Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

someone was saying, “Jesus, Mac, you’re covered in blood.”
    I recognized Augie’s voice. He led me down the steps and out the door to the sidewalk, then across Main Street. The next thing I remember was being laid down on the torn upholstery of the back seat of my LeMans.
    “I thought we had a deal,” Augie said. “I’ve been looking for you all night.”
    He checked the cut on my hand, said it was superficial and gave me a handkerchief to wrap around it.
    And then we were driving. I looked up and saw trees moving above us, as bare as skeletons. They passed, one right after the other, like a parade of dead people, the blue morning sky blinking brightly beyond them …
    The last thing I knew I was sprawled out on my couch. I lay there and listened to Augie’s breathing. Eventually I saw the shape of him in a nearby chair. He was just watching me. After a while, though, he got up and left. He closed the door with the broken lock behind him. Then sometime after that I drifted into unconsciousness and dreamed of some woman named Rose.

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