Blue Smoke

thinking about it now, looking at it now, really looking, and I think, Sweet Jesus Christ, I think he was going to try to rape my little girl.”
    “He didn’t. She got scrapes and bruises, and it doesn’t help to worry about what might’ve happened.”
    “You’ve got to keep them safe. That’s the job. My oldest is out on a date. Nice boy, nothing serious. And I’m terrified.”
    John took a long, slow drink. “Gib, one of the things a man like Pastorelli’s after is your fear. It makes him feel important.”
    “Never going to forget him, am I? That makes him pretty fucking important. Sorry. Sorry.” Gib straightened, shoved at his hair. “Feeling sorry for myself, that’s all. I’ve got an entire family—with members too numerous to count—ready to help me out. I’ve got the neighborhood ready. Just got to shake this off.”
    “You will. Maybe this will help. I came by to tell you you’re cleared to go in, start putting your place back together. Doing that, it’s taking it back from him.”
    “It’ll be good, good to actually do something.”
    “He’s going away, Gib. I’m going to tell you that a fraction of arson cases result in arrest, and we’ve got him. Son of a bitch had shoes and clothes stuffed in his shed, stinking of gas, gas he bought locally from a kid at the Sunoco who knew him. He had a crowbar wrapped up in the clothes, what we figured he used to break in. He was stupid enough to help himself to beer out of your cooler before he torched the place. Drank one while he was in there. We got his prints off the bottle.”
    He held up the Peroni, tipped the bottle to the side to catch the sun on the glass. “People think fire takes everything, but it leaves the unexpected. Like a bottle of Bud. He broke into your cash register, took your petty cash. You had extra ones in a bank envelope and we found it onhim. We got his prints inside the drawer, off the cooler in your kitchen. There’s enough his public defender took the deal.”
    “There won’t be a trial?”
    “Sentencing hearing. I want you to feel good about this, Gib. I want you to feel just. A lot of people see arson as a property crime. Just a crime against a building, but it’s not. You know it’s not. It’s about people who lose their home or their business, who see their hard work and their memories burned away. What he did to you and yours was malicious and it was personal. Now he pays.”
    “Yeah.”
    “The wife couldn’t scrape the money together for bail, or for a lawyer. She tried. Word’s out on the kid. Last time the cops were in there, he threw a chair at one of them. Mother begged them not to take him away, so they let it go. You’re going to want to keep your eye on him.”
    “I will, but I don’t think they’ll stay here. They rent the place, and they’re behind, three months.” Gib shrugged. “Word gets out in the neighborhood, too. Maybe this was my wake-up call, pay more attention to what I’ve got.”
    “You’ve got the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life for a wife. You don’t mind me saying.”
    “Hard to mind.” Gib opened another beer, leaned back again. “First time I saw her, I was lightning struck. Came in with some pals. We were thinking about doing The Block later, maybe picking up some girls, or going to a bar. And there she was. It was like somebody pushed their fist through my chest, grabbed hold of my heart and squeezed. She was wearing jeans, bell-bottoms, and this white top—peasant top they called them. If anybody had asked me before that moment if I believed in love at first sight, I’d’ve said hell no. But that’s what it was. She turned her head and looked at me, and bang. I saw the rest of my life in her eyes.”
    He laughed a little, seemed to relax. “I still do, that’s the amazing thing. Heading toward twenty years, and I still see everything there is when I look at her.”

    “You’re a lucky man.”
    “Damn right. I’d’ve given up everything, anything, to be with her. Instead I got this life, this family. You got kids, John?”
    “I do. A son and two daughters. A grandson and granddaughter, too.”
    “Grandkids? No kidding?”
    “Lights of my life. I didn’t do all I should’ve done when my kids were coming up. I was nineteen when the first came along. Got my girl pregnant, we got married. Next one came two years later, and the third three years after that. I was fighting fires back then. That life, those hours, can be hard