Fire Season (35 page)

“Were you-all inside when the fire started?” Coffin asked them.

They nodded, wigs bobbing. “It was terrifying,” said a short, stout person in lavender taffeta. “We barely got out. The smoke! We could hear the fire crackling upstairs!”

A tall, slender person who appeared to be wearing nothing but a blond Lady Godiva wig, a flesh-toned G-string, and very high heels said, “I'm, like, oh my
God,
we're all going to be trapped like rats!”

“Is anyone still inside?” Coffin asked them.

The Tall Ships furrowed their plucked brows, pursed their painted lips, shook their wigged heads. “No,” the tallest Tall Ship said. She was about 6' 4", Coffin guessed, and wore a maroon evening gown. “I don't think so. We were pretty much the last ones out.”

“Story of my life,” said the short, stout Tall Ship.

“What did he say?” said a Tall Ship who must have been seventy-five or so, a sparkly tiara slightly askew on her long, black wig.

“He wants to know if anyone's still inside.”

“I think there might be,” the older Tall Ship said. “It was the damnedest thing.”

“What was the damnedest thing?” Coffin said.

“We're all running like mad, all us girls, trying to get out the doors over here.” She waved an evening-gloved hand toward the Paramount's main doors—they swung outward onto the courtyard, and were usually left open in warm weather. “The alarms are going off—it's crazy. But I see one girl going the other way—back toward the back of the building.”

“Kind of a stocky person, wearing an auburn wig?”

“That's right! Hell of a thing. Running right back into a burning building!”

Two Provincetown fire trucks came howling down Alden Street and slowed for the hard right onto Commercial. That meant there was only one old pumper, PFD 3, at Coffin's place: Walt Macy had evidently decided that the house was a lost cause. The single pumper was staying behind to keep the rest of the neighborhood from burning down.

“So, are you a cop, or what?” the tallest Tall Ship asked.

“Yep,” Coffin said, walking toward the Crown and Anchor's open front doors. “You want to trade?”

“If you're a cop,” the tallest Tall Ship said, dropping his falsetto, “where are your freakin'
shoes?
”

“Frank!” Lola called, stepping away from the large crowd of gawkers that was already forming on the sidewalk. “Frank—what the hell are you doing?”

“He's in there,” Coffin said. “Maurice is still inside.” He sneezed, then sneezed again.

“You're not going into a fucking burning building, Frank,” Lola said. “You're exhausted, you're sick, you're not thinking straight, and you're barefoot.”

“We could have died,” Coffin said. “Jamie could have died.”

Lola pointed to the Crown's third-floor windows. “Look up there, Frank. Look at how intense those flames are. Anybody that's still inside had better get out quick, or they're toast. If Maurice is still in there, he won't last long.”

“The east wing doesn't look as hot,” Coffin said. “He could be hiding in there. Or trying to make sure it goes up, too.”

Lola put a hand on his arm, gripping his bicep. She was shockingly strong. “Frank,” she said. “I know you're upset—I would be, too. But let's play it smart, okay? Skillings and Tony will be here any minute. We'll watch the exits, and grab him when he squirts out. If he doesn't come out, he dies in the fire.”

“What if he already got out?” Coffin said.

“Then there's no fucking point in going in after him, is there?”

And then Maurice appeared in the Crown's main doorway, coughing, eyes streaming, green muumuu smeared with ash, his strange purplish wig scorched and askew. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve, spotted Lola and Coffin, and disappeared back inside the burning building.

*   *   *

“Dude,” Rudy said, sliding his cell phone into his jacket pocket. “I'm just saying that was
not
the fucking plan. Not even close.”

“He shouldn't have said that about Gershwin,” Loverboy said. The Town Car's steering wheel looked like a toy in his hands.

Rudy lit a joint with his Zippo, held the smoke, coughed a little, let it out. “I was always more of a Cole Porter fan myself.”

“Cole Porter was a great songwriter. Gershwin was a genius.”

They said nothing for a while, the Town Car accelerating hard on Route 6, headed toward Truro. Rudy sat back in his seat, looking out the window.

“Nothing but sand, scrub pines, and salt water,” he said, after a minute. “No wonder the fucking Pilgrims left.”

“Whoa,” Loverboy said when they'd cleared the dunes, the bay and its view of Provincetown opening up on their right. “Big fire. Looks like town center.”

Rudy stared. “Looks like it might be the Crown and Anchor.”

“Bummer,” Loverboy said.

Rudy shrugged. “It's the only way they'll ever get the semen off the walls.”

“So Felcher's unhappy?” Loverboy said, after a minute.

“Fuck him,” Rudy said. “There's lots of people who'd be glad to pay a fair price for this smack. Doesn't have to be Felcher.”

“You can't blame him. He was expecting a big bust and five free kilos of jones. Now the local cops got his bust and he's got to buy the jones from us.”

“Fuck him. What's he gonna do?”

“Seize our assets. Throw us in jail.”

Rudy grinned. “Did you know that Special Agent Felcher coaches ninth grade girls' volleyball in his free time?”

“And?”

“And he's got lousy impulse control.”

“If there's no video, it didn't happen.”

“There's video.”

Loverboy smiled, his huge, perfect teeth gleaming in the dashboard lights. “What a pleasure,” he said, “working with someone who understands the basic principles of business.”

“You've got to fuck them before they fuck you,” Rudy said. He took another deep hit from the joint, pinched it out between his thumb and forefinger, and stashed the roach in his shirt pocket. “That's right out of Machiavelli, baby.”

*   *   *

“Come back here, you little weasel,” Lola hissed, running at top speed through the Crown's open doors. Coffin tried to keep up, but he stepped on a shard of broken glass in the courtyard and had to stop for a second to pick it out of the sole of his foot.

“Son of a bitch,” he said, pausing in the doorway. The smoke was thick. He could hear the fire roaring upstairs, over the shrieking din of a dozen smoke alarms.

“Lola!” Coffin shouted. He couldn't see much: The emergency exit lighting was on, but shrouded in smoke. “Where are you?”

“He went up the back stairs,” Lola shouted back—she was maybe twenty feet ahead, the sound of her voice retreating into smoke and drifting ash.

Coffin followed, running as best he could. His cut foot squished on the rug at every step. He found the stairs—he could hear Lola's footsteps pounding up them, not too far ahead.

“He's headed for the deck!” Lola yelled. “I just saw him.”

Upstairs, the heat was intense. Coffin could feel the flames at his back—the fire gnawing the west wing like some great, hungry animal. More than anything, he wanted to get out. Coughing, he ran down a smoke-thick hallway, toward an emergency exit light. He pushed the door open and felt the shock of the chill night air; he took a deep, gasping breath. A broad wooden deck ran across the rear of the building, facing the harbor. Lola and Maurice had disappeared.

“Frank!” Lola called. She was ten feet below him, crouched on the beach, at the edge of a crowd of onlookers. It took Coffin a second to realize that she'd just jumped from the deck. She gathered herself, started running, service weapon in hand.

The onlookers turned, watched the pursuit. Lola pointed. “There he goes! Freeze, Maurice!”

Coffin saw Maurice sprinting across the dark beach toward Cabral's wharf, a dilapidated wooden dock that warped into the harbor: arthritic, leaning, long abandoned. The tide was out; there were lots of places to hide among the tilted forest of pilings. “Shoot him!” Coffin yelled.

Lola steadied her pistol with both hands and squeezed off a shot, the Glock's flat report just audible over the roar of the fire. Maurice yelled but kept running, disappearing into the deep shadows under the wharf.

“Shit,” Coffin said. He swung himself over the railing, then dropped onto the beach, making sure to bend his knees. He landed on all fours, bare feet digging into the soft sand. “Ow,” he said.

A gaggle of partially dressed drag queens stood on the beach in their lingerie: bustiers and garter belts, feather boas, stockings, and padded bras. They were wrapped in bathrobes, in various stages of makeup, some with wigs, some without. They were crying.

“Did
he
set the fire?” one of them said, pointing after Maurice. “That
person?
”

“Yeah,” Coffin said, limping as fast as he could after Lola and Maurice.

“He burned up all of our clothes,” the drag queen cried. “Our beautiful
outfits!
”

“He tried to
kill
you,” Coffin called, without turning to look over his shoulder.

“Same thing!” the drag queen shouted.

Lola had reached the wharf. She was crouched in the shadows of two thick pilings. As Coffin approached, his cut foot stinging like mad, she put a finger to her lips.

“He's still in there,” she whispered, over the crackling roar of the burning hotel complex, a hundred yards away. “He hasn't come out the other side.”

“You start at the top and work your way down,” Coffin said. “I'll take the water end and work my way up.”

Lola nodded. “If you see him, try to flush him my way,” she said.

Coffin sniffed. His sinuses were brittle; everything smelled like smoke. But there was another smell—chemical, sharp. He put a hand on Lola's arm. “You smell that?”

Lola looked at him, eyes deep-set in the shadows. “Lighter fluid,” she said.

A few drops of something cold dribbled on Coffin's neck. He touched his fingers to it, sniffed them:
lighter fluid
. He looked up, and there was Maurice, lying on the warped planks three feet above them, long plastic grill lighter in one hand. Before Lola could raise her Glock the lighter scritched and a long tongue of flame squirted out, catching the hood of Coffin's sweatshirt.

“Jesus, Frank!” Lola said. “You're fucking on fire!” She peeled her jacket off and threw it over Coffin's head, beating it with her hands, killing the flames. Coffin tore the jacket off—
pain, smell of burnt skin, burnt hair
—fumbling with his bandaged hand, then the still-smoking sweatshirt, dragging it over his head at the same moment Maurice jumped onto Lola's shoulders, driving her face-first into the sand.

“Mother
fucker!
” Lola yelled, Maurice on top of her, knees pinning her arms, the Glock trapped under her body, Maurice with the squeeze bottle of lighter fluid in his hand, wildly spritzing her hair, her uniform shirt, his muumuu.

“Oh, God—” Lola yelled, bucking, kicking in the sand. “Frank!”

Coffin dove—jaw colliding with Maurice's shoulder, teeth rattling, bare arms locked now around Maurice's arms, around his torso, feet driving, Maurice scrambling backward (
scritch
went the lighter), surprisingly strong. Maurice screamed and Coffin looked down—blue flames flickered up from the green muumuu, around Coffin's arm, around Coffin's face, singeing his mustache, his eyebrows. He let go, flung himself down in the sand. For a long second Maurice stared at his burning muumuu, wide-eyed, confused, the flames growing and spreading up his belly and chest, the length of his arm, the nearly empty bottle of lighter fluid in his hand igniting with a flash, liquid fire spewing everywhere. Maurice howled and ran down the beach, blazing like a lit match.

“Put it out!” he shrieked, panicked, running back toward the huge Crown and Anchor fire, flames rising around his face, in his hair. “Put it out!”

Gasping, gagging, Lola snatched her jacket up from the sand and chased after him, threw the jacket over the burning muumuu, shoved Maurice into the cold water of the harbor, dragged him deeper, pushed his head under once, then again. She pulled him out, a hard fist cocked back, but then she saw that most of his hair was gone, his eyebrows were gone, and charred, red welts were rising from his neck and face and scalp. There was no more fight left in him.

“Ah, Jesus,” Maurice said, breathing fast, staring blindly into the orange sky. “I'm all burned up.”

And then Tony arrived, lumbering across the beach from the Crown at a half-run, gear belt clanking. “Need a hand?” he said.

 

Chapter 21

The burn center at Massachusetts General Hospital was one of the best in the world. The hallways were hushed and sparkling clean; the patient rooms were state of the art, the staff were kind, empathetic, and thoroughly professional. Coffin couldn't wait to get out of there. Maurice lay in his hospital bed, so swathed in bandages he could have passed for a mummy on Halloween. Mancini sat in a vinyl guest chair. Maurice's state-appointed lawyer sat in another. Coffin and Lola stood by the door. A nurse stood by the head of Maurice's bed. A Boston uniformed cop stood guard in the brightly lit hallway.

“Okay,” the lawyer said. “You're saying that if my client will plead guilty to three counts of burning a dwelling—that's the Coffin house, the West End house, and the Crown and Anchor—for a maximum of ten years each,
and
plead guilty to the shed fire, the condo fire, and the church fire for a maximum of five years each, the state will drop the attempted homicide charges. That's the deal?”