She climbed the stairs and rang the bell, hearing it echo in the grand foyer on the other side of the front door. She waited, then punched it again. Nothing.
She knocked and the door swung open silently. “Helllloooo,” she called, sticking her head inside. “Yoo-hoo! Mr. Johnson? Blythe?”
Still nothing. “Oh, come on,” she thought, “I know I have the right day, I checked it twice.”
She entered the mansion where it was so quiet she could hear a clock somewhere nearby tick-tocking out the seconds. She sat down in an ornate chair to wait for someone to appear, but after ten minutes got up.
After a few more “yoo-hoo’s,” she tiptoed down the long hallway to the door leading to the bright green world of the park. She let herself out, giving another “Helllooooo” that died in her throat.
Gray smoke blotted out the sun, its acrid smell and taste setting off a panic in Bertie.
She turned to run for the front door and her car and get out of there when she heard a dog barking. She headed down the hallway to the garden door and heard raised voices. One of them sounded like Cully’s.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Bertie froze. Cully? They were both due out here for the Garbage meeting, but if he was outside he must see the smoke and flames. “Why isn’t he headed for the road, too?”
She had to see what was important enough for him to risk life over. She ran down the steps, then eased along the mansion wall trying to get close enough to see without being seen.
She stopped where the mansion turned a corner. The voices were louder, but still not audible. “Oh come on, Bertie,” she thought, “look and then get the hell out of here. Just look and then go.”
She eased her head around the corner. Cully was standing in front of a big hole in the ground, talking with Dillard Johnson, whose back was to Bertie. “Why don’t they get out of there?” she thought. Bling kept jumping on Johnson, until he gave the dog a vicious kick that sent it yelping and tumbling away, to lie motionless in a small, furry heap.
She bent her knees and, in a crouch, ran toward the two vines that made up the Big Johnson’s “vineyard.” She skidded to a stop behind the one closest to the two men and picked up the conversation in the middle. Fortunately, they were so deep into it that neither noticed her.
“I don’t care that the dog likes you better, it’s my wife’s bitch,” Dillard Johnson said.
“Bling isn’t a bitch, she’s a he.”
“She’s whatever my wife wants her to be. A lot of money gives you power, do you understand me? Power!”
Bertie, who was in a squat that was killing her hamstrings, couldn’t believe her ears. They were arguing over the dog? “Come on!” she thought.
“You can’t have the dog and you can’t have my wife, either.”
Cully wanted Annabelle-Khov Johnson? Was the man nuts? Bertie peeked through the vine, but a large bundle of grapes was in her way. She tried to move it to one side, but it swung back. She finally just pulled the bunch off the vine; several were crushed and her fingers started turning purple. She licked her fingers.
Cully was laughing. “I don’t want Annabelle,” he said.
“Not Annabelle,” Johnson snarled at him.
“OK, I don’t want Khov.”
“You know I’m talking about Blythe. She’s the mother of my children and I still want her.”
Bertie fell on her rear-end. Blythe Kees and Cully?
Cully’s face was turning red. “What are you, a Mormon? One wife per customer, buddy,” he shouted at Johnson. “Blythe isn’t your wife, she hasn’t been for years. Is that what this is all about? Why don’t we ask her what she wants? Where is she, because we’ve all got to get out of here…now!”
Bertie picked herself up and crouched again behind the vine in time to see Dillard Johnson turn slightly toward the rampaging fire. He had a gun in his hand and it was pointed at Cully. She gasped.
“Some of us will get out, but not you. Not until you learn that what’s mine is mine and no one, NO ONE, can take it away. You’ve been snooping around my warehouses, taking pictures. Do you think I didn’t know? There are cameras everywhere on my properties. What were you planning to do, win a Pulitzer? Ha! Newspapers are done, you idiot. Start sending cell phone pictures to Fox – that’s the future of journalism.”
“What?” Cully’s confusion was evident in his voice. “Yeah, I took pictures of some homeless people in front of warehouses. One of them was yours? So what?”
“Hey, Sonny-Jim, that one picture could send me to jail. I can’t allow that.” Bertie could see Johnson’s back tense. Oh, lord, was he going to shoot?
She tried to stand but her legs were cramping. “Not now,” she thought. “NOT NOW.”
“Wait,” Cully said, the urgency in his voice apparent over the increasing roar of the fire, burning its way up the canyon. “Wait! At least tell me what the hell I took a picture of that’s so important?”
“OK, I’ll spell it out for you – those warehouses are empty. They’re supposed to be filled with bottles and cans and the rest of the garbage that I’m being paid to recycle. I have a big recycling contract with the city, but I’ve paid enough ‘public servants’ to look the other way while I dump that junk in the landfill with the rest of the garbage. If a picture of an empty warehouse got out and the right people saw it, I’d go to jail. Being rich isn’t nearly as much fun in jail.”
“You’re going to kill me over garbage?”
“You moron, garbage is big money these days. Besides, I’ve already killed Rowley Poke over garbage, what’s one more? He was going to turn me in so he could run for the Senate. Me … ME!”
“You cut his throat?”
“Yes, I cut his throat – I cut it with my double-double Platinum American Express card. Death by credit card! I love it. I rubbed the edge on the wall down in the garden till it was sharper than a razor. The police were so dumb; I even showed the card to them and they didn’t get it. Ha ha ha.”
Johnson’s laugh chilled Bertie, but even more frightening was the normal conversational tone his voice assumed when he added, “Whew! I’m really glad I got a chance to tell someone that.”
Bertie had enough feeling in her legs to stand, just enough for Cully to see her. She frantically put her finger to her lips in the universal shhhh sign and motioned for Cully to move to one side. She held a finger up to signify “wait” and then pantomimed running at Johnson and pushing him.
Cully widened his eyes slightly, which Bertie hoped meant that he understood. She started tiptoeing toward them.
“Unfortunately, I had to kill Brown, too. He saw me rubbing the card on the wall and figured it out. I overheard him asking for that dumb broad Bertie on the phone one day, but he hung up when he saw me. I had to shoot him before he could tell and now I’m going to kill you.”
“You can’t get away with it; even with a fire they’ll find my body with a bullet in it and know I was murdered.”
“You’re going down into the old septic tank that’s right behind you. Your body will never be found. You’ll just be one of the many victims of the fire.”
Bertie charged Johnson and gave him a mighty shove. The gun fired, but Johnson had already lost his grip on it. It tumbled to the ground and bounced away. Bertie saw Cully move to one side and go down hard and then heard a splash as Johnson fell in the old septic tank, screaming as he went.
She trembled at the edge, not sure if she could maintain balance before falling in after Johnson. She scrabbled at the air, trying to grab desperately for something that just wasn’t there.
“Help, Cully!” she screamed.
She teetered for what seemed to her like an eternity, then, as the earth started crumbling along the edge of the hole, she started tipping toward’s it. She could smell the septic tank, strong over the smoke from the fire.
Her last thought was, “Oh my God, I’m going to eat shit and die.”
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
Cully’s strong hand
grasped the back pocket of her slacks and held on. She could it hear it ripping and vowed in that moment never to buy cheap pants again if only the pocket would last long enough for Cully to save her.
Her arms windmilled wildly but Cully gave a huge yank and she teetered back onto solid land and safety and just as the pocket of earth gave away completely. She collapsed onto the ground, crying and gasping for air.
Over her sobs and the crackling of the fire, she could hear Dillard Johnson screaming down in the deep, dark hole.
The fire was almost on them, eucalyptus trees at the bottom of the canyon were bursting into flames and the wind was catching the embers and blowing them toward them.
“C’mon,” Cully said, “We’ve got to get him out of there before the fire gets here.”
“No!” Bertie said. She leaned over the edge of the pit and said, “Johnson, JOHNSON, shut up for a second and listen. The fire is coming, just stay there and after it passes, we’ll come and get you. You’ll be safe down there. The fire will pass over you, and if it doesn’t, get under the water.”
Incoherent screams and the roar of the fire answered her.
“Bertie, we can’t leave him there – “
“Oh yes we can. Go get Bling, we have to get out of here. He’ll be fine.”
Cully ran and picked up the little dog and started running with Bertie away from the fire and the screaming man in the ground.
Cully’s long legs ate up the ground, but Bertie’s shorter, chubbier legs weren’t built for sprints. He took her hand and pulled her so hard that her upper body was traveling faster than her feet.
“Cully, slow down just a little, please. I’m going to fall,” she gasped.
His pace faltered, but he kept going toward the mansion. “I have to get you into the pool, then look for Blythe. She wouldn’t have left without me, so he must’ve locked her in somewhere.”
“Oh, my God, you don’t think he killed her, do you?” she managed to gasp out.
“Don’t say that. Just don’t say that. She’s alive, I know she has to be alive.”
They turned the far corner of the mansion and the pool came into view, smoke almost obscuring it. It looked like a mirage in a heavy fog to Bertie, who was coughing so hard she could hardly stay upright.
Cully stopped and thrust Bling into her arms. “Get in the water. When the flames get up here, duck under. You’ll be safe here.” He suddenly squawked. “Bertie! What happened, your lips are blue, what’s wrong? Are you having a heart attack?”
Bertie, panting and gasping for air, reached up to touch her lips. Her fingers were blue, too.
“No, I squashed some grapes while I was waiting for Johnson to shoot you. Don’t worry about it, go get Blythe and get back here.” She turned toward the pool, leaped off the edge and into the water in a controlled slide, keeping the little dog above the waves.
She turned and saw Cully disappearing into the smoke.
The water was cold; it was October and the heat hadn’t been turned on. Or maybe with Brown gone, no one was paying attention to details like that.
Bertie started to shiver, from the water, from the shock of almost falling into a poop-filled hole, and from the horrible fear the fire was creating in her. Bling was conscious now, licking her face and whining.
She couldn’t see any flames yet, so she crawled out the other end of the pool, holding Bling by his collar. A bin full of pool toys stood against it and she started flinging balls and floats out till she found a kid’s mask and snorkel. She kept digging and at the bottom, found another mask and snorkel. A rope hung nearby. She tied the rope to Bling’s collar and took him and the snorkels with her back into the deeper water.
Shivering, she stood in the water and waited. The fire’s throaty voice was growing louder, the smoke even thicker. She started counting. She’d give Cully three minutes, then go look for him.
At one-hundred-Mississippi she said, “To hell with it,” and clambered out of the pool again. She tied the rope to the bin of toys and hoped the dog was smart enough to get in the water if the fire reached him before she could get back. Then she ripped her sopping wet shirt off and tied it around her head, leaving only her eyes uncovered.
She ran toward the back of the mansion, through the rare trees and plantings of Snarky Park and toward the ornate staircase to the French doors that led inside. A hose, coiled and looking like a snake in the dense smoke, was curled up near the stairs. She turned the handle, grabbed an end and ran into the house, dragging it behind her and into the house.
The water spurted on the parquet floor, but Bertie kept going, calling “Cully, Cully, where are you?”
The air felt hot on her bare arms and back. Inanely, she was glad she’d worn a good bra today, not a holey one held together by safety pins.
She turned the water on herself because the burning hot air was drying out her clothing. She sloshed toward the ornate staircase, feeling her way through the long hall toward its first step.
Still dragging the hose and still calling “Noodles!” she started up with the steps, praying that he and Blythe Kees were up there.
She dropped to her knees and crawled up the steps, one at a time, each seeming an Everest higher than the last. Near the top, she heard a groan and turned to the left, toward it.
She almost fell over Cully where he’d fallen on the floor, covering Blythe Kees’ body with his. She shook him, and ripped at his shirt, pulling off a big shred that she held under the spurting hose. She pushed it up against his mouth to filter the smoke, then did the same for Blythe.
The cold water revived Cully and between them, they pulled and carried Blythe down the stairs, following the hose through the house. Outside in the park, the wind was blowing embers in a flaming shower over them. Cully picked up Blythe and ran toward the pool with Bertie following.
Cully slipped into the water and Bertie slid Blythe slowly over the edge to him, then jumped in. Bling was jumping and barking and she pulled him into the water by the rope attached to his collar.
To Bertie, it felt like a slow-moving nightmare set in the crater of an active volcano. The trees in the canyon below were twisting and bending in the strong wind, as if writhing in pain. Wherever a firebrand landed on a branch, it would glow and then erupt in flames.
Fire was now leaping from tree to tree, climbing from the bottom of the canyon to the top where the humans crowded together in a corner of the pool. Blythe had regained consciousness and the four of them waited while all around them, hell reigned over Snarky Park.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
Bertie sat on the side of the road in front of the remains of Snarky Park. The sun was trying to muscle its way through the smoke drifting up from the ruins of the trees, the mansion, the ground itself, but only occasionally succeeded. The walls of the mansion stood black against the horizon, jagged fingers reaching for sunlight. Some of the first floor remained intact, but the second story, where Johnson had locked his ex-wife in a room, was gone.
A palette of black and gray dominated the landscape; a Hieronymus Bosch painting come to life.
Dirt, ashes and soot caked Bertie’s shredded clothing, her hair and her skin. She was barefoot and topless, except for her filthy bra, and too tired even to be hungry. An eerie quiet lay over the small portion of the earth where Bertie sat, numb and unmoving.
She, Cully, Blythe and Bling had clung tenuously to life during the night while the fire had howled and grabbed at them with its flaming claws. At its zenith, when the air was so thick with flames and smoke that it was like some malignant god had covered them with a burning, suffocating blanket, Blythe Kees had panicked and tried to scrabble her way up the edge of the pool to run away. There was no place to run except directly into the flames and Bertie and Cully had had to hold her down, her fury and fear giving her a strength that terrified Bertie.
They’d survived. But not everyone had made it through the night.
When it was finally safe enough to leave the pool, Bertie ran
to the old septic tank. The wild and tangled ground cover that had hid it so successfully for decades was gone, leaving a black and gaping hole in the ruined earth.
Bertie slowed, then crept up to the hole as quietly as possible, fearful of Johnson, even though she knew he no longer had a gun. She looked down the steep sides of the tank and saw him, Dillard Johnson, floating face up in the shitty water, one side of his head a bloody mess. His eyes were open and so was his mouth, which was clogged with debris.
Cully came up to the edge and looked over. “Oh, hell,” he said, pulling Bertie away.
“What happened, Cully? What happened to him? He was OK, alive and screaming at us, when we ran for the pool. How could … I mean, how?”
“I don’t know, Bert,” he said, putting an arm around her. “If I had to guess, I’d say he tried to climb out and hit his head when he fell back in. I can’t think of any other way he could get a wound like that.” Cully didn’t add that Johnson had probably drowned after falling unconscious into the water.
“He was a murderer and a crook, too, but he didn’t deserve to die like that. No one does,” Bertie said as they walked back to the pool where Blythe sat with Bling, as if in a trance.
“Let me tell her about Johnson,” Cully said. He walked over, and lowered himself to the ground next to Blythe.
“What the hell?” Bertie thought, “Did he think I was going to arm wrestle him over who was going to tell her?” It was the last flash of Bertie-ness for awhile. She wandered away from the two, who were sitting close to each other, their heads touching, Bling huddled next to Cully.
And there she sat. For how long, she didn’t know; the world didn’t run its usual course through time anymore.
The whomp-whomp-whomp of churning helicopter blades finally roused Bertie. She looked up and saw the sleek black dragonfly body hovering over her head. She stood, then jumped up and down, shouting and waving. The helicopter waggled its body in response and flew south.
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