“Oh yeah?”
Groaning, Bishop rubbed at his eyes.
“Here we go. Do I really have to hear this again?”
“Take your boy Luck, for example,” Klootey said, ignoring the protests of his partner. “He drives a Lexus, right?”
Darger nodded.
“See, I think that’s hilarious.”
“Why is that?”
“A Lexus is just a Toyota that costs more. Made in the same factories and everything. From what I see, they don’t even look much different. The Lexus might have gold accents instead of chrome, but the body shape is about the same. At least Cadillac has the decency to make huge boats instead of just putting a different logo on a fuckin’ Malibu and charging more for it, you know?”
“Is that true?” Darger said, leaning forward to snatch a few M&Ms from the bag. “They’re literally made in the same factories?”
“Oh yeah. Same for a bunch of brands. Domestically speaking, Lincolns are just Fords, and like I said, Cadillacs are Chevys. But Infinitis are Nissans. Acuras are Hondas.”
“Huh. So do you think most of the people buying the luxury version know they’re basically just buying an overpriced brand name?”
Klootey shook his head.
“Some of them must. But it’s really only about the idea of luxury, anyway. People like Luck don’t pay more because they think the product is better. They pay more because of what they want to believe about themselves. The story they want to tell themselves and everyone else. It’s a status symbol above all, a way to feel better about yourself. This is a person who wants to feel important and needs other people to feel that way as well.”
“Oh,” Darger said. “I thought you were going to say he was overcompensating for… you know… what’s the euphemism I’m looking for? Small sausage.”
Klootey laughed.
“Hey, maybe some of that, too. Anyway, I could sense that about ol’ Agent Luck before I even saw his ride. Just has that… fancy lad feel about him, I guess. The stiff posture. The slick haircut. I would’ve guessed BMW or something for him, maybe even a Mercedes, but… a Lexus? Come on, dude.”
Darger smiled to herself, thinking about the crappy minivan Luck drove when she’d first met him. He’d certainly upgraded his image in that regard.
“Well, now I’m curious what kind of car you drive.”
“I don’t,” Klootey said.
“You don’t… have a car?”
“Nope,” he said, crossing his arms. “Southern California is made for an open-air experience. I ride a Harley.”
“Interesting. So you bring an outsider’s perspective to this whole thing.”
Bishop scoffed, but Klootey seemed to like the idea.
“Exactly.”
“OK, then,” she said. “What about me? Any guesses about what kind of car I drive back home?”
Klootey’s eyes narrowed to slits.
“Hm… Well, you seem like you’d value individuality quite a bit, so that’d almost make me think of something like a MINI Cooper. You can customize them pretty much however you want right on the website. Get one that’s exactly to your taste in every way: color, tires, exterior accents. That’s why you see MINIs with the union jack on them and crap like that. However…” He sucked his teeth, thinking. “Something about the MINI isn’t quite right for you. A little too rich for your blood, I think. Lacks practicality. You’d go for something no-frills. Efficiency above all else.”
There was another pause, which Darger suspected was mostly for drama.
“That makes my final answer a Toyota Prius.”
Darger stopped chewing.
“Well, damn. You’re right.”
“Don’t tell him that,” Bishop moaned. “Now he’s really never gonna shut up about this.”
“Hey, I have to give credit where it’s due. That was some decent profiling.”
“Aw, I don’t pretend to be anything fancy. I just call ‘em like I see ‘em, Agent Darger.”
The keywords of Klootey’s speech echoed in Darger’s head: Practical. Efficient. No frills. She couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride. She wasn’t one of the people trying to prove something to the world with her car. That had to be a good thing, right?
“So based on your explanation, I take it that you see the Prius as the superior choice to Luck’s Lexus?”
Mouth full of M&Ms, Klootey said, “Oh. Fuck no.”
Darger flinched. Her mouth popped open.
“A Prius is a soulless machine designed for yuppies and their kin,” Klootey said. “Let’s just say the things should come with a goddamn Apple bumper sticker pre-attached. And every time you start it up, it should just automatically whisk you through a Starbucks drive-thru.”
He paused to chew and swallow.
“It’s more like driving a computer than a car, anyway. You jam on the accelerator, and the thing whirs a little like a laptop fan kicking on or something. No soul at all. I mean, say what you will about the upper crust wannabe snobs like Luck who drive a Lexus — at least the thing is a real fuckin’ car.”
Darger started laughing then.
“No offense,” Klootey said, popping another handful of candy into his maw.
Still chuckling, Darger shook her head.
“None taken.”
Chapter 26
The surveillance on Sablatsky was done in eight-hour rotations. When the teams assigned to the graveyard shift arrived at 11 PM, Bishop put the CRV in gear and headed back to LAPD headquarters to drop Darger off.
Luck called as she was walking to her rental. She paused to dig the keys from her bag and answered the phone.
“Anything happen?” he asked.
“Oh yeah. You missed the exciting moment when Sablatsky took his garbage out.”
“He barely moved while we were there, too. Doesn’t seem to be a particularly active guy.”
“If he’s our arsonist, we’ll catch him in the act sooner or later. As long as he doesn’t figure out that we’re watching,” Darger said.
Klootey’s pseudo-profiling came to her then, and she couldn’t help but antagonize Luck a little.
“Did you know your car is just an overpriced Toyota?”
“What?”
“A Lexus is just a Toyota with gold trim instead of chrome.”
“That’s… not true,” Luck said, though he didn’t sound very sure.
“It is. They’re made in the same factories and everything.”
“Yeah, but… I mean, I’ve driven Toyotas before. It’s an entirely different driving experience.”
Darger scoffed.
“Driving experience?”
“Yeah, a Lexus is smoother. Quieter. And all of the control buttons are easier to press.”
Laughing fully now, Darger pressed the key fob to unlock her door.
“You’re joking, right? The buttons are easier to press?”
“Hey, some of us care about the little things, OK? The details.”
“I guess,” she said, snickering. “I’ll talk to you about your ‘little things’ tomorrow.”
On the drive to her hotel, it occurred to Darger that she hadn’t eaten since that afternoon. She considered the bag of peanut M&Ms they’d polished off over the course of the evening and amended that thought: she hadn’t eaten real food since the afternoon.
The red and yellow rotating sign for a Chinese restaurant caught her eye ahead. Her stomach gurgled in response, and she pulled into the parking lot. A few minutes later, she was back on the road with a bag of takeout.
The first thing she did upon entering her hotel room was kick off her boots. Then she walked down the hall in her stocking feet to grab a Coke from the vending machine. Back in her room, she hopped on the bed and dug into the chicken lo mein and spring rolls she’d picked up.
There was a late night talk show on the TV, celebrities having some canned conversation about their canned celebrity movies and canned celebrity lives. She wasn’t particularly interested in w
atching it, but left it on for background noise. She leaned back against the pillows. It felt good to stretch out her legs after eight hours hunched in the backseat of a car. She sighed, realizing she might be looking forward to days or even weeks with more of the same. How long would they have to watch Sablatsky before he did something incriminating?
Darger’s phone chimed out Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.” Her hands were greasy from the spring rolls, so she used her pinky finger nudge the screen closer.
It was Beck.
Wiping her fingers on a paper napkin, Darger answer the phone.
“Agent Darger, this is Georgina Beck. I’m sorry for calling so late.”
“No need to apologize. What can I do for you?”
“Well, I was off duty today. We took the kids to Knotts Berry Farm, something we do every year around this time.” Beck sighed. “I feel like an idiot telling you this, but I left my phone at home. So when my office called this morning to tell me you guys had a person of interest, I didn’t get the message. Obviously. By the time we got home, and dealt with the whole bedtime routine for the kiddos, I didn’t even check my phone until a few minutes ago. Jeez Louise, I sound like the biggest flake in the world.”
Darger chuckled.
“It’s fine. Really. The only thing you missed out on today was a lot of boring, uneventful surveillance.”
“OK, but… I feel like you guys are working your tails off out there, and I just, you know, I want to contribute. All those people killed and wounded in the church fire… those are my people. They need justice, and well, it’s my responsibility to get it for them.”
Darger had an idea then. Chief Macklin might be opposed to the FBI doing their own surveillance, but he could hardly stand in the way of Beck’s department getting in on the action. A devious smile spread over her face. She could just hear Loshak’s voice in her head, accusing her of stirring the pot. She couldn’t help it, though. Sometimes the pot was just asking for it.
“What would you say to partnering up for a stakeout detail tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Beck said. “What time?”
“The morning shift starts at 7 AM.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Great. We can meet at my hotel.”
Chapter 27
Night settles over the city in different shades — the degree of darkness dividing into sections by neighborhood. Downtown, the neon glows all night, bright and warm to the touch, but working one’s way out toward the suburbs, the light pollution dims, softens, retreats. Weak streetlights try to fight off the shadows with mixed results. In some places, the light falls off entirely save for a sliver of moon and, of course, the stars — all those little pinpricks some trillions of miles away.
It’s dark outside Betsy’s apartment. Dark enough, anyway.
The waitress lives in Echo Park in one of those oversized Victorian houses dating back 100 years or so, now converted into four apartments by some slumlord who slapped tan vinyl siding on the place circa 1986 and has ever since left it to slowly rot in the California sun, the porch looking spongy and mossy and soft.
What catches Jim’s eye is not the degrading porch, however, but the dumpster alongside the building. A mattress pokes out, its polyurethane foam the perfect fuel for his purposes — essentially petroleum in foam form. Each time his eyes crawl over that off-white rectangle protruding from the dumpster, his tongue flicks out to touch his lips.
He sits in his SUV for a long time, drumming his hands on the steering wheel, keeping up with the frenetic drumbeats of the fast songs playing softly on the stereo.
Waiting. Waiting for the last lights to go out in one of the upstairs apartments. For the last witness to wink off to Sleepyland so he can get to it.
He shifts in his seat. Finds it increasingly difficult to sit still.
He pictures Betsy again. Drenched in gas. Slow blinking. That lighter creeping ever closer to her shimmering skin.
Hey, she made her choice. No turning back.
A giddiness comes over him. A restless on and off giggling that always seems to afflict him just before a fire, like the prospect of torching something or someone somehow turns him into a hyper child. ADHD.
His eyes outline the mattress again. God, it’s almost perfect. The discarded slab of bedding reaches right up to touch the vinyl siding, and some part of him wonders if the piss-stained Sealy broke out into a sweat at the sight of him. Do these household objects he sacrifices to the gods harbor any fear of him, tremble when he comes near? He believes they should.
Traffic shouldn’t be a problem. Not on a quiet little side street like this one. So long as no one comes by just as he’s standing at the dumpster, it should be no problem at all.
Tonight it’s paraffin that’ll do the deed. A white plastic bottle of lamp oil sits on the passenger seat next to him. He paid cash for it at some dollar store an hour south of here. No cameras. No credit card records. Gotta start throwing off the scent, mixing things up. Patterns of behavior are what get most idiots caught. He must avoid them.
He only waits a few heartbeats after the last light goes out upstairs, though in that short slice of time, a sheen of sweat already slicks his skin. He tastes the salt of it the next time his tongue flicks out to touch his lips.
The giggles have fled him. Instead an almost religious level of stimulation quakes in the center of his person. A thrill so powerful that he feels like he needs to throw up.
He swallows a few times in a dry throat. Tries to shake that vomitous feeling now swelling in his middle. It always feels like this right before. An intense, oddly specific nausea, like spaghetti will come flinging out of his throat, tangled cords of it slithering past his teeth. Always spaghetti, whether he has eaten any recently or not.
No more waiting.
He opens the door. Arms and legs shaking from the adrenaline. Steps down into the night. Clutches the plastic bottle of paraffin to his chest. Closes the door ever so gently behind him.
The night clings to him. Heavy night air with a chill to its touch as though he can feel the darkness itself. Makes his skin crawl with goose bumps just beneath his shoulders.
He crosses the street. Veers toward the alley. Watches the dumpster grow larger. The camera in his head zooming in for the close-up.
He peels open the tab on top of the bottle. Squeezes. Tiny spurts of liquid paraffin jet out, douse strips of the mattress. The shine of it somehow discernible as oily under the yellow glow of the streetlight, that touch of efflorescence.
His shoulder blades rattle a little now as he arcs more and more ropes of paraffin onto the mattress. Hands jittery. Arms spasming.
But Jim doesn’t get scared, he tells himself. Jim lives for these moments. That stretch of quiet focus right before all hell breaks loose? Jim fucking lives for that.
Headlights light up the intersection a half a block down, and Jim holds his breath. The growl of a car’s engine swells in the dark, but the sports car zooms past, unknowing, uninterested. The lights gone faster than they appeared.
Jim blinks a few times. Close. Too close.
What if it’d turned down Betsy’s street? Would that have saved her? Would Jim have backed down?
He mulls it a second. He thinks not. Jim would press on in the face of such adversity. For better or worse.
In any case, best to be quick now. Best to be done with it.
He leans into the dumpster, his top half lowered into the shadowed place. He squints. Sees just what he wants to see. Squirts a few more spritzes of paraffin on some broken down cardboard boxes at the bottom of the dumpster. Someone too lazy to put this in recycling? For shame.
Good news for Jim, though. Better to light it below the fold, so to speak. To give himself time to get away before the blaze really picks up.
His lighter snicks in his hand, little gritty wheel spinning against his thumb, and then the flame snaps to life.
He gasps a little at the sight of it. A reverent breath like he
’s witnessing something spiritual here, something mystical. A glowing, flickering thing he holds in his hand. So small yet so goddamn powerful. This little light of his could bring down buildings, turn cars to smoldering rubble, melt faces clean off of skulls.
And with him at the helm, it would do just that, again and again and again.
He tosses the rest of the bottle of fuel into the fire.
Chapter 28
His body trembles as he watches the fire from across the street. Squirming in the bucket seat of the SUV like some strung-out junkie about to get off after much too long. Maybe that isn’t so far off from what he is.
Black smoke twirls up from below the mattress, the gyrating cloud breaching the open lid, expanding into the night like a living, thrashing thing. Thick coils of it partially block his view of the fire itself. Solid in some areas. Gauzy in others.
The flames rage higher and higher. Growing. Becoming. The tallest orange tendril is a nasty spiraling thing reaching out for the siding of the building. Closer. Closer.
He hears it breathing, sizzling, snapping at the foam. Melting it to a plastic puddle. The sound in some ways more intimate than the sight of the fire, more personal, more sensual.
And his arms fold in front of him as though to embrace himself, his hands clasping the opposite upper arms, massaging at the meat of himself. Skin so slick with sweat it almost feels like touching a fish now, something gutted and wrapped in brown paper at the supermarket.
Panting like a beast. All his skin tingling with an electric throb. Pins and needles prodding every follicle. Little pokes like the time he touched an electric fence as a kid.
It’s too much. Overwhelming. Sensory overload. Even still, he only wants more. More more more. Smoke it. Snort it. Put it in his blood. Boil this destruction on a spoon and slam it into his veins with a syringe.
The twisting orange flame touches the siding now. Little licks at first. Lapping at it almost daintily like a snake’s tongue flicking out of its mouth. Something tender about the contact. Gentle. Almost loving.
Violet Darger (Book 6): Night On Fire Page 14