Jesse was wearing sneakers. The floor was still warm in places and there were pieces of lath lying about bristling with thin shanked nails. Jesse stepped carefully through the debris. In his boots, Arleigh paid it no heed.
Up the stairwell it said FAGGOTS, and in two of the upstairs rooms, where the damage was largely smoke staining, the word was curlicued repetitively on the walls.
'Not an inventive bastard,' Jesse said.
'We'll have the state fire marshal in here later on,' Arleigh said.
'Give us something more definitive. But it looks to me that the fire started right in the middle of the living room floor. That's unusual, unless somebody just dumped a can of gasoline on the rug and let her rip.'
He was red-faced and sweating inside his heavy coat.
'And if it was set, it's logical to assume that the people who wrote FAGGOTS did the setting.'
'People? Plural?'
'Yeah,' Jesse said.
'At least two people did the graffiti.'
'How the hell can you tell?' Arleigh said.
'Work South Central L.A. for a while,' Jesse said, 'get to see a lot of taggers. You know who lives here?'
'No.'
'We'll ask around,' Jesse said.
FOUR.
'This is not encouraging,' Macklin said as he slowed the Mercedes. The traffic was at a dead stop ahead on LaSalle Street.
'We want to take that right.'
'There's a cop directing traffic,' Faye said.
'He's not letting anyone down there.'
'Fire,' Macklin said.
'See the fire chief car sticking out into the road? That's what's causing the whole thing.' He shook his head.
'Firemen and cops,' he said.
'Park any friggin' place they feel like it. Don't give a goddamn how bad they screw up the traffic.'
Macklin had spent time in the tanning salon at Faye's complex so he had a prosperous tan. He was wearing a gray Palm Beach suit and a blue oxford shirt with a button-down collar. He had on a yellow silk tie and a yellow pocket silk. The 9-mm pistol was in the I glove compartment.
'How hard would it have been,' he said, 'for the asshole to have [pulled up onto the grass?'
Faye smiled. She had on a subdued tan suit, with a long jacket I and short skirt, and her hair was up and gathered in a French twist I at the back. The car inched forward.
'It's a house fire,' Faye said.
'I can see the trucks down the side I street.'
'And they can't fight it without fucking up the traffic all the | way back to Lynn?' Macklin said.
'I think it's out,' Faye said.
'It's like the law don't apply to them, you know? Like there's | one law for us and no law at all for them,' Macklin said.
Faye turned and looked at him. She smiled widely.
'There's a law for us?' she said.
'Jimmy, you're a crook. You don't pay any attention to the law at all.'
Macklin inched past the cop directing traffic and squeezed past the fire captain's car and picked up speed. His shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.
'Oh yeah,' he said.
They turned right past the movie theater and drove along Ocean Avenue to Preston Road past Geary Street, which was still closed off, to the causeway and out onto Paradise Neck. The neck was thick with trees and big lawns, the big old shingle houses back from the narrow road and barely visible. They went past the yacht club, a rambling white building that faced the harbor, and around lighthouse point and pulled onto the elegant little bridge that arched the narrow stretch of angry surf to Stiles Island. On the island end was a guard shack. Macklin stopped and lowered his window. A tallish, gray-haired man in glasses came out wearing a blue blazer and carrying a clipboard. A blue plastic name tag on his blazer said STILES ISLAND SECURITY and under that his name, J. T. McGonigle.
'Hi,' Macklin said, 'we have an appointment with Mrs. Campbell.'
'Your name, sir?'
'I know this sounds corny,' Macklin said, 'but it's Smith.'
The guard consulted his clipboard.
