The Poisoned Rose (2 page)

Frank finally hung up the phone and stood. He waved me in again, this time more insistently. He gestured toward one of the two seats facing the desk as he looked through the pile of files. I ignored his gesture and stayed where I was, my hands in the pockets of my jacket. Frank looked up again. He was clearly puzzled that I was still where I was, almost annoyed by it. I took a degree of pleasure from this.

“Jesus, Mac, come in,” he said.

I took a few steps forward and stopped. I turned my head toward the large storefront window that looked out over Main Street. There was nothing beyond it but the shifting, grainy gray of the rain and the half-stripped trees that lined Main. The sound of the rain was so relentless I was starting to feel a little beaten by it. I was spent, and a little drunk still, too tired to think or care about anything.

“You’re late, you know that, right?” Frank said

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“I’m running a business here. You work for me, you need to be on time. Do we understand each other?”

I didn’t answer. The giant was looking at me over his shoulder again. His face was in shadow, but I knew his eyes were on me.

Frank was looking at the scratches on my face. He said nothing about them, but then he didn’t need to; he knew how I got them, knew the whole story.

He looked down at the pile of files then and pulled one from the bottom half of the stack. He dropped it on top of the blotter and opened it, flipping through the papers inside.

“You know, there’s not that much work out here for skilled labor, let alone someone like you.”

I had lived in Southampton my whole life. I knew what was and wasn’t out here. Frank knew that I knew this, so once again I didn’t answer. There was no reason to.

“I’m offering you a chance to change that miserable life of yours.”

“Am I here for work, Frank, or counseling?”

“I’d say you need both.” He paused, then said, “You can make a lot of money in this business, Mac. The right man can clean up, buy things, cars, a house maybe, even women. The right man can break old habits and start new ones.” He stopped and studied me skeptically. “Tell me, honestly, how long has it been since your last drink? A day? An hour? Or maybe you had a little nip on the way over here.”

“I’m not going to take your money, Frank, if it means I have to take your shit, too.”

From the corner of my eye I saw the giant take a few steps away from the back window, moving to join Frank and me. I got the sense that if there was going to be an argument, he wanted to be a part of it. I glanced at him again and saw that his hands were empty, hanging at his sides. The folded paper was left on the window sill.

The floorboards protested loudly under his work boots. He and I stared at each other. The rain slowed then, the sound of it lessening slightly.

Frank closed the folder and placed it back on the top of the pile. There was something decisive about this. He glanced at the giant.

“I don’t work with drunks,” the giant said to him.

Frank shrugged, then looked back at me. “The men who work for me, Mac, do it because I pay top dollar. I won’t bullshit you by saying working for me is an honor, but there are a lot of men who would be more than grateful to be put on my payroll part time, let alone full time, which is what I’m offering you. You hold a certain…value to me. You can go places my other men can’t. You’re part of the scenery out here, which means you can poke around and people won’t even think twice about it. As long as no one knows you’re working for me—and why should they, right?—then I can use you.”

“Not all that sure I want to be used, Frank.”

“A poor choice of words. But you understand what I’m telling you, right? You’re what, twenty-nine now? Thirty? As far as I can tell, you’ve spent your adult life floating from shit job to shit job. You were a housepainter this summer, right? You had your own business, so you have some ambition, but bad luck came your way and suddenly everything you’ve worked for is gone. And of course, you can’t paint houses in the winter, so you need work. You’d need to work two minimum wage jobs just to get by, and you’d be lucky this time of year if you found one.”

“Is there a point here, Frank?”

“My point is, I think you’re sick of getting the short end of the stick. You had a partner in your house painting business, right? He killed his girlfriend and then himself right in front of you at the end of the summer. That’s what put you out of business, that’s what sent you into this tailspin you’ve been in lately. Trouble finds you, Mac. It has your whole life. Some people are just like that. But I think you’ve finally started to realize that if you can’t stay out of trouble, then you might as well at least start profiting from it. There comes a point in a man’s life when he has to take control of things. Otherwise, things will just keep controlling him. You look to me like a man ready to take control. Am I right, Mac? Are you ready to take control?”

It took a moment, but finally I nodded.

“The thing is, you’re no good to me if you can’t see straight. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.”

Frank looked at the giant again. The man offered no reaction at all. Then Frank turned to me. After a moment he looked once again at the file, then opened it. Among the pages inside were several black-and-white surveillance photos.

He spoke, but not just to me now.

“A client of mine paid a young man a sum of money to stay away from his daughter. It was my client’s understanding that they had an agreement. He was plain enough when he paid the kid off. But we’ve recently been made aware that the young man isn’t keeping his side of the bargain. He’s still very much in contact with the daughter. My client wants us to pass a message along to this upstart. It’s an easy money night, Mac, not a big job at all.”

“What kind of message?” I asked.

“One the boy will listen to. On this kind of job I like to send out two men. One to talk, the other to witness. You’ll be working with this gentleman here. Understand so far?”

The giant moved out of the darkness completely now and stepped toward the desk. I could see him clearly. His eyes were fixed on me, his disapproval obvious. He wore his brown hair in a severe military buzz cut, and there were flecks of white around his temples that made him look as if he had just come in out of a snowfall. He was, like Frank, in his mid-fifties, but unlike Frank he looked less well-tended, less groomed. A different kind of life from Frank’s had left its mark on this man.

“He’ll get you started, Mac, show you how things go, what I expect from the men who work for me. Just follow his lead. He’s the best, end of story.”

The giant and I were dressed alike, in jeans and sweatshirts and work boots. Beyond that we were as different as two people got.

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather work alone,” I said.

The giant took another step forward. “I can do this better without him tagging along,” he said. “Playing nurse maid will only slow me down.”

“Sorry, gentlemen. This is the way it has to be. My client is part of a very prominent family. There’s no room for error here.”

In Frank’s book every family with money and property south of Sunrise Highway was a prominent family. Every job was an opportunity for him to grab at just a little more power. This and this alone was all that mattered to Frank Gannon.

“I didn’t sign on to baby-sit, Frank,” the giant said.

“Look, I need someone to show him the ropes, that’s all there is to it. And anyway, if it isn’t him with you tonight, then it’s going to be someone else. I want two men on this. I want it to go right.”

“Then anyone but him.”

“I need you to do this for me. Okay?”

Neither the giant nor I said anything more. I glanced at him. His eyes were hard but I didn’t really care.

Frank took the silence as compliance and said, “The upstart works at a bar in Sag Harbor. On slow nights he usually cuts out around eleven. Traditionally tonight’s a slow night. You’ll meet up here at ten and ride out together. Like I said, it’s easy money tonight. If all goes well, you should be done before one. Any questions?”

I had only one. I had asked it already but didn’t get a real answer.

“What exactly is the message we’re supposed to send?”

“It’s a simple directive. No threats, just a reminder that he is breaking his word. Augie here will do the talking. Watch his back and pay attention, that’s all you have to do.”

I glanced at the giant, the man Frank called Augie, then back at Frank. The rain picked up again and sounded like something brittle breaking into pieces against the front window.

“I guess I should introduce you two,” Frank said. He smiled then. “Mac, this is Augie. Augie, this is Mac.”

That afternoon I shaved and showered, then stretched out on my couch and fell asleep to the sound of the rain. I slept for a few hours, and when I woke up I was thinking about having a drink. But I just sat still and didn’t do anything about it. It was easy to do this sometimes, but not always. I was able to do it now, though, no problem, if only because it seemed the fewer moves I made, the better.

I waited quietly till it was time to go, then grabbed my jacket and left.

It was still raining hard and my head was soaked by the time I got into Augie’s truck. The heat was on, though, so I knew I’d eventually dry out. Together he and I rode in silence toward Sag Harbor. It was a twenty-minute drive from Southampton. Once there we parked across from the Sag Harbor Cinema, in sight of the bar in which the kid worked, and waited.

We were down maybe fifty feet from the corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue, parked with the nose of the truck toward the curb. The red, blue, and white lights from the neon movie theater marquee bled into the rain-swept street, and farther down the road, where it wasn’t touched by the colored lights, the pavement shimmered under the dark sky like a long, taut banner of black silk.

We sat without speaking and listened to the rain drum the steel roof over our heads. It made enough of a racket to distract me from the tangible tension between us. I didn’t really want anything to do with this man. And I knew he wanted nothing to do with me. I just focused on getting through the job and hoped that he and I would never have to work together again.

Augie was wearing a military field jacket over his sweatshirt and jeans. There were no insignia or patches on the jacket, just the name
Hartsell
stenciled over the left top pocket. His pickup truck was an old Ford that had seen better days well before I was born. There were holes in the rusted floorboard that I had to cover with the sole of my boot to keep the water from the flooded roads splashing up at me. The rubber boot around the gear shift had cracked and all but broken off, and the paint on the metal dashboard was faded from nearly four decades of sun.

As I climbed into his truck back in town, I had caught a glimpse of the Colt .45 that Augie wore under his jacket. It was holstered to his belt, just below his right kidney. It was concealed from my sight now, wedged between him and the seat covered with cracked black vinyl. But I knew it was there. I couldn’t help but wonder if Augie was the kind of man who carried his weapon at all times, even at home.

A fairly modern radio was mounted under the old style dashboard, tuned to a jazz program on the college station. The volume was low but I could hear well enough Charlie Haden singing “Wayfaring Stranger.” I listened and felt almost good to be alive. It was a hard song for any man to ignore, and I wondered if Augie was listening. But I couldn’t tell. Anyway, when it was done another, lesser song came on and I stopped paying attention so closely and looked down Main Street toward the bar at the corner where the upstart kid we had come to give a message worked slinging drinks.

The bar was called the Dead Horse. It sat across from Long Wharf, where twenty foot sailboats and luxury yachts moored for the summer months. I knew this bar well. It had two large storefront windows and a front door between them that opened onto the corner of Main and Bay streets. Inside there was a short bar, two ceiling fans, two tiny restrooms, and a dozen tables, nothing more. On weekends ensembles set up in a corner and played, mostly Irish music but sometimes jazz, and the hard wood floors brought the music right to the bottom of your feet. One night, years ago, I had seen a quartet play radical jazz covers of Jimi Hendrix tunes. I drank dark beer with bourbon backs long after the band broke and stayed there with them and a few other regulars till the sun came up and the street lights went off one by one down the length of Main Street. To this day I can remember that night vividly—the bass solo during “Little Wing,” the joy, the pretty girlfriend of the drummer and how I couldn’t take my eyes off her. In those days, I was as ruled by women as George. But I have no memory whatsoever of how I got back to the Hansom House. Even my memory of the days that followed are hazy, full of jagged holes. It was lost time, a span of hours during which, for all intents and purposes, I was not part of this world.

The upstart kid’s name was Vogler. I had looked through the folder Frank had given us and studied his photograph. That folder was thinner than the one I had seen on Frank’s desk, and almost half the text had been blacked out with a Magic Marker. No names, no addresses, nothing but what we needed to know about the target.

Vogler was in his early twenties and didn’t look all that much like trouble to me. He had short brown hair and wire-rimmed glasses and a narrow face that didn’t seem to me the kind of face that made people run with fear. There was no mention of the name of Frank’s client, or the man’s daughter, anywhere in the file. But I wasn’t surprised by this. It was, I was certain, the least of what was being withheld from me.

Streams of rain water ran down both sides of Main Street and collected in a puddle the size of two car lengths. Bay Street was pretty much underwater, like it usually was when it rained. The bridge to North Haven, a left-hand turn at the end of Main, was half lost to a bank of mist that shifted in from the harbor. There were halos around the street lamps and circular pools of grainy light around their bases with stretches of darkness in between. I turned my head and glanced toward the south end of the tiny village, and all I could see was a wall of gray in which the stores that lined Main Street began but did not end. Everything looked unfinished, like a movie set or tumbling-down ghost town.