Chapter 9 - THE FIRE AT SOUTH STREET
At two o'clock on Thursday morning, the warehouses at Pier 44 on South Street went up in a sheet of white-hot magnesium fire that turned the Philadelphia skyline the color of a fresh bruise.
From the third-story window of his study, Dominic Valente watched the orange glow pulse against the low-hanging clouds over the river. He didn't call the fire department. He didn't call the harbor police. He stood with one hand against the cold glass, watching the black cranes along the water line look like the skeletal ribs of some enormous animal being picked clean by the tide.
The telephone on his desk rang once—short, sharp, and electronic.
Dominic walked across the room and picked up the heavy black receiver before the second ring.
"The fire is in the main office," a voice said. It wasn't Frankie. It wasn't Marco. It was the flat, nasal drawl of a shipping clerk from the South Philadelphia yards whom Dominic hadn't spoken to since the dock strike of ninety-nine. "The ledgers from seventy-eight to ninety-five were in the back safe. The roof came down five minutes ago."
"Who was on the pier?" Dominic asked.
"Nobody, Mr. Valente. Just a kid with a bicycle who dropped a gasoline tin by the loading dock and ran toward the train tracks."
Dominic looked down at the desk. The child’s drawing of the tall man with no mouth still lay beneath the crystal paperweight. The lead pencil lines seemed darker now under the amber light of the desk lamp, as if the graphite had begun to sink deeper into the grain of the cheap school paper.
"Was there anything left?" Dominic asked.
"Just the ashes, boss," the voice replied. "And a little gray rabbit toy sitting on the piling by the water, completely dry."
Dominic hung up the receiver.
He walked out of the study, past the small wooden chair by the door where a three-year-old child had sat every morning for four years, and down the long, silent corridor toward the front entrance.
As he reached for the brass handle of the heavy oak door, the morning paper hit the porch outside with a dull, heavy slap against the wood.
Dominic opened the door. The morning mist was thick enough to taste of salt and coal smoke. On the top step lay the Philadelphia Inquirer, the bold black headline across the front page reading: FED FINDS UNMARKED ASSETS IN TAX EVASION PROBE — VALENTE HOLDINGS TO FACE AUDIT.
And tucked neatly beneath the rubber band of the newspaper was a small, white envelope addressed in a neat, sloping schoolteacher hand:
To Dominic Valente. Final Notice.
Dominic picked up the envelope, tore the corner open with his thumb, and pulled out a single sheet of paper.
May you like
There was no writing on it. Just a small, colored-pencil drawing of a boxwood hedge, perfectly trimmed, with a single faceless man standing in the middle, holding a little girl's hand while the house behind them burned slowly down to the ground.
Dominic Valente folded the paper, slipped it into his pocket, and stepped out into the gray mist without looking back.
