Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard Page 3

  “It’s time for you to go, Mac.” White puffed from his mouth when he spoke. “They’ll find a way to make trouble for you if you stay. Just go, I’ll take care of things here. It won’t do anyone any good to have you locked up tonight.”

  The trees that lined the road above were full of lights now. The Chief’s boys were pulling in, one right after another.

  “You’ll have to hurry to make it before the cold gets to you,” he told me quick. “I’d say, considering what you’ve already been through here, that you’ve got maybe ten minutes at the most before things start to turn shitty for you. At the most.”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “My cell phone is in the cab, on the passenger seat. Take it with you. Grab a flare from the glove compartment, in case you get into trouble. C’mon, go, I’ll take care of this.”

  “I’ll see you, Aug.”

  I climbed out of the back and went around to the passenger side door of the truck, leaned into the warm cab, and removed a road flare from the glove compartment and grabbed Augie’s cell phone from the seat.

  “Call Eddie, have him come and get you. Don’t waste time. You don’t have long.”

  I heard voices from the road above then. I told Augie I’d see him soon, then turned and ran blind up the shallow bank and into the open field beyond. I couldn’t move fast, my legs were spent and my lungs ached, but I ran as best as I could toward a ditch and once there lay in it so I was out of sight of the pond and the road above it. I could hear the cops, their voices, I could even hear the squelching of their radios. I looked up over the top of the ditch and could see that I really hadn’t gotten that far away at all.

  I called Eddie on Augie’s cell phone. Eddie’s wife, Angel, was working the dispatch. She said that he had taken a fare to the airport in Islip and wasn’t due back for an hour. I hung up and started thinking that a night with the Chief’s boys might not have been so bad after all. My soaked jeans were beginning to freeze, hardening into something like cardboard. The material burned where it touched my skin, and creases felt like dull blades trying to cut me. I realized then there was one other person I could call. The number came to me as I dialed. It was a number I had dialed a few times the summer before.

  It was late, and the voice that answered was groggy and young-sounding. I wasn’t sure what I would have said had one of her parents answered.

  “It’s Mac, Lizzie. I need to speak with Tina. Is she there?”

  There was a brief hesitation, and then I heard the phone get handed off, then muffled talking, and finally Tina’s voice.

  “Mac?” she said. “What’s going on?”

  “I need your help,” I told her. “Listen to me carefully.”

  After I hung up I made my way out of the ditch and started across the frozen field to the roadside. I bent low so no one could see me. As I went I could watch the Chief’s boys making their way down the incline and around the pond to Augie’s truck. Paramedics were with them. There were flashlights and a lot of calling, but no one looked out into the field. I stumbled several times, more out of weakness than clumsiness.

  I made it to the roadside not long before the car appeared. It had taken me several minutes to cross that field. As the car slowed for me, the passenger door opened, and I climbed inside as fast as I could. I didn’t look anywhere but straight ahead, through the windshield. I didn’t have to look to know that it was Tina beside me, and by the car I knew it belonged to Lizzie’s parent’s, and that she would be driving.

  I told Lizzie to continue on, but slow. The car moved forward, toward the scene of the accident, toward all those lights and the cops running about. I didn’t want us to make a suspicious U-turn, I didn’t want to get pulled over in the middle of the night with two sixteen-year-old girls. And I wanted to know that Augie was going to be okay.

  Tina reached into the back seat and pulled out a blanket and put it around my shoulders. It didn’t do much. I was shuddering violently. Tina turned up the heat full blast and one by one aimed each of the vents toward me. But I could barely feel the air that moved past my skin. Tina took my hands and held them together and blew on them and asked me what was going on, but I didn’t answer. I didn’t even tell her that what she was doing hurt. I just looked out the passenger door window as we approached the point in the road where the car had gone over the bank and told Lizzie to slow it down a little. I looked for Augie and spotted him on the shoulder of the road. He had a wool blanket around his shoulders and was being led toward the ambulance by a paramedic. Augie looked at the car passing slowly, like maybe he recognized it. I quick told Lizzie to turn on the interior light. His eyes caught mine for a few seconds, and then we nodded. I told Lizzie she could switch off the light, and then the back road turned dark and the bare border trees looked arthritic against the winter sky.

  “What’s going on?” Tina said. I could hear the soft urgency in her voice.

  “There was an accident. A car went into a pond. Your father’s okay. Don’t worry. He’s okay.”

  “You’re frozen, Mac. Your fingers are blue. We should take you to the emergency room.”

  It felt like everything I had left was draining out of me, pouring out of the back of my head, crawling out like something alive desperate to get free. I felt one shoulder sinking lower than the other.

  “Just get me home, Tina,” I told her. “Just get me home.” The hospital would have more than its share of cops when they brought the girl in. I couldn’t be there. My only hope was that Tina would do what I said and not take me there.

  “You don’t look so good, Mac. You don’t look so good at all. Mac? Mac. Mac, you okay?”

  After that, all I heard was the sound of the tires spinning over the pavement, but not nearby, far away from me. I don’t know how long that lasted, or when exactly I started hearing nothing at all.

  Gradually I awoke and became slowly aware of my senses and what they told me. I could tell by the shape of the shadows in the corners that I was in my bedroom, and I could tell by the weight upon me that I was under every blanket that I owned. It was warm under there but uncomfortable. I lay there with my desire to do nothing and followed my senses as they came to me.

  I had been awake for a while before I heard the sound of muffled voices coming from somewhere beyond my bedroom door. I could not hear any words, just hushed talk. I didn’t think about getting out of bed till I heard the door to my apartment open and then close. The voices stopped, and I half listened to the silence for a while longer till I heard water running in my kitchen. I got out of bed then and put on a sweatshirt and jeans, opened my bedroom door, and stepped out into my dimly lit living room.

  I felt like I had been asleep for months, though I knew it couldn’t have been long at all. My hands hurt to the bone, and my skin ached, almost burned, as if it had been rubbed harshly. My hair wasn’t entirely dry.

  Tina was in my kitchen. I saw her briefly as she passed quickly by the open door. Immediately after that I heard the sound of the teakettle being placed on the burner, followed by the burst of a gas flame coming to life. I stayed just outside my bedroom door, so the room would be between us when she came finally out into the living room. Every little bit helped. It felt then a lot like five months ago all over again.

  Tina opened and closed cupboard doors, one after another, looking for something. I assumed it was tea. Had she forgotten already where everything was? I heard the last cupboard door close and then she appeared in the kitchen doorway and took a few steps into the living room. She saw me at once and stopped short. She seemed to me to be as much startled and she was diffident. She just stood there across the small room, frozen, her mouth hanging open a bit, staring at me.

  I muttered in Spanish, “Who just left?”

  I spoke Spanish to her to distract her from the look I was certain all these pains must have placed on my face. She was studying Spanish and I spoke it to her often. Now I wanted her to think I was sharp, that I wasn’t rattled or frightened. Mai
nly I wanted her to think I didn’t need her.

  Tina said, “How are you feeling?” She watched my face closely as she waited for me to answer. There was an uncertainty about her that I understood right away. We both knew she wasn’t supposed to be here. That was clearly understood. Yet she had helped me, probably even saved my life. I knew for her that maybe this meant things were different now.

  As I looked at her I noticed that she didn’t really look any different from last summer, except for what she wore and maybe her hair, which was longer now and thicker and maybe even darker; it was hard to tell in the dim light of that room. She had traded in her half-shirts and cut-off shorts for a flannel shirt, jeans, and work boots. I was a little relieved to see so little of her now. She had fallen into the habit last summer of forgetting to close the door when she dressed or showered.

  I looked away from her and saw a wool pea coat on the chair by the door to my apartment. There was a comfort in knowing that it was there, in knowing that the only thing she needed to grab on her way out was already right there beside the door.

  “Who just left, Tina?”

  “Lizzie.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Almost two. How do you feel?”

  “Like shit all over.”

  “I’m making you tea. It should be ready soon.”

  “Thanks.” I opened my mouth to tell her that she should really leave now, but she cut me off fast.

  “Mac, what’s going on,” she said. “What were you and my father doing out there in that field tonight? Is he in trouble again?”

  “He’s not in trouble. There was an accident. We stopped to help, that’s all.”

  There were times back when she was staying with me that I would forget that she was a kid, times when I would think that her looks would easily unclose me, when I would forget in the middle of a conversation that I was twice her age or that the apartment we were in was mine. She was almost my height now, with lanky arms and legs, and gray eyes that shone even in the dimmest light. It was hard to get away from her stare, and when she folded her long arms across her stomach, you knew something was troubling her, you knew something was on her mind, and she had come to talk. There wasn’t as far as I knew a question she was afraid to ask. Augie joked that she had probably been an interrogator of some skill in one past life or another. I could see that. But I really think it came from her having to pull every little thing out of her work-obsessed father that she could get.

  Her arms now were folded tight across her flat stomach, and her eyes held mine decisively. I just stared back. I could see the worry behind her eyes.

  “Is my father working again?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.” There was no point that I could see in keeping the truth from her.

  “For that Frank Gannon guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you working for him again?”

  “No.”

  “Why were you there? I mean, if you’re not working for Frank Gannon, why were you there?”

  I shrugged. “Keeping your father company, I guess.”

  “He pushes himself too far, you know that. He shouldn’t be working.”

  “Cane or no cane, he can take care of himself, Tina. I don’t doubt that now.”

  “I’m not so convinced.”

  “Give him time to prove himself.”

  “I want you to talk him out of working again, Mac.”

  “I couldn’t do that even if I wanted to. You know how he is.”

  She turned her head then, breaking the stare, and looked toward the row of windows at the front of my living room.

  “It’s not fair,” she said, “that I have to sit around and worry about him when he’s out doing things he should be smart enough not to do. I’m his daughter, not his wife. It’s not fair that he does this to me. I’m not sure I can take it much longer.”

  “He’s only doing surveillance work. It’s not dangerous. Frank is concerned about him, too. He won’t give your father anything your father can’t handle.”

  “You don’t get it, Mac. I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “I’m afraid that there’s going to be trouble, like last time.”

  “Last time was different, you know that.”

  She shrugged once. “Maybe it was, but you said it yourself, you go around poking your nose in other people’s lives long enough and you get trouble. I don’t want my father bringing it home again. I don’t want it finding me in my bed one night. The only good night’s sleep I get now is when I’m over at Lizzie’s house. You don’t know how many times I wanted to just come over here and sleep on your couch. You don’t know how many times I ran through in my mind your reaction to coming home and finding me here. Sometimes you were happy to see me, but most of the time I knew the reaction I’d really get is pretty much the reaction I’m getting from you now.

  “I know you want me to go. I know the minute I run out of things to say you’re going to tell me to leave. I just remember how safe I felt here, the way I felt knowing you were out here sleeping on the couch or sitting in the kitchen eating or in your chair looking out the window. And I don’t really want to let go of that feeling.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said the only thing I could. “I should probably get some sleep. You should get going.”

  “Do you really think the Chief’s going to pick tonight to make trouble for you? I can stay for just a few hours, leave before it’s morning out. No one knows I’m here.”

  “You and Lizzie didn’t drag me up two flights of stairs by yourselves, right? You had help.”

  “Yeah. The bartender from downstairs helped us. I don’t remember his name.”

  “His name is George. Do you remember what I told you about him last summer? Do you remember what I said to you when you moved in?”

  “You said he talks too much.”

  “Maybe some part of what happened tonight is making its way around town right now. Maybe it isn’t. But the chance exists that someone might go running to the Chief with the news, because that’s the way it works in this town. You know that better than anybody.”

  “I’m not fifteen anymore, Mac. I’m not a child.”

  “It doesn’t matter. The Chief doesn’t want to make charges stick, he just wants to get my name in the papers. The people in this town will do the rest. All he needs is to make it look like I was busted for statutory rape or some kid of sex crime. Everything else will take care of itself.”

  “I’d tell the truth. About why I’m here, about last summer. About the lies I told everyone about us being lovers. I’d tell them the truth, that you never touched me, no matter how much I begged. There’s nothing they could say.”

  “It wouldn’t matter. They’d just say you’re afraid of me, or protecting me, or that you’re just afraid of your father finding out. They’d say anything. In the end fighting it would only make things worse. I can’t afford to give the Chief anything more than he already has. I need you to leave. I need you to stay away till this whole thing blows over.”

  She didn’t move, just stood there by the kitchen door with her arms folded and stared at me. I had forgotten how relentless she could be, how much like her father she really was. I had forgotten a lot about her, good and bad.

  “He wouldn’t let anything happen to you,” she said then. “I know for a fact that if the Chief came after you, my father wouldn’t sit for it. And neither would that Frank Gannon guy. I’ve heard him tell my father that if the Chief came after you, it’d be a war.”

  “No one would win,” I said quietly.

  “Frank Gannon has something on the Chief, something bad. He said he’d use whatever it is he had to get you out of trouble.”

  “Frank says a lot.”

  “Do you want to live like this, like a criminal in hiding? Is that it?”

  “I’m just trying to keep the pieces in place, Tina. That’s all I want.”

  “What pieces? What are you talk
ing about?”

  “I don’t want your father and Frank Gannon and the Chief of Police cutting each other to pieces because of something I did. I’m doing what I have to do so it doesn’t come to that. It’s really a small price to pay in my book.”

  The fine bones in my hands still ached from the cold, and my skin felt as if it had been drawn tight over them to keep them in place, a glove to keep them collected, to keep them from spilling with a sickening noise to the wood floor.

  I suddenly craved sleep, a solid unbroken day and night beneath my heavy blankets. I wanted to burrow like some hibernating rodent, on a leave of absence from the whole of the world.

  “I can drive you back to Lizzie’s, if you want,” I said.

  Tina shook her head. “It’s too cold for you to go out. I’ll call Eddie.”

  She called him from my rotary phone on the table by my couch. I went to my front windows and looked down on Elm Street. No one was around. The trees, everything, was still. The streetlights were on, gleaming off the newer cars parked along the curb. I could feel the cold coming in through the panes of glass. I looked toward the train station, around the corner and halfway down the block, visible through the trees. It was empty but still well lit. There was a single car parked in the small gravel lot alongside the platform. The next train wasn’t due till dawn.

  After Tina hung up she went into the kitchen. The tea water she had put on was boiling. She poured me a pint glass of green and ginger tea. It was all I had in my cupboards. She brought it out to me, and the heat of the water moved through my hand the instant I gripped the glass.

  When I looked up Tina was putting on her wool pea coat. A baggy wool hat was already on her head. After she buttoned up the coat she pulled mittens from the pockets and held them in her hand. “You should get back to bed.”

  From outside I heard the sound of Eddie’s cab horn. It tooted twice, fast.

  “Tell Eddie to come by tomorrow and I’ll pay him your fare,” I said.

  She nodded and turned to the door. I listened to her move down the hallway, then on the stairs till I couldn’t hear her any longer. I heard the door to Eddie’s cab open and then close. Then it drove off down Elm Street. Not long after that there was nothing to hear at all. I just lay there, relieved that she was gone, too tired to do anything but keep still and listen to nothing.