Done for a Dime (33 page)

Mooney cut in, “Look, look. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like that house. Already own the two Vics either side. Give me three in a row, like Monopoly. Don’t mean I wanted to chalk the place. Beyond that, your daddy, his house, you, the whole family, not my concern. That woman there”—Mooney again pointed to Veronique—“helps me with my paperwork. And that’s all.”

“Then why bring her here?”

Mooney cupped his hands. “Seemed right, bring you all together. Got a lot to work out. Or you can piss the whole thing away paying lawyers.”

Veronique took this as a cue. “My brother, and my mother before him, wanted that house kept in the family.”

That sealed it, Toby thought. In it together. That old sorry house. Bad as grave robbers. Now they’re scared they’ll get dragged into a killing. If that wasn’t the case already.

“I’m family,” he said.

Veronique scoffed, “Hardly.”

“Check out the will.”

“There’s a will?” Mooney was stunned.

“No.” Veronique’s eyes narrowed. “Not one’s that signed.”

How does she know about the unsigned will, Toby wondered. “Maybe there’s one you don’t know about.”

For the first time, she smiled. “I know all I need to know.”

“That’s right. I forgot. You’ve got a key.”

“A will that cannot be found is presumed revoked.”

Mooney chuckled. “That’s the law. Woman knows her law.”

“Yeah,” Toby said. “Probably even knows what a holographic will is.”

That shut them both up. Toby smiled. “Never much cared for his music, did you? Thought that big old horn was slimy. Vile.”

“Jesus goddamn man alive.”

It was Chat Miller, gazing out the window as a muffled, faraway roar made the glass tremble. Everybody jumped, got up, joined him, looking out. He pointed. To the south, on the far side of town along the river, a fireball plumed the darkness. It burned high and white, a huge tapered shock of flame, brightening the night sky. A gas jet, maybe. A broken feed line.

“Where is that?”

“Fuck where is it.
What
is it?”

“Looks like Dumpers. Near there. Some warehouse.”

They edged in, clustering at the window to peer out side by side, the last hour forgotten for a moment. Not a word among them as they watched the ragged stitchwork of flames, embers sailing high into the air like rockets. Faraway sirens wailed as patrol cars responded and the engine companies headed out. The eerie keening sound and swirling lights seemed so distant, unreal.

18

M
anny cranked down the passenger’s side window and leaned out into the wind, craning for a good look back at the flames. Frustrated, he stuck his whole torso through the window, like a sheepdog, perched sideways on the seat. Ferry marveled at the sheer girth of the kid’s butt as he snagged the back of his massive overalls, pulled hard, and dragged him back in.

“There some kinda blue ribbon for dumbfuck I don’t know about?” The van veered as Ferry got control of the wheel again. Then he reached out, slapped at Manny’s head. “Come on. Answer.”

“What the—stop it. What’s
wrong
with you.” Manny scuttled back against his door, arms up to protect his head.

“Face front. Shut up.”

“All right, okay, all right. Jesus.” Manny sank into his seat. He lowered his arms from his head, but just a little. “You know, calling you an asshole is an affront to assholes everywhere.”

Ferry laughed. “That’s good. I like that.” He thrummed his fingers against the steering wheel, thinking, Nothing hones the instincts like abuse.

He turned into the stonework gate at the bottom of the hill to Baymont. As the street formed a T at the panhandle, he turned again—not left, but right. Toward St. Martin’s Hill.

“Hey,” Manny said. “This is the wrong way.”

“We gotta clean up your mess.”

He climbed the hill beneath the Monterey pines and eucalyptus trees, following the narrow, tightly curving streets. Already dark, still windy, people kept inside, this part of town especially. No witnesses walking about.

He passed the Carlisle house and the Victorian where Manny’d holed up. With a major fire on the south of town, they’d called away the patrolman stationed outside. Ferry turned at the end of the block, then turned again, heading back up the alley behind the properties. Tall fences and ramshackle garages flanked the alleyway, making the van all but invisible, but dogs barked here and there. He pulled up behind the Victorian and killed the motor, then reached behind the seat for the bolt cutter again and took a wrench from the tool chest.

“I don’t like being here,” Manny said. “This feels bad.”

“Get out.”

Around back, Ferry opened the doors and took out a five-gallon tub, handed it to Manny. “You take the Vic.” He passed on the bolt cutter next, pocketing the wrench for himself, plus a roll of duct tape. “If they didn’t just ram the door, they changed the lock. Cut it off. It’s important to get inside. Place your tub downstairs. You got a low ceiling, lots of exposed wood framing there. Near the furnace or the water heater—you know where they are—so the welding melts on the gas jets.”

Manny scrunched up his face. “Won’t that kinda be like throwing a Bic into a bonfire? I mean, a gas plume in the middle of something like this, what’s the point?”

Ferry took out a second tub for himself, closed the van’s doors. “Stop wasting time.”

“Meanwhile, you do what?”

“Smack you again, you don’t do what I tell you.”

“Wait. Wait. This just—” Manny pounded the side of the van softly with his fist. “This wasn’t part of the plan.”

“Not before you offed the old spade, no.”

“They’re gonna know it’s me.”

“They already know it’s you. I told you. You’re not gonna be safe because that’s a secret. You’re gonna be safe because you disappear. Get a new life. That’s where I help. Now go. Do it.”

Ferry turned toward the back gate of the Carlisle property. From behind, with juvenile gall, trying for tough, Manny said, “You’re gonna just leave me here, aren’t you?”

Turning around, Ferry felt stunned by the kid’s face. Moon eyes, almost teary, but a clenched frown, too, the kind that told the world you knew you were gonna take some punishment, but you weren’t scared.

“If not leave me here, somewhere.”

“I need you,” Ferry told him. “I’m not gonna just leave. Not now. Not later.”

“You’ll wait.”

“Five minutes, yeah, I’ll wait. Don’t fuck around. Now go. Get it done.”

Ferry tore away the crime scene tape at the back gate to the Carlisle yard, threw the latch, and headed in. The rain had all but washed away whatever gravel had once covered the path to the back door. Just a muddy aisle through a muddier backyard. He aimed for the grassy patches, hoping for better traction, but even so almost slid the last few yards. He taped one of the windowpanes on the back door, tapped with the wrench till the glass gave way, then picked away what larger pieces he could, reached in, and threw the lock.

He felt his way through the dark. Eyes adjusting, he found himself in a vast open room with egg crate foam on three walls. A banner he couldn’t quite read hung from the back wall. Rolled-up carpet smelled of mold. He didn’t see a furnace.

Continuing on, he found himself in a small cluttered vestibule between the addition and the main house. Shelves lined the walls, full of piecemeal hardware and tools. Cans of paint and varnish and thinner were stacked on metal shelving near the same corner where the water heater stood. Here, he decided. This is the spot.

He pried off the tub lid carefully, broke the seal on the fuse, struck twice, and lit the flare. He made sure it was going strong, then backed away, hustled into the addition, where his eye again caught the massive banner draped along the back wall. This time he could make out the words:

S
TRONG
C
ARLISLE
& T
HE
M
IGHTY
F
IREFLY
MF R&B

Manny should see this, he thought, smiling. Snag himself a handle, steal it from the man he killed. The Mighty Firefly. Multiple Fires Raging & Burning.

He hurried out the back, negotiating the mud the same way he had on the way in. Manny wasn’t at the van. Ferry slid behind the wheel and eased the door closed.

Dogs in the nearer yards began to bark again. Above the fences and through the trees, lights came on in windows. He leaned back in the seat, trying to hide. Sweat beading on his face, tricking down his back, he listened for footsteps and checked his watch until Manny yanked open the door and scrambled in.

Stluka and Murchison sped south from the station, passing through Dumpers where, on the brickwork wall of an abandoned foundry, a tagger had laid out the roll call for a gang called the Southtown Punk Stoners. The names of the dead wore large black
X
s, relic of the turf war with Baymont, but two of the
X
s were new.

When they turned onto the river road, the fire came into view. Flames cut high above the roofline along the whole south flank of the warehouse. Smoke boiled out of windows, churning from the wind and heat—black in places, gray or white in others, depending on what was burning—sparked with embers as it billowed up into the night sky.

The watch commander had sent them down to interview a handful of squatters detained by patrol units already on scene. The squatters claimed they had nothing to do with the fire. “Get them away from each other,” the watch commander said. “See what shakes out.”

The fire crews had cut their way in and thrown the gate wide open. Pumper engines and boom trucks and rescue wagons thronged the warehouse grounds. The blaze was a worker, three alarms, with every firehouse in town except one on scene, the last held back for other emergencies. Assistance was en route from Vallejo and American Canyon, Napa and Benicia, even the nearer refineries across the strait.

Firemen garbed in turn-out gear, bunker pants, and lug-sole boots hustled everywhere, manning hoses, hefting ropes and axes and chain saws and halligan tools into the building, raking through charred debris blown out through the roof and stamping out glow coals, shouting down from inside the building and shouting back from the ground amid the deafening thrum and hiss of their machinery and trucks and the roar of the fire itself. They’d already cut holes in the roof to let the smoke escape, and clouds of it roiled up into the night.

Murchison felt the heat prick the skin on the back of his neck as he turned around to eye the road and the tree line on its far side. The fire freaks had already arrived, picking up the dispatcher calls on their scanners. They stood atop cars and in pickup beds, peering in like dads at peewee football. Like my dad, he thought, years ago—that was me, Daddy’s little house afire, ha ha. None of the sightseers matched Manny’s description.

“Murch,” Stluka said, gesturing toward the gate. “Snap to. Let’s get this done.”

The boom trucks had hoisted ladders to the second floor in front, a way in through the broken windows. Murchison saw the beams of hand torches roaming around inside through churning waves of smoke. The dull flickering lights reminded him of something he couldn’t bring to bear at first, but then it came to him: fireflies.

He and Stluka checked in with the officer manning the gate, logging entry and exit, and got pointed north, where, about seventy yards away, a line of squatters stood inside the perimeter, against the fence, detained by patrolmen. They thanked the officer at the gate and headed that way.

There were five of them, and in accordance with some unspoken rule of youth, they bore themselves not with fear, or awe at the raging fire, but an instinctive surly contempt for the police. A study in slouches and extreme hair. What was it about being young these days, Murchison wondered, that made every kid you met so full of shit, and hostile about it to boot?

Reaching the northeast corner of the warehouse, he glanced up and spotted the sheets of black plastic where the windows on the second floor used to be. The fire hadn’t reached here, not yet, but the wind came freighted with heat and his pores opened as he looked up.

The patrolman in charge was named Maples. He wasn’t getting very far.

“Let us back in,
now,
we gotta get our
stuff
.”

Maples said, “Nobody gets back in—”

“You can’t
do
this.”

“—till the fire commander—”

“Nazi motherfucking USA.”

“—gives the all clear.”

“You can’t frame us for this.”

“This is harassment.”

“Nobody wants to frame—”

“Blackshirt motherfuckers. This is against the goddamn
law.
”

The mouthiest of the bunch seemed to be the girl—sixteen tops, burrheaded, small and wiry. She wore a T-shirt reading
SQUAT THE LOT!,
plus khaki pants and rag socks, no shoes—probably abandoned inside once she smelled smoke. Rings and studs bristled everywhere, ten to an ear, plus the eyebrows, cheeks, nose, lip. She hopped around like a bantamweight.

“Cocksuckers! Give it or guard it!”

Other than Maples, the patrolmen just stood there in a semicircle, containing the group, thumbs in their gun belts. Maples saw Murchison and gladly stepped back.

“They want to go back in,” he said needlessly.

“Not possible. Safety, one. Crime scene, two.”

“
Sieg heil!
”

“I tried to tell them.”

“Looky looky here, will ya?” Stluka headed straight for the burr-headed girl. “You look like you fell face first into a tackle box, know that?”

“Up your ass crack.”

Stluka cackled. “Spunkita!” He turned back to Maples and dropped the act. “Take her in, call Social Services. Send her back to her weaselly boojwah parents.” To the other patrolmen he said, “Divvy these scuts up. Find out who’s been poking L’il Miss Squat the Lot.”

Every guy sank a half foot shorter, the same guilt lighting face to face. But it was the girl who darted. Eyes ballooning, she sprang for the road, dodged the one cop close enough to grab her, spun out of his grip, and kept running. Stluka and the cop who’d missed ran after. They caught her at the fence, boxed her into the corner. Before they could lay hands on, though, something in the northerly distance caught their eye. Whatever it was, it showed in their faces to where even the girl turned to look.