Vertical Burn (15 page)

32. DEMOLITION DERBY

Finney’s eyes had barely become accustomed to the sunshine when he spotted Jerry Monahan trudging up the steep Seattle sidewalk.

Monahan walked past without looking up, crossed Fourth Avenue, and entered the Columbia Tower through the southwest entrance. Finney might have followed, but two of the security personnel who’d walked him out of the building were still watching from the doorway.

The Columbia Tower was the tallest building in Seattle, standing nearly two hundred feet taller than the Space Needle. Monahan might have been there to see any one of hundreds of people. There were scores of offices, a private club and a restaurant at the top, public shops and an eating area on the lowest levels, and a multilevel parking garage below the structure.

It was almost one-thirty before Monahan exited the building and walked across Fourth, passing within twenty feet of Finney, who, by this time, had his face concealed behind a newspaper. He was about to follow Monahan when Chief Reese exited the building through the same exit, crossing Cherry and proceeding south along Fourth, probably headed to Station 10 on foot.

What were the odds Monahan and Reese hadn’t been together for the last two hours? It seemed obvious to Finney they’d had a meeting of some sort in the very building where Patterson Cole kept an office. It was too much of a coincidence.

Keeping a good half block behind, Finney tailed Monahan down the hill and then under the shadowy Alaskan Way Viaduct and back into the sunshine on the waterfront. Monahan had parked at Fire Station 5 on the water. Finney hailed a passing cab and had the driver wait on Alaskan Way. Moments later Monahan’s vintage station wagon pulled out of the cramped parking area alongside Station 5, and Finney followed in the cab as Monahan threaded his way to a set of buildings in the flat industrial area just south of downtown. When he parked, Oscar Stillman was standing on the sidewalk nearby.

This turn of events surprised Finney more than it probably should have; Stillman and Monahan had been friends for years. The two men spoke, then jog-trotted across Airport Way in front of some truck traffic and disappeared into the parking lot of an unmarked occupancy. From the street Finney could see three large warehouse-type buildings, most of the property hidden from view by a smaller, windowless structure in front.

Finney instructed the cabbie to wait a block away while the meter ticked and then, after thirty minutes, decided to return to his parked Pathfinder. When he drove back to Airport Way, Monahan’s vehicle had not moved.

From where Finney parked one could drive miles in two directions and see nothing but industrial and commercial occupancies. Fifty feet above and behind him was an elevated portion of I-5, which had punched through the city’s core back in 1960 at the time of the World’s Fair.

A hundred years ago this lowland had all been tide flats, but millions, if not billions, of yards of fill had been carted in to stabilize it. Even now, when heavy trucks drove past, the ground seemed to rumble disproportionately.

From past experience Finney knew the woods sloping up from underneath the freeway harbored encampments of homeless men. Years ago, when G. A. Montgomery was working on Engine 10, G. A. had ordered his crew to wash out an encampment with hose lines after the occupants squabbled with him about dousing their campfire. Young, inexperienced, intimidated by G. A., his crew hosed down everything in sight—sleeping bags, tents, books, clothing. It had been the middle of winter. Finney knew he was only thinking up more excuses to hate G. A., but he didn’t have to work hard. Plenty of people hated him.

As the afternoon wore on, workers left the complex in waves. Stillman left at five, and minutes later Monahan rushed out, patted down his pockets for his keys, and drove off in a haze of exhaust. Except for a couple of outside lights in the parking area, the buildings were dark.

When he thought enough time had elapsed, Finney walked across the street.

Behind the first tall, white, windowless building he found a large parking area where three vans marked
MAKADO BROTHERS
and a couple of dust-covered private vehicles sat.

He went back to his Pathfinder, fired up the engine, got the heater working, warmed himself, and drove around the block. It was a huge industrial block, almost half a mile in circumference, and by the time he got back to the front of the property, he was discouraged. Somebody was trying to put him in prison, and so far the only thing he knew was that Monahan had lied about the dangerous buildings list and about November 7. Yet he could be lying for all sorts of reasons. To cover up his own incompetence—maybe even to keep secret a surprise party for his wife.

Finney was back on Airport Way heading north when he saw a flash of winking red in his rearview mirror. He pulled to the side of the road and found an engine company closing in on him.

As he pulled to the curb, Finney looked in his mirror and realized the engine was in danger of sideswiping his truck.

He pulled his wheels onto the sidewalk, thinking if he didn’t move, he’d get hit. It happened too quickly to think of much else.

The Pathfinder rocked wildly as the sound of metal on metal screeched in his ears. It was incredibly loud and seemed to play out in slow motion. His window dematerialized, and then it was in pieces in his lap. There was a second metallic scraping and then a loud crash. The engine had grazed the side of his vehicle. Was the driver drunk? Having a heart attack?

When his vehicle stopped rocking, Finney found his driver’s-side door jammed. Shaking the glass off his lap, he climbed over the stick shift and out the passenger door. His face felt wet, but he was relieved to find sweat and not blood when he touched it. What the hell was going on?

Up the street he could hear the blatting of the Jake brake; fire vehicles were the only diesel trucks allowed to use compression brakes within the city limits. They worked off the engine and made a loud coughing sound when the driver eased off the accelerator.

It had all happened so quickly.

As he thought it through, he realized the driver might have felt Finney wasn’t moving over properly and decided to teach him a lesson by coming close, then had misjudged. He knew how frustrating it could be to drive an emergency vehicle through city traffic. Few people actually obeyed the law and moved over. They ignored you. Or stepped on the gas trying to race you. They braked in the middle of the street. They stopped in the fast lane next to traffic that had already stopped in the slow lane, blocking the entire street. All sorts of stupid things.

As Finney inspected the damage to his vehicle, the engine turned around in the middle of the block.

The officer was probably on the radio right now calling for the safety officer, Battalion 1, and the police, informing the dispatcher that somebody else would have to handle the alarm they’d been on. Now the engine was facing him.

Finney began moving an instant after the driver floored the accelerator. The
exhilarator
, Captain Cordifis had jokingly called it.

Finney dove through the open passenger door, turned the key in the ignition, and pulled the Pathfinder forward so fast his tires smoked and the passenger door slammed shut with the movement.

Gusts of black diesel smoke thundered out the tailpipe as the engine accelerated toward him. His stomach was doing flip-flops. This guy was trying to kill him.

Finney steered for the concealment of a pillar, but the left wheels of his Pathfinder refused to negotiate the curb.

The engine had no such trouble; it bumped up over the curb and ran for fifty yards with two wheels on the sidewalk. For a moment they were on a collision course, and then Finney wrenched the wheel and the engine only nipped the left rear quarter panel of the Pathfinder. The jolt turned the Pathfinder counterclockwise so that it spun off the sidewalk and ended up in the street facing the direction the engine had come from.

The air horn on the engine had blown at the moment of impact; Finney’s ears were ringing.

He watched the fire engine swing around in a lazy circle down the street. Try as he might, he could see no crew, no officer—nothing more than a silhouette in the driver’s seat. This was crazy. In all his years in the department he’d never heard of an engine driver going berserk like this.

When he put the Pathfinder into reverse, the vehicle stalled. His front bumper was crumpled against one or both tires. He pushed down on the accelerator, and the Pathfinder made more noise and rocked and then settled back where it had been. Cold air blew in through the broken window onto his sweaty face. He couldn’t back up. He couldn’t drive forward.

And the maniac in the engine was coming back. Finney began to panic.

Like a man trying to rock his truck out of a snowy ditch, he shifted the transmission into first, gave it gas, slipped it into reverse, gave it gas. The fire engine began picking up speed, the wigwag headlights bearing down on him.

Once again, he shifted into first. Then reverse, where he felt something disengage. Suddenly he was racing backward across the street in a semicircle.

The engine swerved to react to his maneuver but caught only a part of the front fender. The crash shook Finney like a rag doll. The noise was horrendous, as if he were inside a garbage can being rolled downhill.

Five minutes later the first police cruiser arrived.

The officer’s hair was chopped short and dyed beet red, and she approached Finney with a curious look in her dark brown eyes. “You got a story?” she asked, taking in Finney’s Pathfinder. The engine had long since disappeared. Finney tried to make sense of it as he explained what had happened, but there was no sense to it.

“A fire engine?” she asked. “You sure?”

“I know what they look like.”

The officer, who didn’t like his sarcasm, took his license, radioed her superior, and ran Finney’s plate. A few minutes later the sergeant on watch showed up and gave him a sobriety test.

After evaluating the scene for a few minutes, the sergeant spoke to the first arriving officer, whose name tag identified her as
D. M. MANSON
. “You call the fire department?”

“Yeah. No reported accidents.”

“It was a Seattle Fire Department engine,” Finney said. “It had the decals on the doors.”

“You know which one?” Officer Manson asked.

“I didn’t catch the unit number.”

The two police officers made Finney feel as if he were standing in high-water pants with mismatched socks and flecks of a chicken TV dinner in his teeth. Clearly, they thought his story was fishy. They gave him a case number and told him to call later in the week.

“You’re not going to check fire stations?”

The sergeant looked at Finney. “No point in making work. If the department had an accident tonight, we’ll hear about it.”

33. AIR 26

When Finney arrived at work the next morning and learned Hank Jovi was taking the shift off on dependent care disability, he quickly volunteered for Jovi’s slot on the air rig. There were certain advantages to driving the air rig, advantages he could put to good use on this particular day. For one, he was exempt from Engine 26’s alarms and had freedom of movement between stations. However, he would be responsible for routine delivery of air bottles to stations around the city and would be called to any fire where replacement air bottles were needed.

Finney had tossed and turned all night after the accident. But then, it was no accident. Even if the first pass had been accidental, the second and third charges had been deliberate. In order to avoid hours of scrawling out accident reports, a cagey driver might touch up a scratch on the rig with cardinal red or buff it out with automobile polish, but that only worked with minor scrapes. Last night’s rig had to have some serious damage. If it was a fire department rig, somebody would know about it, and Finney aimed to find out who.

One possibility he was considering was that maybe one of the mechanics from the Charles Street shop, which was only blocks from the accident site, drank a few beers while working late and decided to go for a test drive. He wondered if it was possible one of the outlying fire departments had a unit that looked like Seattle’s, although, unlike Seattle’s traditional red, most of the outlying districts used lime-yellow paint schemes so they would be more conspicuous.

Finney couldn’t decide if the hours he’d spent on Airport Way had anything to do with the attack or if the timing and location had been coincidental.

He’d telephoned the police that morning, but they didn’t have any news. He called the Safety Chief, Stephanie Alexis, a cheerful, good-natured woman with forceful, often controversial opinions on how the fire department should be run, but Chief Alexis reported no vehicular accidents for yesterday’s shift.

As much as he was plagued by Leary Way and puzzled by Riverside Drive, last night’s attack bewildered him even further. More than bewildered—he was pissed. Some damned fool had tried to kill him. He couldn’t believe how angry he was. Maybe he should have been this angry last night. Ever since Leary Way, things had taken longer to sink in, all things, as if his emotions had a blanket around them.

As soon as the housework was finished, Finney drove the air rig to Station 14. In back of the station he could hear the recruits in the current drill school hard at work, the shouting of orders, heavy-duty aluminum ladders rattling, the calflike bellowing of the prime pump on an engine. A bellowing again as some luckless recruit fought to get it right on his second attempt.

Fourteen’s was a Spanish-style building with towers, a tile roof, and stucco walls. Its look hadn’t changed much from the mid-thirties or from 1962 when Finney’s father had been stationed there as a firefighter. The department’s training division shared cramped space both upstairs and down with the living quarters for the crew of Ladder 7 and Aid 14. Years ago Engine 14 had been housed there, too, but it had been decommissioned long before Finney signed on. His father used to talk about how the drivers on Engine 14, nicotine and caffeine addicts to a man, would race to alarms full tilt over the railroad tracks a few blocks from the station and how, if they weren’t braced for it, the men on the tailboard would be launched into the air, along with all the hose in the hose bed. More than one tailboard man had lashed his wrist to the rail.

During the twelve-week drill schools, training division commandeered the classroom at the northeast corner of the building as well as the mostly empty parking lot and seven-story training tower behind the station. About once a year recruits dropped a ladder on one of the parked cars belonging to a Station 14 crew member.

In Ladder 7’s beanery they proudly displayed a photograph of one of the station’s high-angle rescue team members sliding down a line tethered to the Space Needle, a photo that never failed to impress visitors.

Parking the air rig in front, Finney went inside and approached the building inspection file cabinets near the front doors. While two firefighters on a tall stepladder applied metal polish to the brass pole at the other end of the hallway, a female firefighter named Hedges began swabbing the floor around his feet.

“Whatcha doin’?” she asked, slowly painting him into a corner with her mop.

“Just looking up a phone number,” Finney replied, ignoring her prank.

Every fire station in the city performed building inspections in its specified district. Meticulous records of each occupancy were kept, along with the disposition of each year’s inspections and fire code violations, if any. Some of the records went back thirty or forty years. Included in the folders were the names, addresses, and phone numbers of the occupancies, as well as information about the owners. Using the map on the wall above the cabinets, Finney located the block number for the occupancy on Airport Way where Monahan and Stillman had met yesterday afternoon.

He pulled a thick folder out of the drawer and opened it on top of the cabinet. The occupancy name was
MAKADO BROTHERS
. Curiously, the last fire department inspection of the building had been done by Lieutenant Balitnikoff. Balitnikoff had not written up any violations, although the previous five inspectors had all penned Notices of Violation for various transgressions: extinguishers not tagged, fire doors propped open, cluttered aisles, illegal and improper use of extension cords.

Finney found it odd that Balitnikoff had inspected the building, but when he unfolded the small work schedule card from his wallet he found the day in question was listed as C-7, Balitnikoff’s debit shift number. Firefighters worked seven debit shifts in addition to their regular schedules each year, approximately one every seven weeks, and most were worked outside the firefighter’s normal station.

He flipped the file card and found the building was owned by Patterson Cole—not all that strange, since the octogenarian probably held the deeds to more property in Seattle than any other individual. It was with that thought that Finney riffled through the files and found two more occupancies on Airport Way owned by Cole, one of which, directly behind the Makado Brothers but addressed off Eighth Avenue South, had been listed as vacant three months ago.

After jotting down the pertinent information, Finney put the files away and was on his way out of the watch office when Lieutenant Balitnikoff and Michael Lazenby sauntered in. Outside, the tailboard of Engine 10 was butted up against the north stall door, facing the street for a quick getaway in case they received an alarm.

“Speak of the devil,” shouted Balitnikoff, exuberantly. “We were just talking about you.”

“Sure as hell were,” said Paul Lazenby, pushing through the doorway behind his brother, Michael, who’d halted in his tracks. A fourth firefighter who didn’t normally work on Engine 10 shouldered his way through the group and headed for the back of the station.

“Heard you had some magic mushrooms for dinner,” Lieutenant Balitnikoff said.

“Extra special magic mushrooms,” said Paul, smirking.

When Finney said nothing, Michael offered an explanation. “Thompson on D-shift is dating that cop. The little spinner? She told Thompson you claim you got run off the road.”

Paul Lazenby and Balitnikoff burst into laughter. Michael, the only one of the three wearing his foul-weather coat, put his hands in his pockets and bit the inside of his cheek.

“What happened?” asked Paul. “You crash into a garbage truck and think it was your old rig?” All three of them laughed again.

Balitnikoff said, “You sure a deer didn’t jump out in front of you on the way home from the bar?”

“Maybe you got hit by a beer truck,” Paul said.

“Screw you,” Finney said.

“Hey, you were off duty, man,” Paul said, his voice growing more sympathetic. “Oh, wait a minute. You quit drinkin’, didn’t ya?”

Finney opened the door.

“No, wait, you guys,” said Michael. “I want to hear this.”

“Fuck all of you,” Finney said, walking outside.

Michael followed him, zipping up his coat. “I don’t know why they ride you like that.”

“Because they’re assholes?”

Michael chuckled. “Their main problem is they don’t know when to quit.”

Finney appraised Michael Lazenby for a moment. Though he didn’t give a rat’s ass for his older brother, Paul, he rather liked Michael, who had a boyish smile and a shock of blond hair that always looked as if it had just been rumpled. He seemed to take life as it came, while Paul tried to twist and force every circumstance to suit him. Both brothers were narcissists to the core, obsessed with building muscles and chasing women, but somehow Michael managed to make it seem like an amusing quirk, where it was just obnoxious in Paul.

“That wasn’t a bogus rumor we heard?”

“Somebody tried to run me down.”

“In a fire engine? For real?”

“That’s right.”

“Hey, if you find him and want somebody to help beat the crap out of him, I’m your man. People start using fire rigs for that sort of bullshit and we’ll all get a bad name.”

“Thanks, but that’s not going to happen.”

“Keep me on the shortlist if you change your mind. I always like to get in on a good beating.”

“Will do.”