Cancerno coughed. “Would be odd if I couldn’t blame it on Gradduk.” He paused, then said, “Shit, I just realized what that means. If the little bastard
“You have any idea,” I said, “who might have had a problem with this Neighborhood Alliance group? Anyone else bid on the project and lose, anything like that?”
“No. Like I said, I just worry about my end of things.”
I nodded. “Must be a nice chunk of cash in it. You said you’re getting all the work for two years?”
Cancerno snorted. “A nice chunk of cash? Gimme a break, pal. I wish I’d never made the bid. I’ll be lucky to break even on this.”
“Really?” I said, surprised.
His scowl darkened. “Yeah, really. You don’t believe it, I’ll be happy to show you my books.”
“No need for that.”
For a moment it was quiet, and then Cancerno said, “Well, is that it?”
“I guess so,” I said. “We appreciate your time, though. And we’ll be talking to this Warren Barry.”
“Ward Barry. And don’t tell him I gave you his name. Last thing I need on my hands now is somebody else that’s pissed off at me over Gradduk.”
He stood, then turned back to the table. “You have any luck finding Corbett?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“But you tried?”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “Well, you find him, you can tell him I tore up his paycheck today. He ever wants to go back to work, it’ll be for somebody else.”
Joe and I got up, too, and headed for the door. I turned, expecting Draper would have followed us, but I saw he was still hunched in the booth, the whiskey glass in his hand.
“Thanks again, Scott,” I said.
“Huh? Oh, right. No sweat, dude.” He nodded at me, then stood up and walked out with us. I pushed open the heavy front door and stepped into the heat, the sun glaring off the cracked sidewalk, shimmering on the street. Draper stepped out behind us and let the door swing shut. He squinted down the avenue.
“Interesting,” he said, “that the house that burned down here was connected to the one up on Train.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Interesting.”
“It was a scene out here, I’ll tell you that,” he said. “All the trucks going by, people wandering up the street, looking to see what the hell was going down. I could see the smoke, even from here.”
“That’s a serious fire.”
He nodded. “First fire I’d seen since the one when we were kids. Remember that one? We were standing with your old man.”
I hesitated, thinking, then placed it. “Right, the pawnshop fire. Shit, that’s a long time ago.”
“We were still in elementary school. I remember we were coming back from the rec center, walking with your dad. He’d come up to walk back with us because it was at night. When we came out, all the sirens were going.”
Draper looked at me and grinned. “Sorrow’s anthem, right?”
“What?”
“That was what your dad called it, the sound all those sirens made.”
I laughed. “Damn, Scott, you’re reaching back for that one.”
“Well, I remember it. Because it made sense, you know? You had the ambulance, the fire engine, the police cars. All those sirens have a little different sound to them, and blended together like that, it’s like some sort of crazy song. Sorrow’s anthem, your dad called it. Yeah, I remember that night.”
I did, too, now that I stopped to think about it, and it made me sad. I’d stood on the street with Ed, Draper, and my father. Only two of us were still alive. I could remember the tense electricity that seemed to go up and down the avenue that night, the fire at the pawnshop going strong, sirens all around us. It made sense that my dad noticed the sirens, of course, and that he had a name for the sound. He spent his career in an ambulance.
“There was another fire that summer, too,” Draper said, rubbing his bald head with the palm of his hand. “Hell, maybe two?”
“Yes. There were a couple, you’re right. And they were arsons. Everybody was worried about them. But it gave people something to talk about other than . . .”
“Other than what?” Joe said when I stopped talking. He and Draper were watching me with curious looks.
“Other than Ed’s family,” I said slowly.
Draper frowned, then nodded. “Shit, that’s right. That was the same summer Norm killed himself.”
Joe and I were looking hard at each other.
“Gradduk’s dad killed himself the same summer that a bunch of fires went up around this neighborhood?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And now the son’s dead, and there are more fires,” Joe said.
The dull tingle I’d been feeling at the base of my skull from the Glenlivet seemed to be spreading. Draper was quiet, watching us.
“You have any idea how that old arson case turned out?” Joe asked.
I shook my head. “Nope. But all of the sudden I’m awfully damn curious.”
CHAPTER 15
Joe wanted to call Amy, have her run a search through the paper’s computer archives for the old fires. I discouraged him from that by saying I didn’t think the computer database went back that far, but in reality I just didn’t feel comfortable calling her for a favor. We hadn’t spoken since she’d stormed out of my apartment the previous night, and I wasn’t inclined to ask for her help right now, especially when we could handle it ourselves.
“So what’s the alternative?” Joe asked.
I sighed. “I guess we’ll do what a couple of tough-guy PIs like us should never have to do.”
“What’s that?”
“Go to the library.”
Trust a librarian to do in twenty seconds what an investigator might take hours to accomplish. I’d hardly begun to explain what we were interested in before the librarian, a tall, gray-haired woman, was clicking away on her computer.
“We’ve got something called the Cleveland News Index,” she said. “You can actually access this from the Internet; you didn’t need to come all the way down here.”
“Oh,” I said, feeling like a moron.
“The news index has citation information from the local newspaper as well as three local newsmagazines. It goes back more than twenty years. Now you said you were looking for information on arson fires on Clark Avenue?”
“At least one was on Clark,” I said. “But there were two others in the same summer.”
“I’ll just do a keyword search for ‘arson’ and ‘Clark Avenue’ and see what we get.”
I told her the year the fires had happened, and she ran the search. A few seconds later she smiled and turned the monitor to face us. There were fifty records, and the screen showed us the titles of the articles and the dates and sources. I scanned through the first page and shook my head. She clicked the mouse and sent us to the second page of results. This time I saw what I wanted:
