Outside, the city stirred in its slumber, restless. A horn. A truck. A siren. Another siren and another. My head buried in the pillow, fire trucks bounced over the potholes in my mind. Their diesel engines raced from one disaster to the next. Radios crackled commands. Air horns sounded. Big brakes hissed. A trace of smoke hung in the air. An alarm clanged in the hall. Voices called out to each other through the night. I rolled out of bed for a look. In the parking lot, firefighters hoisted oxygen tanks onto their backs. Others uncoiled hoses from parked trucks. Red lights flashed. Long shadows of firefighters on the run danced over the side of the building like goblins around a pyre. Two firefighters pointed up at the Ellington somewhere over my head until one pushed the other aside. A flaming timber crashed right where they’d been standing. A hose burst to life. White water pounded into the building. Windows shattered with the impact.
Smoke crept into the apartment through the cracks in the walls and ceiling. I made it to the kitchen half-dressed. Orange flames licked around the door frame. An axe head chopped through the door. Wood splintered in all directions. The door exploded. Sparks shot through the air. The tops of the cupboards caught fire in seconds.
A silhouetted figure wrapped in smoke and crowned with a black firefighter’s helmet emerged from the fiery haze. Flames danced around his head. Goggles and a breathing mask obscured his face. He held a long axe, which he pointed at me like a staff. I stood transfixed.
“Get out,” his muffled voice ordered. “Go while the stairs are still good.”
With that, he vanished into the blaze.
Flames sizzled. The crackling wood snarled louder. The smoke thickened. I buckled up my jeans, grabbed the binoculars, my wallet, and, for good measure, Shirley Rose’s photo and letter. By now, the entire wall of the kitchen was afire. In the smoky hall, a couple more firefighters pushed by. They headed upstairs, higher into the inferno. It was time to go.
With my arms over my head, I plunged through the flaming portal that was once the doorway. In the smoke-filled corridor, shadows groped their way to safety. Feet trampled over the smouldering floor. Bodies on the move. In the dark, someone coughed from the smoke. At the stairs, someone cried. Akinwole’s door hung off its hinges, busted open. Not on fire. Maybe he was still in bed, asleep, oblivious to the chaos.
I moved toward his apartment to check when the circular moulding in the ceiling crashed to the floor. Surrounded by fire, I recoiled from the flames, reconsidered my course, and sought a new path out of this burning hell.
People, planks, and ceiling tiles swirled through the dark. Then the floor flared up. The flames were around my neck. The heat scorched my skin. The stench of singed hair filled my nostrils. Soon, I’d be transformed into an ethereal being, a wisp of smoke. Miraculously, a gust of hot air opened a path through the fire. I sucked up a lung full of smoke and leapt through the flames toward the stairs. I galloped down the steps two at a time, my arms flailing into the bedlam ahead to clear any unseen obstacles hidden in the smoke.
I hit the last step on the stairs into the lobby of the main floor when the ceiling collapsed. The circle of fire above had burned right through the floor. More burning planks flew through the air. Flames encircled me once again. Sparks snapped at my head. The Ellington refused to go down alone.
Smoke swallowed the foyer. It consumed the flames. Hot air blasted through the burning hole in the ceiling. The smoke punched from above like a giant black fist and released a ball of fire that exploded, propelling me through the door onto the sidewalk, into the violent spray of the firehoses. I gasped. Stumbled to the ground. Breathless and relieved.
Two firefighters in long black coats ran from behind their defensive lines, grabbed my arms and dragged me through the puddles on the sidewalk toward safety.
“Backdraft — the building’s going to blow,” one yelled to the other.
There was a thunderous noise from within. One fireball followed another. The roof of the Ellington lifted from its moorings before the entire structure sagged and collapsed into itself. It was doubtful the roaches survived.
They took me to a makeshift triage tent down the street crammed with a small army of harried emergency workers who’d been kicked out of bed to deal with the anxious Ellington survivors. Someone in a lab coat peered into my eyes with a flashlight. Had me cough. Listened to my lungs through a stethoscope. Hit my knee with a rubber hammer. Someone else with a clipboard gave me fifty bucks and a strip of paper with an address. Arrangements had been made for survivors to go to motels across the city and await further instructions. I signed a form. I moved along.
Around noon, a taxi took me from the processing centre past the smouldering ruins of the Ellington out to Kingston Road. The car was clean and air-conditioned. A cool lime-scented air freshener dangled from the mirror. The posted licence said the driver’s name was Jaffar Malouf. The photo didn’t look anything like him. It didn’t matter. I was safe. Mozart played on the radio. Every time I closed my eyes, the flames enveloped me. The stench of smoke seared my nostrils. The chaos of bodies in the dark lingered. It was good to be alive. The driver gripped the wheel with both hands and drove slow. Other cars whizzed past us. Some honked.
After a while, the man who wasn’t Jaffar Malouf said, “You were in the fire this morning, sir?”
I nodded. “Yes.”
“Such a terrible thing.” He wagged his head in disbelief. “It was all on the news. It’s only by the grace of God you are all still alive. Who would do such a terrible thing?”
“What do you mean?” I said.
Outside, strip malls and used car dealerships floated past the window. This was an unknown part of the city to me, a suburban land of drive-through burger joints, nail salons, body shops, and hasty marts. A place you wouldn’t go unless you had to — unless life dealt you a shitty card.
“The fire, sir,” he said. “On the news they interviewed the fire marshal. He said it looked like arson. There’s going to be an investigation.”
“They always say that,” I said. “It was an old building. In the basement laundry you could see exposed wires. Frayed.”
The driver looked at me through the mirror. “That may be correct, sir. Still they’re saying that someone was seen around the building before the fire started.”
“Someone was seen?”
“Yes, and a suspicious vehicle drove away.”
“That’s what they’re saying?”
“Yes, sir. It’s a bloody mystery, to be sure.”
“People see shit all the time,” I said. “They saw flying saucers and Bigfoot in the woods.”
The driver chuckled. “Yes, that’s true. But these photos are more convincing.”
“Photos?”
“Yes, sir. Security camera from the Mighty Meaty Burgers across the way. The footage is already on the morning news.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“No sir, I’ve been driving cab.”
The car wheeled into a parking lot. Propped up against a piece of cinder block was a hand-painted sign that read: We buy Gold. Old & Broken. An arrow pointed toward a small strip mall next door. Much of the lot was taken up by an industrial garbage bin cryptically tagged Moze On in huge fluorescent-pink letters. The driver stopped the meter.
“This is your destination, sir.”
A kid in high-tops with a steel bolt through his nose wandered by with a cardboard box. The overhead sign read: Havanap Motel. The word Vacancy was painted next to it in equally big peeling letters. A vending machine promised Ice old drinks — the C in Cold having burned out. Home.
“Fire guy?” the desk clerk said.
He checked my name against a list on his desk. Satisfied, he nodded. Love and Hate were tattooed across his knuckles.
“You’re in 101, the unit at the end. Right by the road.” He handed over a key. “There’s a laundromat across the street and a convenience store next door, by the pawnshop in the strip mall. We change the sheets and towels once a week. If you need mo
re, you wash it yourself. The insurance company only pays for the room.”
“Any of my neighbours here?” Akinwole and Rachel were on my mind.
“I guess,” he said. “I got the place filled with people from the fire.”
I felt lost. I’d ended up in no man’s land with nothing.
“How do I get into the city?”
“There’s a bus stop across the street. Takes an hour when there’s no traffic. It comes every forty-five minutes. Enjoy your stay.”
Outside the office a rainbow-stained puddle of water and gasoline left my sneakers cold and squishy. There were twelve grey rooms, each with a dented aluminum door facing the parking lot. They were set off the street in a semicircle, six on either side of the office. A few of the windows were cracked, held together with faded masking tape.
Four lanes of traffic zipped by directly in front of the motel. Beside my door, Akinwole rocked on a straight-backed metal chair. He drank Coke from a can.
“Paul,” he said, “we continue to be neighbours into the next life.”
I said, “You made it.”
“Yes,” he said. “They say everyone got out alive.”
“The cab driver told me it was arson.”
Akinwole shook his head. “Who would do a thing like that? Besides, the wiring was shit.”
“Supposedly, there’s security cam footage.”
“That sounds outrageous.”
“Do our rooms have TV?”
“Oh yes, they are comfortable.”
“You have low standards.” I struggled with the key.
Akinwole grinned. “Sure, so I am easily pleased.”
He leaned back in his chair. He crushed the empty Coke can in his massive hand. “This is the life. Living free in a motel. The Havanap. I like it.” From his tone, who knows if he was joking.
At first the lock wouldn’t turn. Frustrated, I banged it with the back of my fist a couple of times until it finally swung open. Inside, the room was sparse and clean. Linoleum floors. Vinyl blinds. A small dresser riddled with cigarette burns. A lamp by the bed. An old rotary phone. I flipped on the TV, peeled off my wet socks, and propped myself up in the lumpy bed.
The barking heads at CP24 News liked these local disaster stories. They ran them in rotation every twenty minutes, all day long, between the live traffic cameras and the weather graphics (rain the next five days). It didn’t take long for the story to come up.
The reporter was breathless. Wendy Kirpal, earlier on the scene. In the background, the Ellington burned. Over her shoulder, the firefighters dragged me out moments before the roof exploded. Wendy Kirpal ducked. The Ellington collapsed. They showed it from their helicopter. Eye in the sky news. Smoke swirled up from the scene. Text crawled across the bottom of the screen: HISTORICAL BUILDING BURNS IN EARLY-MORNING FIRE. Then back to Wendy Kirpal, now in the safety of the newsroom, with a CP24 exclusive: footage from the security camera across the street.
It was like the cab driver said, except impossible to say who or what was in the image. The Sasquatch films were better. The camera took a frame every ten seconds. Grainy black and white still shots. Wendy Kirpal talked us through it. One shape, she assured us, was a vehicle pulled up to the Ellington. She said it could’ve been a truck or SUV. It could’ve been a car. It could’ve been a yacht, for that matter. Whatever it was, a shadowy figure stepped out. It moved in the direction of the Ellington. Wendy Kirpal noted the figure was back within eight minutes and then the thing moved away. Moments later, the Ellington burst into flames. Wendy Kirpal promised us that in the days ahead, police experts would extract more detailed information from these pictures, and when they did, CP24 would be there with the update on this tragic destruction of a city heritage building. Back to you, Jay.
Anyone could have set fire to the Ellington. The owners themselves had motive. The land was more valuable than the building. The pictures proved nothing. Akinwole was right, the wiring in the basement was shit. Still, the Russians had to be considered. They’d have been pissed off after my attack, and we were almost out of time on the Courtney clock.
I phoned Hornsmith to tell him what had happened and warn him we could be targets. He answered on the first ring like he’d been waiting for my call.
“Latour,” he said when he heard my voice, “you’re alive.”
“I’m alive,” I said.
“That’s good, because Courtney wants to meet. Lunch. Day after tomorrow. Watch. He’s going to settle. Go to the tailor and get some new clothes. We need to look sharp.”
Whoever was out to kill us seemed more pressing. I said, “Anyone hanging around your house? Strange cars parked on the street?”
“I wouldn’t notice that. Why?”
“Because if it was arson at the Ellington, Courtney’s thugs should be high on the suspect list.”
Hornsmith laughed. “They’re only capable of minor theatrics. Go get some new clothes and stop looking for bogeymen. You’re going to make yourself a nervous wreck.”
“Courtney’s thugs are off their leash. He’s lost control,” I said. “We should terminate Courtney’s relationship with the Business.”
“Fire the client?”
“Exactly. Our dealings with him are starting to have negative undertones.”
Hornsmith wasn’t so sure. “Let’s see what he says at lunch.”
FIFTEEN
Everyone’s Out
THE BUS DOWNTOWN took forty-five minutes, like the tattooed freak at the motel said it would. The plan was to visit Mr. Gupta, a second-generation tailor with an inconspicuous shop on Cumberland Avenue. The same shop that had kitted me out a hundred years ago, during my early days with the Business. Set on one of the most expensive shopping streets in the city, it was a walk-up above a lingerie place.
Inside smelled of sandalwood and suggested luxurious afternoons on the shady deck of a varnished yacht. It was a haven of fabric bolts arranged on floor-to-ceiling teak shelves. Patterns for made-to-measure suits waited on a cutting table. Glass display cases featured linen shirts, cashmere sweaters, and silk pyjamas. Deep leather armchairs and free-standing mirrors were arranged so a person could take the time required to select the proper wardrobe for any occasion. In the back, a chrome-plated Italian espresso machine stood ready to serve high-test caffeine to the weary shopper.
A tall man in his late sixties with a hunchback, Mr. Gupta sported salt and pepper eyebrows the size of a snowy owl’s wings. His mouth was twisted into a perpetual smile, the scar of a life catering to the whims of others. The cut of his tailored lightweight woollen suit hid most of his disfigured back in nips and folds of hand-stitched perfection. Mr. Gupta traded in discretion and secrets. Business was by appointment only. He never spoke of his other clients, which gave the impression of exclusivity.
My unwashed sweatshirt and jeans reeked of smoke — an affront to Mr. Gupta’s sartorial sensibility.
“With respect, sir,” he said, “you’re looking like a hobo. You could be living in a Dumpster. Are you on undercover assignment?”
“My apartment burned down, and I’m living in a motel on the edge of town,” I said. “I have no possessions.”
“The Ellington fire.” His giant eyebrows flapped as he nodded. “It was on the television. Unbelievable no one was hurt. Is it true what they say? That it was arson?”
Everyone loves a crime story.
“That’s what they’re saying,” I said. “They have some security video, which doesn’t prove anything. The building had faulty wiring.”
He clasped his manicured fingers as if in prayer and leaned into his words. “It seems everyone is taking an interest. And not only on the news, I mean. I had my supper at Bella Noce last evening, sitting at my usual spot by the bar, and I overheard some Russian gentlemen talking about it.”
The Bella Noce was an expensive restaurant down the street from Mr. Gupta’s shop. Known for its high-end prostitutes and international criminals. Suppliers of military equipment, cocaine, sla
ves, blood diamonds, and so forth. Outside, black-jeaned valets who sported earpieces like they were secret agents on a high security detail instead of punks who parked cars shuffled about a small fleet of Ferraris, Aston Martins, and Escalades. Mr. Gupta trolled the place, no doubt, for newly moneyed clients.
“Perhaps you misunderstood. No one’s interested in an old place like that,” I said. It had to be a coincidence. Mr. Gupta didn’t even understand Russian, as far as I knew.
Mr. Gupta pulled some pants from a drawer and matched them to various shirts. He displayed everything on the cutting table.
“Equally interesting,” he said, “another man joined them. They ordered a bottle of champagne and toasted the burning of your building.”
“Toasted?”
“Indeed, they were merry. Slapping each other on the back and much pinching of cheeks. Now, take off your dirty trousers and see what I want you to try.”
Whatever else he had to say was lost to me. The idea that Courtney’s thugs were connected to the fire jumped from suspicion to serious possibility. Or worse. Like some type of bat soup flu shooting from outbreak to pandemic overnight, my panic needle snapped to red. Measures had to be taken. Right away. They were out to kill me.
Mr. Gupta took no notice of my spiralling mood. He talked me into a new suit, some shirts, new jeans, underwear, socks, belts, and a windbreaker because, he noted, autumn would soon be upon us. He apologized that the suit had to be an off-the-rack job because there was no time for a proper tailor-made. I signed the invoice, which would be billed to the Business. Then, with my new wardrobe wrapped in tissue paper and folded into brown bags, I descended the stairs back to the street.
Outside, danger skulked in the reeds. The situation needed a cool head, not panic, which I would’ve kept had I not been so committed to survival. I zoned out. I pictured Courtney’s thugs outside Mr. Gupta’s shop hauling me into the back of their Escalade. Bolt cutters on my thumb. There was Courtney with my thumb in a shoebox before he flushed it down the toilet.
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