Everything Burns

by Vincent Zandri

  “Okay, I get it. You don’t trust me. But I have something of concern I need to report.”

  “New developments since we last talked a half hour ago, Mr. Johnston? Things happen fast in this town. But make it quick. I’ve got forensics barking up my ass about that woman we fished out of the Hudson.”

  “Bourenhem not only has a key to Lisa’s place, which explains how he got in this morning, but he also stole Lisa’s key ring.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s missing. It’s not where she placed it when she left for the medical center earlier today.”

  “Sure you didn’t grab it and put it somewhere else?”

  “I’m sure or I wouldn’t be calling you and waking you up from your office nap.”

  “He has a key. How’d he get one of those if you made Lisa change the locks?”

  “She must have given him one.”

  “Ouch. What keys she have on the key ring?”

  I tell him.

  “Might explain how he got into your vehicle, that is, if you locked it in the first place.”

  “I’m sure I locked the doors on the Escape. I always lock them. It’s instinctual.”

  “You say the keys to Lisa’s parents’ house are on there too?”

  “Yes.”

  Once more I picture the gate that was left open in the backyard of the Reynoldses’ estate.

  “You might want to give them a call. Meanwhile, I’ll have somebody make a drive-by ASAP.”

  I give him the address.

  “Ritzy part of town,” he says.

  “Ritzy people.”

  “We’ll also make a flyby to Bourenhem’s apartment, if that will ease your mind.”

  “I’d appreciate it.” Then, after a pause, “You find out what happened to that woman in the river?”

  He clears his throat. “Not yet. Her body is pretty messed up. Could be anybody at this point. Why do you care?”

  “The fiction writer in me. Thought you said her body was burned. You gonna blame me for that too?”

  Man, you should just tell him, Reece, Dad says. Maybe you should just tell him the truth. Bourenhem lit her up. But then, on the other hand, what if there ends up being no evidence to prove that Bourenhem killed her? What if all the evidence, physical and circumstantial, ends up pointing to you? Christ, you were the one who dumped her in the river. You were the one who cleaned up the murder site and whitewashed the evidence. You’re the one who’s been lighting fires in Little’s Lake Park and out on Lisa’s deck. You’re the one who’s been withholding the truth from the police . . . On second thought, Son, mum’s the word.

  “I promise,” Miller says, “soon as I know something, you’ll know something. You can write a novel about it.”

  I go to hang up. But then I hear him take a breath as if he’s about to say something else.

  “Reece, do me a favor, will you?”

  “What is it?”

  “Leave the police work up to us. You’re in enough hot water as it is.”

  “I’ll try and restrain myself.”

  “Make sure that you do.”

  “I’m no cop. I write fiction for a living,” I say. “You can trust me.”

  I kill the connection.

  Chapter 51

  While standing inside the vestibule, I dial Lisa’s cell phone. Like I anticipated, she doesn’t answer. I end the call and dial the Reynoldses’ house phone. Also as expected, they don’t pick up. Instead a machine comes on. I don’t bother with leaving a message. I just hang up. Alex and Victoria usually hit the sheets early and it’s already after eight o’clock. They will be in bed by now. At the very least, Alex will be dozing off while Vickie will be up watching TV in bed, fighting the onslaught of sleep. The phone ringer will have been turned low since Alex is such a light sleeper.

  Hanging up, I check on Frankie, who is sleeping on the end of Lisa’s bed. Then I make sure her bowls are filled with food and water. Heading into the bathroom off the bedroom, I wash my hands and face. I’d change my clothing too if I thought I had the time. But I don’t. I need to run an important errand before it’s too late.

  I need to see a man about gun.

  Chapter 52

  Blood lives in a depraved and crime-infested part of downtown Albany that once upon a time was considered the city’s most exclusive residential district. Arbor Hill is filled with old brownstones and townhouses that in the mid-nineteenth century were home to the state capital’s wealthiest landowners, lumber barons, steel mill operators, and even politicians like an upstart presidential hopeful named Teddy Roosevelt.

  But in the decades that followed, the lumber barons and steel mill operators all moved away in search of cheap labor, leaving the buildings vacant and ripe for the renting by one absentee landlord after the other. As the 1970s and ’80s rolled in, and along with them, Section 8 federal government–assisted housing, Arbor Hill became better known for its heroin dens and crack houses than its long-fled multimillionaires. When my mother would have no choice but to drive us boys through the neighborhood in order to get to downtown Albany, we’d lock the doors and close the windows, even in the heat of summer. We also learned to keep our heads down should the ear-piercing discharge of a gun ring out in the near distance.

  Blood’s crib is located on Sherman Street, on the far western edge of Arbor Hill where it meets up with Central Avenue, Albany’s main east-west artery. While Sherman is still set inside the gangland borders, all you have to do is cross the avenue less than one block away and you suddenly find yourself standing in the safe zone. I knew I would find Blood standing on the corner of Sherman, since the former Green Haven inmate turned self-appointed “Sentinel of Sherman Street” is always guarding over the area at night. Even though the self-written code of honesty, righteousness, and honor Blood lives by might not always strictly adhere to the law as written by mortal man, the cops are only too glad to have him take rough justice into his own meaty and scarred hands on his turf. The fact that I once pushed him out of the way of an oncoming vehicle is something Blood did not and will not take lightly for the rest of his days. He will always feel indebted to me and therefore, he will always act as my protector. If I want him to, that is.

  The drug trade still exists on Sherman Street. But with Blood overseeing it, you will not find crack, heroin, or anything else that young students might decide to inject into their white-bread veins because they think it’s the cool thing to do or their parents refused to buy them a new iPhone. Only recreational drugs can be found here. Pot, baby-powder-diluted cocaine, oxycodone, and occasionally, some X. That’s as far as it goes. None of the heavy junk you can find down on Clinton. Those are the Sherman Street rules, and you can either abide by them or face Blood’s wrath.

  Blood is also a top-notch fixer, which means he can also get you things, be it an unlicensed pistol or a hot car (VIN number scraped clean off) or a fake passport. He’s even been known to provide undercover and bodyguard services for private detectives in the area, among them a gumshoe friend of mine who goes by the unlikely name of Dick Moonlight. Having earned himself a master’s in English literature during his decade in the joint, Blood makes the perfect research resource for my crime novels. He’s a tough, imposing, rock-solid individual who doesn’t come cheap, and don’t even think of asking him to go against his principles. He will tell you to your face that he is living proof of the possibility of prison rehabilitation, and he bears the knife and gunshot wounds to prove it.

  Like I was counting on, I find him standing on the corner of Sherman and Lark Streets. Wearing the same black leather coat, black jeans, and shiny black boots that he was wearing when he stopped by unannounced this morning, he looks like a phantom or a superhero, which is not exactly stretching the truth.

  I pull over, come to a stop at the corner, and watch his big, solid linebacker frame emerging from
out of the darkness until it’s blanketed in an inverted arc of sodium lamplight. I hit the switch that rolls down the Escape’s passenger-side window. Leaning down, Blood sets his forearms on the door so that I’m level with his tight-skinned, hairless ebony face.

  “You shouldn’t be driving ’round here after sundown, Mr. Reece,” he says, his unblinking obsidian eyes staring into mine. “You must need some research material real quick, or staying at Lisa’s house all by your lonesome has you good and spooked.”

  “Need your help with something, Blood.”

  “Must need it pretty bad you take a shot on coming out here at night. You can always call or text me, you know. How many times I gotta tell you that?”

  “Too late for that. Besides, you’ll try and talk me out of whatever it is I want.”

  “You probably right about that.”

  I tell him why I’m here, giving him a quick, bulleted rundown of the day’s events, including the burning of Olga in my backyard. In typical Blood fashion, he takes a moment to digest it all without giving away a hint of emotion, either through words or facial expression. Then, without asking me, he opens the car door and gets in.

  “I know Miller as well as a Sherman Street resident can know a top APD cop,” he says. “He a decent man. But he still a cop. And cops go by the law, and the law ain’t always right. You catch my truth?”

  I nod.

  “You right goin’ with your gut and not telling Miller about the burned body. If Bourenhem burned her there, he did it for a reason. To set you up, make you look like the pyromaniac killer. You already wrote that shit in The Damned. Cops latch on to that fact, they never let it go. He never would dream you got the balls to clean up the backyard and dump her in the river. Only thing you fucked up with is not weighing her down enough. You should have called me in. She still be at the bottom.”

  “You’re right, Blood. I should have called you.”

  I recall this morning, when Lisa suggested I call him to stay with me at the house. I also recall his just showing up and offering to hang out with me. I can’t help but wonder if any of this would have happened today if I had agreed to his babysitting me instead of listening to my pride.

  “You a decent man too, Mr. Reece. Wired a little tight for my tastes, but a good man. I like your books and I’m gonna help get you out of this calamity.”

  “You read my books, Blood?”

  “Gots to read them. You put my name in the acknowledgments. Blood, spelled out in black-on-white letters.”

  “I thought you only read highbrow European postmodernists like André Gide or Max Frisch.”

  “Sometimes I slum and read crime thrillers by Reece Johnston. The Damned is classic noir lit. You should be proud, Mr. Reece.”

  “Classic pyro noir, I’m told,” I say, recalling Bourenhem’s earlier description. But hearing this kind of compliment coming from a man like Blood stands the fine hairs on the back of my neck right up at attention. I also feel warm blood filling my cheeks. I must be as red as a stoplight.

  “What do we do now?” I say, making the shift back to the subject at hand.

  “You need cash,” he says.

  Never dawned on me to bring money. Real money. Not the measly two twenties I have stuffed in my pocket. Can’t exactly pay for an unlicensed firearm with a credit or debit card. It’s precisely what I convey to Blood.

  “What’s your bank of choice?” he asks.

  I tell him.

  “Got one of those on Lark Street,” he says. “Computer lets you withdraw as much as five hundred. You need more than that, I spot you the rest. You can owe me.”

  “Thanks, Blood,” I say, shifting the Escape transmission into drive.

  “Don’t be thanking me,” he says. “You shouldn’t expect a thank-you in life just for doing the right thing. That’s something the politicians will never understand. Priests too.”

  “Priests?”

  “Let’s just drop the subject. The good Lord be out of my humble jurisdiction.”

  I drive on to where the money is.

  Chapter 53

  The Key Bank is located on the corner of Lark and Central. I pull up to the corner and, while Blood waits behind, get out and pull five hundred dollars from the ATM. When I get back behind the wheel, I hand the bundle of cash to him without bothering to count it first.

  “Where to?” I say.

  He directs me to make a U-turn, then head back to Sherman Street. As soon as the avenue is clear, I spin the Escape around and hook a right onto Lark. When I come to Sherman I turn left.

  “Keep driving until I tell you to stop,” he orders. “We going to a section of Sherman Street that don’t belong to me.”

  He tells me to stop as soon as we come to an area of the city that’s ceilinged off by a big piece of inner-city highway thoughtlessly erected back in the late 1960s. The buildings surrounding us on all sides are old, and mostly made of wood that’s covered with asphalt shingles that were designed to resemble bricks but instead scream despair. If you didn’t know any better, you’d say the entire section is abandoned. It’s actually plenty lively . . . and deadly. It’s far enough from South Sherman Street not to fall under Blood’s self-appointed jurisdiction and hidden away enough for the Albany cops to turn a blind eye to the nasty business transacted in its crack houses and brothels. The police spend only enough time here to clean up after the more-than-occasional drive-by shooting or to assist in carrying a body bag out from one of the houses to an awaiting EMS van.

  “Pull over there,” Blood says, pointing to a four-story house to my left, the windows of which are boarded off with sheets of plywood so weathered they’ve turned gray.

  “Wait here,” he says. “Anybody come up on you, you tell them who you with right away. They leave you alone after that.”

  “Now I feel better,” I say, hoping the opportunity doesn’t present itself.

  Keeping the engine running, I watch the big sculpture of a man walk up to the house, knock on the plain steel gray door. When it opens a few seconds later, a man emerges from behind it. He’s shorter than Blood, but bare-chested. Like Blood, his musculature is ripped and shredded. He eyes me from across the short expanse of dead no-man’s-land with a combination of curiosity and anger, and then Blood follows him inside, shuts the door behind them.

  I wait, careful to keep one eye on the rearview and the other alternating between the side-view mirrors and directly ahead through the windshield. After about a minute, I pull out my cell to see if Lisa has called. But she hasn’t.

  How are you? I text her. I love you.

  I anxiously wait for a reply that I know in my gut is not coming. When the steel door opens again, I pocket the phone and focus instead on Blood’s return to the car. The shirtless man, who seems not to mind the cool October air in the least, shoots me one last burning glance before closing the door. I hope I never have to lay eyes on him again.

  As he walks, Blood keeps both hands hidden in the pockets of his black leather coat. Without so much as glancing in my direction, he comes around the back of the Escape and gets in.

  “Drive,” he says.

  I slowly pull away from the curb.

  Blood tells you to do something, you do it.

  Less than a minute later he tells me to pull up alongside a mammoth concrete pillar that supports a short section of the elevated roadway. Reaching into his side pocket, he comes back out with a black-plated snub-nose revolver that has black electrical tape wrapped around the grip. It looks like a relic from a bygone gangster era.

  He flicks open the cylinder with a quick snap of his wrist, then raises the six empty chambers up to eye level. Satisfied that they are clean and debris-free, he then pulls six fresh rounds from out of his opposite pocket and proceeds to load the piece. When he’s done he gives the cylinder a spin and wrist-flicks it back home.

  O
ne unlicensed snub-nose revolver, officially locked and loaded. He hands it to me by its taped grip.

  “That’s a .38,” he says. “Cost you the entire five hundred, even. It’ll blow a man’s respiratory system clean out his back at a range of ten feet. Preferably a creepy white man like your Mr. David Bourenhem.”

  I feel myself go light-headed at the thought of shooting a man, much less Bourenhem. I shoot plenty of men and women in my novels, but the sight of real blood is a different story altogether.

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I say. “Let’s hope this is all a great big misunderstanding.”

  “Man drawing a great big picture on the living room wall of your head getting blown away like Hemingway? Man leaving a note about heretics burning to death lifted right out of The Damned? Man burning your neighbor on the back lawn? That what you call one great big misunderstanding, Mr. Reece?”

  I look down at the gun resting in the palm of my hand, feel its solid, heavy metal construction.

  “Guess I wouldn’t have dropped five hundred bills for this if I thought it was all a big misunderstanding.”

  “You sure Lisa okay? Anna?”

  “They should be okay at her parents’ house. And besides, Bourenhem’s problem is me. Not them.”

  “His problem is with you, then he gets to you through them, no matter how much he still in love with Lisa. He took her keys. He might hurt them to get even with you. He psycho enough, that is.”

  My stomach goes so tight at the notion of Bourenhem or anyone else hurting my family, a wave of nausea runs through me. Makes me feel like I might get sick inside the Escape.

  “Miller has promised to watch out for them. He’s promised me some drive-bys at the Reynoldses’ estate and at Bourenhem’s apartment building.”

  “Miller suspect you of lying about Bourenhem,” Blood points out. “He suspect you might be the guilty one in all this. That you the real crazy psycho one. He might be telling you what you want to hear when he promise you he watching Bourenhem. Truth is, the man he really keeping an eye on could be you.”