by Jon Loomis
The black man rolled his eyes and extended a plate-sized hand in the direction of the dance floor. “Leather,” he shouted, leaving a lot of space between the two syllables. He indicated Trooper Treadway’s outfit with his other hand. “Not leather.” Then he repeated the process, in case Treadway still hadn’t gotten the distinction.
“You mean I can’t come in?” Treadway said, nonplussed. It hadn’t occurred to him that there might be places in the gay universe where cross-dressers weren’t welcome. Who knew the rules were so complicated?
The black doorman spun Trooper Treadway around and propelled him out onto the deck with one big hand between his shoulder blades. “You want the Dance Bar, honey. First door on your left.”
In the Dance Bar, the music was even louder than it had been in the Vault, but it was different—happier, somehow. A punchy, disco version of “I Will Survive” thundered from enormous speakers; a DJ stood at the top of a narrow spiral staircase, surrounded by amps and mixers and other complicated-looking gear.
The room was crowded with men and mostly dark. A mirrored disco ball hung from the ceiling, and hundreds of bright dots whirled over the throng of dancers and flickered across the crowds of men waiting for drinks at the bar.
For the first time in his life, Trooper Treadway felt intimidated. The dance floor was packed with gyrating men. They ground against each other in pairs or small pods. Many were shirtless; Trooper Treadway could smell their sweat, the sheer sexual funk of it hanging in the air like smoke. The music was deafening. A strobe light fired in the dark room, its bright pulse turning the dancers ghostly and mechanical.
He couldn’t imagine entering this world, doing what these men did to each other, what some of them appeared to be about to do to each other in the very near future—it was all so abnormal. He shook his head; the images flickering inside it were too disturbing.
It was useless, he decided. There was no talking in a place like this, no chance to ask questions. He wasn’t blending in all that successfully, either. He felt a dozen pairs of eyes on him, standing primly at the edge of the dance floor, clutching his handbag. He felt trapped there suddenly—the place was getting more crowded by the moment—felt himself about to drown in a writhing, alien sea. A cold sweat rose on his forehead; he hoped his makeup wouldn’t run.
He turned to leave, but a colossally muscled man wearing nothing but a cowboy hat, boots, and white Calvin Klein underwear grabbed his arm and spun him around, practically dragging him out to the dance floor. Treadway was alarmed—it was as if he’d walked into an elaborate practical joke, or one of those dreams in which you’ve forgotten your pants.
“What’s your name, honey?” the man yelled into Trooper Treadway’s ear. He was grinding his muscular loins against Treadway’s thigh; his long-fingered hands squeezed Treadway’s buttocks as if they were ripe cantaloupes. The bulge in the man’s white briefs was enormous. The man, Trooper Treadway realized, was getting excited.
“I am Trooper Leonard Treadway of the Massachusetts State Police!” Treadway hollered, trying simultaneously to squirm from the man’s grasp and make himself heard over the pounding music. “Take your hands off me, or I’ll be forced to place you under arrest!”
“What?” the man said, pulling Treadway closer. “I can’t hear you!” The strobe light jittered. The music thumped and wailed.
A number of shirtless men who had been dancing together were now pointing at Trooper Treadway and laughing. Treadway reached into his purse for his ID—his service weapon was in there, too, and his handcuffs—but before he could find it, a second man approached and snatched the purse away, tossing it onto a small round table at the edge of the dance floor. Treadway’s handcuffs slid from the open purse and fell to the floor.
“Kinky!” the second man shouted into Trooper Treadway’s ear, rubbing his private region against Treadway’s buttocks. “I like that!” A hand shot up Treadway’s skirt—he struggled to push it away, but its owner was incredibly strong. Another hand went down the back of his pantyhose as the first hand squeezed his testicles through the taut nylon, forcing him onto his tiptoes.
“Awk!” said Trooper Treadway, squirming in the tentacled embrace of the two men. Panicked, he heaved with all his might, and the three of them staggered a few steps backward. The man who was grinding his pelvis into Trooper Treadway’s buttocks bumped into the table on which his bag lay crumpled, and Treadway’s service weapon—a chunky Glock nine millimeter—slid out of the bag and fell to the floor, where it discharged with a flat crack, barely audible above the music. The bullet pinged off the frozen margarita machine and blew a large hole in one of the DJ’s black metal boxes, halting the music abruptly.
Everyone froze. The smell of cordite hung in the air, sharp and dangerous. For a moment, the silence in the big room was absolute, crystalline. The two men who had been happily groping Trooper Treadway took several steps back. Treadway dove for his gun, retrieved it, scrambled to his feet in the preposterous heels, then dug into his purse, intending to produce his badge and brandish it before him like a crucifix in a den of vampires. He gripped the badge, but before he removed it from the bag a little red flag popped up in his head—there was a chance he could still escape without further embarrassment, the collegial jeering, the damage to his career that would certainly result if he revealed his identity. He collected his handcuffs, held the gun down at his side, and bolted for the door as the bartender frantically dialed the phone, no doubt calling the local police.
Trooper Treadway kicked off the wobbly pumps when he reached Commercial Street and ran as fast as he could down a dim alley, out onto the town beach, past the backs of restaurants and souvenir shops, then up a quiet side street near his hotel. “Motherfucker!” Trooper Treadway gasped, though he was not a man much given to vulgarity. His wig was cockeyed, his pantyhose torn. He had a raging erection.
Months later, Trooper Leonard Treadway would wake up after a darkly erotic dream filled with flashing lights and the shadowy, muscular forms of men. Sweating and aroused, he would lie awake until the clock radio went off at six, unable to sleep for the cloying dough-smell of his wife’s body and the occasional sound of her teeth grinding, like a car driving slowly over china plates and cups.
On his way home, Coffin drove toward the red glow and column of smoke through the tall wrought-iron gate that separated the Heights from the rest of Provincetown. One of the enormous new trophy houses on top of the hill was spectacularly engulfed in flames. Fire spouted from its doors and windows, and the roof was beginning to burn; big, flaming cinders drifted through the air like demonic kites, threatening to torch the houses next door. The volunteer fire department was there, its two small pumper trucks throbbing, red lights whirling, pathetic streams of water pissing from their hoses. The EMS boys leaned against their ambulance; the house was an inferno—if anyone was inside, there was nothing they could do.
It had been a gorgeous house, three full stories with banks of floor-to-ceiling windows facing Herring Cove. It had a broad upper deck, which would have been perfect for watching the sun set over the water while sipping a cold drink.
Coffin shut off the rumbling Dodge; it shuddered and clanked for several seconds before it died. He shouldered open the squealing door and climbed out. Two police cars sat at the bottom of the drive, lights flashing. A nervous cluster of neighbors stood in the street. Tony was smoking a cigarette, discussing the Sox and their annual late-season swoon with one of the summer cops. Lola was talking to two middle-aged men: one small, the other large and barrel-chested and wearing a cowboy hat. The fire crackled and popped like a Civil War skirmish.
“Anybody inside?” Coffin said.
“Don’t know for sure,” Lola said. “There was a dog barking and whining in there for a while, but it stopped.”
“Crispy critter,” Tony said. He rolled his eyes back in his head, held his curled hands up like begging paws.
Coffin looked at Tony, then at Lola, who was pointedly scribbling in her
notebook. He wanted to smack Tony in the head. Instead he said, “Got a cigarette?”
Tony pointed his flashlight at Coffin. “Thought you quit.”
“Just give me a cigarette.”
Tony dug in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a plastic lighter. He handed Coffin a cigarette and lit it for him.
Coffin took a deep drag. It tasted terrible. He took another.
“Gentlemen say they heard an explosion,” Lola said, pointing her pen at the two men. “Around ten fifteen.”
“Not an explosion, exactly,” said the big man. “Sort of a foomp.”
“Foomp?” said Coffin.
“Yeah,” the man said. He draped a thick arm around the small man’s shoulders. “Like when your furnace comes on in the winter? But louder.”
“Did you see anything?” Coffin asked. “Flames? A flash of light?”
“Not till later,” said the small man. “We were out for an after-dinner stroll. On our way back, we saw flames through the downstairs windows. We ran right home and called 911.”
Coffin watched the big house burn for a few minutes. The firefighters were having trouble; they kept slipping and falling on the wet lawn, and one of the trucks was only producing a weak, intermittent spritz. The fire was beautiful, like a great, hungry animal, feasting on joists and windowsills. “Whose house is this?”
Lola looked at her notebook. “Belongs to a Mr. Jason Duarte. Belonged.”
“Any relation to Rocky Duarte? As in Duarte Construction?” Coffin said.
Tony nodded. “He’s Rocky’s grandkid. Took over the business a couple years ago.”
“Rocky was a nice old guy,” Coffin said. “He used to come around when I was a kid and watch the Celts games with Pop—they didn’t have TV.”
“Some house,” Lola said. “The Duartes have done all right for themselves since then.”
“My brother-in-law’s a builder,” one of the summer cops said. “Once you get a good line of credit, you can build these big trophy houses, live in them a few years, then sell them for a fortune and build another one.”
“What if the market goes down?” Coffin asked.
“Sicilian foreclosure,” Tony said, nodding at the fire. He shrugged. “But since when does the market go down?”
Coffin flipped his cigarette butt onto the pavement and ground it out with his toe. “I wonder what went foomp.”
The house groaned, and a large section of the roof collapsed; a cloud of sparks burst upward into the night sky.
“Anybody call the fire marshal?” Coffin asked.
“I did,” Lola said. “He’s on his way up from Barnstable.”
“I’m going home, then,” Coffin said. “Call me if you need me.”
Chapter 11
It’s quiet, except for the hiss and clank of the old-fashioned radiators. There’s a short hallway with a closet, then a living room. Coffin makes a mental catalog: recliners, green carpet, old console TV. The colors are weirdly intense, as if the whole room is suffused with the green light before a storm.
The first bedroom is empty. The bed unmade. Clothes strewn on the floor—jeans, a flannel shirt, women’s cowboy boots, shoddy and worn at the heel. There’s a wall hanging, a big image of a wolf howling at a bright moon, printed on black plush. There’s a boom box on the nightstand, a mostly empty bottle of Jim Beam, a glass pipe and a lighter.
“Hillbillies on crack,” Rashid said. “The black man’s revenge.”
The second bedroom is bad. There’s blood everywhere—smeared on the floor, soaking the bedclothes, spattered on the walls and ceiling. Coffin has seen hundreds of homicide victims, hundreds of rooms and apartments and houses where murders have been committed; his first year as a Baltimore cop, he vomited from one end of his precinct to the other. But this is one of the worst—the two battered children in their beds, the covers twisted around them. Their faces are horribly damaged, their skulls caved in. Coffin realizes he’s making a sound, a kind of whimper in the back of his throat. Rashid is doing his job, taking Polaroids, but Coffin can’t stay in the hot little bedroom anymore. He wants to flee, but where? There’s a small crowd of people outside the door. He considers opening the window and climbing down the fire escape, but then Rashid comes out of the bedroom, shaking his big head. Coffin expects him to make a joke, some wisecrack that will make him feel better, less out of control.
“This is bad, Coffin,” Rashid says. “This is really incredibly fucking bad.”
Later in the dream, the phone began to ring, and Coffin searched for it in a lightless room, worried he might fall down the stairs in the dark. Something fell on the floor and broke. The phone stopped ringing, and Boyle’s voice came out of the answering machine.
“For fuck’s sake, Coffin,” he said. “I blame this entirely on you.”
Coffin turned on the light and, squinting, picked up the phone. The digital clock said 5:17. “What’s that, Chief?” he said, rubbing his eyes.
“We’ve got another one,” Boyle said, as if he’d discovered a rat in the laundry hamper.
Coffin knew but asked anyway. “Another one what?”
“Dead guy, is what—Jesus Christ, Coffin. Up at the Heights—the fire department found a dead guy in that house that burned down.”
Coffin grimaced, swung his legs out from under the bedclothes.
“Is it Jason Duarte?”
“Beats me, Coffin,” Boyle said. “What does Jason Duarte look like? ’Cause this guy’s crunchy, black, and smoldering.”
Coffin sat on the edge of the bed for a minute or two. He felt disoriented and dizzy; his hand shook slightly as he brushed his teeth. He put on old clothes—poking around in burned-out buildings was a dirty job—and a pair of ancient L.L. Bean duck boots. It took him a long time to hunt down his keys. It was still dark outside. The air was damp and cold, and the whole town smelled like smoke.
The smell was worse at the Heights; stronger and more complex. There was the stink of charred wood, of course, but also melted plastic and a burnt-wool smell that Coffin guessed was expensive carpet. Beneath it all, something horrible, something animal and a little sweet that made the back of his throat close a bit.
A few volunteer firefighters were still there, leaning against a pumper truck and smoking cigarettes, keeping an eye on the blackened skeleton of Jason Duarte’s house. Lola and Jeff Skillings had cordoned the lot with yellow police tape. A gaggle of neighbors hovered in the street; Coffin wondered if they’d been there all night. Pete Wells, the fire marshal, was sitting in the open rear door of his van, drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Mornin,’ Frank,” he said.
“What’ve we got here, Pete?” Coffin said.
Wells was about thirty-five, with a mop of curly brown hair. He wore jeans, yellow rubber boots, and a plaid cowboy shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons. “Two bodies,” he said. “One human, one canine. In the basement. That’s where they ended up, anyway, when the floors caved in.”
“Coroner not here yet?” Coffin said.
“Nope. Nor the state police. There’s a wreck out on Route Six, apparently. Big pileup in the middle of suicide alley. Guess I just missed it.”
“You got a minute? Can you give me the tour?”
“Have I got a minute,” Wells said, dumping the last of his coffee into the street. “Time is all I got, my friend.”
_______
The house had burned to the sills; only the poured concrete foundation remained, the basement a blackened hole in the ground. Dead cinders and wet wads of pink insulation were scattered across the lawn. Charred timbers lay everywhere, broken, at odd angles.
“Jesus,” Coffin said, climbing down an aluminum ladder into the basement. “The place looks like a bomb hit it.”
“Nothing as exotic as that,” Wells said, climbing down after him. “Simple arson fire.”
“How do you know?”
Wells pointed. “See here? Scorch marks on the concrete slab, from the stairs to what w
as the laundry room. Looks like somebody doused a pile of dirty clothes with gas or kerosene, poured a trail out to the stairway, lit it, and walked away. Arson 101. They didn’t try to conceal it, either. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an empty gas can lying around.”
“Look at the washer and dryer,” Coffin said. They lay crumpled on the basement floor, as if they’d been thrown from the cargo hold of an airplane as it flew overhead.
“Yeah—the fridge melted, too. Pretty hot fire. Ready to look at the bodies?”
Coffin’s vision began to warp and swim. He stuck a hand out, leaned against the foundation wall and took a few deep breaths.
“You okay?” Wells said. “You don’t look so good, Frank.”
“I’m fine,” Coffin said. His palms tingled. His heart thunked in his chest. “It’s nothing that’ll kill me, anyway.”
They picked their way through half-devoured floor joists, blackened doors, and stumps of stud wall, all of which had collapsed into the basement as the floors gave way.
“Here’s the dog,” Wells said. The charred body lay near the furnace. It could have been any small four-legged thing—a cat, a raccoon. The reek of its burned flesh was almost overwhelming.
“And the man?”
“I didn’t say it was a man.” Wells stepped around a bent and blackened clawfoot bathtub. “I said it was a human. Your guess as to the gender’s as good as mine.”
The body was black and stiff. Most of its clothes had burned away. Coffin was glad it was facedown. The smell was horrible. He coughed, gagging a little. His boots were smeared with ash.
When Coffin got home it was almost noon. He checked his answering machine. There were nine messages from reporters requesting interviews and one message from his cousin Tony, inviting him over to watch a ball game—the Sox versus the Yankees. Coffin pictured Tony’s chaotic house, the explosion of plastic toys all but obscuring the floor, Tony’s three young children screaming back and forth in front of the TV screen, his wife, Doris, hollering at them, somebody always crying.