CHAPTER 27
It was nearly noon the next day before I found anything. It wasn’t a bloody dagger or even an Egyptian dung beetle sculptured from gold. It was a list of addresses. It wasn’t much, but it was all there was. It was on a single sheet of paper by itself in an unlabeled file folder in the back of the bottom file drawer.
“What’s important about that?” Paul said.
“I don’t know, but it’s the only thing that doesn’t have a simple explanation.”
I got a city directory out of the bottom drawer of my desk and thumbed through it, looking up the names of the people at the addresses. The fourth one I looked up was Elaine Brooks.
“Isn’t Elaine Brooks your father’s girl friend?”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t where she lives.”
Paul said, “I don’t know where she lives.”
“I do. I followed her to you, remember?”
“Maybe she used to live there.”
“Maybe.”
“She’s on my list,” he said,
“From the card file?”
“Yes.”
“Let me see this list.”
He gave it to me. There were two other names besides Elaine Brooks. I consulted the city directory. Both the names were listed in the city directory as owning property at one or another address on the list. Elaine Brooks owned two addresses. “The card file alphabetical?”
Paul said, “Yes.”
“Okay. I’m going to read you some names. You look them up and see if they are in your file. If they are, pull the card and give me the address.”
I went through the whole list of addresses, looking each up in the city directory and giving Paul the name I found. All of them were in the file. None of them were listed on the cards at the address in the city directory. “What kind of insurance is listed?” I said when we were through and all the cards were pulled.
“This one says casualty.”
“Yeah?”
“This one says homeowner’s.”
“Any of them say life?”
Paul ruffled through the cards. “No,” he said.
I took the cards and made a master list of names and both addresses and the kinds of insurance each had. All had casualty. Everyone was insured with a different company. When I was through, I said to Paul, “Let’s go take a look at this property.”
The first address was on Chandler Street in the south end. The south end was once rather elegant redbrick town houses. Then it fell into slum wino. Now it was coming back. A lot of upper-middle-class types were moving in and sandblasting the bricks and buying Dobermans and installing alarm systems and keeping the winos at bay. It was an interesting mix: black street kids; winos of many races; white women in tapered pants and spike heels; middle-aged men, black and white, in Lacoste shirts. Our address was between a soul-food takeout and a package store. It was burned out.
“‘Bare ruined choirs,’” I said, ‘“Where late the sweet birds sang.’”
“Frost?” Paul said.
“Shakespeare,” I said. “Why’d you think it was Frost?”
“‘Cause you always quote Frost or Shakespeare.”
“Sometimes I quote Peter Gammons,” I said.
“Who’s he?”
“The Globe baseball writer.”
We drove to the next address on Symphony Road in the Back Bay. Symphony Road was students and what the school board called Hispanics. The address was a charred pile of rubble.
“Bare ruined church,” Paul said.
“Choirs,” I said. “Do we sense a pattern developing?”
“You think they’ll all be burned?”
“Sample’s a little small,” I said, “but the indices are strong.”
The third address was on Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan. It was between a boarded-up store and a boarded-up store. It had burned.
“Where are we?” Paul said.
“Mattapan.”
“Is that part of Boston?”
“Yes.”
“God, it’s awful.”
“Like a slice of the South Bronx,” I said. “Life is hard here.”
“They’re all going to be burned,” Paul said.
’Yeah, but we gotta look.“
And we did. We looked in Roxbury and Dorchester and Allston and Charlestown. In Hyde Park and Jamaica Plain and Brighton. The addresses were always obscure so that we sometimes crisscrossed the same neighborhoods several times, following our list. All the addresses were in unpretentious neighborhoods. All had been burned. It was dark when we got through, and a little rain was starting to streak my office windows.
I put my feet up on my desk and shrugged my shoulders, trying to loosen the back muscles that eight hours of city driving had cramped. ”Your daddy,“ I said, ”appears to be an arsonist.“
”Why would he burn all those buildings down?“
”I don’t know that he burned them. He may have just insured them. But either way it would be for money. Buy it, burn it, collect the insurance. That’s his connection to Cotton. Your old man’s business was real estate and insurance. Cotton’s is money and being bad. Put them together and what have you got?“
”Bibbity-bobbity-boo,“ Paul said.
”Oh, you know the song. How the hell could you?“
”I had it on a record when I was little.“
”Well, it fits. And then when your father needed a little cheap sinew to deal with his divorce situation, Cotton sent him Buddy Hartman and Hartman brought Harold and his musical blackjack.“
”What will you do now?“ Paul said.
”Tomorrow I’m going to call up all these insurance companies and find out if your father was in fact the broker on these fire losses, and if they paid off.“
”The ones in the card file?“
”Yeah.“
”How will you know who to call?“
”I’ve done a lot of work for insurance companies. I know people in most of the claims departments.“
”Then what will you do?“
”Then I’ll file all of what I know for the moment and see what I can get on your mother.“
Paul was quiet.
”How do you feel?“ I said.
”Okay.“
”This is awful hard.“
”It’s okay.“
”You’re helping me put the screws to your father and mother.“
”I know.“
”You know it’s for you?“
”Yes.“
”Can you do it?“
”Help you?“
”All of it. Be autonomous, be free of them, depend on yourself. Grow up at fifteen.“
”I’ll be sixteen in September.“
”You’ll be older than that,“ I said. ”Let’s get something to eat and go to bed.“