Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn

by Ace Atkins

  I resisted the urge to open the box and start in on the pie with both hands. Restraint.

  “How long have you been a Spark?” I said.

  “Twenty-two years,” he said. “Loved every minute.”

  I slid the stills from a large manila mailer and set them on the table between us. “Recognize these men?”

  Ramaglia reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of cheaters. Had I not been in public, I might have reached for mine. He studied the first photo for a while and then flipped through the rest. He shuffled them in a neat pile and placed them on the envelope. “Jesus Christ.”

  “Know them?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Afraid I do.”

  “Are they Sparks?”

  “Hell, no,” he said. “Thank God. The young guy’s name is Teehan. I don’t know his first name. He runs with this guy Johnny Donovan who’s a bad seed. He tried to join the association for at least ten years. About three years ago, he came to our meeting unannounced and basically told Rob that he was a fucking asshole. I hadn’t seen him much since, but I know he’s still out there, trying to say he’s a Spark. He drives a big red Chevy SUV, pretending he’s official or something. A first-class Froot Loop. Someone should bring him up on charges.”

  “Is he violent?”

  “I don’t think so,” Ramaglia said. “Just a nut. Why? You think these are the guys?”

  “They were observed acting very strange at a few fire scenes.”

  “They are strange,” Ramaglia said. “But I don’t see them shooting Rob in the back. Teehan is a blowhard. But he loves firefighters. He wouldn’t torch a building and put the boys in danger. The guy who killed Rob lit those fires and burned you out, too.”

  “You know where I can find them?”

  “Donovan runs some kind of security business in Southie,” Ramaglia said. “I know he’s a rent-a-cop of some sort. Always has a badge and a gun.”

  “What about Teehan?”

  “He’s just a kid,” Ramaglia said. “Jesus, I don’t know. Probably still lives with his mother. I can ask around.”

  “Is he friendly with any of the Sparks?”

  “A few,” Ramaglia said. “You know, he’s a good kid if he kept different company.”

  “Can you ask around without mentioning me or that anyone is asking about him?”

  “Sure.”

  I drank some coffee. I continued to resist the urge to eat part of the pie. I even had silverware within reach. If I worked out a sliver, Susan wouldn’t even notice. It had been a hard week. I deserved some pie.

  “What about the third man?” I said. “Do you know him?”

  Ramaglia shook his head. “I may have seen him hanging around,” he said. “Can I keep one of those pictures?”

  “Absolutely,” I said. “But keep this circle tight.”

  Ramaglia drank some coffee. It felt very good to be in the air-conditioning and drinking hot beverages. I planned to stop back by the new farmers’ market again tonight. That place was the best thing to hit Boston since Carl Yastrzemski. I also could use several new shirts, khakis, and jeans. Underwear, socks, bullets.

  “Rob’s wife’s not doing so good,” Ramaglia said. He looked out the window at a group of children from a summer day camp jumping and jostling. “She held up good for the wake and all. But now it’s over, she’s a fucking mess. They were together a long time.”

  The kids continued to make a lot of noise, like a crazy parade, and continued toward the waiting doors of a school bus. Everyone waited in a neat and orderly line for the bus to let them inside. A few of them pounded on the side of the bus; others took in the scenery around them.

  “Call me if you can find out about the third guy,” I said. “Or get a first name on Teehan that I could check out.”

  “Rob was good people. Ain’t nobody deserves to die like that. Whoever did this and torched your apartment is a real coward. I sure hope you can help.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me, too.”

  39

  Pearl barked and circled as I entered with bags from Whole Foods and set them on the upstairs kitchen counter. Susan had on a loose linen skirt and a navy silk tank, her hair piled in a messy bun on top of her head.

  “How bad is the apartment?” she said. She stood in front of me, placing both hands on my face. She wanted to look into my eyes.

  “Do you remember that fantastic white suit I used to wear?”

  “Do I?”

  “Whoosh,” I said. “Gone.”

  “Oh, thank God,” she said. “And the black leather trench coat?”

  “All the old wardrobe is gone.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Maybe there is an upside.”

  “If I don’t go shopping or do some laundry, I may have to dip into your closet.”

  “There’s a little give in some of my wrap dresses,” she said. “But not that much.”

  “How about I cook dinner and we can discuss?”

  “A roomie with benefits?”

  I rolled my chambray shirt up to my elbows and started to wash the greens. They were local and very fresh. I let them drain in a colander and laid out the rest of the salad: a carrot, a purple onion, red pepper, and some candied walnuts. I mixed some Creole mustard with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar as requested by Susan and placed the baguette in the oven to warm.

  As it heated, I opened a beer and began to stir up some pimento cheese. I grated a nice hunk of smoked cheddar from American Provisions, added a bit of cream cheese, some Blue Plate mayo, and pimentos. I liked to use a lot of black pepper and some spices from Boudreaux’s.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll stop by Ball and Buck tomorrow for some shirts. I’ll need some new workout gear, too.”

  “And pants, socks, shoes, new furniture, and a place to live.”

  “Oh,” I said. “And that, too.”

  I made the salad and set the table. I sliced the bread for sandwiches from the hot baguette. She turned off the television and joined me in the dining room. I continued on my Narragansett kick while eating two large sandwiches and a side salad. I had yet to tell her about the lemon meringue.

  “Have you learned anything new?”

  “After two days of watching video at the TV station, we turned up a couple of suspects.”

  “That’s promising.”

  The sandwiches were so good, I immediately began to make more. I set two small ones out for Susan while I let Pearl lick the bowl.

  “Both of them have ties to the fire department,” I said. “One of them is just a kid. He wants to be a Boston firefighter.”

  “Starting off as an arsonist won’t look good on his application.”

  “If it’s who I believe, I can’t figure out what they hope to accomplish,” I said. “I’m going to talk to the younger one tomorrow. He seems the most promising.”

  “And the other?”

  “Not so much,” I said. “Other than the fact that he is a frustrated wannabe firefighter and the Sparks Association people thought he was a total nutjob. And he once screamed at a man who’s now been murdered.”

  “Haven’t we all?”

  “There’s a third man who was seen with them. But no one knows who he is.”

  “Harry Lime?”

  I lifted an eyebrow and drank some beer. Pearl had finished with the bowl but continued to nose it around the kitchen floor. I picked it up and set it in the sink to wash.

  “We believe there’s three of them,” I said. “If I can get just one to talk, it’ll all come apart.”

  “If one out of three isn’t a complete sociopath,” she said. “After all they’ve done.”

  I nodded. “I can’t imagine they wanted it to go this far,” I said. “Three firefighters dead.”

  “And a man who supported the department.”r />
  “Any recommendations on talking with the kid?”

  Susan poured some Riesling from the refrigerator. She leaned against the counter. “It’s pretty much the same as you did with Z,” she said. “Find the person he looks up to and destroy the image.”

  “This creep is no Jumbo Nelson,” I said. “And Z had a heart. And brains.”

  “The power of three,” she said. “There’s always one who might feel ostracized. The trick is finding out who.”

  “And why.”

  40

  I found Kevin Teehan working in the garden section of a Home Depot in Somerville. I’d spent the morning learning as much as I could about him. He was twenty-two, a high school dropout, had earned two misdemeanor charges for assault, and he was a longtime volunteer with the fire department in Blackburn. I recognized him from a Facebook photo I’d found online. He posted a lot of photos about firefighting and his mother, who I gathered had died when he was young.

  Teehan was a little guy, short and skinny, with a wisp of a beard like Shaggy on Scooby-Doo. The closer I got, I saw he’d buzz-cut his dark hair and had quite a collection of acne scars on his face. He wore small studs in each earlobe. Hip.

  He watered several flats of white and pink impatiens. The impatiens were now on summer sale.

  Teehan stopped watering as I walked close, smiled, and asked if he might help me. I introduced myself and the smile lessened a bit. “I understand you help out Boston Fire sometimes,” I said. “I’m hoping you might be able to help me.”

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “I’m working on the fire at the Holy Innocents last year.”

  “Yeah?” he said. “Don’t know how I can help. I work in Blackburn.” He looked at me for a long moment and then continued his watering duties. He’d moved on from the impatiens to buckets of lantana. If I hadn’t been a gumshoe, perhaps I could’ve been a botanist.

  “But you’re sometimes at fire scenes in the city?” I said. “Working with the Sparks?”

  He shook his head. “I’m not with the Sparks.”

  “Why not?”

  He craned his head, openmouthed, and shrugged. “Sometimes I’ve been to some fires around Boston. I like to watch those guys work. You know, to learn stuff.”

  Teehan’s eyes were set too close together. The wispy beard on his chin looked ridiculous. I wanted to grab some pruning shears and do the kid a favor. “What do you learn, Kevin?” I said. Mr. Friendly.

  “You see how they work as a team,” he said. “It’s like a ball game. All fires have a strategy. These guys are top athletes, really.”

  “What about setting fires?” I said. “Have you learned much about arson?”

  He didn’t turn to me this time, just kept on running the water over the flowers, nice and easy. “What do you mean?”

  “You might have seen something or someone at one of the fires this summer,” I said. “You weren’t fighting the fire, but you were an educated spectator. You might have noticed a very important detail.”

  Teehan set down the hose; the nozzle shut off, but water continued to leak on the concrete. The department smelled strongly of soil and fertilizer and the soft sweetness of roses. He brushed some dirt off his orange vest as he studied my face and looked as if he’d decided I was all right. I wondered if he might ever drive a white van.

  “How’d you get my name?”

  “I interviewed several members of the Sparks,” I said. “Rob Featherstone.”

  Teehan nodded along, playing a bit with the wisps on his chin. “He’s dead,” Teehan said. “Got fucking carjacked or something. It was on the news. They had a big thing for him at the museum.”

  “Did you go?” I said.

  “No,” he said. “I had to work. But he was a good guy. One of the Sparks who actually took time to talk to me.”

  “I bet you’ve seen some big fires.”

  “I’ve been watching fires since I was a kid,” Teehan said. He smiled big. “I always wanted to be a fireman. My mom used to take me to fires when I was a kid. All she could talk about was that someday I’d be on the job.”

  “You were close?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Still are. I bring her flowers every week. Keep her grave fresh like she’d want.”

  “So why’d you join the department all the way in Blackburn?” I said.

  “I took a test for Boston,” he said. “I did real good. I’m on the list. But I don’t have no family in the department. And I’m not a freakin’ woman or black.”

  I nodded as if I could really identify with his plight of being a young white man in America. “So did you happen to be at the Holy Innocents?”

  Teehan actually placed two fingers on his lips, seeming to think on that name. He slowly shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “You know, the big one?” I said. “Three Boston firefighters died? Dougherty, Bonnelli, and Mulligan? They got trapped in the church basement.”

  “Yeah, I know. But I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it.”

  Although I hadn’t seen him on that video, it would be easy enough to check. That morning, I’d culled some of the screen grabs from the footage. I had Z crop some of the faces from different fire scenes, most notably Johnny Donovan. I pulled out a 4x6 with a decent shot of Donovan’s face and showed it to Teehan.

  “Know this guy?”

  Teehan craned his head to study the picture a bit. He did a little more method acting, biting his lip before shaking his head. “Nope.”

  “You’ve never seen him?”

  Teehan shook his head. “No,” he said. “Why?”

  “Oh,” I said. “Just another onlooker. I think he had a pretty good vantage point at the fire. I hoped he might be able to help me, too. If his name comes to you, just let me know.”

  “What are you looking for?” he said. “You hearing something?”

  I took a deep breath. A curly-headed woman in a pink shirt headed down the aisle pushing a shopping cart. She rested her beefy arms on the cart handle, moving slowly and checking out her seasonal options. She stopped and picked up a pot of blue hydrangeas.

  “What about the fire the other night on Marlborough Street?” I said.

  He stopped pulling on the thin beard and scratched the back of his neck. “You mean by the Public Garden?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Right by the garden. Two firefighters got hurt. Whoever is setting this stuff is getting really reckless. You know?”

  I stared at him and I saw fear in his narrow eyes. But he just shook his head and looked away from me, unable to keep contact. “I can ask around,” Teehan said. “You got a card or something?”

  “You know, Kevin,” I said. “For you, I just might.”

  I pulled one from my wallet and handed it to him. This time I wished I really had the one with the skull-and-crossbones logo.

  41

  Yes, I know Johnny Donovan,” said a guy named Mark Schultze. “Wish to God I could say I didn’t. My experience with him wasn’t pleasant.”

  We sat in his office at a very tony private school in Watertown called Oak Grove. Outside his window, children were conducting some type of summer science camp in a marsh. A table had been set along a boardwalk with microscopes. I imagined summer camp at Oak Grove cost as much as yachting at Martha’s Vineyard.

  “How long did you know him?” I said.

  “He was here when I took the job four years ago,” Schultze said. He was a smallish guy with brown hair and an expanding belly. He wore a red gingham shirt that looked like a tablecloth at an Italian restaurant and blocky black eyeglasses. “His official title was security, but he turned out to be more of a fix-it guy. He took care of the heating and cooling, basic maintenance of the property.”

  “Tell me about the problems you had with him,” I said.

  “
Should I speak to my lawyer before I do?”

  “Do you wish to look out for Donovan’s interests?”

  “Of course not.”

  I smiled big. “Well, then.”

  “Six months after I got here,” he said. “A few computers disappeared, an iPad or two, and then a large-screen television.”

  “Did you confront him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Schultze said. “He was incredulous. Donovan claimed he was part of some witch hunt and blamed some of our landscapers who did not speak English nor had access to the classrooms. He kept on saying it was those rotten Mexicans.”

  “Did you fire him?”

  “Not at first,” Schultze said. “He threatened us with a lawsuit if he was reprimanded. That’s how the whole adventure started. I should have followed my instincts. I should gotten rid of him immediately.”

  I raised my eyebrows. I sometimes did this in place of saying “Please continue.”

  “Are you in contact with anyone in the media, Mr. Spenser?” Schultze said.

  “If you’re concerned about school privacy, this conversation is between us,” I said. “I’m doing a background check on Mr. Donovan. He’s a suspect in some other crimes.”

  “More thefts and bullying?”

  “Of a sort,” I said. “Let’s just say his behavior has warranted my attention.”

  Outside the windows, the day campers were dipping gallon buckets into the marsh and sorting through the muck. Some of the children carried long nets. They wore rubber boots and sloshed about, seeming to have a great time. All in all, I would have invested in sailing at Martha’s Vineyard. You could have cocktails while the kids frolicked.

  “My relationship with Mr. Donovan remained icy,” Schultze said. “We didn’t speak for almost a year. He did his job. And then he had an altercation with one of our tenth-graders. He accused a boy of breaking into the maintenance shed and took matters into his own hands.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He pushed the boy and slapped him hard across the face,” Schultze said. Schultze’s own face colored a bit as he spoke. “We fired him immediately. The parents, rightly so, were horrified. As were we.”