“Somebody must have wanted to slow the fire equipment down,” he said, “but they came in from the other end of the street.”
“There was probably one there too,” I said.
“We should tell somebody,” Veronica said.
“Fire equipment’s already on the street,” I said, “so they must have already found out the hard way.”
Gunther braked in front of the Rhode Island Hospital emergency-room entrance, and we both got out to help Veronica from the car. A rescue wagon, siren screaming, pulled in behind us, and the back doors flew open. Two attendants sprinted from the hospital to help the crew unload a stretcher from the back.
The patient was strapped to a backboard, a cervical collar stabilizing her neck. Part of her uniform had been burned off. The flesh underneath looked like grilled beef. I wouldn’t have recognized her except for one thing.
The gurney was nearly half a foot shorter than she was.
65
On Monday, the federal grand jury handed up a sealed, thirty-two-count indictment charging Arena and three officials of the Laborers’ International Union with wire fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, bribery, filing false income tax returns, perjury, obstruction of justice, labor racketeering, and conspiracy. The twelve stitches in her knee didn’t seem to slow Veronica down any. Tipped by her source, she broke the story on page one, spoiling the U.S. attorney’s plans for a showy press conference.
Coyle was so busy arranging bail, holding his client’s hand, and condemning the government in a series of press interviews that it was a week before he could squeeze me in.
That gave me plenty of time to worry myself sick about Rosie.
She was in the intensive care unit. Only family was allowed to see her. All the hospital would tell me was that her condition was critical. They said it every time I called. Cops and firefighters hung up on me when I pressed for details, so all I knew about the accident was what I read in the paper.
HERO FIRE CHIEF CRITICALLY INJURED BY BOOBY TRAP, the headline said. She’d been driving her official car down Mount Hope Avenue, red lights flashing. At Hopedale, she turned left, approaching the fire from the north. The booby trap blew out both of her front tires, and the car lurched into a light pole. The driver of the pumper truck following behind her was blinded by the fog. He didn’t see her until it was too late. The truck clipped the right rear of her car, flipping it over, and the gas tank exploded.
I kept digging, double-checking documents and reinterviewing sources. I needed something to distract me from the image of Rosie lying limp and helpless on a gurney. And I had even more reason to nail the bastards now. I felt darn right homicidal.
* * *
The firm of McDougall, Young, Coyle, and Limone occupied two full floors of the Textron Tower. I got off the elevator on twelve, pushed open the mahogany double doors, and stepped into a waiting room big enough for a pickup basketball game. To the left, a receptionist in a beige business suit juggled calls behind a large glass desk. To the right, five baby dog sharks with tiny, cruel eyes cruised counterclockwise in a hundred-gallon aquarium, the firm’s way of telling you right off what kind of lawyer you’d be getting.
I stood in front of the desk until the receptionist hung up the phone, glanced at my David Ortiz jersey and Red Sox cap, and asked if I was there to pick up or drop off.
“I have a ten o’clock appointment with Brady Coyle.”
“Do you, now?”
“I do,” I said, hoping she didn’t recognize my voice.
“Your name?”
“L. S. A. Mulligan.”
“One moment, please.”
She picked up the phone, spoke a few words, told me Mr. Coyle would be with me shortly, and asked me to take a seat. I spent nearly an hour obsessing about Rosie and studying the little sharks—the wait just the big shark’s way of establishing his dominance—before his secretary appeared and led me up an interior staircase to his office.
“Mulligan!” he said, gripping my right hand in both of his and smiling big to display a picket fence of blinding teeth. “I haven’t seen you since I took you to school in that pickup game at Alumni Hall.”
Still trying to establish dominance, as if his panoramic view of historic Benefit Street, his three-inch height advantage, and his twelve-hundred-dollar suit weren’t enough to do the job.
As he led me across a blue oriental rug toward a black leather visitor’s chair, I took a moment to study the decor. Photos of Coyle posing with Buddy Cianci, George W. Bush, Alan Dershowitz, and Ernie DiGregorio. Four tastefully framed Jackson Pollocks. The room wasn’t a vault, so I figured the paintings for reproductions.
“So,” he said, settling into the high-backed leather chair behind his desk, “you should know right off that we require a twenty-thousand-dollar retainer in criminal cases.”
“No problem,” I said. “I just signed an eighty-thousand-dollar deal with Simon and Schuster for a book on the imminent demise of the newspaper business.”
“Really!”
“Yeah,” I lied. “After I give twenty grand to you and another twenty to the IRS, I’ll still have enough left to buy a judge, twelve jurors, and a sex tour of Woonsocket.”
“Jury tampering is not something you should joke about, Mulligan.”
“What about judge buying?”
“Half of them have ‘For Sale’ embroidered on their robes, but speaking of it is considered uncouth.”
“Thanks for the etiquette lesson.”
“You’re welcome. But enough with the banter. Let’s see what we can do to get you out of this fix.”
We discussed the FBI profile, Coyle already familiar with some of it from reading the paper.
“A profile is a useful investigative tool, but it’s not evidence,” he said. “This one could fit any number of people. Could they have something solid? An eyewitness? Physical evidence?”
“I don’t see how.”
“Nothing incriminating in your car or apartment?”
“Not unless they planted something.”
“Can you account for your whereabouts when the fires were set?”
“Back in December, when a triple-decker on Hope Street was torched, I was in Boston with an insurance investigator watching the Canadians slap-shot the Bruins into unconditional surrender. Couple of others, I was getting naked with that court reporter you’ve been leaking grand-jury testimony to.”
He glared at me for a moment.
“Well I am surprised Veronica would break our confidentiality agreement, even under such intimate circumstances.”
“She didn’t. I guessed.”
“I see.” He forced a smile. “Perhaps this can remain between the three of us.”
“Sure thing.”
“Good. Well, then. We may be able to dispose of your case expeditiously. I can inform the chief of police that you have witnesses who will swear to your whereabouts when several of the fires were set. Since the police apparently believe all of them were set by the same individual, you should be in the clear once they check out your alibis. At that time, I will insist that the chief issue a public apology and rebuke the arson squad for naming you as a person of interest. We still require the retainer, of course, but if things are as you say, you’ll be getting some of it back.”
I pulled my checkbook out of my jeans. Coyle reached across the desk and handed me a fountain pen.
“Before I give you this,” I said, “I want to be sure that representing me won’t involve you in a conflict of interest.”
“I don’t see how it could.”
“It’s like this,” I said. “Most of the torched buildings are owned by five real estate companies that have been busy buying up the neighborhood. The companies were all incorporated over the last eighteen months or so. Lawyers from this firm filed the papers.”