TWENTY

“A man.”

Spraggue nodded wordlessly. It was the third time Hurley had repeated the two words since he had first swiveled around to glare at his unannounced, uninvited guest. The captain snuffed out a cigarette in what must have been an ashtray. From the cracked leather chair on the far side of the desk, it was invisible, hidden by overflowing wire in-and-out baskets, a Styrofoam cup collection, a crooked stack of Manila file folders, the dusty phone, and the remains of what smelled like an aging chicken salad sandwich. The first time Hurley had echoed the words, he’d punctuated them with shouted incredulous laughter. The second time, with indignant denial. The third time, his voice was just a mutter, followed by a regretful sigh.

“I was across the street from him, remember? Describing him … her … to the artist made me uneasy, made me wonder. Then at the theater, during the performance—Shakespeare, you know, girls dressed up as boys—it hit me. A woman, a tall broad-shouldered woman with big feet, a pale creamy sort of complexion, the kind you can get from a tube of grease paint, heavy enough to cover a just shaved beard.”

“Why do I get all the fucking weirdos?” Hurley inquired of the cracked ceiling.

“So haul out your mug-shot books and let me paw through them. You’ve got more male felons than female, I trust? I’ll bet you even have a file on female impersonators who’ve been picked up for the odd misdemeanor over the years, and one on transvestites, and male prostitutes and—”

“We don’t have to look in the mug books, Spraggue,” Hurley said heavily. “Damn, but I wish we’d picked up on this sooner.”

“On what?” Spraggue’s stomach took a dive.

“We can just look in the damned morgue; we’ve had the stiff there a week.” Hurley pressed a buzzer hidden under the sprawl of papers on his desk and a blue-uniformed officer opened the door. “Get me the file on JoJo Stearns,” the captain barked. The officer nodded, banged the door.

“The ID came in two, three days ago. It takes time to lift fingerprints, match ’em up with the vaunted FBI computer that has more down time than a hooker. Small-time hood death, that’s what we labeled it. The kind of death that, unless you find somebody actually standing over the body, smoking pistol in hand, you don’t solve until ten years later when some snitch gets burned and wants his prison sentence reduced. Then he says, hey remember JoJo? You still want to know who did JoJo? You get me out of here on a misdemeanor, or you get me Concord instead of Walpole, or you get me one-to-five instead of six-to-ten, and I’ll give you my brother-in-law.”

“JoJo Stearns,” Spraggue repeated.

“He was a very pretty man, in his ‘before’ photos,” Hurley said. “I can understand your not making him as a guy right off. He must have surprised a lot of people in a lot of johns in a lot of bars across this city.”

“He’s got a record? Vice stuff?”

Hurley shook his head.

“Well?”

“I don’t know—” Hurley began. He jumped at the thunderous knock on his glass-paned door. The uniformed man entered with a thick Manila file folder. “Just break the door down next time you want to get my attention, Brownlee.” The officer smirked and went out. “Jeez, we’re hiring real scumbags,” Hurley said. “Want to be a cop?”

“Hah.”

“That’s just it. You don’t want to be a cop, but you want me to give you information only cops are entitled to. That’s what I was going to say when old shit-for-brains interrupted.”

“Hurley, if I hadn’t brought my boy-girl revelation right to you, would you have any inkling that this stiff was the one who gave the water bottle to Donagher?”

“Might be the one.”

“A man dressed as a woman gives a senator a poisoned drink. The senator’s bodyguard dies. A man known to dress as a woman on a great many occasions, a man who matches my description of the water donor, turns up in the morgue—when? the very next day? You want to call it coincidence? You get that many guys dressed up as girls in the morgue?”

“Coincidences happen.”

“Sure they do.”

Hurley played with a pencil. He didn’t open the folder.

“So did JoJo die of natural causes?” Spraggue asked. “You didn’t say.”

“We thought at first it was an accident.”

“Why?”

“Came in through the fire department,” Hurley said.

“You always this loose-lipped?”

“Shit, man. This isn’t my case.”

“Collatos liked you. You said you liked him.”

“I don’t think he particularly cares, right now.”

“I care,” Spraggue said.

“The fireboys had another one of their typical fires of suspicious origin on Tuesday night. Slummy. Not exactly front page stuff. In case you haven’t noticed, two hundred twenty-five buildings in Boston have gone up in flames since last January: Dorchester, the South End, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain. Even Back Bay, where your aunt’s got her property. Most of the buildings are abandoned housing stock, old warehouses. This was a three-story wooden place on Tremont, boarded up, thought to be abandoned. It was, except for JoJo.”

“He didn’t live there?”

“JoJo didn’t live anywhere. He sat on one barstool until he found a home for the night and then he went back to another barstool until he found a home for the next night. Can you believe it? A broad with a pecker? You can never tell what’ll turn some creeps on.”

“Was the fire set?”

“Definitely. And the method was one the fireboys have come to know if not to love. This arson shit is getting me down.”

“It got Pete down, too. When he was working—” Spraggue stopped talking and his eyes narrowed.

“I’m way ahead of you, for once,” Hurley said. “Arson Squad. Collatos was working liaison with the Arson Task Force and the Arson Squad. Right? And somebody who just might have killed him gets burned up in a fire that sure as hell looks like arson.”

“Could it have been an accidental death? Could JoJo have been camped out in that particular house on the wrong night?”

“It wasn’t the sort of place our JoJo usually hung out. Not the sort of place to take a trick.”

“Then,” Spraggue said slowly, “Donagher could have nothing to do with this. Those threatening notes may really mean as little as I thought …”

Hurley opened the file and stared at it, but Spraggue knew he wasn’t reading. The captain made a show of reluctance before saying, “JoJo had connections to people who’ve been investigated for arson, people who are still under investigation …”

“Are you saying someone was after Pete because of something to do with his Arson Squad work?”

“Senator Donagher didn’t die. Collatos did.”

“Donagher was the one who was given the bottle.”

“But, of course, his bodyguard would taste it. Probably share it; that’s what a couple of runners racing together would normally do. We all assumed Senator Donagher was the target, because of the incident at the reservoir, because of the letters, because it seems more reasonable somehow to shoot at a United States senator than a retired cop. But Donagher doesn’t have a—what-do-you-call-it? idiosyncrasy with speed. Collatos did. He could have mentioned the fact. He was a talker.”

Spraggue ran a hand over his forehead. It came away flecked with grease paint.

Hurley went on. “What doesn’t make sense is that Collatos wasn’t a threat anymore, wasn’t a cop. He was off the arson squad detail …”

“He could have known something.”

“He was a blabbermouth; if he’d known anything, half the cops in the country would have known.”

“Unless he didn’t know he knew it … didn’t know it was worth knowing.”

“Come again?”

“Or maybe he’d made a deal with someone …”

“No way,” Hurley said, slamming his hand down on the desk hard enough to threaten an avalanche of paperwork. “Collatos was as honest as I am. Goddammit, the minute a cop dies in smelly circumstances, people start talking corruption. Blame the victim. If you’re going to go after Pete, I’m not—”

“Whoa,” Spraggue said. “I was just thinking out loud. Remind me not to do that in front of a cop.”

“Sorry.”

“Has anyone gone through the files Pete would have had access to when he was working with the firemen?”

“Somebody will.”

“What about his apartment? Who looked through that?”

“Menlo.”

“Then you might say it hasn’t been touched.”

“If you plan on going in there, you’re going to have to talk to the sister.”

“Then the seal is off the door?”

“Did I say that?” Hurley said. “I must be getting careless in my old age.”