Rogue Island (11 page)

“Yup.”

“Okay, asshole. Come on over. I'll hold my nose and look at what you got.”

“Not there,” I said. “Some place we won't be recognized.”

“The McDonald's on Fountain Street in fifteen minutes.”

“People from the paper get coffee there.”

“Central Lunch on Weybosset, then.”

“City editor's sister runs the place.”

“Okay, Mulligan, how about this. There's a titty bar called Good Time Charlie's near the Sax chicken-and-ribs place on Broad.”

“Just up from the YMCA?”

“Yeah. Got any pervert friends that hang out there?”

“I think that'll work,” I said, and hung up.

I swung Secretariat around the newspaper building, crossed over the interstate to the Italian tenement district, bounced four blocks south on what passes for roads in Rhode Island, and parked on Broad at the edge of the hood, where sixteen-year-old daytime hookers in hot pants competed for sidewalk space with used condoms and smashed forty-ounce Colt 45 empties.

The joint was dark except for a small floodlit stage where a skinny black girl writhed like a freshly killed snake. The small afternoon crowd sat up close, glassy-eyed and clutching sweating cans of beer. Polecki was already there, squeezed into a dark booth in back. I slid in across from him. A waitress, snapped into a body stocking so transparent I could almost see behind her, materialized to take our orders.

“Hey, Mulligan!” she said. “What's shakin'?”

Polecki looked at me and made a face.

I'd been wondering what had happened to Marie after she quit waiting tables at Hopes. I also used to wonder what she looked like naked. Two mysteries solved already, and it was only two thirty.

We sat silently until Marie returned with my club soda and Polecki's can of Narragansett, a local favorite named in honor of a Rhode Island Indian tribe butchered by our God-fearing colonial ancestors. Marie gave me fifteen back from my twenty and hooked a finger in the red garter on her right thigh. I slid in a dollar, and she winked and went away.

“So,” Polecki said. “Which one am I supposed to be?”

“Huh?”

“Am I Dumb or Dumber?”

“Does it matter?”

“Might be the difference between one broken arm or two.”

I stared at him over the top of my glass for a long moment.

“Look,” I said. “You're never going to invite me to share a box of Kentucky Fried, and I'm never going to invite you to share a box at Fenway Park. But people in the old neighborhood are getting burned to death, and I'm betting that bothers you as much as it does me.”

“More,” he said.

“So I'm going to show you some photographs,” I said. “And then you're going to give them back to me, and we're going to talk about what to do next.”

“Okay.”

I pulled a manila envelope out of my jacket, drew out the crowd pictures with Mr. Rapture's face circled in red, and fanned them across the table. He picked them up one at a time and studied them in the dim blue bar light. When he was done, I gathered them up, slid them back in the envelope, and stuck it back inside my jacket.

“So, who is he?” he said.

“Don't know. Been calling him Mr. Rapture.”

“Because of that look,” he said.

“Yeah, because of that look.”

“Anything else make you think this is our guy?”

“Found him walking on Doyle last night. When I tried to talk to him, he ran.”

“Couldn't catch him, big lanky guy like you?”

“Nearly did, but I slipped and fell.”

“That how you got that nose?”

“Yeah.”

“Broken?”

“No.”

“Too bad.”

He flagged Marie down, and we sat quietly as she fetched him another beer. Who says cops can't drink on the job?

“Well,” he said, “what you got isn't much. Doesn't prove a damn thing. But it
is
a lead, and we don't have many. What do I have to do to get my hands on those pictures?”

I pulled the envelope back out of my jacket, slid out the best picture of Mr. Rapture, and laid it on the table between us. I kept my hand on it and looked at him hard.

“I'm going to give you just this one,” I said, “but there is a condition.”

“I'm listening.”

“You didn't get it from me, and we never had this conversation.”

“Figured it was something like that.”

“Deal?”

“Deal.”

Polecki drained his beer, picked up the picture, and hauled himself to his feet.

“Hold on a minute. You don't have many? Is that what you said?”

“Huh?”

“Leads, Polecki. You said you don't have many. That means you must have some, right?”

He sat back down and said, “Why should I tell you?”

“I gave you something. Your turn to give me something.”

“This ain't
Let's Make a Deal,
asshole.”

“Look at it this way. If Mr. Rapture turns out to be the guy, I just cracked the case for you. But until we know, I'm going to keep digging, and some of the people who talk to me aren't ever gonna talk to you.”

He stared hard at me for a minute.

“If you learn something you'll call me?”

“Called you today, didn't I?”

He sat silently for a moment, fiddling with the gold wedding band he still wore. Maybe because he still loved her. Maybe because the extra pounds he'd packed on made it impossible to get it off.

“Off the record?” he said.

“Absolutely.”

“ 'Cause I don't wanna be reading this in the fuckin' paper.”

“You won't be.”

“Okay, Mulligan. We're lookin' at a retired fireman, an old fart who has nothing better to do than hang around the Mount Hope Firehouse every afternoon and get in everybody's way. Likes to show up at fires and hand out coffee to the crew.”

Oh, shit. That sounded like Jack.

“Anything solid makes you thing it's him?”

“Nothing yet, but his alibi sucks. Claims he's home alone every night watching cop shows and FOXNews. 'Stead of being helpful and answering our questions, he got all indignant when we braced him. Roselli's got a hunch this is our guy. Me, I'm not so sure. But he
does
seem the type.”

“How's that?”

“Lives alone. Something of a loser. Spent thirty years in the department and never got a promotion. And somebody who used to put out fires would know how to set them.”

“You think an ex-
fireman
would do this?”

“You got any idea how many arsonists turn out to be firemen or former firemen?

“How many?”

“I don't know, but it's a lot. Some of 'em do it because they get to be heroes when they put the fires out. Some do it because they love fighting fires with their buddies. Some of them are probably just fuckin' nuts.”

“So what's this guy's name?”

“Uh-uh. You're not getting that from me. With what I gave you, you can figure it out for yourself.”

Polecki hauled himself to his feet again, Marie calling “Come back and see us” as he headed out. I sat alone for a few minutes, then walked to the door, pushed it open, and studied the street.

It wasn't being seen coming out of Good Time Charlie's that worried me; it was being seen with Polecki. By giving him the picture of Mr. Rapture, I'd strayed way over the line. Reporters don't feed info to cops. Some of us go to jail for contempt rather than answer subpoenas. We have to be loners to do our jobs right. Guys like Zerilli would never talk to us if we smelled like rats.

I'd given Polecki more than a photo. I'd handed the better half of Dumb and Dumber something he could hold over me if he had enough functioning brain cells to recognize it. If he ever told Lomax what I'd done, I'd have to find myself a tin cup and stock up on pencils. But I'd rather be unemployable than have another innocent victim on my conscience.

23

At the Mount Hope firehouse, I asked for Rosie and learned she'd left for the day. In the mess room, a half dozen firefighters were sitting on mismatched chairs at a yellow Formica table, watching Lieutenant Ronan McCoun slide a pan of lasagna out of the oven.

“Jack Centofanti around?” All that got me was angry stares.

I looked at McCoun and raised an eyebrow.

“The old goat's not here,” he said. “We told him he ain't welcome here no more.”

I got back in the Bronco, drove to Camp Street, and parked in front of number 53, a grotesque Victorian that had been built as a single-family home more than a hundred years ago. Now, twelve doorbells pocked the front door jamb. They didn't work, but it didn't matter. I gave the door a push, it groaned open, and I stepped into a hallway littered with cigarette butts and junk mail.

I climbed the stairs, careful not to trip on the loose rubber treads or put any weight on the rickety banister. Jack's place was on the second floor at the end of a dimly lit hallway. The brass numbers on the heavy maple door said 23, with the 3 coming loose and hanging upside down. I raised my hand and knocked.

“It's open.”

I turned the knob and found Jack sitting in a stuffed armchair, his bare feet on a matching hassock and a tumbler in his hand. Beside the chair, a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam rested on a mahogany piecrust table. The room lights were off, and the last light of a dying day seeped feebly through half-closed Venetian blinds. The glow from the tabletop TV, tuned to FOXNews with the sound all the way down, was washing Jack's face blue. I snapped the switch by the door, the ceiling light came on, and he squinted from the shock of it, raising his left hand to cover his eyes. Now I could see that he'd placed the bottle on a crocheted doily to protect the tabletop.

“Liam?
Madonna
, it's good to see you, boy.”

“Good to see you too, Jack.” He, Rosie, and my relatives were the only people allowed to call me Liam.

“Sit. Sit. My place is your place.”

As I settled into a matching chair across from him, I noticed he hadn't shaved in a few days.

“You wanna drink, right?”

“Love one.”

He got up and limped into the kitchen, the belt from his terry-cloth robe dragging on the floor behind him. I heard water run in the sink. He returned with a wet tumbler in his hand, thrust it at me, sat back down, and passed the bottle.

“So how ya been?”

“I'm fine, Jack.”

“Your beautiful sister? She good?”

“Meg's great. Teaching school in Nashua. Got her own house in the suburbs. Got married last summer to a nice girl from New Haven.”

“Merda!”
He stared at me a moment, then snorted. “Well, if that's your idea of great, then I guess it's okay with me too. What about Aidan? You two still not talking?”

“I'm talking. He's not.”

“Must make it hard to have a conversation.”

“It does.”

“I never did like Dorcas.”

“I know.”

“
Pazza stronza
. A real
rompinalle.”

Crazy bitch. A real ball-breaker. The closest Jack had ever been to Italy was the three-cheese-and-meatball pizza at Casserta's, but he'd mastered the art of cursing in Italian.

“I'll never understand what the two of you saw in her, Liam. I told Aidan when she married you that he was the lucky one.”

“Turns out you were right.”

“Yeah. You'd think he would have figured that out by now.”

“He probably has, but we Mulligans know how to hold a grudge.”

Jack laughed. “Man, I could tell you some stories. One time, out at the Shad Factory, I pulled in a dozen beauties. But your papa? He couldn't catch a thing. I busted his balls about it on the drive home, and he got so
incazzato
he wouldn't speak to me for six months. Over a little thing like that.”

Jack's tumbler was empty now. I passed him the bottle, and he refilled his glass. Then he carefully put the bottle down on the doily. That's when I noticed the framed photo propped beside it on the table. I got out of my chair and picked it up. Jack and my father, wearing their waders, standing on the shore of Shad Factory Pond holding long strings of fish. I felt a twinge of guilt for not keeping more in touch with my father's best friend.

“He was a stubborn mick, your papa, but I miss him.”

“So do I.”

He sighed and took a swig from his glass
. “Famiglia. Famiglia.”

Jack never married. The Mulligans were the nearest thing to family he had, once his parents died, and that was a long time ago. I returned the photo to the table and eased back into my chair.

“So what's up with you, Jack?”

“Still got my health, so I can't complain.”

“I stopped at the firehouse on my way over. Thought you might be there.”

“Nah. I gave enough of my life in that place. I don't hang out there anymore.”

I just looked at him for a moment.

“Want to talk about it, Jack?”

“Ah, shit. I guess you heard.”

“I did, but I'd like to hear it from you.”

“The fellas at the firehouse? Great guys, each and every one. Give ya the shirt off their backs and the pants too if ya needed them. And the girl? That Rosie? I had my doubts when they made her captain. Weren't no women firefighters in my day, that's for damned sure. But she's a real pisser. I don't blame any of them none.”

“But?”

“But those two arson cops, Polecki and Roselli? They come waltzing into the firehouse last Monday afternoon, asking me fuckin' questions in front of everybody. Then started in with the fellas. Asked 'em why I was always hangin' around. If they knew where I was when the fires started. If they ever saw me doing anything suspicious. Put it in their heads that I was a suspect. Me. A fireman for thirty years. The fuckers.”