by Клео Коул
Oat! This man knows Oat!
Thirty
My mind racing, I vaguely registered Ryan Lane introducing the unsmiling man at his left.
“This is the battalion chief for the entire borough of Queens, Donald O’Shea.”
“Good evening, ladies,” the chief said, voice gruff, an impatient hand jingling change in his pocket.
O’Shea sported a salt-and-pepper flattop and an expression that appeared equally flat. His outfit reminded me of Fire Marshal Rossi’s — pressed dark slacks, nylon jacket, and what looked like a white uniform shirt beneath — which meant he’d just come off duty or was just going on.
Val and I greeted him, and he immediately excused himself. “Some business,” he said to Ryan and moved off.
Ryan then gestured to the woman at his right. “And this is my lovely boss, Mrs. Josephine Fairfield. Valerie, you know Josie.”
Josie? Now why did that name sound familiar? She was tall and well formed with elegant almond eyes and a long, patrician nose sloped to a wide mouth of glossed cranberry. I’d seen her before. I was sure of it. Is she a Blend customer?
Her outfit carried that conflict of classes not uncommon among Manhattan’s urban wealthy. The denims appeared stressed and worn, but the sweater was cashmere; her matching scarf — the dazzling color of a dragon fruit cactus — was patterned with front-and-backward Fs, trumpeting the House of Fen; and her shoulder bag of polished black leather was a cool thousand if it was a penny.
“Good job overall, Valerie,” Mrs. Fairfield said, her words clipped. “But the mayor had to wait fifteen minutes for the sound system to come online. What was that about?”
Val tensed. I felt for her. Over the years, I’d waited on thousands of Mrs. Fairfields, their auras vibrating like crashing cymbals as they worked overtime to advertise how very important they were. Valerie answered the woman with the same tone of pained patience I used on this perpetually displeased Clan of Narcissus.
“The city provided the public address equipment, Mrs. Fairfield. Once I realized the problem, I called my close friend Dean Tassos — he owns the Mirage clubs? Anyway, Dean drove portable equipment all the way from Brooklyn to help us out and that took time.”
“Well, next time you should test the system out first, don’t you think?”
Val’s fingers tightened around her dark pint. “I assure you, we did test it first. Why don’t you — ”
“Josie,” Ryan Lane firmly interrupted, “I’m sure we want to congratulate Valerie, too, don’t we?”
I had to give it to Lane. He was one good executive. He’d defused Oat the very same way when the guy had been rude to me.
“All of the numbers aren’t in yet,” said Ryan, “but I can already tell, we had a record take with the bake sale this year.”
“It must have been the coffee,” Val said.
Ryan nodded. “It was outstanding, wasn’t it?”
Val pointed across the booth. “Thanks to Clare.”
Ryan looked confused for a second. “Oh, yes! You’re the coffee lady. Sorry, I’ve met so many new people today...”
He extended his hand. I shook it.
“No problem,” I said. “I’m glad it all worked out.”
“Did it ever. You know — ”
“I’m moving on, Ryan,” Mrs. Fairfield announced. She turned and headed straight for the end of the bar where Michael Quinn was perched — and that’s when it hit me.
I had seen Josephine Fairfield before, just not in the flesh. She was the mystery woman in those firehouse picnic photos, the ones taped to the door in Michael Quinn’s company kitchen.
Mrs. Fairfield was older now, of course, her figure fuller, her free-flowing hair bobbed like a Jazz Age flapper’s, but she was just as attractive as her younger self. I could still see her frozen in time with Michael’s arm around her. Of course, she hadn’t been dressed in designer duds in those old picnic photos, just a simple white cotton sundress. But I remembered Michael’s expression — a different man, so buoyant, so carefree...
“I’m sorry about Josie.” Ryan’s voice was low. He had leaned down close to us. “She’s easy to misunderstand.”
Val shot me a look: The woman is a be-yotch. How hard is that to understand?
Ryan straightened. “Anyway, it was good seeing you ladies. Have a nice — ”
“Wait!” I lunged for the man’s sleeve. “Don’t go!”
Ryan was taken aback, but I couldn’t let him escape. I needed to question him about Oat!
“Won’t you join us, Mr. Lane? For one beer, at least?”
“Uh...” Ryan looked worried as he glanced back toward his boss. I didn’t blame him: given the level of drinking going on in this working man’s bar, if Josie Fairfield treated anyone else like she’d just treated Val, she’d be getting a black shiner to go with that shiny black handbag.
“One drink,” he said.
“Great!” I scooted over.
He pointed to our glasses. “But you two need a refill. Allow me — what are you drinking?”
“Let me,” Val said. “I have a tab open already. Do you drink beer?”
“Sure do. I’ll have what Ms. Cosi’s having. Harp, right?”
I nodded. Val got up, and Ryan sat down across from me, fiddled with his cuffs. “Your coffee is quite good, Ms. Cosi, exceptional. Who’s your roaster?”
“You’re looking at her.”
“Is that so?” He considered me with new interest. “I’d enjoy seeing your facilities one day.”
“Come by anytime. I do small-batch roasting in our basement.”
“You know, I fell in love with coffee years ago... on a trip to Nicaragua.”
“Oh? I’d really enjoy hearing about it.”
Okay, so I wouldn’t, but as Mike often said (in a piece of advice that sounded almost culinary), grilling an informant met with much more success if you tenderized him first. So while I half listened to Ryan, I turned my peripheral eye to his boss.
Given Josephine Fairfield’s past relationship with Michael Quinn, I was curious to see how he’d react at her approach. But Donald O’Shea had gotten to Michael first. The still unsmiling Queens battalion chief didn’t shake Michael’s hand or pat his back. They weren’t sharing drinks, either. The close conversation looked official — and it didn’t look pleasant.
“...and I ended up in the Samulali region, a rather untamed area,” Ryan was saying. “On that first morning, just as dawn was breaking, I drank fresh black coffee in a battered tin cup.”
I nodded politely.
“The beans had been dried in the sun and roasted inside a converted oil drum, which was turned by hand over an open fire. It was almost a spiritual experience...”
It took me a second to register that Ryan had stopped talking.
“How interesting!” I finally said. “You know, you should meet my partner, Matt. He’s our coffee buyer and travels frequently to South and Central America.”
Ryan sighed, his eyes glazing a bit. “Ever since that time, my dream was to buy my own coffee farm.”
“It’s not an uncommon dream,” I conceded. “One of the farms we buy from is run by a former California banker who followed his passion and purchased an estate in Panama after retiring.”
“I’m retiring from my job. Very soon.”
Finally, an opening. “Speaking of your job, Mr. Lane, you introduced Mrs. Fairfield as your boss?”
“That’s right. She is.”
“That’s unusual, isn’t it? For a woman to be in charge of a company that makes rescue gear for firefighters?”
“It was her husband’s company. He passed away last year and she took over. But it’s just an interim thing. She has no real interest in the business...”
“Is that right?”
“Yes, a larger corporation is in the process of evaluating us. In another month or so the purchase of Fairfield Equipment should go through without a hitch.”
“Is that a good thing? The company being bo
ught?”
“Oh, yes. It’s really just a big infusion of cash and resources. We’ll have the opportunity to expand worldwide.”
“That’s good news, then, but I’m also wondering, Mr. Lane — ”
“Ryan.”
“Ryan, how well do you know Oat Crowley?”
“Well enough, I guess.” He shifted uneasily, scratched the back of his head. “I’m really sorry about the things he said to you today in the park. That was uncalled for. I mean, look at you here. You’re obviously friends with James’s wife.”
“Oat and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms, but there’s a reason for that and it’s not James.”
“Oh?”
“I have a female friend named Lucia. She’s involved with Oat. Has he ever mentioned Lucia to you?”
Ryan laughed. “Oat and I aren’t that close.”
“I see. Well, Lucia is convinced that Oat’s not the marrying kind. That he has no interest in settling down. Would you say that’s true?”
“Odd you should ask.”
“Why?”
“Any other time, I’d probably say I have no idea. But just today, in the park, when I mentioned retiring, Oat asked after my position. I don’t blame him — my job’s a lot less hazardous than his.” He smiled. “Anyway, I agreed he’d be a good candidate for it, and he confided that he was planning to retire from the department soon. He said he was finally ready to settle down, buy a big house, maybe even start a family.”
I knew it.
Crowley was after Lucia for more than the occasional booty call. He wanted to marry her. But with Enzo and Glenn standing in his way, Oat had to find a way to upset the balance in Lucia’s life. The caffè fire did that — and if the authorities determined the blaze was random arson (à la some mad coffee shop bomber), then Lucia would also net a portion of a big fire-insurance pay out, a convenient nest egg for a newly married couple to put a down payment for a “nice, big house.”
“Here you go, kids!”
Val was back, and in a much brighter mood. She set our topped-off pints in front of us and we toasted the successful bake sale. I was about to question Ryan further when Val waved us closer, hunching down, as if she were going to reveal who stole Salvador Dalí’s Two Balconies out of Rio’s Mansion in the Sky museum.
“So did you notice what’s happening at the bar?”
“What?” Ryan and I asked together.
She pointed. “See for yourselves.”
We all turned our heads to find Mrs. Josephine Fairfield, affluent owner of Fairfield Equipment, friend of New York City’s illustrious mayor, putting her manicured hands all over Michael Quinn. And he did not appear happy about it. Every time she laid a paw on him, he firmly removed it.
“Now that’s what I call chutzpah!” Val declared, taking a delighted swig of Guinness.
“Are they a couple again?” I asked.
“No,” said Val, eyes bright. “James told me she’s been calling him repeatedly, trying to get him back. It’s common knowledge at the firehouse. Ever since she dumped him, he can’t stand the sight of her!”
My mind flashed back to that night in the captain’s office, the same evening I’d discovered his “Kevin wall.” Michael had been annoyed by a personal cell call — a call from a woman named Josie.
“Look,” Val pointed, even more amused, “she’s throwing herself at the man!”
Lined up on the bar were a half-dozen shot glasses, sparkling like newly cut diamonds. Standing at the ready was a freshly opened bottle of well-aged, single-malt Irish whiskey (which probably cost as much as your average gemstone).
Josephine knocked back a shot, clearly not her first, and gave up on the patty-cake game. She began wrapping her dragon-flower designer scarf around Michael’s neck. She laughed, pretending she was choking him. Then she pulled him forward, expecting a kiss. He pushed her away.
“Son of a gun,” Ryan Lane spat. “I better get up there...”
Val looked surprised by Ryan’s disgusted reaction, probably assuming (as I did) that the man would take a little delight from his haughty boss’s comedown. Then again, if Fairfield Equipment was being evaluated for purchase by a worldwide corporation, seeing your half-drunken boss throw herself at an off-duty member of the FDNY wasn’t exactly the optimum public relations moment.
“I’m sorry, Ryan,” Val said, quickly sliding across the booth to let him out.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said, picking up his pint. “Thanks for the beer.”
As Ryan moved toward the bar, Val sat back down and leaned across the table. “Josie Fairfield and the captain were supposed to be married. Did you know that?”
I arched an eyebrow. “The leader of the wolf pack was ready to tie the knot? When was this exactly?”
“Oh, like ten years ago,” Val said. “Josie broke it off with the captain just a few months after 9/11. According to Ed Schott, she just didn’t want to deal with the captain’s grief. Six months later she was hooked up with a much older guy who had a lot more money and a lot less baggage, the head of Fairfield Equipment — ”
“And now that her husband is dead, she has her freedom and her money, so — ”
“She wants her first love back. It’s a very old song.” Val tipped her head toward the bar. “Only it looks like Michael Quinn’s not in the mood to be played.”
“NO! YOU’RE NOT LISTENING!”
Val and I froze, along with every other patron in the pub. Josie Fairfield finally lost it. She was now shouting at the top of her lungs.
Oh God, poor Michael — and poor Ryan. He stood right behind his boss, trying to talk sense into her ear, but she’d belted back too much booze. Her arm windmilled crazily, trying to wave him away.
“NO! I WANT TO KNOW — WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO? START ANOTHER FIRE?”
I blanched, looked to Val. What did that mean?
Val mouthed something, but I didn’t understand her. Then we watched Michael rise from the bar, take Josie by the elbow, and calmly escort her to the pub’s front door. He caught my eye as he past our booth, but I couldn’t read him.
Ryan trailed behind the two. He also made fleeting eye contact with us and, brother, did he look miserable.
“What a job that guy has,” Val said when they were gone. “Now I really need a smoke. You want to come?”
“Sure.”
We crossed the crowded room and stepped out the back door, leaving the warm, golden light for the dark, quiet patio. The hulking outline of a large Dumpster sat a few yards away, but the prevailing smell on this dim square of concrete was stale tar. A carpet of butts had been crushed into the ground below my low-heeled boots, and I considered for a moment the hundreds of conversations (drunken and sober) that must have preceded those ends.
A laughing couple rose from a weathered, wrought iron bench, nodding a greeting as they headed inside.
Now Val and I were alone.
She dug into her bag, put a cig between her lips, and snapped her disposable lighter three times. When the tricolored flame kissed the cylinder’s tip, she glanced my way.
“Want one?”
I was running on a serious caffeine deficit, so I was sorely tempted. But I’d given up nicotine once in my life, and (like my addiction to a certain ex-husband) I had no intention of fighting that battle again. I thanked her for the offer then said, “So tell me. What did Mrs. Fairfield mean when she shouted that stuff about — ”
“Starting another fire?”
I nodded.
Val moved to the wrought iron bench and sat down, took long silent drags. “Oh, man, I needed that.”
I pulled up a battered garden chair, checked for beer spills, and sat down opposite her. The metal was freezing and the cold seeped through my blue jeans to the backs of my thighs. I ignored it, along with an increasingly edgy feeling that I simply attributed to a creeping jonesing for my own drug of choice.
“So?” I pressed. “Josie Fairfield is an arsonist?”
“I al
ways thought that story was just a story. Guess we know the truth — I mean, given her little drunken confession in there. But it’s not unheard of, right?”
“What?”
“Come on, Clare, haven’t you heard of that game the occasional whacked-out New York female plays? Setting a fire to meet a fireman?”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Val released a delicate but toxic plume of white into the black night. “James says it probably happens a few times a year.”
“And that’s how Mrs. Fairfield met Michael?”
“They met when her apartment’s kitchen caught fire. That’s all I knew... before tonight, I mean — ”
A muffled ring tone sounded in Val’s bag: You spin me right round, baby, right round...
Val instantly brightened. She hastily dug into her handbag again then silenced the tinny eighties tune as she brought the phone to her ear.
“Hey, what’s up?”
As Val chatted, I noticed she was careful not to say the name of the caller. It didn’t matter. I already knew she’d set that ring tone for one very special friend.
“Hold on a second,” she told Dean Tassos and turned to me. “I’m going to take this in the ladies’. Then I’m heading home. Would you give me a ride, Clare? James obviously isn’t showing.”
“Of course.”
With unexpected relief I watched the shapely outline of Valerie’s suit move into the glow of the open doorway. My wool sweater wasn’t thick enough for the March night, but I liked the solitude of this smokers’ patio so I folded my arms close, leaned back in the battered metal chair, and closed my eyes.
Inside the crowded pub, the band was starting up again. I had no desire to join the party. So much had happened tonight, let alone in the past ten days, that I just wanted a few minutes peace. Too bad I never got it.
“Hello, Clare.”
My eyes immediately opened. A wide-shouldered silhouette loomed in the doorway, blocking most of the pub’s golden light. Shifting shadows veiled the giant’s face but not his identity.