by Jack Ewing
Dezi insisted he count the bills. He did, with trembling fingers, and the count went on and on. It was all there: seventy-five hundred. The most cash he’d ever held all at once, with the same amount to come again in a few weeks. Somebody up there must like him. Or was it a trap? There was only one way to find out. Toby promised to call before he came over in two days.
He practically skipped down the steps to his truck, stripped off the coveralls and threw them in the cab. With a fist-sized roll of money lumping his pocket, Toby drove away, uncertain of his next destination. Should he go to the bank to open up a checking account or resuscitate his meager savings? Better to hang onto the money for now. He’d get a cash discount when he bought paint and supplies for the Colangelo job from his friendly neighborhood retailer. Besides, that wad of green felt damn good against his thigh.
Toby headed straight to Danzer’s Restaurant. He celebrated his good fortune with a mug of beer and a Reuben on slabs of pumpernickel as thick and wide as both his palms. Flushed with largesse, he bought a couple rounds and was repaid in kind. Pleasantly full and with a mild glow—but in reasonable control of his faculties—when he left four hours later, Toby drove to the Puterbaugh’s neighborhood. He purposely parked several streets away, on the same block as the night before.
The compact sedan he’d noticed still sat there, wearing its coat of dust. In daylight the car was beige, a match for the dead man’s suit. A sheaf of parking ticket mail-in envelopes was held to the windshield by the driver’s wiper. All were signed with a flourish: Officer T. Grady. They were all for the same non-moving violation: failure to comply with alternate-side parking. Usually, such rules, instituted for street sweeping or winter snow removal, were relaxed in warm weather. T. Grady, whoever he—or she—was, must be particularly officious or behind on the quota. Or maybe it was because the sedan was out-of-state: it had Texas plates framed by metal holders imprinted with the name of a car-rental agency in Brownsville. The driver’s-side door was unlocked and Toby was tempted to inspect the interior to see if his instincts were correct. But that could wait until dark. Too many people in the area were taking advantage of nice weather to do yard work or build on their tans for him to prowl the vehicle unseen now. He’d come back tonight.
As he walked towards the Puterbaugh’s a couple fire engines screamed by a half-dozen blocks away. Their sirens trailed away east. Toby felt a pang of pity for the poor people who owned the flaming home.
The Puterbaugh house seemed quiet, blinds drawn, windows closed tight. Not sure what he would say if someone happened to be home, Toby knocked. But there was no answer and after a minute he gave it up. It didn’t look good for Mr. and Mrs. P. He sauntered back to his truck, giving the beige car another quick glance.
A block after he turned onto James, just three blocks from home, he confronted a barricade of two police cars parked front-to-front across the road. Beyond an officer who approached, flashing lights swirled. Helmeted and slicker-covered figures disappeared into a thick cloud of billowing smoke. “What’s happening?” Toby asked the cop, a young blond fellow with the beginnings of a donut gut.
“House fire.” His tone said, Are you blind?
“Which one? I live down that way.”
“Couldn’t say. But you’ll have to keep out of the area until they get it under control or the place burns down.” He waved Toby to the left.
The firemen had a three-block radius cordoned against vehicular traffic. Toby found a parking space and hurried on foot, along with rubbernecks drawn from all directions, towards the fire. Nearer the source of smoke, he glimpsed flames that, through haze, looked as though they were behind translucent glass.
He slowed and other spectators rushed past. No doubt about it now: Toby recognized all the familiar landmarks. The fire was consuming his home.
Chapter 13
The flames were fierce, dancing through the apartment house roof fifty feet into the air when Toby drew close enough to feel heat. He traversed the opposite sidewalk, watching the destruction. Thick, dark smoke funneled upward like a tornado against china-blue sky. The whole upper half and much of the lower floor of the big house were ablaze. Part of the roof had already collapsed. The twisted, buckled metal staircase leading to Toby’s rooms ascended into a crackling inferno. Through a choking pall rent by glowing trails of drifting debris, dim shapes of firemen in neon yellow-trimmed gear and breathing apparatus moved against the fiery backdrop, spraying water from different positions. It wasn’t doing much good: the fire was too far along. Houses on either side were widely spaced and in no immediate danger but they were being wetted down anyway. An ambulance, lights flashing, was parked near a fire engine. Beyond the ambulance sat a local TV news van with a gaudy logo. A slick-looking sports-jacketed man with a mike was interviewing a white-haired man in fire chief’s uniform while a skinny fellow in cutoffs and T-shirt videotaped them both.
Farther down the sidewalk, Toby ran into four of his neighbors huddled together, their eyes fixed on the conflagration and their mouths agape in horror. One of the downstairs girls—Sylvia or Jean, Toby didn’t know which—spotted him first from fifty feet away and charged. Her hair was wet, partly in curlers. Her pink fluffy slippers slapped the concrete and her robe flashed open as she ran, revealing bare legs. Her roommate sprinted over too, followed by the two men.
“Oh, Tobeee, I’m so happy to see you,” Jean or Sylvia squealed. She threw herself against him. Her eyes were wet but it was impossible to tell if the tears were caused by emotion or smoke irritation. In either case, her mascara was a mess. “We didn’t know if you got out,” she murmured against his chest. The other woman, in sweaty T-shirt and jogging shorts, hugged them both, sobbing. Toby returned the embrace.
The bearded tenant who’d just moved in shuffled over. He mumbled a greeting, his eyes on the blaze. Todd patted Toby’s shoulder. “What happened?” Toby asked anybody. “How’d the fire get started?”
The bearded man, in a voice with a lot of nose, said, “It was already going when I got home from work.” He spoke as though afraid of being accused of the crime. He wore a gray suit and held a brushed aluminum case of the type made popular by drug dealers. He ran fingers through his hair and then wandered distractedly down the sidewalk.
“I wasn’t here, either.” Todd gave his alibi. “The bus dropped me—” he glanced at a fancy large-dial, multiple-button watch strapped to his bony wrist—“seven minutes, twelve seconds ago, to be precise.” Todd turned to study the fire as if it was a classroom experiment gone awry.
“I was jogging,” said the woman in the running outfit. Her voice was shaky and her whole body trembled. She didn’t want to turn loose of Toby. It was okay with him.
“I was here,” the wet-haired one said. She kept arms locked around Toby’s neck. Tears streamed down her cheeks, dragging dark makeup along for the ride. “I just got out of the shower, when BOOM!”
“Probably a faulty gas pipe,” Todd noted, his eyes still on the flames. “These old houses are seldom up to code.” He uttered a soft cooing sound when a section of blazing roof caved in.
“It sounded like the whole building was coming down on my head,” the woman in curlers wailed. “I had just time to grab my robe and run before flames began eating through the ceiling.” Her face collapsed and she sagged against Toby’s chest. “I could have been killed!”
“An explosion?” Toby stroked a curler. He tried “Jean?” and hit a bull’s-eye.
Jean let go and swiped at her eyes, further smearing makeup. “Sounded like it to me. The whole building shook. The bathroom ceiling cracked. When I got outside, your apartment was just…gone, Toby.”
“Now everything’s gone,” said the one who had to be Sylvia, her sweaty, pleasantly smelly body still tight against him. She stared at the fire. “All our clothes.”
“All our books,” Jean said. “Cell phones. Cosmetics.”
“CDs and computers.”
“Photos and cameras.”
“Pl
ants and dishes.”
“Ditto,” said Toby.
They had a group hug. Toby had been lucky. He hadn’t lost much. What was gone could be replaced with the money in his pants, except for the tenor sax, a pawnshop Selmer with nice tone and good action. “Where’s Joe?”
“At work,” Sylvia said. “He doesn’t get off till eight.”
“How about Bart?” Nobody knew. Nobody seemed to care much.
Toby and the two women lolled together on somebody’s lawn across the street while firemen battled the blaze. Somewhere inside the burning house, glass shattered.
“What’ll we do now?” Sylvia asked. “Where’ll we go? Where will stay tonight?”
“I don’t know.” Jean’s eyes lit up with reflected flames. “All my money was in there. Cash, checks, credit cards, everything.”
“Mine, too,” Sylvia said.
“I won’t go live with my folks again.” Jean’s lips pinched. “I won’t.”
“Me neither,” Sylvia said. “I hate Binghamton.”
“Do you have family in the area, Toby?” Jean asked.
“Nope.”
“What are you going to do?” Sylvia asked.
“Find a new place, buy new clothes, and settle into my rut again.”
“You have any money, Toby?” the two women asked together.
He thought about lying, crying poverty too. But he so seldom got the chance to play moneybags. “Matter of fact, I’m loaded.” He discreetly flashed the wad. “Just got paid in advance for a painting job. Could I interest you ladies in a loan?”
Jean and Sylvia shrieked in delight at his openhandedness. There were more hugs and a few kisses. He promised to spring for a motel room and a meal that night.
They lounged amiably as the fire raged, making plans, oohing as a window burst, aahing as a wall caved in. After discussing various options, they agreed to check into the Upstater Motel in North Syracuse. Sylvia had stayed there once and proclaimed it “nice.” They’d have dinner together that night.
That settled, they chatted about house hunting together for a more permanent residence. By pooling incomes, they could afford a better place for the three of them, maybe in the suburbs. Just a straight business arrangement, of course, no hanky-panky implied or intended. It shouldn’t be difficult, in these liberated times, to find someone willing to rent to their mixed but gainfully employed group. They’d start looking tomorrow.
Firefighters gained the upper hand after two hours. By then, the house was gutted and flames were gasping for fuel.
Mrs. O’Dwyer, the landlady, joined them then, panting from the exertion of trotting three blocks. She was a short, dumpy woman of sixty-something with tightly permed blond curls and bulldog jowls. She’d heard about the fire on the television news and rushed right over. Mrs. O’Dwyer inquired about everyone’s safety, expressed concern about Bart’s unknown whereabouts. She promised to do everything possible to find her tenants new apartments at reasonable rates among the many properties she controlled. “I’ll start looking right away,” she said and dashed off.
It took another hour before the last hot spot was extinguished. Weary, soot-stained firemen began packing hoses.
Toby, Jean and Sylvia went to take a closer look at what had once been their home. The air for blocks was hazy and stung the eyes. Ashes still drifted down. It smelled like a forest had burned. The street was wet with puddles marking asphalt-filled potholes, as though a brief, violent rainstorm had passed right over the block.
A pair of firemen sitting on the curb paid no attention to the trio of victims edging past—they were too busy sucking oxygen from a bottle.
The house had been reduced to smoldering rubble still giving off heat where firemen gingerly prowled, poking at cinders with axes, shovels and pry bars. The foundation and first floor walls, both of stone, remained mostly intact, topped by ragged fragments of framing held up by charred studs. The bottom part of a window frame and a corner of the front door stood upright on the lower floor. All else was ruin.
Giving the house a wide berth, Toby and the women trooped around back, past a gang of firemen straining at a front corner of the house to lift a section of fallen wall.
The garages still stood. Paint had blistered from heat, and fingers of soot had touched here and there, but the cubicles were undamaged. Sylvia and Jean ran to check that their cars were okay. The doors of Toby’s unit were still opened wide, the way he’d left them last. From the outside everything inside seemed undisturbed. He was glad he’d had the foresight to move the corpse from his garage before this happened.
“My car keys were inside the apartment.” Jean patted her curlers as they walked down the driveway to the street again. “Even if I had keys, I’d be too upset to drive.”
“Me, too,” said Sylvia. “Be a dear, Toby, and drive us to the motel?”
“Sure.” Toby wondered which girl he wanted to sit beside him in the truck cab.
But it would be a while yet before they got away. When they neared the street, Todd and the bearded tenant stood on the sidewalk talking with one of several uniformed policemen standing about. The cop beckoned to the newcomers. The officer got names and addresses where all could be reached. The two women mentioned the Upstater Motel.
“Just temporary,” Toby added, “till we get back on our feet.”
Todd would return to his parents’ home in Solvay. The bearded man, named John Evans, would beg lodging at his ex-wife’s place off Erie Boulevard. Joe could probably move in with his younger brother who worked at an auto parts shop across town, Toby thought. Bart, if he turned up, had plenty of former girlfriends to scrounge off.
“When can we go through the wreckage?” Sylvia asked. “To see if there’s anything worth salvaging?”
“Not for a few days, at least,” the cop said. He was a big, burly guy about forty with gray edging into sideburns framing his flabby face. His stout torso strained buttons on the short-sleeved blue shirt under his shiny silver badge. “It’ll take a while to cool down. And there will have to be an investigation, of course.”
“Why?” Todd asked.
“All fires of suspicious origin are investigated. And this one’s real suspicious. Happened in the middle of the day. Started upstairs, where nobody was home. Caught too well, too fast. Textbook case of deliberate arson, bet my shield on it.” He tapped his notebook with a thick finger, ran his sharp gaze over the assembled faces. “Now, who’s got useful information about this?”
Jean gave an expanded version of her thrilling escape from death. The lawman made her tell it slowly, from the top, so he could get it all down. While they were talking, there was a minor commotion at the demolished house. Since he had nothing to add to the police investigation, Toby strolled over alone to see what they’d found.
In response to firemen’s shouts, the ambulance maneuvered through fire-fighting equipment and zoomed up the driveway. Idling cops walked quickly over to stand beside the firemen, all of them looking down at something not visible from the street.
Toby edged closer.
After a short discussion among the public servants, two men in white tunics snapped on rubber gloves, removed a gurney from the ambulance and rolled it near the ruin. They bent and with help from the firemen lifted something from the rubble: something man-shaped, but stiff and shrunken and blackened. For a fleeting moment, Toby was scared it was the body from the Puterbaugh’s house, the corpse he’d dumped in the cemetery, come back to haunt him.
The men worked quickly and efficiently to load their burden onto a sheet. They loosely folded the cloth over it, buckled it down on the gurney and wheeled it across the lawn. As they passed, Toby glimpsed a blackened arm that ended in a clawed charcoal fist. An oval patch of white skin on the upper arm framed a blue cross.
Was Bart still alive? Sure didn’t look it. Poor guy, Toby thought, his scalp numb with the shock of seeing someone he’d known reduced to this. What an awful way to go! Not that there was a good way. He glanced over a
shoulder to see if anyone else had noticed. They had. The faces of the four tenants gathered around the policeman were ghostly, their eyes round and staring.
Toby speculated about what his own face looked like just then. A dagger of guilt stabbed him as the white-clad men slid the gurney into the back of the ambulance. My fault. I should have gone for a beer with Bart when I had the chance, body or no body in the pickup. Now it was probably too late.
The ambulance rolled down the driveway, slalomed around the fire engines and sped west, its siren a mournful cry that seemed to linger in the smoky air.
Chapter 14
On the way to the motel in Toby’s truck, all three passengers were quiet for a few miles, stunned into silence by the tragedy, and by the realization they’d lost everything except their lives. Who could afford renter’s insurance? The women recovered fast. Jean and Sylvia pleaded, in tandem, to be allowed to stop and buy essentials. “All we’ve got,” they said, “are the clothes we’re wearing.” Toby would need some items himself, so he detoured to a mall along the route.
Jean refused to go anywhere the way she was dressed: “I must look just awful!” She stayed in the truck as Toby and Sylvia lit across the parking lot together.
It was after eight. The mall closed at ten. Patrons, mostly in teens and early twenties, wandered four or five abreast down broad, well-lit concourses. Toby and Sylvia’s first stop was a warehouse-type drugstore. They hustled up and down aisles, piling products into a shopping cart: Various brands and fragrances of deodorant; toothbrushes, tubes of paste; bottles of mouthwash; packets of disposable razors, cans of shaving cream; packaged bars of soap; bottles of perfume, after-shave, shampoo and conditioner; combs, brushes and hair picks; lipstick, eyeliner, mascara, shadow and foundation in rainbow shades; makeup remover, skin cream and a bag of cotton balls. Sylvia topped off the cart with pastel-colored cartons containing tampons and pads and panty liners. “You’ll get used to these things when we share a house.”