The Poisoned Rose Read Online Free PDF Page B

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 touch it. It was an old model 1911 with walnut grips. The safety was on, and the hammer down, so there was no chance of it accidently firing, even if it went flying off the seat. Still, I couldn’t just leave it there, so I picked it up, opened the glove compartment, and stowed it there.
    Augie had returned his hand to the steering wheel. His eyes were fixed on the road ahead, his left foot hovering over the clutch, his right holding the gas pedal to the floor. All I could do was hang on to the frayed door strap with my right hand and grip the dashboard with my left.
    Augie kept the nose of his truck right there on the tail of the Caddy for several miles, till Noyac Road veered away from the bay and followed a wavering line through the woods. We passed through middle-class neighborhoods, during which I kept an eye out for cars pulling out of driveways and late-night joggers. Then the neighborhoods gave way and we entered a long stretch of barren wood. Here the streets were unlit, and sharp corners came up unannounced. The driver of the Caddy was having as difficult a time as Augie keeping his vehicle on the road. At one point it fish-tailed and looked about to spin out of control. Augie hit the brakes and backed off so his truck wouldn’t get clipped by the swerving Caddy. But once the Caddy regained control and continued on, Augie pushed the accelerator down to the floorboard again and we surged forward till we were right back on the Caddy’s tail.
    The speed limit was thirty-five, and we were easily doing eighty, sometimes more than that in the brief stretches of straight road. Several times Augie tried to get around the Caddy, but the driver always cut him off. We were only a few miles from the village of North Sea now. Beyond that was the town of Southampton. All we needed was to drive the Caddy into either village, where our chase would not go unnoticed by the local cops who sat in patrol cars on North Sea Road waiting for speeders and drunk drivers.
    But Augie didn’t seem content to just push the Caddy toward the authorities. He was determined to run it off the road or get around it and cut it off. I could see that his knuckles were white from the force with which he gripped the steering wheel. I knew this was foolishness—I knew obsession when I saw it—but there wasn’t time to get into that.
    About a mile from North Sea we hit a good straight patch of back road, and that was when Augie made his move. He dropped down a gear