The Bone Orchard

In the trendy Hamptons of Long Island, local private detective Declan MacManus becomes an eyewitness to a mysterious car accident that he alone knows is a murder and that holds the key to a terrifying conspiracy that someone in the town will do anything to hide. A first novel. Original.

Chapter One

It was dark when I left my apartment above the Hansom House and went down the two flights of stairs to the street below to wait for Frank Gannon. The stretch of gray clouds hanging low overhead had cores the color of lead, and the few spaces of night between them were starless and empty. I would have been warmer had I remained up in my rooms and watched for Frank from my living room window, but it seemed to me that the early night air was the place to be right then. Frank had called me in the morning and told me that he would come by around five, after I had gotten home from work. It was just five now and I was ready for him, wrapped against the cold in a secondhand overcoat with torn seams, waiting at the curb and wondering a little just what it was he wanted from me now.

I tried to stay clear of Frank as a rule, but Southampton is a small town, particularly in the winter. He had done me a favor when I was in a jam with the chief of police not too far back, but I had paid that off three months ago and was not expecting to hear from him again. He had a phobia about talking on the telephone, so he had hung up this morning before I had the chance to tell him to go to hell. He had simply said, "It's Frank, we need to talk. I'll find you after work." And then he hung up. My first instinct was to pretend I hadn't heard him, but by breakfast I knew there really was no point in that.

The wind was out of the south, an ocean wind, and it stung my face and ears and pried through the weak seams in my coat like long fingers. Just two nights ago it had been Indian summer, days in the seventies, nights in the fifties. In my rooms above, and in the dark bar below, windows remained opened to the mild night air.

The clientele of the Hansom House, mainly local laborers and artists, had sat in their summer clothes at the crowded bar and on the half-dozen overstuffed antique sofas in the main room, listening to live music. One night it was three white boys playing reggae, another it was a jazz quintet made up of kids under twenty.

The Hansom House was an old three-story wreck that had been turned a quarter of a century ago by a local artist into a funky bar and restaurant with apartments above. It was something of a holdout for us year-rounders, and this annual stretch of warm days and nights that came always somewhere between October and Christmas was the hard-earned summer vacation we counted on.

But now, and suddenly, it seemed that winter was here, that maybe it had been here all along. These warm nights had been an illusion or trick. The old elm trees that lined my street were bare, and their branches tapped and hissed in the steady wind. The leaves tumbling across the pavement were dead and brittle and sounded like the quick scuffling feet of the last people to leave town.

I saw headlights turn onto the far end of Elm Street a few hundred feet away and head toward me. I could see that they didn't belong to a silver Cadillac Seville, Frank's car, but instead to an old-style Checker cab that had been long ago repainted red. It was Eddie's cab, and it was slowing down for me.

It pulled over to the curb, its wide tires rubbing against the concrete. Eddie leaned across the seat and jerked the handle of the back door. It swung out, and immediately I smelled clove oil and the pungent odor of cigar.

"You'll freeze to death out here, Mac."

He had been on the East End for almost twenty years, but his Jamaican accent remained for the most part intact. The thick bristles that grew from his face were dull silver, like metal shavings, and by the shape of his face you could tell that he was missing most of his back teeth. What remained were yellowed and seemed to always have an unlit cigar wedged somewhere between them. He didn't smoke as a courtesy to his passengers.

Eddie had a way of sometimes knowing things that went on around town before anyone else did, and there were times when he sought me out to fill me in on what he knew, when he thought I might do well to know. We didn't in any way socialize, but our paths crossed often enough, and he was there for me in one way or another more times than I could remember.

I leaned forward to tell him that I was waiting for someone, but before I could speak, he said, "Frank Gannon sent me to get you. Come on, get in, it's cold. I'll take you to his office, my friend."

The heated air blowing from the vents under the dashboard felt good. It flowed past me and disappeared fast into the cold night.

Eddie steered us away from the curb and to the end of Elm Street, then turned left and passed the empty train station, then turned left again onto North Main and headed us toward the village. Frank's office was about a mile away, across the alley from the Village Hall, where the police station was. For the past few months I had gone out of my way to avoid either of those places, staying clear of that whole corner of town. It seemed the smart thing to do, and I wasn't happy about being driven toward it now.

The first quarter of a mile Eddie and I rode in silence. I saw that his eyes were fixed on me in the rearview mirror.

"Cold came suddenly," he said.

"Very."

He glanced at the road ahead, then back at me again. "You back working for him again?"

"No. No."

We came to the stoplight on the corner of Newtown Road and Main Street. The village was ahead of us and looked empty; there were maybe a dozen cars lining the length of Main. Frank's office was just beyond our sight. We'd be there in less than a minute.

The clouds over the village were low, brushing the treetops, flying like phantom ships racing into the east. I watched this for a moment, then turned my head and looked into the reflection of Eddie's eyes in the rearview mirror.

I watched his bloodshot eyes. He usually worked sixteen-hour days just to make ends meet. He never charged me a cent for any of the rides he had given me over the years.

"He's a dangerous man," he said. "You know that."

Eddie looked forward after a moment and waited for the light to change. It was obvious from what was around us that within a month Southampton would be little more than a ghost town, and Eddie and I and everyone else like us would be in on that long haul to spring.

His office was dimly lit and sparsely furnished. It ran the length of the top floor of the narrow building. Frank was behind his desk when I came in, reading a file with a look of concentration. He gestured eagerly for me to come in and take a seat on the leather couch by the door. I passed and stood leaning against the brick wall, my hands deep in my overcoat pockets, my eyes on the bare trees outside the storefront window that overlooked Main Street.

A smaller window in the back of that long room overlooked the parking lot behind the Village Hall, where the police patrol cars were parked. Frank could watch the shift change from there and know, if he wanted, which cops were out on any given night. Everyone in town knew this about him. And Frank made a point of letting everyone know.

He glanced up from his reading and looked at me over his half-frame glasses. "Thanks for being on time, MacManus."

The only light on in the room was the desktop reading lamp by his right elbow, but I could see him well enough by it. He was fifty-five or so, not very tall but thick through the torso, built like a keg. He wore his black hair slicked back and his dark mustache thick but trimmed just above his upper lip.

"What do you want, Frank?"

He closed the folder, then removed his reading glasses and dropped them on the desktop. He leaned back in his chair, the springs protesting under his weight, and rubbed the bridge of his...