The Rat on Fire (23 page)

“A
CCORDING TO
M
AVIS
,” Scott said to Mack in Scott’s office at the funeral home on Friday afternoon, “he never did go to work last night. I wouldn’t know myself, because I went to bed. That is what I hired Herbert and Alfred to permit me to do: go to bed. They don’t have any real duties except to sit there and drive the wagon to Boston City when some poor fellow runs out of the will to live or something. If everybody makes it through the night, Herbert and Alfred didn’t have anything to do. When somebody didn’t make it, they generally got there before he turned spoiled and got him back here in the freezer in time to chill enough for me to bother working on in the morning. But if there were no deaths, they had nothing to do.

“Mavis took the job a lot more seriously than Alfred did,” Scott said. “Which maybe shows that Alfred after all was smarter than his mother, although it sure didn’t show up so that you couldn’t miss it. Anyway,” he said, “when she got up to go to work this morning, Alfred was in bed.

“Alfred was not supposed to be in bed already when Mavis and Selene got up for school and work. When Alfred reported for work, and stayed for work, Alfred got home just in time to have breakfast with them. Then he either went to bed and slept all day so he could raise hell all night, or else he went down to the corner to do what Mavis persists in calling ‘talking to the other kids.’ I’m more inclined to think that the best he did was loafing and the worst he did involved stolen cars, but those are mere suspicions.

“Mavis woke Alfred up and asked him when he got home from work. Alfred had not been to work. Alfred never came in here last night. He told Mavis he had not felt well on the
way to work, so he turned around and came home and went to bed after she had gone to sleep.

“That,” Scott said, “is bullshit, of course. Alfred just got himself distracted on the way to work at the Scott Funeral Home. It’s happened before, for hours at a time. Sometimes it’s a foxy chick, and sometimes it’s something you can drink, or smoke, or snort, or steal and sell for money. Officer Peters has also been a reason for Alfred to take a little paid vacation from the Scott Funeral Home. Alfred likes, liked, his vacations. He would use any excuse at all to take one, and Herbert would get somebody at the hospital to help him load the service wagon, and get the load down here on the gurney all by himself. Herbert never complains, of course, because every so often Herbert forgets that he’s supposed to be at work, and Alfred covers for him.

“Whether Mavis actually believed what Alfred told her,” Scott said, “I do not know and I am not going to ask. She gave him a good chewing out and told him he smelled as though he had been drinking quite a lot. He said he was upset about Selene and Peters. Then she made breakfast for herself and Selene and tried to wake Alfred up again, but couldn’t do it. So she made up her mind that she would show a little responsibility at least, and she and Selene left the building. Alfred was still sleeping.”

“Apparently everybody else left the building, too,” Mack said.

“Sure,” Scott said. “The people who do this kind of thing make a few plans at least. They know it’s one thing to torch a building, but it’s quite another thing to burn somebody to death. Insurance fraud is fairly minor, next to murder. The trouble is, they had too much faith in the regularity of Alfred’s habits. Alfred wasn’t regular in anything. If they’d only called me up, I could’ve filled them in.”

“Was he badly burned?” Mack said.

“He was scarcely burned at all,” Scott said. “Apparently when the fire started, the smoke and the noise and the heat woke him up. He got out of bed, pulled on a pair of pants, and went to the door. He opened it, but the flames were in the hallway by then. I say this because his jeans were scorched on the front and he had some minor burns on his stomach. He didn’t have a shirt on.

“He went to the kitchen window on the fire escape,” Scott said. “Now there were people who saw this, because they’d already sounded two alarms and the third was going off. The people on the ground, the firemen and the cops and the news people, saw him at the window. Until that instant they thought there was nobody in the building, because they’d gone through it pretty well, banging on doors and getting no answers. When Alfred slept one off, he slept well.

“Alfred got the window open. Even if he’d had the presence of mind to shut the door to the hall, the door had burned through, because there were flames in back of him. The people on the ground said he got the window open and got out on the fire escape and the fire came right after him.”

“There must have been a draft by then,” Mack said.

“Of course,” Scott said. “The people said the whole damned thing was just a sheet of flame. Alfred got on the fire escape. The bolts let go—I suppose it hadn’t been tested in fifty years, which would not surprise me—and down he went, fire escape and all. It was the fall that killed him.”

“Three stories is not a bad drop,” Mack said.

“It is if you’re the guy that’s dropping,” Scott said. “Anyway, that’s all I know. Except that for the next couple nights, Alfred
will
be at the Scott Funeral Home.”

“Poor Mavis,” Mack said.

“Poor Mavis, hell,” Scott said. “She’s had a hard life before
this. She’ll make it through this one. What I want to know is what you’re going to do.”

“I’ve already done it,” Mack said. “The Attorney General said he appreciated my call, and that the investigation was already well under way.”

D
ETECTIVE
L
IEUTENANT
I
NSPECTOR
John Roscommon entered the green-painted interrogation room and closed the door deliberately behind him. Carbone and Sweeney watched the back of his blue blazer, and Dannaher stared at the floor. Roscommon shut the door so that the latch did not click. The fluorescent lights in the ceiling, under the textured Plexiglas, hissed every so often.

When the door was closed, Roscommon turned around and leaned his back against it. He rocked back upon his heels and clasped his hands at his crotch.

Sweeney got up. “You can have my chair, Loot,” he said.

Roscommon did not look at him. He looked at Dannaher, who had two days’ grizzle of beard and wore a dirty shirt and continued to gaze at the gray metal table and the floor. “Don’t want it, Mike, thanks.”

“Well, Jimma,” Roscommon said. “Good tah see ya again.”

Dannaher did not say anything.

“Your old pal, Jimma, Roscommon. Remember me?”

Dannaher continued to study the table and the floor.

“Sure you do,” Roscommon said. “You remember your old pal, John Roscommon. We known each other for years. Aren’t you gonna say hello to your old pal, John Roscommon?”

Dannaher shook his head. Roscommon rocked on his heels twice. “Jimma, Jimma,” he said, “this is no way to greet an old friend that you met long ago when he put you in jail for the first time. Wasn’t I decent to you, Jimma? Didn’t I tell you, when I collared you, your next step was going to be the place where they’re so concerned about whether you get nightmares that they keep guards around all night, make sure the bears don’t get you? Didn’t I tell you that, Jimma?
And wasn’t I right? Didn’t you get a nice room and all that protection from the bears because of me? Tell the truth now, Jimma. Isn’t that so?”

Dannaher mumbled, “I know my rights. I don’t have to say nothin’.”

“Ahh, Jimma, Jimma,” Roscommon said. “See what happens when you get out someplace where there’s nobody to protect you from the bears and you start in to drinking with Clinker Carroll again? See what happens when you’re left on your own? You’ve been down to Danny’s all day, I bet, drinking a ball and a beer with Clinker and talkin’ about the old times. You’re half in the bag, Jimma. You need somebody to take care of you, protect you from the bears.”

“Isn’t,” Dannaher said, “isn’t no crime, I can have a few drinks.”

“ ’
Course
it isn’t,” Roscommon said. “You can have a few drinks with the Clinker and you can drink some coffee with Leo. No crime in that.”

“I don’t have to say nothin’,” Dannaher said. “I want my lawyer. I wanna see Tiger Mike Fogarty.”

“Sure,” Roscommon said, “and I bet you want to see him in private, too. With nobody listening.”

Dannaher nodded.

“And you’re gonna,” Roscommon said. “You are gonna see a lot of Tiger Mike in private, for a while. Then you are probably gonna see him in public for a week or two. See him while he’s tryin’, get you off on murder one.”

Dannaher looked up, fast. “I didn’t kill nobody,” he said.

Roscommon said, “Jimma, Jimma, you know the law. Accessory before the fact? Charged as a principal? You helped Leo Proctor burn down Fein’s apartment house. Charged as a principal. Kid died as a result of that fire. You’re going, Jimma. You’re going away, and you’re going away a long time.”

“I didn’t have nothing to do with that fire,” Dannaher
said. “Leo did that. I stayed completely away from Leo. I dunno what Leo did.”

“You know some of the things Leo did,” Roscommon said. “You know a lot of the things Leo did. You had some long conversations with him.”

“I did not,” Dannaher said.

“You want some Danish down at the Scandinavian, Jimma?” Roscommon said. “These guys can get it for you. They know right where it is, from tailing you and Leo so many nights and listening to what you had to say. Ask Sweeney and Carbone, they don’t know about the Danish.”

“I got a right to remain silent,” Dannaher said.

“You bet you have,” Roscommon said. “You also got a right to remain out of circulation for fifteen or sixteen years of a life sentence for murder. But that comes after Tiger Mike goes through his regular performance of trying to win a hopeless case, and that won’t be for a while yet. So right now we’ll just give you your right to remain silent, and alone, and you can go down to the holding room and call Fogarty and tell his secretary you got to see him right off, and she will tell you that she’ll have him come over here as soon as he finishes in Middlesex today, and that all will give you some time to think. About Murder One. Sweeney, cart him down. Carbone, come with me.”

“A
W
RIGHT
,” Roscommon said to Carbone in Roscommon’s office, “what the goddamned fuck happened? Didn’t I tell you to keep the cocksucker Proctor under surveillance?”

“Yessir,” Carbone said.

“And you didn’t,” Roscommon said.

“Nosir,” Carbone said.

“What is it that I am doing around here?” Roscommon said. “Am I talking to my goddamned self?”

“Lieutenant,” Carbone said, “I made a mistake.”

“Well,” Roscommon said, “that’s the first time I ever heard
that
excuse. Of course a kid is dead, and a lot of people lost everything they own, and the AG is all over me like a rash and a wet towel and a new suit all at once, because those folks happened to be unwhite, but even though I am not enjoying this whole matter very much, I got to admit this is the first time I ever nailed an investigator for booting one, and he came right out and said he booted it. You have my full attention, Donald.”

“I watched his goddamned
house
, Lieutenant,” Carbone said. “I watched his goddamned
car
. His van. I started watching when it was still dark this morning. The minute that son of a bitch moved, I was after him.

“The trouble is, I was out in front with the van, watching it, and he apparently went out the back and left the van there. I don’t know
how
the fuck he got to Bristol Road. He must’ve had a car stashed on the other side of the alley, and gone in that. By the time I figured out he must be gone, since he always comes out before nine in the morning, he was out.

“ ‘Oh, my God,’ I said to myself, ‘this is the day he’s gonna
do it.’ I call Sweeney and he’s watching Fein. Fein’s just leaving his house. Tuck Fein,’ I say.”

“Not supposed to use that kind of talk on the air,” Roscommon said.

“Not supposed to get in the kind of situation where you use that kind of talk on the air,” Carbone said. “I did. Told Sweeney, forget the landlord and haul ass to Bristol. I’ll meet him there. Sweeney tells me, forget meeting, he’s closer to Bristol, I should go find Dannaher. Which is what I did. Took me a while, but I did it.”