Sinner's Ball (3 page)

She was out the door in a flash.

I turned to Allie.

“What was that all about? I figured we'd spend the day together.”

She smiled. “It appears your little girl has grown up.”

O
n my way back to Feeney's, Benny Kim flagged me down.

Benny was the latest incarnation of the folks who made Hell's Kitchen vibrate like a Charlie Parker saxophone riff. People of dark melodies whose harmonics were all fluid and harsh. Men who'd left the old country behind and bowed to no one.

Now the Irish and Germans who'd built the railroad, worked the docks, run the rackets, and operated rotgut bars and whorehouses on every corner were pretty much gone.

Except for throwbacks like my brother.

The new kids on the block were Koreans like Benny, and Guineans, Jamaicans, Indians, Somalis, and a sprinkle of yuppies to leaven the mix. All trying to make it. And their music was as dark and rough-edged as that of the hardscrabble people they'd replaced.

But Benny Kim was one of a kind.

In a city full of wannabes, he was a true artist. And his greengrocery was his canvas. Fruits and vegetables and flowers in all their glorious hues were nothing more than paints on his palette. A daub of kiwis here, a tumble of Yukon golds there, a splash of blood oranges fronting rolling mounds of Granny Smiths.

A vibrating work of karmic balance.

But Benny was also a realist, and he never let art get in the way of commerce. Most of his time was spent stripping week-old roses of their outer petals and peddling them as new.

I noticed that a fresh helping of scaffolding decorated the building adjoining his. Attached to the woodwork was a sign that read
FRANCO DEMOLITION
. The real estate barons were interring another dead soldier in Hell's Kitchen's graveyard, and were well on their way to turning the city into a Hollywood set. A friend of mine, guy named Danny Reno, grew up in that building. He came to a bad end too. The thought didn't put me in a cheery frame of mind.

“What's up, Benny?” I said.

“You cops ain't worth a shit!”

“And a top o' the morning to you, my man. Some L.L. Beaner drop a kiwi in the radish bin again?”

He put down a fading bunch of white roses with cerise centers and pink edging on their petals. “My new Beemer, Steeg. Gone. You know how much endive I gotta sell to buy a Beemer?”

“A bushel and a bunch of pecks, I suspect.”

“You make jokes and my insurance rates are circling Mars. Patel? Runs the electronics store? Him too. Check-cashing guy down the street? Him too. The dry cleaner? They stole his Escalade. What do you think of that?”

“Nice cars. I'm definitely in the wrong business. What do the friendly folks at the neighborhood precinct say?”

“Too bad, Benny. Doing everything we can, Benny. Maybe we find your car, maybe not. Call your insurance company
.” He thumped his chest. “Fucking cocksuckers!”

“Why're you telling me this?”

“Who else am I going to tell? No one else wants to listen anymore. From now on, I'm gonna be the eyes and ears of this fucking neighborhood.”

“Maybe you should think about parking in a garage.”

“Where do you think the bastards took it from?”

I was out of suggestions.

T
he Closed sign was still up at Feeney's.

Nick met me at the door.

“DeeDee said you took her and her friend to Dave's warehouse,” I said.

He seemed annoyed by my question.

“Is there a problem?”

I was annoyed by his answer.

“It's counterfeit. Ergo, illegal. And I don't want her around it.”

“The stuff was gonna wind up in the garbage anyway.”

“She needs something, I'll buy it. Understood?”

“You live in a sewer, you're gonna get dirty. Can't protect her forever, Steeg.”

“Sure I can. Now tell me about her friend.”

“Nothing to tell.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Are you kidding? When my kids hit their teens, I stopped talking to
them
.”

“They must have appreciated it,” I said.

He jutted his chin toward the back. “Dave's waiting.”

My brother and Anthony sat across from a heavyset, cherubic guy. He appeared to be doing all the talking, punctuating each sentence with a twitch of his brush mustache.

I walked up to them.

Dave nodded at the cherub. “Jake, this is Sal Lomascio. We go way back.”

We shook hands.

Sal pulled his briefcase off the seat and set it on the table. I squeezed in next to him.

“Let's take it from the top,” I said. “Tell me why it was arson and not some bonehead with a cigarette, or a short in the wiring?”

Anthony looked at me as if I were the dumbest guy in the room. “It's not that simple,” he said.

Dave beat me to it.

“Shut the fuck up, Anthony,” he said.

My nephew's eyes wobbled for an instant. Then they fixed on his father with a tightness I had never seen before. Anthony had gone from being the favored son to being a minion. And he wasn't handling it well.

Welcome to your new life, kid
, I thought.

“It was arson,” Sal said. “No doubt about it.”

“And you know that, how?”

“It's my job. Dave tells me you were a cop, so you know it ain't like in the movies. You know, where the handsome lead detective spots this mook standing on the fringe of the crowd with his eyes rolling around in his head like he's about to come. Then he grabs the freak and hammers him until he confesses.”

“I love movies like that. Always made me feel good about my career choice.”

“But in my world it's all about forensics.”

“So you found an accelerant.”

His mustache twitched. “No. But lots of circumstantial stuff pointing that way. Goes a long way to convincing a jury. And it starts with the real estate market.”

“Hell of a circumstance.”

“You bet your ass it is. Ever since the subprime mortgage bubble blew all to shit, real estate prices dropped off the cliff. Properties like Dave's that were on the market at gonzo inflated values suddenly slid twenty, thirty percent or more, and went begging even at the discount. So, what's an owner to do?”

“If you can't make a flood, make a fire,” I said.

“Exactly. And Pytho has had a bunch of them lately. Sloppy, amateurish jobs.”

“Tough to find good help these days.”

“Tell me about it,” Sal agreed.

“But that wasn't what happened here.”

“Nope. Whoever did this was no amateur. Two points of origin.” Sal's eyes twinkled, and his mustache gave
a self-congratulatory twitch. “That was the first clue. It took a lot of looking, and the answer was in the charring.”

“And that revealed?”

“The doer bored holes in the lath-and-plaster walls, stuffed them with newspapers, and lit it up.”

“Burns low and slow,” I said.

“Right. You had a classic fire tetrahedron—fuel, oxygen, heat, and what eventually became—as we say in the arson game—an ‘uninhibited chemical reaction.'”

“I don't get it. Lath is metal, and plaster doesn't burn.”

“That's now. Unfortunately for the stiffs, the warehouse was built around 1900. Back then the lath was wood.”

“Not a happy circumstance.”

“I know. Like you said, everything was going on real slow inside the walls. But when the Red Devil hit the wooden flooring and made it to the crates full of all that Chinese import shit, it just had more to eat. Took a couple of hundred firefighters with their snot turned to icicles to put it out. It was one hairy job.”

“Show me the photos,” I said.

“Thought you'd never ask.”

He dipped into his briefcase, came out with a file, and passed it to me.

I opened it and pulled out four close-ups of the walls.

“Kind of hard to read,” Sal said.

Actually, they weren't. Each photo showed a spot on the wall where the charring was more pronounced.

“What about the sprinklers?” I said.

“Piping was fucked. I figure before the party got started, the celebrants tried to rip out the pipes, sell them, and maybe do some Christmas shopping. With brass going for close to two bucks a pound, they could score enough shit to last a few days. But all the poor bastards managed to do was break the pipe that fed the sprinkler.”

“You said there was a party. Why?”

“An empty bottle of wine near one of the bodies. Ain't exactly a leap of logic.”

“Fascinating, but total circumstantial bullshit.” I looked over at my brother. “What's going on here?”

He turned to Sal.

“Tell him,” he said.

“We found six bodies in the basement,” Sal said. “In packing crates.”

“I told you there was more,” my brother said.

“That little fact somehow missed the newspapers,” I said.

“The DA never released it to the press,” Sal said.

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “There were two crime scenes. Both primary. One with the squatters on the main floor. And the other with six bodies in the basement?”

“Fucked up, huh? But just when you think it can't get better, it does.”

“I can hardly wait.”

He reached into his briefcase and pulled out three photos.
“These are the shots of the people who bought it on the main floor.”

Three bodies. Two men and a woman. Curled up in a fetal ball.

Only two possibilities.

A defensive posture they assumed when the flames reached them. Or they were already dead, and dehydration had contracted their muscles.

“Has the medical examiner ruled whether they were alive when the fire took them?”

“ME's report hasn't come in yet.”

I made a mental note to call my ex-partner Luce Guidry to see if she could get her hands on it.

Sal then passed me the photos of the guys in the basement. All I could make out were six packing crates that appeared to be totally burned.

“Not much to see,” I said.

“I know,” Sal said. “Gotta wait on the autopsy.”

“I don't get it,” I said.

“Neither do I,” Dave said. “I put the warehouse on the market six months ago, locked it up, and walked away. No one had access.”

“What about the counterfeit stuff?”

“Ever since the latest fed crackdown, I got out of the business. Left it to the Chinatown gangs. Too much risk, not enough reward. Whatever Nick couldn't move on the street, I left sitting there, growing mold.”

“And you have no idea where the bodies came from?”

“Not a clue.”

“Any IDs?

“Let's put it this way,” Sal said. “They were so fucked up they're gonna be down to checking dental records.”

“Can I have your files?”

He handed me the folders. “Knock yourself out. They're copies.”

“And you'll let me know if you hear anything else?”

Sal snapped the briefcase shut. “Absolutely.”

“So what do you think, Jake?” Dave said.

“First blush? Two sets of vics. Two separate crimes.”

“Way I see it too,” Sal said.

Dave rubbed his cheek and looked at me. “You think I have a shot?”

“Truth?”

“Wouldn't have it any other way.”

“The smart money says no. The DA has been waiting years to nail you for a major crime. Doesn't matter if you did it or not.”

He grinned. “Yeah. But I have something going for me he doesn't.”

“And that is?”

“You.”

“I
've got a present for you,” Luce said, pulling a file folder out of her handbag.

We were at a tiny Asian lunch buffet joint near Times Square. The restaurant was wedged between one of the few remaining Triple X video stores and a souvenir store specializing in fake ivory carvings and electronics that quit working a couple days after you brought them home. It occurred to me both establishments were in the business of selling simulations of the real thing.

“The ME's report?”

“And something else. The tox report.”

It had taken her all of a day to snag them.

“What about dental records?”

“Nothing yet.”

“Not surprised. Have to be real lucky.”

“Luck works for me.”

“Can I see the reports?”

“Not so fast. You call me. Say you need a favor. And I drop everything. Then you sweet-talk me with visions of a great lunch.” She looked around and made a face. “They should issue biohazard suits at the door.”

She wasn't far wrong. The wallboard was pus green, the tape around the joints was peeling, and the hot tables were filled with gummy-looking resinous stuff that defied description.

“You can't always go with first impressions.”

“Yeah, I can,” she said. “So before we talk business, how about some pleasantries?”

“Fine. How are you?”

“Great, until I walked in here.”

“Good. Now can I see the reports?”

She sighed. “You never surprise, Jackson.”

Luce was the only person on the planet who called me by my given name.

She slid the file folder across the table.

“They cover the three on the main floor, and the six in the basement,” she said.

I read the ME's findings on the squatters first.

Two men. Early twenties. A woman somewhat younger. Soot in their mouths, throats, and lungs. Organs bright cherry red. Meaning elevated levels of carbon monoxide in their blood and tissues. Ditto for cocaine. Even if they'd had time to escape, the combination of CO and cocaine would have made it impossible. They'd died in the fire.

The men in the basement were a different story.

No soot. No carbon monoxide. But the shocker was multiple stab wounds to the groin. Bled out. Dead before the fire hit. Cause of death: homicide.