Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (6 page)

I
t was June now,
hot as hell, and Johnny had the crazy idea to
hit an old mattress factory in Dorchester. The building was
big and brick, with a billboard on a far wall
showing a little girl snuggled up for bedtime. The girl’s
blanket had little moons and stars, reminding Kevin of when
he’d been a kid. He remembered how his mom used
to come in at night, tuck him in, make him
feel safe before he dozed off. Even now that he was a grown
man, she looked out for him. Looking over him. Although
she didn’t know everything, she’d believe what he was about
to do was right.

“You brought it?” Kevin said.

Johnny looked at him like he was a freakin’ idiot. “No. I forgot it. Hell, yes, I got it. It’s in the trunk. I made six of
them. I figured with three of us working, we could spread them around.”

“What about a security guard?” Kevin said.

“Not tonight,” Johnny said. “Off on Friday night. Besides, they don’t make them here anymore. They ship ’em in from China or somewhere. It’s just a fucking warehouse now. Ready to burn.”

“How do we get in?” Kevin said.

“Back loading dock,” he said, holding up his crowbar. “A cheap deadbolt on a clasp. Snap, crackle, pop.”

A
whoop-whoop
siren came from deep down the alley and the men turned. A patrol car rolled by slowly with its lights on, a spot flicking back and forth over the road and up onto the brick warehouse, finally falling on their faces, burning their eyes. “Christ,” Johnny said.

The patrol car stopped, and in the blinding light, a door opened and a shadow of a cop got out. “Show me your hands, fucknuts.”

“Screw you, Ray,” Johnny said. “You about gave me a fucking heart attack.”

“You’d have to have a heart first,” Ray said, snorting. “And a dick.”

Ray turned off the spotlight and followed them over to Johnny’s car. Johnny popped the trunk to show six brown paper bags set neat in a row, as if ready for lunchtime. Each of the men grabbed two bags. Johnny ran down the layout of the place where they were most likely to get more bang for the buck. The third floor was pretty much empty, but there was a room with a lot of scraps and trash in it.
The fourth floor was gold, with old mattresses stacked ten feet high and ready to burn.

“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Ray said.

“Yes, Officer,” Johnny said, flicking at his badge. “But do you?”

“I just want to do some good,” Ray said, heading toward the loading dock. He was just like the rest of them, would give up his left arm to be a firefighter. If he hadn’t gotten on with the cops first, he’d still be waiting for them to call his number. Instead, you had to be a fucking veteran, the son of a fireman, or some dummy minority. All of them could add so much to the department. All of them wanting to fight fires since they were kids.

As the big rolling door slid
back, Kevin recalled that little room in Lynn where he’d
grown up. The stars and the moons on his blanket
and the little red fire hat on the hook by
the door. She was so sure he’d be part of
it someday. The happiest days were after they’d look for
fires, both of them coming up smelling like smoke, talking
about what they’d seen and heard. Never talk about his
father. He was nothing. He could never be a man
like those in the department. Not like what Kevin would become.

Kevin carried a sack in each hand and walked into the darkness, a small bit of light shining through the dirty industrial windows. He was to set both on the first floor. Johnny would call them on the walkie-talkie when it was time to set it off.

Two years since he turned in his application. Two years of calling every month to see where he stood on the list.
Still fifty ahead of him. None of them ready for the challenge like he was.

Kevin sat on his haunches in the middle of the desolate building. It was warm inside, with trapped heat from the long summer day. He lit a cigarette and smoked a bit, taking in the big, cavelike space that smelled of mold and stagnant water. New boxed mattresses stacked ten to fifteen high as far as he could see. He watched the glowing tip of the cigarette and took a breath. Everything just seemed endless.

“Now,” Johnny said. “Do it!”

S
ome might deem this entrapment,” I said.

Hawk said, “Heard it was Give a Honkie a Donut Day.”

“Is that a thing?” I said.

“Is now.”

I reached into the box from Kane’s and selected a cinnamon sugar. The selection was dazzling. Toasted coconut. Oreo sprinkles. Maple bacon. Since Kane’s had come from Saugus to the Financial District, I’d been unfaithful to my old standby.

“Who eats meat on donuts?” Hawk said.

“It’s not just meat,” I said. “It’s bacon. Bacon makes everything better.”

Hawk nodded. We leaned against the brick wall above the marina at Rowes Warf. Hawk selected a coconut, careful not to get any shavings on his fitted T-shirt. It was the kind that
wicked away sweat. In the late-afternoon heat, his face and bald head shone with perspiration.

“What’s in it for me?” Hawk said.

“C’mon,” I said. “How’d you know I needed a favor?”

Hawk just looked at me. He reached for a donut and took off a healthy bite.

“Arson case,” I said. “Looks like it’s circling back to Jackie DeMarco.”

“Hot dog.”

“And given our history with Jackie,” I said. “Well. You know.”

“Ha,” Hawk said.

I ate a donut, trying to make it last, and stared out into the harbor. It was late afternoon and the water was filled with motorboats, little speedboats, and yachts. The water ferry from Logan skitted along, churning waves, cutting a path to the Boston Harbor Hotel.

“You think Jackie’s still holding a grudge?”

“I shot two of his best men.”

“If they were his best,” I said, “he might’ve traded up.”

Hawk nodded. He wore a pair of dark Oakleys, but I felt a hard stare behind the Oakleys. He’d set his gym bag on the brick wall, the zipper open, showing a pair of blue Lonsdale mitts.

“Insurance racket?”

“Nope,” I said. “Jackie’s casting a hand over some property in a bad part of the South End.”

“Someone wouldn’t pay up.” Hawk continued to stare from behind his sunglasses. As he chewed, a fleck of shaved coconut
dropped on his shirt. He flicked it away as if it were a gnat. “We need to pay Jackie a visit?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I’m still in the gathering phase. I’d prefer him not knowing about it.”

Hawk shook his head. “Someone like DeMarco ain’t stopping with what he got,” he said. “If he’s moving out of Southie, man has delusions of grandeur. Wants to be his daddy or the new Joe Broz.”

“He’ll have to work on his wardrobe.”

Hawk snorted.

“Only one?” I said. I nodded to the box with ten left.

“The rest are for you, white boy,” Hawk said. “After all, it’s your day.”

“You ever hear anything about DeMarco burning people out?”

“Not my line of work, babe,” he said. “I’m not into subtlety.”

Hawk reached for another donut anyway, a maple-bacon one. He smiled as he ate. It must’ve been good. Hawk rarely smiled.

“Vinnie?” I said.

Hawk licked his fingers. “Or Gino Fish.”

“Gino isn’t what he used to be,” I said. “But Vinnie is more.”

I rested forearms on the high wall looking over the harbor. When Hawk and I had been young, it was sometimes tougher outside on the street than in the boxing gym. A man had to walk with purpose if he wanted to keep his wallet. Now the expressway was a Greenway and blight was a thing of the past.

Hawk hoisted his gym bag on his shoulder and left. I turned
and kept looking out at the Boston Harbor, the light sailboats zipping to and fro without much effort. The sails full of wind and energy, speed, and power.

In an effort to double my strength, I reached into the box Hawk had left for a second donut. Always prepared.

V
innie Morris ran the business from an old bowling alley right off the Concord Pike. When I walked in, a fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt was cleaning rental shoes and singing an old Bonnie Tyler song. “‘Turn around, bright eyes,’” he sang. And then he continued the chorus. He didn’t need to contemplate his day job.

He stopped singing, looked me over from head to toe, and then pointed up the staircase. The staircase was wide, metal, and mid-century mod. There were plastic plants and a painted mural of a ball hitting a strike. The pins exploding around it. The fat man kept on singing the same lines as I climbed the steps.

Upstairs, Vinnie sat at an empty bar, talking on a landline. Two cell phones sat near a spiral notebook. A cigarette twirling smoke up into a paddle fan.

He pointed to a nearby seat. I walked behind the bar and helped myself to a cup of coffee. Last time, he’d offered me grappa. I’d accepted and hence learned my lesson.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Okay. Fucking do it,” Vinnie said into the phone. He turned to me. “Hello, Spenser. Why don’t you just help yourself?”

“Service with a smile.”

He hung up the phone.

“Bar opens at five.”

“I never knew the bar to be open.”

“It’s a new thing,” he said. “I mean, what the hell. Why not?”

Vinnie was the most distinguished-looking thug I’d ever met. Salt-and-pepper hair. Clean-shaven lantern jaw. A medium-sized guy in middle age who kept himself trim. During a divorce, his wardrobe had devolved into track suits, but in the past couple years he was back to his old self. Today, he wore a tailored navy linen shirt, with linen pants the color of vanilla ice cream. An alligator had died to make his belt and shoes.

I sipped some coffee. Terrible, but coffee nonetheless.

“What do you know about Jackie DeMarco?” I said.

“We’ve been over this before,” he said. “Right before Hawk shot a couple of his guys down in Southie.”

“We had a misunderstanding.”

“My advice is to leave alone whatever you have in mind,” he said. “DeMarco walked away from the flaming pile of shit you started. He won’t do it again.”

“I know he’s into stolen property and drugs,” I said.

Vinnie shrugged.

“How about arson?”

Vinnie looked away and scratched the back of his neck. He pulled his notebook close, scribbled in some figures, and then turned back to me. He picked up his half-burned cigarette, took a puff, and squinted through the smoke.

“Maybe,” he said. “If money’s involved, he’d set his mother’s house on fire.”

“And who might do that work for him?”

“What, you got some kind of Symphony Road situation?” he said. “That was a long, long time ago. No one burns for insurance anymore. Property in this town is worth too much fucking money.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said. “This was about turf.”

“Someone pissed him off?”

I nodded. Vinnie raised his eyebrows.

“And that didn’t scare you in the least?”

I shrugged. Never being a fast learner, I drank some more coffee. It was late afternoon. I could use the fuel.

“Only one guy I know,” Vinnie said. “Worked for Broz back in the day. I hear he’s still called out of retirement from time to time. A real artist with burning shit.”

“A name?”

“Listen, why don’t you come see me sometime when you or Hawk don’t need me doing work for you,” he said. “We could bowl a few games. Have some beer. A few laughs.”

“You really want that?”

Vinnie lit a new cigarette. “Hell, no,” he said. “What I want is for you to know what you’re getting into. Learn something for me. I’ve moved from the field into management. I get up late, drink coffee, read the newspaper. I make some calls and
I’m done. After all these years, I got out while the getting is good. Unnerstand?”

“Not many Thug Emeritus positions.”

“Check Harvard,” Vinnie said. “I wouldn’t put any crazy shit past them.”

I nodded. I waited. Either Vinnie would give me a name or he wouldn’t. He looked me over and said, “Ever hear of Tommy Torcelli? Aka Tommy Torch?”

“Sounds like he used to front a doo-wop group.”

“Ha, ha,” Vinnie said. “He used to work as a mechanic in Dorchester. Down by Fields Corner. He was the go-to guy for a long time. I heard he got busted for some kind of kiddie-porn thing. He’s a true sicko in every way.”

“Boy, I sure would love to meet him.”

“I think he’s still in the can,” Vinnie said. “But I know he did business with Jackie and his old man. If someone wanted something burned, Tommy Torch would be on his speed dial.”

I nodded.

“The guy can burn two city blocks and make it look like a firefly farted. You know?”

“A true genius.”

“Yeah,” Vinnie said. His cigarette bopped in his lips. “What got burned?”

“A Catholic church in the South End.”

“The one where those firefighters died?”

I nodded.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s the world coming to?” Vinnie said. “Joe Broz did a
lot of bad things. Killed a lot of people. But he’d never have burned a church. Or hurt a Boston firefighter.”

“The new generation,” I said. “Thugs without ethics.”

Vinnie made a couple calls. I finished the coffee while watching the afternoon traffic jam up on the pike. After ten minutes, he’d arranged for a meet with Tommy Torcelli at Walpole. Vinnie said he and Tommy Torch went way back.

“How far?” I said.

“Far.”

“Does he have ethics?”

“The man can’t even spell
ethics
.”

“Can he be trusted?”

“Nope.”

“Good to know.” I gave him a soft salute with two fingers and descended the stairs.

M
CI Cedar Junction at Walpole was a quick yet not scenic drive from Boston on Route 128 South. The next morning, I made it in a little over an hour. The security process took a bit longer. Morning visitation was nearly done before I met Tommy Torch face-to-face through the glass. We had about twenty minutes to exchange pleasantries.

“I know you.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“You’re the guy that killed Fran Doerr,” he said.

“Aw, shucks.”

“He was an asshole,” Tommy said. “Never liked the fucking guy. I like Vinnie. When Vinnie walked behind Broz, you knew where you stood.”

“True.”

“And Vinnie likes you.”

“Vinnie and I have a mutual respect.”

“He don’t work with that queer Gino no more,” he said. Tommy nodded for effect. “Runs his own affairs.”

The guy gave me the creeps. His thin white skin was dotted with age spots. His face was small, skeletal, with bright blue eyes, his white and wispy hair pasted flat in long, useless strands. But no one looks good in an orange jumpsuit. It was very hard to pull off with style.

“So what can you do for me?” he said. “You wanna know something? Right?”

“I don’t think we’d get along socially.”

“I want a reduced sentence. This thing they got me for is junk. It wasn’t even my computer. Someone set me up.”

“I thought they caught you in the act?” I said. “With your pants around your ankles in Moakley Park?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Well. I did that. Sure. But the other stuff. The added charges that keep me in here. That’s not true.”

If only the world’s smallest violin were handy. Even with the Plexiglas separating us, our words exchanged only through a phone line, I felt the direct need to take a shower.

“I heard Jackie DeMarco had a church in the South End torched last year,” I said. “You know anything about it?”

“I’ve been in jail for two years.”

“I know,” I said. “But I heard you’d been Jackie’s go-to guy before you got popped.”

“Maybe,” he said. “I knew his old man a lot better. His old man was something. Used to run most of the city before Broz
set him up. Drank espresso at a little table on Prince Street every morning. Funny how them things work. Everyone in this world is trying to cut you off at your knees. You know what? What I did was wrong. But I got popped for pissing off the wrong people. It was a setup. I got a sickness. People knew it. They used it as a fucking tool.”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I want to know about the church fire.”

He sat back and rubbed his face. He tried futilely to assemble a bit of dignity. But Elvis had left that building long ago. Tommy had few options, and this was probably his best chance since he’d landed back at Walpole.

“I read about it,” he said. “In all the fires I set, I never had one fireman hurt. My fires burned right. They were places that needed to be torched, abandoned shit boxes for insurance cash-out. I just made it look like it was an accident. Electrical and all that. Sometimes I’d cover a rat with kerosene and let it loose in the walls.”

“Lovely,” I said. “But who would Jackie use?”

“Nobody is gonna admit torching a place that killed no firefighter.”

“Three,” I said.

“I never killed no firefighter.”

“You said that.”

“You catch that guy and he gets life,” he said. “If he’s lucky. If he’s unlucky, Boston Fire will find him first.”

“I need a name,” I said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”

“I don’t want no part of this,” he said. “I mean, I give you a name and then you go beat the crap out of someone. I mean, I got my own personal fucking code.”

“Sure,” I said. “If not, we’re just a wild beast lost in this world.”

“Huh?”

“Or at least some guy with lollipops in his pants.”

“Fuck you, Spenser,” he said. “I took this meet out of respect for Vinnie. If you don’t want to do business, I got to get back to watching a bunch of blacks kill each other over shootin’ hoops.”

“You help me with this thing and I’ll let the DA know,” I said. “It’s up to them what they do with you.”

“I got people doing that for me already.”

“I’m sure you’re reforming every day here,” I said. “Maybe you’ll walk out of Walpole a clean and righteous man.”

“I don’t need this,” Tommy said. He was about to hang up the phone. “I don’t need to waste my time with the crap. Come back if you got a deal.”

“How many visitors have you had lately?” I said. “It took a lot of effort to get a meet.”

Tommy dropped the phone in a loose hand. He stared at me and thumbed his nose. He stared for a bit. I stared back. He was ugly and it wasn’t easy.

“I help and you put in a good word?”

“The world is round,” I said.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Because Vinnie said so,” I said. “And because I’m not making you any promises.”

Tommy took in a long breath. He looked worn out and beat. He rubbed his scruffy face and sat up straight in the hard plastic chair. “Let me see what I can do and I’ll be in touch.”

“You know how to find me?”

“I got your number.”

“No promises.”

“How about we quit talking,” Tommy Torch said, “before I change my fucking mind.”