Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

when he leaves. You’ll be safe, I promise.”
    “Can’t I stay here?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    “The cops could still come looking for me.”
    “I could hide.”
    “We don’t have time for this, okay? You have to go home. I’m sorry.”
    “Will you drive me?”
    “No, it’d be better if Eddie took you—”
    “He’s been leaving the house a lot at night with his own camera equipment,” Tina said quickly. “Augie has. He’s been leaving at sundown and not coming back till dawn. He locks up everything that’s important in a gun safe in his study. I’ll bet you there are photographs inside. They might tell you where to start looking for him.”
    I had no leads, nowhere to start. The East End wasn’t a big place, but what was I going to do, drive around in my car, hoping to spot his pickup somewhere?
    “Do you know the combination?” I said.
    “Yes.”
    “Write it down for me.”
    “I don’t know it by heart. But I’ll remember it if the dial is in front of me.”
    I waited a moment, watching her. She held perfectly still, her shoulders tight.
    “I’m not lying to you, I swear. I need the dial in front of me.”
    There was, I could see, no point in arguing.
    I could see, too, that there was so much of her father in her.
    “You do what I say, okay? The minute I say it. No questions. You understand?”
    She nodded.
    “All right,” I said, “let’s go.”
    The late-rising moon was near full and hung just above the tree tops. Between it and us was a sky crowded with fragmented clouds that moved like slabs of ice down a dark river.
    It took less than five minutes to reach their house. It was a small clapboard cottage at the end of Little Neck Road, not far from the college, on the edge of a long peninsula that reached into Shinnecock Bay. As I got closer I could see that Augie’s truck was in the driveway, parked outside the closed garage door. I pulled in behind it and cut the motor and killed the lights. Their house was dark and still, not unlike every other house we had passed along this residential street.
    I could hear the lazy lapping of the slight bay waves against the stony shore not a hundred feet away. It was the only sound for miles around. I smelled brine through my half-opened window, and wild roses. The bay air was cool against the walls of my lungs.
    Tina was looking at the truck in the driveway. “He’s home,” she said. There was a mix of surprise and hope in her voice.
    “Yeah, it looks that way, doesn’t it?” I said. I studied the cottage through the windshield. I didn’t take my eyes off it. I could feel Tina looking at the side of my face.
    “What’s wrong?” she said.
    “All the lights are off. Would your father really have come home and gone to bed if you weren’t there?”
    Tina looked toward the house. “No,” she said flatly. She thought for a moment. “He could have gone out with someone else, though, right? In their car. And sometimes he rents a car.”
    I was Augie’s only friend, though I suppose it was possible he was with one of Frank’s other men, or Frank himself, for that matter. And he could have rented a vehicle. Still…
    “If he knew he was going to be out this late, wouldn’t he have told you? Asked you to sleep over at your girlfriend’s house.”
    Tina was friends with a girl whose family lived on North Main Street. I didn’t know the girl’s name, first or last, or where on North Main her family lived, but I knew Tina slept over often enough.
    “Yeah,” she said. “He would have.”
    I eyed the cottage, scanning from window to window.
    “Do me a favor,” I said. “Wait here, okay.”
    “Where are you going?”
    “I just want to check something out.”
    “I’m coming with you.”
    “No. Stay here.”
    I reached up and flipped down my sun visor and removed the Spyderco knife I kept there. I slid it into my right hip pocket and climbed out from behind the wheel. I closed the door quietly, then followed the narrow slate walkway from the street to the front door.
    I looked around, then pulled open the outer door. The winter glass was still in place. I leaned close to the front door, listening. I noticed then that the door wasn’t closed completely. I nudged it with my shoulder and it swung open a little. I reached down fast and grabbed the brass handle, keeping the door from moving any farther. I listened for something, anything, but all I heard was the broken rhythm of the gentle bay waves coming from around