver’s license. The name on it was William Townsend, the photo was of him. I put the license back and looked through the wallet for anything else. Nothing, no business cards, no scraps of paper with names I recognized, nothing. I counted his money; there was well over eight hundred dollars in cash. I thought of the nine hundred in my pocket and only realized then just how far into this world of hurt for hire I had gone.

  Suddenly I wanted out of it. I was hit with the urge to bolt. I looked at Townsend’s lifeless face once more and saw hints of Frank and the Chief, even Augie. I began to wonder if I really looked any different.

  One last look down at Townsend, and then I turned to get out of there. I moved fast, my strides long, my feet light on the linoleum.

  I was halfway through the kitchen, nearly at the door, when something burst out of a side pantry. It--whatever it was--moved parallel to me at first, was just a sudden blur of noise and motion and force. Then it quickly changed direction and knocked over a chair as it rushed to intercept me. We came together like two cars at an intersection. The figure crashing into me was in dark clothes and knit mask and gloves. As he collided with me he lifted me upward and sent me sideways, heaving me against the refrigerator. There was no mistaking that he moved like a football player, charging low and hard. I felt as if I had been caught by a huge wave. My body folded like a doll and I smacked the refrigerator door with back of my head. I heard glass tumbling off shelves and shattering inside.

  Then the man in the mask was all over me. He moved in, crowding me. I smelled cologne mixed with sweat. It was a cologne I had smelled before, but this wasn’t the time to try to remember when. I saw his right arm come up suddenly. I saw a flash of metal in his hand. I saw the hand and the metal in it move and come down, making a sweeping half-moon arc, angling toward the left side of my face like an outstretched hook punch. It was coming toward my neck. I raised my left arm and folded it back till my fist touched my shoulder, and then I ducked my head behind it. It was all I had time to do. The knife caught me in my left shoulder, and I felt the blade zip open my jacket sleeve and the skin beneath as it moved in one quick motion across my deltoid. I felt a deep, lingering pinch and was instantly aware of blood running down the inside of my jacket sleeve. I winced but held back the grunt that rose in my throat.

  The man in the mask swung at me again, but my knees had buckled enough for me to slip under the blade. The man immediately wound up for a third swing, but this time he paused and grabbed at my left arm with his, trying to trap it and create an open shot. We tangled, and in that brief delay I had enough time to launch a short stomp kick to his forward shin. I scraped downward and struck his foot close to his ankle. It wasn’t much, but it took his mind off his attack and made him play defense, and that was all I wanted.

  I grabbed his knife hand with my right and clawed at his eyes with my left. In the process I pulled up his mask, exposing his chin. The mask rose just a little more and I saw teeth, perfect teeth. But his power was too much for me, so I lifted him off the ground with a knee to his gut. But the instant he landed, he grabbed on to me and spun and flung me across the room. I was airborne, and then I hit the opposite wall hard and slumped to the floor. I heard bits of plaster raining down behind the sheet rock. My legs felt weak. The wind had been knocked out of me. I turned and looked at my attacker. He had paused to pull down the part of his mask I had managed to peel up. I looked fast at the knife in his hand. It was four inches of serrated steel, smeared with my blood.

  I searched for anything that I could use as a weapon. The only thing I could see was the overturned chair, but it was out of my reach. Once his mask was set my attacker started to move toward me again. He walked with fast, determined steps, one right after the other. I crawled up the wall as quickly as I could, scrambling to my feet. Standing was like trying to climb stairs after a long run. I needed the wall to keep me up. There wasn’t anywhere to go, there wasn’t time for anything but to stand and face him and the blade in his gloved hand.

  We were maybe three feet apart and I was ready for the worst of it when he suddenly stopped short and turned his head as if startled. I saw it just a second after he did. Flashing red and blue lights filling the living room. He looked in their direction, then back at me. I could see that his thick chest was heaving under his black sweater. He studied me for a quick second, frozen, then turned away and bolted toward the back door.

  He burst through it and out into the night. I listened to him go, then looked up the short hallway to the front room. Police lights danced on the walls. I could tell by the uneven patterns that there was more than one cop car out front. I thought of what the Chief had told me about only being able to enter the reservation in an emergency. I looked at my bloody shoulder, then looked once again down the hall, this time at Townsend’s body on the couch. I was on my way through the back door, out into the cold night, a few seconds later, running with everything I had left.

  The police lights caught in the bare trees looked like madness. My heart pounded with each flicker. I had nowhere to go, so I ran blindly, my right hand cupped over my bleeding shoulder, across the small back yard. I ran into the woods behind the cottage. I ran even as branches clawed at my face. I ducked my head and kept moving till I could no longer see the chaotic blue and red lights in the trees and the only sound in my ears was my own frantic breathing.

  I was losing blood and had to do something about that soon. I could only think of one place I could go.

  I came to Montauk Highway and crossed it quickly. No one saw me. I made it to the campus and hid in a cluster of trees behind the library. I tore my T-shirt and made a compress for my cut and waited till first light. Then I made my way to the campus train station and waited on the platform for the first train. When it came a half hour later I got onboard and took a seat. As the train began to move I kept my head at an uncomfortable angle against the vibrating window to keep from passing out. I rode like that to the Southampton stop and stared through the streaked window at the Hansom House. Then the train moved again, and when it stopped at Bridgehampton I got off. When the train pulled out I stepped onto the tracks and walked as straight as I could along its wide beams. I was heading east, into the cold morning sun.

  Eventually I made it to her house, though I had no idea how long it took me. I was more tired and cold and wracke
d with pain than I would ever guessed was possible. All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. I craved my empty bed like it was the better part of me I had left behind. Her house was a hundred feet from the tracks, through a narrow line of trees. I was halfway across her back yard when she spotted me from her kitchen window. She came running out the back door to me. At the sight of her my strength started giving out. But I kept moving toward her, my eyes locked on her. I wanted to make it to her, but by then my legs were rubber and I could feel one knee buckle, then the other.

  She caught me just as I began to fall. I had nothing left. She struggled to hold me up but I was just dead weight and too much for her and ended up taking her down to the ground with me. She landed on top of me. I felt no pain, just her warm breath on my face. She felt as light as a feather.

  Then I smelled dead leaves and heard her voice but no words. I could see her face. She was talking to me but I heard nothing. Her hands were on me and I felt something inside me burst softly. Warmth spilled through me.

  I lost some time then, and the next thing I knew I was being carried into her house and placed on the kitchen table. I felt on me two pairs of hands now. I looked up at her finely lined, tanned face as she unbuttoned my denim jacket. Above her head the ceiling mounted light burned brightly, and my eyes ached as if someone was rubbing their knuckles in them.

  I heard her say, “You boys play too rough.”

  I nodded, and then my eyes closed, pinching out tears that ran down my temples to the table.

  A male voice said, “I’m going to get my kit out of the car.”

  I heard a door open and close. Then my eyes opened again. She was holding my right hand with one hand and wiping the trail of tears from my temples with the other. I just looked up at her beautiful face and the bright light behind it. I remember wishing then that I had had a different life, one that would have allowed me her. I remember opening my mouth to speak. But of course I said nothing, and my silence was the last thing I knew for a long while.