Rogue Island

by Bruce DeSilva

  39

  The next day’s front page headline: HELL NIGHT IN MOUNT HOPE. The lead photo, played four columns wide, captured Rosie as she emerged from a smoky doorway cradling Carmella DeLucca in her arms.

  Thanks to Veronica’s call, Lomax had reached the newsroom in time to stop the city-edition press run after only twelve hundred papers had been printed. He filed a series of updates for the online edition and then wrote the print story himself with feeds from reporters at the scenes. He remade the front page with dramatic fire photos and put out a great newspaper that started flowing onto the delivery trucks only ninety minutes past normal deadline.

  “Wait till the publisher gets the overtime bill from the pressmen and truck drivers,” Veronica said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “he’ll probably dock Lomax’s pay.”

  We were hunched over plates of scrambled eggs and bacon at the diner, devouring the paper. Last night we’d been isolated at separate fire scenes, and we were hungry for the whole story in one place. There’d been five suspicious fires in all, the last one eating through a three-story garden apartment building on Mount Hope Avenue. I didn’t even know about that one until I read what Lomax had written.

  “Bet they’ll give your friend Rosie a medal,” Veronica said.

  “She’s already got a drawer full of them.”

  Charlie cleared the cold, half-eaten eggs away and topped off our coffees. “Here comes that asshole I was telling you about,” he said. “The one that come in here the other day asking could I whip him up a cheese soufflé.”

  Mason strolled in looking uncharacteristically casual in a buff cashmere sweater and knife-creased tan slacks, his left hand clutching the handle of a Dunhill briefcase worth more than my pension. He perched on the stool next to mine and asked Charlie for coffee.

  “What, no café au lait this morning? No chai latte? Must be something you want that I ain’t got.”

  “A cup of your excellent coffee would be fine.”

  The fry cook snorted, slammed a mug in front of Mason, and dumped in the dregs from a nearly empty pot. Mason took a sip of the sludge and pointed at the front page.

  “Guess I missed a big story last night.”

  “Yes, you did,” I said. “That’s what happens when you work in Providence and live in a palace way the hell down in Newport.”

  “You guys did a great job.”

  “Why, thank you, Thanks-Dad. That means soooo much coming from you.”

  Veronica stretched out her right leg and gave me a kick. It hurt enough to make me wonder whose side she was on.

  “Ease up on him,” she said. “Not his fault his father’s rich.”

  Mason just shrugged, snapped open the silver latch on his briefcase, and pulled out a slim file folder.

  “I’ve been working on that manhole covers story, and I think I may have found something,” he said. “I was hoping you could look it over and advise me on what to do next.”

  “Later. Right now, I got someplace I have to be.”

  Leaving the cub reporter with the hot babe, I walked out of the diner and whistled for Secretariat. When he didn’t come, I fetched him from the lot across from the paper and pointed him toward Mount Hope.

  40

  At Prospect Terrace, a Mr. Potato Head statue stood watch over Roger Williams’s grave. Sexually confused vandals had already enhanced the spud with D-cups and a big red penis.

  A state fire marshal’s car was parked at the curb in front of the torched triple-decker on Doyle. I pulled in behind it, got out, ducked under the yellow police tape, and skirted a sooty, soggy heap of mattresses and upholstered furniture. A uniformed cop stood with crossed arms on the concrete front stoop. He didn’t tell me to get out.

  “Guy from the state fire marshal’s office is nosing around in the basement,” he said. “Want me to see if he’ll talk to you?”

  “Thanks, Eddie.”

  While I waited, I looked over what was left of 188 Doyle Avenue, where I’d played cops and robbers with the Jenkins twins when I was a kid. Now half the roof was gone. Nothing but black behind every shattered window. A total loss. I stared at the unblinking third-story window on the southeast corner where old Mr. McCready, the teacher who’d first introduced me to Ray Bradbury and John Steinbeck, had been strangled by the smoke. The arsonist was reducing my childhood to ashes.

  The crew of Engine 12, the first on the scene last night, had gotten everyone but Mr. McCready out safely, but two firemen were in Rhode Island Hospital with smoke inhalation and another was on a slab with fried lungs. I was still looking at the window when Leahy stepped out on the stoop.

  “Nothing I can say officially, Mulligan,” he said.

  “But?”

  “But unofficially, there’s heavy charring in three places on the basement walls.”

  “In the shape of upside-down arrowheads?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I take it you know what that means.”

  “Signs of an accelerant,” I said, my late-night reading of government arson reports beginning to pay off.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Signs of an accelerant. Big surprise.”

  “A timing device? Coffeemaker again?”

  “I scraped some broken glass and melted plastic off the floor and sent it to the lab, but, yeah, that’s probably what it is.”

  I thanked him and drove a block north to Pleasant, where a uniformed officer slumped behind the wheel of a cruiser in the driveway of a two-story bungalow. The place had been so badly burned there was no way to tell what color it had been painted.

  “The people who lived here just came by,” he said. “Wanted to go inside, see if they could salvage something, maybe find some family pictures. It’s going to be at least a week before the arson investigators get around to this one, so I had to chase them off. Look at this place. Wouldn’t you think they’d know there’s nothing left that isn’t drenched or burned to ash?”

  On Mount Hope Avenue, the roof of the garden apartments was a skeleton of blackened rafters. Thin gray smoke wafted from the smoldering interior. A pumper crew was still on the scene, shooting a jet of water through the collapsed northwest wall. The reinforcements from Pawtucket had fought this one, arriving in time to see people leaping from second- and third-story windows. Three jumpers snapped their ankles, and two broke their legs. A fireman and six tenants, including a toddler, were hospitalized with second-degree burns and smoke inhalation.

  I was looking for someone to talk to when Roselli stepped out of the wreckage and threw me the finger, his own special way of saying No comment.

  At the ruined duplex on Larch, a crew from Dio Construction sprawled on the curb next to their front-end loader, popping the tabs on a mid-morning twelve-pack of ’Gansett and sharing the suds with Polecki.

  “I was wondering when you were going to show up, asshole,” he said.

  “What are they doing here? You release this scene already?”

  “Nah. The owner hired them to knock the place down and clear the rubble, which is fine with me. The roof and floors collapsed into the basement. I can’t even get in there for a look until they clear some of this crap away.”

  Across the street, Joseph DeLucca was slumped on his front stoop, his bandaged head resting on his knees. He heard my footfalls on the flagstone walk, raised his eyes, and glared.

  “Get your ass off our property, you fuckin’ vulture.”

  He hauled himself to his feet, balled his fists, and took a step toward me. The movement made him wince in pain.

  “How’s your mom?”

  That stopped him. He sighed and collapsed back onto the stoop.

  “I don’t want you writing about my ma in your fuckin’ paper again,” he said, but all the bully had drained from his voice.

  “I won’t, Joseph. I’m just wondering how she’s doing.”

  “Pissed as hell. Got her staying with her sister, but Ma don’t understand why she can’t come back home.”

  “Why are you sitting here?” I
asked, before realizing he probably had nowhere else to go.

  “ ’Cause of that fuckin’ Polack. Pozecki? Perluski? He told me I can’t go in my own fuckin’ house. I told him that was bullshit, so he promised to take me inside, let me look around as long as I stay out of the fuckin’ basement. I gotta see if the pictures of Pa and my Nomar rookie card got burned up. If he ever stops suckin’ down beers, the fuckin’ prick.”

  “You rent this place?”

  “Nah. It’s Ma’s. Pa left it to her after the cancer took him. It’s all she’s got.”

  “Insured?”

  “Ma says we are.”

  “Going to rebuild?”

  “I don’t know, man. Ma’s too old to start over. Should have sold the fuckin’ place when we had the chance.”

  41

  New volunteers swelled the DiMaggios to sixty-two members, Zerilli cutting off enlistments when he ran out of Louisville Sluggers. Barely trained fire academy recruits reinforced Rosie’s embattled battalion, which had now lost five men to injury and death. Fire extinguishers and firearms flew off the shelves at Drago Guns and Hardware on North Main. Scores of women and children fled Mount Hope and moved in with relatives, their men staying behind to sit up all night with revolvers or shotguns. The paper announced a relief fund for families burned out of their homes, the publisher chipping in the first thousand bucks. And the governor offered Rhode Island National Guardsmen to patrol Mount Hope’s streets, then recanted when he remembered they were in Iraq.

  Hell Night follow-ups kept us all hopping for days. It was good there was so much work. I didn’t have time to slow down and think about all the ways the old neighborhood was getting smaller.

  It was Friday before I had time to consider what to do next. I was still sitting at my desk thinking about it when Deep Purple interrupted with the opening licks of “Smoke on the Water.” I checked caller ID and decided to pick up anyway.

  “You!

  fucking!

  bastard!”

  “Good morning, Dorcas.”

  “Who’s the Asian bitch you were pawing at Casserta’s the other night?”

  “You know, I’m glad you called. How’s Rewrite doing? Are you remembering her heartworm pills? She should have one the first of every month.”

  “You always cared more about that fucking dog than you cared about me!”

  “Well, she was more affectionate.”

  “You son of a bitch!”

  “It’s been nice chatting with you, Dorcas, but I have to go back to work.” I clicked off before she could accuse me of screwing the dog.

  As soon as I shut my loving ex off in mid-rant, Deep Purple started in again: Dah dah DAH, dah dah da-DAH, dah dah DAH, dah dah.

  Note to self: Change ring tone to something without smoke in the title.

  “We should talk.”

  “Got something for me?”

  “Nothing hard,” McCracken said, “but Hell Night doesn’t make sense. A pyro sets fires so he can watch them burn. Why five fires on four streets at the same time? No way to savor them all.”

  I pulled a fresh bottle of Maalox from my drawer, cracked it open, and took a swig.

  “Maybe it’s not the fires that get him off,” I said. “Maybe it’s reading about them in the paper, seeing his handiwork on the TV news.”

  “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it was a way of maximizing the damage. The fire department isn’t equipped to handle that many fires all at once. We got too many maybes. Why don’t you drop by so we can put our heads together?”

  “Be there in half an hour.”

  I walked across town and stepped into McCracken’s outer office just in time to see his secretary bend over to stuff a folder in a file cabinet.

  “He’s expecting you,” she said, holding the pose to give me a good look at a lacy red thong under a black micro-skirt. “You can go right in.”

  Hell of a straight line, but I didn’t touch it. I’d seen her ex-boxer boyfriend remodel too many faces.

  McCracken squeezed my hand like he was trying to grind my metacarpal bones into powder.

  “Heard anything from Polecki?” I said.

  “Just after I called you. The triple-decker and the two single-families were definitely torched. Coffeemakers and gasoline used on all three. They’re still working on the duplex and the apartment building, but we can be pretty sure what they’re going to find.”

  “Word is the toddler they pulled out of the apartment building isn’t going to make it,” I said. “Another kid who won’t get to grow up in Mount Hope. That makes eleven dead now, not to mention fifteen more with burns and injuries.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “And nearly five million in fire insurance claims, three million against my company alone. Thank God I’m not in the life insurance business.”

  His desk was the size of a parking space. He unrolled a map that covered most of it, a topographical view of Mount Hope showing all the streets and structures. We spent the next few minutes identifying the fourteen buildings that had been torched. McCracken colored them in chronologically with a yellow marker, starting with the first fire in December and ending with Hell Night.

  Initially, the fires appeared scattered: the first on Cypress, the next four blocks south on Doyle, the third over on Hope at the eastern edge of the neighborhood. But as the last half dozen boxes filled with yellow, a pattern emerged. All of the fires had been set within a misshapen rectangle bordered by Larch on the north, Hope on the east, Doyle on the south, and on the west by Camp, known in colonial times as Horse Pasture Lane. Nothing outside the southeast quadrant of the neighborhood, the part that butts up against Brown University and the pricey East Side.

  “I noticed the same thing Tuesday when I drove around checking out the Hell Night damage,” I said. “Could have parked the car and strolled past all fourteen torched buildings in ten minutes.”

  “Clear out all the old buildings between Doyle and Larch,” McCracken said, “and you’d have yourself a prime piece of development property.”

  “You would. But that would require one hell of a conspiracy.”

  “Because the properties belong to five different realty companies.”

  “Yeah, and the DeLuccas own their place on Larch, which makes six owners.”

  “What about the other four Hell Night targets?”

  “Don’t know yet,” I said. “I’ll check the property records this afternoon, but that’s probably going to give us still more owners.”

  “Probably will,” he said. “Hard to see anything in it. Still, the pattern is peculiar.”

  “It could be random. A few years ago, I thought I’d found a cancer cluster over by McCoy Stadium. A dozen dead and dying in just four square blocks. A team from the CDC came up from Atlanta to look at it and decided there was nothing strange going on. When you’ve got a lot of something, like fires in Mount Hope or cancer in Pawtucket or stars in the sky, it’s never spread evenly. You always get clusters.”

  “Still, it’s something to think about,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “it is.”

  42

  On the walk back across the Providence River, I called Veronica and suggested she join me for my usual gourmet fare at the diner. I was watching Chef Charlie burn the life out of my cheeseburger when she showed up with Mason. That irritated me a little. A squeeze and smooch from Veronica, and I almost got over it.

  “I’m glad you called,” she said, climbing onto the stool next to mine. “Something I meant to tell you this morning. You remember Lucy?”

  “Your sister?”

  “Yeah. She’s driving down from Boston this afternoon to spend the weekend with me. I won’t be seeing you for a couple of days, so it’s good we can grab a quiet lunch together.”

  I looked around. Two loudmouthed women were having an expletive-laced discussion about the cheating ways of someone named Herb. Charlie hummed a little off-key ZZ Top to drown out my burger as it screamed for mercy. Some guy a couple of stools down was
snoring like a champ. The diner wasn’t exactly a romantic spot, and sitting between Veronica and Mason didn’t feel much like quality time.

  “You’ve got a sister?” Mason said.

  “I do.”

  “Is she as pretty as you?”

  “Younger and prettier.”

  “Think she’d like me?”

  What was this, High School Musical?

  Veronica tossed her mane and laughed. “She might. I’ll give her your number and you can ask her yourself.”

  Mason grinned, then remembered he was rumored to be a reporter. He unsnapped the Dunhill and extracted a file folder.

  “Got a few minutes now to consult on that manhole covers story? I think I’m on to something, and I could use your advice on how to proceed with my investigation.”

  Oh, great. Now he’s an investigative reporter.

  “Sorry, Thanks-Dad. No time today.”

  “Oh. Okay,” he said, and put the file away.

  He sat quietly for a moment, then said, “Mulligan?”

  “Um?”

  “Is this a test? Do you want to see what I am able to accomplish on my own?”

  “Right. You’re on to me.”

  “So I should use my own judgment, then?”

  “Yes, that fine instrument honed in the hallowed halls of Columbia.”

  He nodded and smiled to himself.

  Veronica and Mason were still picking at their sandwiches when Charlie cleared away my empty plate and dropped the check on the counter. I nudged it toward Thanks-Dad.

  “Have fun, Veronica,” I said. That sounded lame, so I pecked her cheek for emphasis.

  As I headed for the door, I turned around for a last look at her bare legs curled around the stool. She had her wallet out and was showing Mason a photo of her sister. He was grinning again. I turned away and stepped out into a day that smelled like rain.