Firetrap (9 page)

18. CINDERELLA RIDES A HOG

JAMIE ESTEVEZ
>

For a moment I considered the possibility that he was drunk and was going to kill us both showing off. Trey was straddling the bike, cranking the throttle as we spoke, drowning out my words with the roar of the engine so that I had to repeat myself, peering at me through dark glasses he refused to take off, his helmet resembling a Nazi tank commander lid. I was angry for a few moments, too, and then I began to see the dark humor in it. It was a nice night, and the trip wouldn't be more than two miles, and I liked bikes, something he couldn't possibly have anticipated. In another world, where he didn't abhor me so much, it might even turn out to be a story we would tell our grandchildren. Our grandchildren. What a laugh. This man detested me. If I didn't know it before tonight, I certainly knew it now.

I crossed my arms and stared at him, waiting for him to shut the bike off so we could hear each other. Under my palm I could feel my heart beating, and for a couple of seconds I feared he was going to leave the motorcycle running and wait me out over the earthquake of noise, but suddenly the street was bathed in silence.

“Thought it would be an adventure for you,” he said. “You ever ride a bike before?”

“Of course.”

“Like this one?”

“Why? Did it used to be a pumpkin or something?”

“Pumpkin? That would make you Cinderella. What does that make me as your driver? A rat?”

“I believe the coachmen were mice.”

“Oh, I'm a coachman now?”

“I didn't say that. I said mouse.”

“I guess I'm dressed like a coachman.”

“On the other hand, I think maybe they
were
rats.” He stared at me, apparently unable to come up with another riposte. “Are you drunk? Because if you've been drinking, I'll ride up front and you can take the sissy seat.”

“Like you could handle this…”

“Care to make a wager on it?”

“No way I'm letting you kill yourself trying to prove a point. You'd really ride it, wouldn't you?”

“Try me.”

“I haven't had any alcohol in twenty-four hours.”

“So where's my helmet?”

“Beans. Forgot the spare. I could go home and get it, but by the time I got back to ride you over there, we'd be late. Tell you what? You take a cab. I'll meet you there.”

“I'll tell
you
what. You go home and get the helmet, and I'll wait here.”

He hadn't been expecting an argument, had apparently thought I would turn down the bike ride so we would arrive at the ball separately. It was hard to believe he could be this rude and not be drunk. “You could take a cab. I'll pay.”

“Not after you've offered me a ride.”

“Your problem is you want to run everything.”

“Look who's talking. I'm not the one picking up his date for a black-tie ball on a motorcycle.”

“I would have called and warned you, except I lost your number.”

“Hardly possible since it was written on the same piece of paper as my address.”

He stared at me and I stared back, and I could tell he was going to brave this out, even though somewhere behind those black riding glasses he had to be embarrassed by the enormity of his faux pas as well as the crudeness of his attempt at sabotaging the evening.

“Tell you what,” I said. “You wait here.”

“You going to sneak out back and call a cab?” he asked. “Leave me in the lurch?”

“Why? Is that what you would do?”

I gave him my most withering look and went upstairs, picked out an old Bell helmet that was more spacious than my new one, then carefully worked my hair into it in a manner that would do the least damage. I threw a brush and a can of hair spray into my purse for repairs, and when I emerged onto Lenora Street wearing heels, a formal dress with wrap, and a motorcycle helmet, Trey Brown looked astounded. It was almost worth the discomfort to see the look on his face. He hadn't been expecting me to return, and he certainly hadn't been expecting me in a helmet.

We attracted a fair amount of attention on the streets of Seattle, a man in a tuxedo and a woman in a formal dress riding a chromed Harley-Davidson with an engine that sounded like bursts of cannon fire.

As we rode, I hugged him from behind—his torso as hard and knotty as a tree—and realized that no matter what my brain was telling me about this man, my insides were telling me something else. Like I said before, I have a long and sad history of falling for bad boys, and in spite of my best intentions, it was beginning to look as if Trey Brown might be next in line.

As we drove from the north end of downtown to the Mikimoto Mansion on Capitol Hill, I reviewed what I'd learned about Trey during the past eight hours. Earlier that day at KIRO, I ran into a researcher named Ferdie Miller, who'd heard about the project I was working on and told me Trey Brown had been a linebacker who played for the Huskies seventeen years ago.

“Nice kid,” Ferdie said. “Quiet. One of the fiercest competitors I've ever seen. You see a lot of guys play hard and hit hard, but you only see a few who you think are actually trying to kill the opponent. During his sophomore and junior years for the Huskies, he devastated the opposing teams, one of the best linebackers ever in college football—like he'd stepped right out of the pros and was out here picking off these kids for the fun of it. If he hadn't blown out his knee, he would have been a top draft pick. Whenever he got pulled out of a game, you could hear an audible sigh of relief on the other bench. I saw him once…well, I'm getting off on a tangent here.”

“You know anything about his family?”

“I know his last year in high school he was living with his coach. I gathered he'd been in some sort of trouble.”

“Did you know his last name used to be Carmichael?”

“All I know is he came out of nowhere in the Central Area and played at the U.”

A computer search brought up torrents of information about the Carmichael empire, about various business dealings over the past thirty years, but almost nothing on a lost son named Trey. There were a couple of articles mentioning Shelby Junior, who died in a car accident nineteen years ago, listings of the surviving siblings as Stone, Trey, and Kendra, but no mention after that of a Trey Carmichael in any of the articles about the family. I wondered if Trey's exclusion didn't have something to do with the car accident that killed Shelby Junior. I had a feeling I would find out tonight.

Built in 1903, the Mikimoto Mansion had once belonged to one of Seattle's founding families but ten years ago had been purchased by a wealthy Japanese businessman, who had restored it to its former grandeur and renamed it after his own family. Used often for business and community events, it was situated on John Street, sitting like a maiden aunt at a high school graduation in the middle of a block of high-rise condos, a gargantuan Victorian even by today's standards.

Trey rode across the sidewalk, scattering the parking attendants like chickens, and then when one of the attendants put his hand out for the keys, Trey slipped them into his jacket pocket, grinned, and said, “In your dreams.”

“That was fun,” I said as we dismounted.

“The fun hasn't started yet.”

19. REMEMBERING THE STEPHEN KING NIGHTMARE

KENDRA CARMICHAEL
>

I wonder how many women can say they haven't seen their crazy brother in almost twenty years. I'm not even sure he's still legally my brother, because I never had the nerve to ask Father if you can dis-adopt somebody, or what else he might have done to make certain Trey didn't have any claim on the family fortune. I'd always affectionately called Trey “my crazy brother” until that last summer when, for the first time in memory, other people started referring to him as “your crazy brother.” And I guess he did go crazy…just that once. At least I hope it was just that once. My feelings about him have been conflicted for nineteen years, and tonight, when I saw him step through the doorway in a tuxedo, I knew my feelings weren't going to sort themselves out easily.

Trey was always a little wild, or as Mother used to put it, a tad adventuresome. And yes, adventuresome was probably a more accurate word in his youth, because he was bold in a way nobody else in the family was except for Shelby Junior, who, when he jumped off that ledge into the tidal pool in Jamaica on spring vacation, was followed almost immediately to everybody's stunned surprise by nine-year-old Trey. Forty feet, I think we figured it later. Trey knocked himself out on impact when he flubbed the entry but wanted to go right back up and try again, as soon as Shelby and the others pulled him out of the water and revived him. Both my wild brothers…what a cruel shock to lose them within six weeks of each other, Shelby to the Grim Reaper and Trey to that Stephen King nightmare that unfolded and then revealed aspects of his personality that none of us could ever have guessed.

Trey, I've missed you so much over all these years, wanting so badly to hear what you were doing and to catch you up on my life and somehow to see you clear your name—or failing that, at least redeem yourself. When we were kids and even into high school, we talked in a way I'd never been able to with Shelby Junior or Stone. Shelby was simply too much older, and Stone never seemed to have any time for me. But there you were, only a year older and actually interested in what was going on in my life. I always appreciated that, and despite the fact that you all but admitted to that hateful crime, I still find it hard to fathom.

Now, tonight, I'm near the main entrance to the mansion, having just come in, when I turn around and spot a beautiful young black woman in a pale pink dress with a flared hem, matching heels, and pearl earrings, patting her hair into place as she walks through the entranceway alongside a man I recognize with a start as my long-lost brother. To say I am startled is an understatement. I can actually feel my heart beating below my breastbone.

Trey has filled out, and he may even be taller. His face is more mature and handsomer, though I'd always thought he was recklessly handsome as a youth, but he still exhibits that inner calmness I've admired since the first day I laid eyes on him. I was three and he was four when he was brought home one rainy afternoon with a shabby little suitcase and a one-eyed teddy bear and introduced as my new brother. I clearly remember eleven-year-old Stone saying, “But he's black. We don't want any—” Before he could finish the sentence, Father slapped him across the face, one of the few times he struck any of his sons. None of us ever forgot it, and it was the last time Trey's ethnicity was ever mentioned. “He's going to steal my toys,” whispered Stone under his breath, which was ironic, because later it was always Stone stealing Trey's things or purposely trying to subvert Trey's relationships with girls.

Trey's inner calmness hadn't been shaken by his introduction into our household, or the radical overnight change of lifestyle he must have undergone, or seemingly, the loss of his original family—his grandmother having passed away only a few days before we met him. None of it had shaken him, and neither did getting knocked out cold in high school football games, or getting chased by a shark on that vacation in Jamaica, or much of anything else until the very last night he was with us.

In the first few moments we confront each other, I can tell Trey doesn't recognize me, and then when he does, that he doesn't know whether to hug and kiss me or shake hands or just stand with his mouth gaping. At first I'm not sure what to do either, but then all those years as brother and sister come back to me and block out that last night, and I launch into his arms and almost knock him over, hugging him until I can't squeeze any harder. I hope he can't tell how soft my three babies have made me, how flabby I feel despite the personal trainer and the nutritionist, and I hope he doesn't reject my friendship. Guilty or innocent, I at least want to know what's happened to him over the intervening years.

“You look terrific,” he says, holding me at arm's length.

“Liar. But
you
do look terrific.”

“You're a beautiful young woman. I'm overwhelmed.”

“Young? I'm not young anymore, either. I have a husband and three kids and cellulite, and I'm starting to look like my mother, and oh, Trey, I've missed you. You did know Mother was gone?”

“I heard.”

He hugs me again, more gently than I hugged him, and I sense how deeply he's missed me, and how much it must have hurt to be ostracized for so long and to miss his mother's funeral service—even if it was his own doing. It is hard to know if there is any way to remedy all the scars on both sides. In some ways it would have been so much simpler if he'd just stopped denying it and gone to jail, atoned for the crime, and afterward maybe some of us could have forgiven him and moved on.

“It's so good to see you, Kendra,” he says. His gray eyes are as focused and as inviting as ever. His voice is deeper. “This is Jamie Estevez. Jamie, my sister, Kendra.”

“Glad to meet you, Kendra.”

“Me, too. I was admiring your gown.”

After a few moments of chitchat, I begin towing Trey and his date through rooms packed with people, making introductions, working our way ineluctably toward select members of the family. As we wade through the party, I turn back to him and say, “Did I tell you I'm married?”

“Yes, and three children, you said.”

“Three girls.”

“I'd love to meet them.” And of course, in the back of my mind, I realize I have to reevaluate whether or not I actually want Trey to spend any time around my girls. I push the thought off, vowing to think it through later.

“So,” I say, turning to Jamie Estevez a few minutes later, when we are both elbowed out of the conversation by a Bank of America executive holding forth about the Z Club fire. “Have you known Trey long?” I've learned a few things already, that Trey's a firefighter in Seattle, a captain.

“I only met him yesterday. We're working together on the Z Club report for the citizens' group.”

“Oh, my gosh. Does Stone know Trey's working on the report with you?”

“The three of us got together yesterday for a few minutes.”

“So they've met? Stone and Trey?”

“Yes.”

“How did it go?”

“Stone was guarded. Trey was…distant. Apparently it didn't go as badly as it might have.”

“He's here, you know. Stone and his wife. And some other people Trey might not care to run into.”

After Trey rejoins us and we work our way through the rooms, I wonder how Echo will take to seeing Trey again, how India will react, or Father. This isn't the ideal setting for a strained family reunion, and Father hasn't mentioned Trey in years, so when I escort Trey and Jamie to a sitting room where Father is holding court for a group of politicos, I'm apprehensive to say the least. Spotting Trey, Father halts the conversation with a wave of his hand, and after a moment walks over to him and speaks quietly. “Trey? Good God. What are you doing here?”

“Yeah, well…”

“How long are you here for?” Father asks.

“Until we feel like going home, I guess.”

“No, I mean, how long are you in town?”

Trey pauses. “I live four miles from here.”

Father seems taken aback, as if this newfound proximity is a threat and as if he might be able to tolerate a onetime visit, but not this other. Then Father says, “It's good to see you.”

“Is it?”

“I would give my right arm to have had things turn out differently, I so regret what happened.”

“Which part?” Trey asks, his tone sharpening.

“All of it, son. Every bit. I've never stopped loving you.”

For a moment I think everything is going to be all right and all will be forgiven—though both men have valid reasons not to forgive—and Trey will be welcomed back into the fold like a lost lamb and we can all forget what happened. But then the room begins filling with people who want to talk business with Father, and because we all know this is a night for doing business, Trey makes noises as if he's leaving, and Father makes him promise to get back to him before the evening ends. Trey agrees, though reluctantly. As we leave the room, I strain to read Trey's face, but he maintains that blank look he used to get when he was brooding.

Once again we make our way through the mansion, mingling. Jamie seems like an intelligent, good-natured woman, and a whole lot of the people I introduce her to already know her from television. Things are going well until somewhere near the kitchen we run into Renfrow. Barry Renfrow is a hulking man with dark circles under his eyes, gray hair thinning across the top of his head, and a perpetually greasy face that makes him look like he's been eating oily potato chips. He's a man who's come more and more over the years to resemble a giant hard-boiled egg. He is just the tiniest bit uncouth in all things, smacking his lips when he eats, double-dipping in the cheese dip, and making covert sexual innuendos at the oddest moments, a sleazy habit that I first noticed when I was sixteen. I'd avoided him my whole life and virtually shunned him after Trey left. Aside from being part of the apparatus that ejected Trey from the family, I have no idea what he does for Father or how his affairs are entangled with the Overby empire.

Before I can think of a way to salvage the situation, Renfrow, looking bored and unflappable, puts his hand out to shake with Trey's, who ignores the hand and says, “I was hoping your fat old ass would be dead by now.”

“That's no way to talk to your superior, son.”

“I'm not talking to a superior.”

“Mind your manners or—”

“Don't threaten me. I'm not some high school kid you can push around.”

“None of us are who we were, dear boy.”

The ripples of silence initiated with Trey's insults spread until people in the next room grew quiet, maybe twenty guests, many with grimaces of fear on their faces—somebody, anybody, there's an angry black man in the building!—staring at the confrontation even as these men glare at each other. What they see are two men in dinner attire, one overweight and out of shape and looking like a nominee for a heart transplant; the other with the look of a heavyweight prizefighter wanting to do some serious damage to an opponent. In light of their physical differences and Trey's obvious antipathy, it is rather amazing how self-confident and lethal Renfrow manages to sound.

As this is going on, I catch a glimpse of India gliding past the doorway, stopping as her eyes catch the utter stillness of the room, while we're all standing like a flock of sheep cornered by a rabid dog. India scans the assembly until her eyes stop on Trey. Her family has known ours forever and she's known Trey since they were kids. As she halts at the edge of the doorway, her long blond hair flowing past her bare shoulders, the strapless gown moving like a theater curtain that hasn't quite settled, she notices me, regains the glacial composure she is noted for, and vanishes as quickly and silently as an eel in a lagoon. Whether she is avoiding Trey or simply eschewing an unpleasant scene, I have no way of knowing.