Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

the elbows and walked past us without glancing at me. I didn’t realize till after they had passed that the man between them was the boxer. I’d been too busy looking for recognition in the cop’s eyes to notice.
    The boxer staggered as they led him to the reception desk. There was blood caked on the back of his head. The cops wore latex gloves on their hands. The nurse stood up right away and escorted them through the swinging doors and into the emergency room. I watched the doors swing to a close in their wake.
    I could hear my heart pounding. Blood rushed in my ears, sounding to me like the echo of a thunderclap out over the ocean. We were all here, in this building—Augie and Tina, the ugly boxer who had beaten Augie, at least two Southampton cops, maybe even the three boys, one of them with his knee torn to shreds.
    And maybe, too, the father of the boy was here, contemplating a future destroyed and entertaining thoughts of revenge.
    What was it Augie had said to me when we’d first met?
    We take care of the ones we love.

    I had been thrown in the middle of something yet again, but not by Frank Gannon this time. It was the cruelty of an entitled son that had done that. And, too, the recklessness of my only real friend. A man who had once said to me, “My right arm is yours.” A man who had given me no reason since to doubt his pledge.
    Regardless of what put me here, I had to start piecing things together. I had to catch up or be left behind. I needed to know what Augie was up to.
    I turned to Tina and said, “I need your help.”
    At first it seemed that she hadn’t heard me. She just stared ahead. But eventually she turned her head a little and looked at me. Her eyes were flat, and by her expression it appeared as though she were looking at someone she had never seen before.
    I knew I had to break through that. “I need to know what your father was doing,” I said. “I need you to tell me what you know. And I need you to tell me now, okay?”
    She looked away, saying nothing. I leaned closer and spoke in a whisper. “I’m in trouble, Tina. I’m in trouble and I need you to help me.”
    She turned and gave me the same odd stare. Then her eyes lowered, her line of vision coming to rest on my chest. She reminded me of a bird that had stunned itself by flying into a window.
    “Anything you can tell me, Tina. Anything.”
    Her eyes shifted from side to side as if she were trying to decide whether or not to say what was on her mind. I gave her time, watching her closely.
    “There’s a boy in my school,” she said finally. Her eyes were still fixed on my chest. “We were in the same homeroom. Two weeks ago he overdosed on heroin and died. He’d bought the bag or whatever from someone on school grounds. My father didn’t take the news very well.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “He had moved us out here to get away from all that. Drugs, gangs. He used to say this was the last safe place on earth. He talked about coming back here for years. But when the boy at school died, Augie went kind of nuts.”
    “You said he would leave the house at sundown and not come back till dawn. This was after he heard about the boy?”
    She nodded. “He was very angry about the whole thing. It was like he was taking it personally.”
    “You think he was trying to find out who was selling at your school?”
    She nodded again, her eyes still on my chest. “People have seen him out there during the day, like he was watching the place or something. He’d be sitting in his car, watching the parking lot. It was embarrassing.”
    “He must have felt like an old enemy had caught up with him,” I said.
    Tina took a breath, let it out. “Do you think he found out who the dealer was? Is that why they did what they did to him?”
    I realized then that she wasn’t aware of the condition their home was in. She had no idea that it had been torn apart. She didn’t know about the professional who had tried to kill me with a sawed-off shotgun. All she knew about was the guy she had seen bolt across the front yard in a hooded sweatshirt and baseball cap and the condition of her father.
    “I don’t know,” I answered.
    Her eyes lifted then, rising from my chest to my mouth. They held there for a moment. I could tell she wanted to say something.
    It took her a while but finally she shrugged and said, “My life would be very different right now if you hadn’t shown up. In a lot of ways, you know. If you hadn’t stopped