Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

just sat there for a moment, alert, listening and waiting for the sound of the street door opening and footsteps moving up his stairs.
    I saw the world he lived in then, the world he had created for himself. Maybe for a second I felt for him, but only a second.
    “If I do this, Frank, I don’t get paid. We have to be clear on this up front. I don’t want any confusion. I’m not working for you. That’s not why I’m here.”
    He watched me then, the way a father would a son he didn’t understand. He paid well, and I could have used the money badly, everyone knew that. But I didn’t ever want to need money bad enough to where I’d take it from a P.I. like Frank Gannon.
    “Look, however you want it, MacManus,” he said. He was still staring at me, but I got the sense then that maybe a part of him had just given up on me. There was real comfort in that. “There’s no reason to make an opera out of it.”
    I nodded at that. “Good.” I removed my right hand from my overcoat pocket and reached for the doorknob. As far as I was concerned, we were done. But I wasn’t fooled by the pitch. There was more to this, and I just wanted to see it coming before it hit. “See you around, Frank,” I said.
    “Take it easy, kid.”
    It was the next night that we parked on the shoulder of a narrow back road on the edge of town and waited.
    There was nothing where we were but the kind of stillness and darkness you’d expect to find so far from the heart of things. There were fields around us, dormant farm fields, and border trees that stood in the distance like hedges of briar against a sky. There was no wind, but it was cold enough without it. The air outside the cab of Augie’s pick-up truck was arctic air, killing air, and even with the heater running full blast the glass around us was as cold as metal to the touch. I was glad to be inside.
    Augie beside me, I was behind the wheel, his camera equipment between us. He was wearing an army field jacket and scarf over a heavy knit sweater, jeans, and Timberland boots. All I had over my jeans and thermal shirt and ten-year-old work boots was my ratty overcoat. I kept my bare hands tucked inside my coat pockets.
    Augie and I had barely gotten ourselves settled in for the wait when a car appeared on the dark road behind us. I watched it in the rear-view mirror; Augie eyed it from the side mirror mounted outside the passenger door. The car appeared around the sharp turn a hundred feet behind us and approached and passed us fast.
    “It’s not him,” Augie said. I followed the car as it went by. It was a station wagon, not the Fiat for which we had been instructed to follow.
    We tried to settle in after that. There was the potential for a long wait. Our mark lived less than a mile down this road. The only way for him to get anywhere was to drive by us. His wife was home, so if he was planning to see someone, if there was someone for him to see, he would have to leave and we would follow.
    Augie took a deep breath and then let it out. “It’s good to be back,” he said.
    “It’s been a long time for you.”
    “I don’t mind telling you, Mac, I was starting to go crazy, pacing around the house all night, standing at my window watching for the dawn ‘cause I couldn’t sleep, the whole nine yards. I’d open a bottle of Jack and the next thing I knew it was over halfway gone and there was sunlight in my eyes. Poor Tina was ready to kill me. She’d get out of bed in the middle of the night just to tell me to go to sleep. The scary thing is, she’d remind me of her mother so much. When I was half in the bag and she’d come out, I’d swear it was looking at a ghost. After that I’d be too creeped out to sleep, you know.”
    Tina had stayed with me in my apartment during the three months last summer he was in the hospital. She was fifteen then. Having her there brought me shit, especially from Frank and the Chief. But it was a bad summer for everyone, all around.
    “How is she doing?” I said.
    Augie shrugged. “Good, as far as I can tell. She’s got this boyfriend now. You’ll meet him at Thanksgiving. You’re still coming, right?”
    I nodded. “Is he a decent kid?”
    “What’s decent these days? He’s polite, whatever that means. No piercings, no visible tattoos, no criminal record.”
    I smiled at that. “It surprises me sometimes just how much of a father you really are when you want to be.”
    “I’ll tell you one thing, Mac, if this kid doesn’t