Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [31]
“So, what’s up?” Kub said. “You look like something’s bothering you.”
John Finney and Robert Kub had connections that extended as far back as drill school, not the least of which was that Robert Kub had been Charlie Reese’s partner at Leary Way. Unlike Charlie Reese, though, Kub didn’t look back on Leary Way as a triumph. Finney found it endeared Kub to him in a way nobody would have guessed.
Kub was tall and lean, four inches taller than Finney, with a dark, nearly black complexion and jaws that stood out like chestnuts when he chewed gum, which he did incessantly. His hair was cropped close, and he had a habit of absentmindedly palming the top of his head. He spoke in a mellifluous baritone and was so deliberate in what he said and did that at times he gave the impression of being dim-witted, though he was anything but. In fact, Finney admired the perceptive way Kub’s mind worked, and it was because of this and because he wanted some perspective that he’d come to see him. Kub was one of the few friends he hadn’t distanced himself from after Leary Way.
Kub leaned forward in his chair, the long fingers of his hands interlocked. “What’s up?”
It took only a few minutes to outline it: the fact that there’d been a plethora of alarms the night of Leary Way, alarms that contributed to the loss of the building and to the death of Captain Cordifis because there was too little help; that two days ago there’d been a similar rash of alarms with a corresponding number of units out of service; and that three weeks before Leary Way there’d been a smaller but nearly identical event with no major fires, but an unusually high percentage of alarms all at the same time; the fact that in the past five years nothing even remotely similar had happened. As with the first event in May, two days ago there had been no major fire losses. Finney figured it for a practice run.
“I don’t know,” Kub said. “I don’t know what to think about this.”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it? Somebody orchestrating this? They burned down Leary Way and made sure we didn’t have any help by lighting a bunch of little nuisance fires.”
“I wouldn’t call the other ones nuisance fires. We lost two houses in the south end.”
“Okay. But they were set, right?”
“Right.”
“And you haven’t found the arsonist, have you?”
“Lots of times we don’t find the bad guys.”
“This is organized, Bob. It has to be. That house I found. It’s going to be another nuisance fire. It’s all primed and ready.”
“I still think this is a little off the wall.”
“It is off the wall. That’s why they think they can get away with it. It’s too crazy for anybody to catch on to.”
“I don’t know. How about you and me go up and talk to G. A.? See what he thinks about it. He’s upstairs eating dinner with the crew.”
“But I wanted to bounce this off of you.”
“I told you what I thought. Let’s go talk to G. A.”
“G. A.’s the one who declared Leary Way an accident, and he’s never changed his mind about anything in his life. You know how proud he was about that investigation. He’s not going to reverse himself. He’s still got the melted electrical socket from Leary Way sitting on his desk like some sort of bobcat he shot and stuffed.”
“Maybe he made a good call. Maybe he’s proud of it. Look, a lot of people don’t like G. A., but he’s dedicated to this unit like no officer I’ve seen. If you’re really on to something here, I think he can hear you out objectively. G. A. looks pigheaded to people who don’t know him, but believe me, he can admit his mistakes like anyone else. If what you’re saying has any validity, who better to take back his call than him? He’ll appreciate that you brought it to him first.”
Finney stared into Robert Kub’s brown eyes. Although one wouldn’t guess it from his implacable exterior, Kub was an intensely emotional man, and having been on the fire ground the night Bill Cordifis died had changed him more than he cared to admit. From