The Butcher's Son (5 page)

“‘I just heard a couple of the examiners talking after they’d finished the grading,’ the guy said, ‘and I heard your name and that they don’t promote fags. Shit, man,
I
didn’t say you were a fag. I don’t even
know
you.’

“I was forcing myself to pull back a little bit, but I said, “That’s fucking right, you don’t. But
I
know
you
now, and if I hear anybody else saying I’m a fag—and I mean
anybody
—I’m coming looking for
you
, and you damn well better believe it.’ And then I turned around and walked out the door.”

I was impressed, and it must have shown on my face.

“That took one hell of a lot of guts,” I said. “I’m really proud of you!”

Tom just shrugged, and said, “Thanks.” Then he drained his glass and set it on the table. He fished out an ice cube with one finger and put it in his mouth.

“I probably should have let it drop right there,” he said after a minute, “but I didn’t. I went in to see my chief and told him I knew damned well I’d done better on the exam than anybody else, and I wanted to know exactly why I didn’t make the promotion list. My chief’s a good guy, and a decent one, too. He gave me a couple lame excuses that I could tell he didn’t believe himself.

“But as I was leaving, he said ‘Tom, take my advice and don’t make waves. You’re a good arson investigator—one of the best. But there are just certain things you can’t change. And I don’t want you to jeopardize your job.’ And I knew exactly what he was referring to.

“So, it boils down to this, If I keep my mouth shut and just let them shit on me whenever they feel like it, I can keep my job. But I’m as far up the ladder as I’m ever going to get.”

I shook my head in empathy/sympathy.

“So, that’s why I decided to talk to you,” he said, fishing another ice cube from his glass. “I’ve got to tell you I was more than a little unhappy with you when you took up with Chris and dropped me like a hot potato. I thought we were better friends than that.”

I started to say something, but again he put his hand up to stop me.

“That’s all water under the bridge. But when you called, I suspected you wanted to know about the bar fires—you always were a nosy bastard, you know.” He grinned at me, and the best I could muster was a weak half-smile.

“But I figure I’ve worked my ass off for the department for seven years. I’ve been tiptoeing around this gay thing all that time and realize now that my breaking up with Kent had a large part to do with my believing that staying locked in the closet would protect me. And it didn’t. I’m not going to live my life like that anymore. I can’t.”

I nodded again. “There’ll come a time when you won’t have to. I don’t know when that’ll be, but things are starting to change. I suspect Stonewall just might be our ‘shot heard ’round the world.’ At least, I hope so.”

I finished my Bloody Mary and pointed to the empty glasses in an unasked question. Tom shook his head.

“Enough for me, I think. So—ask away.”

“Well, first, when is the department going to release whatever they know to the insurance companies? I imagine Bob Allen’s not the only bar owner out there whose life is pretty much in limbo. The insurance companies don’t give a shit, of course—every day their money sits in the bank, they’re getting interest on it.”

“As far as the department’s official stand, they don’t want to release any information to anybody, including the insurance companies, until they have dotted all the Is and crossed the Ts. They’re just applying this ‘policy’ a little more stringently to the bar fires. And if the bar owners have to wait, who cares? The longer those fag bars stay closed, the safer our streets will be for
decent
people.”

“Huh?”

Tom just grinned and shrugged.

“What about the basics? Do they or do they not know who’s behind the fires? And are they all linked to one source—as I’d imagine they all have to be? I noticed that what little media coverage there has been has given the impression they’re all just spontaneous, random acts of moral outrage against an uppity gay community’s daring to think it has rights like other people.”

“They’re pretty sure they’re all by the same guy. I’ve been on about two-thirds of the bar fires, and they’re strictly by the numbers—Molotov cocktails using a Valley Vineyards Chianti bottle with the label removed. Which is stupid as hell, because it’s the only bottle with that shape—long neck, extra-wide base. I suspect he does that just so we’ll be sure to know it’s him.

“And in case you think his choice of wines might be a clue, I will point out that Valley Vineyards Chianti is available in almost every liquor store in the city, and in a quarter to a third of all restaurants.

“He’s a pretty vain bastard who really gets a kick out of thumbing his nose at us. Rag wick from an old one-hundred-eighty-thread-count white sheet—all the arsonist’s little personal trademarks known only to him and to us. All tossed in back windows between three and five-thirty in the morning. The Main didn’t have a back window, so they tossed it on the roof.

“Oh, and if the window is barred, and the bars are too close together to fit the bottle through, he breaks the window and uses the extra long neck of the bottle to pour the gas down the inside wall. Then he leaves the bottle sitting on the ground under the window where we’ll be sure to find it. No fingerprints, of course.”

“So, they do know who’s doing it?”

Tom nodded. “It’s the classic MO of a well-known fire-for-pay professional by the name of Jerry Tamasini.”

He was quiet a minute, apparently waiting for me to say something.

“And…? Are there plans to arrest Mr. Tamasini anytime soon?”

Tom picked up his glass and tipped it back to get at the last piece of ice at the bottom. He munched it loudly and, after swallowing, said, “They don’t have to. He’s currently serving twenty-five-to-life downstate. Been there two years now.”

I sat looking at him without speaking for much longer than I’d intended. Finally, I managed to say, “Then, why the charade? If whoever is doing this knows damned well that the police will recognize the MO and know Tamasini’s in jail…”

He smiled. “Well, there is the fairly reasonable theory that he has an apprentice on the outside, but I personally feel Tamasini has way too big an ego to share his little trademarks with anyone else. Still, the police and most of the arson squad prefer the apprentice theory to the other, more realistic one.”

“Which is?”

“Which is that the arsonist is thumbing his nose at us, letting us know he knows the police and arson squad know. I think he may be telling us he’s one of us.”

Chapter 4

Tom and I left the bar shortly after our conversation about the fires and my sincere apologies for having been such a jerk in not maintaining our friendship. I assured him I would use utmost discretion in whatever information I passed on and, of course, promised not to reveal my source—Bob, of course, already knew.

He made me swear I wouldn’t tell the specifics of Tamasini’s MO, which had never been made public and was supposedly only known by Tamasini, the arson squad, and a select group of department bigwigs. That it could actually be someone in the fire or police departments…

I called Bob as soon as I got home and told him what little I could—basically, that he shouldn’t expect to be taking an insurance check to the bank any time soon, but that he definitely didn’t have to worry about anyone thinking he’d torched his own bar. I told him I’d keep him posted on anything I might find out or hear later down the line.

Tom was right—I
am
nosy. If something piques my curiosity, I can’t stop niggling at it until I get an answer. I found myself niggling.

I was slouched in my chair in front of the TV, surrounded by full ashtrays, thinking about what Tom had said and its implications, when Chris came in from bowling—at ten-forty-five. They’d had the lanes reserved from five until seven.

He seemed surprised to see me still up.

“Sorry I’m so late,” he said. “I should have called, but I figured you and Tom had a lot to catch up on, and I ran into a couple guys from the store, so we went out for a couple drinks.”

More than a couple, I judged, from the faint odor of alcohol that trailed after him as he went into the bedroom and started undressing for bed. He continued talking through the open door.

“There’s a hot rumor going around that Marston’s is being bought out by some big chain in New York. That should be interesting. I sure hope they don’t come in and start replacing the entire staff—especially the head window designer, of course. How about you? Find out anything from Tom about the fires?”

“Not enough,” I said as I put out my cigarette, turned off the TV and the lights, and went into the bedroom to join him.

*

The next week was a very busy one. Monday and
Tuesday were spent taking care of a million details leading up to Chief Rourke’s press conference the following week—details for which, as with the forthcoming newspaper article, C.C., of course, took full credit.

A phone call from the chief came in while C.C.’s secretary and I were standing in his office going over our respective responsibilities on his checklist, which was only a few pages shorter than
War and Peace
. Rather than shooing us out with a disdainful wave of his hand, he deigned to let us stay while he oiled his way into the chief’s good graces.

“Why, yes, Chief,” he said, leaning back in his chair and swiveling it so he had his back to us. “Yes, the article will definitely appear in this Sunday’s edition, and I did a pretty good job on it, if I do say so myself. I’m sure you’ll agree… Yes, yes, I’ve seen to that…and that, too… Yes, I’m working on that right now.

“You don’t have to worry about a thing, Chief, I spent the entire weekend here in the office working, but I’ve got it all covered… Yes, and I look forward to our four o’clock meeting tomorrow.”

His secretary and I exchanged glances, and she rolled her eyes to the ceiling. If old C.C. had spent the weekend in the office, it sure as hell wasn’t because he was working. Office gossip was that whenever his wife and kid were out of town, as they had been the past weekend, he spent every waking hour on the fancy leather couch in his office boinking some bimbo from Accounting.

On Wednesday, Chris announced that Marston’s had, indeed, been bought out by the New York chain, that the place had been swarming with New York bigwigs, and that he was scheduled for an interview with one of them on Thursday afternoon. He was firmly convinced the ax was about to fall, although I assured him that any other store in town would kill to have him.

Thursday morning, I was summoned into C.C.’s office and, for the first time in memory, offered a chair. That magnanimous gesture, I was sure, boded no good. I sat down carefully on the edge of the chair, lest wristbands suddenly spring from the arms and a metal cap with thick electrical wiring drop over my head.

“Hardesty,” C.C. said in his pseudo-sincere, bullshitting-the-clients voice, “I’ve got some great news, which
could
be great news for you, too, if you’re half as smart as you think you are. I wanted to talk to you first because if you’re stupid enough to pass this up, I’ll have to find somebody else, and I’m not going to have you embarrass me by turning it down later.”

The silver-tongued devil. I leaned even farther forward, waiting for the switch to be thrown.

“Carlton Carlson and Associates has been appointed official public relations firm for Chief Rourke’s campaign for governor,” he said, proudly. “All the legwork, all the liaisoning between the chief and his various teams, and the full PR package. And I’ve decided to let
you
be part of it. In fact, I’m thinking of appointing you my special assistant for the length of this project.”

Which was to say that I would be doing all said legwork and liaisoning, and the bulk of that full PR package would be sitting on my desk while C.C. did all the ass-kissing and the oiling up and the squeezing of every ounce of credit for everything that went right. Of course, if something should happen to go wrong, C.C. would have a convenient scapegoat—me.

Well, I’d played C.C.’s little games just about long enough, and I decided it was time I took control of my own life. There were other jobs out there, and I could find one easily enough. Not one that paid anywhere near what I was making, probably, but money isn’t everything.

“Well, thanks, Mr. Carlson,” I said. “I really appreciate your trust in me” (I actually said that! And I didn’t burst out laughing!), “but I think I’m going to have to pass on your offer.”

C.C. looked at me like I’d just put a gerbil in the microwave. No one—
no
one—in the employ of Carlton Carlson & Associates ever said “no” to Carlton Carlson, because if they did, they were automatically no longer in the employ of Carlton Carlson & Associates.

He stared at me for a full minute while I prayed for death.

“How much am I paying you?” he said, finally.

I told him.

“For the length of this assignment, I will increase that amount by fifteen percent.”

Something very strange was going on here, and I decided that since I had already jumped off the roof and was passing the 15th floor on my way down, I didn’t have too much to lose.

“Twenty-five percent,” I said.

He looked like Zeus had just walked up and slapped him across the side of his head with a thunderbolt. I actually saw him shudder.

But he pulled himself together and, after looking at me through narrowed eyes, which made my skin crawl, nodded and said “Deal. And we’ll put that in writing, so there won’t be any further…negotiations…in the future. An increase in salary of twenty-five percent between today and the end of this assignment.”

Which, I knew perfectly well, would also be the end of my employment.

Realizing that I might well be pushing my luck a bit too far, I said, “May I ask why you selected me for this assignment?”

C.C. sat back in his chair and once again became Mr. Professional.