Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

be to get on the next train out of here, disappear like my father had?
    Later I heard music from the bar downstairs. Muffled bass notes reverberated in the wood planks and beams and high trebles found their way up through the cracks between. It was reggae music, which usually soothed me, but there was a rage in my heart that could not be consoled. I knew it wouldn’t take much to send me out of control. In the end, it took very little at all.
    I suddenly felt feverish and rushed into the bathroom. I dropped to the floor and vomited into the toilet. All the heat was out of me and I became suddenly very cold. Sweat instantly covered every part of me. My gut felt torn up. But I was still drunk, knew I would be for hours.
    When I was certain I wasn’t going to be sick again I got up from the cold floor and leaned over the sink and let the water run. I splashed my face and rinsed my mouth. When I was done I lifted my eyes and caught my reflection in the broken hand mirror fixed to the wall above.
    I didn’t like what I saw. But I didn’t look away. I wiped the excess water from my face and felt the bristles of a five-day-old beard beneath my fingers. I searched my eyes. They looked sunken in their sockets. I looked as if I were something rotting from the inside out. I studied myself for as long as I could bear. The next thing I knew I was outside, in the cold night without my coat, reeling as I headed for my car.
    Frank Gannon was a man who prided himself for never taking no for an answer. Like the Vogler kid, he needed a message that he could not ignore. I would need to make it clear to Frank that I was, and would always be, the one man who could refuse him.
    And I wanted as many people as possible to know that I had.
    I drove to his office and climbed the thirteen stairs and pried open the door with my tire iron. Then I stumbled inside and turned the place upside down. All I could think of was how my eyes looked and the pain and rage I felt—the pain and rage I had caused strangers. I wanted nothing to do with the misery and mischief of others ever again. I used my tire iron to pry open Frank’s filing cabinets, all six of them, pulling out each and every drawer and turning them over. Files—and the secrets and power they no doubt contained—went everywhere. I flipped over Frank’s desk and broke open its drawers, kicking the pieces across the floor. When I couldn’t do anymore damage, when I was spent and there was nothing else left to destroy, I dropped to the floor and lay there, gasping.
    I had cut myself at some point; there was blood on my hands, and on the papers scattered beneath me. But I didn’t care. I just lay there, half conscious, panting. I thought maybe I was going to throw up again but didn’t. Everything settled into a kind of peace inside and around me. All I could hear after a while was my own breathing.
    The world had been reduced to the one thing that mattered.
    I allowed myself to drift, and the next thing I knew it was morning. I heard someone coming up the stairs but I didn’t move. I waited for Frank to open the door, wanted him to see what I had done and to know what it meant.
    I heard him mutter, “What the fuck?”
    He entered, stopped short, and then he must have seen me among the debris and wreckage I had caused because I heard him rushing toward me, his shoes stomping on the wood blanks. Before I even saw him over me I took two kicks to the ribs. I heard him cursing, heard his heavy breathing. I tried to move, but before I could he kicked me a third time. I had rolled over and gotten to my knees, was ready for his next blow, ready to take him apart like I had taken his office apart, but I heard a second voice coming from somewhere else in the room, followed by more rushing footsteps. I anticipated a second assault, but it never came. Instead, Frank and this second man began to argue. Frank was so enraged he was almost incoherent. When words broke down, and Frank launched one last kick, a scuffle broke out.
    I heard Frank yell, “Get this son of a bitch out of here right now!” The room seemed to be made smaller somehow by his voice. Someone got me up off the floor like I was nothing. I could barely stand. I felt an arm around me and two huge hands holding on to me firmly. Someone was beside me, walking me toward the door. I barely felt the floor beneath my feet.
    Frank yelled, “I don’t ever want to see that piece of shit again.”
    Then I was out in the hallway, and