Truth be told, he had been nudged into this realization by a meeting with his employer earlier in the day.
Because of circumstances beyond his control, Remo was currently living at Folcroft Sanitarium in Rye, New York. Folcroft was cover for CURE, a supersecret government agency set up outside the pesky confines of the Constitution in order to protect the American republic from those who would do it harm. Remo was CURE's enforcement arm, answerable only to his employer, Harold W. Smith.
The circumstance that had put Remo in such close proximity to his boss was a fire. Specifically, a fire that had burned to the ground Remo's home of ten years.
Remo had been planning a trip to Massachusetts to collect a few items in storage that he had left behind after the fire two weeks before. Since he was heading that way already, Smith had stopped by Remo's Folcroft quarters with a small assignment in the area. It was when he learned the nature of the assignment that Remo realized he no longer had even an ounce of faith in his fellow man.
Remo was pondering just how vast was this pool of personal disillusionment as he parked his rental car on the snowy streets of Lowell, Massachusetts.
The air was cold as Remo stepped onto the sidewalk. There wasn't a hint of the elusive February thaw that was spoken of by many New Englanders but hardly ever seen. Remo suspected that the alleged thaw was a comforting myth the people of the region told one another in order to get them through the last long months of winter.
Even though he was dressed only in a white T-shirt and dark gray chinos, Remo didn't feel the cold. As soon as he left his car, his body compensated for the extreme temperature. Indeed, if passersby had looked closely enough they would have seen just a faint heat shimmer around his bare forearms. Like a desert mirage on an open highway.
Without even a hint of a chill, he walked up the street, stopping on the sidewalk before an old brick structure.
The building was two stories tall with an open cupola sitting high on its slate roof. Three big whitewashed garage doors sat almost directly on the street. Above the middle door, the legend Engine No. 6 was etched into the brick.
The garage doors were all closed. To their right was a man-size door, also closed.
When Remo tried the door, he found it locked. Frowning, he rapped a knuckle against it.
It took two whole minutes of knocking, but a four inch-by-four-inch peephole finally opened in the door.
A pair of very tired eyes looked blearily out on the street. Below them, a giant handlebar mustache sagged out the opening like the paws of a dead ferret.
"What is it?" the fireman yawned. "It's two o'clock in the afternoon. We were all asleep."
Remo smiled. "Hi, I'm a corrupt and stupid mayor who wants to increase my fire department's budget," he said sweetly. "Is Firefighter Joe here?"
The eyes above the mustache grew skeptical. "Yeah, he's here. But he usually deals with fire chiefs, not mayors."
Remo's smile relaxed just a bit. "It's a very sad story about our chief," he confided. "He was with the department for eighteen years but, for some reason we still can't figure out, he went to see a fire last week. It was his first one. He was so scared at all the hot and the orange, he had a heart attack and dropped dead right then and there."
The man nodded. "I been with the department ten years this summer," he commiserated. "So far I been lucky enough to keep away from all that fire stuff."
And, having decided that Remo's story did indeed check out, the man opened the door.
Apparently Remo's knocking had awakened the rest of the firehouse personnel. As he entered, several men were lumbering down the wide staircase at the side of the building, wiping sleep from their eyes with pudgy fingers.
The name Bob was stitched on the T-shirt of the man at the door. He had been given the nickname "Burly Bob" by his fellow firemen. It was a sobriquet that hardly acted to distinguish him from his firefighting brethren, since most of the sleepy-faced men who were even now stumbling tiredly out into the main garage bays of the station house tipped the scales in excess of five hundred pounds.
Scanning the sea of ponderous bellies and sagging bosoms, Remo worried for the fate of any cat unfortunate enough to get caught in a Lowell tree. Come autumn, he envisioned a lot of bent ladders and crippled cherry pickers, as well as dozens upon dozens of feline skeletons clutching desperately on to naked maple branches.
"Hey, Joe!" Burly Bob yelled up the staircase. "Guy's here to see you! Says he's a mayor!" He stumbled away from the door to join his comrades at a big coffee machine.
As the men slurped coffee and devoured pastries from an aluminum-foil-lined tray near the coffeemaker, Remo crossed his arms patiently. He hummed quietly to himself.
Smith's computers had caught Joe Bondurant while tirelessly searching the Internet. Online, he went by the name "Firefighter Joe," offering via the electronic ether a service that was at once abhorrent and completely contradictory to the goals of his chosen profession.
When Joe appeared a few moments later, Remo saw that he obviously didn't share with his brother firefighters a fondness for sweets. Firefighter Joe was tall and thin. His blue T-shirt and trousers looked like collapsed sails. If it weren't for his red suspenders, he would have been tripping on his pants as he walked over to Remo. Like the others, he wore a long mustache that sagged morosely to his chin.
"What can I do for you?" Firefighter Joe asked as he shook Remo's hand. He had no sooner spoken than a bell began ringing loudly throughout the station.
The men at the coffee machine reacted angrily. "Not again," one man complained through a mouthful of sticky Danish.
"It's probably just a whatchamacallit," said another, scowling as he chewed a lemon cruller. "You, know, uh..." He had to think for a second. "A fire."
"Shut it off," Burly Bob griped as he sucked the blueberry goo from the center of a bearclaw. Someone disappeared into the radio room. A moment later, the noisy ringing stopped.
"That's better," Firefighter Joe said. He hitched up his sagging pants. "Now, Bob says you're a mayor?"
Remo nodded. "Mayor Dan Garganzola," he said. "We've got a bit of a budget crisis going on in my town right now. I've had a four-million-dollar surplus in discretionary spending every year for the past five years that I spend, no sweat. But because of some nits in the city council making noise, raising taxes is getting to be a tough sell. Trouble is, I've promised the fire department seventeen new trucks, eight new station houses, two firefighting catamarans and GPS satellite locaters stitched into their infrared union suits."
Firefighter Joe nodded thoughtfully. "So you're looking for, what, an event?"
"I guess," Remo said. "What've you got?"
"First off, we'll handle it for you," Joe said, waving to the other men. "This is our gig, exclusive."
"But I have my own fire department," Remo said. "Don't you just give me the details and I pass the info on to them?"
"No," Joe insisted. "It's ours and ours alone. The deals we cut are almost exclusively with the chiefs or the unions. It's either that or no dice."
Joe had just given him what he wanted most to know. There was only a handful of people involved in this scam.
"Fine," Remo agreed.
"Okay," Joe said. "What we do, see, is we give you a fire. Make it big enough that you have to call for assistance from neighboring communities. That'll give us an excuse to be there. Of course, we'll have been there already, since we're the ones who'll start it for you."
"How do I know they'll send you?"
"Trust me," Joe said. "I've greased enough palms around here to make sure we're the ones who get called. Now a big fire is usually enough for most small towns looking to siphon more dough into the fire department. Warehouse, factory, mall, that sort of thing. Of course, if you want the big one-national media attention and tons of money pouring in from around the country-you're gonna have to sacrifice. A body or two's good. More is better."
"You've done that before?" Remo asked, a slithering coldness creeping into his voice.
"Oh, sure," Joe boasted. There was a smile beneath his huge mustache. "We're all old pros at this."
Joe didn't see the hard look that settled on Remo's face. Smith's information had been accurate.
"For body duty, it's best to hire a couple of guys off the street," Firefighter Joe continued. "Guys who aren't real tight with the union yet and don't mind going out and squirting that wet stuff on fires."
"Water," Remo suggested.
"Yeah, that," Joe said. As he talked, he walked over to a nearby fire engine. "Most of the young guys are still stupid enough to be willing to do the actual fighting-fires part of firefighting. You send them into the building and then seal it off behind them with my own patented method." At the truck now, he patted the gleaming red side. "This'll be what locks the door behind them."
Remo smelled the familiar strong scent in the air. "You filled the water tanks with gasoline," he said darkly. His eyes were flat.