Gin Palace 01 - The Poisoned Rose

could hear air being sucked through it. I saw then that his eyes were open, searching. He looked puzzled, shocked. His eyes met mine and there was a cognition. There were bits of shattered windshield glass in his wounds. He tried to move his mouth but the nerve damage to his face was so severe his jaw wouldn’t work.
    I took off my denim jacket and laid it over his torso. He was on his side. I could see that the bullet that had entered his chest had exited through his back, just below his left shoulder blade. I knew enough to know that he would probably be dead before an ambulance could get to him. The nearest hospital was in Southampton, twenty miles away. The nearest ambulance station was only a little over a mile from here, but in his condition it might as well have been a hundred.
    Still, I lifted my head and looked toward the entrance to the Dead Horse, where a handful of people had collected, among them the kid with the long black hair, the one Vogler had been arguing with.
    “Call an ambulance,” I yelled. The rain was a steady peal in my ears, as heavy as a waterfall. My voice barely cut through it.
    Nobody moved at first, they all just stood there and stared at me. I glanced through the storefront window and saw that the bartender was on the phone, her eyes fixed on Vogler and me. Gurgling sounds added to the sucking sound coming from his chest wound. I looked down at him. His eyes were locked on me, but they were becoming glassy and dimming. Any minute they would roll back in their sockets and his lids would half close and the look of dulled surprise that has been worn by every corpse I have ever seen would show itself on his face.
    I said, “Hang on,” but I knew he couldn’t hear me. He was bleeding out of this world, and quickly. I felt his neck for a pulse, but what I found was more of a flicker interrupted by long stretches of nothing.
    I looked back up at the people gathered outside the Dead Horse. They continued to stand there dumbfounded, watching me. After a moment, the guy with the long black hair turned away and returned inside the bar. He casually removed a cell phone from his belt, opened it, pressed two buttons, then brought the phone to his face.
    I yelled to the people outside the bar, “Somebody get a blanket!” But before anyone could move, Augie’s pickup truck skidded to a stop behind me. I turned and saw that the passenger door was open and that Augie was leaning across the seat, holding the door so it wouldn’t kick back and close. He waved me in.
    “C’mon, let’s go.”
    No one by the bar was moving. I looked back down at the kid. His eyes were vacant. There was nothing—no one—behind them now.
    I heard from behind, “C’mon, Mac, let’s go.”
    I stood and faced the crowd, then looked down at Vogler’s body once more. Finally, I turned and climbed into the passenger seat of Augie Hartsell’s pickup.
    We were in motion before I could close the door. I fastened my seat belt as we steered through the stop sign and around the corner. Augie gunned it through to fourth gear as we crossed the bridge and went after the black Caddy.
    I sensed him glance at me once we hit the straight away of Long Beach Road. I felt his stare for a moment but didn’t look at him. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, looking for the Caddy’s tail lights on the dark and rainy road ahead.
    To our right was Great Peconic Bay, though it was hard to make out in all this rain and dark. It seemed to me like a void in the night, more an absence than a presence. If I wasn’t a local I might not have even known it was there. It was hard right then to see things for what they were.
    A few hundred feet ahead on the narrow beach road the distinctive rear lights of the Caddy suddenly appeared. Augie flattened the accelerator, and together we raced toward violence.
    We pulled in tight behind the speeding Caddy on Noyac Road and followed it closely along the rim of the bay. There was, as far as I could tell, only the driver inside. I looked at the rear license plate, but it was blacked out with tape. Several times during that first minute Augie nearly lost control in one of the many sharp corners in the road. But that didn’t deter him. He looked intense, wedged in behind the wheel, and it wasn’t long into this confusion before he reached back and removed his .45 from his belt and laid it on the seat between us.
    It must have been digging into his back. I looked at the weapon but didn’t want to