Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

tourist trade, and this annual stretch of warm days and nights that came always somewhere between October and Christmas was the hard-earned summer vacation we counted on.
    But now, and suddenly, it seemed that winter was here, that maybe it had been here all along. These warm nights had been an illusion or trick. The old trees that lined my street were bare, and their branches tapped and hissed in the steady wind. The leaves tumbling across the pavement were dead and brittle and sounded like the quick scuffling feet of the last people to leave town.
    I saw headlights turn onto the far end of Elm Street a few hundred feet away and head toward me. I could see that they didn’t belong to a silver Cadillac Seville, Frank’s car, but instead to an old-style Checker cab that had been long ago repainted red. It was Eddie’s cab, and it was slowing down for me.
    It pulled over to the curb, its wide tires rubbing against the concrete. Eddie leaned across the seat and jerked the handle of the back door. It swung out, and immediately I smelled clove oil and the pungent odor of cigar.
    “You’ll freeze to death out here, Mac.”
    He had been on the East End for almost twenty years, but his Jamaican accent remained for the most part intact. The thick bristles that grew from his face were dull silver, like metal shavings, and by the shape of his face you could tell that he was missing most of his back teeth. What remained were yellowed and seemed to always have an unlit cigar wedged somewhere between them. He didn’t smoke as a courtesy to his passengers.
    Eddie had a way of sometimes knowing things that went on around town before anyone else did, and there were times that he sought me out to fill me in on what he knew, when he thought I might do well to know. We didn’t in any way socialize, but our paths crossed often enough, and he was there for me in one way or another more times than I could remember.
    I leaned forward to tell him that I was waiting for someone, but before I could speak, he said, “Frank Gannon sent me to get you. Come on, get in, it’s cold. I’ll take you to his office, my friend.”
    The heated air blowing from the vents under the dashboard felt good. It flowed past me and disappeared fast into the cold night.
    Eddie steered us away from the curb and to the end of Elm Street, then turned left and passed the empty train station, then turned left again onto North Main and headed us toward the village. Frank’s office was about a mile away, across the alley from the Village Hall, where the police station was. For the past few months I had gone out of my way to avoid either of those places, staying clear of that whole corner of town. It seemed the smart thing to do, and I wasn’t happy about being driven toward it now.
    The first quarter of a mile Eddie and I rode in silence. I saw that his eyes were fixed on me in the rear-view mirror. I knew what was on his mind.
    “Cold came suddenly,” he said.
    “Very.”
    He glanced at the road ahead, then back at me again. “You back working for him again?”
    “No. No.”
    We came to the stop light on the corner of Newtown Road and Main Street. The village was ahead of us and looked empty; there were maybe a dozen cars lining the length of Main. Frank’s office was just beyond our sight. We’d be there in less than a minute.
    The clouds over the village were low, brushing the treetops, flying like phantom ships racing into the east. I watched this for a moment, then turned my head and looked into the reflection of Eddie’s eyes in the rear-view mirror.
    I watched his bloodshot eyes. He usually worked sixteen-hour days just to make ends meet. He never charged me a cent for any of the rides he had given me over the years.
    “He’s a dangerous man,” he said. “You know that.”
    Eddie looked forward after a moment and waited for the light to change. It was obvious from what was around us that within a month Southampton would be little more than a ghost town, and Eddie and I and everyone else like us would be in on that long haul to spring.
    His office was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. It ran the length of the top floor of the narrow building. Frank was behind his desk when I came in, reading a file with a look of concentration. He gestured eagerly for me to come in and take a seat on the leather couch by the door. I passed on his offer and stood leaning against the brick wall, my hands deep in my overcoat pockets, my eyes on the bare trees