Early Autumn Part 23

We drove to the next address on Symphony Road in the Back Bay. Symphony Road was students and what the school board called Hispanics. The address was a charred pile of rubble.

"Bare ruined church," Paul said.

"Choirs," I said. "Do we sense a pattern developing?"

"You think they'll all be burned?"

"Sample's a little small," I said, "but the indices are strong."

The third address was on Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan. It was between a boarded-up store and a boarded-up store. It had burned.

"Where are we?" Paul said.

"Mattapan."

"Is that part of Boston?"

"Yes."

"G.o.d, it's awful."

"Like a slice of the South Bronx," I said. "Life is hard here."

"They're all going to be burned," Paul said.

'Yeah, but we gotta look."

And we did. We looked in Roxbury and Dorchester and Allston and Charlestown. In Hyde Park and Jamaica Plain and Brighton. The addresses were always obscure so that we sometimes crisscrossed the same neighborhoods several times, following our list. All the addresses were in unpretentious neighborhoods. All had been burned. It was dark when we got through, and a little rain was starting to streak my office windows.

I put my feet up on my desk and shrugged my shoulders, trying to loosen the back muscles that eight hours of city driving had cramped. "Your daddy," I said, "appears to be an arsonist."

"Why would he burn all those buildings down?"

"I don't know that he burned them. He may have just insured them. But either way it would be for money. Buy it, burn it, collect the insurance. That's his connection to Cotton. Your old man's business was real estate and insurance. Cotton's is money and being bad. Put them together and what have you got?"

"Bibbity-bobbity-boo," Paul said.

"Oh, you know the song. How the h.e.l.l could you?"

"I had it on a record when I was little."

"Well, it fits. And then when your father needed a little cheap sinew to deal with his divorce situation, Cotton sent him Buddy Hartman and Hartman brought Harold and his musical blackjack."

"What will you do now?" Paul said.

"Tomorrow I'm going to call up all these insurance companies and find out if your father was in fact the broker on these fire losses, and if they paid off."

"The ones in the card file?"

"Yeah."

"How will you know who to call?"

"I've done a lot of work for insurance companies. I know people in most of the claims departments."

"Then what will you do?"

"Then I'll file all of what I know for the moment and see what I can get on your mother."

Paul was quiet.

"How do you feel?" I said.

"Okay."

"This is awful hard."

"It's okay."

"You're helping me put the screws to your father and mother."

"I know."

"You know it's for you?"

"Yes."

"Can you do it?"

"Help you?"

"All of it. Be autonomous, be free of them, depend on yourself. Grow up at fifteen."

"I'll be sixteen in September."

"You'll be older than that," I said. "Let's get something to eat and go to bed."

CHAPTER 28.

It was raining hard in the morning when Paul and I ran along the Charles River. It rained all day. I sat in my office and called insurance companies. Paul had finished his book on ballet. He went out and, at my suggestion, walked up to the Boston Public Library and used my card to take out a copy of Catcher in the Rye. Five minutes after he was back, Susan called.

"The line's been busy for an hour," she said.

"Broads," I said. "Word's out that I'm back in town and the broads have been calling since yesterday."

"Paul with you?"

"Yes."

"Let me speak to him, please."

I held the phone out to Paul. "For you," I said. "Susan."

Paul took the phone and said, "h.e.l.lo."

Then he was quiet.

Then he said, "Okay."

Then he was quiet.

Then he said, "Okay," and hung up.

"She says there's a prep school out in Grafton that specializes in drama, music, and dance," he said. "She says she'll take me out to look at it this afternoon if I want to go."

"You want to go?"

"I guess so."

"Good. You should. Is it a boarding school?"

"You mean live there?"

"Yes."

"She didn't say. Would I have to live there?"

"Maybe."

"You don't want me to live with you?"

"Eventually you'll have to move on. Autonomy means self-reliance, not changing your reliance from your mother and father to me. I'm what they call in politics a transition coordinator."

"I don't think I want to go away to school."

"Wait, see, take a look at the place. We'll talk. I won't make you do what you genuinely can't stand to do. But keep open. Keep in mind that sometimes I go to unpleasant places and people shoot at me. There are drawbacks to living with me."

"I don't mind."

"Some of the drawbacks might be mine," I said.

"Oh."

"Don't make more of that than it is. If one of us starts fearing that honesty will hurt the other's feelings, we've slid back some. I'm trying to work this out so it's best for all of us, me as well as you. Susan too."

He nodded.

"I've taken you this far. I won't push you out of the nest until we both know you can fly. You understand that?"

"Yes."

"You can trust me to do what I say. Do you know that?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Willing to make another trip out in the rain?"

"Yes."

"I'm in a Dunkin' Donut frenzy," I said. "If you went up Boylston Street and bought some, and coffee to go, and hurried back before the coffee got cold, I might be able to make it until afternoon."

He grinned. "Since I've known you you've been a health food freak."

I gave him five dollars. He put on the yellow slicker jacket I'd bought him and left.

I called a guy in Chicago named Flaherty at Colton Insurance Company of Illinois. He told me that they had insured property in the name of Elaine Brooks, that six months later the building burned, and that while everyone guessed it was arson, no one could prove it and they paid and privately agreed not to insure Elaine again.

"Thing is," he said, "if it was arson, it was also murder. Two winos were apparently cooping up in there and never got out. What they found was mostly charred bones and a muscatel bottle that had half melted."

I said, "Thanks, Jack," and noted the information on my master list.

He said, "You got anything I should know about on this thing, Spenser?"

"No, I'm into something else, this is just collateral, you know."

"Well, don't hold out on us. I throw a lot of investigative work your way."

"Yeah, and it's real exciting too," I said.

"Don't knock it, money's good."

"Money's not everything, Jack," I said.

"Maybe not, but you ever try spending s.e.x?"

"There's something wrong with that argument," I said, "but I can't think what right now. I may call you later with my comeback."

"Keep in touch," Flaherty said.

We hung up. Murder, two counts. Better and better. Or worse and worse, depending on where you stood. From where I stood it looked like enough to keep Mel Giacomin in line.

Paul came back with coffee and doughnuts. Plain for me. Two Boston creams for him-disgusting. I made some more of my calls. Everything was clicking in. Giacomin was involved with some kind of arson ring, and there was no doubt, though at the moment, no proof, that Harry Cotton was in it with him.