It was almost a relief when the telephone jangled him out of his soft fog at three-fifty in the morning.
‘Mac Bassett?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Fire Chief Tare. There’s a fire at the Wren House.’
Mac pushed himself more upright. ‘You mean the Bird’s Nest,’ he said, muddled by the Scotch.
‘Best you come down,’ Tare said, clicking off.
Mac pulled on his sneakers and half ran, half hobbled out to his truck. He sped south through the town, leaning forward over the steering wheel to look for any glow of orange in the sky. There was only darkness.
And then he was there, and there was relief. The Bird’s Nest was intact. He waited for the lone fire truck to pull away from the back door, and drove in. The fire chief’s red sedan was parked in the back, by the Dumpster. Mac made a wide turn to sweep his headlamps across the back of the restaurant. All looked well.
He left his headlights shining on the back of the building. Chief Tare was standing next to the Dumpster, in front of the steps that led to the kitchen door.
‘We got it right away.’ Tare pointed to a scorched section of the cedar siding. ‘No real damage.’
The wood was charred in an almost perfect rectangle, running three feet up from the ground and five feet across.
‘Unusual to see such a regular pattern?’ Mac asked. His head was clearing.
Tare stepped back, probably from the Scotch on Mac’s breath. ‘Accelerant, poured or squirted in a horizontal line, to run down the wood,’ he said. ‘Could have been kids with gasoline.’
Mac concentrated on speaking distinctly. If Tare thought he’d arrived drunk, word would spread that Mac had got tanked and tried to torch his place for the insurance.
‘It might not have been kids.’ Mac pointed to the plywood covering the broken kitchen door. ‘That broken window was round one. This fire is round two.’
Tare frowned in the glare of Mac’s headlamps. ‘Someone is sending you a message?’
Something new and frightening swept through Mac’s mind. Paranoia fueled by the Scotch, perhaps. He said it anyway: ‘You got here fast.’ Too damned fast.
‘We got a call. Indistinguishable voice, man or a woman, adult or child, saying there was a fire at your restaurant.’
‘You didn’t call the cops?’
‘I didn’t think it was necessary.’ He looked up again at the kitchen door. ‘Of course, I didn’t know you’d already had an incident.’
‘It’s unusual, isn’t it? You, the chief, coming to such a small fire?’
‘I like to keep my hand in, make sure things get handled properly.’
‘In the middle of the night?’
Tare started toward his car. ‘Best you heed what these messages mean, Mac.’
Mac walked around the restaurant, checking to make sure the doors and windows were locked. Everything was secure.
He went back to his truck, got in and shut off the lights. He didn’t want to go back to his house; he didn’t want to go inside the restaurant. He didn’t want to be penned up anywhere. He sat in his truck behind his restaurant until the sun rose enough to lighten the rectangle that had been charred onto the back of the Bird’s Nest.
He had a thought. He got out of the truck, walked to the Dumpster and lifted the lid.
Lying bright and obvious on top of the black bags of garbage was a blue and white plastic bottle of charcoal starter. No one could have missed it, if anyone had been interested enough to look.
The fire hadn’t been meant to send a message. It had been meant to send two.
The first was the most obvious: this time, the fire was carefully limited, to scorch only a small rectangle. Next time, it wouldn’t be confined. It would be higher and hotter. The whole restaurant would be destroyed.
The second message was even more chilling. The arsonist hadn’t bothered to conceal the accelerant; he’d set it in plain view inside the Dumpster. In almost any circumstance, the chief or one of his firemen should have thought to look there. They hadn’t. They weren’t curious – that was the message.
‘No cops?’ Mac had asked the fire chief. ‘None needed,’ Tare had replied.
Not now, not in the future, not for any harm that would come to Mac Bassett.
FORTY-TWO
Things got better that evening, for a time.
The Bird’s Nest was busy. Two-hundred and seventy-three heads showed up to eat and, more profitably, to drink in front of the television sets Mac had set up around the restaurant. Ordinarily, Mac would have credited the crowd to Chicago’s Crosstown Classic, that annual baseball contest between the Cubs and the White Sox. That night, he figured there was another contingent – Bassett watchers, who’d come for a last meal before the restaurant, and perhaps Mac himself, went up in smoke. He mentioned it to April.
‘Whatever it takes to make a profit, Mac,’ she said, trying to tease, but there was no mirth in her eyes.
Mac made his first round through the crowd at six-thirty. When he’d first taken over the restaurant, he’d tried to work the room at least twice each evening, stopping at each of the tables to greet the people he knew and introduce himself to those he didn’t. He’d enjoyed it. After his indictment, it instantly turned into rough, awkward work. People didn’t want to talk much to someone headed for jail.
That evening, as usual, a brief ‘How’s it going, Mr Mayor?’ meant, ‘You going to prison, Mr Mayor?’
‘Fighting back,’ he said a hundred new times. ‘Countersuing.’
‘Countersuing?’ most asked in surprise. Jen Jessup hadn’t published anything about Mac’s countersuit. He still doubted she’d tried.
‘The whole thing’s political retribution, and that’s going to come out,’ he said those hundred times.
‘Political here, or political back in Linder County?’ more than one asked.
Mac was careful then, because a good number of the diners were friends of his predecessor, Pete Moore. ‘Political everywhere,’ he said, smiling, hurrying on to the next table before his mouth could bring more grief.
Jen herself called midway through the evening. ‘Heard there was a fire.’
‘Surely not at your desk.’
She took a breath. ‘No one wants the piece. Horace Wiggins turned it down without bothering to explain, of course. The papers in DeKalb, Rochelle, and Dixon said they won’t be party to your grandstanding. Even the Rockford paper I string for said they’ll give you space only when you get sent to prison. I’m really sorry, Mac.’
‘Thanks for not sugarcoating.’ He waited for her to ask about Betty Jo Dean.
‘That fire?’ she asked. ‘Deliberately set?’
‘Charcoal starter. Fire Chief Tare showed up but didn’t bother to look inside the Dumpster.’
‘Be careful, Mac,’ she said, and surprised him by hanging up without asking about Betty Jo Dean. Jen Jessup was a puzzle, beautifully wrapped.
A sallow-skinned man in a green sport coat, bright blue shirt and dark olive tie sat alone in the booth farthest from the door. He was around sixty, and sweating as though with a fever. His thin, graying hair was pasted back on his skull, and shiny with tonic.
An untouched glass of Coke lay on the table in front of him, next to a closed menu.
‘Welcome to the Bird’s Nest,’ Mac said.
The man offered a faint smile.
‘From here?’ Mac asked.
‘My whole life.’
‘You must have seen some changes, then,’ Mac said, offering casual, meaningless words.
The man shifted his eyes nervously to look at the door. Mac thought of Farris Hobbs the night Mac had first brought up Betty Jo Dean. Farris’s eyes had shifted like that.