“I saw the car.”
“Where did you see the car?”
“It was leaving from behind the club.”
“Bissonette’s?”
“Like I said, yeah. It flashed its brights at me as it came out.”
“What kind of car was it, Mr. Petrocelli?”
“I got a good look at it under the streetlights there.”
“What kind of car was it, Mr. Petrocelli?”
“I couldn’t help but notice it.”
“What kind of car was it, Mr. Petrocelli?”
“It was a black limousine.”
Her mouth is silk, her tongue, her soft lips thick with passion. I run my hands through the tangles in her hair, the strands are thick, greasy. I am on my back, she is on her knees, crouching over me, her hair spilling down, obscuring her face. She is working, like a squirrel over a nut she is working. Her legs, smooth as felt, rub against my legs. Her head bobs in her work. My hands in her hair, over her ears, I pull her off and up so that she is stretched over me. The smell of game is in the air, quail. As I kiss her I taste my own saltiness. We lay like that, her stretched out on top of me, kissing gently, sweetly, passing the saltiness back and forth, suspended as in a hanging prism, but even as our mouths lay upon each other just as gently, even as our tongues dance about each other just as sweetly, like waltzers floating arm in arm across a wooden floor, even as we try to hold on to the moment our bodies are picking up the tempo, her hands pressing into my side, my grip on the thick muscles of her thigh, her foot, toes splayed, pressing down on my own, my knee, her knee, my teeth, her hip. I grab her tight and spin around and she is beneath me now, reaching for me. I pull my hips away, away from her gropes, and drag my tongue down from her neck, between her breasts, down.
“And what did your investigation of the fire find, Inspector Flanagan?” asked Eggert.
“A hot spot in the basement, just underneath the bar area.”
“What exactly is a hot spot?”
“It’s a place where there is damage beyond that which we would expect to see from a normally spreading fire. The hot spot is where the fire started.”
“What kind of damage did you find to indicate this was a hot spot?”
“Well, in this basement, for example, there were pots and pans being stored, metal racks, cans of food, that sort of thing. A normal fire, there maybe would have been some damage, but since a normal fire rises, not as much as we found. There was an area down in the basement where certain metal objects had just melted, not charred at all, just melted, as if they were made of clay and someone had stepped on them. You wouldn’t see that as part of a normal fire. And the lower walls of the basement were singed. A regular fire goes up, a fire set with chemicals spreads out and down, which is what this looked like.”
“Did you perform a chemical analysis in the basement?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And what did you find?”
“There were trace elements consistent with a great deal of kerosene being burned in the basement. We checked with Mr. Ruffing and he stated that there was a small amount of kerosene kept in the basement, but not a sufficient amount to have left the quantity of trace elements we found.”
“Why would a fire in the basement burn the whole building, isn’t the basement floor cement?”
“Actually, yes, it was, but the walls were wooden and, more importantly, the joists in the basement were all wood. Once the joists catch the entire foundation is weakened and most likely the building will collapse.”
“Is that in fact what happened to Bissonette’s?”
“Yes.”
“Did you, in the course of your investigation, come to a conclusion as to when the fire started?”
“Based on the evidence, as we could best put it together, it started sometime between three and four-thirty in the morning. It wasn’t called in until ten to five.”
“Did you come to a conclusion as to how this fire was started, Inspector?”
“Yes, we did.”
“And what was that conclusion, sir?”
“Arson.”
She tastes of prairie dogs and coyotes, angry, taut and electric, oily, ancient, of something untamed and dangerous. Salt pork. Beneath me she quivers, she howls, soft, ominous, inhuman. I am biting into the flesh of a live snake. She digs her thumbs into my biceps, her heels kick at the small of my back. I fight to maintain control, first with my tongue, spelling out mysterious words in dead languages, then my arms, straining as they grab at her clavicles, her neck. My head leaps forward and like a wrestler I am on her, pinning her arms, my face pressing into hers. We breathe together in the struggle, hot wetness passing from her lungs to mine and back again. I slip an arm around her body and flip her over. Her legs tangle about themselves as she spins. With my arm I sweep her knees to her chest and then I am atop her, one arm across her breasts, the other hand grabbing tight at her elbow. I spin around her from one side to the other. I am in a classic riding position. Two points for the takedown. She tries to lift up with her arms and I break her down. She growls when I enter her. Our rhythms are in opposition. There is thickness there, resistance, despite my ferocity I drop into her slowly and a force in opposition rises as I pull back. She straightens her legs and suddenly I fly into the air, lost for an instant, then we are back to the slow insistent pounding. I fall on top of her and bite her shoulder. She takes my hand and starts to suck at my fingers. It accelerates, the pounding, the breaths. I am igniting atop her. She straightens her legs and I fly once more through the air, ungrounded, untethered, suspended, lost somewhere above the unceasing Colorado.
“And what did Chester Concannon say then, Mr. Grouse?” asked Eggert.
“He said some of the city’s finest citizens had already contributed to the committee, this CUP. I asked him who.”
“Did he give you names?”
“Yes, sir. He rattled off a whole list of prominent businesspersons. It was a very impressive list.”
“Did you agree then to make the contribution?”
“Well, no, not really. I’m a Republican, you see.”
“What did the defendant Mr. Concannon say then?”
“He mentioned a few other contributors, including Mr. Ruffing.”
“Did you know Mr. Ruffing?”
“Oh, yes. We worked on a development deal in Hatboro-Horsham once. His place had just burned down and I told him that it was a terrible shame what happened.”
“What did Mr. Concannon say then?”
“He told me that, yes, it was a great shame. And then he said, and I remember because it gave me chills, he said it was a great shame but that Mr. Ruffing had fallen behind in his contributions to the committee.”
“What did you do then, Mr. Grouse?”
“Then and there, Mr. Eggert, then and there I wrote out a five-thousand-dollar check to CUP.”
I lay beside her now, my legs stretched, my arms resting on a pillow above my head. The sweet cloak of sleep slips across my brain and my head turns to the side. There is a sharpness to the room, it is hot, moist, it smells like the Carnivora house at the zoo. I want to sleep, I don’t have much time, I know, before I will be evicted, but with her leg tossed carelessly over mine, I want to sleep.
“Let’s try something,” she says.
“Too tired,” I mumble. “I’m exhausted.”
“But that’s the point. To get so exhausted that everything else disappears, until it all fades silently away and nothing matters but the fading away.”
“I’m there.”
“I’m not.”
“Let me sleep.”
“I can still hear the traffic, I still know my name.”
“Veronica.”
“Yes, that’s it.”
“Let me sleep, please. Just a minute.”
“Yes, sweetheart.”