John looked out the window of his kitchen as he foamed the milk, the hiss of the steam bursting forth. He was tired, as he almost always had been ever since that night when he was almost culled by the Spider, only to almost capture her, then losing her in the smoke and the flames.
His pain was both physical and spiritual at this point. The smoke inhalation he'd suffered vainly trying to find the woman he now knew to be Anna in the burning warehouse had put him in the hospital for a few days, but that pain was only of the flesh, and he knew it would pass.
The anguish he felt at losing his Anna was much greater than any burn.
The milk boiled over and scorched his fingers.
John shook the foamed milk from his hand, and poured it over his coffee. He shuffled over to the kitchen table, slowly, deliberately, trying to make no movement that would hurt.
Well, hurt
more.
All his movements hurt.
John sat down, and opened up the morning paper. He turned, as he usually did, to Steven Longstreet's column first.
Not surprisingly, it was about the state of crime in the City. According to Longstreet, it had exploded in the last few months, which John knew to be something of an exaggeration. But Longstreet wasn't wrong about recently, open gang warfare had broken out in parts of the City, and the police didn't seem to have any idea of what to do about it.
Longstreet went on to discuss the murdered Koreans, around a dozen of them, gunned down after a "business meeting" by an assailant who sped off in a car. That had been met with any number of other mob type members being found around town, some in dumpsters, some rolled up in carpet, some floating face down in the river.
And
some,
of course, found ripped apart, eviscerated, and hung up to swing bloodlessly in the air.
John took a deep drink of his coffee, too hot, too fast, and he bent over in pain as it went down his smoke burnt throat.
The doorbell rang.
John hobbled over to the door, and looked out his eyehole. He saw a uniformed police officer standing on his front porch next to another man in a long trenchcoat. John opened the door.
"Good morning, officers," he said, smiling. "What can I do for you today?"
"John Claire?" the uniformed officer asked, and John nodded. "I'm Sergeant James Candy, and this is Detective Roy Stern. We'd like to ask you a few questions."
John nodded, and pulled his bathrobe tighter.
"Of course, gentlemen. Would you like to come in?"
The officers nodded, and the three men went into John's house. John led them to his kitchen, and offered them some coffee.
"I'm just having some myself," John told them. "It's no hassle."
"I could have a cup," Sergeant Candy said. "Black is fine." Detective Stern shook his head no.
John poured the cup and handed it to the Sergeant. John took his seat at the table, and picked up his own cup. He indicated for the police officers to have a seat, Sergeant Candy did. Detective Stern folded his arms and looked over John's shoulder at the newspaper.
"Reading Longstreet, huh?" the Detective asked. "He's been giving us an even harder time in the press than normal. A few extra bodies turn up in the City, and everyone's an expert on stopping crime all of a sudden."
John didn't know what to say. He had another sip of his coffee. The foamed milk had gone flat.
The Detective was a tall man, a good amount over six feet, of a slender and muscular build. His head was shaved completely, he was wearing a black London Fog coat and the mirrored sunglasses that cops tended to wear. His expression was blank, emotionless.
He was, frankly, a very intimidating person, John thought.
"You feeling better, Mr. Claire?" Sergeant Candy asked. "You were just in the hospital, is that right? Smoke inhalation?"
John nodded. "That's right."
"From where your warehouse burnt down? That's when that happened?"
"Yes, that's correct."
"So you were there when it caught fire."
"I was, correct. I was there working."
Sergeant Candy had a sip of his coffee.
"Now, that's good coffee," he said. "The stuff they got us drinking at the police station, well, pardon my language, but it's shit compared to this stuff. What is this, from Europe? Italian, or something?"
"Swiss."
"Whatever it is, it's great," the sergeant went on. He looked over at the detective. "Maybe we should talk to the Chief, see about getting this instead of the Maxwell House."
The detective just grunted. It was hard to tell through his sunglasses, but it seemed like his eyes hadn't left John since they'd entered the kitchen.
"But what I don't understand is," the sergeant went on. "What kind of work were you there doing that late at night? I mean, we've been through what's left of the warehouse. We didn't find any, like,
wares
in there like you might expect in a warehouse. No equipment. No tools or what have you. For a while we thought maybe you went there to paint or something, but we didn't even find that."
James Candy shook his head, as if puzzled.
"All we
did
find there were dead people. You know? Some guys burnt up in the fire that we think might be some crime figures, some guys we haven't identified at all yet, and some asshole hanging from a tree outside that we are pretty sure
started
the fire. Gasoling all over his hands. All the forensic evidence points to
that,
but what we don't know is how he ended up hanging from a tree with his chest ripped apart, and his guts and blood missing."
"Lewis Gray," John said. "He was doing security for me --"
"We know who he is," the Detective interrupted.
"Yeah, we know who he is," Candy went on. "But why did you hire
him?
The guy is-
was
- a piece of shit, nothing but a problem since he started shaving. Burglary, assault, drug dealing, I think I saw sexual assault in his record... of all the people to hire to do security, why him?"
"I try to hire people from the neighborhood," John said. "Try to give people a chance, turn their lives around."
"That ever work?"
John shook his head.
"Not often. Sometimes."
Candy shook his head.
