Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

to let fly on me—here we were, after all his waiting—he held himself back.
    It took him a while to speak again. I could feel his hate. It felt like cold coming off a window pane on a winter night.
    “A young man was killed last night in Flanders,” he said. “His name was Tim Carter. You were there when he got killed. Don’t bother to deny it. You were sent there by Frank Gannon to find out where Marie Welles had gone to. At some point during that visit a bullet opened his throat and he drowned on his own blood.”
    “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, Chief,” I said. My words sound automatic and forced, even to me.
    The Chief ignored that. “Carter was a nothing, a small-timer. I don’t care about what happened to him. I don’t care who did him. What I do care about is why a family as powerful as the one this woman comes from would want to have a nothing like him killed?”
    “What makes you think her family had anything to do with it?”
    “You don’t ask the questions here, you answer them. Got that?”
    I said nothing.
    “You don’t even realize the shit you’re in right now, do you?”
    “What do you want, Chief?”
    “I want to know why this woman’s family is suddenly so desperate to find her. And I want to know why they sent the man they sent. And I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the man who shot Carter. Shot him through the window of a cottage you’ve never been to.”
    “I’m a little tired for games, Chief.”
    “The man who shot Carter was hired by the girl’s family, allegedly to find her. But he’s not a particularly nice man. He’s not the kind of person you send to bring a loved one home.” He paused. “You’ve crossed paths with him before, MacManus.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Work it out in that little rat brain of yours, if you can. In the meantime, I want you to find the girl and bring her to me. I want to talk with her before her family gets to her. ‘Cause I think once they do, there won’t be much she’ll be able to say, if you know what I mean.”
    I didn’t.
    “What’s going on, Chief?”
    “There’s only one thing I hate more than you, MacManus, and that’s when the rich try to get away with murder.”
    “Why should I believe this is anything less than some kind of set-up?”
    “Because when I get you, MacManus, believe me, you won’t see it coming.”
    “So why would I want to help you?”
    “Because there’s something in it for you, too.”
    “What?”
    “You look for her, you’ll find out soon enough.”
    I glanced at Long. He was staring at me. He said nothing.
    I said to the Chief, “I’m not interested.”
    “There isn’t a lot of time for fucking around, MacManus. I have business with the girl, and you have unfinished business with the man her family sent to find her. It seems we can help each other out. Which means for now—for as long as you’re looking for her—you’re free to come and go as you please. You won’t even get pulled over for speeding.”
    I looked again at Long, as if to say, “Are you hearing this?” Of course, I said nothing, and neither did he.
    “None of this matters anyway, Chief, because I have no idea where she is. I wouldn’t know where to begin to look.”
    “Bad news for you, then.” He paused again, to look me up and down. “You know, there’s something funny about you, MacManus. Your father disappeared on you when you were a boy, and you grew up and became this guy people come to when someone disappears on them. But in between that—between your father abandoning you and the family that took you in just happening to get themselves killed—you were for all intents and purposes a rich kid. The house on Gin Lane, the beach right outside your back door. The trips abroad every year, the sailboat, the language tutors. And let’s not forget the personal trainers, all that hand-to-hand combat and weapons training shit. What was all that for? So you could grow up to be the family bodyguard.” He scoffed, then said, “You had it all, everything a kid could want, every possible advantage. The Van Deusens even sent you to college. What do you have a degree in? Criminology? What was it you were secretly hoping to be, I wonder.” He paused. “I mean once you got away from them. Once you made your little escape.”
    I could barely breathe. I needed air.
    “Do this for me, MacManus. You found her once, you can find her again. And if in the process you