Page 76 of Fire and Bones
“That’s being kind,” Burgos sniffed. Not a pleasant sound.
“Does Finrock have a jacket?” I asked.
“Petty stuff. A couple DUIs, one drunk and disorderly, one juvie B and E.” Burgos’s eyes remained on Thacker.
“Where was Finrock at the time of the fire?” she asked.
“Deery says he claims he was on his chesterfield—that’s a couch—in Mississauga binging all twelve seasons of Bones. Neither the Mississauga PD nor border patrol is busting ass getting back to him.”
A short pause for Thacker to comment, maybe me. Neither of us did.
“Danny Green and Johnnie Star were, how shall I put it, close.” Burgos made an obnoxious limp-wrist movement with one hand. “Both are skeevier than slop in a sty. Green worked the Smithsonian metro station offering bargain blow jobs for fifty bucks a pop, supplemented that income stream hawking oxy and K.”
Burgos used the street names for oxycodone and ketamine.
“Star was your man if X or speed was your jam.”
Ecstasy and meth.
“Deery has two hypotheses. A is that one of them maybe pissed off a competitor by expanding onto the other skeeve’s patch.
“B is that some self-appointed vigilante decided to make the world a better place for himself and his red-blooded American brothers. Deery says department moles intercepted a lot of chatter leading up to Memorial Day and this WorldPride 2025 shit, especially a group calls itself Male Order. Catchy, eh?”
“Sounds like a real free-thinking bunch,” I said.
“Who are they?” Thacker asked.
“White supremacists. Misogynists. Skinheads. Neo-Nazis. You name it. They’re scumbags who hate anyone don’t look and think like them. And here’s a tantalizing side note. Certain more virulent Male Order members have a history of torching buildings.”
“These assholes were in DC this past week?” My words dripped with disgust. “Maybe they got worked up seeing all the rainbow flags?”
“Male Order was one of a dozen hate groups staging anti-gay protests in the district recently,” Thacker said.
Burgos took a nice day swig before speaking again.
“Here’s another lead Deery’s chasing. Danny Green was from Birmingham, Alabama. His father, also Danny Green, is a forklift operator there and a candidate for United Neanderthals International. Danny the elder has three assault charges, one aggravated. All old, all dropped, unclear why.
“Danny senior don’t like that his boy’s gay, and he don’t like that his boy’s dating Black. Blames the former on the latter. Could be he got tanked and decided to take Star out.”
Thacker arched a brow. “Along with his own kid?”
Burgos shrugged one scrawny shoulder. “Maybe Daddy’s plan wasn’t as brilliant as he thought.”
Through the window behind Thacker, I tracked a small plane flying low over the city. A banner dragged from its tail, advertising an event whose name and details were lost on my less than twenty-twenty vision.
“Go on,” she said.
“Finally, there’s the Syrian slant.”
“Jawaad el-Aman,” Thacker said. “I understand the kid’s father is the Syrian ambassador to the US.”
“El-Aman’s old man isn’t ambassador to shit.”
Thacker’s gaze hit mine, shock meeting shock.
Burgos pulled the ubiquitous investigator’s spiral from a hip pocket. I’d been wondering at its absence. After licking a thumb, then turning a few pages, he selected salient points, much as Doyle had done.
“Deery dug this crap up. Not sure it matters. The diplomatic mission of the Syrian Arab Republic to the United States was suspended in 2014.” Pause. “The US subsequently recognized the diplomatic mission of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces.” Longer pause. “The final ambassador was a guy named Imad Moustapha.”