“Yeah,” Vinnie said. His cigarette bopped in his lips. “What got burned?”
“A Catholic church in the South End.”
“The one where those firefighters died?”
I nodded.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Exactly.”
“What’s the world coming to?” Vinnie said. “Joe Broz did a lot of bad things. Killed a lot of people. But he’d never have burned a church. Or hurt a Boston firefighter.”
“The new generation,” I said. “Thugs without ethics.”
Vinnie made a couple calls. I finished the coffee while watching the afternoon traffic jam up on the pike. After ten minutes, he’d arranged for a meet with Tommy Torcelli at Walpole. Vinnie said he and Tommy Torch went way back.
“How far?” I said.
“Far.”
“Does he have ethics?”
“The man can’t even spell ethics.”
“Can he be trusted?”
“Nope.”
“Good to know.” I gave him a soft salute with two fingers and descended the stairs.
15
MCI Cedar Junction at Walpole was a quick yet not scenic drive from Boston on Route 128 South. The next morning, I made it in a little over an hour. The security process took a bit longer. Morning visitation was nearly done before I met Tommy Torch face-to-face through the glass. We had about twenty minutes to exchange pleasantries.
“I know you.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“You’re the guy that killed Fran Doerr,” he said.
“Aw, shucks.”
“He was an asshole,” Tommy said. “Never liked the fucking guy. I like Vinnie. When Vinnie walked behind Broz, you knew where you stood.”
“True.”
“And Vinnie likes you.”
“Vinnie and I have a mutual respect.”
“He don’t work with that queer Gino no more,” he said. Tommy nodded for effect. “Runs his own affairs.”
The guy gave me the creeps. His thin white skin was dotted with age spots. His face was small, skeletal, with bright blue eyes, his white and wispy hair pasted flat in long, useless strands. But no one looks good in an orange jumpsuit. It was very hard to pull off with style.
“So what can you do for me?” he said. “You wanna know something? Right?”
“I don’t think we’d get along socially.”
“I want a reduced sentence. This thing they got me for is junk. It wasn’t even my computer. Someone set me up.”
“I thought they caught you in the act?” I said. “With your pants around your ankles in Moakley Park?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Well. I did that. Sure. But the other stuff. The added charges that keep me in here. That’s not true.”
If only the world’s smallest violin were handy. Even with the Plexiglas separating us, our words exchanged only through a phone line, I felt the direct need to take a shower.
“I heard Jackie DeMarco had a church in the South End torched last year,” I said. “You know anything about it?”
“I’ve been in jail for two years.”
“I know,” I said. “But I heard you’d been Jackie’s go-to guy before you got popped.”
“Maybe,” he said. “I knew his old man a lot better. His old man was something. Used to run most of the city before Broz set him up. Drank espresso at a little table on Prince Street every morning. Funny how them things work. Everyone in this world is trying to cut you off at your knees. You know what? What I did was wrong. But I got popped for pissing off the wrong people. It was a setup. I got a sickness. People knew it. They used it as a fucking tool.”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I want to know about the church fire.”
He sat back and rubbed his face. He tried futilely to assemble a bit of dignity. But Elvis had left that building long ago. Tommy had few options, and this was probably his best chance since he’d landed back at Walpole.
“I read about it,” he said. “In all the fires I set, I never had one fireman hurt. My fires burned right. They were places that needed to be torched, abandoned shit boxes for insurance cash-out. I just made it look like it was an accident. Electrical and all that. Sometimes I’d cover a rat with kerosene and let it loose in the walls.”
“Lovely,” I said. “But who would Jackie use?”
“Nobody is gonna admit torching a place that killed no firefighter.”
“Three,” I said.
“I never killed no firefighter.”
“You said that.”
“You catch that guy and he gets life,” he said. “If he’s lucky. If he’s unlucky, Boston Fire will find him first.”
“I need a name,” I said. “I’ll take care of the rest.”
“I don’t want no part of this,” he said. “I mean, I give you a name and then you go beat the crap out of someone. I mean, I got my own personal fucking code.”
“Sure,” I said. “If not, we’re just a wild beast lost in this world.”
“Huh?”
“Or at least some guy with lollipops in his pants.”