Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

haven’t notified next of kin. So they either don’t know who she is or they’re not saying just yet. Whatever the case, there’s an awful lot of running around next door for what little seems to be getting accomplished. I’d like to find out why that is.”
    I turned my head again and looked back out at the sky beyond the bare branches of the old trees lining Main. I had no interest in town politics, or benefiting from the suffering of others. To Frank every misfortune that befell another was a potential point of leverage for him to use as he saw fit. It was hard for me to think of the young girl Augie and I had tried to save as some kind of gift to Frank. I could remember clearly now the point I had reached last year, when I turned Frank’s office upside down. I was a drunk then, and that contributed to my rage. It also explained what I was doing working for him in the first place. But I wasn’t a drunk now. I could see things with bare attention, I could see things for what they were. I could see clearly where this meeting was going, and that I had no desire go there. All I had to do was tell Frank to go to hell and walk away and spend today washing dishes for an unhappy and ill-tempered boss.
    But I also knew he wouldn’t make it that easy for me to do that. Augie needed help. Frank would know what to do. I wouldn’t.
    “One thing about the girl,” Frank said. “She was wearing a high school ring. From Southampton High. The date on it makes her a senior. Maybe someone knows her. Flashy car like that, she probably doesn’t go unnoticed.”
    It was obvious what he wanted from me. But I didn’t see how using Tina to identify the dead girl would help Augie. I could only see how it might help Frank.
    “You know that girl can only bring you trouble by the truckload,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that she’s sixteen now. Maybe I’m all wrong, maybe you really aren’t banging her like you say. But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter what I think. Whether it’s innocent or not doesn’t matter. You’re still asking for a fall by keeping her around.”
    “What do you want me to do, Frank? Stick her in a motel?”
    “Send her off to someone. Anything. Her being there is exactly what the Chief is looking for. You know that.”
    “I’m on top of it, Frank.”
    “Yeah, I bet.”
    “You’ve got a dirty mind.”
    “Me and everyone else in town. Just because you’re known around here doesn’t mean people won’t be willing to believe whatever shit they hear. Trust me on this. You’ve made the papers, MacManus. The minute they put hero by your name, everyone began waiting for the first hint to that flaw which proves conclusively in the scheme of things you’re really no better than they are. It’s human nature; it’s the way of the world. You might want to wise up to it fast.”
    A few years ago I had found the kidnapped daughter of an ex- girlfriend of mine, when no one else could. It was just luck. Since then people have sometimes come to me for help, mostly out of desperation. I was never comfortable with that, and I often wondered what freedom might come from having that status Frank spoke of stripped from me forever.
    “I’m just a guy who washes dishes, Frank,” I said. “That’s all I am. It doesn’t mater to me what anyone thinks.”
    He sighed, then shook his head. He eyed me skeptically for a moment. I caught the smell of him then, the smell of his expensive cologne and the fabric of his well-tailored clothes.
    “Do you want to make trouble for yourself?” he said.
    “Just the opposite.”
    “Do you want to keep living like a criminal, crawling around like a rat?”
    “I didn’t choose this life, Frank,” I told him.
    “I don’t believe that. Not for one minute. You know, I take that back, MacManus. You don’t live like a criminal at all. You live like a man who’s got something to hide, like a man with a secret he’s keen on keeping buried. That’s what you look like to me. That’s what you’ve always looked like.”
    “Believe what you want to believe, Frank. It’s what you’re good at. It’s what you get paid for.”
    “We’ve all got secrets we want to keep, kid. We’re all alike in that way.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    He shook his head from side to side. “You think no one knows what really happened on that boat.”
    “No one can know but me.”
    “But they can think they know, and in the end, in this town,