Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

my back. I was breathing hard, shallow breaths. I reached for my pocket, but my knife wasn’t there, and anyway, what did I think I was going to do with it? I lay there in the sand and heard the man getting closer. Then the footsteps stopped. I looked through the windows and could see feet.
    The man crouched down and looked inside what was left of my LeMans. Then he saw me and stood. I watched his feet as he moved around the back of the car. The minute he was visible I saw the gun in his hand. It was a chrome-plated revolver. The lights were behind him; I couldn’t see his face, just the shape of him, dark and towering.
    I looked up and I couldn’t hear the waves anymore, only my own breathing, short, frantic bursts through my nose. My brow tingled and I broke out in a fast sweat. The man came around the car and approached me and stood over me. He looked at me for a moment, then raised the gun and aimed it at me.
    I don’t know if I could see the barrel or just imagined that I did, but either way it seemed as big as a well and pulled me into it. I felt as if I was falling. It was almost hypnotic. The gun was level with my head.
    I heard a shot and flinched violently. A burst of mist sprayed, colorless in the poor light, sprayed from the man’s head. I saw this but couldn’t at first make any sense of it. And then the man’s body dropped to the ground. It fell fast and landed in a heap at my feet. I could see another figure then, this one standing at the foot of the drop from the road. It was man, and he had a gun in his hand. It was aimed at me. And then whoever this man was lowered the gun and limped toward me.
    He knelt beside me and held up four fingers and asked me to tell him what I saw. I could hear the ocean clearly now. The headlights from the SUV up on the road stabbed my eyes, but I was able to count the digits. His hands clamped on my thighs firmly then and he asked me if I could feel anything. I told him I could. He moved his hands down to my knees, then my shins, then to my feet. I could feel each place his hands came to rest. Then he ran his hands over my ribs. I winced at his touch. When I breathed it felt as if tissue were rubbing against metal, as if something sharp and broken was shifting inside me. He looked at my face and studied my reaction, then moved up to my neck, then my head.
    “You’re bleeding,” he said. “Can you sit up?
    I nodded. He took my arm and helped me up to a seated position. My lips drew tight and I grunted.
    “I think you bruised a rib or two,” he told me. “You’re lucky they aren’t broken.
    “Help me up.”
    “How’s your head feel?”
    “Just help me up.”
    He braced himself under my right arm and lifted me to my feet. I could sense the world moving, rotating on its axis at a thousand miles an hour. The sand on which I stood felt like mud, though I knew it was dry. I couldn’t seem to find footing.
    “Go easy,” he said.
    I had to concentrate to stand. I felt drunk. I looked down at the body lying in a heap. Blood was flowing fast from its head, sinking down into sand. It was hard to imagine that just moments ago this heap was a walking, talking living being.
    “He’s dead,” I said. I slurred my words. There was no reason for my statement, but I said it anyway.
    “Yeah.”
    “Who was he?”
    “There isn’t time. Montauk cops have nothing better to do than cruise this road.”
    I nodded and we headed side by side up the slope to the road. We both moved with a limp; it was even in the same leg. I looked at the man as we climbed toward the pavement, studying the side of his face. The back of my jacket and shirt were soaked with my own blood. There was a chilled tingling in my forehead.
    “Why’d you help me?”
    He looked ahead as he spoke, at the crest of the hill and the bent beach grass that lined the road. I could smell his breath.
    “You saved my life,” he said. “Now we’re even.”
    “How did you know?”
    “I heard they were going to move against you. I picked up your tail just after East Hampton. I gotta tell you, you took the bait well.”
    “You said ‘they’. Who are ‘they’?”
    We crested the hill and reached the pavement. The earth didn’t feel anymore stable here. The LTD stood at the side of the road, it’s engine running. The man with the limp moved me quickly toward the passenger door.
    “Just forget about them. Do us all a favor and just forget about them.” He opened the door and helped me into the back.