Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

rich scum like Bishop. I just couldn’t sit around on my hands and watch anymore. It was getting harder and harder to look at myself in the mirror. It was getting harder and harder to see the reflection of my face in my daughter’s glasses. Do you have any idea what kind of hell that is?”
    Again, I said nothing.
    Long shrugged. “Anyway, they’re proud of me. They don’t care if we lose the house. As long as they don’t learn the shit I did before my big brave stand, then maybe they’ll stay proud.”
    “We’ve all done shit, Long,” I said.
    He waited a moment, then said, “I remember the morning I found you all shot up on the floor of that kitchen. You were in and out of consciousness, and you kept saying, over and over, ‘I was too late. I was too late.’ I find myself saying that a lot lately. Maybe there’d be a lot of people still alive if I had done this sooner. You can drive yourself crazy just thinking about that, though, right? About what could have been. What should have been.”
    I looked at Long and waited, saying nothing. I was back for a moment in the silence that had brought me here, brought me this far from my home.
    “He’s still out for you, MacManus,” Long said finally. “The Chief. You know that, right? He’s out for you and me both now. Hell, my name is probably right next to yours on his list. I was thinking, you know, we might want to keep in touch with each other. In case some day one of us needs a friend.”
    Over the flat water a hawk flew in a wide circle, hunting. There was no breeze suddenly. The air seemed cool, like a dead spot in a room.
    “Maybe that’s a good idea,” I said.
    “I don’t know where we’ll end up, my family and me, I mean. It’s pretty clear we’ve got a transition ahead of us. I should have stashed some cash away when I started this whole thing. But you don’t think that way, do you? You don’t think that you can lose it all. If you did, you’d probably never do anything.”
    “Probably not.”
    “Anyway, you’ll be around, right?”
    “I’m not going anywhere. You know where to find me.”
    Long looked at me for a time. I realized that he was holding a set of keys in his left hand.
    “I’m sorry that she died, MacManus. You two had been through a lot together, from what I understand. Anyway, I’m sorry it turned out that way for her.”
    I said the only thing I could say. “Me, too.”
    “I’d offer you a ride back to town, but I’ve got some things to do here.”
    “Don’t worry about it. I’ll walk. Take it easy, Long.”
    “You, too, man.”
    I left him and walked around the house to the driveway. Long’s car was parked by the front door. I saw that the gate was open, the chain that had held it closed in a pile on the grass. I walked down the drive and passed through the gate but decided not to leave just yet. I had to confirm a realization that had come to me suddenly. I crossed the wide street and stood beside a tree and waited. It wasn’t too long after this that I saw Long come through the front door. I watched him load his car with things that I recognized—Tiffany lamps, ornate wooden boxes that I knew contained silverware, gold candle stick holders, everything he could grab and sell for quick money.
    I just stood beside the tree and watched. It didn’t matter to me one way or the other. After a few quick trips in and out of the house, Long locked the door behind himself and got into his car and drove down the driveway. At the road he got out, swung the gate closed and locked the chain around it, then drove off.
    I hid behind the tree as he went. I didn’t care if he saw me. I just thought I’d spare him the embarrassment of being seen doing what he had to do for the sake of his family.
    I retraced my steps back home, avoiding that part of town where the Chief and Frank Gannon were. I craved my home suddenly, deeply. But when I got there I felt restless. I stood in the doorway of my bedroom and looked at my unmade bed, at where we had come that night last spring, Marie and I, where I had held her in my arms, where she had told me her name was Rose and I was too drunk to know any different. I stood and watched the very spot where she had realized that I could not help her, that I wasn’t the man she had hoped I was, where I had watched her dress and where she last stood before leaving me to continue on her search for someone who wouldn’t betray her, someone who would die for her, who wouldn’t ever