Vertical Burn (18 page)

39. TRAMPLING THE ELDERLY, THE INFIRM, THE HANDICAPPED

Slowly the room filled with body heat, music, and chitchat. Waitstaff in Mickey and Minnie Mouse costumes waded through the assemblage, balancing trays and dispensing hors d’oeuvres. People had come dressed as Marilyn Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Batman, the Mario Brothers, Madonna, Jesus, the Pope, Ty Cobb; there was even a man in a Bill Clinton mask sporting a
SLICK WILLIE
tattoo. There was a couple dressed as Laurel and Hardy and another costumed as firefighters. Finney was glad he’d come. It was just the sort of well-meaning diversion his life lacked.

Diana was only a few inches shy of Finney’s six feet, and when they danced he couldn’t help noticing they fit together like a hand and glove. He’d had a lot of surprises recently, few as pleasant as the kiss she’d given him earlier. There was something vaguely adolescent in the way he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“So, you’re house-sitting, did you say?”

“My parents took their motor home to the Southwest so they could use up the last of the country’s petroleum supplies. Mom’s always wanted to see the high desert in the autumn. I’m sitting with eight parakeets, two hundred houseplants, and an answering machine that fills up twice a day. I swear my mother is the most gregarious woman on the face of the earth.”

“You are indeed a dutiful daughter.”

“It’s the least I could do to make up for all the grief I’ve given them.” She laughed. “No, really, two of my brothers live out of town, and the other one works fourteen-hour days and barely ever sees his wife and kids. It was me or a professional house-sitter, and I couldn’t let that happen.”

“So you grew up on the Eastside?” he asked.

“Want to hear my sad tale, do you?”

“I do.”

“I wish it was sordid. At least that would be interesting, but I was a typical spoiled Eastside brat, raised on Pickle Point just off Meydenbauer Bay in a house almost as large as Ten’s. We lived about sixty feet from Lake Washington in a neighborhood of disgustingly conspicuous wealth. I had a stay-at-home mother with a master’s degree in English, who thinks all little girls should grow up to be just like her, and a father who is one of the founders of a law firm with offices in Seattle, Spokane, and Portland. I had three brothers who treated me like a boy until I was sixteen, which was how I wanted it.” She laughed. “Now for the sordid part. I had it all: private schools, tutors, my own pony at age three. We grew up with a full-time housekeeper and a summertime grounds-maintenance team.” She rubbed her nose against his cheek. “I broke this playing football when I was twelve. I broke it again when I was fourteen. My parents were apoplectic when I refused cosmetic surgery.”

“Ever regretted it?”

“Not for a minute.”

“It’s cold.”

“That’s why I’m warming it up on you. Did you know cats live their lives through their noses?”

“I did know that. And congratulations.”

“On what?”

“On breaking it twice. I haven’t even been able to get my nose to bleed.”

“We were soooo spoiled. I was chauffeured everywhere by my mother in a Mercedes. Ballet, piano, ski, gymnastics lessons. In high school my parents gave me an Alfa Romeo. Were they ever teed off when I traded it in for that Jeep. Except for that and being a tomboy, I was an exemplary child until I dropped out of Pepperdine five credits shy of a degree.”

“Why’d you do that?”

“I don’t know. I guess it was a pinch of postadolescent rebellion.”

“Then what’d you do?”

“Social work with kids, counselor at a summer camp, clerk in a Starbucks shop, and training for triathlons. When I eventually joined the fire department, my mother told me firefighters were tobacco-chewing rednecks or lesbians with crewcuts. I said, ‘No, Mother. The lesbians chew the tobacco and the rednecks have the crewcuts.’ Mother still talks about my completing a degree in communications and perhaps turning out a novel. Mother has two half-finished novellas tucked away in a dresser drawer.”

Finney didn’t mention his ex-wife’s ambitions in that direction.

“That’s enough about me. What about you?”

He told her about his childhood trekking around the West Seattle Golf Course with the steel mill kids, polishing used golf balls to resell to their former owners, about getting thrashed by the older boys at Cooper Elementary. He’d been small for his age and until high school had suffered for it. He’d had a paper route and a love-hate relationship with his father who’d been a harsh disciplinarian and a worse critic. “Tony and I never quite measured up—me even less than him. I always resented my mother for not sticking up for us, but now I realize she was barely holding her own. I didn’t realize the dynamics of our family until just a couple of years ago. In those days the department didn’t pay like it does now, and my father used to work a second job down at the steel mill in West Seattle. He had little patience to start with and less when he was tired. And he was always tired.

“In school I never did more than okay unless I really liked the class. I was a second-stringer on the basketball team. I wrestled and ran track. After high school I tried college, but my heart wasn’t in it. I worked at Boeing, then got a job with a paint company. I thought I liked it until one morning I woke up and realized I needed to get into the department. It shocked the hell out of my father. I wish we hadn’t wasted so many years yelling at each other.”

“In our house we never raised our voices,” Diana said. “You know what I like best about this job? I like when we’re downtown and some businessman in a three-piece suit sees me on the rig and realizes he’s looking at a woman. The double take. I love it.”

“I love the way little kids go crazy when we drive by.”

“You want kids?”

“If I ever get married again. You?”

“I think so. In a few years.”

They were quiet until she said, “So. You ever going to tell me why you carved your initials in the wheel well of Engine Ten?”

“You saw that?”

“Don’t worry. Nobody else caught it. Tell me what’s going on, John. Tell me why G. A. thinks you set the fire on Riverside Drive.” He was quiet for a few moments as they danced. “I want to help you,” she whispered into his ear.

Until now, he hadn’t trusted anybody with the full catalog of his suspicions, wasn’t sure he wanted to. “I’m being framed,” Finney said. “You really want to hear this?”

“Yes.”

The story took two slow dances and the better part of a fast number which they stood out, gazing out over the fog. From time to time they could see the blinking red lights atop a neighboring skyscraper, but mostly what they watched were the reflections of dancers and candlelit pumpkins in the dark windows. He told her about the dangerous buildings list, about following Monahan, about the counterfeit fire engine, the attempt on his life. When he paused, she said, “I saw Paul and Michael taking pictures of Engine Ten one day.”

“I’d like it better if you saw Jerry Monahan taking pictures of it. Paul and Michael probably carry snapshots of the rig in their wallets to show people next to them on airplanes.”

“Actually, I believe they do.”

He recounted the rest of it, and she listened sympathetically.

“There’s been speculation an arsonist was working last June,” Diana said. “Earlier this week Reese even set up a committee to look into it.”

“I’d hoped that was coming.”

“The committee was disbanded almost as soon as it was put together. Reese said their preliminary findings indicated it was a waste of time.”

“And the committee agreed?”

“I don’t know. I could ask Oscar Stillman. He was the chairman.”

“Don’t bother.” He hadn’t told her about seeing Stillman with Monahan on Airport Way.

When the band announced a short intermission and the dance floor began to clear, a man dressed as Abraham Lincoln accidentally clotheslined his stovepipe hat off on a mobile of witches and goblins, only to have it caught in midair by a man in a Superman outfit, much to the entertainment of the bystanders. People mingled, ran into old friends; the conversations grew almost as loud as the band had been.

“Somebody’s trying to frame you . . . ?” Diana said, thinking aloud. “Somebody was responsible for Leary Way, and they think you’ll expose them? That’s what’s happening?”

“Patterson Cole owned Leary Way. He also owns the building where I found the engine. That’s too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.”

“Patterson Cole owns property all over town. He owns vacant lots in Medina that the city’s been trying to get hold of for twenty years. He owns this place.”

“The Columbia Tower?”

“Bought it over a year ago. He has an entire floor on forty-two.”

“I knew about the office, but I didn’t realize he owned the building. I guess it stands to reason.”

Diana said, “An engine has to cost close to three hundred grand. Why would anybody invest that kind of money?”

“I can’t even guess what they’re planning to do with the engine. But they want to tie up the fire department bad. They want to get us running around until we’re so busy they can set fire to whatever they want and nobody will be there to stop it. They want a conflagration. You know as well as I do, once you get a block or two going, you get a firestorm—and nobody and nothing can stop one of those. They’re going to burn down something, and it’s going to be big. The phony engine was carrying a prefire for this place.”

“There are four or five thousand people here in the daytime,” Diana said. “Knock out the elevators, which the alarm system does automatically, and there are only two exits, both down narrow stairwells. One of those stairwells would be reserved for firefighting. Can you picture five thousand panicky people trying to get down the other one, walking forty or fifty stories probably in the dark?”

“This place will be full of smoke as soon as somebody opens a door onto the fire floor, which you know will happen.”

“We did a prefire here a few months ago,” Diana said. “The system has backups out the ying-yang. Television cameras. Sprinklers. Fire walls. Fire pumps to assist the department in raising water to the upper levels. It even has a water tank upstairs that holds thousands of gallons for fire suppression. This wouldn’t be like Leary Way, where they didn’t even have a night watchman. They’d be tangling with the best in technology here.”

“The First-Interstate Bank building in L.A. had the best in technology, too,” Finney said. “And that fire took rotating crews and four hundred firefighters to tap. Even so, it almost got away from them. Seattle’s only got two hundred firefighters on duty at a time.”

“So we’d start out with half as many people as needed, and the rest of the city wouldn’t have any coverage at all.”

“No. The Columbia Tower wouldn’t have any coverage at all.”

They both thought about that for a moment. She said, “I read something recently about this place, but I don’t remember what. It didn’t have anything to do with what we’re talking about though.”

He took her white-gloved hand as the band began playing again, and they danced. He couldn’t stop thinking about the possibility of a fire in this building. Once in the stairs, anybody who was handicapped or elderly or infirm would be in serious trouble. Seattle’s aerial ladders might reach to the sixth or seventh floor, but no higher. They didn’t have air bags for people to jump onto, and even if they did, a seventy-story jump onto an air bag would be lethal.

40. THE MAKE-OUT ARTIST

It was after one
A.M
. when Finney spotted Charlie Reese and his wife entering together on the heels of several Supersonics still high from a squeaker at Key Arena: Sonics, 101; Utah Jazz, 100.

Chief Reese began working the room, shaking hands with firefighters, politicians, and anyone else who might be useful. His wife seemed a reluctant participant. Finney remembered having thought when he first met the two, eighteen years before, that they were a strange couple—Reese particularly handsome and she notably unattractive in a way that she had to work at, letting the hair on a mole on her chin grow an inch long, not shaving her legs, wearing ill-fitting, unflattering clothes. Finney noticed her once at the department picnic, where she sat alone all day, immersed in a romance novel. Charlie had alluded to the murky origins of their relationship during lunch at drill school, something about a sleazy affair he’d had with her married sister before dating her. In recent years, Reese had become a stalwart churchgoer, while his wife was a self-proclaimed atheist.

Finney watched Reese circumnavigate the room and wondered what kind of reaction the chief would have when he came to Finney and Diana. He glanced at Finney’s mask. A flash of recognition crossing his features, he turned away, striding deliberately past both Finney and Diana to shake hands with one of the D-shifters from Station 6.

“That was awful blatant,” Diana said. “He always snub you like that?”

“This is the first time I’ve run into him since he screwed me over.”

“Come on. Let’s go. This thing is winding down anyway. Or do you want to stay?”

“Let’s go.”

Around the corner near the elevators the odor of roasted pumpkin from the candles in the jack-o’-lanterns was particularly pungent. They pushed the down button and waited, Diana staring at him as the music and noise spilled around the corner. He was remembering that good-night kiss she’d given him hours earlier.

Without thinking about it further, Finney leaned forward and kissed her. Her arms melted around his neck. On the descent to forty they resumed their kiss as soon as she’d punched the down button.

Outside, the fog had thickened, visibility reduced to a hundred feet.

When they pulled into the parking area near the dock, it was almost two. Finney was exhausted and knew Diana was as well. Shutting off the Jeep engine, she pulled the emergency brake and turned to him.

“You want to come in?” he asked.

“That would be nice.”

“I can barely stand.”

“You want me to carry you?”

He laughed. “No, I think I’m better off than that.”

“Because I could.”

“I know you could.”

“I had a wonderful time tonight, John.”

“So did I. Thanks for inviting me.”

Their footsteps echoed on the wooden dock, his porch light showering a halo of yellow over them in the fog as he unlocked his front door. Inside he took off his hat, cape, and sword. He turned to find the Cat in the Hat stepping into his arms, kissing him repeatedly across his face, backing him up until they both tumbled onto the couch in his living room. He hadn’t had time to turn on a light. After a moment, there was a noise in the dark and their kisses slowed and then ceased altogether.

“You have a roommate?” she asked.

“I guess I should have told you about him.”

“You guess you should have.” She sat up. “This could have been embarrassing.”

“Dimitri likes to watch. Don’t worry. He won’t say anything.”

The noise came again and Diana grew utterly still. Finney reached up and turned on a lamp. His tailless cat sat four feet away, staring at them from the seat of a wooden rocking chair that tipped back and forth slightly as the cat balanced. “Diana, meet Dimitri. Dimitri, Diana.”

She laughed, and when she flung her hat across the room toward the hat rack—a perfect landing in the shadows next to Finney’s Zorro cape—Dimitri ran for his life. Diana took off her four-fingered gloves and snuggled against him. After a while, Finney reached up and draped the afghan from the back of the couch across them. He couldn’t recall when he’d felt so contented. “Umm,” Diana said, “I don’t want to drive home in this soup.”

“I don’t want you to.”

“You don’t mind if I stay until it lifts?”

“I hope it doesn’t lift for weeks.”

She kissed him again and said, “I bet you did this all the time when you were a kid. I bet you were the make-out king in high school.”

“I was too shy for that.”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“I don’t know. I was.”

“Um, hmmm.”

The knocking had been going on for some time before it turned to banging. It took Finney a few moments to awaken fully.

“Open the door. I’ve got a warrant for your arrest. John Jacob Finney! Open this door. I’ve got a warrant.”

“Oh boy,” Diana murmured, half-asleep. “What time is it?”

“Just after three.”

“Why would they . . . ?”

“Probably want to take me by surprise.”

“I’ll call a woman I know in my father’s law firm. She’ll have you out by noon.”

She might bail him out, he thought, but she couldn’t keep him out.

Finney climbed to his feet, opened the door, and confronted a man pounding the door with the heel of his palm. “Open up, you bastard! Open up in the name of the law.”

“For Christ’s sake, Gary. What the hell are you doing?”

Gary Sadler was half a six-pack on the wrong side of sober, eyes bloodshot, breath reeking of beer and cigarettes. His hair was jeweled from the fog. “Came to arrest your sorry ass,” Sadler said. “Came to take you in for arson. Whaddya think? Arson or stealing my girl. You choose.” Sadler couldn’t stand without constantly resettling his feet, as if he were in a small boat. He tried to look past Finney to see who was with him. “That ain’t your Jeep out there, John boy. Motor’s still warm. Got a union sticker in the window. Did I interrupt something? Garyius interruptus?”

“Shut up, Gary. And go away.”

“Can’t go away. Can’t go nowhere.”

“Why not?”

“Too drunk.”

“You didn’t drive here?”

“Yeah, I did. But I ain’t driving home. Friends don’t let friends drive drunk, do they?”

“What do you want?”

“Came to warn you.”

“About what?”

“Secret stuff.”

Finney felt Diana behind him, her hand on his shoulder. She gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’m going now.”

“Diana,” Sadler said, stepping back in an exaggerated gesture of gentlemanly courtesy. He stumbled and caught himself. “Didn’t mean to break up your tête-à-tête. Damn, woman. That’s some outfit. How come you never wore anything like that when we were going out?”

“We never went out,” she said, vanishing into the fog.

Finney pulled Sadler into his living room so the neighbors wouldn’t overhear. He switched on a lamp next to his bookcase. “What do you want, Gary?”

“Came to tell you something you need to know. Mind if I sit?”

“Go right ahead.”

Sadler collapsed in a heap on the floor. “I’m okay.” He put his index finger to his lips and made a shushing noise. Dimitri was sitting on top of the sofa, staring at Sadler. “That your cat?”

“Be careful. He doesn’t like lushes. Cut to the chase, Gary.”

“Got a visit from G. A. Montgomery and his little stooge, firefighter slash law enforcement officer Robert Kub. G. A. did all the talking. Said you lit that Riverside Drive fire.”

“I didn’t.”

“I know that.”

“How do you know?”

“Because if a firefighter set it, it was Jerry Monahan. Tell you why. Couple of things. You wanted that place on the dangerous buildings list. He didn’t. And he didn’t put it there. Why didn’t he put it there? He didn’t want to attract attention to it. Also, we parked on that same block two weeks before the fire. You weren’t working that day. Me and Greenleaf came back to the rig and found Jerry all dirty. When I asked what happened, he said he was messing around down by the river and fell over the bank.”

“Without going into the water?”

“Exactly our thoughts. He was inside that house. But why lie about it?”

“Why set a fire?”

“Who knows? G. A. says the phone line at the station will be tapped by the end of the week. They’re getting a court order. Even wanted me to trick you into revealing complexity in the arson.”

“Complicity?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“Told him Jerry’s crazy as a bedbug with a snootful of kerosene. Told him you might be a fuckup at a fire, but you’re no criminal. And that old woman? Hell, you were the only one in the station didn’t run when you saw her coming in for a BP.”

“Thanks for telling me, Gary.”

“You watch out for that female type just left.”

“Don’t warn me about her.”

“Oh? Somebody already warn you?” He laughed. Then he saw something across the room, something visible only from his vantage point on the floor. He crawled across the carpet and pulled a large piece of plywood from under a table—the plywood base Finney had used to build and replicate a miniature Leary Way: the buildings, the fire engines and ladder trucks, each painted with the appropriate numerals, and the firemen, with yellow helmets for the firefighters, red for lieutenants, orange for captains, white for chiefs.

“Mother of Mary,” Sadler said. “This is like something out of
Gulliver’s Travels
. You build this?”

“Yeah.”

“Why the hell’d you do that?”

“I was trying to understand.”

“Jesus H. I was thinking about asking you if I could stay the night, but maybe I should crawl into a cab. This is spooky.”