High Fall (35 page)

He laughed. “That’s an axiom in the business. As if ambition didn’t exist outside the pictures. Nothing could convince them there’s more to the world than pictures.”

“Pictures …
pictures
’ Of course!
Pictures!
”

“What?”

“Greg, Liam McCafferty talked about pictures—about succeeding in politics and having his picture on the wall between Kennedy and the Pope.”

“McCafferty?”

“Of course, you don’t remember him. He was a drone on the set. No one remembered him except Trace Yarrow, and that was only because they worked together before
Bad Companions.
Worked,” she said slowly, “with Yarrow consulting for Pacific Breeze Computer and McCafferty doing the boss’s taxes there.”

“And McCafferty arranged the dumping? Why?”

“To preserve the place where he felt
alive.
Remember telling me that gymnastics was where we were alive?”

Greg nodded. “You clutch onto those places, and they end up killing you.”

“Politics was what made McCafferty alive. But the toxin dumping he engineered for revenge—and money. He wanted to get even with Dolly Uberhazy, in a way that would ruin the thing that made
her
feel alive—her career. And Greg, McCafferty’s the one who was in the location office, on
Bad Companions
the guy with the copy machine. It would have been no problem for him to make a new copy of the call sheet and leave it for a gofer to take to the fire house.”

“So he engineered the dumping. I can see that. But why kill Dratz?”

“To save his career. He couldn’t have it come out that he’d dumped toxins, not in environmental California. In politics that’s a liability that could be dug up anytime, forever.”

Suddenly, she realized the sound of the metal rattling outside was louder. The door to the canteen opened, and a projectile flew through the door and landed on the stove. The stove burst into flames. The door slammed shut. Kiernan grabbed the handle. The door didn’t budge.

“It’s bolted on the outside. Open the serving window.”

“I can’t. It won’t move.”

Flames shot up from the stove.

T
HE RAGS ON THE
stove blazed up. Pieces of cloth burned loose, fell to the floor. Kiernan grabbed the door handle. “It’s locked from the outside!”

Greg pushed the awning. “Damn, I bolted that down myself.”

All six burners were shooting flames. Beside the stove two of the rags on cabinet handles had caught fire. She yanked them down by the good ends, flung them in the sink and turned on the spigot. Nothing came out. “Water—where’s the water, Greg?”

“Turned off.”

She looked at the stacks of cardboard boxes, the greasy cloths hanging from cabinet handles. “Greg, this place is going to go up all around us.” Unbidden, she pictured Carlton Dratz, facing the wall of fire, unable to get through. She could tell from the look of horror in Greg’s eyes that he saw the same thing. But he wouldn’t be able to imagine Dratz’s corpse. That picture flashed in her mind, the heat-cracked bones, the charred teeth where the fire had burned into his mouth. Her throat closed, her eyes tightened, she felt as if panic were going to swallow her. She shouted to cover her fear. “We’ve got to get out. How can we get out, Greg?”

“There is no other door.”

The air was dry-hot. Snapping sounds came from the stove, and the floor was unsteady. It was moving.

“Goddamned trailer’s loose!” Greg shouted as he pulled open a cabinet. “We must be rolling toward the bluff.” He yanked out a bag of flour, looked toward the shoots of flame coming from the stove, then turned and threw it on the burning rags in the sink.

Not quick enough. Sparks shot off, to a roll of paper towels. The canteen hit a bump; the towels rolled off the sink onto a cardboard carton by the door.

The canteen rumbled faster. Her breath was coming in fast puffs.
What about the guard?
Kiernan thought desperately. Was there still a guard? Even if there was, he’d be so startled to notice a trailer traveling across the sand that it would be over the bluff before he got himself in action.

“Awning!” Greg shouted. “It’s the only way. I’ll have to kick it free.”

Smoke rose from the cardboard. “That’s going to be blazing in a minute!” Kiernan yelled.

“I can’t get leverage to kick; there’s no place to hang on to.”

“The cabinet door. I’ll brace it.” She pulled it open and pushed her knee in the opening. Her heart was banging in her chest. She’d never been so panicked.

He grabbed it overhead, his back to the cabinet, flexed his biceps, lifting his shoulders to an inch below his hands, and kicked at the side of the awning with both feet. The latch in the middle held, but the metal of the awning gave, then snapped back, like the corner of a lid let go. The recoil thrust Greg back into the door. Into Kiernan’s knee. She braced her teeth to keep from yelping from the pain.

He kicked again. And again. Harder. Faster. The metal gave in fractions of inches.

The cardboard boxes burst into flames. Black smoke filled the trailer. She could barely breathe.

He kicked again. The awning opening was four inches at its widest at the corner.

The canteen rolled faster.

“Push with your feet, Greg!”

He braced against the cabinet door and shoved with both feet. The awning bent eight inches. He released. It sprang back. Coughing from the smoke, he let go.

Flames shot from the floor.

“Grease,” Greg shouted. “Christ! The propane tank is going to blow.”

Shoving him to the side, Kiernan grabbed the top of the cabinet door and braced her feet against the awning. “Get out, Greg. You can squeeze through.” Maybe she would make it on her own, but he wouldn’t. His shoulders were too thick, too wide.

“No! You go!”

“Greg, we don’t have time. Outside, you can stop the trailer; I can’t. Go on!”

She pushed with all her strength. The awning gave; the cabinet door smashed back into her fingers. The smoke stung her eyes. Beneath her, flames crackled through the floor mat.

Greg hesitated, then thrust his head and shoulders through the opening. His legs dangled over the sink, then disappeared into the hole and his feet were gone.

Her fingers shrieked with pain. She could barely see for the smoke. A new spout of flame shot up from the floor, singeing her hamstrings. She had to let go. No! The floor was blazing. The trailer bounced but didn’t slow. She couldn’t get air through the smoke. Her fingers were going numb. She had to get across the aisle, across the counter, and out through the space that looked four inches wide.

She’d get only one chance. If she miscalculated, she’d fall butt-first to the burning floor.

She coughed against the smoky air. Her eyes watered. She could feel the heat of the fire on her legs. Pushing with all her strength, she shoved her feet and legs fast through the opening, pushed off hard, and grabbed for the side of the awning, pulling it toward her, narrowing the opening. Her legs slid through thigh-high. Her face smacked into the hot metal. She pressed her free hand against the ceiling, pulled her chest against the hot metal awning, exhaled, and pushed her legs down the side of the trailer.

The awning scraped her legs, her hips stuck. The ceiling was out of reach.

Something pulled on her legs. Her face scraped down the metal.

The night air hit her like a cool cloth after a fever. Her butt struck the ground momentarily, then Greg pulled her up.

The edge of the bluff was twenty feet away.

The trailer rattled over it. An explosion lit up the jagged knuckles of the bluff.

Greg wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “I have never in my life been so scared.”

She let out a squeak that she’d meant to be a laugh. “Me neither.”

The guard was running toward them. In the distance a siren cut the night air. Greg said, “Did you really think I could stop that trailer?”

She didn’t, she realized. Why had she insisted he get out first? Stubbornness? Gift to an old idol? No. In the safety of the cool air, on hard ground, it seemed ridiculous, but she knew the reason: She couldn’t have borne losing him again, not without knowing who he had become. “You did pull me out in time.”

“I … called in … his plates,” the guard panted. “I seen him pushing the canteen. I gave chase, but he moved fast for an old guy with a gut on him. Was burning rubber before I could catch him. But I got his plates.”

“We could have died in the trailer while you were chasing after him,” Greg said.

“You were in the food trailer! Hey, no one’s supposed to be in there now. You had no business being in there.”

Kiernan and Greg looked at each other and laughed. “The chase,” she said, “so much more rewarding than the save.”

The guard glared, turned, and strode back toward the parking lot.

“And you,” Greg said, “you’re not worried about chasing McCafferty? You don’t think he’ll escape?”

She considered a minute. “No. I barely know Liam, but he’s so much like my relatives. And he’s not you, Greg. He couldn’t go off and leave his life behind like a shed skin. For him, there’d be nothing left. Movie people think ‘the business’ is all that matters. They’re right; they just don’t realize theirs isn’t the only business. Liam could no more imagine life without his picture between Kennedy and the Pope than Dolly could envision a career managing the local motor vehicle office. He won’t run, because there’s nothing to run to. The police will find him at home, in his chair by the picture window overlooking Mission Bay, with one of his Waterford crystal glasses on the table beside him, and a bullet through his brain.”

Greg shivered, and she had the sense that the reaction was not just for McCafferty but for the path not taken.

I
T WAS AFTER SUNRISE
when Kiernan answered the last question and signed her statement at the police station. “Mr. Gaige finished his a full hour sooner,” Officer Melchior chided her as he held open the front door for her. “I want you to be clear on this, Ms. O’Shaughnessy. I’m pleased you did not go off the bluff. I just wish you’d go off … somewhere—out of my district.”

She patted his arm. “Life is fraught with disappointment, Melchior.”

She should have been exhausted. She would be in an hour or two. But now she was running on adrenaline, and the still-startling realization that Greg Gaige was alive. Without gymnastics, but
alive
. And waiting for her at Gliderport. Her stomach quivered, and the smile on her face was so wide, she felt silly.

She forced herself to stop at home to change out of her soot-streaked jeans and sweatshirt. The sleeves were singed, and there were fire holes in the backs of the legs. She doffed her clothes and was in and out of the shower in three minutes. Then she put on her forest-green running suit, brushed beige eye shadow on, and rubbed it off twice before it looked good enough. Looping by the Pannikin, she picked up two double cappuccinos and an assortment of scones, and muffins, and, suddenly unsure of Greg’s taste, added two chocolate-covered croissants, and headed to Gliderport.

Winding through the curves of Torrey Pines Road, she grinned at the magenta bougainvillaea cascading over stucco walls, and the orange birds of paradise that seemed poised to take off into the fog. Traffic was still light going toward San Diego, and northbound ahead of her the road was empty. When she turned onto the entrance to Gliderport, patches of fog hung in the branches of the Torrey Pines like discarded illusions. But over the ocean slivers of light slit the fog for an instant before it resealed around them.

There was almost no sign now that the movie set had ever been on the bluff. Only the two trailers remained.

Greg wasn’t by them. For an instant she feared he’d disappeared again, or she’d dreamed his reemergence. Then she spotted him, across the warning chain—at the far edge of the bluff, a shin’s length from the brink of nothingness. Her breath caught; she started to run, then, taking in his stance, slowed herself to a walk. Greg looked like he was in a gale—the wind was snapping his shirt and hair, breaking off mouthfuls of the bluff itself and spitting them at his legs. But there was nothing unsteady or tentative about his stance—his firm, muscular legs were planted solidly apart. Kiernan couldn’t help thinking of Lark Sondervoil—her lithe body wavering, eyes wide in terror, hands grappling for ground that wasn’t there. The rise where Lark had gone over was less than forty feet to the north. Slowly Greg turned toward it, and his eyes, already tightened to slits against the wind, pressed shut as if the sight, the memory, the grief, were more than he could bear to take in.

She stopped, unwilling to intrude. Was this, she wondered, as much of a memorial as Lark Sondervoil would get? Then she started forward again, knowing that the acknowledgment from Greg was what would have mattered to her.

Greg opened his eyes, slowly turned toward land. When he spotted Kiernan, he waved. He had changed his shirt. The wind fingered his curly gray hair, whipping a strand loose from the rubber band at the nape of his neck. He had washed his face, but the residue of soot had settled in the crevices across his forehead and formed black lines between his eyes.

She slowed, drinking him in. Her chest felt so full, she could hardly breathe. She barely knew Greg, she warned herself. And emotion was something she’d never trusted. But she brushed all that aside as she came up beside him. She smiled, then laughed to cover the illogic of it all. “You smell like a barbecue pit.”

He ran his fingers down the side of her neck, made a show of checking them for soot, and grinned. “You’re no perfume ad yourself, briquette.”

Three feet from the edge of the bluff she stepped down into the ridge trail worn by the wind and the daring, and sat back on the bare sandy rise, and felt around in the paper bag until she found her coffee. When Greg sat down next to her, she gave him a cup, and rested a hand on his knee. “I’m still so astonished you’re alive.”

“Astonished as in ‘pleased’?”

“Real pleased.” Suddenly embarrassed, she removed her hand and passed him the bag of pastries. “There’s so much I want to know—about you, who you are, and how you’ve lived. But first tell me what happened the day of the fire on
Bad Companions.”
She had a good idea how McCafferty had orchestrated the result, but she wanted to know what Greg had seen and what he’d deduced after a decade of pondering.