Incendiary Designs

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  “What was the name of the agent who handled the sale?” Wellman’s pacing was getting on his nerves, and Thinnes felt like telling him to knock it off.

  “Helen Morgan. She’s supposed to be one of Cox’s top people.”

  “Supposed to be?”

  “I wasn’t impressed with her. She didn’t seem to be very hungry for a sale.”

  “This the first time you dealt with Cox?”

  “No. Just my first dealings with Mrs. Morgan. Cox is okay.” Wellman stopped pacing and shrugged. “Maybe she’s just better at condos. Listen, would it help if I offered a reward for help on this case?”

  Oster made a face. “Actually, sir, it wouldn’t. What a reward would do is bring every creepy crawler in the city out of his hole.”

  Forty-Two

  Thinnes was scheduled for court the next morning; the case was continued. Driving back to the Area, he called in on his cell phone.

  “We got another aggravated arson,” Evanger told him. “Swann’s on it. Go over and see if it might be related to that string of fires you and Oster are working. And in any case, give Swann a hand with the canvass.” He gave Thinnes the address and hung up.

  Urban renewal was nibbling away at the near north side and developers were eyeing the Green—Cabrini-Green—like rats scoping out a garbage can, pulling strings to get the vertical slums pulled down. Thinnes had always thought it was just a matter of time before a sniper in the project took aim at one of the nearby upscale high-rises, or a stray bullet took out one of the yuppie Sandburg Village residents barbecuing on his balcony. All hell’d break loose, and after mop-up operations, the land around the Green would be primo real estate. Whoever owned it—besides Michael Wellman—would become very rich. Thinnes didn’t really care. He could sympathize with the Cabrini residents who didn’t want to move. No one in an upscale neighborhood was going to invite them in, and where did you go from down? Refrigerator boxes on lower Wacker Drive? What he did care about was how the land was being cleared. Attrition and eviction notices were one thing, arson something else.

  The two-flat he pulled up in front of was surrounded by police-line tape and TV news trucks. A female reporter rushed up as he got out of the car and shoved a microphone in his face. Sweat beaded her upper lip and trickled down her cleavage. Her expensive shoes were soaked from the water all over the street. Thinnes would’ve bet the hydrant was open before the fire trucks arrived.

  His “No comment” was reflex. He ducked under the tape and strolled down the gangway between the fired building and its neighbor. The back porch was mostly missing. The alley behind the scene was crowded with fire trucks and firemen stripping off their rubber suits.

  Swann, who was talking to one of them, waved his arm toward Thinnes. “This looks like a pretty straightforward grudge fire,” he said. “Victim’s boyfriend threatened to kill her, and it looks like he did.”

  “So we need to find out if anyone saw him?” Thinnes said.

  “Yeah.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Guadalupe Mendoza. She was sixteen. The firemen told me it was probably a Molotov cocktail—the preferred method for conflict resolution among some of the local gangbangers. They’re supposed to be sending someone over from Bomb and Arson to confirm.”

  “He’s here now.” Thinnes said, pointing to the plainclothes Caprice that was squeezing past the firemen.

  The driver was a thin, light-complected black male, who parked facing against traffic with his door just inches from a utility pole. Art Fuego got out the passenger side of the car. The driver slid across the seat and was right behind him.

  “What’s happening, bro?” the driver asked Swann. He was way overdressed for the occasion, in a trendy suit.

  Swann slapped his hand and said, “Same old same old, Jimmy. This is Thinnes,” he added, pointing. He nodded at Fuego and said, “Art. Who’s on?”

  Fuego said, “Jimmy’s show. I’m just another warm body.” To Thinnes, he said, “Can I bum a ride from you when we’re done here?”

  “ ’Pends on where you’re going.”

  “Clark and Addison, but I’ve got something that might make it worth your while to go out of your way.”

  Thinnes shrugged. “Why not?”

  “What do you think, Jimmy?” Swann asked, waving at the wreckage. “Think you can figure out the cause?”

  Jimmy looked up at the charred remains of the building’s back porches and shook his head slowly. “It’s incendiary, man. There’re only three causes of incendiary fires—men, women, and children.”

  Fuego lived in a white limestone three-flat. Thinnes didn’t ask, but he knew that condos in the area went for figures in excess of $300K. Fuego’s wife must work.

  They parked in the alley in front of his garage and went in through the back gate. The yard was tiny and nearly filled by a vegetable garden. A trellised patio extended out from the house with a picnic table and barbecue.

  Inside, two small, reddish brown and white dogs waited for Fuego by the door. They had silky hair, long ears, and docked tails. Together, they weren’t as heavy as Toby; they wriggled with delight at the sight of their master.

  “Cause and Origin,” Fuego said. “Brittany spaniels.” He let them into the yard and told Thinnes, “Follow me.”

  They went through a neat, bright kitchen, not unlike Thinnes’s, to a small room serving as an office. There was a state of the art computer with a killer commercial printer. The walls were decorated with three-foot-square, computer generated maps of Districts 17, 18, 19, and 23, with streets. District and Area boundaries, utility and property lines, structures, and major landmarks indicated. Zoning districts were printed in different colors. Tiny red flames marked various properties on the maps—fire scenes, presumably; large black question marks designated others.

  “I’m hoping to sell the Department on buying one of these systems,” Fuego said, booting up the computer. “It’s a little more sophisticated than ICAM.” The Information Collection for Automated Mapping program that kept statistics on various types of crimes in the city’s 279 beats. “But I got a feeling they won’t buy it ’til the City gets all its utilities computerized.” He used the mouse to zoom in on and highlight the area with the most question marks and fire markers. A couple more clicks of the mouse and a query box appeared on the screen. He typed in an address, and one of the little fires began to burn on the screen. “Ronzani’s house,” he said. He highlighted another property using the mouse and a few keystrokes. “This is the factory building where you found Maggot Man. The building south of it belongs to a trust.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I looked it up—along with all the other parcels on this grid. This is just a square mile, and it took me six months of my spare time to enter the data, but I think you can get the idea.” He clicked, and half the properties in the middle of the screen turned red. “These belong to Michael Wellman.” Another click and half the rest of the map’s center turned blue. “These belong to a Dr. Martin Morgan, the rest to individuals and trusts. It’s like a Monopoly game, only with the land trusts, it’s hard to know who’s playing.”

  Thinnes was impressed, but it was a pretty expensive setup for a detective, even if his wife worked. “You a big gambler?”

  “No.” Fuego dragged out the o to let Thinnes know he understood the implication of the question and resented it. “For the record, there’s an eighty percent markup on computer hardware, and I’ve got a brother-in-law who gets me good used equipment for cost.”

  “For the record, I’m happy for you.”

  Back at the Area, Swann had fired up one of the squad-room computers and spread his notes out on the table next to it.

  Viernes, who was just winding down with coffee and the Chicagoland section of the Tribune, pointed to a paragraph in the back pages.

  Thinnes read: “Twenty year old Angelo Ortiz lost his life yesterday at 3:30 in the afternoon, on the steps of his family’s home in Pilsen. He was shot t
o death by gang assassins. No one knows why.”

  “Most of the time,” Viernes said, “you feel like a Band-Aid on a shotgun wound. You just go along telling yourself it’s a job, just do it and forget it. Until, one day, you’ve had too much.”

  Swann looked up from his work. “Yeah, man.” He said it very softly. “The way I see it, there’re cats burning all over the city, burning with every kind of fire and desire known to man. And there’s cats dead and dry inside as tinder, ready to explode at the first little incendiary suggestion—that kind are fucking terrifying! There’s so many, so much hate and rage, it’s a wonder there’s a stick left standing.”

  Viernes shook his head. He stood up and pushed in his chair. “I’m calling it a day.” He handed the newspaper to Thinnes and walked out.

  Reluctant to start his own work, Thinnes paged through the paper from back to front until a caption caught his eye. He read the accompanying paragraph, then threw the Trib in the nearby wastebasket. To no one in particular, he said, “Get the body bags ready—somebody just hijacked a truckload of fireworks!”

  Forty-Three

  You know what this city needs more than any single thing?”

  It was one of those questions people asked when they were trying to sell you something. Thinnes could think of plenty of things—jobs, decent schools, a cure for the disease that made people solve their problems with drugs and their differences with guns…

  The speaker was William Cox, an older guy who’d lost some weight, but was probably still 190 or so, and six feet tall. He had gray hair—long for a guy his age but combed and slicked back—a receding hairline, and sagging jowls.

  Thinnes said, “What’s that?”

  “Affordable housing.” Cox pushed his wire-rim bifocals further up on his nose. He was wearing a white summer suit with a Snoopy tie and was sweating in spite of the AC.

  There were pictures of wife, kids, and grandkids on his desk, a kinetic sculpture—a whimsical wire affair run by pulleys and clock gears—and one of those oil-on-black velvet-paintings of a clown that made Thinnes think of John Wayne Gacy.

  Cox’s real estate agency was in a brownstone in Lincoln Park, south of Fullerton. A pleasant, middle-aged receptionist had shown him and Oster in, and Cox had told them to make themselves at home.

  “We’re looking into an arson fire that killed a man, Mr. Cox,” Thinnes said. Oster said nothing. Cox looked surprised and waited. “The building belonged to an Aldo Ronzani.”

  “Ah, yes. When I heard Mr. Ronzani had passed away, I offered my services to his executor. We were able to arrive at a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

  I bet you were, Thinnes thought. He said, “You found somebody to buy a burned-out building?”

  “It was so badly damaged by the fire that the gentleman who bought it had it razed. I believe he’s planning a new development.”

  “His name?”

  “Michael Wellman. It’s a matter of public record—when property’s conveyed.”

  “Unless it’s put in a blind trust.”

  “Ah. Yes. But in this case there’s no mystery. No problem, I hope?”

  “Did you handle the sale personally?”

  “No. That particular sale was handled by one of my sales associates, Mrs. Morgan.”

  Thinnes shrugged. “She any relation to a Dr. Martin Morgan?”

  “I believe her husband is a doctor. Whether he’s the Dr. Morgan you’re interested in, you’ll have to ask her.”

  Thinnes asked about the other properties on his list and a few more questions about Wellman. Cox’s answers backed up what he knew already. “How long has Mrs. Morgan worked for you?”

  “Three years. I can’t believe…She’s an exemplary employee.”

  “She a good salesman?”

  “Very successful. My associates work on commission; she’s one of the highest paid.”

  “Michael Wellman didn’t seem too impressed.”

  That news seemed to genuinely upset Cox—his mouth sagged open and he blinked several times before saying, “Well, he never said anything to me…”

  Helen Morgan was built. And she knew it.

  When Cox told her over the intercom that two gentlemen were waiting to speak to her, she called back, “Certainly.” She sounded like Sally Kellerman, who does the seductive voice-overs for TV commercials. Thinnes wondered if she practiced it.

  She walked into the room like a model walking down a runway. As far as he could tell, she was naturally blond, but her eyes were an unnatural blue—almost purple. He would’ve bet her clothes cost a bundle—not that he was an expert on women’s clothes—and that the gold-diamond jewelry was the real thing. She was modeling an ivory-colored linen suit that showed off her assets: traffic-stopping cleavage and legs almost as perfect as Rhonda’s. Once they’d been introduced, she invited the two detectives into her office.

  Following close behind Thinnes, Oster whispered, “She’s so plastic I could hold a lighter up to her and she’d melt.”

  “Shut up, Carl.”

  When they got there, she gestured to chairs and said, “Have a seat, gentlemen.” She sat at her desk, really an expensive table that showed off her legs as she crossed them. Straightening in her chair, she slipped her hands into the side pockets of her skirt, making the front of her jacket fall open. Her blouse was silk, or something like it, and left no doubt as to what she had underneath. Thinnes could hear Oster take a deep breath.

  She took her hands from her pockets and straightened the things on the desktop: pictures of two children in a molded Lucite frame, a gold lighter encased in a chunk of cut glass, a notepad with the company letterhead, a gold pen. Then she seemed to give Thinnes her full attention.

  “If I wanted to get started investing in real estate,” he said, “say, buy something run-down to hold until urban renewal caught up with it, how would I get started?”

  He could see her adding up his haircut, watch, and suit and deciding it wasn’t worth her time. While she thought about it, she raised her chin and looked at him along her nose, from under half-mast eyelids. It was almost funny but, hey, it worked for Lauren Bacall.

  “I’m afraid that’s not my area of expertise,” she said, finally. “I’ll have to turn you over to one of my colleagues.”

  A junior associate, no doubt, but she made it sound as if she was terribly disappointed, even as she stood up to show them out.

  “Never mind.” Thinnes took out his star and held it up. “I was just wondering. We’re actually here on official business.”

  “How can I help?” She was good at concealing her feelings but didn’t quite manage to hide her surprise. Before he could answer, she reached under her chair for her purse and started digging through it. He waited. She pulled out a pack of Virginia Slims and waved it at him. “Mind if I smoke?”

  “It’s your office.”

  “So it is.” She made a production of taking out a cigarette, putting the pack away, and reaching for an ashtray from the shelf behind her—waiting for one of them to offer her a light. Neither of them smoked; neither reached for the lighter on the desk. She finally picked the glass chunk up herself. After she’d fired up the cigarette and had a long drag, she repeated, “What can I do for you?”

  “Tell us about Michael Wellman.”

  “Who?”

  “The man you sold the Ronzani property to.”

  “Oh, him. A thirty-five-year-old child. I handled that sale as a favor to Mr. Cox. It was the first time I’d dealt with Wellman.” Her tone implied the last time, too, if she could help it. She leaned forward. “What is this about?”

  Thinnes glanced sideways in time to see Oster redden and refocus his attention on his note-taking.

  It must be habitual with her, Thinnes thought, to use an aggressive come-on as an offense. Some people did it with anger or rudeness. He wondered if she could turn it off at will. He could see where Wellman, who hadn’t mentally reached puberty yet, would be unimpressed.

  “Yo
u ever heard of a Brian Fahey?”

  “No.”

  He couldn’t tell if she was lying. “Terry Koslowski?”

  She shook her head. “Should I?”

  “You know a Dr. Martin Morgan?”

  “I used to think so.”

  “Could you clarify that?”

  “He’s my husband.”

  “Does he own any real estate near the Ronzani property?”

  “I’m not telling you anything more about anything until you tell me what this is about.”

  “Aldo Ronzani’s death resulted from an arson fire—that’s felony murder.”

  She laughed. Another Lauren Bacall rip-off. “You’re wasting your time and mine. Martin doesn’t have the balls to commit murder.”

  “What about you?”

  “I don’t have a reason.”

  It was cold in the building, but Oster was sweating by the time they walked out. He loosened his tie and said, “Whew!” Then he turned his head as if easing a stiff neck and added, “Nice tits.”

  Forty-Four

  Thinnes’s car didn’t have AC, so they took Rhonda’s. Thinnes drove. In a summer like this, the number of open hydrants in a neighborhood was as much a measure of its residents’ income as the condition of the buildings—as accurate as the presence or absence of graffiti. Thinnes would’ve bet there weren’t many open hydrants in Lincoln Park. There weren’t any in this part anyway. The Conroys lived south of Belden, in a two-flat on the west side of Dayton. They’d bought the building when they were married in the early seventies. Now it was worth so much they couldn’t afford to sell—capital gains would’ve killed them. Thinnes started looking for a parking spot as soon as he turned off Webster. When he was nearly to the end of the block, he turned west, then south into the alley between Dayton and Freemont. He pulled behind the Conroy’s garage and parallel-parked six inches from the door, facing the wrong way.