“Watch your head,” she said, just as my skull met a rafter.
Firemen had hacked holes in the roof to vent the smoke, but the cramped attic still reeked of burned wiring and something more. Rosie swung her flashlight to the left, illuminating a crude plywood table with two-by-fours for legs. On top was a hydroponic farm, two dozen marijuana plants under a bank of charred high-intensity lights. Half of the plants were just stalks, their leaves consumed by the fire. The rest had withered in the heat.
“A house full of Brown students growing their own,” Rosie said. “The lights overheated and would have burned the place to the ground, we hadn’t gotten here in time.”
“Mind if I inhale?”
“Be my guest,” she said. “Half the crew’s been up here sucking in breaths and holding them.”
She laughed again, and we joined in. It wasn’t that funny, but we were all giddy with relief that the serial arsonist had taken the night off. And I think Rosie was a little high.
Rosie pulled me aside and whispered in my ear. She was only two inches taller than me, so she didn’t have to bend down much to do it.
“I thought you liked ’em tall.”
“Short works for me, too. All the parts are still there, just closer together.”
“She’s beautiful, Liam.”
“And she cooks.”
“She got any idea how crazy you are about her?”
That stopped me. “What makes you think that?”
“Are you kidding? I can tell just by the way you look at her.”
She kissed me on the cheek and said, “Buy her something nice she can wear against her skin.”
* * *
On the drive home I felt jittery. Rosie knew me better than I knew myself, and what she’d said had thrown me off balance. And the adrenaline rush of a big story was still cruising my arteries with no place to go. Veronica sensed it and laid her hand on my thigh.
“Why don’t we stop for a drink at Hopes?” she said.
“I got a better idea. Let’s go home and get naked.”
“Only if you explain something to me first.”
“What’s that?”
“How come Rosie gets to call you ‘Liam’?”
“She’s been calling me that since first grade, Veronica. I guess it’s a habit she can’t break.”
I backed Secretariat into a parking space across from my place and was reaching for the ignition key when the police scanner crackled again.
“Code Red on Doyle!”
My adrenal glands started pumping again as I turned the Bronco around. I drove back the way we’d come, monitoring the radio chatter.
“Triple-decker fully involved. People in the windows. Engine Six needs assistance.”
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.