Fire Season (2 page)

“I thought the display was kind of weak this year,” a brunet said. “Must be the budget cuts. They just didn't have much oomph.”

Coffin cleared his throat. “All of you were in the show as usual—nobody left early or called in sick, correct?”

The drag queens nodded.

“Now this one's important,” Coffin said. “We've Xeroxed your IDs in the office, we have all of your information. Does anyone in this room own or have in their possession a twelve-gauge shotgun?”

A few of the drag queens tittered. The rest shook their heads.

“Okay, last question: Is there a twelve-gauge shotgun on the property here, that you know of?”

“No shotgun,” the blond drag queen said. “Not that I've ever seen. But Rocky keeps a loaded pistol behind the bar, and Kirby carries a pistol when he makes the night deposit. A big one.”

“Oh my God,” one of the other drag queens said, holding his hands about a foot apart. “It's
huge.
”

Coffin shrugged. “Okay. That's it for me. Lola?”

“One thing,” Lola said. “Very quick.”

The drag queens sighed.

“How did you-all feel about the seals?” Lola said. “They were noisy, right?”

The drag queens nodded. “Noisy,” said the blond drag queen. “A pain in the ass. Even with the windows closed they'd wake you up at freaking five thirty in the morning.”

“You sleep here?” Lola said.

The drag queens nodded. “Sometimes, after a show,” the blond said. “After the after-party.”

“And the after-after-party,” the brunet said.

“We might be too tipsy to drive home,” the blond said. “So we just crash here. There are a couple of guest rooms reserved for the performers.”

Coffin smoothed his mustache. “So the seals were a pain in the ass?”

“But they were also really
cute
,” a redheaded drag queen said. A murmur of assent went up around the room.

“
So
cute,” another drag queen said. “Those soulful eyes. Like Dorothy.”

“
Just
like Dorothy,” another of the drag queens said, nodding fervently. “In the scene where she sings ‘Over the Rainbow.'”

“So did they ever make any of you mad enough you'd want to shoot them?”

“Oh my God, no,” the blond said. He made a sweeping gesture, tilting his head a bit to one side. “I mean, look at us—none of us would hurt a fly.”

Coffin looked at Lola, who shrugged. “Okay,” said Coffin. “We're done. You have our cards—if you think of anything you forgot to tell us, anything that might be important, give us a call.”

 

Chapter 2

October 21, 6:36
P.M.

Coffin was slightly out of breath. He had just trotted up Town Hall's wide interior stairs to the police chief's office on the second floor, stepped over drop cloths, and pushed his way past a large plasterer's scaffold on the second floor. After decades of genteel decline, Town Hall was being restored to something like its original appearance. Built in 1886, it was a grand old hulk of a building—but the roof leaked in dozens of places, bats flew down its hallways, rats gnawed its wiring, chunks of plaster fell from its ceilings, and its plumbing backed up without warning, flooding entire floors. Finally, it had been declared structurally unsafe by a consulting engineer in 2008. Somehow the town had come up with six million dollars to perform the necessary renovation, returning Town Hall to its considerably more elegant original condition, down to the period correct Victorian paint colors. To everyone's relief, the historical purists on the board of selectmen had granted a few grudging concessions to the twenty-first century: broadband Internet would be installed, along with high-efficiency air-conditioning and unisex bathrooms.

The building had been seething with contractors since June: roofers, plasterers, painters, HVAC guys, electricians, plumbers, floor men, carpenters, IT specialists, you name it—they were in and out of offices and hallways, up and down the stairs, inside and out, drilling, sawing, sanding, grinding, and banging, all at tremendous expense to the town. No work of any note would be done to Coffin's permanent office space in the basement, though—the town couldn't afford it. The workmen would come and go, and the fat sewer pipe that spanned the office ceiling would still drip ominously onto Coffin's desk.

Coffin sat down in the leather desk chair and inhaled deeply once or twice through his nose, then made a sour face. Chief Preston Boyle had resigned back in May amid considerable uproar—all that remained of him was the slight, rank smell of his farts, which Coffin believed were still embedded in the desk chair's leather-covered seat. Now Coffin was acting as interim chief until a replacement could be hired—just as he had when his uncle Rudy had finally been forced to resign as chief of the Provincetown police department three years before. At the request of the new town manager, Coffin had moved the contents of his filing cabinets and desk upstairs, though most of it was still stacked on the floor in banker's boxes. There was no point in unpacking the nonessentials, Coffin thought—the résumés were piling up on the town manager's desk, and the interview process would start in a matter of weeks. He'd be back in the basement by February at the latest.

Still, for now the upstairs space was a big improvement over Coffin's windowless office in the basement, with its Di-Gel green cinder block and rumbling, dripping sewer pipe. Boyle's office had blue-gray institutional carpeting, a broad mahogany desk, and in daylight a nice view of the harbor.

Coffin stood, looked out the window. In mid-October the days were mostly bright and warm, the evenings often chilly and damp. Commercial Street was busy, for the off-season. It was the week of Provincetown's annual transgendered/cross-dresser's festival and small clusters of men, mostly in their fifties and sixties, strode up and down the sidewalks of Commercial Street dressed in various stages of drag—everything from evening gowns, feather boas, and tiaras to ratty wigs worn with jeans and tennis shoes. They shopped, had dinner and drinks in Provincetown's upscale restaurants, went on whale watches and moonlight sailboat cruises, sometimes with their wives and even their children in tow—but they also attended workshops on gender reassignment, how-to sessions on wig buying and makeup, group counseling for self-esteem, and mentored discussions of transgendered spirituality. There was an awards banquet, a talent show, a formal ball, and, at the end of the week, a culminating fashion show, to be followed this year by a special drag show featuring performers from New York and San Francisco. The event's official title was Fantasia Fair, but the locals called it Tall Ships Week, and the men in their drag finery were known as Tall Ships. It was mostly an affectionate term, Coffin thought: a not exactly reverent description of those tall men in their wigs and makeup, muumuus flapping in the harbor breeze.

Coffin heard a siren—a fire engine, he knew, heading east from the station on Shank Painter Road. A few seconds later the intercom buzzed, and Coffin punched the button. “Yeah, Jeff,” he said.

“Dumpster fire, Frank. Behind Rossi's Package Store. I guess it's goin' pretty good—lots of cardboard.” It was Jeff Skillings, that day's desk officer: his Cape Cod accent was even thicker than Coffin's—“cardboard” came out something like “cahdbowed.”

“Another one?” Coffin said. “That's two in two weeks. Not good.”

“Probably kids,” Skillings said. “Like the one at the high school.”

“Probably. Anybody called Pete Wells?” Pete Wells was an investigator with the state fire marshal's office in Stow, assigned to the Cape and Islands.

“Think we need him?”

Coffin thought for a second. “Let's hold off,” he said. “You're right. It's probably just kids.” He punched the glowing intercom button again, breaking the connection. Then he stood up and put his coat on.

 

Chapter 3

Rossi's Package Store was the first structure you came to if you entered Provincetown by Conwell Street off Route 6. It was a small, full-range liquor mart, selling everything from thirty-six-packs of Old Milwaukee Light to high-end single malt scotch, premium cognacs, and $250 magnums of Dom Pérignon. It was perfectly normal to see down-and-out fishermen standing next to Porsche-driving real estate lawyers at Rossi's checkout counter; the former with maybe a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon, the latter with a fifth or two of Grey Goose, both on their way to very different kinds of parties, both with very distinct notions of what constituted a good time.

By the time Coffin pulled into Rossi's crushed oyster-shell parking lot, the Dumpster fire was already out. A loose half-circle of volunteer fire and rescue guys stood smoking and telling jokes near the front end of the idling pumper, a shiny new-to-them four-door Ferrara that had been bought used with money the volunteer firefighters had raised at raffles, bingo games, and pancake breakfasts. Wisps of foul-smelling smoke still rose from the Dumpster.

Coffin shook hands with the fire chief, a short, barrel-chested man in his fifties named Walt Macy. “What've we got here, Walt?” Coffin said.

Macy took off his PFD ball cap, scratched his bald head and put the cap back on. “Nasty little fire,” he said, crossing his arms over his big chest. “Must have used some kind of propellant—probably gasoline or lighter fluid. Pretty much the whole contents of the Dumpster were involved by the time we got here. Flames maybe ten feet high. Once we put the hose on her, she went out just fine, but it was pretty impressive when we first drove up.”

Coffin wrinkled his nose. “What's that smell? Plastic?”

“Yep, plastic juice jugs, the clerk says. Nasty shit in those things—that what d'ya call it—PBA or BPA or whatever.”

“So why so much cardboard and plastic in the Dumpster—don't these guys recycle?”

“Clerk says they do, big-time. Evidently whoever set the fire pulled a lot of cardboard and other stuff that was waiting to go to the recycling center out of the bins there—” Macy pointed a thick index finger at a row of waist-high, chicken wire, and two-by-four bins with hinged lids that ranged along the side of the building. “Then they threw it in the Dumpster, poured in their gas or whatever, tossed in a match and up it went.”

“Nice of them to put it all in the Dumpster, and not just torch the bins,” Coffin said.

Macy nodded, pursing his lips. “Hadn't thought of that. Yeah, I guess it was kind of nice of them. Relatively speaking.”

“Who called it in?” Coffin said.

“First call was the clerk. Then a few others from drivers passing by.” Macy tugged at the suspenders of his big, rubberized firemen's pants. Bunkers, they called them. “Pretty bold, tossing all that stuff in the Dumpster, pouring in the gas and torching it before it's even fully dark,” he said. “Could've been spotted pretty easy from the street.”

“Maybe he was,” Coffin said. “We'll get in touch with the folks who called it in, see if they saw anyone.”

Macy nodded. “They're on caller ID. I'll phone the numbers over to your office.”

“What's the clerk's name?” Coffin said.

Macy pulled a notebook out of his pocket, flipped it open. “Szabo,” he said. “With a S-Z. From Hungary, he says.”

Coffin shook Macy's hand. “Good to see you, Walt. Wife and kids all right?”

“Doin' fine. How's your ma?”

“God,” Coffin said. “Don't ask.”

*   *   *

There were no customers in the store, but the chemical smell of roasted plastic was strong. The clerk, Szabo, stood by the window, looking out at the parking lot. He was tall and slender, with pale eyes and dark hair. His fingers were long, his nose hawkish.

“Pretty exciting out there, for a while,” Coffin said, pulling his shield out of his jacket pocket, flipping it open.

“Yeah,” Szabo said. “Exciting. I guess you could say that. Scared the living shit out of me.” Coffin had a hard time telling one Eastern European accent from another. They all sounded like Boris and Natasha from the old
Rocky and Bullwinkle
cartoons to him.

“Big fire?” Coffin said.

“Fucking huge.” Szabo shook his head. “Flames five, six meters high. Burning cardboard flying around. I thought the shop was going to go up. Lucky those firemen come so fast.”

Coffin looked out the window, too. The fire and rescue boys were climbing back into their shiny new truck. It had hot rod flames painted on the sides. “So, what happened—you looked out the window and there's the fire?”

Szabo frowned, shook his long head again. “Was customer,” he said. “Guy comes in, gets a couple forties out of the cooler. I'm reading my book.” He held up a weathered paperback:
Flying Saucers
by Carl Jung. “Guy's walking up to the register, past window. He says, ‘Holy shit, fucking Dumpster's on fire,' so then I look.”

“So you called it in right away?”

“Right away. Picked up the phone and called 911.”

“What happened to the guy—the customer?”

“He pays up and pffft—takes off. Doesn't even wait for change. His car was in the lot, so maybe he worries.”

“What kind of car?”

Szabo thought for a second, looking away. Then his pale blue eyes focused on Coffin's face. “I don't know,” he said. “Didn't see. Guess I was watching fire.”

“What did he look like, this customer?”

“American. White guy.”

“Tall? Short? Heavy?”

“I don't know—medium.”

“How old?”

“Late twenties.”

“Did you card him?”

Szabo shook his head. “He looks over twenty-one.”

“Dressed how?”

“Jeans, hoodie, ball cap. You know—like everybody.”