Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn

by Ace Atkins

  “There was a fire last year,” I said. “A nine-alarm in the South End at the Holy Innocents Catholic Church.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You worked the deaths?”

  “Of course I did,” Quirk said. “You might recall I once ran Homicide. We investigate all fatal fires. You know that.”

  “And what did you learn?”

  “Jack and shit,” he said, picking up the square plastic picture frame on his desk. He turned it around in his big hands to study his wife, kids, and numerous grandchildren. He waited a few beats and then leveled his gaze at me. If it was at all possible, his face had hardened in the years I’d known him. Not flesh and bone. More like carved granite. “Whattya know?”

  “I’d like to see the interviews.”

  “It was a fire,” he said. “Go talk to fucking Fire.”

  “I would,” I said. “But it’s an open investigation. I hoped Boston police might have many of the same files.”

  “Yeah, well,” Quick said. “We just might.”

  “You do.”

  “As you said, it’s an open investigation, hotshot.”

  I smiled and shrugged. Quirk frowned.

  “You working with a jake?” he said.

  “Perhaps.”

  “A jake who doesn’t want people to know he’s working with the nosiest snoop in the Back Bay.”

  “I prefer the most winning profile.”

  “If I had a nose like that, I wouldn’t be one to brag.”

  “Character,” I said. “Built of character.”

  “And plenty of cotton shoved up your schnoz,” Quirk said. He put down the plastic square and pushed back from his desk. He folded his big hands over his chest. “Arson isn’t too keen on a guy like you butting into their business.”

  “I will tread lightly.”

  “You?” he said. “Yeah, sure. How’s Susan?”

  “Charming and gorgeous as ever.”

  “Pearl?”

  “Getting old,” I said. “Graying around the muzzle. But wiser, like us all.”

  “I like Susan,” he said. “She gives you class.”

  “I do not disagree.”

  “Never understood what she sees in you.”

  “Would you like me to demonstrate a one-arm push-up?”

  Quirk held his gaze for a while. He then nodded. “I can’t promise anything. But I can make some calls. Ask around.”

  I nodded back. But I did not move from the chair. It was new and very comfortable.

  “Or do you expect for me to leave the heights of my office and go down and fetch the reports in records like a Labrador retriever?”

  “I can wait,” I said. “You now have a secretary. Perhaps she might share a little coffee?”

  “My she is a he,” Quirk said. “And he makes terrible coffee.”

  “Coming from you, that’s a compliment,” I said.

  “So your client thinks it was arson.”

  “Yep.”

  “Officially, I’ll tell you I never heard that,” Quirk said. “Unofficially, I’ll tell you we took pictures, asked questions, and stepped away. Looked to be accidental. Did I tell you it was my freakin’ church when I was a kid?”

  “No, you did not.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Quirk said. “Okay. Okay. You got that look in your eye.”

  “Sanguine?”

  “Like you’re going to pain my ass until I say okay,” he said. “Give me a call in the morning, Spenser. For Christ’s sake.”

  I stood and walked to Quirk’s closed door. It was a nice door, but I missed the old one with the frosted glass over on Berkeley. I opened it wide and waited.

  “And, Spenser?”

  I turned.

  “Your favor meter ran out a long while back,” he said.

  I mimed turning a meter backward and winked at him. Quirk did not smile.

  3

  I took Susan and Mattie Sullivan to Fenway that night. Mattie and I ate at the ballpark while Susan held out for postgame at Eastern Standard. Once seated, she promptly ordered a cocktail called The Thaw made with gin, St.-Germain, lime, Peychaud’s Bitters, and parsley. I simply nodded toward the Harpoon IPA on tap.

  “We should’ve given Mattie a ride home,” Susan said.

  “I offered,” I said. “She still prefers the T.”

  “Because she doesn’t want to rely on anyone.”

  “Not a bad trait,” I said. “She’s known no other way.”

  Eastern Standard was at the bottom of the Hotel Commonwealth, outfitted with brass, swirling ceiling fans, and red leather booths. The place made me feel as if I were eating inside a Paris train station, with a menu to match. Steaks, frites, oysters.

  Since I’d eaten at the game, I kept it to two dozen oysters. Susan had the bluefish with hominy, cherry tomatoes, and romesco sauce. She told me I could pick from her plate.

  “Do you remember my pal Jack McGee?” I said.

  She shook her head, sipping her cocktail.

  “The firefighter?” I said. “He’s captain over the house in the North End. We stopped by the house during Saint Anthony’s last year.”

  “I had to pee.”

  “The firefighters were most gracious.”

  “Big guy?” she said.

  “Some might call Jack somewhat husky,” I said. “But he can shimmy up a ladder like nobody’s business.”

  “Sure,” Susan said. “Okay.”

  “Jack’s a long-timer at Henry’s,” I said. “He lost three guys in that church fire in the South End.”

  Susan nodded. She tilted her head to listen with more intent and complete focus. All the noise around us went silent when she looked at me that way.

  “Jack thinks it’s arson,” I said. “Although, as of yet, there is no official cause.”

  “And Jack wants you to snoop?”

  “I would prefer the term professionally detect.”

  Susan shrugged and took another sip of her cocktail. “And what do you know about arson investigation?”

  “About as much as I do about women,” I said. “But Jack says most of the evidence burned up in the fire anyway. He wants me to use my contacts with the flotsam and jetsam of Boston.”

  “He believes the fire to be the work of criminals?”

  I nodded.

  “But who would burn a church for money?”

  “You really want to ask that?” I said.

  “I withdraw the question.”

  “I just hope I can help.”

  “So you agreed to take the case?”

  “He caught me at a good time,” I said. “‘Summertime and the living is easy.’ If I can’t get anywhere, I won’t charge him.”

  “Just how much did you charge Mattie Sullivan to find out who killed her mother?”

  I grinned and looked down at my knuckles. “Box of donuts.”

  Susan smiled back. She’d worn a green safari shirt dress, gold hoop earrings, a thin gold chain, and brown gladiator sandals to the game. The outfit really snapped with the Sox cap I’d bought for her at Yawkey Way.

  “You know Mattie graduates next year,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “And I understand Z is moving back to Los Angeles?”

  I nodded again.

  “Does that make us empty-nesters?” she said.

  “Have you forgotten Pearl?”

  “How could I ever forget the baby,” Susan said. “But we both must admit she’s getting a bit long in the tooth.”

  “You know my answer to that.”

  “We’ll just find a new Pearl?”

  I sipped some beer. I didn’t like to think about it. Outside the window, the stadium continued to empty, with people walking along Comm Ave or down into Kenmore Statio
n. The Sox had lost, but the lights burned bright across the city.

  “And what if something happens to you?” Susan said. She grinned with her white, perfect teeth in a devilish way. She tilted back her drink.

  “You can have me mounted and stuffed,” I said. “Just like Roy did for Dale.”

  “Roy stuffed Trigger,” she said. “Not Dale.”

  “Similar sentiment.”

  “Maybe I’ll just find a younger man,” Susan said. “Someone with less miles on him.”

  “But could he sing ‘Moody’s Mood for Love’ in Spanish?”

  “Can you?”

  I took a sip of beer and took a deep breath, just as the oysters and Susan’s bluefish arrived.

  “Timing is everything,” she said.

  4

  Bright and early the next morning, I drove into the South End to meet with Captain Troy Collins of Engine Company 22. The firehouse was a squat building of little character situated between several churches and office buildings on Tremont. Collins invited me upstairs to the firefighters’ quarters and kitchen, where he made some coffee. “McGee warned me you’d be stopping by,” he said. “He didn’t want to get me in trouble. Told me to keep it on the down low.”

  “What’d you say?”

  “This was Pat D’s firehouse,” he said. “I’ll tell you my deepest, darkest secrets if you think it might help. Him and Mike were like brothers.”

  Collins was a trim black man in his early fifties with closely cropped gray hair and a short gray mustache. He had a thick chest and muscular arms and walked with the ramrod posture of former military. Two firefighters were in a break room, lying on an old couch and watching CNN; three others were in a back room, lifting weights. I passed a locker with a bumper sticker that read DIAL 911 CUZ SHIT HAPPENS.

  “Accurate,” I said.

  “Saw one the other day that read GOD CREATED FIREMEN SO POLICE COULD HAVE HEROES, TOO.”

  “I bet cops love that.”

  “Cops think that Jack, Queen, King is as high as we can count,” he said. “Screw ’em. Would you like some cream or sugar?”

  I took a teaspoon of sugar. “You guys were the first to arrive?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I was off. Dougherty was in charge.”

  I’d spent my waking hours reading up on Lieutenant Pat Dougherty, Jimmy Bonnelli, and Mike Mulligan from The Globe’s online archives. Mulligan was only twenty-four, just back from a second tour of Afghanistan. Bonnelli had nine years on the job, two ex-wives, and three kids. Dougherty was the old-timer, a lifelong friend to Jack McGee. Father to four, a practical joker, a fine cook, and a dedicated Pats fan. He spent most of his years with Engine 33/Ladder 15, the old Back Bay firehouse built in the 1880s.

  “It had been a busy night and the boys were eating late,” Collins said. “We had some extra in the dinner fund and Dougherty sprung for some nice filets. Wrapped in bacon. He knew a guy who knew a guy in the meat business.”

  “And right before they sat down—”

  “They were in the middle of saying Grace and the alarm goes nuts.”

  “Always that way?”

  “Always,” Collins said. “Good food tempts fate.”

  “How long do you think the fire had been burning?”

  “It’s not a half-mile from the station,” Collins said. He sat down and placed two coffees between us. “Didn’t take them a minute to get there. Mike was a great driver. But I heard that church was lit up. Fire eating through plywood and shattering the big stained-glass window. Dougherty struck a second alarm right away.”

  “I read they went immediately toward the basement?”

  “Pat would’ve seen the fire and smoke down there,” he said. “We later found out that’s where the church kept their old files, which burned quick and hot. He knew he’d lost the building but wanted to make sure it didn’t spread. There’s a big new condo a block away, hundreds of people. When they got there some homeless guy was screaming he’d seen someone inside.”

  “How many went in?”

  “All four,” he said. “Dougherty and Mulligan led with the hose. Bonnelli and John Grady followed after hooking up to the hydrant.”

  “You know what happened to the homeless guy?” I said.

  “Nope,” he said. “There’s a methadone clinic around the corner. Neighborhood is in transition, homeless guy could be one of hundreds. I can’t tell you much else.”

  “What about John Grady?”

  “He got lucky,” Collins said. “Another few feet and he’d have been dead, too.”

  “I know you weren’t there,” I said. “But how do you think they got trapped?”

  “No secret,” he said. He rubbed his short, gray mustache and had a vacant, faraway look in his eyes. “The fucking fire flashed back and blocked the exit. I know the smoke was thick down there. They’d have had to try and braille their way out. You know? On their hands and knees, feeling walls when they died. Like I said, this thing happened quick. It burned hot. All in all, five minutes? I think about those men when I go to sleep and first thing when I wake.”

  “Do you think it might’ve been set?”

  “No evidence of it,” he said. “To be honest, there wasn’t a hell of a lot left in that pit.”

  “But it’s possible?”

  “Of course.” Collins watched me and took a long, deep breath. “Anything’s possible. I found it strange how fast the fire burned. And how the fire met in the middle.”

  “Multiple points of origin?”

  “Say, you’re pretty smart for a former cop.”

  I shrugged. “Some of my best friends are firefighters.”

  Collins grinned and drank some coffee. He made a bitter face and reached for some artificial sweetener.

  “The investigation is still open?” I said.

  “Unknown origin,” he said. “I guess technically it’ll always be open.”

  “Why do you think the fire was set in two locations?”

  “Hold on,” Collins said. He lifted up his right hand. “Hold on. I never said ‘set.’ I said it could have originated in two places. And I only say that because Mulligan radioed in that two fires were burning at opposite ends of the church before the flashback.”

  “That didn’t register with investigators?”

  “Evidence didn’t show two sites,” Collins said. “And Mike’s dead. We can’t ask him what he saw.”

  He gave a weak smile and sipped his coffee.

  “I’m very sorry.”

  “One minute you’re laughing and telling jokes and the next thing you know you’re riding that red truck into the depths of hell,” Collins said. “I miss those fellas every damn day. Like I said, they were brothers. If you hadn’t noticed, not many folks who look like me in the ranks.”

  “Irish?”

  “My great-great-grandfather must have been Irish,” he said, laughing. “A slave owner down in Georgia.”

  “I knew it,” I said. “You have that twinkle in your eye.”

  “I wish I knew more,” he said. “And I wish I’d been there with them. We got the dedication coming up. They’re going to unveil a plaque here at the house. It’s pretty much all I can think about. Media and all that stopping by. Folks bringing us more food than we can ever eat.”

  “I’d like to speak to John Grady.”

  “That might be tricky,” he said.

  “He’s no longer with your company?”

  “Nope.” Collins shook his head. “He’s on disability. Cracked a couple vertebrae that night. Off the record, I hear he’s been drinking a lot. He just never came back from it, physically or mentally.”

  I asked where I might find him, and he gave me the name of a well-known bar in Dorchester. I nodded and offered my hand. Collins shook it and looked me in the eye.

  “What do you t
hink about this church being connected to these latest arsons?”

  “Hard to say,” Collins said. “We haven’t had much rest since spring. Someone or several folks are burning up lots of old buildings. Dumpsters, trash piles. It’s keeping us on high alert.”

  “Jack believes it’s all the same.”

  “I’m not sure about that,” Collins said. “Seems to be a different kind of animal at work. Besides, you do know Jack McGee is crazy?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why do you think we’re friends?”

  5

  The Eire Pub was known as Boston’s Original Gentlemen’s Prestige Bar. Just to underscore the point, it was announced from a rooftop billboard on Adams, across from the Greenhills Irish Bakery and down the street from a run-down funeral home. Staying true to my heritage, I ordered a Guinness. The head was poured so thick and professionally, I could have used it to shave.

  The Sox played on flat screens spaced about every two feet. After I sampled the beer, I ordered a corned-beef sandwich and watched another inning. Four potential barflies surrounded me at the largish bar. The walls were decorated with a lot of historic Boston photos. Several had been shot by my friend Bill Brett from The Globe. The middle of the bar was divided by an island of whiskey. Through the colorful bottles, I spotted a guy in his early to mid-forties with a lot of brown hair, sipping on a draft.

  Two of the other men were too old. A guy seated three stools down wore a collared shirt and had soft hands.

  I moved to the other side of the bar and found a stool next to the big guy.

  “These fucking bums are killing me,” the man said.

  “That’s what the beer is for.”

  “It’s like last season was some kind of dream.”

  “You wouldn’t happen to be John Grady?”

  “Depends on who’s asking,” he said. “You work for my ex-wife or the fucking insurance company?”

  “I work for myself,” I said. “I’m a friend of Jack McGee’s.”

  “Pfft. Jack McGee,” he said. “You know he’s a genuine nutso?”