Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

you some, Mac. You’d better leave town as soon as you can. Not right now, it’s not safe on the roads during the day. But tonight. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said. “Why are the Southampton cops looking for me? Are you telling me they think I killed Concannon?”
    “From what I hear the knife they found on the scene was a Spyderco, just like the one you carry. And there are prints all over it.”
    “It’s a popular knife. A lot of people carry it. Why are they so certain it’s my knife?”
    “I don’t know. Apparently, someone in the department has got it in his head that it belongs to you.”
    I thought then of the man who had attacked me, and the weapon he used. I thought of his initial charge, a football player’s low, lifting tackle.
    “I need to get to my apartment,” I said quickly. There was a touch of panic in my voice. “I need to check something.”
    “It’s time for you to get out of town, Mac.”
    “I have to check this first. I have to know something. Will you take me there tonight?”
    Eddie looked up at Gale again, then back at me.
    “Please don’t fight me on this, Eddie. I need to get into my apartment.”
    In a warning tone he said, “If we can’t get you in, if we see one cop car parked outside, anything, we don’t stop, I take you straight out of town. Agreed?”
    “Agreed.”
    “If it is a set-up, Mac, if this is the Chief finally getting his revenge, then I think he’s probably got you good. He’s not a stupid man.”
    “That’s what I hear.”
    “I’m serious, Mac.”
    “I just have to know that for sure, Eddie. I just have to know exactly what it is I’m running from.”
    Eddie nodded. He understood that. He had fled his country twenty years ago after a rival for the woman he loved dropped cocaine in Eddie’s car and turned him in to the cops.
    “Okay,” he said. “You look and we leave, no matter what you find, right?”
    “Right.”
    “I’ll come back for you when it’s dark.”
    Gale followed him outside. She spoke to him as they walked but I didn’t hear a thing she said. Then, at the edge of the driveway, she stopped and waited as Eddie got into his cab. She waited till he was backing down the driveway before she turned and crossed the lawn again.
    She stepped onto the porch but remained in the doorway, looking at me. In the light I saw threads of gray in her hair. I had to look away, she looked that good.
    “You have no intention of leaving town tonight, do you?”
    “Is that what you and Eddie talked about?”
    “No.”
    “I can’t just abandon Augie.”
    “He’d be the first one to tell you to go.”
    “And I’d tell him to go to hell.”
    “Touching.”
    “I need to get to my apartment.”
    “And after that?”
    I wasn’t thinking that far ahead. My life hinged on the contents of a bureau drawer. It was too absurd to dwell on.
    We looked at each other in silence, and then after that I got up from the chair. It was a struggle. She just stood there in the doorway with her arms folded and watched.
    Gale said in a flat voice, “What is it exactly you’re looking for?”
    “I keep my knife in the top drawer of a bureau in my living room. If it’s still there, I know the Chief is bluffing.”
    “Do you really think the Chief bluffs?”
    “If he isn’t, then all hell’s going to break loose.” I suddenly became very tired. I let out a short breath and said, “I should get some rest, Gale.”
    At first she didn’t make a move. Then she nodded and said, “I’ll help you upstairs.”
    She eased me down on the bed in that sparse, dim room. The two windows on either side of the bed were half open. A breeze lifted the curtains. Gale went to close them.
    “Please don’t,” I said.
    She looked at me. “It’s cold.”
    “Cold feels good right now.”
    She looked away from me, toward an empty corner of the room. She thought about something for what seemed a long time. I waited. Finally she looked toward the open bedroom door and went to it. She closed it, turned the lock, and paused with her hand on the knob. After a minute she let go of it and turned and faced me.
    She was near the foot of the bed, her back against the door, her hands behind her. I didn’t know what was going on. She looked both puzzled and relieved all at once, like someone who suddenly accepts a dark fact of their life and is to their surprise made free by it. She stayed there for a while, looking at me, and then