The Poisoned Rose (8 page)

Chapter Four

 

It was months later, on a cool night in early May, that I found myself waiting outside the Hansom House for Augie.

The air was still and pale dark clouds roamed the broad black sky in herds. Augie had called me early that morning and said he needed my help with something tonight, that it was urgent and that he would come by for me when I got home from work that evening. It was a fast call that ended abruptly. Before that morning I hadn’t heard from him in over a week. Unlike me, he was a busy man these days—busy working for Frank, busy keeping him near. He was busy, too, doing something else, something he didn’t ever talk about.

The day that he called I got home from work exactly at six o’clock and waited upstairs till nine. But there wasn’t any sign of him, and it was too beautiful to stay inside my cramped apartment, so I came down to the street to wait in the open night air and smell the heavy scent of freshly dug earth coming from the potato fields behind the train station.

I was certain that Augie would have called if he had been able. The events of last November were still very much on our minds. The cop killer was still out there somewhere, and we knew nothing more about what it was Frank was up to.

With so much still up in the air, I didn’t think Augie would have left me hanging like this if he could have helped it. I knew he would have called to tell me of any change in plan, as what might appear to be his sudden disappearance would have certainly caused me concern.

Deep down I knew Augie was up to something. And he knew that I was on to him. He was gone every night of the week, even the nights when Frank had no job for him. Augie and I had proceeded over the last five months with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. I didn’t want to know about the work he did for Frank, and we steered clear of any mention of it during the few times a week we were able to get together.

But all that changed when he used the word “urgent.” I’d never known him to use that word, or any like it, before. It played in a loop in my head as I drove all day from one end of the East End to the other, delivering truckloads of antique and restored furniture to the affluent. I had tried to call Augie at his home during my lunch break but got nothing but the same unanswered ringing I got each time I tried his number before coming downstairs to take in the rich night.

I hadn’t been standing in the doorway of the Hansom House for very long, when I saw an old red-colored taxicab come up Railroad Plaza, pass the train station and make the right-hand turn onto Elm Street.

It was Eddie’s cab. It passed the Mexican restaurant on the corner and slowed, then pulled to the curb and stopped across the street from me.

Eddie’s arm was hanging out the open driver’s door window, his white shirt sleeve rolled up, his black skin shiny under the streetlights. He waved me over. I left the doorway and walked down the pathway to the street, then crossed to him.

The motor was running a little rough, the body of the cab trembling slightly. I could hear reggae music coming from inside, drifting out on an invisible cloud of clove oil and Old Spice.

Eddie was a middle-age black man who had come to America years ago from Jamaica and started a small cab company on the East End. I had helped him out of a jam once, when I was young. He was a thin man with skin like coffee and a narrow, bony face. His smile was pleasant despite his yellowed teeth and shockingly pink gums. His face was unshaven, his bristles white and as thick as quills.

We weren’t friends, really. We didn’t frequent the same places, we didn’t go out of our way to see each other or even say hello. But we knew each other. He was, being a cabbie, sometimes privy to things no one else knew. Sometimes he made a point of seeking me out and telling me things he thought I, for one reason or another, should know.

So I knew by the fact that Eddie drove by my place and stopped that something was going down. My heart raced a little.

“What’s up, Eddie?”

His white bloodshot eyes were stark against his dark skin. His face was wrinkled, with deep furrows by his eyes and mouth. Between his teeth, sticking out from the right side of his mouth, was the stub of a cigar, unlit.

“That little girl, that daughter of your friend, I saw her not long ago in town.” Eddie knew pretty much everyone on the East End. He had driven Augie home from my place several times when Augie was too gassed to drive. Augie had even used Eddie’s cab once during a surveillance job for Frank, and paid Eddie well for it.

“Augie’s kid?”

“Yeah, that’s her.”

“What’s going on?”

“I think she could use a friend right now.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was with some boys. High school, by the letterman jackets they were wearing.”

“Where?”

“By the library.”

“Is she in trouble?”

“Let’s just say the odds don’t seem in her favor, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded and looked in the direction of the village. The library was a mile away; I didn’t know what I expected to see.

I looked back at Eddie. “I’ll check it out. Thanks.”

“No problem, Mac.”

My LeMans was parked just a little ways down on the same side of the street. I took a step toward it, then stopped. I turned back to Eddie. “Hey, you haven’t by any chance seen Augie recently, have you?”

“No. Can’t find him?”

“It’s probably nothing. If you see him, though, let me know, okay?”

“I’ll keep an eye out for him. A man like him would be hard to miss.”

I thanked Eddie and continued on to my car. His cab pulled away from the curb as I unlocked my door. I climbed in behind the wheel and pulled the door shut, then cranked the ignition till the engine caught and shifted into gear and pulled into the street. I made a U-turn, turned left at the end of Elm Street onto Railroad Plaza, and then made the left onto North Main Street and followed that for a half mile into the village, heading toward the library.

It was a quiet night in town. The shops were closed, the sidewalks empty. The restaurants I passed weren’t all that busy. Unoccupied tables and wait staff with nothing to do were visible behind large storefront windows. The library was around the corner, on Job’s Lane, but I parked near the end of Main, close to the corner. I could cut around to the back of the Village Hall and approach the library that way and not be seen on the street by anyone.

My shortcut to the back of town was the alleyway that ran between Frank’s office and Village Hall. I hadn’t even walked past Frank’s place since the night I trashed it and Augie had to pull me out and take me home. The front window to Frank’s office was dark now, but I still didn’t like being so near it all that much. The sooner I was away from there the better.

I got out of my car and stepped to the curb and listened. It didn’t take long for me to pick out the sound of laughter coming from somewhere behind the Village Hall. It sounded distant and thin, and I went after it, walking down the alleyway to the small parking lot used by cops. Once there I heard something other than laughter.

A shriek sounded out and carried briefly, then was cut off, gone.

I tried to place it but it was too brief. Beyond the cop lot was a municipal parking lot the size of two football fields. It was empty now. To the right of that, behind the library, was a small park surrounded by a cluster of fir trees and a cyclone fence. It was a tiny park, not much bigger than my apartment. But I looked toward it intently and waited. It was the only enclosed area around, and anyway I had a feeling about it.

I stopped just outside the alleyway and held still and listened. The shriek had been such a brief sound that a part of me doubted now that I had heard it. But there also was a part of me that didn’t doubt it, that heard it well and knew just what it meant.

A car passed down Main Street behind me, and I could hear very little over it till it was gone. Then silence returned to the open parking lot and I waited in it, not making a move, my eyes fixed on the tiny-fenced in park behind the library.

Then my ears found something, a rustling sound from near the center of that small park, the unmistakable sound of a struggle.

I heard murmured words, male voices giving hurried and hushed commands. Then finally I heard it, another shriek, or half a shriek, for it was cut off midway through just like the one before, cut off before it could rise and carry, before it could reach above the dense trees that surrounded that park.

It was all I needed to hear. My heart burst and sent a terrible ache through me, and I broke into an all-out run.

I reached the fence and cleared it as quickly and quietly as I could. Then I moved forward through the border trees. This park was significantly darker than the open lot was, but still I spotted them almost instantly. They were on the other end of the enclosure, in a patch of open ground that was only slightly better lighted than the ground under the crowding trees.

There were three of them, three boys in lettermen jackets. And there was Tina, in the middle of it. I could see her well enough. She was in their arms, not one part of her touching the ground. She was kicking and bucking and trying with all she had to get free of them. It looked like a feeding frenzy.

I could hear her murmuring. One of the boys had his hand over her mouth. They were all talking at once in voices that weren’t all that hushed but still quiet. They didn’t hear my approach.

The three boys were busy with Tina, busy keeping her still, busy yelling at each other, busy tearing Tina’s T-shirt open, pulling at her white bra, trying to peel down her jeans. They had no idea I was even there till I was upon them.

The first boy I reached had shoulder length hair, thick. I came up beside him and grabbed a handful of that hair and gave a good yank, pulling it like I was ringing a church bell, bending my knees and tugging him almost head first to the ground. I used all my body weight and hung onto him till he was flat out on his back. I couldn’t have him getting back up right away, the fall he had taken wasn’t hard enough to stun him, so the instant he hit the ground I let my legs buckle and dropped down on him, landing my right knee, with all my body weight behind it, onto his ribs. I heard a quick crack and a deep grunt.

I left him there and stood fast. I caught Tina from the corner of my eye. Her T-shirt was torn up the middle, her bra around her neck. Her breasts were exposed. I didn’t want to see them but there was nothing I could do about that. Her jeans were unbuttoned and had been pulled almost past her hips, her panties with them.

The other two boys still had her. They were aware of me but hadn’t had time to drop her yet. The second boy had one hand over her mouth and the other hand around her waist. The third had his hands hooked under her knees. I saw that Tina’s eyes were closed tight, her face contorted with anger and concentration. She was still bucking with all she had.

I moved without hesitation to the boy nearest to me, the one with her legs in his arms. I rushed him, crouching like a peek-a-boo boxer, like Frazier or Tyson, and spiraled with my whole body and being and drove a fast open-handed uppercut between his muscular legs. It landed with a loud slap. He dropped Tina’s legs, drawing his arms fast to his crotch as if to catch something about to fall. He fell to a heap on the ground and immediately began to heave his dinner.

The third boy had dropped Tina by then and was rushing toward me, moving like a linesman after the quarterback. Tina lay flat out on the ground, her eyes wide open. She had no clue what was happening. The third boy came in for a low tackle. I let him, and the first blow I landed was a sharp knee thrust to his face. It slowed him a little. A second blow stunned him. I was able then to grab hold of his head with both hands. I hugged it close to me like it was a basketball I didn’t want to lose and wailed at it again with my knee. It took two more blows before the third boy caved and lost momentum and stumbled facedown to the ground.

My mind was racing now. I know I should have grabbed Tina and gotten out of there. I had done what the law allowed and nothing more. This was important to me. But something kept me there. It came to me in this chaos that I had a reason to put a scare into that boy, to say something to him, let him know I was on to him and I wasn’t afraid of him. I didn’t want to let him go and then have it come back and cause trouble for me or anyone else. The third boy rolled out onto his back. I looked down at him. Through the dark I was able to recognize him. I had seen his photograph in the papers, in the local sports pages, there and only there. It appeared nowhere else, not the front page, not in the police blotter, not anywhere. I knew his name. I knew exactly who he was.

Tina wasn’t the first girl from the high school to be attacked. Since last November three rapes had been reported by girls who claimed not to know their attackers. The rumor around town was that the investigating cops weren’t doing their job. A lot of people had a pretty good idea why nothing was being done.

The first boy, the one whose rib I had cracked, got to his feet fast then and headed toward the park exit. He didn’t look back, just bolted clumsily, his arm clutched at his side. The second boy, the one I had clipped in the groin, was on his hands and knees, wiping the vomit from his chin. He looked at me but I wasn’t certain he could see much of anything. His eyes were watery. They looked for me in the dark but didn’t seem to find me.

“Get out of here,” I said to him.

He looked at the third boy, then back up at me. When he didn’t move I took a single step toward him. It was just a bluff, but it did the job. He scrambled to his feet and hobbled away as fast as he could.

I approached the third boy and stood over him. He was out of breath. He looked up at me, his eyes blinking. Since he was a football player I knew he was used to pain, to playing hurt. He was stunned by the shots I had landed but he wasn’t broken. I sensed no fear from him at all. He was simply on his back, resting as if between plays.

“Fun time’s over,” I said to him. “Do you understand me?”

He said nothing, just stared up at me. His jaw was set tight, hatefully.