Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

the favor I owed him to another time. But I wanted out from under his thumb badly, I wanted this over with finally, once and for all. I didn’t want to spend another day, let alone another two months, waiting for his call.
    I said, “It’s under control, Frank. Nothing to worry about. I can stop any time, you know that.”
    “I’ll have to take your word for it, won’t I?”
    “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Frank. You’re lucky that way.”
    He didn’t say anything to that, just regarded the beach and the working gulls and the gray Atlantic to his left.
    “I’m going to be needing you for a job,” he said after a while.
    “What kind of job?”
    “The kind you’re good at. A family wants their daughter found. It’s a prominent family.”
    “Aren’t they all.”
    “I’d like to make an impression on them. This job could go a long way to making certain things happen for me.”
    “Running for mayor again?”
    Frank had run for mayor years ago and lost badly.
    “Not exactly,” he said.
    “I don’t suppose you can tell me who this family is.”
    “I’ll get to that. Right now I just want to be assured that you’ll be available to me over the next few days.”
    It was Friday morning. The Fourth of July, Independence Day, was Monday. I had no plans that would take me too far from my phone. I told Frank that.
    “Which brings me to another point,” Frank said. “You have an exposure that you need to take care of right away. This isn’t open for negotiation. Do you understand me?”
    “I’m listening.”
    “It’s all about appearances, MacManus. We live in a small town, you probably know this better than anyone. I told you that you had to keep your nose clean, that you had to lay low. Playing house with a fifteen-year-old girl wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.”
    “You know the situation. Where else was she going to go? Anyway, Augie’s due home from the hospital after the weekend. She’ll be going with him then.”
    “That’s not good enough.”
    “It’s the best I can do.”
    “The phony alibi may have protected you from prosecution, MacManus, but don’t think for a minute that the Chief isn’t waiting for his chance. I’ll give him one thing, he’s a patient man. When he moves against you, it won’t be for littering. He’s waiting for something juicy, and statutory rape is about as juicy as it comes.”
    “You’ve got a dirty mind, Frank.”
    “If only I were the only one who did.”
    “What does that mean?”
    “There’s talk. A lot of talk. Christ, the Chief wouldn’t even need to make the charges stick. He’d just need to get into the papers the simple fact that you’d been arrested and charged. He’d just have to feed the talk that’s already going on. And the fact that you took advantage of your best friend’s daughter while he was in the hospital, learning to walk all over again, is just the cherry on the top, so to speak.”
    “What are you talking about, Frank?”
    “Jesus, MacManus, everyone thinks you and the girl are banging away every night.”
    I both was and wasn’t surprised. People had thought the worst of me before. It was out of my control, and I told Frank that.
    “But how do you think all this talk got started, MacManus?”
    “The way all talk does.”
    Frank shook his head. “It came from the girl. She told all her little friends at school that you two are hot and heavy lovers living together like grownups in your crappy apartment. That’s where it all began.”
    I was a fool not to have seen this coming. I was a fool for choosing not to see it coming, for turning a blind eye to the way Tina behaved around me, the way she looked at me, for letting certain things she said fall on deaf ears. Maybe I had thought it was a phase—a case of misguided attachment—and that it would eventually end. Maybe I had hoped to ride it out, continue to quietly ignore what wasn’t proper till she got the message and turned her affections elsewhere.
    A mistake, I could now see.
    I didn’t care what other people thought. I didn’t care what Frank thought. But the Chief was a different story. And, for that matter, so was Augie.
    “Shit,” I said.
    “I can talk to Augie, if you want me to,” Frank said. “The girl can spend the weekend with that family on North Main. I’m sure he’ll understand.”
    “No, I’ll talk to him,” I said. “I’ll go see him this morning.”
    “Don’t you have to work?”
    “I’ll