by Mike Barry
“Did you tell him?” Marasco said.
The blond nodded. “I told him. You told me to, right? So of course I did.”
“That’s good. How did he take it?”
The blond shrugged. “How do I know how he took it? He’s very cool. A very cool type.”
That, Marasco thought, dismissing the blond with a nod, sending him out the short steps to the grounds, was for sure. Whatever else this Burt Wulff was or was not he was a man of almost no visible emotion. Perhaps what he had told Marasco was the truth; he indeed was a dead man, to kill him would be simply to finish the job. But that was hard to believe.
Marasco liked life too much, he found it too interesting, it meant too much for him to think that there was such a thing as a man who could toss it away as Wulff seemed willing to. He had worked hard at life, manipulated it the way a juggler worked a group of balls in the air; now at forty-eight he had everything bouncing and moving neatly in the air and he intended to keep it that way for another thirty years, twenty at least, all things being equal.
He downed half of the scotch outside the living room so that Pauline would take it to be just a short, watered one and walked in, finding her as he had left her on the couch, listening to the music that poured out of the speakers. Opera? Something like opera he guessed; at least there were voices and strings and no real tune. All of it sounded pretty much the same to Marasco. But if it gave her pleasure she could have it on all the time for all he cared and sooner or later he would stop making excuses and even go with her to one of her opera nights. Why not? Wife number three was the real stuff; he had to admit it. Third try never fails, three on a match and what he had here was the real item.
He sat beside her on the couch, never too closely, Pauline did not appreciate affection outside of the bedroom and even there insisted upon it only on her terms. He stretched out an arm, touched her hand, smiled and leaned his head back against the wall. It was a little boring, Marasco was willing to admit, but compared to how and where he had spent evenings years ago it suited. It suited very well.
“Who were those two men who came through the gate this afternoon?” Pauline asked absently.
Marasco shifted a little on the couch. “Which two? When?”
“When I was on the tennis court. About four o’clock.”
“Oh,” Marasco said, “customers.”
“I never saw one of them before. The other has been around a few times but one was a stranger.”
“New customer,” Marasco said and winced slightly. He ran his fingers along his wife’s palm. “Just business.”
“Anything important?”
“No. Nothing too important.”
“You know,” Pauline said moving toward him slightly, “I have absolutely no idea of what you’re doing. People come in and out all day, you’re here and gone and I have absolutely no idea of what’s going on.”
“Is it important?” Marasco said, “do you really need to know what’s going on?”
“No,” Pauline said. Her fingers brushed against his, Marasco felt the familiar warmth, “but sometimes you can get curious, can’t you?”
“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Marasco with slight unease. “Didn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” Pauline said. “Did it?”
“Once upon a time.”
“I’m not a cat.”
“Oh yes you are,” Marasco said and moved imperceptibly closer to her. Why did he always feel with this woman that each approach was the very first? Why did each approach necessitate seduction? It was like starting from the beginning time and again which on the one hand could be very exciting—and, in his late forties, he was not one to knock excitement—but on the other hand, times like now when a man simply wanted in an uncomplicated way to get laid without preliminaries, could be very exasperating. She looked up at him, the bland, impenetrable features as if sculptured, and he put a hand to her cheek feeling the cool surfaces, feeling the slow rising excitement as he drew her against him realizing that this evening was not going to be too difficult. They would always surprise you, these women, just when you felt you had them figured out they would veer in a different direction. Marasco drew his wife against him and thoughts of the missed shipment, of Terello, of the big clown in the basement went scuttling away down a long, dark corridor.
“I smell something,” Pauline said.
“What’s that?”
She pushed her hands against his chest, disengaged him gently but firmly, her head raised. “Don’t you?” she said, sniffing in what was even then a patrician way. “Don’t you smell something?”
“Look,” Marasco said, “you can’t do this to me. I want—”
“I’m not putting you off,” she said with irritation. “I tell you, I smell something.” She stood rapidly, backpedalled. “Don’t you?”
And then Marasco did smell it. Desire or at least preoccupation may have blocked his sinuses but now, attention drawn, he took in the odor that Pauline had sensed before he. It was a high, dense sweetness, behind it something blacker like the odor of combustion and in an instant, for reasons that he could not quite understand, Marasco felt himself seized by a mounting, unreasoning fear. He had never liked fire. And fire was not something which happened to you in Islip.
“You do smell it,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, standing, “I do.” And indeed he did; he could not understand why he had not minutes before because once conscious of it the odor was overpowering, it lapped at him, came at him in sickening, sweetish ripples and Marasco found himself gagging. One hand on his wife he moved toward the door, the odor coming at him more and more rapidly. He could feel it beginning to straighten him up; the first tendrils of the odor reached his lungs. Marasco gagged.
“What is it Albert?” Pauline said. “What’s going on here?”
“I don’t know,” he said, holding onto her but for comfort or protection he did not know. He leaned out the door, beginning to choke her and looked toward the rear stairs.
He could barely see them. Thin knives of smoke were coming up from below. He could feel them digging at him like spears.
“We’re on fire, Albert!” Pauline screamed, “the house is on fire!”
That’s ridiculous, Marasco wanted to say, fires are something that happen in tenements on the Lower East Side; junkies are rolled and wrapped in fires all the time but nothing like that ever happens in Islip, Long Island. He opened the door to the basement, felt the heat storming at him, groaned and by leaning all of his suddenly-panicked weight on the door managed to get it closed, turned toward his wife with streaming eyes. He began to feel the fear, then. It was like nothing he had ever before known.
“Where are the girls?” he said.
“They’re both out for the evening,” she said, “you see? you don’t even care where your daughters are.”
“I do,” he said, “I do.” Strains of opera lofted foolishly from the living room; something happened to the wiring then and one of the speakers began to rumble, a high, splitting whine that caused him to put his hands in his ears. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
“The fire department—”
“No time,” Marasco said, “no time.” He was panicking now for sure and in some detached corner of the mind he knew this but he had to get out. Fire could suffocate, it could kill; the odor was beating on him now like a bird, he could suffocate here in his own house unless he got out. “Let’s go,” he said, seizing her by a shoulder, “for God’s sake, let’s get out.”
It was getting suddenly difficult to see in the hallway or maybe that too was the panic reaction. He reached out, touched her shoulder, brought her to him and gave her a push ahead.
“Go,” he said, “get out of here.”
“We can’t just go, Albert. The house—”
“The hell with the house!” Marasco screamed, “I can’t see!” the basement door coming open again and thick, greenish plumes of smoke right behind it; the smoke gripping him
like ropes; the blanket of smoke tearing at his neck, squeezing, constricting. He tried to close the door but at that point lost all orientation whatsoever and found that he could not.
It was then that panic utterly consumed Albert Marasco. In his own house, no more than six yards from the nearest exit, the fire still only at the smoky, warning stage, plenty of time to deal with it if only he could have, Marasco lost control. In his mind was a voice and the voice was saying get out, get out, save yourself now before it’s too late, just get out and it was this voice alone to which Marasco responded. It was the only thing that mattered, the only communication left in the world: the voice that told him get out and he shrieked yes, I will, I will and headed toward the voice, the beckoning voice that would be his salvation if only he could heed it.
The voice knew. He must trust the voice. Get out it said and Marasco obeyed. He forgot his wife, the exit, instructions, possibilities, sinking into the certainty that only one thing mattered and that was escape. Was it possible that the man listening to it now had not ten minutes before been sitting on a couch with his wife, listening to opera, gently trying to nudge her into sex? Impossible. Impossible. The man who was listening to the voice had no wife. Had no couch, no feelings about the opera one way or the other, certainly no interest in sex. The man responding to the voice had no estate, no business, no contact, no intricate network of supplies and appointments, rendezvous and conditions which had made him behind the guise of the respectable, one of the most significant drug traffickers on the East Coast.
The thing in the hallway was a blind, staggering animal who heard only the call for its own preservation. Listening, waving its arms, stumbling in the darkness and the tongues of smoke, the thing that had been Albert Marasco lurched one way, lurched the other, collided with the swinging door, lost its balance and fell gracelessly, screaming all the way, down the flight of stairs toward the basement.
Landing at the end of the fall, babbling, in Burt Wulff’s arms.
IX
It had gone even more easily than he had thought. Wulff had known from the instant of ignition that he would have no problem in establishing a fire; it was the cheapest glue imaginable and endlessly combustible. Thank the contractor for that; he had sized up Marasco and decided to take the man over. The problem was whether Wulff in the process of creating a fire would be incinerated in the room; it would make a nice, neat, tight little coffin for a man six feet four and the walls tumbling in around him would press slabs of pain into his body for awful, wrenching instants before the last moments. Wulff knew that he was a dead man already but there were ways and ways of dying; if it were all the same to circumstance, he would just as soon die the second time without pain. Feeling the heat pressing against his body, the already rising odor of the glue he had found himself for the first time that day on the outside of panic, but then, hurling his weight over and again against the door he had burst free. Fire had weakened not only the glue it seemed but the very connections holding the house together. Hell, the way the thing was made you could probably have demolished it just by vigorously jumping up and down a few times. A man like the blond could probably have carried out the entire upstairs on his shoulders.
Wulff came out of the room quickly, seeking the stairs. That would be his only problem, working out the geometry of the bottom and getting the hell out of there but the fire provided not only heat but light, and Wulff found the stairwell immediately. The flames traced a clear, clean path out of his cubicle, swung toward the heavy boiler pumping like a heart at the far corner, then almost majestically pivoted and walked their way to the opposite wall. The whole place was going up incredibly faster than he could have hoped. When the flames hit the boiler there was going to be a hell of an explosion. Already, Wulff could smell the thin, escaping gas.
But there was margin. Enough margin. Breathing heavily, he lowered his head and charged at the stairs the way that you were trained to break into a suspect’s room: no wasted motion, all activities concentrated on the front end. Taking the steps two at a time as he was it must have been those instincts which had saved him when the heavy, clawing weight of Albert Marasco had landed in his arms. Wulff swayed, felt his right foot begin to lose purchase, thought for one sick moment that he was going to carry Marasco’s body below the boards and into hell but his motion had been pitched forward, all of his body weight had been veered toward going up.
The balance held. He dragged the man upstairs.
He could have tossed the man into the flaming basement and closed doors behind him, of course. Left him to incinerate there. But something beyond instinct caused him to hold onto Morasco, struggling to make the last four or five steps of the ascent. The man was semi-conscious, babbling, shrieking, lunging at Wulff’s eyes with burnt fingers like little talons. There was no attack in it, only panic. Marasco literally did not know where he was; he did not know who was holding him. Mewling, spitting, crying, Marasco clung to Wulff, his body shaking and shifting. He was much lighter than Wulff would have thought. A little man. One hundred and thirty, one hundred and forty pounds. A hoist carry was easy.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” Marasco whispered, “I’ve got to get out.”
“You’re out,” Wulff said, “you’re out now,” and came through the door at the top. One quick glance behind; the flames were charging after them like dancers. The hall itself was beginning to incinerate, little pockmarks on the floor, black rings on the walls. The house was going to collapse inwards rather than out, imploding upon itself like an apple crushed in a man’s hand. Oh, the builder had done his work well on this one. Wulff looked at the thing in his arms and with revulsion tossed Marasco to the floor, stood over him. Hard to see now; the smoke was whipping into his eyes. “Out,” Marasco was whimpering on the floor, “I’ve got to get out.”
“You’ll get out,” Wulff said, “oh you’ll get out.”
“Please,” the thing said, whimpering, scrambling on the floor. It seemed to be trying to achieve a sitting posture. Wulff put a foot in the man’s chest and pushed him prone. It prone.
“Fire,” the thing babbled, “I always knew that there was going to be a fire—”
“Where is it?” Wulff said, “where’s the next step, Marasco?”
“Fire. Oh my God, I’m going to die.”
“Who takes it after you, Marasco?” Wulff said and kicked the thing. He inhaled smoke, looked at the little flame-dancers ringing them. Not much more time now.
He kicked the thing again.
“I want to know the next step in the detail, Marasco,” he said. “It’s a chain, a never-ending chain. Who’s next? Who do you take it to?”
“I’ve got to get out,” the thing mewled and tried to crawl toward a door blindly sensed. Wulff kicked it again.
“Stay put,” he said.
The thing rolled on its back and looked up at Wulff, eyes glinting with tears. Recognition seemed to assault it. “Please,” it said.
“Where are the others?”
“What others?”
“The others in the house. Your wife, your daughters. Your blond boyfriend.”
The thing came up on its elbows. “I don’t know,” it said hoarsely, “don’t know. Got out I guess. Got to get out too.”
Wulff kicked it down to the floor, heard sirens and a gong in the distance. So someone at the gatehouse had finally turned in an alarm. Not much time now.
“You supply the junk and take the money,” Wulff said, “but you’re small time. Islip isn’t anywhere; you live in a house built like paper. You’re nothing, Marasco. Who’s next? Who’s next up the line?”
“Don’t know. Don’t know what you’re talking about. Don’t know—”
“Tell me or I’ll leave you here, Marasco.”
“No.”
“I’ll leave you here to suffocate. They won’t even find your ashes, Marasco, they’ll all be mixed into the embers of the house. Your wife won’t even have something to cremate. But don’t worry about it. These
funeral directors do marvelous things these days.”
The sirens opened up, penetrated the air, came closer. Wulff’s eyes were already squeezed half-shut, he was weeping from the fumes, knew that he could not hold out much longer himself. His physical reserves were near the breaking point. Still he pressed on. There was some margin. There had to be some margin, enough to squeeze information out of the thing on the floor.
The thing extended its arms, looked up. “Carry me out,” it said.
“What?”
“For God’s sake, Wulff, I can’t move. Don’t let me die here.”
“You’re going to die here.”
“No. No.”
“Then tell me who it goes to next? Who’s your contact point? I figure you for just a middleman, Marasco. You’re the guy in the center, working on margin. Who’s up or down? Who’s inside and out? Tell me. Tell everything.”
The thing got up on its elbows, looking at Wulff through a haze of stinking fumes. “I didn’t have anything to do with your girl, Wulff,” it said.
He started to shake. “Shut up,” he said.
“I looked it up. I told you, I understand everything about you. That had nothing to do with us.”
“Just tell me where it goes, Marasco.”
“You’re all wrong,” the thing on the floor said. It was crying. “We didn’t have anything to do with it at all. I don’t know what you think happened but it wasn’t us. It was something else entirely.”
He hit the man. Underneath the pulp he could feel heat, beneath that the suggestion of ash. Coming up fast he kicked a shin, heard it crack under his heel. Marasco squealed.
“Who’s next on line, Marasco?”
“Get me out of here.”
“Who’s next?”
“I’m dying, Wulff, I’m dying.”
Wulff knelt over him. The man was in extremis; his eyes cold and open, the face structured in shadows of bone. He inhaled; his breath caught, he gasped, and knew then that time was running out; he had to get out of here. One last try. He put a finger in the man’s belly, indented in the soft place, pushed.