Free The Poisoned Rose by Daniel Judson Page A

hands in the deep outer pockets and pulled the jacket closed. I could already feel my body heat collecting inside.
    “You like it?” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    “Tina helped me pick it out.”
    “Tell her thanks for me.”
    “I will. Listen, I’ve got some things to do. I’ll come back for you tonight. I’ve rented a car—a nice sedan with comfy leather seats. We’ll do the tail and keep Frank relaxed. We’ll watch each other’s back and make some money in the process. Don’t worry, sooner or later we’ll find out exactly what Frank is up to. We’ll know everything we need to know.”
     

Chapter Three
     
    Augie and I worked for Frank Gannon for two weeks—three nights the first week, five nights the second. I made more in those two weeks than I’d made in the best two months of my life. I got squared away with the utility companies and paid upfront for a six-month insurance policy on the LeMans. I bought half a dozen cases of rice milk and three cases of dried fruit from the whole food store in town. I stocked my cupboards with teas and canned goods. I had enough food to last me a month.
    The first job had Augie and me tailing a cheating husband. We caught him kissing another woman in his car and got it all on videotape. Then we followed another husband to a bar in Wainscott, where he met his much-younger male lover. After that we tailed a well-off married woman and mother of two to Patchogue, where she stripped for tips in a blue-collar joint on Montauk Highway. Men were throwing money at her—she knew most of them by name—and she left with what had to be a grand, easy. Augie caught it all with a high-tech hidden surveillance video camera that belonged to Frank Gannon. The lens was fitted into the bridge of a pair of black-rimmed glasses, the recorder stowed in the pocket of Augie’s field jacket. I stayed by the door and watched Augie’s back. I could tell he didn’t like the work any more than I did. But compared to what he had been through in Colombia, never mind his two tours in Vietnam, it was all just a walk in the park for him. He had a perspective I didn’t, and probably never would. He wasn’t as affected by suffering the way I was, he didn’t pity people as easily. I could understand that. I even envied it. This was just business to him, nothing more. And, to his mind, everything happened for a reason.
    He never commented on the character of the people we followed. He never called them names or made jokes about them. They weren’t stupid or greedy in his mind, just people making mistakes. Every tape we made he labeled carefully, logged in a notebook, and then handed over to Frank. I could tell as he did so that he was aware of what was going down, of the significance of it, the lives that would not be the same come morning.
    When we weren’t working, we were sleeping. When we weren’t sleeping, we were drinking, sometimes in bars but most often in his kitchen during the day, when his daughter was at school. We’d sit at his table and drink Beam neat and talk. I left always just before Tina came home, driving back to the Hansom House in the middle of the afternoon in my newly insured car, as lit as a match. Sometimes he and I didn’t get home from a job till morning and we’d start our drinking then. Augie and I were together day and night. Even on the days when there wasn’t work we usually met up at some point. On the day his check from the insurance company for his wrecked pickup finally arrived, I drove him to Riverhead to buy a new truck. He chose one of those giant Ford rigs with lights everywhere, a cockpit like a jet fighter, and the biggest motor in production. He drove it home that afternoon, me tailing behind in my rust-bucket LeMans. It was only a twenty minute drive but we stopped twice along the way for drinks. After the second bar, turning onto his street, Augie nearly took out a neighbor’s mailbox.
    I liked the money I was paid, but the job was getting to me. I began