Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (8 page)

J
ohnny ran away from a couple of condemned triple-deckers on Dot Ave with a big shit-eating grin on his face. Kevin was driving his Crown Vic that night, windows down and headlights off. He’d parked around the corner and listened to the scanner on low. Johnny opened the passenger side and slammed the big door. He was laughing. The night was hot, and Johnny’s face shone with sweat.

“
This one’s gonna be a pissah,” he said. “You see those old shingles on the roof?”

“Yeah?”

“They turn pink from wear,” he said. “They’re made out of gasoline. Those two buildings will burn like crazy. You’ll see this thing for miles.”

“You sure no one’s inside?”

“Does it fucking look like anyone would live in that shithole?” he said. “Or you afraid we’re going to burn up some rats? Don’t be getting soft on me.”

“I just thought we were going to burn that building on E Street. You know, that old warehouse?”

“We are,” Johnny said. “But we burn this and it’ll tie up a couple engine companies. That way we can set up shop and work on that building. We don’t and they’ll put it out before it really gets going.”

“I don’t know,” Kevin said. “They can’t handle all this.”

“If it’s not a mess, then we ain’t doing any good.”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know dick,” Johnny said. “Just drive. Everything’s all set. Me and Ray already stacked some tires by the wall. He said it’s covered in scrap wood and oil drums. It’s all ready to go.”

“Do we wait for the call on Dot Ave?”

“You worried it won’t burn or somethin’?” Johnny said. “Christ.”

They drove through Dorchester and up into Southie. The scanner crackled to life:
Engine 21, Ladder 17, and Ladder 7. Multiple calls for a fire at 848 Dorchester Avenue. Box 7252 is being transmitted.

Kevin drove. Johnny smiled, hot wind blowing through the open windows. “What’d I fuckin’ tell you?”

Johnny wore rose-tinted sunglasses that night. They were prescription,
the kind that reacted to light. When he’d light up
La Bomba, they’d change his eyes. He reached
into the
front pocket of his security guard uniform and pulled out
a cigarette. He smoked it while Kevin followed the streets
over to an endless warehouse on E Street. Almost all
of it looked to be corrugated tin, and Kevin wondered
how the hell they’d light up this beast.

Kevin had already sweated through his T-shirt. He reached for the hem and wiped his face. Driving with one hand, he slowed the Crown Vic and parked in an alley. Johnny already had La Bomba in his lap, cigarette dangling from his lips. “Here. You get the freakin’ honor.”

Kevin grabbed the paper bag and got out of
the car. He walked to the west side of the
building, close to Fargo. He found the wall Johnny had
told him about, wood with tar paper and a pile
of tires stacked eight feet high. All he had to
do was light the match, get in the car, and
roll on back to the first houses on Dot Ave.
After all, if they didn’t show up at a fire,
some of the Sparks would start to wonder.

Kevin’s heart raced and his hands shook as he set the bag next to the tire and struck the match. He got the cigarette going and ran back to the car. Two fires tonight. Johnny said they needed to do five or more tonight or it wasn’t worth squat. Really get the whole department hoppin’. From Southie to Charlestown and maybe over to Brighton. It would be beautiful, he said.

Soon they were headed back to Dot Ave, seeing flames and smelling the smoke from the triple-deckers. The scanner told them it was a working fire now. The chief had called for a second and third alarm by the time they parked a few blocks away. A ton of chatter on the scanner.

At the scene,
Kevin and Johnny walked through the dozen or so Sparks
watching the blaze and taking pictures. Kevin raised his hand
over his eyes, seeing the two buildings burning hot and
bright as promised. But also seeing a third house and
an apartment building starting to smoke. It had spread. The buildings were too damn close.

Johnny saw it but didn’t seem to give a shit, talking with two jakes who’d just come out of the building sucking on oxygen. Johnny made some kind of joke and gave the boys a thumbs-up before walking away.

They stood around for the next half-hour before Kevin drove Johnny back to his own car. He’d left the red sedan parked inside a chain-link fence. The fence surrounding the little plot where he’d parked his security company trailer. The two sat there in the car, Johnny’s pit bull going nuts by the gate.

“You see them families?” Kevin said. “We should’ve been more careful. This was supposed to be political.”

“It is political,” Johnny said. “Everything is political.”

“But burning out families?” he said. “I saw ten people sitting on the curb. That old man sucking on oxygen. I don’t like how this went.”

“People have been hurt,” Johnny said. “More will have to get hurt for someone to do something.”

“Nobody’s gotten hurt,” Kevin said. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Good night,” Johnny said. He got out and slammed the door.

Kevin sat there for a moment, listening to the dog bark over and over. When he began to start the car, he felt a hand on his wrist. He felt like his heart might leave his chest. It was Johnny, laughing at making him jump. “You know the best part?”

Kevin shook his head.

“Those jakes back there,” he said. “They thanked me. Thanked me for all the support. You know how that fucking made me feel? It’s all gonna be worth it. You’ll see.”

A
fter visiting the boys in Arson, I cracked my office windows that afternoon to the pleasant sound and smell of rain falling, and began to check messages. According to my service, I had eight calls from Cedar Junction, or as it’s more traditionally known, MCI Walpole.

Tommy the Torch had fine timing. I returned the call.

Prisoners don’t set their own hours, and I had time to walk down to Berkeley Street to buy a sub sandwich and chips. I made coffee and responded to a few e-mails. I ate most of the sub and cleaned off my desk. I paid a few bills. I checked the time. And then I called Susan. “Dr. Kildare here,” I said. “I’m calling to schedule in a sponge bath after a two o’clock lobotomy.”

“Are you performing your own?”

“You know ol’ Dr. Gillespie,” I said. “He’s pretty rough on me.”

“Do you have any references from after the war?”

“What can I say? I was born into the wrong era.”

I swung around and faced Berkeley. The young woman in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt building was eating lunch at her desk, too. I offered a friendly wave in solidarity. This time she waved back.

“You better watch out,” I said. “Other women might appreciate my arcane references.”

“I doubt it.”

“Or my ability to produce a pizza later tonight.”

“Pizza sounds wonderful,” she said. “It’s been a hell of a day for shrinkage.”

“With peppers, onions, and black olives?”

She agreed and I hung up. I finished the last bit of the sub sandwich and poured some coffee. I sat at my desk and watched the rain fall for a long while.

At a quarter to five, Tommy Torch called. Actually, it was an automated voice who informed me I had a call from Cedar Junction and would I accept the charges.

“Gladly,” I said.

The automated voice didn’t understand. It asked me again.

“Yes,” I said.

Tommy was animated, talking fast but low into the mouthpiece. He informed me that if someone learned we spoke, that the gentleman might fashion his nuts into a keychain.

“Colorful,” I said.

“You unnerstand?”

“Nuts into a keychain,” I said. “That’s bad, right?”

“The guy we spoke of.”

“Jackie DeMarco.”

“For Christ sake.”

“They can hear you, but not me.”

“Yeah, him,” he said. “He may be using this guy from up in Lynn but works in Revere. He’s one of those young hotshots. A shooter. But I hear he’s been branching out into other lines of work.”

“Diversification.”

“Yeah,” Tommy said. “Right. He’s also real good at burning shit. Not as good as me. But gets the job done.”

“What makes you think he works for DeMarco?”

“You don’t need to concern yourself with that shit, Spenser,” he said. “I give you a name. If the name pans out, then you put in a good word. That’s how the world works, right?”

“True pals.”

“Sure,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

The connection from Walpole was very bad and the line buzzed in my ear. Between the rain outside my window and the mumble mouth of Tommy, it was difficult to hear. “And?”

“What?”

“The name?”

“Don’t fuck me,” he said.

“You needn’t be concerned.”

“You know Teddy Cahill?” he said. “Works in Arson?”

“And his dog, too.”

“That fucking dog once got me four years inside,” he said. “It’s still alive? Christ.”

“I’ll talk to Cahill,” I said. “I’ll let him know if you helped. What they do is up to them.”

“Okay,” he said. “What the hell?”

I waited. I almost started to work out a drumroll on my desk. Instead I started to whistle the theme to
Jeopardy!

“Tyler King,” he said. Voice lowered. “A real scumbag. He’s the kind of guy who’d throw acid in his mother’s face. A goddamn yellow prick.”

“Coming from you, a true compliment.”

“Mainly does business out of his garage in Eastie,” he said. “Right by Logan. Planes right overhead and shit. He’s got a party store in Saugus, too. Deals drugs. But does the hard stuff that’s got to be done. He ain’t a nice man.”

“Neither are you, Tommy,” I said.

“I know what I am,” he said. “If I ever forget, I got guards to remind me. I just got to know, are we good with this?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” I said and hung up the phone.

I grabbed my Braves cap off the hat tree and locked up the door. I called Quirk as I drove south to police headquarters. I needed information and maybe a mug shot on Tyler King.

“Why they don’t make bubblegum cards for criminals?”

“Great idea,” Quirk said. “I’ll talk to the super. We’ll get right on it, Spenser.”

W
hy the hell are you asking about Tyler King?” Quirk said.

“Nice choice of locations,” I said. “Am I not welcome in the new office?”

We sat in Quirk’s car in the parking lot of a Burger King on Malcolm X Boulevard.

“People will start to talk,” he said. “With the new title comes a lot of politics. I don’t need that shit.”

“Fair enough.”

He handed me a legal-sized envelope that included two arrest reports and three booking photos. “We liked him for two murders last year,” Quirk said. “But we couldn’t make it stick. You know he’s the top guy for your buddy Jackie DeMarco?”

“So I’ve heard.”

“This shit never changes,” Quirk said. “People get older. People die. New thugs take their place.”

“What keeps us in business.”

“His mother was a head case,” Quirk said. “Dope addict. Broz had her killed and left her down in the Fort Point Channel. Funny how this all comes full circle.”

“What was the murder?”

“One of the Columbia Point Dawgs was making trouble for DeMarco’s growing business,” Quirk said. “We found him in the trunk of an old Buick LaSalle parked in a lot at the Franklin Park Zoo.”

“How old?”

“He’s twenty-four,” Quirk said. “When I was twenty-four, I was already married, had a kid and a mortgage. This kid’s probably already killed a half-dozen people and spends what he’s got on dope and broads.”

“The rest he spends foolishly.”

“Tyler King is no George Raft,” Quirk said. “Wears his pants hanging off his ass and ball cap with a flat brim. I hear he’s good with trucks. Works with his old man at a shop by Logan. He does some fleet work with trucks. Believe it or not, he’s got a high IQ. I got his juvie records.”

I read through the report of the gentleman who was a member of the Columbia Point Dawgs. I had read recently that entire organization was snatched up in a Federal raid and asked Quirk about it.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Boston is now free of crime. Yippee.”

“I bet you make one hell of a public speaker on career day.”

“Damn right I do,” Quirk said. “I tell the kids to stay off the streets or I’ll bust their ass.”

“I bet the teenyboppers adore you.”

“Teenyboppers, hell,” Quirk said. “That’s what I say to kindergartners. I guess Tyler King was sick that day.”

I read more and then put the reports back in the envelope.

“Keep ’em,” he said. “That pic is suitable for framing.”

I held it up to the light. Tyler King was not an attractive young man. He had pasty white skin, a stubbly black beard, and the long, thin face of a dope addict with short, unkempt hair. He didn’t look tough. Only mean.

“You like him for torching that church?” Quirk said.

“Perhaps.”

“Good source?”

“Not someone you’d want on the stand,” I said.

“Your people, Spenser.”

I nodded. The rain fell pleasantly in the Burger King parking lot. Smoke puffed from the little chimney that created that great charbroiled taste.

“DeMarco won’t miss the next time,” Quirk said.

“No,” I said. “He won’t.”

Quirk took in a long breath and let it out slowly. His unmarked unit had that new-car smell. “But if he had anything to do with how those firefighters died, you better come straight to me or Frank.”

I nodded.

“Don’t pussyfoot around,” Quirk said. “I don’t want DeMarco to have time to take you out.”

“You really do care, Marty,” I said. “I’m touched.”

“Now get the fuck outta my car before someone sees us together,” he said.