And then, a minute later, “Code Red on Pleasant! Single-family home fully involved. Engine Twelve needs assistance.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Veronica said.
I floored the pedal as we crossed the Providence River, raced up the steep slope of Olney Street, and swung left on Camp into Mount Hope.
The radio again.
“Code Red on Larch Street. Code Red! Code Red! All hell is breaking loose out here!”
38
Veronica fished the cell from her purse.
“Which one are we heading for?” she said.
“I’ll drop you at Doyle, then head for Larch.”
She called the city-desk overnight supervisor, told him where we were going, and urged him to send everyone he had to Mount Hope. Then she made another call, getting Lomax out of bed.
The radio squawked again, telling us the city of Pawtucket was responding to a mutual-aid request from Providence, three pumpers and a ladder truck on the way.
From the corner of Camp and Doyle, we could see flames in the first- and second-story windows of a triple- decker fifty yards down the street. Police cruisers had Doyle blocked off, so I pulled over, told Veronica to be careful, and let her out.
I watched her charm her way through the police line; then I sped five blocks north on Camp. The cops had Larch blocked off too, so I drove half a block past the intersection and pulled the Bronco up on the sidewalk, giving fire equipment and emergency vehicles room to maneuver.
I dashed back down the sidewalk to Larch, where gawkers gathered at the police lines. They looked scared this time. Some of the women were weeping.
I shouldered my way through until a uniformed officer blocked my way. Patrolman O’Banion was not a Mulligan fan. Probably had something to do with the time I wrote about him filching joints from the evidence locker, and the chief—no doubt pissed he hadn’t thought of it first—suspended him for a month without pay. I flashed my press pass at him. He glanced at it and said, “Get the fuck out of here.”
I did, resisting the urge to break into a run. No point risking one of the DiMaggios mistaking me for a torch fleeing the scene. I walked a block south on Camp, turned east on Cypress, strolled up a driveway, climbed a stockade fence, found myself in another driveway, and emerged on Larch.
I heard the fire before I felt it, the flames sounding like a thousand flags snapping in the wind. I felt it before I saw it, the heat like a backhand slap from the devil.
A sheet of flame climbed the front of the duplex. Black smoke boiled from cheap asphalt siding, mixing with gray smoke that curled from the eaves. On the roof, two firemen swung axes, cutting vents to release the smoke trapped inside. The wind shot blazing tongues up the east side of the building to the peak. The two firemen gave up and scrambled down an aerial ladder on the other side as their brothers laid down a cover of spray.
The street was a snare of fire hoses. Leakage from loose couplings soaked my jeans.
Behind me, I heard a pop.
I turned and saw a flash of light in a cellar window of a two-story bungalow. Peeling yellow paint, blue Dodge ram on blocks in the front yard. The house where I’d talked to Carmella DeLucca and her Neanderthal son, Joseph. A sheet of flame shot across the basement from right to left, illuminating the three cellar windows.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Over here!”
But four firemen had already turned from the duplex and were hauling two four-inch lines across the street. Rosie and two of her men strapped on respirators, lowered their faceplates, kicked in the front door, and burst inside. Half a minute later they emerged, Rosie carrying the flailing birdlike figure of Carmella DeLucca.
“Put me down!”
So she did. The old woman appeared to be all right, but one of the firemen led her to the rescue truck. I followed, and as a medic checked her over, I tried to pump her for details.
“Mrs. DeLucca? Where were you when the fire started?”
“None of your business,” she said. “And don’t go putting my name in your paper.”
“Want to say something about the chief? She just saved your life.”
“Like hell she did. I was perfectly capable of walking out of there my own self.”
Across the street, smoke from the duplex had changed from black billows to white steam, a sign that the fire was retreating, its work well done.
The bungalow took up the slack. It burped a series of dull thuds, probably old paint cans exploding in the basement. Smoke rolled from the gutters along the roofline as the fire clawed up the walls between the studs, where the streams from the hoses couldn’t reach it. Thin gray smoke curled from the open front door.
That’s when Joseph DeLucca lumbered down the sidewalk dragging Officer O’Banion, who was clinging to his leg. Joseph reached down with one paw, peeled the cop off, and bellowed.
“MA!”
“She’s safe,” I shouted, but he didn’t listen.
He charged up the front walk, rushed through the door, and was swallowed by smoke. Rosie and one of the other firemen who’d just rescued “Ma” went in after him.
I stood in the street, held my breath, and counted the seconds.
Ten. The window curtains caught fire.
Twenty. A stuffed chair near the front window ignited.
Thirty. Flames chewed through the siding near the door.
Forty. A tongue of fire curled from the eaves and licked the roof.
Fifty. Joseph hurtled through the front door like he’d been thrown. Behind him, Rosie and the other fireman materialized in the smoky doorway. Joseph tried to shove past them to get back inside. They wrestled him to the ground, beating on his burning hair with their insulated gloves. Another fireman tipped his nozzle to the sky and let the spray fall on them like spring rain.
39
The next day’s front page headline: HELL NIGHT IN MOUNT HOPE. The lead photo, played four columns wide, captured Rosie as she emerged from a smoky doorway cradling Carmella DeLucca in her arms.
Thanks to Veronica’s call, Lomax had reached the newsroom in time to stop the city-edition press run after only twelve hundred papers had been printed. He filed a series of updates for the online edition and then wrote the print story himself with feeds from reporters at the scenes. He remade the front page with dramatic fire photos and put out a great newspaper that started flowing onto the delivery trucks only ninety minutes past normal deadline.
“Wait till the publisher gets the overtime bill from the pressmen and truck drivers,” Veronica said.
“Yeah,” I said, “he’ll probably dock Lomax’s pay.”
We were hunched over plates of scrambled eggs and bacon at the diner, devouring the paper. Last night we’d been isolated at separate fire scenes, and we were hungry for the whole story in one place. There’d been five suspicious fires in all, the last one eating through a three-story garden apartment building on Mount Hope Avenue. I didn’t even know about that one until I read what Lomax had written.
“Bet they’ll give your friend Rosie a medal,” Veronica said.
“She’s already got a drawer full of them.”
Charlie cleared the cold, half-eaten eggs away and topped off our coffees. “Here comes that asshole I was telling you about,” he said. “The one that come in here the other day asking could I whip him up a cheese souffle.”
Mason strolled in looking uncharacteristically casual in a buff cashmere sweater and knife-creased tan slacks, his left hand clutching the handle of a Dunhill briefcase worth more than my pension. He perched on the stool next
