"Hell, something burns in this damn city every day of the year."

Later he said, "Later I did have my suspicions."

The final reports on the first couple fires arrived on Conch's desk two weeks later, nesting on top of the dozens and dozens of initial reports that had been pouring in five or six each morning.

"Something's definitely up," he said to the desk.

"I agree. As I see it, if you look at me and ask me, I'd say we've got us an arson epidemic on my top and in your lap. And the funny thing, they're all restaurants, not dives and diners and luncheonettes, but restaurants, nice places to go, strange. We're talking cafes in Soho, nouvelle Village cuisine, the smart places on Second Avenue, gourmand troughs from East Side to West, Midtown's culinary foundation is shaking, and look--even way Downtown the past nights, always at night."

"You know, I'm beginning to have my suspicions: I'm beginning to suspect these aren't insurance bleeders: it's spring, it's the tourist season, the trade is at its briskest: I'm beginning to suspect something entirely different."

"Right! Good work, Conch. And these final reports . . . "

Conch gestures.

"Right! On top of the stack, those final reports may well hold the key we've been looking for, the one we've been suspecting all along."

"Right! Quick thinking!"

"Well? What are you waiting for--a promotion?--go ahead and read them, you're the one who has arms; I'll hold them while you flip the pages."

"Right!"

+ + +

"Just as I suspected!"

"What? what?"

"The modus operandi. Conch, do you realize that each of these places was torched in the exact same manner, primitive Molotov cocktails thrown through the front windows. To be precise: Dos Equis bottles with knotted old shoestrings for fuses."

"Something tells me we're going to be seeing a lot more beer bottles before this is through, like, at every one of these places!" he slaps his hand down on the files.

"Brilliant Conch!"

"A single man . . . working alone."

"In the dead of night."

"On a crazed mission."

"Lurking in the streets."

"Riding the trains."

"But who?"

"Yes, who?"

"Conch, I have this feeling that if you go through those places' files of on-file job applications, sift through the ashes, you'll find your answer . . . and his address."

"And I bet he drinks Dos Equis."

"Quick thinking, Conch."

+ + +

I woke up confused by the knocking, ignore it, go back to sleep, so early, so insistent, so early to be so insistent that I figured it must be important, enough to go answer.

Through the hole it was a fish-eye shaped person I didn't recognize, "Who is it?"

"Detective Conch, NYPD Arson Squad."

Nope. Too early for something that weird-sounding. "Well, I'm sorry but my momma tole me not to open the door to no strangers," and I turned and walked back down the long hall.

Boy was I surprised when he kicked down the door and started shooting at me. I ran with one leg while the other one dragged, collapsing into the right room halfway back in bed.

Conch took a quick look through the apartment before approaching the suspect and leveling his gun on him.

"Ya sure got a lot of bottles in your kitchen, buddy. Maybe ya run one of them refund money-run scams on the corner groceries, make 'em turn over the keys 'cause they don't have the jack to pay off your deposits. Or maybe ya fill 'em with gasoline an' heave 'em through the front windows of every place that's broken you heart an' turned ya down for a job 'cause ya weren't good enough."

I was hit and I was hit bad, I was still alive but I was bleeding fast, I plugged up my holes with my fingers and toes, "Hey man, you got the wrong guy. Yea, sure, I admit it, I've thought about it, sometimes, when I was hurting real bad, but I didn't do it! I swear to you. I've committed arson in my heart, but so has every guy; I've never done it in real life."

Conch pointed with a jerk of his head, "Those your shoes over there? Them laces look pretty old and knotted to me. Like maybe you've been thinking about getting a new pair before the day's out."

He sneered the ugliest self-congratulatory sneer I'd ever seen. "C'mon, who're ya tryin' ta kid, kid?! You're the Manhattan Flambé."

He pulled out his two-way.

"Hello? Hello?"

"Desk here."

Swaggering, "Conch. Got our man. Bottles, laces, the whole shebang."

"Good work! Book 'im!"

Swaying like a buoy, "Had to bust down the door, put a couple slugs in him when he ran down the hall, got everything under control."

"You shot him? He was guilty and trying to flee the consequences of his actions?"

"He was."

"He was."

"He was?"

"He was!"

"Ohh, he was."

Conch's mouth slid out of saying scum into a smile, and when I looked at the barrel my eyes went cross.