Roast Mortem

Twenty-Two

It was the longest drive of my life — with the possible exception of that predawn cab ride to the ICU all those years ago, when my young, stupid husband had nearly killed himself partying too hard.

Northern Boulevard led straight to the Queensboro, and I ascended the bridge ramp in record time. Just one day ago, shades of magic hour light had gilded this span. Tonight’s lonely crossing felt blacker than outer space.

Twice I smacked the button on my car’s heater, but the unit was hardly working. It failed to lessen my bone-cold chill, and the dark void between bridge and river only made me shiver harder.

As I hurled my old car toward Manhattan’s wall of flickering windows, a distant memory flashed through my mind — the image of a luna moth, throwing herself against the glass of our porch lantern.

“Why is she doing that, Daddy!”

“Just her nature, honey. It’s how God made her...”

“But she’ll burn up!”

“She’s not worrying about that part, muffin. She’s just trying to get to the light...”

Now I knew how that little moth felt. A part of me wanted to soar away, fly off somewhere to get some peace, think everything through. But that’s not how I was made. As long as I cared, there was no flying away.

Traffic thickened at the bridge’s end and my impatience rose. Spotting an opening, I sped up. Angry horns bleated as I cut off slow-moving bumpers, swung in a careening arc onto the wide, multilaned spectacle of Second Avenue.

Now I was racing south from Fifty-ninth, a straight shot downtown. Green lights tasted sweet, like seedless grapes; red lights were bitter. Yellow felt longer than midsummer days, my excuse to squash down the pedal.

At Fourteenth I turned west, zoomed across the island to Manhattan’s West Side, traveled south again and looped around to Hudson. I parked in front of the Blend, cut the engine. The shop’s front door was locked but the lights were on. Tucker, Dante, and Matt were standing inside. I rapped on the glass.

“Where is it!” I cried when Tucker threw the bolt.

“Calm down, sweetie.” He held up his palms. “Like I told you before you hung up on me, there’s no bomb in the package.”

“Where!”

“Take it easy, Clare...” Matt’s face was in front of me now, gaze steady. “I looked the whole package over myself. It’s like Tucker told you. There was no need to call the bomb squad. There’s no firebomb...”

My ex-husband’s hands felt firm on my shoulders, but worry lines were creasing his forehead.

“Show me,” I said.

Matt led me to the marble counter. Dante stood silently behind it, head still bandaged under his fedora, ropey arms folded. I met his eyes.

“That arsonist’s ass is mine,” he said quietly.

I’d never heard this tone from Dante before. I mean, sure, he was serious about his painting, but as a barista at the Blend, he was always a carefree dude, as mellow as his ambient playlists.

Not at the moment. The burning demons in Dante’s retinas now rivaled Captain Michael’s.

“Whenever you nail this asshole, you give him to me.”

“She’s not nailing anyone,” Matt snapped. “Whatever lunatic quest she’s been on stops tonight.”

I still didn’t understand what they were talking about — until I moved closer to the counter. A charcoal gray backpack was sitting there with every pocket unzipped and turned out. A small, brown box sat beside it, already opened. Inside was a plain piece of paper displaying three typewritten words.

FOR CLARE COSI

“What’s for me?” I whispered.

“A warning,” Matt said. He reached in, lifted up the paper.

Beneath it was a box of wooden matches. A single match had been taken out of its box. The slender charred stick had been struck, then blown out, half burned.

Fifteen minutes later I was standing amid a sea of banged up desks in the Sixth Precinct’s detective squad room.

“Mike, I’m sorry to bother you,” I said above the raised voices and ringing phones.

“It’s okay...”

Mike Quinn was jacketless, his weapon holstered under his left arm, leather straps making their usual indelible creases in his starched white shirt. Under the harsh fluorescence, his features looked just about as starched. Then his gaze moved over me and his expression softened, his voice melting with it.

“What do you need, sweetheart?”

For you to put your arms around me, that’s what I need. For you to explain your cousin’s ugly accusations. I need you to make love to me...

“Can we talk? Privately.”

“Yeah, Quinn.” Matt stepped out from behind me. “Make it as soon as possible.”

A dunking in liquid nitrogen would have been warmer than the look Quinn gave my ex. His eyes found mine again, as if searching for an explanation. Then he looked back to Matt.

“Give me a second.”

“Why’s your flatfoot working so late?” Matt loudly asked after Quinn departed.

“Lower your voice,” I whispered when a female detective glanced our way. “Mike’s launching an undercover investigation. It starts tonight.”

My gaze followed Quinn as he strode back over to a cluster of desks in the corner. He spoke for a minute to the tight group of detectives he oversaw, one of whom I recognized immediately by his ruddy face and carrot-colored cop hair: Finbar “Sully” Sullivan.

Sully was wiring up another man for surveillance. (I knew this because when I was helping Quinn on a case a short time ago, Sully had wired me.) This second man was also familiar — Sergeant Emmanuel Franco.

Because Sully was still prepping him, Franco’s flannel shirt was open, revealing a weight lifter’s six-pack and part of a tattoo. A hard hat covered his shaved head and one hand gripped a bright orange vest. The construction-guy costume made sense for his new undercover assignment.

After the trendy Manhattan club near the Williamsburg Bridge was cleared of dealing ecstasy and Liquid E to its clientele, the nearby construction site’s workers became the squad’s new target.

Matt nudged me, pointed across the room. “That younger guy your flatfoot’s talking to, the one in the hard hat with his shirt open, he looks familiar.”

“No,” I lied, “he doesn’t.”

“Sure he does. That’s the cop who interrogated us last December. Franco was his name. I remember now. Sergeant Emmanuel Franco,” Matt spat. “I’ll never forget that mook.”

I gritted my teeth. Our daughter had failed to inform her father that she’d had several “hot dates” with Sergeant “Mook” after our Christmas party. With Joy back in France, I figured their relationship was over and it didn’t matter, anyway. So why bring it up?

Quinn returned and motioned for us to follow him. “I don’t have a private office,” he said as we crossed the busy floor. “We’ll have to talk in an interview room.”

“That’s fine,” I said, expecting as much.

Like the NYPD Bomb Squad, which was also based at the Sixth, the jurisdiction of Mike’s OD Squad spanned all five boroughs. With his work mostly in the field, there were no proper offices for his small crew, just that tight cluster of desks in the open squad room.

“I’m not too keen on interview rooms,” Matt said as he dodged two suits and a uniformed officer. “You’re not planning to chain me to anything, are you, Quinn?”

“I don’t know, Allegro. That’s entirely up to you.”

Mike shut the door and we sat down at a metal table with four equally uncomfortable metal chairs. The interview room’s walls were concrete block and the only window had one-way glass.

The space had all the warmth of a closet at the city morgue. But the stifling feeling was exactly the point. Detectives didn’t bring suspects in here for tea parties. They brought them here to extract confessions, and the only differences I could see between this airless space and the dimly lit confessional where I’d recited my girlish sins was the kneeler — and the lighting. In Father Pentanni’s box, I could hardly see a thing. Here in Quinn’s confessional the glare was even harsher than in the squad room.

After we sat, I began to explain the situation.

“Just show him,” Matt said, cutting me off.

I chafed at my ex’s tone, but I didn’t say a word. Matt distrusted cops (and all authority figures) — partly because of his run-ins with the NYPD and partly because of his bad experiences with corrupt officials in banana republics. I knew how difficult it was for my ex-husband to come here with me. The last thing I wanted to do was get into an argument.

I set the backpack on the table, pulled out the package.

Quinn almost never showed emotion on the job. But as he studied the box of matches, the single charred stick, and the arsonist’s note to me, his features twisted openly with fury, worry, and frustration. When he finally spoke, it was a single, quiet curse.

“That son of a bitch...”

Matt folded his arms. “Is that all you’ve got to say?”

“No... I’m going to get this to our people in the Crime Scene Unit, but...” Quinn exhaled.

“I know,” I said, reading him. “It’s been handled to death.”

“Who opened it?” Quinn asked.

I turned to Matt. “You explain...”

“One of our customers, Barry, first noticed the backpack — ”

“Barry?” I interrupted. “Tucker said it was a group of NYU students.”

Matt shrugged. “Barry found it first. He went to the students next, asked if it was one of theirs. They all passed it around.”

I still didn’t like the sound of that. “What was Barry doing in the Blend so late?” For months now, the man had been coming in mornings or early afternoons, never in the evenings.

“Tucker said something about his having a fight with this new boyfriend. The guy’s on some anticaffeine or anticoffee kick. I don’t know. One of those political food movements. He wanted Barry to give up coffee. Barry said no. They had a fight, and Barry came to the Blend to spite him...”

“Excuse me,” Quinn said. “But how many people handled this thing? An estimate?”

“Ten, maybe twelve,” Matt said.

Quinn went silent. The cop curtain finally came down on his emotional show.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly. “I know that makes it impossible for your people to find forensic evidence.”

“Not impossible. Just harder... We’ll have detectives from this precinct assigned to your case. After we’re done in here, you tell them everything, okay? They can work with the fire marshals investigating the Caffè Lucia fire. You’ll also have to get me the names and addresses of everyone who touched this thing. Any fibers, fingerprints, or other DNA evidence we find, we’ll have to match against your customers and baristas, and eliminate them one by one.”

Matt folded his arms. “How long with that take?”

“A while. It’s not attached to a homicide — ”

“Not yet,” I said. “But Enzo is in a coma. He’s not expected to live. And if he doesn’t, the person or persons who set that fire are going to be — ”

“Murderers.” Quinn said. “I know.”

“What happens in the meantime?” Matt snapped. “While we’re waiting for some technician to lift a fiber from the asshole who threatened Clare. We go up in flames?”

Quinn focused on me. “When we’re through here, I’ll speak to my captain. We’ll get you protection.”

“It’s not me who needs it,” I said, meeting his eyes. “I have you, don’t I?”

Quinn gave me the sweetest look. I returned it.

“Excuse me!” Matt cried. “What about the Blend?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Quinn said, still holding my gaze.

“Good,” Matt grunted.

Quinn reached out then, opening his hand as he moved it across the table. He waited, keeping it there until I put mine in his. Then he gently but firmly closed his fingers.

Matt blew out air. “Are we done now?”

“I need to talk to Mike about something else,” I said softly. “Privately, if you don’t mine.”

“Fine. I’ll wait for you downstairs.” Matt rose, left the room, and shut the door — more of a slam really.

“You okay?” Quinn asked.

I nodded, swallowed the sand in my throat. I wanted to tell him everything then, what I’d learned at the firehouse and not just about possible suspects in the Caffè Lucia fire. I wanted to speak to him about the disturbing story that Captain Michael had told me. But this arid, airless room was so awful — and it was Quinn’s turf. If I were going to question the man about his past again, I wanted it to be on mine.

“I need to see you tonight, Mike. My place, okay?”

He arched an eyebrow. “You want me to wake you up at four in the morning?”

“Yes.”

The corners of his lips lifted. “Okay then. I will.”

I rose. “I’m sorry it isn’t easier.”

He stood, too, picking up the contaminated evidence. “I’ll take this to my captain, explain what you’ve been up to. We’ll get sector cars doing routine checks of the Blend all night, and when you open tomorrow, you’ll have at least one plainclothes officer undercover inside throughout the day.”

“Thank you, Mike.” It was far from the first time I’d said it, but I meant it as much as ever.

“One more thing, Clare.”

“Yes?”

“Would you please send Allegro back in here? I’d like a private word with him.”