Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

platform. The next train wasn’t due till dawn.
    After Tina hung up she went into the kitchen. The tea water she had put on was boiling. She poured me a pint glass of green and ginger tea. It was all I had in my cupboards. She brought it out to me, and the heat of the water moved through my hand the instant I gripped the glass.
    When I looked up Tina was putting on her wool pea coat. A baggy wool hat was already on her head. After she buttoned up the coat she pulled mittens from the pockets and held them in her hand. “You should get back to bed.”
    From outside I heard the sound of Eddie’s cab horn. It tooted twice, fast.
    “Tell Eddie to come by tomorrow and I’ll pay him your fare,” I said.
    She nodded and turned to the door. I listened to her move down the hallway, then on the stairs till I couldn’t hear her any longer. I heard the door to Eddie’s cab open and then close. Then it drove off down Elm Street. Not long after that there was nothing to hear at all. I just lay there, relieved that she was gone, too tired to do anything but keep still and listen to nothing.
    I fell asleep and dreamed of violence, then awoke to my telephone ringing. I answered it with my eyes closed. For a few seconds I felt disconnected from the world, a man with no life to which he was attached. The feeling was gone in seconds, much too soon.
    “Yeah.”
    “You okay?” Augie said.
    “What’s going on?”
    “I’m on my way to your place. You up for a ride?”
    “What’s going on?”
    “I don’t know. That’s what I want to find out. Meet me outside. I’ll be there in two minutes.”
    “Augie, what’s going on?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe something, maybe nothing. That’s what we’re going to find out. I’ll see you in a minute.”
    He hung up. I found my tea and drank it down. It was still warm.
    We rode back to the pond at the edge of town and parked along the shoulder of the narrow road. The cab of the truck was warm, but the window glass was still cold to the touch. The only winter coat I had was gone, taken by the cops, Augie had said, from the scene of the accident. I had only a denim jacket on over my sweatshirt and jeans. Augie kept a change of clothes in his truck, in a mesh duffel bag behind his seat, for emergencies. He took out a spare jacket and gave it to me. It was much too big for me, but my denim jacket filled it out slightly, and anyway it would keep me warm. How I looked was the least of my worries now.
    I tried to remember if there were any papers in any of the pockets of my winter coat -- bank statements, old mail, pay stubs. I didn’t want the Chief’s boys to stumble upon anything like that and somehow use it against me. What I had told Tina back at my apartment was only partially true. The Chief would settle for public humiliation, but everyone knew what he really hungered for was to see me do time for something -- that and to keep me for a night in the basement of the police station, just him and his boys and me.
    Augie didn’t seem that much the worse for wear. He wasn’t tired, that much was for certain. He drove alertly, pushing the speed limit all the way. The girl we had tried to save was dead. He told me that right off. But the questions he now wanted answered fed his mind and occupied him in a way he hadn’t been since his beating last May. He was alive, back in business, his depression suddenly lifted. He felt useful again, vital. I could see it in everything about him as he drove.
    After he parked the truck, Augie climbed out into the cold night air, and I followed him. The motor was still running, the headlights still on. We stood within their influence and looked from the point where the car went over the bank, a little ahead and to the right of us, to where it had appeared around the curve.
    “I’ll tell you, Mac, things don’t add up here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Our friends, the cops, they weren’t acting much like cops, you know. They seemed to me more like a clean-up crew than trained and experienced investigators. They towed the car out of the water, loaded it onto a flatbed, and then, boom, it was gone. Not so much as a roll of film or even a single measurement was taken. No one bothered to note the tire marks on the road, nothing. They took my statement fast, then put me in my truck and told me to drive myself to the emergency room. Of course I didn’t. I parked up the road and waited and watched the whole thing.” He paused. “They were almost