The Poisoned Rose (16 page)

“It’s pretty obvious that our mutual best interests lie in me not being found. My own sense of self-preservation guarantees your preservation. This appears to be one of those few times in life when it just works out like that.”

“How do you survive?” I asked. “How do you make money?”

“I waitress, off the books.”

“Where?”

“A little place out in—” She caught herself and stopped short. She was looking at me squarely, her hands still deep in the pockets of her slacks, her posture still that of a cadet’s. Her mouth was sealed tightly.

“You have to be careful of things like that,” I said. “Little slips can lead to trouble, for both of us.”

“Maybe I’m not as clever as I think I am,” she said.

“Very few of us are.”

“So we have a deal?” she pressed. “You’ll do this for me?”

The sound of the crickets and the frogs swelled then, filling up the open night, ringing like countless alarm bells. It was almost deafening.

“Yeah,” I said. “We have a deal.”

We shook hands and said goodbye. I returned to my LeMans and drove away from the parking lot. The last I saw of Marie Welles, she was still standing at the water’s edge, watching me go. The pickup was still parked by her vehicle, blocking my view of it. But the driver—the man who called himself Skull—was heading toward her, lighting a new cigarette as he walked.

I managed to make it back to the Hansom House without running out of gas. I craved my bed deeply, more so than I had ever imagined I could. As I started up the stairs, I thought about what I would tell Frank. After all, I had done what he asked. I had found the woman. The other part of it, the lie I would tell him regarding where she was, I didn’t really care about. The way I saw it, I’d be lying to save a life. Or at least lying to play no part in destroying a life. And I’d be lying to a liar. I anticipated my first good night’s sleep in a long time.

I had my life back. Tina was out of my place, Augie was home, and my debt to Frank, as far as I was concerned, had been paid. I was even able to convince myself that Tim Carter’s death—still fresh on my mind—would in no way affect me. All I had to worry about now was making a living and staying out of the Chief’s way. Making a living would be the more difficult of the two. Dodging the Chief was going to be easy enough. All I had to do was stay in my apartment whenever I wasn’t working. And right now that didn’t sound all that bad to me.

It was a little past eleven when I got back. There wasn’t much activity in the bar below; tomorrow was a workday and everybody with a job was at home, enjoying the sleep of the just. I had to be at work by eight. I looked forward to sleeping straight through the night and calling Frank in the morning.

But it was when I reached the top of the second flight of stairs that I realized at once just how gravely misplaced my optimism was. I froze in the heat of my hallway, dead in my tracks.

Standing outside my door, waiting for me, was the Chief.

Chapter Eight

 

He was a physically imposing man, tall, long legged, wide through the shoulders. He was in uniform, complete with thick leather belt and gun and tall boots. His hair was thinning, gray, but his face held the ruggedness of an outdoorsman. It was deeply lined, gaunt and grim, colorless now, though I knew his complexion to be usually ruddy. When I was young and he was just a cop, all the children feared him and told wild stories about him. Back then he had reminded me of one of those mountain men from the movies. As I grew he didn’t diminish in size at all. He held his stature, his prominence. I could only assume that today’s children held him in the same regard and spread their own half-truths about him.

He stared at me from the end of the hallway. A uniformed cop was standing behind him. The Chief nodded toward my door.

“I think we’d both rather do this inside,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“C’mon, let’s go,” he said, “I don’t have all night.”

Inside, I turned on a light as the uniformed cop moved about, making a quick sweep of all my rooms. When he was done, he said, “All clear, Chief.” And it was only then that the Chief stepped inside my place. He closed the door.

I had crossed paths with the uniformed cop years ago. He was one of the three cops who found me on the kitchen floor of an unrented house in the Shinnecock Hills, a .45 caliber slug in my collarbone and the missing girl I’d been asked to find dead in the basement, killed by the family friend who had abducted her. I remember this cops’ face above me. I remember his look of uncertainty, as if he wasn’t sure at all what to make of me. That was the last time I’d seen him. It’d been, I think, two years.

His name was Long and I could tell by the stripes on his sleeves that he was a sergeant now. His face was flattened, his jaw square like a box. His hair was dark and tightly curled, cut close to the scalp. He was, from what I heard, a decent guy. He stood back as the Chief and I faced off. There was something about the way Long looked at me, and the way he stood just behind and to the right of the Chief, that gave me the impression that he wasn’t necessarily one of the Chief’s boys.

The Chief hadn’t moved. He stood just inside my living room, the shut door behind him. It was as if someone had planted a tree there—he was that large and that firmly set. He eyed me, saying nothing. I had to look up to meet his flinty eyes. His jaw muscles flexed under his thick skin like hard springs. After a while, he moved past me, stepping farther into my living room.

The Chief made a survey of the room then. But it was a quick, perfunctory one, more curiosity than security sweep. When he was done, he looked at me again.

A single, heavy drop of sweat sprang down my ribs, rolling over one bone at a time. Then it ran down my waist before collecting in my cotton T-shirt.

“So this is where you hide,” he said. “This is the rat hole you won’t leave.” He nodded. “It suits you.”

I said nothing to that.

By his look I expected that at any minute he might grab me by the throat and squeeze. His lips were pursed tightly, and there was sweat under his nose, small beads that trembled just a little with the rage he labored to contain.

“I understand that Frank Gannon hired you to find a woman who calls herself Marie Welles.”

There was so much about that sentence that I did not like. I held still; I didn’t want to offer the Chief any opportunity to misunderstand even the slightest movement on my part.

“I also understand,” he continued, “that you just had a meeting with her.”

I watched him closely. He took several shallow, tight breaths through his nose, as if he was trying to breathe but not take in some horrible odor. He made another visual sweep of my living room, then shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his leather belt squeaking in protest.

“What do you want, Chief?” I said. I tried to mask my fear with impatience.

The Chief took a step toward me. It was a sudden move. Then he thought better of it and stopped short. As much as he clearly wanted to let fly on me—here we were, after all his waiting—he held himself back.

It took him a while to speak again. I could feel his hate. It felt like cold coming off a window pane on a winter night.

“A young man was killed last night in Flanders,” he said. “His name was Tim Carter. You were there when he got killed. Don’t bother to deny it. You were sent there by Frank Gannon to find out where Marie Welles had gone to. At some point during that visit a bullet opened his throat and he drowned on his own blood.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Chief,” I said. My words sound automatic and forced, even to me.

The Chief ignored that. “Carter was a nothing, a small-timer. I don’t care about what happened to him. I don’t care who did him. What I do care about is why a family as powerful as the one this woman comes from would want to have a nothing like him killed?”

“What makes you think her family had anything to do with it?”

“You don’t ask the questions here, you answer them. Got that?”

I said nothing.

“You don’t even realize the shit you’re in right now, do you?”

“What do you want, Chief?”

“I want to know why this woman’s family is suddenly so desperate to find her. And I want to know why they sent the man they sent. And I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the man who shot Carter. Shot him through the window of a cottage you’ve never been to.”

“I’m a little tired for games, Chief.”

“The man who shot Carter was hired by the girl’s family, allegedly to find her. But he’s not a particularly nice man. He’s not the kind of person you send to bring a loved one home.” He paused. “You’ve crossed paths with him before, MacManus.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Work it out in that little rat brain of yours, if you can. In the meantime, I want you to find the girl and bring her to me. I want to talk with her before her family gets to her. ‘Cause I think once they do, there won’t be much she’ll be able to say, if you know what I mean.”

I didn’t.

“What’s going on, Chief?”

“There’s only one thing I hate more than you, MacManus, and that’s when the rich try to get away with murder.”

“Why should I believe this is anything less than some kind of set-up?”

“Because when I get you, MacManus, believe me, you won’t see it coming.”

“So why would I want to help you?”

“Because there’s something in it for you, too.”

“What?”

“You look for her, you’ll find out soon enough.”

I glanced at Long. He was staring at me. He said nothing.

I said to the Chief, “I’m not interested.”

“There isn’t a lot of time for fucking around, MacManus. I have business with the girl, and you have unfinished business with the man her family sent to find her. It seems we can help each other out. Which means for now—for as long as you’re looking for her—you’re free to come and go as you please. You won’t even get pulled over for speeding.”

I looked again at Long, as if to say, “Are you hearing this?” Of course, I said nothing, and neither did he.

“None of this matters anyway, Chief, because I have no idea where she is. I wouldn’t know where to begin to look.”

“Bad news for you, then.” He paused again, to look me up and down. “You know, there’s something funny about you, MacManus. Your father disappeared on you when you were a boy, and you grew up and became this guy people come to when someone disappears on them. But in between that—between your father abandoning you and the family that took you in just happening to get themselves killed—you were for all intents and purposes a rich kid. The house on Gin Lane, the beach right outside your back door. The trips abroad every year, the sailboat, the language tutors. And let’s not forget the personal trainers, all that hand-to-hand combat and weapons training shit. What was all that for? So you could grow up to be the family bodyguard.” He scoffed, then said, “You had it all, everything a kid could want, every possible advantage. The Van Deusens even sent you to college. What do you have a degree in? Criminology? What was it you were secretly hoping to be, I wonder.” He paused. “I mean once you got away from them. Once you made your little escape.”

I could barely breathe. I needed air.

“Do this for me, MacManus. You found her once, you can find her again. And if in the process you cross paths with the man who killed Carter, you do what you have to do. Understand me? When it’s over, give Long here a call. If there’s a mess, he’ll come clean it up. But try not to leave a mess for a change.”

Long stepped to me and offered his business card. I didn’t take it. He stepped back, placing the card on my coffee table. He was watching me closely.

There was only one question on my mind. I had to speak it. There was no way I would not speak it.

“Are you sending me to kill a man, Chief?”

“You live in this town, too,” he said.

“What does that mean?”

“Think about it. You’ve got forty-eight hours. After that it’s open season on you all over again. And believe me, MacManus, when the opportunity presents itself, I will send you straight to hell. Do we understand each other?”

“I’m not killing anybody, Chief. Not for you, not for anyone.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, MacManus. This man won’t give you a choice. I can promise you that.”

“This isn’t what I do.”

“I thought you were supposed to be smart. You need it spelled out for you, in big bright letters, fine. They want her dead, MacManus. Her family wants her dead, not found. If you find her, you’ll be saving her life. You did that once before. I would assume you’d want to do it again.”

“What do you mean, I did it once before?”

The Chief smiled. He was enjoying tormenting me. “Just find her before he does, if he hasn’t already. Chances are you led him right to her tonight, in which case we’re already too late.”

I watched from my front windows as the Chief and Long drove off in an unmarked police car. I waited for as long as I could bear, till I knew they were far enough away, then ran down to the street and got into my car. I followed Montauk Highway past the Shinnecock Indian Reservation. There I turned left onto Little Neck Lane, then right into Augie’s driveway.

He greeted me at the door as I came up the walk. He must have seen me pull up. He was wearing a bathrobe over knee-length baggy shorts and a jersey. He leaned on his cane. His hand was gripping the handle so tight that his knuckles were white. I could tell by the way his bathrobe hung off him that there was something heavy in the right pocket.

It was midnight but Augie looked awake enough. Rain clouds, steel gray and massive, like giant warships in the sky, had begun to gather in the northeast, obscuring the low moon. The terrible heat remained, but maybe its end was near now. Air was moving a little, the leaves in the scrub oaks lining the road across from Augie’s yard hissing lightly in a slight breeze.

Augie saw the look on my face and said, “What happened?”

“Where’s Tina?”

“At Lizzie’s. Why?”

“The Chief just paid me a visit.”

“Come on,” Augie said, ushering me inside. He looked past me to his street and made a quick survey. “We’ll talk inside.”

We sat across from each other at his kitchen table. I told him about the Chief, what he had said, and about Frank calling in his favor. Then I started to tell him about Marie Welles.

“I don’t know of any family named Welles on Halsey Neck Lane,” Augie said.

“Maybe they just moved there.”

“Maybe.”

I told him then everything I knew about her. He listened carefully, but the instant I mentioned Scully’s name, a look came across his face that made me stop.

“What?” I said.

“Hang on a second.” Augie got up and left the room. He went down the hall to his study and came back a minute later with a manila envelope in his hand. I could tell it contained photos. Augie sat down and opened the envelope and spread the photos out on the table. He searched through them and finally picked one out and handed it to me.

It was a surveillance shot of a man walking out of a bar. It was taken at night, from a distance, but it was good enough of a shot for me to see that the man was Scully.

“Is this him?” Augie said.

I nodded

“That’s Will Scully. He deals drugs out of that bar in Sag Harbor, the Dead Horse, the one that kid Vogler was shot in front of. The Horse was on the top of my list of places to stakeout last spring. A lot of heroin moves through there. Most of what comes out to the East End is headed there. Which makes you wonder about the name, doesn’t it? The Dead Horse. Anyway, Scully is a major player in the local trade. That’s all I really know about him, except that he doesn’t much like having his photo taken.”

Augie showed me another photo. In this one Scully was looking straight at the camera. He was on the sidewalk outside The Dead Horse. It was obvious that he was aware of the camera. It was obvious, too, by the look on his face, that he was pissed off. The next photo Augie placed in front of me showed Scully turning away from the camera and waving someone over. In the photo after that a blur was entering the frame. It was man, or part of one. I could barely see him, never mind who he was. That was the last photo.

“I got out of there after that,” Augie explained. “I didn’t much like the look of his friend.”

“When did you take these?”

“Last spring, when I found out that shit was being sold at Tina’s school. It was the night before I was ambushed.”

“You think maybe these were what your attackers were after? Your photos?”

“I don’t know. I sure would like the chance to talk to this guy Scully, though.”

“What else can you tell me about him?”

“Like I said, not much. He’s good at keeping out of sight and underground. Actually, he’s a fucking ghost. Very, very hard to find. Very cautious. But if you want to find him, I’d say the Dead Horse is the place to start looking.”

I took another look at the photos. I looked closely at the one of Scully looking angrily into the camera. If he was the man who had sacked Augie, it was a face and an expression I wanted to see in person now more than ever.