Fire Season (20 page)

“He didn't do it himself, of course,” she said, touching a finger to her temple. “Too smart for that.”

“Right,” Coffin said. “Way too smart.”

“It was that accountant he's running around with. Huggybear.”

“Loverboy?”

“Who?”

*   *   *

After he'd left his mother's room—patting her hand, kissing her temple—Coffin paused outside the director's office. The door was open. Ms. Haskell, the patient's advocate, was sitting at Branstool's desk. She waved Coffin in.

“Detective Coffin,” she said. “Have you got a minute?”

“Just,” Coffin said.

“Thanks, I know it's a busy time for you. But I wanted to let you know we've decided to consider your mother's appeal of the relocation decision.”

“Her appeal?”

“We were contacted by her attorney this morning. She pointed out that under Massachusetts law, there's a ten-day window during which an appeal must be heard, if requested.”

“Her attorney? She has an attorney?”

“She's retained an attorney, yes. A Ms. Sarah Baldritch of Baldritch, Torkel, Nash. Of Boston.”

Coffin touched his mustache. It was spiky, needed trimming. He thought again about shaving it off. “Has my uncle been to see her? Rudy Santos?”

“Not to my knowledge, no, sir,” Ms. Haskell said. “But feel free to check the visitor log.”

On his way out, Coffin glanced through the log—a yellow pad on the day-nurse's desk, next to a small printed placard that said “Please Sign In.” Rudy's name wasn't on it—but Coffin already knew it wouldn't be.

*   *   *

Kotowski lived in a ramshackle old house near the breakwater, at the far west end of Commercial Street. The house had a small insignia above the door—a blue rectangle with a white house floating on white waves—which meant that it had, in its earlier form, been one of the houses floated across the harbor from the old Long Point salt works, an abandoned settlement of fishermen and salt workers once known as Hell Town. He'd bought it for almost nothing in the seventies, had weatherized it himself, built crazy additions without permit or license, almost lost it to unpaid taxes and greedy developers multiple times. Somehow he was still there, still making his strange paintings—the dusty living room crammed with poorly mended furniture he'd picked up at the dump: the armchairs repaired with duct tape, the three-legged coffee table supported by a cinder block. A large outboard motor lay in pieces on the living-room floor, in a state of greasy and perpetual disrepair.

“You want me to do a
what?
” Kotowski said. They were sitting at Kotowski's warped and tippy kitchen table, peering at the screen of Lola's laptop.

“I want you to do an artist's rendering of the guy standing behind the guy in the big poofy dress.”

“An artist's
rendering?
That's what you get when you melt down an abstract expressionist, right? Or when Thomas Kinkade takes a crap.”

“He'll be here all week,” Coffin said.

“
I
thought it was funny,” Kotowski said. “Hell, I can't even
see
the guy. Can you make him any bigger?”

“Nope.”

“Any clearer?”

“Sorry.”

“Does he ever come out from behind the guy in the dress?”

“That's as good as it gets.”

Kotowski closed the laptop with a definitive snap. “Forget it,” he said. “It's not dignified. I'm an artist—not some police technician working with composites on a computer. I went to RISD, for Christ's sake.”

“Fine. I thought it might be kind of a challenge—putting together a whole face from the fragment. Plus, you were doing the crime theme for awhile.”

“Doing the
crime theme?
” Kotowski said, making finger quotes. “Are you talking about the Frog Marches? Those were deeply subversive paintings, Coffin. If you think they had anything to do with your conventional little arsonist, you've entirely missed the point.”

The Frog Marches were a series of life-sized, photo-realist paintings Kotowski had done in 2008 and 2009.
Frog March 1,
depicting a weeping George W. Bush being led away in handcuffs by FBI agents, had sold immediately for a price that even Kotowski thought ridiculously high. He'd done several more:
Frog March 2
showed Dick Cheney being dragged into a courtroom in an orange jumpsuit; in
Frog March 3
Donald Rumsfeld was tarred and feathered;
Frog March 4
imagined the prison strip-search of Condoleeza Rice, complete with latex-gloved matron; and
Frog March 5
showed Alberto Gonzalez, strapped to a table, cloth wadded into his mouth, eyes wide behind his glasses as a large man in camouflage poured water over his face. All had been sold to the same anonymous collector.

“Good series,” Coffin said. “Very lifelike.”

“Very lifelike?” Kotowski said. “Is that all you can say? What about the content, Coffin?”

Coffin shrugged. “They were terrible people. I'm glad they're gone. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want their pictures in my living room.”

Kotowski poked Coffin in the chest with a long, bony forefinger. “But they're
not
gone,” he said. “That's the point. You can drive out the Devil with a pitchfork, Coffin, but he always comes roaring back again. Just look at Cheney—he was in the fucking
Nixon
administration, for Christ's sake.”

“Whatever,” Coffin said, rubbing his chest. “Will you do it, or not?”

Kotowski tapped a filterless Camel from the pack and lit it. “I told you—no. N-O. I don't work for the cops, even if they're my best friend.”

“I'm touched, Kotowski. Sort of.”

“Well, don't be. It's all relative. You're just the person in this town I dislike the least. Want a beer? I stole some Newcastles from the Oyster Shack.”

“Sorry,” Coffin said. “I can't. I have to get home.”

“All right, all right, twist my arm. I'll do your fucking rendering. It'll take a few minutes. The beer's in the fridge.”

Coffin opened a Newcastle for Kotowski, and one for himself. They were very cold. Kotowski fetched a large sketch pad and a stick of charcoal, opened the laptop and started to draw.

“So,” he said. “Are you going to take my advice and leave town?”

“Jamie doesn't want to,” Coffin said. “She likes it here.”

“What about you? What do
you
want?”

“Does it matter?”

“Nope,” Kotowski said, sketching. “Not in the least.”

Coffin sipped his beer. “I like it here. I like the seasonal change. It's too crowded in the summer and too cold and deserted in the winter, but maybe that's better than living someplace that never changes. Sometimes the streets seem too narrow. I don't know—you'd leave?”

Kotowski curled his lip. “Provincetown isn't the same anymore. It's too
cute
. It's like a fucking theme park. Welcome to Queerland! Come and gawk at the quaint and lovable locals in their fanciful homosexual garb!” He made a loud retching sound. “I was getting drunk at the Vault a few nights ago and a guy walks in with his wife and a couple of bored teenagers. Teenagers, Coffin! The guy said he wanted them to get a look at a real alternative lifestyle.” Kotowski made finger quotes again, rolled his eyes. “He said, ‘It's all about recognizing each other as human beings, right?' I had to stop myself from caving his head in with a bar stool. What the fuck is the point of having a leather bar if you can't shock the yokels with it?”

“The whole gay thing is so twentieth century,” Coffin said.

“Exactly! We'll have to come up with something new—something completely
vile.
Then, in a few years, they'll accept that, too, and we'll have to come up with something
else
—it's like a freaking arms race. I'm telling you, Coffin, all this accepting you breeders are doing—it's taking the fun out of being homosexual.”

“Maybe you should move to Texas, or Uganda,” Coffin said.

“I like a challenge,” Kotowski said. “But get serious—Texas?”

Coffin drained his beer. “Okay,” he said. “Nice chatting, but I've got to get going.”

“Don't you want your rendering?” Kotowski said. “All done—free of charge.” He turned the sketch pad around. It was the man in the gray hoodie, stocky, hands in his pockets—except that all of his features had been squashed together in the upper-right corner of his face: eyes, nose, mouth, ears.

“What the hell is
that
?” Coffin said.

“It's cubism, you philistine,” Kotowski said. “Jesus, don't you know
anything?
”

*   *   *

Lola pulled up in front of Coffin's house in her new Camaro just as Coffin was climbing out of the Fiesta. The two cars were a study in contrasts, Coffin thought: the Camaro was shiny, black, and powerful—a decent contemporary take on a classic muscle car. The Fiesta was salt-faded, rusty, and sagging.
Kind of like me,
Coffin thought.

“Jamie will be happy to see you,” he said, when Lola had eased herself out of the driver's seat.

She glanced at her watch. “It's mutual,” she said. “I haven't seen Jamie in, like, a month.”

“You'll be amazed. She's out to here.” Coffin held his hand a few inches in front of his belly.

“Can't wait,” Lola said. “Did you get the sketch?”

Coffin shook his head. “No dice,” he said. “He wasn't in the mood.”

The sound of R&B music filtered through the front door as they stepped onto the screen porch. It was a CD Jamie had just bought: Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, the horn section chugging through the minor-chord progression of “100 Days, 100 Nights.”

Coffin pushed the door open.

“Dude,” Lola said.

“Whoa,” Coffin said. The living room was empty. There were no strict Victorian chairs, no lumpy Victorian sofas stuffed with horsehair. There were no glass-fronted cabinets full of his mother's knickknacks, no clutter of end tables, no doilies, no threadbare Persian rugs. Except for the Bose CD player thumping away on the floor and the taxidermied goat's head leering down from above the fireplace, the living room had been cleared out.

“Jamie?” Coffin said. “Anybody home?”

Jamie appeared at the top of the stairs. She was wearing yoga pants and a skimpy green camisole, tight across her belly. Her breasts, Coffin thought, were spectacular.

“What do you think?” Jamie said, spreading her arms.

“I think you look amazing,” Coffin said.

“I'll second that emotion,” Lola said.

Jamie rolled her eyes. “You guys are goofballs. Not me, the living room. Isn't it awesome?”

“It has a certain
je ne sais quoi,”
Coffin said.

“Minimalist,” Lola said. “Very hip.”

Jamie trotted down the stairs, a careful hand on the rail. “Seriously,” she said. “Look how much lighter it is without all that dark
stuff.
”

She had a point, Coffin thought. “It looks a lot bigger, too,” he said.

Jamie kissed his cheek. “Well, duh,” she said. “It's empty, right? Goofball.”

“You kept the goat,” Lola said.

“Frank thinks it's haunted by his father. How could I get rid of it?”

Lola tilted her head, looked at Coffin, then the goat, then back at Coffin again. “Total resemblance,” she said.

“Hey!” Coffin said.

“Who's up for a cocktail?” Jamie said. “I'm pouring.”

“But not drinking,” Coffin said, watching Jamie's backside as she strode into the kitchen.
Still not square
, he thought. Then he shook his head.
You don't want to start channeling Rudy.

“Only vicariously,” Jamie said, taking a big plastic jug from the fridge, holding it up by its neck. “I'll stick with Clamato.”

“Clamato?” Lola said. “Seriously?”

Jamie tossed a few ice cubes into a tall glass, filled it with the viscous clam-and-tomato-juice cocktail. “I know,” she said. “It sounds like a sexually transmitted disease. I sort of hate it—but the baby wants, wants,
wants
it.” She drank it halfway down, refilled the glass.

“Freaky,” Lola said.

“Told you,” Coffin said. He retrieved a bottle of Famous Grouse from the cabinet over the stove, waved it at Lola. “Scotch, or scotch?”

“I think I'll have scotch.”

“Doris called,” Jamie said.

“How's Tony?” Lola said.

“In the psych ward, down in Hyannis. They're keeping him for observation.”

“Good,” Coffin said.

Jamie put a hand on Lola's arm. “Can you stay for dinner?”

“What are we having?” Coffin asked. “Pig's knuckles and Cheez-Whiz?”

“Mmm,” Jamie said. “Cheez-Whiz.”

Lola glanced at her watch again. “Sorry,” she said. “I'd love to, but I've got a date.”

“Another date?” Coffin said, pouring scotch into a pair of highball glasses. “Getting kind of serious, aren't we?”

“Well, yeah,” Lola said. Coffin handed her a glass and she took a sip. “I've got a date with a Realtor. I'm thinking about buying a house.” She propped her hip on the kitchen counter, next to a pile of mail: a few bills, a catalog from Pottery Barn.

“Really?” Jamie said. “In P'town?”

“I'm looking at half of a duplex, yeah,” Lola said. “Prices have come down, but rents are higher than ever, seems like. It's cheaper to buy, if you can get a loan.”

Coffin grinned. “Our little girl is finally settling down.”

Lola cocked a fist, and Coffin ducked away. “Never hit a man who's holding scotch,” he said.