Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

door shut behind me as softly as I could.
    It was here in the dim hallway that I became aware for the first time that day of the terrible heat that had descended upon Long Island. I had forgotten somehow that we were in the middle of a heat wave, a literal killer with days of near hundred-degree temperatures and air so humid your lungs felt like they were wrapped in shrunken leather when you breathed in. But one step out into the hallway brought it all back to me quickly enough. The air there was like the blast of heat that comes when you open an oven door. It was worse in the stairwells, where climbing down was like descending into the rising exhaust and heat of some fire. The air was better on the street but not by much.
    I still wasn’t completely awake as I pulled open the heavy door of my aging LeMans and got in behind the wheel. I had left the windows down overnight to keep the interior cool. My car was too gone with rust to be worth stealing, and any kids looking for a joy-ride wouldn’t get very far—the gas gauge was busted, and I never kept more than a gallon or so in the tank at any given time. I was broke and paid filling station attendants with change from the bottom of my pocket. I needed these days every cent I could spare.
    Halsey Neck Lane was on the other side of the village, south of Montauk Highway. I’d make it there and back with the gas I had. I had grown up not far from Halsey Neck, on Gin Lane. The big-time rich lived there, old families that were among the first to build homes out here. But there was a lot of newly rich there now. The East End wasn’t like it had been when I was growing up. It wasn’t the quiet resort town where famous families summered in their grand homes. It was more than just New Yorkers who came there for the beaches and quaint villages. Europeans looking for a new Rivera came there now. Hollywood types flew into East Hampton airport on private jets. I hated this part of town more and more with each year that passed and made it a point of not going there for any reason. I was certain that Frank somehow knew this. That this was why he picked it as our meeting place. Frank was the kind of man who wanted, and found at all costs, every advantage.
    My limbs felt heavy as I drove south toward the ocean. My vision blurred now and again. The heat was like an unwanted blanket. It pressed down on me. Sleep lingered in my body like a mood I couldn’t shake. But I knew I had to wake up. I knew I had to be on my toes. I had to listen to what Frank had to say. Most important, I had to try to hear what it was he really meant.
    I made it to the parking lot at the end of Halsey Neck in less than five minutes. Frank was already there, waiting beside his silver Cadillac Seville. He was dressed for the heat in white summer slacks, a blue linen shirt, and loafers. His Seville and my Lemans were the only cars in the lot.
    I steered toward him slowly, broken bits of asphalt popping beneath my balding tires. There wasn’t a part of me that was asleep now.
    The first thing Frank said to me after I got out was, “You look tired, MacManus.”
    I asked him what it was he wanted.
    He started walking and nodded for me to follow. We stepped off the parking lot and onto the sand and walked over the primary dune and down the other side of it to the beach. I didn’t see anybody but us there. The sand was soft beneath my feet, hard for walking. I recalled running on this beach as a youth fifteen years ago to build my endurance and strengthen legs for fighting, running from where I lived with my adoptive family on Gin Lane all the way to Road ‘D” at the end of Dune Road, just before the Shinnecock Bay inlet.
    Frank veered right, heading west down the beach. Gin Lane was to our backs. I liked it that way. I followed him and looked ahead down the long beach and wondered if I could make that same run now, at my age. There was, I’d learned, a big difference between fifteen and thirty. My toes sank deep into the soft sand, my calves working hard, harder than they’d had to work in a long time.
    Frank glanced at me as we walked across the sand. “I like this time of the morning,” he said. “You can speak your mind and no one will hear it. It’s the safest time of the day for conversation.”
    My lungs ached from breathing in the overheated air. I felt a look of strain on my face.
    “Late night last night?” Frank asked.
    “It’s the heat.”
    “Get air conditioning.”
    “Can’t