Fire Season (25 page)

*   *   *

Twenty minutes later, Rudy and Loverboy picked them up at the entrance to the deserted Adventure Bound campground just off Highland Road, where they'd crouched in the shadows as the Truro police, a Truro fire truck, and a Truro ambulance had raced by, sirens howling. The Coast Guard helicopter was back, too, rotors churning the sky like a big Mixmaster, searchlight working the cliff base below Highland Light.

“Jesus, boys,” Rudy said, turned half around in the passenger seat. “You sure know how to draw attention to yourselves.”

“You shoulda left it in gear, Frankie,” Tony said.

“I
did
leave it in gear,” Coffin said.

“So, what's your story?” Rudy said.

“Stolen vehicle,” Coffin said.

Rudy pursed his lips. “Sure. Sounds good. What kind of car was it?”

“Eighty-four Fiesta.”

“Jesus. Really? Who'd steal a piece of shit like that?”

“The key's been stuck in the ignition for almost a year. It was a crime of opportunity.”

“Then what? The guy got disgusted and ran it off a cliff?”

“Works for me. I'll call it in first thing in the morning.”

They dropped Tony off at his Orleans ranch house—Doris frowning and worried in her bathrobe, a couple of late-season bugs lazily circling the porch light. Coffin reminded Tony of their deal: any more trouble, and back to the psych ward.

“But, Frankie,” Tony said.

“What now?”

“They said they'd come, but they didn't. They
always
come when they say they're going to.”

“I don't know what to tell you, Tony.”

“Maybe the helicopter scared them off,” Tony said.

Coffin steered him toward the front door, gave him a push. “Maybe so,” he said. “Get some rest. No more of this now.”

“Sure, Frankie,” Tony said, yawning, shuffling into the house like a bear into its cave. “No worries.”

“Frankie,” Doris said, when Tony had disappeared inside. “What am I supposed to
do?
”

“I don't know,” Coffin said. “I really don't.”

“He's crazy, right? I mean really
crazy
.”

Coffin nodded. “Seems that way, yeah. Maybe wait 'til morning and talk to his doc down in Hyannis? If he gives you any trouble tonight just call me and I'll send an officer out to pick him up.”

“You can't come?”

Coffin took a deep breath. “Okay. If you need me, call and I'll come out. But I think he'll sleep. He's had a big day.”

Doris put a hand on Coffin's arm for an awkward moment, then put both hands in the pockets of her bathrobe. “Thanks, Frankie.”

Coffin shrugged. “We take care of the family,” he said. “It's what we do.”

*   *   *

“So,” Rudy said, on the drive back to Provincetown. “How bad is he?”

“How bad does he look?” Coffin said.

“He looks completely fucking crazy. But how bad
is
he?”

“He seems pretty manic,” Coffin said. “He's delusional, a little paranoid. He's not making a lot of sense. Either that or he's been serially abducted by aliens.”

“You speak from experience,” Loverboy said. A statement, not a question. His shoulders blocked out most of the view of the road ahead.

“My ex-wife was bipolar,” Coffin said. “She had occasional psychotic breaks—every few years, things would get bad. She'd get very manic, not sleep for days. She'd go on crazy spending binges, get into all kinds of risk-taking. If you talked about medication she'd accuse you of wanting to poison her, or control her. She thought Bill Clinton was calling her on the phone—this was during the whole Lewinsky thing. She thought her father had implanted an electronic device in her abdomen—a bomb, maybe, or some kind of transmitter. She thought Baltimore was going to be destroyed by race riots. It was … freaky. She was like a different person.”

“It's not that uncommon,” Loverboy said, “something like two percent of the population is psychotic.”

“How is she now?” Rudy asked.

“We're not in touch, really. I send the alimony checks and she cashes them. That's the extent of our correspondence. But before we split, she was fine as long as she took her meds. Really, totally fine. But one of the symptoms of the disease is resistance to taking the meds.”

Rudy shook his head. “Jesus. I hate to see him like this. I mean, he was always a fucking goofball, but this alien shit is just way over the top.”

“That's what's hard about mental illness,” Loverboy said. “You can't reason with it, and you can't kick its ass.”

“Sounds like you're talking from experience, too,” Coffin said.

Loverboy nodded. “My brother is schizophrenic. Like you said—if he takes his meds, he functions fairly well. If he doesn't, he doesn't.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Rudy said. “I need a drink. Got any booze at your place, Frankie?”

“Booze I got,” Coffin said. “No furniture, but plenty of booze.” Coffin yawned and slouched down in the backseat, with its mingled smells of marijuana smoke and cheap leather.

“Something I've got to ask you,” Coffin said, after a minute or two, as they passed the turnoff to Wellfleet town center and then Moby Dick's, an old-school tourist restaurant decorated in fishing nets, lobster pots, and rusting anchors. It was closed for the off-season.

“Ask away,” Rudy said.

“I had a weird conversation with Mom today. Your name came up.”

“Okay.”

“She said she had Branstool whacked. She said you did it.”

Rudy half turned in his seat. “She
is
delusional, you know. She also thinks they're slipping saltpeter into her oatmeal.”

“You mean they're not?”

“Look, I told you I didn't have anything to do with what happened to Branstool.”

“Any idea who did?”

“I wish I knew, Frankie.”

Coffin closed his eyes. “Figured you'd say that.”

“No, seriously—I wish I knew. There are a couple of options. Maybe three.”

“Okay. Like?”

“Like MS 13. You know about them.”

“Duh. Very serious gang—started by Salvadoran immigrants to L.A., spread into Mexico and Central America. Extremely violent. Lots of facial tattoos. Active in the East Coast heroin biz. Zero presence on the Cape. What else?”

“Chechens.”

“Chechens?”

“Well, they call themselves Chechens but they're mostly Ukrainian converts to Islam. Chechen just sounds a lot more badass. They're not very organized but they've been moving some heroin in the region, is what I hear, selling mostly at street level to all the little Eastern European waitresses and retail workers—ten bucks a bag for new customers.”

“Would they be in for a couple million? Would they cut off a guy's head with a radial arm saw?”

“Don't know,” Rudy said. “Maybe, if they're trying to make a name for themselves.”

“What's the third choice?”

“You're gonna hate it.”

“I hate the whole conversation.”

“DEA.”

“Oh, come on. I understand that you think it's fun to bullshit your nephew, but that's just ridiculous.”

Rudy turned around in his seat, pointed a thick finger at Coffin's face. “Ridiculous? Why do you think there's high-quality smack flooding the eastern U.S., Frankie? Where's it all coming from?”

“Afghanistan.”

“Right. And who runs Afghanistan?”

“Pakistan.”

Rudy rolled his eyes. “Okay, smart-ass, who besides Pakistan?”

“Us?”

“Right! Us. As in the CIA. The CIA runs heroin distribution out of Afghanistan, Frankie. They have to in order to fund their secret wars in Pakistan and Somalia and wherever the fuck—that way it's off the books, right? No inconvenient questions from Congress.”

“Sure, Rudy. If you say so.”

“Damn right I say so. The DEA is the conduit at this end. You think with all the money we've spent on the war on drugs since the eighties, and all the power we've put into the hands of law enforcement, we couldn't keep drugs out of the country if we wanted to?”

Loverboy laughed, a low, slow rumble. “DEA is a law unto itself,” he said. “They want your house, your cash, your car—they just take it. No due process for you, motherfucker.”

“Exactly,” Rudy said. “There's two ways to get rich working for the government. You can get elected to congress, or you can sign up with the DEA. The drug wars in Mexico? That wouldn't happen unless the DEA made it happen. They make money on every piece of it: guns, coke, ganja, human trafficking, protection, the whole deal.”

“Come on, Rudy. Now who's paranoid?”

“Fine—laugh it up. But don't act all surprised if they show up here, looking for their missing bag of smack. It's not like the old days, Frankie, when it was a few cowboy smugglers against the law. If it's big, and it moves, it's because DEA wants it to move.”

“What missing bag of smack, Rudy?”

Rudy grinned. “Just a lucky guess, Frankie. Just a lucky guess.”

*   *   *

“Man,” Loverboy said, as the Lincoln crested the hill at High Head, and the long curve of the shoreline from North Truro to Wood End opened up before them, the lights of Provincetown reflecting off the black water, the moon bright among broken clouds. “What a vista.”

Coffin's phone sputtered to life in his pocket, playing a muffled “La Cucaracha.”

“Uh-oh,” Rudy said, pointing. “Check it out.”

Coffin dug for his phone and craned his neck at the same time, trying to see past Loverboy's pumpkin-sized head. A crimson halo of fire was erupting from a structure on the West End, on what appeared to be the harbor side of Commercial Street. “Son of a bitch,” Coffin said. “This guy's fucking relentless.” He checked the caller ID—Lola—then touched the
TALK
button.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Frank? We've got another fire.”

“I'm looking at it right now. I'm on Route 6, on my way in.”

There was a blast of static as they passed the dunes on their right. Then Lola said something that sounded like “Kotowski's house.”

“What?” Coffin said. “What about Kotowski's house? Hello?”

His phone was dead—no service bars, no dial tone. He felt a powerful urge to lower the window and throw the phone out into darkness, but put it in his pocket instead.

*   *   *

Loverboy got them to the West End in record time, taking the length of Bradford Street at a smooth eighty miles an hour, swerving adeptly around two bicyclists, a Winnebago, and a cluster of stout, ruddy men in their sixties crossing the street in front of one of the more upscale guesthouses, all dressed in variations on the Dolly Parton theme—big blond wigs, prowlike bosoms, shiny dresses.

As they made the left turn at the end of Bradford onto the southern tail of Provincelands Road, Coffin craned his neck to get a good look out the window. They passed the salt marsh and the breakwater, then swung into the traffic circle at the end of Commercial Street. Coffin took a deep breath. Kotowski's house glowed in the firelight, but it was not on fire—the big beachfront trophy house next door was.

The trophy house was a recent build—thrown up at the height of the Bush-era housing boom. Somehow the developer had gotten a variance from the zoning board and built a three-story structure that dwarfed the surrounding two-story houses, and came within a foot or two on each side of filling the entire lot. It had a flat roof, a rooftop deck complete with a heated swimming pool, its own boat dock, a billiard room, a screening room, and a solarium populated by a great many exotic orchids. It was meant to be impressive—an expression of unrestrained consumption—but now it was also very much on fire.

There were three police cruisers parked on Commercial Street with lights flashing, and both of Provincetown's functioning fire trucks were already hooked up to the nearest hydrant and dispensing heavy streams of water onto the fire—one onto the roof, the other into a broken downstairs window.

Coffin climbed out of the Town Car and stretched—his back was sore, and his arms ached a bit after his wrestling match with the Fiesta.

“We're out of here, Frankie,” Rudy said. He was rolling a joint on the open glove box door. “Too many cops around. You know how it is.”

“Thanks for the lift,” Coffin said. “I owe you.”

“In more ways than you know, Frankie.”

“Rudy?”

“Shoot.”

“When I go into work tomorrow, that bag of smack isn't going to be in the safe anymore, is it?”

“There's a bag of smack in the safe?”

“That's what I'm asking you.”

“I don't know anything about any bags of smack, Frankie.” He held up three fingers, put a hand over his heart. “Scout's honor.”

“You were a Boy Scout?”

Rudy snorted. “Fuck, no. Do I look like the kind of guy who would've been into kneesocks and circle jerks as a kid?”

“Look, Rudy—” Coffin paused, scratched his ear. “I don't give a damn about the smack. I have a signed and notarized receipt that says I gave it into the custody of our town manager and our town attorney. Nobody can blame me if it goes missing.”

“Good boy. Now you're catching on.”

“But,” Coffin said, “I worry about the safety of the person who may be driving around with that bag of smack in the trunk of his car right now. I know you've got your big friend here, and I'm sure he's very good at what he does. Just don't forget what happened to Branstool.”

Rudy lit the joint with a chunky Zippo. The smell of lighter fluid and marijuana smoke drifted out of the car window. “Frankie, you know me, right?”

“Sure, Rudy.”