our starting pitchers, our right fielder, our shortstop, and our third baseman were all on the disabled list. Ortiz had returned from his wrist injury, but he wasn’t the same. And the great one, Manny Ramirez, was gone, traded to the Dodgers after throwing one tantrum too many about his pitiful twenty-million-dollar contract. I wondered what Rosie would have said about that. Me? After all that had happened, it was hard to care about baseball anymore.
On a Sunday afternoon in early September, the Providence paper’s banner headline grabbed me before I grabbed it from the newsstand: ARSON RETURNS TO MOUNT HOPE.
I carried the paper to the Algiers Coffee House on Brattle Street and read it over a cup of Arabic coffee and a lamb-sausage sandwich. A duplex on Ivy Street had burned to the ground, and a fast-moving fire had gutted Zerilli’s Market on Doyle Avenue. The story, under Mason’s byline, quoted Polecki as saying the fires were definitely suspicious but still under investigation. When I turned to page eight for the rest of it, I was thrilled to see that the fire picture on the jump page was credited to Gloria.
Mason’s story went on to speculate that the arsons had resumed because, after a quiet summer, the police and the neighborhood vigilante group known as the DiMaggios had “let their guard down.” I made a mental note to talk to Mason about cliches.
I tried to call Whoosh, but his home number was unlisted and the phones in his store were melted lumps of plastic.
75
Next morning, I borrowed Aunt Ruthie’s immaculate two-year-old Camry and headed south on I-95. An hour later I turned off at Branch Avenue, parked on the street by the gate to the North Burial Ground, opened the trunk, and took out my Tonka hook-and-ladder truck. A bunch of dead mums slumped against the headstone that marked the final resting place of Scott and Melissa Rueda. I placed the toy on the twins’ grave and took the dead flowers away.
Then I walked to the car, cruised a few miles east, and swung into Swan Point Cemetery. Rosie was buried among the rhododendrons, about fifty yards west of where they’d planted Ruggerio “the Blind Pig” Bruccola. Her grave was smothered in a mound of dead flowers. I cleared them away, preserving the mementos her fellow firefighters had placed there—three fire hats, a brass nozzle from a fire hose, several dozen Providence FD patches, and a few score more from other fire departments around the state. I draped a signed Manny Ramirez jersey over the shoulders of her gravestone, kneeled in the grass, and talked with her for a while, just the two of us reminiscing about our Hope High days while watching a tug churn its way up the Seekonk River. I kidded her about the neon flowered monstrosity she’d worn to the prom. She made fun of my awkward, left-handed layups. We agreed we had made a mistake, that one time we slept together, but we weren’t sure if the mistake was doing it at all or not giving it another try.
“I’m so sorry I missed the funeral, Rosie. I would have been there, but Aunt Ruthie talked me out of it. If she hadn’t, I’d probably be lying right next to you.”
When the chat between two friends turned into a conversation between the living and the dead, and I couldn’t hear her voice anymore, I walked back to the car, taking the jersey along with me. She’d want to wear it again the next time I dropped by to talk, and there was no point in leaving it behind so some punk could steal it.
I took a shortcut past Brown Stadium and swung Ruthie’s car onto Doyle Avenue. The store was a blackened shell, and Whoosh was standing out front supervising a sidewalk sale of smoke-damaged goods. I parked on the street, strolled over to him, and stuck out my hand.
“Do I know you?”
“You do.”
“You’re gonna have to remind me.”
“Look harder,” I said, and removed my sunglasses.
He squinted at my face, then said, “Ah, shit. I didn’t figure you for a suicide.”
“Hard to recognize me with the beard?”
“Yeah, but what really threw me was the Yankees cap and jersey. Fuckin’ good disguise.”
“Take a walk with me.”
“Hang on a sec,” he said.
He walked through the store’s charred doorway and disappeared into the ruins. A couple of minutes later, he emerged carrying a stack of six wooden cigar boxes.
“Might as well have these,” he said. “The heat dried them out, but throw some apple slices into the boxes, and some of them should come back okay.”
I thanked him and locked the boxes in the trunk of Ruthie’s car. Then we strolled together under the old, half-dead maples lining the sidewalk, where a few of the leaves were starting to turn.
“I’m so sorry about Rosie. I know the two of you were close.”
“My best friend.”
“John McCready was mine, so I know how you must feel.” He threw his arms wide. “So many fucking fires. So many neighbors dead.”
“Sorry about the store,” I said.
“Hell, that’s the least of it.”
“Going to rebuild?”
“Gonna reopen next week in a storefront on Hope Street,” he said. “It’s a good space. Giordano gave it to me in a straight swap for the old place. Guess he’s thinking of building something here. Damned good of him, though. And to think I had him pegged for an asshole.”
“The DiMaggios still on patrol?”
“They disbanded back in June when it looked like the fires had stopped. Big fuckin’ mistake. As of last night, they’re back on the streets. They catch the prick what burned my place down and I won’t be calling the cops next time. He’s going right into the Field’s Point sludge incinerator.”
“Whoever he is, he’s just a hired hand,” I said. “Want the names of the bastards who sent him?”
76
“It’s Mulligan. I need a favor.”
“Name it.”
“I need you to get the recording and documents out of your safe deposit box and bring them to me.”
“What’s up?”
“Better you don’t know.”
“Okay. When and where?”
“The Battleship Cove visitors’ parking lot in Fall River at eleven A.M. Saturday.”
“I’ll be there.”
“You still driving the black Acura?”
“Yeah.”
“Just pull in, and I’ll see you.”
77
Saturday morning, I splurged on a couple of Tommy Castro CDs at Satellite Records in Boston. “Take the Highway Down” boomed from the speakers of Aunt Ruthie’s Camry as I cruised south on Route 24 toward Newport, the documents and recording McCracken had delivered locked in the trunk. As I crawled along Ocean Avenue looking for an address, I cued the CD to “You Knew the Job Was Dangerous.”
The house was a sprawling Nantucket-style cottage with weathered shingles, a broad white porch, and an
