Torch Song Read Online Free PDF Page A

could touch each other.
    â€œOkay,” he said. “He got out and two days later turned up at Marla’s place. She has a house down around Tuxedo Park, been there all these years with the boy. She said she sent him away, and no one’s laid eyes on him since. He’s skipped, probably with two hundred eighty grand. She hasn’t heard from him. That’s for openers. She married Steve Boseman a year after Pete went up, and a year later Boseman was killed. They figure he was in the drug game or numbers; it had the marks of a gangland killing—hands tied behind his back, shot in the back of the head. He was dumped in a creek and drowned a few miles from where they lived. She’s been alone since then. But she visited Pete once a month all the time he was in the pen.”
    â€œWhy? If she married someone else…”
    â€œDon’t know. We’ll ask.”
    Constance nodded. Crazy, she was thinking.
    â€œWhat I thought we might do,” Charlie said, “is take a little spin over to Utica and then down to Norwich. If you’re really not hungry yet.”
    â€œWe can get some lunch along the way,” she said. “I’ll change first.” She was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt, running shoes. He thought she looked good the way she was.
    She drove. It was less than an hour’s drive to Utica. He directed her to Grant Street, where the paint factory had burned down. And it would have burned to the ground, Charlie knew; it had been made of wood. Explosions, toxic fumes, roiling, poisonous smoke… The site had been cleared and fenced. This was an industrial area with ugly gray buildings and trucks, ugly gray slush, a railroad siding.… A road led around back of the property; the fence was new. Anyone could have parked within a hundred feet, walked in, sprayed the place, tossed the match, and out.
    He directed her past a hospital, past Utica College, onto State 12. Another good road, she thought, driving. All the places had been on good roads, accessible. Rain started to fall. Don’t freeze, she ordered. Just don’t start freezing.
    In Norwich, an hour later, they drove around the high school building. The gymnasium, an annex, had been destroyed; the school building had been saved.
    Constance stopped for a bunch of teenagers who couldn’t decide if they wanted to cross the street or not. They didn’t seem to notice that they were getting wet.
    Charlie scowled at the kids. He’d be leaning on the horn, he thought, and they’d flip him off and make him even madder. He’d end up yelling; one of them would pull a gun…. They moved out of the way and Constance edged past them; they didn’t seem to notice the car. She turned to circle the school again, and Charlie touched her arm.
    â€œLet’s go find something to eat,” he said. This was a bust. The school would have been a cinch at three in the morning. A quiet neighborhood, everyone sleeping. Something was nagging at him, and he couldn’t get at it. Something was screwy, he thought, then realized he was thinking like an arson investigator. What was behind the fires? Not killing anyone, not a spectacular show. He couldn’t have hung around to watch, he thought, or said—he wasn’t sure which, because Constance made a sound that sounded like agreement. A stranger in a small place like this would have been noticed. Even in Utica, around the warehouses, no stranger would have gone unnoticed. And Fircrest? Forget it.
    Constance interrupted his train of reasoning. “What you should do,” she said grimly, “is find us the quickest way home, without going over mountains on narrow roads.”
    He looked at her questioningly.
    â€œThe rain’s starting to freeze,” she said.
    By the time they reached their driveway, three hours later, the car was riding on ice like a hockey puck. Charlie let out his breath as she pulled into the garage.