Later on, Marie packed while I stood by her window and watched the traffic below. I looked for Searls, for Jean-Marc, for the Montauk police. I wanted to believe we were safe, but I knew there was no harm in vigilance. The village was busy now. I felt suddenly drowsy, and my eyes ached. But I stood there, keeping a lookout.
Marie put together a single suitcase and set it by the door. That was it, she was ready to go. All we had to do was wait till sundown, then make our run through the villages—East Hampton, Bridgehampton, Water Mill, then Southampton. Every mile we traveled would only take us closer to the Chief’s domain. After Southampton, we’d pass Hampton Bays, then Westhampton. From there, it would only be a matter of miles till we reached Manorville and the wide open Long Island Expressway.
The day passed slowly. At times there was no motion in the apartment at all, and no sound. At times, as I stood there and looked out, I felt that Marie and I were missing something, though I wasn’t sure really what. We were both lucky to be alive, if unlucky to have lived. All that mattered was peace—peace for her, at least. For now, as we waited, silence and stillness would have to do.
A little before six I went back downstairs to buy us dinner. It would blow my budget, but I didn’t care. Marie offered to pay, but I knew she would need all the money she had with her to start over. I could miss a meal or two for that.
I brought back a pizza with feta cheese, sliced tomato, and black olives. We ate while sitting cross-legged on her floor, side by side, our backs to a wall. I did my best not to see the scars on her wrist again. When we were done, there were two slices left over. We wrapped them in aluminum foil for her to eat on the road later tonight, or for breakfast tomorrow. It was half-past six now, and we could feel night coming, could see it beginning to influence the sky and smell it in the air that flowed in over the low window sills.
By eight the change was more dramatic, and the same points of white light that had been the last to die this morning were the first to be reborn now. They weren’t stars, of course, but planets. Venus and Mars and Mercury, I think. Named for the Goddess of Love, the God of War, and the Messenger. I watched them grow sharper and sharper on the horizon, in a sky that seemed to drain of color by the minute.
It was twilight when I realized that Marie was standing at the window on the other side of her bed. She was watching the changing sky as well, but I could tell she was getting ready to say something. I waited. Darkness was beginning to fill the corners of her apartment, shadows spreading out around us. When she spoke, her voice was less hoarse than it had been last night. The day’s silence must have been good rest for it. The sound of her voice struck me as something new in an old world. It compelled me deeply for some reason. I could have sworn I’d heard it before, maybe even recently.
“I should have done this a long time ago,” she said. “I should have left this place far behind me and not clung onto it as desperately as I have. Maybe things would have turned out differently.” She thought about something for a moment, thought about it carefully. “My brother can have everything,” she said. “The house, the money, I don’t care about any of it. All I want is a job and a halfway decent apartment to be left alone in. I just want to find other people like me and take comfort in their presence.”
I looked at the darkening sky and said nothing.
“How did you do it, Mac?” Marie said then. She was looking at me.
“Do what?”
“How did you get away from your family?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“You said you wanted to save me from having to go through what you went through to get free. I was wondering what that was exactly.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“I don’t talk about it.”
“You’ve never told anyone.”
“No.”
“I want what you have now, Mac. I don’t want any more than that. I want to do what you did—turn my back on it all and just live my life. A life I’ve chosen. My life, for better and for worse. So I’d like to know what it was you went through. I want for you to be able to tell someone. Believe it or not, it’s good to share our secrets. It’s good to be able to tell a person anything and have that person still look you in the eyes afterward. Still care.”
I said nothing.
Marie smiled. “C’mon, I’ve told you mine. Now you have to tell me yours.”
“Are we playing doctor here?”
“In a way, I guess, yeah. I want you to tell me what you did to get free, Mac. I need to know. Please.”
“You already know. We were out sailing, the four of us. There was a fire, I made it, they didn’t.”
“That’s what happened. Now tell me what you did.”
“That was the thing, Marie. I didn’t do anything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Right after the fire broke out, there was an explosion in the stern. They were thrown overboard, the three of them. I wasn’t. I was at the bow. I froze.”
“You were scared.”
“No. I did nothing.”
“What could you have done?”
“I could have thrown them a line. I could have sent over the emergency raft. Their boat had every piece of radio equipment and safety gear there was. I knew what to do in an emergency. I probably could have made it aft and into the cabin, called the Coast Guard. But I just stood there. I chose to do nothing.”
“You just left them.”
“We were far out, you could barely see land. It was night. The boat was moving; we were under full sail when the fire started. And even on fire, even with the damage from the explosion, the boat was still moving.” I paused, looked at my hands, then shrugged and said, “The thing is, it didn’t take much. It took just seconds, really. Two, three tops. And then, just like that, it was too late for me to be able to do anything for them.”
Marie said nothing. She turned and looked out the window.
“You were a kid,” she said.
“I was twenty. Old enough to know what I was doing by not doing a thing.”
“You wanted to get me free of them. Remember, I knew them. I knew how they treated you. My father knew it, even Jean-Marc knew it. You deserved better. You wanted a life of your own. And they weren’t about to let you have that.”
“It doesn’t make it right.”
“Maybe not. But I remember when we were kids how you used to not want to go home. You used to linger in our yard, even after Father had called Jean-Marc and me in. There was an opening in one of our hedges, like a little cave. You used to hide in it. I used to look out the window and see you there.” She took a breath, let it out. “You know, my father once offered to take you in. He set up a meeting with Mr. Van Deusen and told him that he wanted you to come stay with us. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“He turned my father down flat, said he’d made a promise to your real father. But Father knew that wasn’t the truth. I pleaded with him to try again, I wanted you to live with us so bad, but he said there was nothing we could do, except make you feel welcome whenever you were here.”
I felt an overwhelming sense of regret suddenly. I couldn’t help but wonder how many lives would be different right now had I come to live at the Bishop house all those years ago.
“How’d you survive, by the way?”
I was confused by the question. “What?”
“The accident.”
“Oh. The boat took on water after a few miles and turned over. It was the middle of September, but the water was cold. I could see land by then, so I swam for it. “
“What did you do after that?”
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t imagine you were in the will. What did you do?”
“I got a job and finished college. I didn’t have a place to live, so at night I’d sneak into the office of one of my professors and sleep on his couch. Then I met a woman and we lived together for a while. My father
had been a cop, and I had a degree in criminology, so I applied to police academy. I got in but didn’t go.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “I didn’t have it in me. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t like the idea of lives being in my hands.”
Marie nodded thoughtfully. “It must be hard for you to say no to people, Mac. It must be hard for you to see a person floundering and not want to jump in and help.”
I said nothing to that. Several cars passed by below, one right after the other. My thoughts were on our drive out of town. Marie’s escape was all I wanted to know about.
“I’ve been thinking, Mac,” she said then. “Why don’t you come with me?”
I looked at her.
“Maybe it’s time for you to leave this place, too,” she said. “Why don’t we leave it together? I think my father would have been happy that we found each other again. He would have liked the idea of the two us looking after each other.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’re afraid, aren’t you?” she said. “You’re afraid of leaving because this place is all you’ve ever known.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I made a promise to a friend. If Searls is loose, I’ll need to stick around and keep it.”
Marie thought about that, then said, “And if you didn’t have that promise to keep? What then?”
“I’d leave with you in a heartbeat,” I said.
It wasn’t long after this that the pharmacy sign outside began to blink. It took time coming on, but eventually the blue and red light was rushing over us again, chasing the darkness from the corners of her apartment. It was close to night now, nearly time for us to leave. We waited till nine, for dark to have settled in completely, then got ready. But before we left she went to her closet, opened it, and pulled something out. She held it up for me to see.
It was a denim jacket, like the one I used to wear, like the one I had put over Vogler all those months ago.
“Scully wanted me to give this to you,” she said. She handed it to me. I looked it over. There wasn’t a spot of blood on it, but the third button from the top was missing. I realized then that it wasn’t just a jacket like mine, it was mine.
“How’d he get this?” I said.
“He took it off Vogler.”
“What?”
“Scully told me you didn’t recognize him at the cottage. He was with Vogler when Vogler got shot. They were arguing. This was before Scully got all paranoid and shaved off his beautiful hair, thinking people wouldn’t recognize him so easily and that a bald head made him look meaner. He took the jacket off Vogler before the cops came.”
“Why?”
“He wanted to know who you were and thought there might be something in the pockets to identify you. There was, and that’s how I knew you were still out here. And then after what happened at the cottage, he thought you should have the jacket back. He thought it would be a gesture of good faith on our part or something. He was impressed by the fact that you tried to save Vogler. So was I. That’s why I came to you that night—”
“Wait a minute. You knew Vogler?”
“I knew him before I knew Carter, yeah. Before I went into hiding. My brother paid Vogler to stay away from me. Vogler took the money and handed it all to me. I didn’t know where it came from at the time. Anyway, that’s why my brother had Vogler killed, because he went back on their agreement.”
“I saw that,” I muttered. “My friend and I, we were there.”
She nodded. “I know. But what Jean-Marc didn’t realize was that my father had already hired a private detective to scare Vogler off. The man he hired sent you. Without his knowing it, my father provided witnesses to a murder his own son arranged and paid for. That was when Jean-Marc decided to take control of things and keep my father isolated from everyone. That’s when the shit really started to happen.”
“Your brother was behind Vogler’s murder.”
“Yes.”
“Who were the men he hired?”
“I don’t know their names. One disappeared afterward. The other had gotten beaten up pretty badly. Broken wrist or something. I guess that was your doing. He went away for a while after the hit on Vogler went bad, but eventually he came back.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was ugly, had pockmarks on his face. He used to be a boxer or something. I saw him a few times with Jean-Marc. He’d worked for him before.”
“Searls,” I said.
“Like I said, I don’t know their names. But he was short, kind of stocky.”
“You’re telling me your brother used this man, this ugly boxer with the scars on his face, before?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Jean-Marc told me he’d asked the Chief for help finding you and that the Chief had sent over Searls. He made it sound like he’d never seen Searls before.”
“He lies about everything, Mac. Sometimes he lies for the sake of lying.”
I thought about that, then said softly, “Your enemy is my enemy.”
“What?”
“He’s playing me and the Chief against each other.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Searls didn’t just kill Vogler. He killed a cop, too.”
“I thought they arrested some guy in Jersey for that. It was in the papers.”
“They arrested a guy with a record and found the cop’s badge and gun in his possession.”
“How would he have the badge and gun if he wasn’t the one who killed the cop?”
I thought of the .32 under my floorboards, given to me, or so I’d been told, so it could not be planted in my apartment.
Searls had set someone else up to take the fall.
“Jesus,” I said.
“What?”
“The Chief got a fucking cop killer released and didn’t even know it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s been your brother’s show from day one. He’s playing everyone. He orchestrated Vogler’s murder. He leaned on the Chief and got his man Searls released from jail, then sent Searls to kill Carter and find out from Scully where you were hiding.”
“You act like you don’t know who my brother is, Mac. Like this is news to you.”
“But I don’t understand. How did Searls end up working for Scully?”
“I’m not following.”
“Searls and Scully ambushed a friend of mine last May, over some photos my friend had taken of Scully. They put him in the hospital for three months.”
“Searls never worked for Scully.”
“No. Searls was with Scully when they broke into my friend’s house.
It’s how Searls ended up in jail.”
“I don’t think so, Mac. I mean the part about Scully knowing this Searls guy. Scully had help, but I’ve met every one of his friends, and none of them looked like that man.”
“If not Scully, then who was with Searls that night?” I said.
My thoughts raced, in too many directions to follow. Images flew at me. I saw in my mind the man wearing the baseball cap and hooded sweatshirt, the man who almost caught that second shell from Searls’ shotgun, the man who bolted out of Augie’s house and was never seen again.
If that man wasn’t the man we’d thought he was—if that man wasn’t Scully—then who was he?
Who had been with Searls the night Augie was beaten nearly to death?
I remembered the look of surprise in the smaller man’s eyes when I had gained leverage over the shotgun and aimed it at his face.
It seemed to me now that I had seen those same eyes recently.
And then I realized where. My own eyes went wide.
“What?” Marie said.
“Jesus.”
“What?”
“I need to make a call.”
Back at the pay phone, I dropped two quarters into the slot and punched in Augie’s number. He answered on the second ring.
<
br /> “Yeah.”
“It’s Mac.”
“You okay?”
“It was Jean-Marc Bishop who sacked you.”
“What?”
“The guy at your house last May wasn’t Scully, it was Jean-Marc Bishop. The woman Frank sent me to find, Marie Bishop, Searls works for her brother. Searls was the one who killed Vogler. On Bishop’s order. And the cop, too. We witnessed the hit, that’s why they came after you.”
“No, Mac, no. That was months later, remember? Why on earth would they wait that long to come after me?”
“Searls left town for a while, to lay low and set someone up for the cop’s murder. The minute he came back, he went after you. Listen, Scully is dead. I found his body last night. I’m pretty sure Searls killed him, too.”
“Where are you?”
“Montauk. Did Frank call you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he have to say?”
“Searls was never picked up. He’s not sure what happened, if the cops tried and Searls never showed, or if they didn’t even try at all. Apparently, there’s some shit going down over at the Village Hall, something to do with the Chief. Frank says he’s suddenly out of the loop.”
“It’s a coup,” I said. “A cop named Long is in Bishop’s pocket. They’re making a move against the Chief.”
“Shit.”
“You’re okay there, right?”
“Frank put men outside my house. Two of them. They’re just up the street, watching over me like I’m some old lady or something. But there’s a bigger problem, Mac.”
“What?”
“Tina’s supposed to be with her girlfriend, Lizzie. But I just called a little while ago and they said she and Lizzie took the car and went somewhere.”
“Call Eddie, have him swing by their house. Have him keep a look out.”
“Did that already.”
“I’m heading that way now. I’ll stop by my place and see if Tina’s there. She might be waiting for me.”
“I appreciate that, Mac.” He paused briefly. “What’s going on, son? You sound … funny.”
“I’m going to make a quick run somewhere. I’ll be back in about two hours.”
“A quick run where?”
The Poisoned Rose Page 20
