Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

above a bar?”
    I said nothing.
    “Staying alive, that’s what I’m doing with guys like that,” she said finally. “I choose my friends carefully. I’ve had to think that way for a while now. If a man can help me keep my brother from getting his hands on me, then I do what I have to do to keep that man around. It’s as simple as that.”
    I looked at her for a long time. She stared back at me.
    So there it was.
    “I can pay you,” she offered. “It wouldn’t be much, but it would be something.”
    “This isn’t about money.”
    “Then what is it about?”
    We both had secrets we wanted to keep. This was clear. It was also clear that she knew things about me—more than most people knew. I thought about what Augie had said months ago, how some secrets break through to the surface while others remain buried, and how random it all seemed.
    Then I remembered his second analogy, that secrets were more like mines waiting to be triggered than treasure waiting to be found.
    I glanced toward the pickup again. The smoker was still behind the wheel, still watching us. Then I looked back at Marie. Suddenly I didn’t much care that I owed Frank. Suddenly all I could think about was the last time he’d sent me to find a woman who did not want to be found.
    More than that, this was family shit—rich family shit. And I didn’t want anything to do with that.
    “Keep your money,” I said.
    “So you’ll help me.”
    I nodded. “It wouldn’t look very good for me if someone happened to spot you any time in the near future. You’ll have to be careful. The man who sent me is crazy and dangerous in his own way. I don’t want him coming back to me and saying someone saw you buying groceries in the IGA. Do you understand?”
    “It’s pretty obvious that our mutual best interests lie in me not being found. My own sense of self-preservation guarantees your preservation. This appears to be one of those few times in life when it just works out like that.”
    “How do you survive?” I asked. “How do you make money?”
    “I waitress, off the books.”
    “Where?”
    “A little place out in—” She caught herself and stopped short. She was looking at me squarely, her hands still deep in the pockets of her slacks, her posture still that of a cadet’s. Her mouth was sealed tightly.
    “You have to be careful of things like that,” I said. “Little slips can lead to trouble, for both of us.”
    “Maybe I’m not as clever as I think I am,” she said.
    “Very few of us are.”
    “So we have a deal?” she pressed. “You’ll do this for me?”
    The sound of the crickets and the frogs swelled then, filling up the open night, ringing like countless alarm bells. It was almost deafening.
    “Yeah,” I said. “We have a deal.”
    We shook hands and said goodbye. I returned to my LeMans and drove away from the parking lot. The last I saw of Marie Welles, she was still standing at the water’s edge, watching me go. The pickup was still parked by her vehicle, blocking my view of it. But the driver—the man who called himself Skull—was heading toward her, lighting a new cigarette as he walked.
    I managed to make it back to the Hansom House without running out of gas. I craved my bed deeply, more so than I had ever imagined I could. As I started up the stairs, I thought about what I would tell Frank. After all, I had done what he asked. I had found the woman. The other part of it, the lie I would tell him regarding where she was, I didn’t really care about. The way I saw it, I’d be lying to save a life. Or at least lying to play no part in destroying a life. And I’d be lying to a liar. I anticipated my first good night’s sleep in a long time.
    I had my life back. Tina was out of my place, Augie was home, and my debt to Frank, as far as I was concerned, had been paid. I was even able to convince myself that Tim Carter’s death—still fresh on my mind—would in no way affect me. All I had to worry about now was making a living and staying out of the Chief’s way. Making a living would be the more difficult of the two. Dodging the Chief was going to be easy enough. All I had to do was stay in my apartment whenever I wasn’t working. And right now that didn’t sound all that bad to me.
    It was a little past eleven when I got back. There wasn’t much activity in the bar below; tomorrow was a workday and everybody with a job was at home, enjoying the sleep of the just. I had to be at work by eight. I