Dirty Fire by Earl Merkel
Synopsis:
A Fortune Worth Dying To Obtain. A Secret Worth Killing To Keep...
Once, police detective John Davey had everything-- until bribery charges destroyed his life. Now he's been given a second chance. He's asked to join the investigation into the baffling murder of a Chicago coulpe who were shot to death before their North Shore mansion was set ablaze. To the city, it's a scandal. To Davey, it's overkill.
Then, in the charred ruins, Davey finds clues to something more sinister than a deadly premediated arson-- a criminal maze threading back through history and a connection to billions of dollars in artwork that vanished during the Holocaust. When another woman falls victim to a brutal torture-murder, Davey begins to suspect corruption among his own former police colleagues. And as one revelation leads to another, betrayal is layered on betrayal... until Davey has no one left to trust but himself.
Book Excerpt:
Dirty Fire - Chapter 1
Gil Cieloczki moved gingerly over the ground, trying to avoid the worst of the ice-coated rubble. He glanced back at me, his expression wordlessly repeating the warning he had given in the car.
It was an unnecessary caution. A slip, I knew, would mean more than just a painful fall: everywhere I looked, a wide assortment of impalements awaited the unwary, the inexperienced, the impatient.
It was a surreal landscape, painted in stark tones of blacks and grays and dirty white.
Razor-edged shards of plate glass; steel reinforcing rods broken and contorted by intense heat; shattered brick and concrete: all jutted from mounded-up ice that in places rose almost knee-high. Spray from the fire hoses had frozen on the tangle of pipes that had burst from the heat, their ends jagged and menacing. What once was, by all accounts, a showcase of North Shore architecture was now reduced to just so many scorched and sharpened mantraps. Even the steel-shanked boots I had borrowed from the firefighter were scant protection.
And, of course, making everything geometrically more difficult was the wind- a hard, flat and relentless rush of frigid mid-January air TV weather reporters like to call an "Alberta Clipper." Firefighters and other unfortunates forced to work outside in the Chicago winter call it "The Hawk," a term of wary bravado that included no allowance for contempt. The Hawk dared us to keep our heads up, and slapped tears from our eyes when we tried.
Alongside Cieloczki, a short and stocky figure whose firefighter's helmet bore a Lieutenant's shield also picked his way, hunch-shouldered against the icy gale, toward the burned mansion.
"We lost this one bigtime, Cappie," said Jesús Martinez, his heavy turnout coat crackling with sooty ice. "We lost it before we even got here."
"Yeah," Cieloczki said, flatly. "All we did was make a lot of steam. Somebody wanted to build a vacant lot here." He eyed the ruins, and shook his head. "And did a damn good job of it."
At the one remaining wall, a thin figure watched us approach. His face was owl-eyed where goggles had shielded him from grit and soot, and he stood with the overly stiff posture that signals extreme exhaustion. A cigarette hung on his lip as if forgotten. He nodded as we stopped, sharing the windbreak of the wall.
"Chief Cieloczki. Lieutenant. I see you brought the cops with you. How's it going, Mr. Davey?"
He did not offer to shake hands. Instead, he took the cigarette from his mouth, and waved it vaguely in the direction of a half-dozen men, one of whom was holding the leash of a black dog.
"Not much yet. It's a mess, naturally. We had to wait for things to cool down, and our prelim search didn't turn up anything. The dog got here an hour ago, just after sunrise. They're still looking."
"Any thoughts, Roy?" Cieloczki asked. "What's your guess on cause and origin?"
"Careless smoking," the firefighter replied, automatically, and grimaced at the callousness of his own reply.
"Sorry. Bad joke, Gil. When my guys got here, the ground floor was already completely enveloped, and before we even got off the truck we had breakthrough flames on the roof. This one went fast. The house had one of those systems that ring through to Emergency Services automatically when the smoke alarm goes off."
"Arson?"
Roy nodded, grimly.
"If the log is right -and we got no reason to doubt it- I'd bet there was one helluva load of accelerant in there. We'll know soon. You can't put that much stuff in a house without leaving a lot of evidence around."
Martinez had been watching the dog and its handler. "Directory says this place belonged to a couple named Stanley and Kathleen Levinstein. Any sign of them? Anything to indicate somebody was still in there when the fire started?"
Roy shook his head. "Lieutenant, all I can tell you is that by the time we arrived, anybody who was inside wasn't coming out alive- for sure, not on the ground floor. We got a ladder team up to the second floor as soon as we could, but there was no way to get access."
He stopped, and written on his smoke-smudged face was every firefighter's recurring nightmare: the horror of having done something wrong that cost a life -or worse, the lingering self-accusation that he had not done everything possible to have saved one.
"I don't know- maybe somebody could've been in a bedroom on the second or third floor..."
Cieloczki reached out and grasped the firefighter's arm.
"Roy," he said, with a gruffness meant to mask the compassion. "Don't go there, son."
"They've found something," said Martinez.
As one, we turned.
On the far side of the gutted structure, the black dog was sitting on his haunches. His tail wagged as his handler squatted beside him. The rest of the search team had gathered around the pair, and even at a distance I recognized the peculiar attitude they struck. It was a not-quite-embarrassed, not-quite-awestruck, fascinated-yet-repelled posture that even experienced firefighters assume when they see what flames do to human flesh.
Suddenly the air seemed even colder. Without a word, we began walking through the rubble.
It was the last case I would work as a police officer. Two days later, I was handcuffed and placed under arrest.
Topics/Categories:
arson, Art, Holocaust art, Murder, Russian mafiya
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Original Publish Date:
10/01/2003
ISBNs:
0-451-21017-4
Formats:
paperback e-book kindle
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