“Yeah,” McGee said. “I guess they might’ve turned it into a steakhouse or something. Like that—”
“Smith and Wollensky,” I said. “Of course the South End is growing that way. Maybe someday it will be a B and B for Labradoodles.”
“First came the gays and all their arty-farty stuff and now the investment bankers with their Mercedes SUVs, complaining about all the city noise and traffic.”
“Leave it to Gary Cooper and gays to clean up Dodge.”
“This property is worth something to somebody,” McGee said.
“Sure.”
“Maybe worth more cleared than as some musty old church.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“I’ll bet dollars to donuts,” McGee said.
“Always an unwise bet,” I said.
“Why?”
“I hold one in higher esteem.”
“You tell me what, then,” McGee said. “What else is there but greed? Someone wanted that church gone.”
“Revenge,” I said. “Extortion. An act of God.”
“Revenge is looking good,” McGee said. “But God would never let this happen. Not my God, anyway.”
The rain slackened and I shook the water from my hat. It was a road hat for the Mississippi Braves that a friend down south had sent. Nearly identical to my Boston Braves hat except for the big M with a tomahawk through it. I watched the men coming and going from the break in the chain-link fence. I spotted John Grady. He had on a blue windbreaker but no hat. His long hair fell limp and wet over his big head as he gave me a hard stare.
After a few minutes, a tall man with a clipped mustache and wearing a black raincoat walked out.
“Oh, shit,” McGee said.
I looked at McGee.
“Fucking Commissioner Foley,” he said. “He’s going to make a thing. Oh, Christ.”
Foley shook a few more hands and then the commissioner walked on over. He wore a navy suit with a pale yellow tie. As he moved, you could see a small gold shield adorning his lapel. A smaller man in dress uniform walked in stride almost like a shadow.
He patted McGee’s back, shook his hand, and eyed me. “Who’s your friend?”
McGee introduced me.
“Yeah,” he said. “I heard of you.”
“My reputation stretches far and wide,” I said.
“And that you’ve pissed a lot of people off.”
“Yep.”
“And caused a lot of folks in BPD a headache.”
“Also true.”
He put his hands in his pockets, looked down at the wet pavement. He shook his head as he stroked his mustache in thought. His sidekick stood back, eyeing me and Jack McGee with a raised chin.
“But I heard other things, too,” Foley said.
I looked to Jack McGee. And he looked back at me, eyes widened.
“I know what you’re up to,” he said. “You been fucking sneaking around. Asking questions at my firehouses without coming to me first.”
I nodded.
“You know these were good, honorable men?” Foley said. “And they died doing the right thing. They were helping people in this fucking city.”
“I do.”
“Then quit sneaking around,” Foley said, putting a hand on my back. “You want to poke around? Fine. Then do it right. Come on down, I want you to see where they died.”
McGee looked at me and let out a long, steady breath.
9
We followed an alley beside the Gothic stone church to a burned-out doorway. Inside, portable lights shone in the dark space. New wooden beams and studs shared space with charred and blackened wood. Foley pointed to the crossbeams overhead and the stone walls.
“The flashback happened here,” he said. “This is where the mayday went out. We were pushing midlines down both steps. We had a company to the rear of the structure and out on Shawmut. I’ve never seen a fire burn so fast in my life.”
Water dripped from the crossbeams, pinging puddles on the floor. Sawhorses, table saws, and piles of sawdust and scrap wood littered the basement. He walked to the stairwell, where his driver handed him a small Maglite.
Commissioner Foley cast light on charred spots along the wall resembling an alligator’s back. “This is deep char,” he said. “This is where we believe the fire started.”
“But we don’t know how?”
“The first thing we do is try to rule out the obvious,” he said. “We know this wasn’t electrical. We can find no traces of an accelerant present. It kills you. But sometimes you never know. We know this is where the fire started and the spread just took over everything fast. All that was left was the stone. You think about something so small, a fucking spark hitting this wood and eating everything in its path like a fucking cancer.”
“What about a second source?” I said. “Another spot it may have originated.”
Foley stood. He looked to McGee and back at me, shaking his head. “I heard that shit, too. But it’s not true. There’s no evidence of multiple points of origin. Zip.”
“Most of the church burned up so freakin’ bad, how would we ever know?” McGee said.