The Poisoned Rose (17 page)

I handed the photo back to Augie and said, “Thanks.”

He shuffled the photos together and retuned them to their envelope. He seemed a little lost in thought. I thought I knew by the expression on his face what it was he was thinking about. I remembered Frank forbidding me to look for the men who had almost killed Augie. It was hard to believe I might have stood so close to one of them. It was hard to believe I had looked him in the eye.

Augie was quiet for a while. I left him to his thoughts and followed my own. When he spoke finally his voice was low, his eyes focused on his hands.

“Remember in the hospital when I told you that everything was going to be fine?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s easy to think that way when you’re in a hospital room, all safe and sterile. But it isn’t so easy when you’re back out in the world. I wasn’t prepared for how hard it was to come back into this house. I thought that in the three months away from it I had come to terms with what had happened here. But it isn’t that easy. It took me a whole day before I could go down the hall and into my study. I sleep with a loaded .45 by my bed. That’s when I’m actually able to sleep. Mainly I just lie awake at night, listening for sounds. I was so convinced that last night was the night they were coming back for me that I sat up in a chair with my .45 on my lap and stared at my front door. I didn’t dare fall asleep. I’ve come to realize that all the happy horseshit I said to you back in the hospital was just that, happy horseshit. Nothing is going to be fine till I find the bastards who did this to me. My life can’t start again till I do that.”

“Come and stay at my apartment for a while,” I said. “You and Tina. We can make room.”

Augie shook his head. “I wouldn’t make it up and down all those stairs. Besides, being scared in my own house is one thing. Running away from it is another thing all together.” He watched my face for a moment. I held his eyes and thought of the night we’d first met. “Look, Mac, if this Scully guy is the one, then I want him. Do you understand? I want him.”

I nodded.

“Your enemy is my enemy, Mac. Remember that.”

On my way to Sag Harbor it started to rain. Things weren’t any cooler for it, though, just all that more humid. Inside the Dead Horse I sat in a corner and waited for Scully. I didn’t have a thing to drink, not even a club soda. People stared at me all night but I didn’t care. I waited till the bartender called last call. It was early, just past two. My eyes were fixed on the door the whole time. But Scully was nowhere to be seen. I waited outside in my car for a while, till the bar was all closed up and the bartender was gone. Still nothing. Finally, a little before three, I drove home through the rain.

I went back up to my apartment, pausing at the top of my stairs to look down my hallway before proceeding. No one was there.

I unlocked my door and went inside. Before I could close it behind me, Tina came tearing out of the kitchen. By the way she moved, I half expected someone to be right behind her.

She was crying. She ran into my arms, almost knocking me down. I’d never seen anyone so scared in my life. Her hands were trembling but the rest of young body was rigid.

“What?” I demanded. “What’s wrong?”

Her hair and clothes were soaked from the rain. Even though she was in my arms she seemed uncertain where to go or what to do with herself. The urge to run, flee, something, anything, was like a current rushing though her.

I asked her again what was wrong. There was rain on her face. I hadn’t seen her this shaken up since that night behind the library. But this seemed somehow even worse.

“Tina, what’s going on?” I said again.

Her breathing was uneven. Had she been running?

“What, Tina?
What?
“

Her voice was jittery. She didn’t seem to know whether to cry or not.

“I was walking over here from Lizzie’s house. I wanted to talk to you. Someone started following me.”

“Who?”

“A man.”

“What man?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m not sure.”

“It was probably some guy coming to the Hansom House, that’ all.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“It was him,” she said, her voice sharp, almost hostile.

“It was who?”

“It was him. I know it was.” Her eyes locked onto mine. She was shaking with terrible force.

“It was who, Tina?”

“He was right behind me. I started to run, and then he was gone. But when I got here, he was right outside. He was right here, standing across the street. He must have gone back and got his car and beat me here—”

“How long ago was this?”

“A few minutes.” She looked at me. She was starting to cry. “It was him, Mac.”

“It was who, Tina?”

“It was
him
.” She snapped, impatient with my slowness. “The man who hurt Augie. It was him, he was right outside. I know it was him. I remember his picture in the paper. It’s the same ugly face. It’s the same man.”

I rushed to my front windows and looked down through the branches to Elm Street. My car was parked directly across from the Hansom House, and standing beside it, on the curb, was a man.

The street lamp nearest to him was out. I saw what I thought was broken glass scattered around its base. But I could see well enough with what little light there was. I could see what I needed to see.

He was wearing a raincoat, his hands deep in the pockets. He was looking up at me. I saw the same ugly, battered face I’d seen in Augie’s hall, the same buzz haircut, the same bull of a man who had nearly driven me through a wall. It was Searls.

In one horrible moment things started to make sense.

I tore from the window without thinking and bolted out my door and down stairs. I moved faster than I had ever moved before. But by the time I reached the curb Searls wasn’t anywhere to be seen. I was standing alone on the quiet, unlit street.

Back upstairs I called Eddie and told him to come pick Tina up and to take her to her father. Then I called Augie and told him what I had seen and that he should take Tina and get out of town.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Tell Eddie to take Tina back to Lizzie’s house. Tell him to make sure he’s not being followed. I’m not leaving my home.”

“This Searls guy’s a professional, Augie.”

“So am I.”

“What is he doing out of jail?”

“I think maybe that’s something we should try to find out. I’ll make a few phone calls.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone, Aug.”

“Don’t worry about me. What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.” I paused, looked at Tina, then said, “Something.”

“Call as soon as you know anything.”

“I will. Take care of yourself.”

“You, too.”

I hung up and watched for Eddie from one of my living room windows. Tina and I said nothing to each other as we waited. When Eddie’s cab pulled up, I walked Tina downstairs. The bar was closed. I put her into Eddie’s cab and told him where to take her. There wasn’t time to explain anything, and Eddie knew better than to ask. After they drove off I went back upstairs. I called Frank’s pager and punched in my number. I waited for him to call back. But my phone never rang.

Finally, around five, in that darkest hour of the night, I realized there was only one place I could go.

Chapter Nine

 

It was less than a hunch. It was raw instinct. And it was a long shot, but it was all I had.

I had his card but I didn’t want to call. I knew where he lived—that was if he still lived in the same place he was living in when he was one of the three cops who found me flat out and bleeding on the kitchen floor of that unrented house by the canal.

It was dawn when I reached his house. The rain had stopped and the air seemed cool. But I barely noticed. He lived in a small middle-class home on Moses Lane, off Hill Street. His unmarked cop car was in the driveway as I rode past.

I parked at the curb one yard down and made my way around back, to his kitchen door. I saw him through the window. He was at his kitchen counter, his back to the door. He was in his uniform and making his lunch. I knocked on the window pane. He turned quickly and saw me. He didn’t move at first, then finally picked up a dishrag, wiping his hands with it as he started toward the door.

His gun belt was on. I saw the Glock 9mm in his left hand holster.

He opened the door only partway.

I said, “I need to talk.”

“Not here,” Long said abruptly.

“You know your boss is a criminal, don’t you?

“Not here, not now.”

“I need your help.”

“Not here.”

“Where then?”

“Give me a few hours. I’ll pick you up behind the movie theater.”

“I need to know what’s going on.”

“You’ll get answers. Just meet me there.”

“When?”

“Nine. That’s the earliest I can get there.”

“You’re not a fan of the Chief. I can tell.”

“I’ll see you at nine, MacManus.”

He closed the door on me. My heart was racing. I could barely breathe as I walked back to my car.

At nine exactly Long pulled in behind the Southampton Cinema in his unmarked car. I could see right off that he was in street clothes. He pulled up beside my LeMans and stopped. I got into the back seat of his car and we drove off.

“I took a sick day for this,” he said.

“I need to know what’s going on?”

“This’ll make twice now I’ve saved your life.”

“How did the guy who jumped Augie get out of jail?”

“Just sit tight, okay.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s just five minutes up the street.”

The car smelled clean, new. I sat back and watched the trees that lined Montauk Highway pass by the rain-streaked window. After a few minutes Long made a left-hand turn, onto Halsey Neck Lane. I looked at his eyes in the rear view mirror.

We were headed into that part of town I did my best to avoid, that part called “south of the highway.” It was that I’d spent my youth living with my cruel adoptive father, self-absorbed adoptive mother, and their imbalanced son.

“Where are you taking me?” I said.

He didn’t answer. We followed Halsey close to where it ended on Meadow Lane, then turned into a driveway, passing through a wrought iron gate attached to two stone columns. I knew where we were going then. I’d been to this home before, long, long ago, when I was boy. But what I didn’t know was why we were here now.

I hadn’t thought of this place in years, but the estate was just as I remembered. The grounds were lined with twelve-foot hedges, as was the driveway, which curved like a sickle till the hedges ended suddenly and the driveway spilt into a circle at the front of a century-old mansion.

This house was gray stone and ivy covered, three stories high with white marble pillars at the entrance. It was giant in that way ships are when you see them out of water.

Long parked the unmarked car halfway around the circle. There was no door handles on the back door. He had to open it from the outside to let me out. Together he and I walked to a front door made of heavy oak. It was framed by intricate scroll work and rose up to a rounded point, like a church door, which was, if I remembered, where it was from. It had been taken, I think, from a ruined church somewhere in Europe at the end of one war or another.

An old black woman in a gray maid’s uniform answered the door and led us through a marble entrance hall to a dark hallway lined with wood paneling. She looked at me closely before leaving us. At the end of this hallway was a door that led out to the backyard. It was there that a man near my age was waiting for us.

He was standing under an awning that was extended over a stone patio at the back of the house. The manicured lawn beyond him was tree-lined and sloped gently down to Taylor Creek fifty or so yards away. Across the narrow body of water was the Dupont Sanctuary, above which clouds were beginning to fragment and let through the morning light.

The man waiting for us was handsome, but there was harshness to his face, which for some reason I thought I had somehow seen recently. But if he was who I thought he was, that couldn’t be. If he was who I thought he was, then I hadn’t seen him in decades. I looked in his face for something that I would recognize from all those years ago.

We didn’t shake hands, only nodded to each other as we came face to face on the stone patio.

“I don’t think I would have recognized you if I saw you, Mac,” he said flatly. “It has been a long time.”

I recognized his voice, the way his mouth moved when he spoke, the way his eyes looked at me.

“Jean-Marc,” I said.

“You have a good memory.”

“Not really. If we weren’t here at the house I don’t think I would have made the connection.”

Beside us was a wrought-iron table with a glass top and four chairs around it. On the table was a leather knapsack and a pair of binoculars and a tall glass half filled with a clear liquid. It was over ice that had melted down to their white cores.

The three of us sat at the table in a way that allowed each of us a clear view of the sloping lawn and the water beyond. Beams of sunlight were punching through the clouds almost everywhere now. The rain was moving on, and the drops it left behind sparkled in the reopening light.

Jean-Marc sat across from me, Long to my right, his back to the house. I saw Long shift several times in his seat till he was comfortable. Holstered behind him, to his belt, was his gun.

Jean-Marc leaned back in his chair and stared at me, sizing me up.

“How long has it been?” he said. “Fifteen years?”

“Longer than that, I think,” I answered. His friendliness made me cautious. I had never liked Jean-Marc much, even as a boy.

He was part of the Bishop family—old money, a real fixture in town. I had grown up not far from here, and we had played together, Jean-Marc and his twin sister and me, for two summers starting when I was ten, till my adoptive father put an end to that.

“I hear you still live in town,” he said. Even when he smiled his eyes were harsh. “Above that bar by the train station. With your girlfriend, or something like that.”

“I live alone,” I said. I looked at Long, then back at Jean-Marc. His dark face was cleanly shaven. His brown eyes were piercing and alert, like the eyes of a hunting bird. He wore a polo jersey tucked neatly into jeans and tennis sneakers. His hair was black and short, parted low on the left side. On his right wrist was a gold watch that did all kinds of tricks in the emerging sunlight.

“Listen, I don’t have much time to play catch up with you, Mac,” he said. “Things are kind of hectic here right now. Family stuff, you know. So I’m just going to get down to it, to why I had you brought here. I don’t mean to be rude, but the clock’s ticking.”

He paused, then said, “I need to ask you, as a favor to our family, to cease your attempts at contacting my sister. I understand the pressure on you, but I can’t let you continue to interfere with family matters. Do you understand?”

“No.”

“You don’t understand?”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

“I can understand your wanting to help her, considering what you and Marie went through as kids. But I need you—we need you—to just, please, leave her be.”

“Jean-Marc, I don’t—” I stopped suddenly and looked at Long. I don’t know why I did that. I looked back at Jean-Marc. “Marie,” I said. “Marie Welles is your sister. Marie Welles is Marie Bishop.”

“She started going by the name Welles several months ago. Part of her ongoing refusal of her own family. The doctors say it’s a common thing for someone with her disorder to do.” He smiled. “You know, I’m not surprised you didn’t recognize her. It’s been a long time. Plus, she’s had her share of reconstructive surgery over the years. As she grew older she became quite vain, obsessed with her face, all the things she didn’t like about it. And her hair was blonder back then, from all the sun. I prefer it blond, myself.”

“I just saw her,” I said, still a little stunned. “She acted at first like she was waiting for me to recognize her. But when I didn’t, she said nothing, just let me go on thinking we were strangers.”

“She has become very…deceitful. I wouldn’t take it personally. In fact, you’re lucky she didn’t get her hooks into you. She uses men, Mac. Badly. I think you can understand that our family troubles are really nobody’s business but our own. I mean, you and Marie go way back, right? My father and I have never forgotten what you did for her. What that dog did to the both of you.”

You had saved her once before,
the Chief had said.

My mind was suddenly racing.

“We’d like to do you a favor, Mac,” Jean-Marc said. “In exchange for you doing us the courtesy of respecting our family’s privacy.”

I didn’t say anything to that. I was searching my memory of the face I’d seen at the dark beach for any hint of the girl I’d known those long ago summers.

When I came back to the present, I felt as if I had missed something. Jean-Marc nodded toward the leather bag on the glass table top. Long reached for it, then placed it in his lap and opened it. He reached inside and pulled out a clear plastic Zip-lock bag.

Inside it was a small semiautomatic handgun with a long barrel. He held up the bag for me to see, then placed it on the table between us. I could tell just by glancing at the size of the barrel that it was a .32 caliber.

“Long here tells me that you’re in trouble with the Chief,” Jean-Marc said. “Something to do with his son. I don’t care about any of that. Family matters are family matters, as far as I’m concerned. But I’d like to help you if I can. The Chief has been a friend of my family for almost as long as you have. We told him we needed a man to do some work for us and he sent us someone named Searls. A real animal, as it turns out, but I guess I don’t need to tell you that, do I?”

You’ve crossed paths with him before,
the Chief had said.

The man who had shot Carter—who had been stumbling around in the woods behind his cottage—was the same man who had nearly beat Augie to death.

The ugly ex-boxer who had tried to blow my head off with a sawed-off shotgun, and who had been stalking Tina last night.

I said to Long, “He was in county jail, awaiting trial. How did he get out?”

“Does it matter?”

“Yes.”

“Apparently, the arresting officer hadn’t read Searls his rights. His public defender found out and got him released.”

“When?”

“A week ago.”

“How come I didn’t hear anything about it?”

“It was done quietly.” He paused. “More like kept quiet, actually.”

I thought about that, then said, “How did Searls’ public defender find out he wasn’t Mirandized properly.”

“How do you think.”

“The Chief.”

Long nodded.

“We don’t know why he would do a thing like that,” Jean-Marc said. “Send us a man like that, I mean. He has sent us men when we needed them before, and they’ve all been highly professional. But this Searls, he’s nothing more than a butcher.”

I glanced at Long. He held my stare. I knew then that he was here with Bishop and me behind the Chief’s back.

“You see,” Jean-Marc continued, “it’s time to clean up. This whole mess with this Searls man gets put away tonight, once and for all. I think you’d agree that we’re all better off with this animal back in jail. And it won’t be long before we find my sister. We’re negotiating with someone right now who can bring us to her. So all that leaves is you. I can’t allow any harm to come to my sister. She’s not a well woman these days, and it’s my responsibility to protect her—from others as well as from herself. We understand that this Searls man may be following you because of some old grudge, and if he is, you might inadvertently lead him to her. So we obviously want to be as careful as we can until Marie is back home safe.”

Jean-Marc looked at Long then, as if to cue him.

Long leaned forward, “The Chief is playing every one against each other. Or trying to. I don’t know why, or what he’s up to, but he’s clearly hedging his bets.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Maybe he came to you last night because he sincerely believed you could help him. He has to realize that setting Searls loose was a mistake. Or maybe he came to you because he wants payback for what you did to Tommy and he knows Searls wants to kill you for what you did to him. Another possibility is the Chief is looking for someone to pin Carter’s murder on. To be honest, knowing him the way I do, knowing the way his mind works, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was hoping for all three outcomes.”

I almost didn’t want to ask, but of course I had to. “How could he pin Carter’s murder on me?”

Long eyes went to the Zip-lock bag on the table between us. “This was found locked up in the Chief’s office. Not the evidence room, where it belonged. It’s the gun that was used to kill Carter.”

“How did you know that?”

Long took a folder from the leather bag and dropped it on the table.

“Inside is the ballistics report on the bullet that cut Carter’s throat,” Jean-Marc said. “It states that that bullet was fired by this gun, which the cops found at the scene.”

I looked at the folder but said nothing.

“We believe the Chief was keeping the gun so he could plant it on someone,” Long said. “My bet is he was hoping to plant it on you. Maybe while you were out looking for Marie, or hunting the man who had put your best friend in the hospital.”