Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (Spenser, #44)(30)

“And if I refuse?”

“You won’t get to meet the new boss,” Frank said. “And I’d really hate to miss that.”

I shook my head and crawled into the backseat. Belson slammed the door, put out his cigar, and got behind the wheel. We drove off in the opposite direction of the Public Garden before he took Berkeley over to Storrow. It was past rush hour and the road had yet to become clogged. Belson followed the Esplanade as a middle-aged woman in the passenger seat turned around to me and said, “Just what the f*ck do you think you’re doing, getting into a wrestling match at the farmers’ market?”

“Tea Party Museum was too far of a walk.”

“You can’t pull crap like that anymore,” she said. “Tourists took video of you with their cell phones. You’re gonna be very popular on YouTube.”

“Spenser, this is Captain Glass,” Belson said. “She doesn’t like me smoking in the car, either.”

“And I don’t give any free passes to aging thugs who drink beer with cops.”

I met Belson’s eye in the rearview mirror and raised my eyebrows. “Sometimes Frank and I drink cheap bourbon.”

Glass had shoulder-length brown hair and green, unsmiling Irish eyes. Her skin was the color of milk, which contrasted with her black silk blouse. She wore a small gold cross on a lightweight gold chain around her neck and just a trace of red lipstick.

“You were easy to spot,” Glass said. “But so was the other man.”

“The other man who we understand attacked you,” Belson said. “Right?”

“That’s right, Officer,” I said. “He came out of nowhere.”

“However it happened,” Glass said, “several vendors want to press charges against you and the other man.”

“Send the bill to Jackie DeMarco,” I said.

Belson turned off at Mass Ave and doubled back down Commonwealth. I took it as a good sign we weren’t headed south to police headquarters. The direction meant this was a meet and greet and not an arrest. Had it been night, I might have thanked my lucky stars.

“I should feel honored they sent Homicide to pick me up,” I said. “However, the last time I saw the big guy, he was still breathing.”

“His name is Davey Stefanakos,” Belson said. “He’s got a rap sheet that looks like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Before he got into the life, he was in the Army and did a lot of that mixed martial arts crap.”

I touched the bandage over my eye and let out a long, painful breath. “Didn’t feel like crap to me.”

“Get over it,” Belson said. “You think you can retain the belt forever? Someone’s coming up. Someone’s always coming up these f*cking streets.”

“You’ll have to deal with that crap on your own,” Glass said. “We want to talk to you about a guy named Rob Featherstone.”

“Sure,” I said. “Remind me again. Who’s Rob Featherstone?”

“The guy from the Sparks museum you talked to last week,” Belson said. “And a poor unfortunate bastard. Somebody dumped his body off the Tobin Bridge last night. Some college kids farting around on sailboats fished him out of the water.”

“Was he already dead?”

“Somebody was real pissed off,” Belson said. “Shot twice in the back of the head. Twice in the back.”

“Ouch.”

“We understand you spoke with him in connection to Holy Innocents?” Glass said. “You’re working for a Boston firefighter off the books.”

“I can’t divulge my client list,” I said.

“Zip it up, Spenser,” Belson said. “We’re on the same team. Featherstone loved firefighting so much, he’d get up in the middle of the night and chase sirens.”

“And what do you do?”

“I get paid for it,” Belson said. “Featherstone did it for free. In my book, that makes you a little screwy.”

“He seemed like a nice guy,” I said. “What else can you say about a person who hands out coffee and donuts to men on the job?”

“Just what did he tell you?” Glass said. “Did he know anything about the church fire?”

“No,” I said. “Mainly I looked at Arthur Fiedler’s helmet collection.”

“Yes or no, Spenser,” Belson said. He stopped at a traffic light. “Yes or no.”

“He talked about what he saw,” I said. “But nothing he said was of any help to me. Or anything that might’ve gotten him killed.”

“His wife said he’d become obsessed with all these summer fires,” Glass said. “He nearly lost his day job hopping from place to place. He told her he’d figured out what was going on and was damn well going to do something about it.”

“And who’d he suspect?”

“Well, that’s the problem,” Belson said. The car lurched forward on Commonwealth as we made our slow, steady way toward the Public Garden. “Never told her. Found his car down in the Seaport. Cleaned of all prints. Some blood on the window glass, which we’re pretty sure is his.”

“Friends?”

“Not many,” Glass said. “We’re working on it.”