Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [81]
Finney climbed to his feet, opened the door, and confronted a man pounding the door with the heel of his palm. “Open up, you bastard! Open up in the name of the law.”
“For Christ’s sake, Gary. What the hell are you doing?”
Gary Sadler was half a six-pack on the wrong side of sober, eyes bloodshot, breath reeking of beer and cigarettes. His hair was jeweled from the fog. “Came to arrest your sorry ass,” Sadler said. “Came to take you in for arson. Whaddya think? Arson or stealing my girl. You choose.” Sadler couldn’t stand without constantly resettling his feet, as if he were in a small boat. He tried to look past Finney to see who was with him. “That ain’t your Jeep out there, John boy. Motor’s still warm. Got a union sticker in the window. Did I interrupt something? Garyius interruptus?”
“Shut up, Gary. And go away.”
“Can’t go away. Can’t go nowhere.”
“Why not?”
“Too drunk.”
“You didn’t drive here?”
“Yeah, I did. But I ain’t driving home. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, do they?”
“What do you want?”
“Came to warn you.”
“About what?”
“Secret stuff.”
Finney felt Diana behind him, her hand on his shoulder. She gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’m going now.”
“Diana,” Sadler said, stepping back in an exaggerated gesture of gentlemanly courtesy. He stumbled and caught himself. “Didn’t mean to break up your tête-à-tête. Damn, woman. That’s some outfit. How come you never wore anything like that when we were going out?”
“We never went out,” she said, vanishing into the fog.
Finney pulled Sadler into his living room so the neighbors wouldn’t overhear. He switched on a lamp next to his bookcase. “What do you want, Gary?”
“Came to tell you something you need to know. Mind if I sit?”
“Go right ahead.”
Sadler collapsed in a heap on the floor. “I’m okay.” He put his index finger to his lips and made a shushing noise. Dimitri was sitting on top of the sofa, staring at Sadler. “That your cat?”
“Be careful. He doesn’t like lushes. Cut to the chase, Gary.”
“Got a visit from G. A. Montgomery and his little stooge, firefighter slash law enforcement officer Robert Kub. G. A. did all the talking. Said you lit that Riverside Drive fire.”
“I didn’t.”
“I know that.”
“How do you know?”
“Because if a firefighter set it, it was Jerry Monahan. Tell you why. Couple of things. You wanted that place on the dangerous buildings list. He didn’t. And he didn’t put it there. Why didn’t he put it there? He didn’t want to attract attention to it. Also, we parked on that same block two weeks before the fire. You weren’t working that day. Me and Greenleaf came back to the rig and found Jerry all dirty. When I asked what happened, he said he was messing around down by the river and fell over the bank.”
“Without going into the water?”
“Exactly our thoughts. He was inside that house. But why lie about it?”
“Why set a fire?”
“Who knows? G. A. says the phone line at the station will be tapped by the end of the week. They’re getting a court order. Even wanted me to trick you into revealing complexity in the arson.”
“Complicity?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“What’d you tell him?”
“Told him Jerry’s crazy as a bedbug with a snootful of kerosene. Told him you might be a fuckup at a fire, but you’re no criminal. And that old woman? Hell, you were the only one in the station didn’t run when you saw her coming in for a BP.”
“Thanks for telling me, Gary.”
“You watch out for that female type just left.”
“Don’t warn me about her.”
“Oh? Somebody already warn you?” He laughed. Then he saw something across the room, something visible only from his vantage point on the floor. He crawled across the carpet and pulled a large piece of plywood from under a table—the plywood base Finney had used to build and replicate a miniature Leary Way: the buildings, the fire engines and ladder trucks, each painted with the appropriate numerals, and the firemen, with yellow helmets for the firefighters, red for lieutenants, orange for captains, white for chiefs.
“Mother of Mary,” Sadler said. “This is like