Chapter 6

“Who’re you now, Boris Karloff?”

O’Leary grunted and waved Ralph into a chair. The arson investigator’s desk, all four edges of which were scalloped with burn marks, supported a pair of fat dry-cell batteries the size of Thermos jugs, wired to what appeared to be an ordinary wall switch without a strike plate. The switch was screwed to two wooden uprights nailed to the pine board upon which the dry cells stood. It looked like a high school science project.

“I had the lab fix this up,” O’Leary said. “Saves a lot of explaining. This thing here is an arc switch. Know what that is?”

“Golly, gee, no, Mr. Wizard. What is it?”

“You’re a card, Poteet. You don’t see these much anymore. They’ve been replaced by more expensive units with less conductible materials for reasons of safety. This one’s a duplicate of the one we found installed next to the door of Lyla Dane’s apartment. The original burned, of course. But not enough to disguise what it is.”

“I’m starting to get it,” Ralph said, interested now.

“Really? You’re smarter than you—well, than I thought. Anyway, we asked the landlord about it. He said the switches are identical throughout the building. We checked out the one in that empty apartment you and I were in this morning. It’s a conventional safety switch, not an arc. He swears the last switch he replaced was in the furnace room, and he did that more than six months ago. It isn’t an arc either. We checked.”

“You’re saying somebody snuck in and switched switches.”

“You put things cute. But yeah. Then, just before our friend left, he or she turned on all the gas burners on the kitchen range and blew out the pilots. The lady’s out for the evening, which is what she does to eat. By the time she gets home, the place is full of fumes. She opens the door, turns on the light—” He flipped the switch. A blue spark crackled between the points.

Ralph said, “Kaboom.”

“More like foom. Only she weighs less than a hundred pounds, so instead of blowing her to smithereens the blast throws her across the hall, which is what saved her life, for the time being. The report from Ann Arbor isn’t good. She’s in a coma with third-degree burns over forty percent of her body.” He lifted a smoldering cigarette butt from a charred groove on the edge of his desk and inhaled.

Ralph sat back quickly. In the smoke he thought he saw Carpenter’s emaciated features. Watch him while I go up and make sure we didn’t forget anything. “So what’d you pull me down here for? I call the electrician when a bulb needs changing.”

O’Leary said nothing for a moment. His big scorched-looking face with its squinched nose was as calm as a morgue slab. Finally he wiped his eyes.

“Yeah. I wanted to ask you face to face what kind of guy this landlord is.”

“Vinnie’s a sleaze.”

“You don’t like him?”

“I didn’t say that. I had anything against sleazes I wouldn’t have no friends at all.”

“You’re friends?”

“I didn’t say that either.”

O’Leary flipped his butt disgustedly into a plastic wastebasket by the desk. Leaning over, Ralph saw that it was half-filled with water. Somebody had been with him awhile. “Reason I’m asking, I didn’t like the way he acted when we asked him if anybody had been in the apartment last night or this morning besides Lyla Dane.”

“What’d he say?”

“He said he didn’t know, what’d he look like, some kind of weirdo peeping Tom?”

“Did you tell him?”

“He was lying. You get a sense for it in this work. Thing is, is he protecting himself or somebody else?”

“Vinnie wouldn’t stick his fat neck out for Mother Teresa. You sweat him?”

“As far as possible without hauling him in. Reason I called you, everybody we talked to said you were living in the building when they moved in. I figured you’d know him better than any of them.”

“I pay my rent, he lets me go on living there. That’s about it.”

“What about the two guys you were with this morning?”

Ralph reached for a Blue Diamond matchstick to cover the fact that he’d jumped. So O’Leary was that kind of cop. “Talk to Mrs. Gelatto, did you?”

“Should we?”

Dammit. He didn’t know now if O’Leary had spoken to her or to the cop who had grilled him in Carpenter’s car. “I had a little too much to drink last night,” he said. “Looks like I took a couple of guys back to my place for a nightcap when the bar closed. I seen them out around four.”

“Names?”

He shrugged. “You drink?”

“I’ve been known.”

“Everybody’s your friend. You don’t waste time with names.”

“What bar were you in?”

“Place called Richard’s, for a little. I don’t know about before and after.”

“Sounds like you got a problem.”

“I ain’t an alcoholic.”

“I mean as to being able to account for your movements last night. Nobody knows what time Lyla Dane went out. You could have rigged the switch and the gas before or after going to this Richard’s.”

“Could of. If I had a reason.”

“There are plenty of reasons when a hooker gets hurt. Maybe she was blackmailing you.” Ralph laughed. O’Leary looked sheepish. “Yeah, right. But if I were you, I’d find those friends.”

“What makes me your yellow dog?”

“For one thing, not telling me about them in the first place. Strangers in the building on the morning a tenant gets blown up are worth mentioning.”

“I didn’t figure there was a connection. I still don’t. What’s another?”

“I don’t like you.”

“I ain’t crazy about you neither.”

“I can live with it.” O’Leary flipped the switch off and on and off again. “For the record, it was Mrs. Gelatto told us about the three of you on the stairs. In between stories about her late husband and the marvelous curative properties of pickles.”

“Maybe we should try them. Can I go now?”

“I got a Mass to go to anyway. Let us know if you have any plans to leave town. You know that song.”

Ralph stood. “What kind of Mass takes place in the middle of the week?”

“It’s a memorial service. The pastor of my wife’s church died sometime last night. They found him this morning in his bed in the rectory. You all right?”

Ralph coughed and spat splinters into the wastebasket. “Yeah. That’s the second time today I swallowed one of the bastards. What’d you say your pastor’s name was?”

“I didn’t. But it was Breame, John Breame. He was a monsignor at St. Balthazar. Sure you’re okay?”

“I may start smoking again.” He went out.

“New rule, Poteet,” said Lucille Lovechild. “No more two-and-a-half-hour lunches.”

Anita had shunted him straight into the office with one of her Cheshire grins. Ralph said, “I had to see a man about a fire.”

“Interesting you should use that word.”

“Man?”

“Fire. Get back to work.”

He stopped at Anita’s desk. She was still reading Working Woman.

“Ain’t that like a monk with a subscription to Playboy?”

“Why not?” she said. “I bet he gets lucky more often than you do.”

“Chuck Waverly around?”

“He went out a little while ago with his camera. Lucille gave you hell, huh? Tell me everything.” She closed the magazine and cupped her chin in her palm.

“Well, I hope he took the right film. Them forty-watt bulbs they put in motel rooms can barely light themselves.” He turned to go.

“Oh, this came for you by messenger.” She held up an envelope.

Ralph didn’t take it. “Any windows?”

“No windows.”

“My wife’s handwriting?”

“I wouldn’t know it.”

“Jake Otero serves papers in a messenger’s uniform. Was he a little round guy with a stupid face?”

“You’re a little round guy with a stupid face.”

He took it. The envelope was heavy white stock, addressed in fine copperplate. “‘Mr. Ralph Poteet,’” he read aloud.

“A stranger, obviously.”

He opened it.

Dear Mr. Poteet:

If it is not inconvenient, your presence in my home this evening at six o’clock could prove to your advantage and mine.

Cordially,

Philip Steelcase

Bishop-in-Ordinary

A card with a Farmington Hills address engraved on it was clipped to the letter, along with a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.

“IRS, I hope?” Anita inquired.

“Religious mail.” He refolded the bill inside the letter and stuck it in a pocket.

She opened her magazine. “They’re way too late.”