by Jon Loomis
“Kind of a stocky person, wearing an auburn wig?”
“That’s right! Hell of a thing. Running right back into a burning building!”
Two Provincetown fire trucks came howling down Alden Street and slowed for the hard right onto Commercial. That meant there was only one old pumper, PFD 3, at Coffin’s place: Walt Macy had evidently decided that the house was a lost cause. The single pumper was staying behind to keep the rest of the neighborhood from burning down.
“So, are you a cop, or what?” the tallest Tall Ship asked.
“Yep,” Coffin said, walking toward the Crown and Anchor’s open front doors. “You want to trade?”
“If you’re a cop,” the tallest Tall Ship said, dropping his falsetto, “where are your freakin’ shoes?”
“Frank!” Lola called, stepping away from the large crowd of gawkers that was already forming on the sidewalk. “Frank—what the hell are you doing?”
“He’s in there,” Coffin said. “Maurice is still inside.” He sneezed, then sneezed again.
“You’re not going into a fucking burning building, Frank,” Lola said. “You’re exhausted, you’re sick, you’re not thinking straight, and you’re barefoot.”
“We could have died,” Coffin said. “Jamie could have died.”
Lola pointed to the Crown’s third-floor windows. “Look up there, Frank. Look at how intense those flames are. Anybody that’s still inside had better get out quick, or they’re toast. If Maurice is still in there, he won’t last long.”
“The east wing doesn’t look as hot,” Coffin said. “He could be hiding in there. Or trying to make sure it goes up, too.”
Lola put a hand on his arm, gripping his bicep. She was shockingly strong. “Frank,” she said. “I know you’re upset—I would be, too. But let’s play it smart, okay? Skillings and Tony will be here any minute. We’ll watch the exits, and grab him when he squirts out. If he doesn’t come out, he dies in the fire.”
“What if he already got out?” Coffin said.
“Then there’s no fucking point in going in after him, is there?”
And then Maurice appeared in the Crown’s main doorway, coughing, eyes streaming, green muumuu smeared with ash, his strange purplish wig scorched and askew. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, spotted Lola and Coffin, and disappeared back inside the burning building.
* * *
“Dude,” Rudy said, sliding his cell phone into his jacket pocket. “I’m just saying that was not the fucking plan. Not even close.”
“He shouldn’t have said that about Gershwin,” Loverboy said. The Town Car’s steering wheel looked like a toy in his hands.
Rudy lit a joint with his Zippo, held the smoke, coughed a little, let it out. “I was always more of a Cole Porter fan myself.”
“Cole Porter was a great songwriter. Gershwin was a genius.”
They said nothing for a while, the Town Car accelerating hard on Route 6, headed toward Truro. Rudy sat back in his seat, looking out the window.
“Nothing but sand, scrub pines, and salt water,” he said, after a minute. “No wonder the fucking Pilgrims left.”
“Whoa,” Loverboy said when they’d cleared the dunes, the bay and its view of Provincetown opening up on their right. “Big fire. Looks like town center.”
Rudy stared. “Looks like it might be the Crown and Anchor.”
“Bummer,” Loverboy said.
Rudy shrugged. “It’s the only way they’ll ever get the semen off the walls.”
“So Felcher’s unhappy?” Loverboy said, after a minute.
“Fuck him,” Rudy said. “There’s lots of people who’d be glad to pay a fair price for this smack. Doesn’t have to be Felcher.”
“You can’t blame him. He was expecting a big bust and five free kilos of jones. Now the local cops got his bust and he’s got to buy the jones from us.”
“Fuck him. What’s he gonna do?”
“Seize our assets. Throw us in jail.”
Rudy grinned. “Did you know that Special Agent Felcher coaches ninth grade girls’ volleyball in his free time?”
“And?”
“And he’s got lousy impulse control.”
“If there’s no video, it didn’t happen.”
“There’s video.”
Loverboy smiled, his huge, perfect teeth gleaming in the dashboard lights. “What a pleasure,” he said, “working with someone who understands the basic principles of business.”
“You’ve got to fuck them before they fuck you,” Rudy said. He took another deep hit from the joint, pinched it out between his thumb and forefinger, and stashed the roach in his shirt pocket. “That’s right out of Machiavelli, baby.”
* * *
“Come back here, you little weasel,” Lola hissed, running at top speed through the Crown’s open doors. Coffin tried to keep up, but he stepped on a shard of broken glass in the courtyard and had to stop for a second to pick it out of the sole of his foot.
“Son of a bitch,” he said, pausing in the doorway. The smoke was thick. He could hear the fire roaring upstairs, over the shrieking din of a dozen smoke alarms.
“Lola!” Coffin shouted. He couldn’t see much: The emergency exit lighting was on, but shrouded in smoke. “Where are you?”
“He went up the back stairs,” Lola shouted back—she was maybe twenty feet ahead, the sound of her voice retreating into smoke and drifting ash.
Coffin followed, running as best he could. His cut foot squished on the rug at every step. He found the stairs—he could hear Lola’s footsteps pounding up them, not too far ahead.
“He’s headed for the deck!” Lola yelled. “I just saw him.”
Upstairs, the heat was intense. Coffin could feel the flames at his back—the fire gnawing the west wing like some great, hungry animal. More than anything, he wanted to get out. Coughing, he ran down a smoke-thick hallway, toward an emergency exit light. He pushed the door open and felt the shock of the chill night air; he took a deep, gasping breath. A broad wooden deck ran across the rear of the building, facing the harbor. Lola and Maurice had disappeared.
“Frank!” Lola called. She was ten feet below him, crouched on the beach, at the edge of a crowd of onlookers. It took Coffin a second to realize that she’d just jumped from the deck. She gathered herself, started running, service weapon in hand.
The onlookers turned, watched the pursuit. Lola pointed. “There he goes! Freeze, Maurice!”
Coffin saw Maurice sprinting across the dark beach toward Cabral’s wharf, a dilapidated wooden dock that warped into the harbor: arthritic, leaning, long abandoned. The tide was out; there were lots of places to hide among the tilted forest of pilings. “Shoot him!” Coffin yelled.
Lola steadied her pistol with both hands and squeezed off a shot, the Glock’s flat report just audible over the roar of the fire. Maurice yelled but kept running, disappearing into the deep shadows under the wharf.
“Shit,” Coffin said. He swung himself over the railing, then dropped onto the beach, making sure to bend his knees. He landed on all fours, bare feet digging into the soft sand. “Ow,” he said.
A gaggle of partially dressed drag queens stood on the beach in their lingerie: bustiers and garter belts, feather boas, stockings, and padded bras. They were wrapped in bathrobes, in various stages of makeup, some with wigs, some without. They were crying.
“Did he set the fire?” one of them said, pointing after Maurice. “That person?”
“Yeah,” Coffin said, limping as fast as he could after Lola and Maurice.
“He burned up all of our clothes,” the drag queen cried. “Our beautiful outfits!”
“He tried to kill you,” Coffin called, without turning to look over his shoulder.
“Same thing!” the drag queen shouted.
Lola had reached the wharf. She was crouched in the shadows of two thick pilings. As Coffin approached, his cut foot stinging like mad, she put a finger to her lips.
“He’s still in there,�
� she whispered, over the crackling roar of the burning hotel complex, a hundred yards away. “He hasn’t come out the other side.”
“You start at the top and work your way down,” Coffin said. “I’ll take the water end and work my way up.”
Lola nodded. “If you see him, try to flush him my way,” she said.
Coffin sniffed. His sinuses were brittle; everything smelled like smoke. But there was another smell—chemical, sharp. He put a hand on Lola’s arm. “You smell that?”
Lola looked at him, eyes deep-set in the shadows. “Lighter fluid,” she said.
A few drops of something cold dribbled on Coffin’s neck. He touched his fingers to it, sniffed them: lighter fluid. He looked up, and there was Maurice, lying on the warped planks three feet above them, long plastic grill lighter in one hand. Before Lola could raise her Glock the lighter scritched and a long tongue of flame squirted out, catching the hood of Coffin’s sweatshirt.
“Jesus, Frank!” Lola said. “You’re fucking on fire!” She peeled her jacket off and threw it over Coffin’s head, beating it with her hands, killing the flames. Coffin tore the jacket off—pain, smell of burnt skin, burnt hair—fumbling with his bandaged hand, then the still-smoking sweatshirt, dragging it over his head at the same moment Maurice jumped onto Lola’s shoulders, driving her face-first into the sand.
“Motherfucker!” Lola yelled, Maurice on top of her, knees pinning her arms, the Glock trapped under her body, Maurice with the squeeze bottle of lighter fluid in his hand, wildly spritzing her hair, her uniform shirt, his muumuu.
“Oh, God—” Lola yelled, bucking, kicking in the sand. “Frank!”
Coffin dove—jaw colliding with Maurice’s shoulder, teeth rattling, bare arms locked now around Maurice’s arms, around his torso, feet driving, Maurice scrambling backward (scritch went the lighter), surprisingly strong. Maurice screamed and Coffin looked down—blue flames flickered up from the green muumuu, around Coffin’s arm, around Coffin’s face, singeing his mustache, his eyebrows. He let go, flung himself down in the sand. For a long second Maurice stared at his burning muumuu, wide-eyed, confused, the flames growing and spreading up his belly and chest, the length of his arm, the nearly empty bottle of lighter fluid in his hand igniting with a flash, liquid fire spewing everywhere. Maurice howled and ran down the beach, blazing like a lit match.
“Put it out!” he shrieked, panicked, running back toward the huge Crown and Anchor fire, flames rising around his face, in his hair. “Put it out!”
Gasping, gagging, Lola snatched her jacket up from the sand and chased after him, threw the jacket over the burning muumuu, shoved Maurice into the cold water of the harbor, dragged him deeper, pushed his head under once, then again. She pulled him out, a hard fist cocked back, but then she saw that most of his hair was gone, his eyebrows were gone, and charred, red welts were rising from his neck and face and scalp. There was no more fight left in him.
“Ah, Jesus,” Maurice said, breathing fast, staring blindly into the orange sky. “I’m all burned up.”
And then Tony arrived, lumbering across the beach from the Crown at a half-run, gear belt clanking. “Need a hand?” he said.
Chapter 21
The burn center at Massachusetts General Hospital was one of the best in the world. The hallways were hushed and sparkling clean; the patient rooms were state of the art, the staff were kind, empathetic, and thoroughly professional. Coffin couldn’t wait to get out of there. Maurice lay in his hospital bed, so swathed in bandages he could have passed for a mummy on Halloween. Mancini sat in a vinyl guest chair. Maurice’s state-appointed lawyer sat in another. Coffin and Lola stood by the door. A nurse stood by the head of Maurice’s bed. A Boston uniformed cop stood guard in the brightly lit hallway.
“Okay,” the lawyer said. “You’re saying that if my client will plead guilty to three counts of burning a dwelling—that’s the Coffin house, the West End house, and the Crown and Anchor—for a maximum of ten years each, and plead guilty to the shed fire, the condo fire, and the church fire for a maximum of five years each, the state will drop the attempted homicide charges. That’s the deal?”
“That’s the deal,” Mancini said. He was wearing a charcoal gray, pin-striped suit that made him look like an investment banker.
Maurice was shaking his head. “Not the condo fire,” he said, through his bandages. “I told you, I didn’t do that one.” It was hard to understand him. His lips had been badly burned, and according to the nurse it hurt him to talk.
“Did you try to kill Detective Coffin?” Mancini said.
Maurice stared out of the holes in his bandages, but said nothing.
“Then shut the fuck up,” Mancini said. “If we go to trial I’ll do everything I can to see you do the max on every charge—that’s ninety years even without the attempted homicides.”
“Let’s say forty-five,” the lawyer said. “Up for parole in thirty.”
“Thirty years,” Maurice said. “Fucking hell.”
Mancini glowered. “You’re lucky. I should throw away the fucking key.”
“Can I ask a question?” Coffin said. His neck and right forearm were bandaged. A big patch of hair on the back of his head had been singed down to the scalp; half of his mustache was gone.
Mancini shrugged. “I think you’re entitled.”
“I still don’t get why you did it, Maurice. The church, the Crown, my house. I don’t get it.”
“The seals,” Maurice said. “Because they killed the seals.”
“The seals?” Coffin sat for a minute, smoothing what was left of his mustache. “I don’t understand.”
“Nobody did anything,” Maurice said. “Nobody was punished. You didn’t do anything.”
“So you took it on yourself?”
Maurice nodded. “The seals never hurt anybody. They were innocent creatures, and those fucking drag queens killed them. That’s why I burned the Crown.”
“And the church?”
“I wanted people to be scared. I wanted to punish them.”
“Your father killed the seals, Maurice.”
Maurice stared at him, dark eyes glittering through the holes in his bandages. “My father?” he said, after a long silence. “Donny killed the seals?”
“That’s right,” Coffin said. “Donny. He confessed a few hours before you set my house on fire. He said they were ruining the business.”
There was another long silence. “Jesus Christ,” Maurice said at last. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
* * *
Provincetown’s jail was a primitive, two-cell affair that mostly housed drunks and perpetrators of domestic violence. Like most jails, it smelled of Lysol with lingering undertones of mold, vomit, body odor, and shit. Ygor had a cell to himself, but that would change later in the day when he was transported down to the county correctional facility in Buzzard’s Bay. Ygor sat on his bunk in an orange prison jumpsuit and slippers. He had a large and very colorful black eye. Coffin sat on a plastic visitor’s chair outside the cell. Lola stood nearby, back to the wall.
Coffin leaned forward. “So a Wookiee attacked you and your friends? That’s your story?”
“He was huge person, like Wookiee only clean-shaven,” Ygor said. “Huge and very fast. There was old man with him, too.”
“And this happened why?”
Ygor shrugged. “There was dispute over musical composer. Some people have no sense of humor.”
“And then they brought you here, the Wookiee and the old man? And next thing you remember is waking up in this jail cell?”
Ygor nodded. “That’s right. I don’t know why I am here. I’m completely innocent.”
“What about the six grams of heroin in your pocket at the time Officer Pinsky found you unconscious on the front steps?”
“They must have put it in my pocket. I don’t use heroin.”
“What about the stolen Escalade out at Herring Cove, where we found your friends?”
“I didn’
t steal it. That was Dmitri.”
“Tell me about Branstool, Ygor. Who cut off his head?”
Ygor’s unswollen eye was cool and gray, his face deadpan. “My friend Vladi confessed to me that he did it. I wasn’t there.”
“Vladi’s the one that died out at Herring Cove?”
“That’s right. Vladi had very hot temper. I tell him, Vladi, it’s going to get you in trouble, but he doesn’t listen.”
“Where’s the rest of Branstool, Ygor?”
Ygor shrugged again. “Like I said, I wasn’t there. If I would guess, is probably in ocean. Food for crabs. Food for fishes.”
* * *
Billy’s was packed—Coffin had never seen it so crowded, though he realized that his perception was colored a bit by the fact that Rudy and Loverboy were sitting at the bar, taking up as much physical and psychic space as four or five normal-sized people. Gemma was there, too, standing at Rudy’s elbow, wearing black leather pants that appeared to have been applied with a spray-gun, and a black ruffled blouse open almost down to her navel. It was the quiet week between Fantasia Fair and Halloween, so most of the police force were there, too, except for the two on-duty officers. Lola and Kate were picking out songs on the jukebox: Amy Winehouse’s “Me and Mr. Jones” followed by the Stones’ “Wild Horses.” Pinsky and the impossibly glamorous LaWonda, resplendent in an electric blue, sequined minidress and five-inch platform heels, stood near the bar, sipping cosmopolitans. Skillings and his partner Don, who was a vice president at Fishermen’s Bank, stood with them, drinking the good eighteen-year-old Talisker, a rousing single malt from the Island of Skye. Doris and Tony sat in a booth—Tony seemed to have returned mostly to his old self: his uniform was sloppy, his left shoe untied. He guzzled a tall draft beer against his doctor’s orders, while stealing occasional glances up at the wavering picture on the TV screen. Walt Macy was there, too, and five or six of the fire and rescue crew, big men and women bellied up to the bar. Ernie from the Portuguese bakery was drinking a gin and tonic, and chatting up Roz from the Fish Palace. A brace of old people in wheelchairs had gotten a ride over from Valley View in the nursing home van; they sat looking flushed and happy, drinking short draft beers and shots of Jagermeister. Six or seven of Yelena’s incredibly good-looking friends had also come—Captain Nickerson swung on his little swing, head cocked, one bright eye staring at the cluster of Eastern European girls, who were drinking shots of pepper vodka and slamming their empty glasses down on the bar. “Show us your tits!” Captain Nickerson shrieked, but this time, out of respect, they didn’t. Yelena and Squid were both hustling to keep up: Even Kotowski was pretending to work, pouring the occasional shot, opening a beer here and there, lit cigarette dangling from his lower lip. Coffin’s mother was there, too—or some part of her, Coffin thought: The part that hadn’t turned into a crow—her ashes inside an ornate brass urn that sat squarely in the middle of the bar.