Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn

by Ace Atkins

  “Those kids work for me,” he said. “They needed some money. I do good in this neighborhood. People respect me.”

  “I hope so, Johnny,” I said. “I also hope you trust your friends.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Two more firefighters got hurt the other night,” I said. “Three men dead from the church. Real firefighters can’t live with that. They’re all family. They’ll come find you.”

  Donovan took a few steps backward. In the small, heated room, his stench was something awful. He spit on the ground and marched to the door, holding it open.

  I took the subtle hint and left.

  51

  Two days later, as I forced out my twelfth bench press of two hundred and twenty-five pounds, Hawk entered my field of vision. He didn’t offer to spot my last rep. He simply loomed over me and said, “Got something for you.”

  “Can’t you see I’m deep into my intense training?”

  “Weights will be here,” he said. “This won’t wait.”

  I followed Hawk out of the Harbor Health Club. Z was working with a heavy-set woman on a treadmill. Her mouth was working faster than her legs. Helpless, Z watched as we left.

  In the parking lot facing the harbor, Hawk popped the trunk of his Jag. He reached inside and pulled back an Army blanket to expose a large black box.

  “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  “It’s July.”

  “This shit can’t be returned,” he said. “One of a kind.”

  “Hard to get?” I said.

  A couple of seagulls looped around the docks. Pleasure boats bobbed up and down in the morning chop. Hawk closed the trunk and leaned against the Jag. He smiled. The sun was very bright and his teeth gleamed.

  “How’d you know where to find it?”

  “One of DeMarco’s people owes me a favor,” he said.

  “That’s mighty white of you,” I said.

  Hawk grunted. I could see the edge of his .44 under a light, long canvas jacket. “Jackie gonna be a little mad,” he said. “Three folks try to get in my way.”

  “Stefanakos?”

  “Nah, man,” Hawk said. “I’m saving his ass for you.”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  “We can sell tickets.”

  “I’ll make popcorn.”

  “Haw.”

  Deep in the harbor, I spotted the USS Constitution making a rare journey out of port. The big white sails full of air, cutting through the mild chop with ease. Cannons boomed off Old Ironsides in some kind of ceremony. Even on shore, I could hear people clapping from the decks.

  “Maybe we can borrow that cannon.”

  “He coming for you and me no matter what,” Hawk said. “Things get tight and we just got to draw that line.”

  I nodded. “Won’t the bad guys ever learn?”

  The warm sea wind kicked up Hawk’s canvas coat, fluttering it off his jeans and boots. He wore black sunglasses and no expression. “You gonna drop with this Quirk?”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Quirk finally retire?”

  “Worse,” I said. “He got promoted.”

  Hawk whistled low. “Damn shame.”

  “And Belson’s got a new boss,” I said. “Woman named Glass.”

  Hawk nodded. “Hmm,” he said. “She good-looking?”

  “When she isn’t gritting her teeth. Got any idea what’s on this thing?” I said.

  “Far as I know, this something you use to play Donkey Kong.”

  “I’ll call Arson,” I said. “They have a tech guy named Cappelletti who can figure it out. He’s pretty sharp. Although I don’t think he likes me much.”

  “That is sharp.”

  I’d been working out for nearly an hour. The hot sun and breeze made quick work of drying my sweaty T-shirt. After I switched the box to my trunk, I’d get changed and make some calls.

  “Jackie DeMarco’s crew will be coming.”

  “Bring it,” Hawk said. “I got no trouble with it.”

  I smiled. “So now should we return Jackie’s money?”

  “Don’t those firefighters have kids?”

  I nodded. Hawk grinned wide.

  “Well,” he said. “Okay, then.”

  52

  Where the hell did you get this?” Cappelletti said.

  “A little bird brought it.”

  “We need to know,” Cappelletti said. “Sometimes judges and defense attorneys ask questions like that. Evidence can’t just wash ashore.”

  He stood like a banty rooster. He again had his sunglasses worn over his ball-cap visor. As he eyed me, he chomped on some gum.

  “Fine,” I said. “It was a big bird.”

  “Jesus,” Cappelletti said. He hoisted his thumb my way. “You believe this guy?”

  “You know what they say about gift horses,” I said.

  Captain Cahill and I exchanged glances. He rubbed Galway’s head and watched me with deadpan eyes. It had been three days since Hawk had liberated the camera server and I’d handed it over. They’d been going through it hours upon hours ever since. Got to hand it to Arson, they had some true patience.

  “I take it you found something of interest?” I said.

  “We found a person of interest,” Cahill said. “Or what we used to call a suspect.”

  “Anyone we know?”

  Cahill blew out a long breath and threw up his hands. “Your pal Big Ray Zucco,” he said. “The cop from Blackburn? Boston Police picked him up this morning for questioning. Belson said the dumb bastard used his own vehicle.”

  “He’s not my pal,” I said. “Never met the guy. I was betting on Johnny Donovan.”

  “Well, it’s one of the three dipshits,” Cahill said. “We got Zucco walking away from that warehouse only eight minutes before you can see the smoke. This was an hour after your place went up. I gotta hand it to you, Spenser. That flower shop had some primo footage.”

  “I guess flower theft is a major problem in the South End.”

  “I don’t want to know who or what,” Cahill said. “But this is something. This gives us something to work off of. We can push him with this. Let the Feds handle the legal end. We just got to stop the burning.”

  Cappelletti sat on a desk adjacent from where I leaned against a wall. It had grown dark that morning and started to rain. The day before had broken heat records. The rain fell pleasant and cooling onto Southampton Street, even with Cappelletti’s continual gum smacking.

  “Any physical evidence at that second fire?” I said.

  “Nope,” Cahill said. “Burned up clean and neat. These bastards are getting better as they go along. If we didn’t have video, we wouldn’t have squat.”

  “Maybe if we knew where you got the server, we could make a fucking arrest,” Cappelletti said. “You know that?”

  “You don’t want to know,” I said. “Trust me.”

  Cahill toasted me with a coffee mug. The rain kept falling. Galway snuffled a bit and resumed snoring.

  “He’ll break,” Cahill said. “Zucco won’t try and protect a nut like Donovan. How the hell did a cop fall in with a guy like that?”

  “Ever been to Blackburn?” I said.

  “Sure,” Cahill said.

  “Know their cops?”

  “A few.”

  “Then you know the kind of guys they hire,” I said.

  Cahill did not disagree. Cappelletti scooted off the desk. He started to pace. Cahill and I watched him. Young guys are prone to pace. Old guys sit and figure it all out. After a while, Cahill got tired of it and told him to sit down. “We’ll wait to hear back from BPD,” he said. “We’ll have a long chat with this guy. It takes as long as it takes. But this son of a bitch is going to wear a wire for us.”

 
“How about Teehan?” I said.

  “How about him?” Cahill said.

  “If he knows you have Zucco,” I said. “Maybe he’ll talk with me.”

  “If he knows we have Zucco,” Cappelletti said. “He just might jump in the car and keep riding until the road ends. He’ll fucking run.”

  “You ready to bring him in?” I said.

  “Depends on what Zucco says.”

  “You mind if I take a shot?” I said.

  “Christ,” Cappelletti said. “Do you know how this is going to look to the Feds? No offense, Spenser, but you’re going to fuck up the case.”

  Cahill looked up with his hooded eyes and stroked his drooping gray mustache. “Yes,” he said. “But given what he’s just turned up, I’m not in a position to disagree. You met Teehan. You really think he’ll turn?”

  “I think he’s a chronic loser,” I said. “A true misguided nut. But I also think he’s a hero in his own mind. If he sees Zucco is caught, he might just decide to join the team.”

  “And Donovan?”

  “You’ll have to catch him with matches in hand,” I said. “Or kill him.”

  “Nuts?”

  “Like Mr. Peanut but without the top hat.”

  “One or all of these guys have killed three men,” Cahill said.

  “Four, if you count Featherstone.”

  Cahill nodded. “Let’s get to work.”

  53

  It was late and raining in Roxbury. Frank Belson met me in the police headquarters parking lot and sat in the passenger side of my Explorer. He reached for the half-finished cigar in his shirt pocket. I held up a hand to stop him.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

  “I can’t smoke at home with Lisa,” he said. “I can’t smoke in the car with the new captain. Now I can’t smoke with you. Christ.”

  “It’s because we love you, Frank.”

  “Hah.”

  “We care about your personal health and want you around a good long while.”

  “Bullshit,” he said. “You hate the smell.”

  “A wet night and a soggy cigar,” I said. “Heaven.”

  Belson shrugged. He had on the same blue suit but different tie. The new tie looked about two decades old.

  “How’s Zucco holding up?”

  “He did pretty good for the first two hours and then his story started to change,” he said. “That’s when we showed him the video. And then it all became very real and personal to him.”

  “Did he lawyer up?”

  “Nope,” he said. “He admitted to the fire. Me, Glass, and the Arson boys were there.”

  “And on Featherstone?”

  “Nope,” he said. “He says he didn’t even know Featherstone.”

  “You believe he’s in the dark?”

  “I’m not really sure,” he said. “He blamed everything else on Johnny Donovan. And he thinks, but can’t be sure, that Donovan did the Holy Innocents fire, too. He said Donovan had some issues with a priest there.”

  “What kind of issues?”

  “The kind of issues that got covered up for decades by the archdiocese,” Belson said. “He called Donovan a real-life psychopath. He’s worried Donovan will try and kill him if he knows he’s been pulled in.”

  “And what else did you guys talk about?”

  “What the hell do you think?”

  “Will he wear a wire?”

  “He’s happy about it,” Belson said. “He said he’s wanted out for a while but was afraid of Donovan. He claims this was going to be the last fire he set.”

  “Donovan’s pretty cocky,” I said. “He really flaunted that he couldn’t be caught. Of course he was referring to himself as Mr. Firebug.”

  “Everyone can get caught.”

  “Justice is always served, Frank?”

  “Always,” Belson said. “And me and you will ride off on our fucking horse into the sunset.”

  “Yee haw.”

  The engine was off, but the windshield wipers continued to slap away the rain. I wanted to find Kevin Teehan, scare the living daylights out of him, and turn him against Donovan, too.

  “Captain Glass really doesn’t like you,” Belson said. “Marty kind of put on an act. But you knew how it really was. Glass ain’t kidding.”

  “She’ll come around,” I said. “You know how charming I can be.”

  “I think she’s immune to that shit, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “Even with my dimples?”

  “She ain’t into your dimples.”

  “Ah.”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  I nodded.

  “How the hell you’d get this damn video?” Belson said. “It’s outstanding.”

  “Jackie DeMarco had an operation close to where these guys burned the church and that warehouse.”

  “That’s why at first you thought it was DeMarco.”

  “See?” I said. “You can see how I made an honest mistake.”

  “And you harassed his ass,” Belson said. “And he politely turned it over. No harm and no foul.”

  “Exactly.”

  Belson shook his head. He reached for the door handle and slightly opened the door. Before he left, he lit the cigar.

  “Come on, Frank.”

  “I’ll buy you a fucking bottle of Febreze,” he said. “Get over it.”

  “Wonderful.”

  He turned to me and smiled. A rare smile for Frank Belson. “You know Cahill told me that someone made a two-hundred-grand donation into the widows-and-orphans fund today.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  “Jackie DeMarco,” he said. “A hell of a guy.”

  54

  The air conditioner in Susan’s house was on the fritz, and the upstairs of her old Victorian felt like the lowland reefs of Bora Bora. We lay in her bed on top of the sheets as I told her about my day and she shared what she could share of hers. “Can I ask you a professional question?” I said.

  “Yes,” she said. “You are highly oversexed.”

  “Not the question,” I said. “But thank you.”

  The fan blew an insignificant amount of wind our way. Who knew Cambridge could be so hot? I got up, clicked up the speed on the fan, and got back into bed.

  “How do you break up a bond between three people?”

  “Now you’re getting kinky,” Susan said.

  “Talking my work,” I said. “Not yours.”

  “Mr. Firebug?”

  “Alleged Mr. Firebug.”

  “I thought you knew.”

  “Knowing and proving are two very different things.”

  Susan had on a black T-shirt and a pair of white lace panties. She turned over on her stomach and kicked her legs back and forth. Her legs were long, tan, and shapely. How I loved summer.

  “What do you know about the youngest?” she said. “What’s his name? Teagarden?”

  “Teehan,” I said. “Lost his mother at an early age. High school dropout. He lives and breathes the Boston Fire Department and all things firefighting. Works a low-paying job but has aspirations of becoming a true, real-life hero.”

  “Does he stand a chance of becoming a Boston firefighter?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Especially not now. But he did apply this winter. He’s a volunteer firefighter in Blackburn while holding a job at Home Depot. The application I saw showed he is somewhat mentally deficient. No one at Boston Fire took him very seriously.”

  “What about the cop?”

  “Big Ray Zucco,” I said. “I don’t know much about him. Belson pulled him in and questioned him. I think he hoped to appeal to a brother officer.”

  “And part-time arsonist.”

  “Minor character flaw.”

 
; “Who would you say out of the three is the most insecure?” she said. “The one posing as a hero but knows he’s a fraud?”

  “In a perfect world,” I said. “I would hope all of them.”

  “But would Teehan, as the youngest, be the most vulnerable?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Donovan?” she said. “You believe he’s the leader?”

  “I do.”

  “You want to focus on Teehan’s anxiety,” Susan said. “If you could get Teehan and Zucco to worry about Johnny Donovan, you might break the triangle. Turn the two weakest members against the strongest.”

  “That won’t work,” I said. “Zucco is in too deep with cops now. They have other plans. I just want Teehan to see Johnny Donovan as he really exists. He believes Donovan is a hero and trusts his leadership. Until that breaks, he won’t speak with me or with the cops.”

  “You can push,” she said. “But to break the trust, he’ll have to see his hero in the act as a failure and someone not to be admired.”

  “Johnny Donovan has already failed six ways to Sunday.”

  “Do you think the kid believes he’s responsible for the death of those firefighters?” she said. “Or the murder of that Spark?”

  “I don’t even know if Teehan helped him.”

  “This sounds all very bound up in a father-son dynamic,” Susan said. She flipped onto her back, staring up at the circling fan. “The illusion of the father as a hero is hard to break unless he sees something very real and personal to him.”

  “How about stone-cold logic?”

  “Logic is a waste of time, my friend.”

  “What’s real?”

  “Real is experience,” she said. “It’s visual. Right now, he probably believes everything Johnny Donovan tells him. I’m betting none of them see what they’re doing as wrong. They have justified all their actions.”

  “So all I have to do is make sure that Johnny Donovan really screws up and Teehan sees it?”

  “Yep.”

  “Piece of cake.” I kissed her on the cheek. “What do I owe you, Doc?”

  Susan arched her back, stretched, and smiled. “I can think of one specific thing.”

  I started to whistle “Heigh Ho” and sang, “‘It’s off to work I go.’”