I pulled her into my arms, and we kissed under the spray. She scrubbed my back, and I took my sweet time with hers. I would have taken all day if she hadn’t reminded me that our jobs were waiting. There’s nothing better than a wet woman.
My fridge was empty, so we headed for the diner. Charlie raised a shaggy eyebrow as Veronica and I walked in together. Aside from Wu’s arrest, it had been a slow news day in Rhode Island, the editors filling the news columns with spin from the presidential primaries, lies from Washington, and gore from Iraq.
While Veronica scanned the “Lifestyle” section, I turned to the sports. Curt Schilling’s shoulder had mysteriously worsened over the winter, and doctors were debating whether he needed surgery. But with Beckett, Matsuzaka, Lester, Wakefield, Buchholz, Colon, and Masterson, we had more starters than we needed anyway. Charlie scraped a layer of grease from the grill, wiped his hands on his apron, and turned to grin at us.
“Your taste in women is improving, Mulligan. Whatever happened to that skanky blonde you tripped down the aisle with, the one who thought your name was ‘Bastard’?”
Whenever I ate at the diner, day or night, Charlie was there to cook for me. You’ve got to work a lot of hours to put a daughter through Juilliard. I grunted and dropped a twenty on the counter, grateful to be in a place where I could treat my girl to a meal without applying for a loan to cover the check.
35
“I’m about to push the send button, so go stand next to the fax machine, Liam,” Aunt Ruthie said. “I don’t want someone else to get his hands on this and start wondering where it came from.”
It was ten pages in all, Wu Chiang’s Visa charges for November, December, January, and February, and a partial bill for the first few days of March. I carried it back to my desk to check the billing dates against the dates of the fires, but a quick glance had already told me this was going to be trouble.
Wu was a copy-machine salesman, and most of the charges spoke of a mundane existence: CVS, Stop & Shop, Texaco, Target, B & D Liquors, although $249.95 spent at Victoria’s Secret looked intriguing. He had a girlfriend, or maybe he was a cross-dresser. But what concerned me was a $477 November charge for a U.S. Airways flight and $2,457 for a twenty-one-day stay ending December 20 at the Hotel Whitcomb in downtown San Francisco. A business trip, maybe, or a winter vacation. Or could this have been an elaborate alibi?
I called the Whitcomb and got the concierge on the line. Yes, he remembered Wu. The guy’d been a chronic complainer. He didn’t like the view from his window. He whined that his no-smoking room smelled like cigarettes. There was never enough J&B in his minifridge. And on the way out, he argued about his bill.
To be sure, I e-mailed him a photo of Wu, and the concierge called back with a positive ID.
I turned to my keyboard and started to write it up, a slam-dunk, page-one byline. Then I thought about it and realized I owed some people a heads-up.
36
“Sonovabitch!” Zerilli said.
“Technically this just clears him of the three December fires,” I said. “Looks like he was in town for the others. But to suspect him now, you’d have to think more than one serial arsonist is working Mount Hope.”
“Not fuckin’ likely.”
“No,” I said. “It’s not.”
“Shit! Last night I asked the DiMaggios to turn in their bats. Told ’em they could keep the hats. Guess I better get ’em back on the streets.”
“I think you should.”
The phone jingled. He picked up, gave odds on the Celtics-Nets game, licked his pencil stub, recorded a bet on a scrap of flash paper, hung up, and absently scratched his balls through his boxers.
“Ah, fuck,” he said. “Good of you to come by though, letting me know in person ’stead of havin’ to read the bad news in the fuckin’ paper.”
We smoked silently for a moment.
“CD player workin’ okay?”
“Yup.”
“Out of Cubans yet?”
“Not quite yet.”
“How about putting fifty down on the Yankees, hedge your sucker bet on the Sox?”
“No thanks, Whoosh,” I said. “If the Yankees win, it would just feel like blood money.”
* * *
The blinds were open in Jack’s little apartment, and the sun slanting through the slats lifted the atmosphere from depressing to merely dreary. Jack had replaced the terry-cloth robe with pressed jeans and a blue oxford shirt. He was freshly shaven, a razor burn on his left cheek, and his thin gray hair was neatly combed. His weatherproof nylon jacket—the blue one with the letters
“Hear the news?” he said. And then he smiled wide enough to show most of the teeth he had left.
“Jack, I …”
“I was just on my way over to the firehouse to hang with the guys,” he said. “Wanna walk along with me?”
I grabbed his arm. “Jack, wait.”
He caught my eye and saw something that stopped him.
“What’s wrong, Liam? Are your brother and sister okay?”
“Jack, the police arrested the wrong guy. They probably won’t want to admit it just yet, but they’ll have to release him in a day or two.”
“You sure? The TV said …”
“I’m sure.”
His shoulders slumped, and I watched the air go out of him. He let the jacket drop to the floor.
“So it’s not over.”
“No.”
My favorite Italian curse. Literally it means “pig cow,” but it’s reserved for times when most Americans would say “Oh crap!”
“This means Polecki and Roselli will start looking at you again, Jack. Remember what I told you to do if they come around again?”
“Don’t say nothing. Don’t go with them unless they arrest me. If they do, ask for a lawyer.”
“Right. And don’t tell the cops I told you not to talk.”
“Yeah. I got it.”
He collapsed into the armchair by the table where the Jim Beam bottle, only a couple of inches of amber left in it, still stood on the doily.
“Stay for a drink, Liam?”
Together we sat in silence and drained the bottle, not bothering with glasses.
“Come visit again when you get the chance,” he said.
“Maybe next time I’ll have better news.”
At the door, I turned and wrapped him up in a hug. It seemed to embarrass him a little.
“Just hang in there, Jack.” As I headed down the stairs, my ulcer was grumbling.
* * *
It was another thin crowd at Good Time Charlie’s. Marie wasn’t waiting tables this afternoon, and her body stocking was gone, replaced with nothing at all, unless you counted the garter on her right thigh. When she saw me
