Robert B. Parker's Slow Burn (Spenser, #44)(4)

“We should’ve given Mattie a ride home,” Susan said.

“I offered,” I said. “She still prefers the T.”

“Because she doesn’t want to rely on anyone.”

“Not a bad trait,” I said. “She’s known no other way.”

Eastern Standard was at the bottom of the Hotel Commonwealth, outfitted with brass, swirling ceiling fans, and red leather booths. The place made me feel as if I were eating inside a Paris train station, with a menu to match. Steaks, frites, oysters.

Since I’d eaten at the game, I kept it to two dozen oysters. Susan had the bluefish with hominy, cherry tomatoes, and romesco sauce. She told me I could pick from her plate.

“Do you remember my pal Jack McGee?” I said.

She shook her head, sipping her cocktail.

“The firefighter?” I said. “He’s captain over the house in the North End. We stopped by the house during Saint Anthony’s last year.”

“I had to pee.”

“The firefighters were most gracious.”

“Big guy?” she said.

“Some might call Jack somewhat husky,” I said. “But he can shimmy up a ladder like nobody’s business.”

“Sure,” Susan said. “Okay.”

“Jack’s a long-timer at Henry’s,” I said. “He lost three guys in that church fire in the South End.”

Susan nodded. She tilted her head to listen with more intent and complete focus. All the noise around us went silent when she looked at me that way.

“Jack thinks it’s arson,” I said. “Although, as of yet, there is no official cause.”

“And Jack wants you to snoop?”

“I would prefer the term professionally detect.”

Susan shrugged and took another sip of her cocktail. “And what do you know about arson investigation?”

“About as much as I do about women,” I said. “But Jack says most of the evidence burned up in the fire anyway. He wants me to use my contacts with the flotsam and jetsam of Boston.”

“He believes the fire to be the work of criminals?”

I nodded.

“But who would burn a church for money?”

“You really want to ask that?” I said.

“I withdraw the question.”

“I just hope I can help.”

“So you agreed to take the case?”

“He caught me at a good time,” I said. “‘Summertime and the living is easy.’ If I can’t get anywhere, I won’t charge him.”

“Just how much did you charge Mattie Sullivan to find out who killed her mother?”

I grinned and looked down at my knuckles. “Box of donuts.”

Susan smiled back. She’d worn a green safari shirt dress, gold hoop earrings, a thin gold chain, and brown gladiator sandals to the game. The outfit really snapped with the Sox cap I’d bought for her at Yawkey Way.

“You know Mattie graduates next year,” she said.

I nodded.

“And I understand Z is moving back to Los Angeles?”

I nodded again.

“Does that make us empty-nesters?” she said.

“Have you forgotten Pearl?”

“How could I ever forget the baby,” Susan said. “But we both must admit she’s getting a bit long in the tooth.”

“You know my answer to that.”

“We’ll just find a new Pearl?”

I sipped some beer. I didn’t like to think about it. Outside the window, the stadium continued to empty, with people walking along Comm Ave or down into Kenmore Station. The Sox had lost, but the lights burned bright across the city.

“And what if something happens to you?” Susan said. She grinned with her white, perfect teeth in a devilish way. She tilted back her drink.

“You can have me mounted and stuffed,” I said. “Just like Roy did for Dale.”

“Roy stuffed Trigger,” she said. “Not Dale.”

“Similar sentiment.”

“Maybe I’ll just find a younger man,” Susan said. “Someone with less miles on him.”

“But could he sing ‘Moody’s Mood for Love’ in Spanish?”

“Can you?”

I took a sip of beer and took a deep breath, just as the oysters and Susan’s bluefish arrived.

“Timing is everything,” she said.





4


Bright and early the next morning, I drove into the South End to meet with Captain Troy Collins of Engine Company 22. The firehouse was a squat building of little character situated between several churches and office buildings on Tremont. Collins invited me upstairs to the firefighters’ quarters and kitchen, where he made some coffee. “McGee warned me you’d be stopping by,” he said. “He didn’t want to get me in trouble. Told me to keep it on the down low.”

“What’d you say?”

“This was Pat D’s firehouse,” he said. “I’ll tell you my deepest, darkest secrets if you think it might help. Him and Mike were like brothers.”

Collins was a trim black man in his early fifties with closely cropped gray hair and a short gray mustache. He had a thick chest and muscular arms and walked with the ramrod posture of former military. Two firefighters were in a break room, lying on an old couch and watching CNN; three others were in a back room, lifting weights. I passed a locker with a bumper sticker that read DIAL 911 CUZ SHIT HAPPENS.