“Let’s walk,” I said.
We followed the Public Garden along Beacon and took a left on Charles to the Paramount. I bought Grady a stack of blueberry pancakes. I had the huevos rancheros with fresh-squeezed OJ and black coffee. Creature of habit. The afternoon was soft and warm. They’d opened up the windows fronting Charles.
“To recap,” I said. “What’s your problem with me?”
Grady hadn’t touched his food. “You got no business.”
“You said that,” I said. “But if that stopped me, I wouldn’t be very good at my job.”
“This is Arson’s case,” he said. “They don’t need you tracking shit through their house.”
“A good metaphor, but far from accurate,” I said. I reached for the coffee.
“A guy like you ain’t in it for no one but themself.”
“That’s why you agreed to break bread with me?”
“Maybe I was fucking hungry.”
I raised my eyebrows. Hard to argue with bulletproof logic.
“I think you have some kind of beef with Jack McGee and this doesn’t have anything to do with you or me,” I said. “Or even Dougherty, Bonnelli, and Mulligan.”
“McGee is an asshole.”
“Doesn’t change what he believes.”
“We never got along,” Grady said. “We worked together six years ago. I never wanted to be on the same shift with him. He liked to piss me off. Always complaining and making trouble.”
“How’s he making trouble now?”
His mouth was full with a slab of blueberry pancake. I held up my hand to let him know he could finish chewing. I sipped on some coffee and added a half-packet of sugar.
“He didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Come the fuck on,” Grady said.
I shook my head. I waited. When in doubt, be quiet, let them talk. People like to fill the silence. I cut into the huevos rancheros. If there was any logic to the world, this breakfast would hang at the MFA.
“He didn’t say?” Grady said. “No shit?”
“None at all.”
“It’s my fault.”
I looked up. There was a lot of chatter and hum around us. People laughing and talking. Silverware clanging as small tables were cleared. New customers hustled for a seat once they got their food.
“How?” Oh, Spenser. Master interrogator.
“I killed them,” Grady said. His face had drained of color and his blue eyes had grown very large. He breathed in and out of his mouth. He’d had only a few bites of pancake, and as he reached down for the coffee, his hand produced a slight tremble. “Jack knew. Jesus. He didn’t say that? Isn’t that what this is all about?”
I shook my head.
“Laying the blame,” he said. “He wanted me to be exposed. I broke down that door, let in all that air. I wasn’t listening to the radio chatter. I just fucking bust through that office. When that room opened up. All that fucking oxygen. Whoosh. That fire came up hard and fast. I got knocked back. My ears were burned and back broke. But, shit, I got out. I was pulled out. But. Oh, holy hell. Jesus. Jack? Jack didn’t say?”
Grady was crying. I always had a hard time watching big men cry. I saw my father cry only twice. Both times scared the hell out of me.
“That’s not your fault,” I said.
“Bullshit,” he said. “It’s in a report. But it was kept quiet.”
“McGee doesn’t want you,” I said. “He wants the men who set this. He thinks it’s this firebug who’s driving the department crazy.”
“That’s it?” Grady said.
I nodded. He wiped his face and blew his nose. It sounded like an out-of-tune trumpet. “What’d Arson tell you?”
“Zip,” I said.
Grady rubbed his face. He nodded. “But you know they got a tape?” he said. “A surveillance tape of some bastard running from the church. Christ. I know for a fact they been sitting on that for a year.”
17
The Arson squad kept separate offices from headquarters in an old firehouse on Mass Ave, blond brick with twin bay doors for investigators’ vehicles. I found a battered red door and took the stairs up to the second floor. The captain knew I was coming and he buzzed me in.
He was a big man, bigger than me, with gray hair and a drooping Sam Elliott mustache. He met me at the landing with a panting yellow Lab at his side. I liked him right away. His name was Teddy Cahill. His dog’s name was Galway.
“Did I mention I can do an amazing rendition of ‘Danny Boy’?”
“I’m glad someone can,” Cahill said. “Went to a wedding this weekend and none of the kids knew the words. It broke my heart.”
“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.”
“You ain’t fucking kidding.”
We stood in the kitchen and he poured coffee into two mugs. We walked back through a long hall to a cluttered office. Arson headquarters was a collection of beaten desks set end to end with outdated computers and so many file cabinets they lined the outside halls. Galway lay down and sighed.