Gin Palace 02 - The Bone Orchard

hadn’t heard me come down the stairs and looked up, a little startled, when I said her name.
    “Mac,” she said.
    “What are you doing?”
    “I’ve been looking through Augie’s notebooks and junk. He kept a record of everything.”
    “He was a thorough man.”
    “Yeah, that’s putting it mildly.”
    “I was trying to figure out what to make for din--”
    “--Did you know that he’d been spying on Frank since we moved out here. Over something that happened a long time ago, as far as I can tell. It almost seems that’s why we moved out here. His has notes from conversations between him and the Chief about it. I’m beginning to think that Augie went to work for Frank just to get closer to him, to find something out.”
    “What?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “There isn’t anything in there by any chance about why he didn’t tell me that he knew my father?”
    “No. I’m sorry. You know, I’ve been meaning to tell you, he didn’t stay mad at you long, Mac. Last Thanksgiving, I mean. And I don’t think he was really mad. I think he was more scared than anything else.”
    I paused, then nodded. “We should get started,” I said. “There’s a lot to do.” I turned toward the stairs.
    “Wait. C’mere. I want you to see something.”
    I turned back. “What?”
    “Something I found mixed in with some surveillance photos.”
    I walked over and stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. She held up a faded black-and-white photograph of four men. A crease ran down the middle of it. Tina pointed to one of the two men in the center.
    “That’s Augie,” she said. She sounded happy, almost proud.
    My interest piqued and I knelt, leaning in close for a better look. I smiled at the sight of his young, still-forming face. He looked like an early model of himself. “You’re right, it is,” I said.
    All the men in that photo were young, not yet in their twenties. They wore chinos and cloth jackets and stupid grins. They could have been Jack Kerouac and his boys. Tina pointed to one with longish hair on the right flank of their line.
    “Any idea who that is?”
    I leaned in even closer. I laughed once. “Jesus, that’s the Chief,” I said.
    “No.”
    “Yeah. Look.”
    She brought the photograph closer to her face. “Oh my God. The hair.” She pointed to the man at the left flank. “So could this be Frank?”
    I looked closer still. “Yeah, I think it is.”
    Then she pointed to the man between Augie and Frank. “So then who’s this?”
    I looked at the face and my smile faded.
    “That’s my father.”
    Tina turned to look at me. “You’re kidding?”
    I shook my head as casually as I could. “No.”
    She looked back at the photograph. “My God, Mac. When was this taken, I wonder.”
    “Nineteen sixty-five, maybe sixty-six.”
    “How can you tell?”
    “Augie joined the marines in sixty-seven. He doesn’t exactly look like a marine yet, does he?”
    “No.” She ran her fingers over the surface of the photograph. “They were so young.”
    “They’re all so thin. They’re all as much boys as they are men.”
    “Do you have a photo of your father?”
    “No.”
    She looked over her shoulder again and held it out for me. “Take it,” she said.
    “It’s yours, Tina. It belonged to Augie.”
    “I’ve got other pictures of him. Tons. Take it. I want you to have it, if you want it.”
    I hesitated, as if taking it would commit me to something. Then I took it from her hand and looked at it closely.
    I hadn’t seen my father’s face since I was seven. He was smiling widely in the photo, laughing wildly. They all were, their eyes focused on something behind the camera. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, holding short-necked bottles of Schaffer beer, arms around each other, making a kind of chain of men. They were standing on a dirt road, and behind them were spring trees.
    When I got back to the Hansom House I placed the photograph in top drawer of the bureau in my living room, where I used to keep my Spyderco knife. I laid the photo next to the one of Catherine. These were the only two photographs I owned. As the night went on I became more and more aware of the bar buzzing two floors below me. It felt at times like the engine of a ship humming up through the decks.
    That night I couldn’t sleep. Sounds for the first time in my life kept me awake. I could hear everything from every corner of the Hansom House, from basement to attic.
    I got out of bed and sat in my