Read Grist 04 - Incinerator for Free Online

buying?”
    “Client.”
    “Anything for the cops?”
    “Yeah. About this pyromaniac who’s torching the homeless.”
    I might as well have been Demosthenes at the seaside, waiting for applause from the waves. Hammond’s kerchief had slipped down over his left eye, and he tugged it upward. “Where’d this come from?” he asked, looking up at it.
    “Al the Red,” I said, abandoning the topic. “Scourge of the Caribbean.”
    “Bet your ass,” he said. “There’s not a palm tree safe.”
    “Well, what are they good for anyway?”
    “Target practice.” He made a pistol out of his hand, sighted over it, and said, “KABOOM!” People gave us nervous looks. It takes a lot to make a roomful of drunk cops nervous, but whatever it takes, Hammond had it.
    He blew on his fingers to disperse the smoke. “She took the kids, of course,” he said.
    “She would,” I said. “She’s their mother.”
    “Yeah?” he said. “What’m I, an unindicted coconspirator?” He drained the drink and signaled for two more.
    We’d had this discussion before. “You said something about paper plates,” I said.
    “Wrapped in cellophane.” He closed his eyes for a long time, and I hoped he’d gone to sleep. “With little blue flowers on them,” he added, eyes still shut. “On the sink, right where the real plates would have been if she hadn’t taken them. My mother gave us those plates. Did I tell you my mother’s on Hazel’s side?”
    Peppi clunked a couple of drinks onto the table, and Hammond opened his eyes and put four ounces of whiskey into the realm of memory. I took a whack off the other one. I was getting drunk.
    “So what was I supposed to think?” he asked me.
    I’m not a guesser. I wouldn’t guess my own weight if I were standing on a scale. So I just said, “What?”
    “I figured it was like she was tipping me a wink,” he said, sighting me through the bottom of the whiskey tumbler and looking like a middle-aged pirate with a truncated spyglass. “It was like she was saying, Hey, I’ve taken the kids and the furniture, but I’m still worried about what you’re going to eat and what you’re going to eat it off of. You can still get us back. I was alone in the house, it was the middle of the night and the house was empty, but there were these paper plates, and I looked at them like they were the fucking Holy Grail and figured she’s pissed off but we can straighten it out. We always did before.”
    “Good for her,” I said. It was my turn to wave for Peppi. Peppi shook her head meaningfully and looked away. “That’s a woman for you,” I added, flagging Peppi again. “Sentimental.”
    Peppi poured and trudged grudgingly toward us. She didn’t look sentimental. She looked like a woman with a rattlesnake in her hip pocket.
    “Except it wasn’t,” Hammond said as the drinks landed loudly on the table.
    “What wasn’t?” I asked. To Peppi, I said, “Two more.” I was tired of waving.
    “You’re driving,” Peppi said unpleasantly. Peppi had unpleasant down cold.
    “Aren’t you listening?” Hammond said to me. “Plates. We’re talking about paper plates. I sit around for eight days going out of my mind. I’m trying to pick the tattoos off my arms. There’s no note, no phone number, no nothing. I go to the assholes in Missing Persons and they laugh in my face. Guys I know, for Christ’s sake. Every morning I wait for the mailman, catch hell because I’m coming in late. No letter. No birthday card, even.”
    “Happy Birthday” didn’t seem like the right thing to say. I drank instead.
    “And then her sister calls me,” he said as Peppi plunked the full glasses on the table. For once, Hammond didn’t give them a glance. He still had half a belt in his hand. “Her sister. Zora, for Christ’s sake. I’ve only called the bitch forty or fifty times since Hazel left, and it’s always ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about it. How terrible for you.’ So Hazel finally lets go of