“They said someone was dead,” she said.
“Yes.”
“Is it…”
“Yes,” I said, reaching out and pulling her toward me, holding her as she cried.
“Damn him,” she said, her tears hitting now the street. “Damn him.”
“Who?”
“I told him to stop. I told him it was crazy dangerous. But he missed it. All this talk about the old days. His time in the center of it was coming back to him and he couldn’t help himself. But it’s like Cooper says, the old road always ends in despair.”
“But it wasn’t just a fire, Chelsea.”
She pulled away, looked up at me.
“He was murdered,” I said.
“No. It can’t be.”
“I found his body. Before the fire. He was shot.”
“Stop.”
“Any idea who?”
“No.”
“Any enemies?”
“No. No.” She turned toward the burning building, watched as the fire succumbed to the torrents of water. “Everyone loved him. He was just a kid. An old kid. He never grew up. But there was something rich about him, as if the current of life moved raw through his body. People felt more alive just being near him.”
“And he loved you.”
“Yes.”
“Always and forever.”
She bowed her head. “Yes.”
“It was in his eyes every time he looked at you.”
“Victor, what am I going to do?”
“What does Cooper say? He seems to have the answer to everything.”
“You know what he says, Victor? He says the living go on dying, only the dead will rise unchanged.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but right now I hope it’s true.”
Chelsea and I were still standing together some twenty minutes later when Detective McDeiss, wearing his black porkpie hat, ducked beneath the yellow tape, accompanied by our good friend K. Lawrence Slocum. By then the blaze was under control, the crowd had lessened, the street was strewn with water and debris, the air foul with the burning.
“Everywhere you show up is a party, Carl,” said McDeiss, shaking his head as he scanned the desolation, acting as if I was the root cause of the current tragedy. “We ought to put a bell around your neck.”
I introduced the detective and Slocum to Chelsea, told them she was the dead man’s ex-wife. McDeiss asked a few questions and then led her to another officer.
“The detective will take her home after he gets a full statement,” said McDeiss after he returned.
“Thank you.”
“I suppose she’ll have to identify him.”
“I don’t think there’ll be much to identify.”
“Probably not,” said McDeiss.
“All right,” said Slocum. “What happened?”
“I’ve told it three times already.”
“Tell it again,” he said, and so I did, everything from the moment I stepped into the shop until it blew up behind me.
“You see who it was who was running?” said McDeiss.
“No. As soon as I opened the door the place exploded and I was kissing pavement. It was all I could do to get to the other side of the street and away from the flames. By the time I remembered to look around there was nothing.”
“Did you call nine-one-one?”
“With my cell.”
Slocum was shaking his head at the ruined buildings, the singed facades of brick, the devoured roofs with just parts of the skeletal structure still poking through.
“You sure he was shot?” said McDeiss.
“Pretty sure. I didn’t have time for an autopsy.”
“Maybe he just was overcome by the fumes and fell. Dangerous thing cooking up crank.”
“It looked like he was shot.”
“Any idea of the caliber?”
“Look, I’m not Charleton Heston, all right. Only thing I know about guns is that when I see one I cringe and say, ‘No, please, don’t shoot.’ ”
Slocum rubbed his hand with his mouth. “Okay, Carl,” he said. “I’m afraid to ask but I’m going to anyway. Who was he, this Lonnie Chambers?”
“Twenty years ago,” I said, “he was in Tommy Greeley’s drug ring.”
Slocum rubbed his mouth again. McDeiss turned around and kicked the curb and then hopped around in pain.
“Here’s the story,” I said. “Twenty years ago Tommy Greeley was sleeping with Lonnie Chambers’s wife. Lonnie didn’t like that. Lonnie went to Tommy’s girlfriend to tell her about it, but she didn’t react like he had hoped. She had her own issues to deal with. So Lonnie started following Tommy to find who else he might be screwing and he did, yes he did.”
“Who?” said Slocum.
“Who do you think?
“Jesus Christ, Carl. Didn’t we talk about this?”
“She came to me.”
“And what about him? Have you been a good boy?”
“Until today.”
“Carl.”
“A client who should be in art school was stepped back into prison as a way for that bastard to get back at me. The client’s a good kid and he’s going to jail just so that bastard can make his point.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Really? Talk to the ADA, Melissa Carter, see what she has to say. She was as shocked at the sentence as I was. And remember I told you I was beat up and threatened in my vestibule. I’m certain it was his file clerk, a man named Curtis Lobban, who did the beating and the threatening.”
“You said you didn’t see a face.”
“I recognized his voice.”
“That will sure convince a jury. You promised you’d stay away from them.”
“She’s a vampire,” I said, “and he’s a murderer.”
“He’s a Supreme Court justice.”
“And a murderer.”
“You don’t know.”
“It’s pretty clear to me.”
“You sure this Lonnie found out about the two of them?”
“She told me so yesterday.”
“You sure he told the justice about it?”
“Pretty sure. It seems like he was looking for someone to tell. I was going to ask Lonnie about it just to be certain. That’s why I was here. But I mentioned Lonnie to the justice today. I even told him where the shop was.” As it dawned on me, I spun around in frustration. “I led the bastard right to him.”
“So you’re not sure that Lonnie told the justice back then.”
“Not absolutely, no. But that’s exactly why he killed Lonnie and set the place on fire. That’s exactly why he killed Joey, because Joey could have traced back the killing of Tommy Greeley to him. He’s covering his tracks. And that’s how I ended up in jail when you bailed me out, because of him. He’s doing what he can to discredit and discourage me because I am on to him.”
“Or maybe it was simply an entry error.”
“You don’t believe that. You don’t believe that.”
“And maybe this Lonnie was killed by someone not so happy about a competitor cooking up methamphetamine and selling it on his turf. Perhaps one of the local motorcycle gangs who run the business up and down the East Coast.”
“You’re looking to look the other way.”
“It’s a tough business he was in,” said Slocum.
“How does Babbage fit into your theory?” said McDeiss. “Why would the justice care about Babbage?”
“Maybe Babbage knew something to connect Straczynski to the drug ring. Or maybe Babbage’s death was just a heart attack.”
“ Montgomery County coroner, when I asked him, seemed to think it was exactly that,” said McDeiss. “Acute myocardial infarction. Only when I looked at the report something seemed a little off. Some missing hair off the back part of his scalp.”
“Oh?”
“Torn out.”
“It’s him, I’m telling you.”
“It sounds personal,” said Slocum.
“He killed one client. Stepped back another into an unjust sentence. He sent his clerk out to beat me up. He threw me in jail. And now he almost incinerated me. Yeah. It’s personal.”
“How’s your dad?” said Slocum.
“Not good,” I said, “and getting worse,” and as I said it a wave of hopelessness washed over me. It started with my thinking about my father, who was indeed getting worse, every day, every hour, and there was nothing I could do about it, but it wasn’t just my father. I was up against a man whose power was beyond my comprehension, who could throw me in jail, ruin my clients, kill my friends with impunity. I was up against a man who could destroy me absolutely, if he wanted, and he apparently wanted. And the two men in the city’s employ that I admired most, that I had trusted could help me, were turning their backs on what I was sure was the truth. And there was nothing, nothing I could do about it. Nothing.