Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (11 page)

W
ould you mind if I kidnapped you for the weekend?” I said.

“What’s the occasion?”

“Have you forgotten?”

“I’d sometimes like to forget my birthday,” she said. “But I figured you might with all this fire business.”

“How could I forget?” I said. “You wrote it in my DayMinder.”

“I don’t know,” Susan said. “Would a birthday kidnapping include champagne and room service?”

“Absolutely.”

“Okay,” she said. She tapped at her cheek with an index finger. “I can be willingly accosted. But are you sure you can afford taking a couple days off?”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Trouble will be waiting when I
return. We leave Friday. I made reservations. Pearl can stay with Henry.”

“Isn’t that presumptuous?”

“Presumptuous is that I’m not packing a lot of clothes.”

“And what should I pack?”

“The black bikini,” I said. “I’ve bought a few things for you from La Perla.”

“They must love you there,” she said.

“I buy you another getup,” I said, “and they’ll throw in a free pair of knickers.”

Susan drummed her fingers on the table. We’d found a nice corner booth at Alden & Harlow, still finding it hard to believe the space had once been Casablanca. I’d ordered their Secret Burger and Susan asked for a bruised tomato salad. She had a glass of sauvignon blanc while I stayed on my Sam Adams kick from Florian Hall. Continuity was important.

“I like the bandage,” Susan said. “It’s kind of cute.”

I touched my brow, having forgotten, and smiled. And then I showed her my right hand knuckles, purplish and swelling.

“Not so cute.”

“A hazard of the job.”

Susan took a healthy sip. Half the glass was gone.

“And the other fella?” she said.

“Sort of like punching the cab of a Mack truck.”

“Yikes,” Susan said. “Big?”

“I thought of him as Killer Kowalski’s older and more physically developed brother.”

The food arrived. The waitress, a cute young woman with
black hair and purple highlights, placed the plates before us with some flourish. She asked if we had everything we needed. I looked to Susan, gripped her hand under the table, and said, “You bet.”

“And would it spoil the surprise if you told me where?”

“The Cape.”

“That narrows it.”

“Hyannis.”

“That narrows it a bit more.”

“Our old place,” I said. “Where we used to go.”

“The old Dunfey’s?” she said.

I took a bite of the Secret Burger and nodded. The burger was spot-on.

“Aren’t you nostalgic,” Susan said.

“It’s been more than twenty years,” I said. “Back then, you were afraid of Hawk.”

“
Afraid
isn’t the word,” she said. “More like scared shitless for you.”

Her bruised tomatoes, although impressive, looked like I felt. She took a bite of the salad as I worked on the hamburger. Alden & Harlow chefs were artists. I tried to make it last. Susan laughed at me, reached over, and wiped some high-end ketchup off my chin.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll let you kidnap me. But only for nostalgia’s sake.”

“I heard they turned our bedroom into a shrine,” I said. “Holy men come there to pray. It promises to grant amazing prowess.”

“It’s where you—”

“Opened the heavens?”

“We’d already done that many times,” Susan said. “It’s where we forged our bond. In a very real sense, where we made a lifetime commitment to each other.”

“With only one brief and yet unimportant interruption.”

“You call that time unimportant?” she said.

“No,” I said. “But the other people involved were.”

“We never discuss that time.”

I looked up from my drink. “Would it be helpful?”

“Nope.”

I offered my Sam Adams across the table. Susan lifted her wine and we touched glasses with a sharp clink.

“To the future?” she said.

“‘Art is long,’” I said. “‘And Time is fleeting.’”

R
ob Featherstone had lived in a blue cottage, like they built for GIs after the war, a few blocks from the water in Quincy. The next morning, I stepped over several flower arrangements set on the steps and mashed the buzzer. Within a minute or two, a woman opened the door. She was in her mid-sixties, with a long, drawn face and sagging shoulders. She wore narrow glasses and a Sox hoodie over a gray shirt.

I told her I’d worked with her Rob. A solid half-lie.

She nodded, reached into the hoodie, and grabbed a tissue. She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, and said she was Mrs. Featherstone.

“I’m very sorry to hear about Rob.”

She nodded and wandered back in the little house. I opened the storm door and followed. A handful of people sat in the living room with more talking back in the kitchen. Mrs.
Featherstone walked back from the kitchen and nodded to a small dining room. The table was finely polished. The seats had been covered in protective plastic. On the walls hung prints of old locomotives and coal burners. Several model train engines sat side by side on the table with a track encircling the table.

“You a Spark?”

“I’m a private investigator. Rob was helping me with an arson case.”

“Christ Almighty,” she said. “I knew they were going to kill him.”

“Who?”

“The damned arsonists,” she said, wiping her nose again. Her nose was very red and her eyes completely glazed over. “Don’t you know about all these crazy fires?”

“And who are they?”

She shook her head. “Hell if I know,” she said. “But Rob did. He was sure of it. Just sure of it.”

“Besides you, who would he confide in?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Jerry Ramaglia? He’s here. Other Sparks. Rob saw them more than he saw me. When he wasn’t at work, he lived at that firehouse museum.”

“You think he meant someone who was a Spark?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “He didn’t tell me nothing. We’d been together for forty years. But the last thirty hadn’t been so easy. We stayed together for the kids, and then the kids leave and we stay together ’cause it’s easy. Even if Rob wasn’t an easy man to be around. Chasing fires and playing with his model trains.”

“But he told you that he knew who set all these fires.”

“Yes.”

“And what else?”

“That he was going to do something about it.”

“And you didn’t ask him what he meant?”

“To be honest, I thought it was just talk,” she said. “Rob always had some kind of conspiracy theory working. I just said, ‘Good luck with that, dear,’ and turned the newspaper while eating toast. But they killed him. Didn’t they?”

“Someone did.”

“Couldn’t’ve been anything else,” she said. “Rob was an electrician. He fixed and wired shit. He did good work. Never pissed anyone off. Wasn’t into getting drunk or drugs or crap like that. He loved being a Spark. It was his life.”

She blew her nose long and hard. There was an odd burst of laughter from the kitchen. A man walked into the dining room and asked if we would like some coffee. We both shook our heads and the man disappeared.

“God,” she said. “Someone killed him. He finally did it.”

“Did what?”

“Something really important.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I’m sad for him. ’Cause he’s dead. But he finally did something big for Boston Fire. He would have loved that.”

“And if he did have some big information, might he have shared it with Jerry?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Better ask Jerry.”

I nodded. “Did Rob keep a journal or have a personal computer?”

“He had both.”

“May I see them?”

She shrugged and looked down at her hands. She twisted the tissue in her fingers. “Cops got all that,” she said. “They came over and took everything last night.”

I nodded again.

“But you’re not with the cops.”

“No.”

“Boston Fire?”

“Nope.”

“Who do you work for?”

“Spenser.”

“And who’s that?”

I pointed to myself, smiled, and again offered my condolences. She stood, walked me from the room, and pointed out Jerry Ramaglia, who was visible through a pair of French doors. Outside, I found him pacing and smoking a cigarette. He had on a ball cap that told me he was assistant chief of the Sparks Association. Soon he might need a new hat.

I asked him about Featherstone talking about the arsons.

“Nah,” he said. “I never heard him say that. He knew something about who torched that church or any of those warehouses and he’d a told me. We spent pretty much every day together. We were at that fire. Worked it all night. Yeah. He knew something about an arson and he’d have called me straight off. Between you and me, the wife is a little . . . you know.”

He swirled his index finger beside his head.

“Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs?”

“Right.”

“You think she made it up?”

“I didn’t say that,” he said. “But maybe she’s not remembering things right. You know she’s in shock. Maybe she’s trying to make some sense of someone shooting Rob. He’s just a nice guy. No one would want to kill someone like Rob Featherstone. Whoever did it just wanted his wallet. He got jacked. But not ’cause he knows something. That’s really nuts.”

“Did he tell you that I’d stopped by?”

“He only told me he’d met a private investigator at the museum,” he said. “He told me you were looking into the fires and told me to ask around for you.”

“Can you still put out the word with the Sparks?”

“Sure,” he said. “Of course. Whatever it takes to find who did this to Rob.”

“Did he have a computer he used at the museum?”

“Just for business,” he said. “Not personal. We take inventory on it for T-shirt sales, fund-raisers, and all that.”

“Security cameras?”

“Nah,” he said. “But I’ll talk to the boys. We’re going to get together tonight at the museum. He was a good chief. A really good one. A born leader. Did he tell you that a fireman saved his life when he was a kid?”

I shook my head.

“He was on the top floor of a triple-decker and everyone got out except for him and his sister,” he said. “A jake busted open his bedroom window and carried him and his sister out at the same freakin’ time. He never forgot it. Felt he owed it to these guys the rest of his life.”

He crushed the cigarette under the heel of his shoe. He
looked up at me. More people had arrived at the cracker-box house. Ramaglia looked in the window and then back to me. “I gotta get back to everyone.”

“Of course.”

“You think he really might’ve been on to something?” he said. “One guy doing all this shit?”

“Police are taking it seriously.”

“Be a hell of a thing if we could stop all this burning. I don’t think I’ve had a good night’s sleep all freakin’ summer.”

“What kind of person would want to set fires every night?”

Ramaglia shrugged and took a deep breath. “Someone good and smart,” he said. “He’s got some sense about how it’s done and how to do it. That takes some kind of genius nutso.”

O
n the way home, I dropped by the Engine 8/Ladder 1 firehouse in the North End. Jack McGee and another firefighter were unloading groceries from the back of a pickup truck. I helped them carry the load up to the second floor, making a couple trips down to the pickup truck on Hanover.

“You caught me at a bad time, Spenser,” Jack said. “I’m supposed to cook tonight.”

“How about I help,” I said. “And we talk.”

“You any good?” he said. “This is a tough crew.”

“Could Bobby Orr skate?”

“Go to it, chief,” McGee said. “I was going to make some hamburger steaks and mashed potatoes. But you can use anything we have in the galley.”

I sorted through the pantry and the commercial-size refrigerator, perused the newly arrived boxes and bags. I found
several pounds of shrimp in the freezer, some white rice in the pantry, and many onions and peppers fresh from the store. I stood back, folded my arms across my chest, and nodded at McGee. “Can your boys take the spice?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “And if they can’t, the others will bust their balls.”

“How many?”

“We got eight, maybe nine.”

“You have six pounds of shrimp in the freezer,” I said. “I can add some vegetables and rice and make shrimp étouffée.”

McGee shrugged. “Sounds good to me,” he said. “What else do you need?”

“A bottle of Tabasco,” I said. “And a couple loaves of crusty bread.”

“I’ll send someone down to the Salumeria Italiana.”

I nodded. “Perfect.”

McGee tossed a very manly white apron to me and I wrapped it around my waist. I grabbed the shrimp and set them to thaw under running water. Placing a chopping board on the counter, I went to work on the onions, peppers, celery, and garlic. “You think they might have some green onions at the Salumeria?”

“We’ll get ’em,” he said. “What can I do?”

“Do you know how to make a roux?”

“What the fuck is that?”

“A Louisiana gravy.”

“Nope,” he said. “But I can try.”

I found a black skillet the size of a wagon wheel and set it on the burner. I took several sticks of butter from the refrigerator and olive oil and flour from the cabinet. I explained how you
kept the burner on medium and stirred in a stick of butter with a little oil with a half-cup of flour. “Keep stirring it until it turns the color of toffee.”

“Whaddya want to talk to me about?”

“I just got back from a wake for Rob Featherstone.”

“Yeah,” McGee said. “I heard about Rob. He was a little odd, but a good egg, you know? He took care of me and the boys. He’d been a Spark for longer than I been a firemen.”

“His wife thinks he knew something about the arsons.”

McGee stopped stirring the butter. I could see it was beginning to burn and made the hand motion for him to continue. The smell of melting butter with the flour and spices wasn’t too bad. I wanted to crack open a cold beer, but drinking at the firehouse was a little frowned upon.

“Okay,” he said. “Are you talking Holy Innocents? Or the others?”

“Cahill admitted the church and these warehouse fires are connected.”

“Son of a bitch,” he said. “Finally, they admit it.”

“The guy calls himself Mr. Firebug and taunts Arson with letters,” I said. “The commissioner doesn’t want anyone to panic or for it to get out to the media.”

“The media would love that shit,” McGee said. He kept dutifully stirring. “Mr. Firebug. Shit. I always felt the church was a revenge thing, but what about these warehouses and abandoned houses? What gives?”

“I would’ve guessed revenge, too,” I said. “But for the first time in my life, it turns out I was wrong.”

“The first time?”

“I know,” I said. “Can you believe it?”

“Nope.”

I walked up next to McGee. He was a thick-bodied guy and took up a lot of space by the stove. I examined his roux. Still not brown enough. “Keep stirring.”

“Okay, okay.”

I went back to chopping. Out the window, there was a nice view of Hanover Street and the Paul Revere statue. Tourists surrounded Paul and took photos with him and his horse while I made fine work of the garlic, chopped onion, green pepper, and celery.

If I’d had more time to prep, I would’ve made shrimp stock with the shells and heads. But the étouffée would stand on its own.

I peered back into the skillet. I scraped the onions, green peppers, and celery into a bowl. I dumped the bowl into the skillet and told McGee to keep it going.

“Cahill must have some physical evidence he’s sitting on,” McGee said. “Right?”

“Between me, you, and the étouffée?” I said. “He has some fragments of some type of device. Same stuff has shown up at some recent fires.”

“And now Rob Featherstone is dead,” he said. His big face shone with sweat while he worked. “You know, we had a fire three days ago on Endicott, near the Greenway. We thought it was an abandoned building but found some guy on the second floor with his damn dog. He’d been sleeping and saw the smoke, but he was afraid to leave. We got him out and had to get up on the roof to put out the third floor.”

“More people are going to get hurt.”

“I’m just saying we get at least one or two of these a week,” McGee said. “You know how many we used to work?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe one like this every six months.”

“You gotta hate prolific psychopaths,” I said. “Mr. Firebug.”

“Any fucking guy calling himself that should get his nuts handed to him.”

“Keep stirring,” I said. “Don’t burn the roux.”

“I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“Me and you both, McGee.”