But no… too risky. They might get suspicious… might guess a third party was involved here…
Yoshio sighed and headed for the apartment door. A wasted trip. All he could do was keep watch, just as he had been doing for months.
So frustrating. He wished something would happen. And soon.
8.
Alicia had given up peering through the skylight. She'd dropped into her reading chair and sat among her mending trees and plants, staring at the scanner.
But no word of a fire in Murray Hill.
Had Benny the arsonist scammed her? He didn't set fires, he just told people he did. Then he took the money and ran.
But then again, maybe he hadn't found the conditions right. He knew about the security guards Thomas had hired but had told her he could easily slip past them. Maybe it hadn't been as easy as he'd thought.
Maybe he'd go back tomorrow night.
Alicia shuddered.
"Do it tonight," she said to the empty room. "I don't know how much longer I can take this waiting."
THURSDAY
1.
"So, did you hear about Benny the Torch?"
Abe's offhanded question stopped Jack in midbite.
He'd dropped by the shop with some bagels and Philly—the cream cheese was for Abe; Jack ate his dry. Abe supplied the coffee.
"No," Jack said as a premonition started a slow crawl up his back. "What about him?"
But Abe's attention had turned to Parabellum, perched on his left shoulder this time. The parakeet was pecking away at the piece of bagel Abe held up to him.
"Look at the little fellow! He loves bagels. A kosher parakeet."
"I think it's sesame seeds he likes," Jack said. "And that one's coated with them. But what about Benny?"
"Found him dead early this morning under a ramp to the Manhattan Bridge."
"He fell?"
"No, he burned. To a crisp, I'm told. With his own accelerant."
The piece of poppy seed bagel Jack was swallowing paused halfway down as his esophagus tightened.
"How'd he manage to do that?"
"Oh, I doubt he had much to do with it. Somebody burned the word 'firebug' in the ground next to him."
"Jeez."
"And word is he was still alive when he burned."
Jack shuddered. Benny was a lowlife… but burned alive…
"Oy, Parabellum," Abe said. "This is the way you show appreciation?"
Jack looked up and saw that the parakeet had dropped a load on Abe's shoulder. From the look of the stains up there, it wasn't the first.
"What goes in, must come out," Jack said. "And look at it this way. You only had stains on the front of your shirts before. Now you've got them on the shoulders as well."
"I know, I know," Abe said, wiping at the glob with a paper towel. "But I think this little fellow's got a condition. Colitis, maybe. Hey, you buy that stock I told you about?"
"You know I can't buy stock."
"Not can't—won't. You're missing out on a lot of easy money. Such a broker I've got. Puts me in these IPOs. I'm out before I know I'm in. A thousand shares, it goes up two bucks, we sell. Money for nothing. All you've got to—" He stopped and stared at Jack. "That face. You're making that 'when-will-you-drop-it-Abe' face."
"Who me?" Jack said, wishing Abe would drop it.
"Yes, you. And I should be making my 'when-will-Jack-wise-up' face."
"Jeez, if it isn't you, it's Gia."
"I'm not telling you to quit. You're too good a customer. I'm telling you to get your money out of those fahkaktah gold coins and put it to work for you."
"You need a social security number to open a brokerage account, Abe."
"So? You've got all those false identities, and I know some of them have social security numbers."
"Dead folks' numbers."
"Fine. You convert some of those ducats and Krugerrands into dollars. You use a dead man's number to open an account with my broker. You let him make trades for you. He makes you twenty percent a year."
"No thanks."
"Jack! How can you say no thanks to doubling your money in less than four years?"
"Because I'd have to pay taxes on those profits."
"Yes, but—" .
"No buts. I'd have to. And sitting back and letting them take their cut is saying it's okay. And saying it's okay…"
Jack couldn't do that. Once he crossed that line, even under another identity, he'd… belong. He'd have joined them. And they'd know him.
"But you wouldn't be saying okay. It'd be the fake guy with the dead man's Social Security number."
"Same thing, Abe."
Abe stared at him a moment, then sighed. "I don't understand you, Jack."
Jack smiled. "Yes, you do. And Parabellum just ejected another casing."
"Oy!"
As he watched Abe wipe the glob away, he said, "Any word on who might've done Benny?"
Abe shook his head. "Nothing. But if you should want my opinion, and I'm sure you do, I say it looks to me like Benny might've tried to set a match to the wrong building."
Jack had a sinking feeling he knew what building that might have been.
He remembered Alicia telling him how two people she'd hired to get involved in her will problems had wound up dead. Did Benny the Torch raise the tally to three?
Only one way to find out.
2.
Alicia had just hung up with the hospital lab—no results yet on Hector's cultures, but the little guy was hanging in there despite more fever spikes;—when Raymond's voice came over the intercom. "That fellow named Jack to see you," he said. "He doesn't have an appointment but says it's important." A faint murmur in the background, then: "Check that—he says it's 'urgent.'"
Alicia's first instinct was to send him away. He'd blown her off two days ago, so as far as she was concerned, they had nothing left to talk about.
But the word "urgent" got to her. It wasn't one she'd associate with Jack. If he said this was urgent, he probably meant it.
Oh, hell. "Send him in."
A few seconds later, Jack slipped past the door and closed it behind him.
"Did you hire Benny the Torch?"
He hadn't sat down, hadn't even said hello. But the name "Benny" made Alicia disregard all that.
He knows! But how could he?
"What are you talking about?" was the. best her startled brain could come up with.
"He was found dead this morning. Someone burned him alive last night. Any connection between him and what you asked me to do?"
"Oh, no!" she gasped. "Not again!"
Jack dropped into the chair. "Okay. That answers my question."
She felt his stare as she fought a surge of guilty nausea.
That twitchy little man… burned alive…
Finally he said, "I thought you weren't going to go running off looking for somebody else. I thought you were going to think about it."
"I didn't have to look," she said. Her voice sounded dull and far away. She felt as if she were listening to herself from another room. "I already had his name. My God… I killed him…"
"You didn't kill him. But I think you may have a point about the short life span of people who get involved in this. Everyone but you. And that's what I don't understand."
"I do," she said, shaking herself and forcing herself to focus. "I read the will yesterday."
"About time. And it clears up all the mysteries?"
"No. Not by a long shot. But it does explain why I'm still alive."