Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

might want to stay away from him, find a new friend to play with.”
    “I’ll keep that in mind, Gale.”
    “Somebody’s got to look after you. I’m serious, though, Mac. Stay away from him, okay? Do you understand me?”
    I nodded.
    “I’ve got to get back upstairs. You caught us on a bad night. There were two other car crashes right before yours, and some high school girl was raped. They brought her in a half hour ago. So bear with us.”
    She touched my shoulder with her left hand. I remembered living for her visits to my room, living for the moments during her shift when she would stop and talk with me about really nothing at all.
    I looked up at her face now. It was tanned and finely lined, showing her age. I nodded once. I hated the things in both our lives that made my feelings for her so ridiculous.
    “I’ll see you, Mac.”
    She turned, pulled open the curtain, and left. There was something about the way she moved that made me think of a person running away. With the curtain open and her gone, I was left again in clear view of the two waiting uniformed cops.
    ***

    It took an hour for the doctor to make his way to me. He was young, new, didn’t know me. He barely looked at my face. I was stitched up, all the while being questioned by the cops for what was the tenth time. I had to speak in a full voice just to be heard over the chaos of the ER.
    After the doctor was done and I was questioned a few more times, I was taken back to the Hansom House in a patrol car. The uniformed cop driving kept looking back at me in the rear view mirror. I didn’t care about that. I had lost track of Augie in the confusion and didn’t know if he was still at the hospital or not. I figured since I hadn’t seen him that the cops had released him with orders not to talk to me till I was questioned. I’m sure he went straight to Frank to tell him what had gone down.
    The cop dropped me off outside the Hansom House. I walked up the path through the rain to the porch. The stairs were just inside the entranceway, to the left, and I went up them to my rooms. I picked a dry pair of jeans and T-shirt out of the dirty clothes pile at the foot of my bed, then went into the bathroom and looked at myself in the streaked piece of mirror. I peeled back the bandage and checked the stitches in my scalp. My face was hidden behind smudges of dried mud. I reapplied the bandage, washed up and changed, then grabbed a nearly empty bottle of Beam from the table by my unmade bed. I sat down on my living room couch and poured myself a glass.
    The muffled sound of a reggae bass was coming up through the floorboards. With it was the sound of a trumpet being played by someone who had listened to his share of Chet Baker. I didn’t feel up to going downstairs, facing George and the women who came for his free drinks. I didn’t want to hear that the woman from this afternoon had come back, or was back, waiting in a dark corner for me. I wanted nothing to do with anything.
    I lay back on the couch and took a long gulp of Beam, feeling it burn my chest as it went down. I needed the warmth. I still felt jittery from the fight, from that moment when I thought Augie and I were going to die. It wasn’t long before I started thinking of the kid, Vogler, bleeding to death on that rainy street.
    I drank several glassfuls and then slipped into unconsciousness. It was like being underwater, down deep, the whole workaday world, silent and out of sight, far above me. It was the only peace I knew.
    Sometime later I was conscious again. I was still on my couch, still in the dark. I had no idea how much time had passed, and I wasn’t certain why I had been awakened. But then I sensed that someone else was there in the room with me. I sat up fast and switched on my bedside lamp, then grabbed it as a weapon. The light threw drastic shadows across the room.
    I felt the same riot letting loose inside of me, the same animal instinct to save my life at any cost. It ran through me like a fever. But then my eyes caught something and the fever suddenly ceased.
    Standing at the foot of my couch, casting the largest shadow of all the shadows in that room, was Augie Hartsell.
    “Easy there, partner,” he said.
    I didn’t realize that I was holding my breath till I found myself letting out a sigh. I waited a second, then put the lamp back on the tabletop. The brightness of the sudden light made my eyes ache. I was still lit from the Beam and half asleep. I could