Into the Inferno

by Earl Emerson

  “Anybody narrowed down the cause?”

  “Sure. Down to about, oh, twenty or thirty different companies. To about a hundred and fifty chemical agents, maybe ten thousand possible combinations. Southeast ships chemicals around the country. And every one of those companies wants to stall the investigation. There’s a million theories floating around out there, but nobody knows for sure. We got lawsuits out the yinyang. We lost three good men, and we should be moving heaven and earth to figure out why, not hiding behind attorneys.”

  “Don’t you guys have a union?”

  “Yeah, but the leadership is basically hanging our guys out to dry.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. You’d think the city would want to find the cause. What if it happens again?”

  “That’s just it. Everybody’s saying it could never happen again.”

  “How can they know that if they haven’t pinned down the cause?”

  “Thank you very much. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them. The commission has identified over a hundred and fifty chemical compounds got spilled or opened at that fire. You mix one chemical with another, and all of a sudden you’ve got a substance nobody knows nothin’ about. Truth is, we might never know what caused this.”

  “Nobody else caught the syndrome? None of the freight company employees or the truck drivers?”

  “Nobody. Which makes us think it was a gaseous compound. The smoke goes away, so does the hazard.”

  “Or maybe some mixture of chemicals that doesn’t remain stable very long.”

  “Coulda been.”

  “Anybody catch it and then shake it?”

  “Not that I know of. You sure you got this?”

  “I’ve had four coworkers go down.”

  “Like our guys?”

  “Two are that way. Two are dead.”

  “Jesus, I’m sorry, buddy. I really am. You got your family stuff in order and all that?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Far as I know nothing has ever changed with these guys, until one died from a heart attack. Vic was my best friend, so it’s not like I ain’t been keeping tabs. I’d like to say yes, they’re getting better, but the truth is, these guys are zombies and always will be.”

  “God.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you warn me about an explosion?”

  “I can’t talk about that, man. I mean, I really can’t. They’re watching me. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re taping this phone call.”

  “Who?”

  “That’s just it. If I knew who, I could do something about it. It would take a month to tell you everything that’s happened around here. I will tell you this. I went back to Southeast Travelers one night to look around. They’ve kept the building pretty much the way it was, all taped off and everything. There was a man in there in the dark doing something. I couldn’t quite tell what. I could tell he didn’t work there. The bastard threatened to kill me.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I got out of there, man.”

  “Call the police?”

  “What I did was, I started packing a gun.”

  “You find out who he was?”

  “No, man, we didn’t become friends or nothin’. Scared the hell out of me. I really thought for a minute he was going to kill me.”

  I had some more questions for Drago, but I could hear the tremor in his voice. Charlie was coming close to losing his mind right there on the phone. I decided to change the subject and asked about the companies involved.

  After much shuffling of papers and confusion on his end of the line, Drago told me he couldn’t locate the list of companies with products in the fire room at Southeast Travelers. Instead he told me all the company names he could remember off the top of his head and everything he knew about them. I wanted to compare the list from Holly’s truck with Drago’s list. It seemed to me that if we found products on both lists, we should concentrate on them.

  “How about a company called Jane’s California Propulsion? Did they have anything at Southeast?”

  “Jane’s? Maybe. I dunno. It’s a pretty long list. I can’t remember all the companies. Listen, I’ll get back to you when I find my complete list. And you get in touch anytime, day or night,” Drago said. “I mean that. You want something, it’s yours. I’ll fly out there and sit with you, man. I mean that. I’m there for you. Anything.”

  “Thanks, Charlie.”

  When I hung up, Stephanie looked at me and said, “Did they?”

  “Did they what?”

  “Recover?”

  “No.”

  We were still waiting for the meal when Mary Kay LeMonde approached our table with a look on her face that was half curiosity and half challenge. Through part of the winter and early spring, Mary and I had kept company, our time together overlapping Holly’s entrance and exit in my life, as well as the second Suzanne’s, the Suzanne whose existence had spurred my breakup with Holly. You can see how complicated things were.

  I liked women, liked to be friends with them, liked to be lovers with them, and I especially liked to be friends with them after I had been lovers with them. I can’t tell you why it meant so much to me, because I didn’t know many other single men who were friendly with any of their exes, much less all of their exes. To me, it had always been pivotal that my lovers liked me after the heat of passion waned, which was ironic because Lorie barely spoke to me and certainly had not been back to visit since the night she left three years ago.

  Joel McCain claimed it was almost as if I were forming a club of ladies I’d fucked.

  Fucked. That was the word Joel had used. Could any term be more degrading, more gauche, more unpolished, or, in this case, more apt? Until the past few days, I’d never used the word. Not even back in the army. Oddly, Joel, with religion oozing out his ears, had used it all the time.

  “Hello, Jimmy.”

  “Mary Kay. How nice to see you.”

  As with the others, after we stopped sleeping together Mary Kay and I remained on speaking terms—the last phone call about two weeks ago.

  Grasping the table for support, I stood up, realizing as I looked into her dark-brown eyes that even though we still spoke on the telephone from time to time, I had been doing my level best to avoid her. Two weeks ago at the QFC I’d raced out of the store after spotting her. Childish, yes. Vintage Swope? You bet.

  Mary Kay was unquestionably the best-looking woman on the staff at Mount Si High School and had often gone on about how handsome I was and what a nice couple we made and so forth. We had been a matched pair, neither of us ever appearing in public with unflossed teeth, a hair out of place, or lint on our clothes, two mirror addicts temporarily in love with the thought of coupledom. For years I’d been as shallow as a puddle of melted ice cream, and now all I could think about was how shallow Mary Kay had been, still was, and how glad I was to be shed of her.

  Mary Kay was too busy with her machine-gun chatter to notice the way I gripped the table for support. Talk, talk, talk. Mary Kay had even nattered while we made love, a proclivity that had kept me from completing the business at hand on at least one occasion. She’d gabbed our breakup to death in much the same way Holly had, analyzing the smallest details until I wanted to bay at the moon.

  I introduced the women, telling Mary Kay that Stephanie was a doctor, that we were working on a fire department project together. Don’t ask me why I cared what she thought. Mary Kay and I would never see each other again. Before she left, Mary Kay ascertained that Stephanie was from out of state and would be leaving soon, all of this done in one polite exchange after another.

  I couldn’t help thinking how much of my life had been frittered away on women I knew were only passing through. It seemed such a colossal waste of time. But then, I’d always been misguided about what it took to be a man. It was no accident I ran away from home and moved directly into an army barracks, no accident, either, that within two years of my exit from the service I’d become a firefig
hter. One macho trade after another. And of course, Lorie had been gorgeous. Demented, but gorgeous.

  My years of standing around on street corners handing out Bible tracts alongside timid females and gawky men had polluted my entire adult life. I was still trying to be a man’s man. Anything but the sissy on a street corner.

  After our waiter left, Stephanie said, “That must have been a tangled web.”

  “What?”

  “You and Mary Kay.”

  “Not really.”

  “So why did you feel you had to make sure she knew you and I weren’t romantically involved.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You did everything but pull out a grease pen and print strictly business across my forehead. You ashamed to be seen with me?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “You practically apologized to her for being with me.”

  “She’s a little touchy, is all.”

  “Because of the way you broke up?”

  “I suppose.”

  “It is over, isn’t it?”

  “It is, but she was having a hard time believing it.”

  “You didn’t make it plain?”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “How could it be any simpler? You don’t want to see her anymore. You move on. She moves on.”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Selfishness always is. Were you seeing her before Holly or after?”

  I picked up a piece of bread and broke it. “Before.”

  “You took a long time to answer. It was during, wasn’t it?”

  “I’m tired.”

  “You dumped her.”

  “We decided to make some space.”

  “You decided to make some space.”

  “She wasn’t fighting it. She—”

  “You’re not the kind to tell somebody it’s over, are you? No. You’re too passive-aggressive for that. You like women hanging around. Clinging. Making you feel wanted. Important.”

  “You drove up here today to attack me?”

  “I’m not attacking you.”

  “Funny. It feels like you are.”

  I’d harbored some slim hope that Stephanie Riggs would remain my ally throughout this ordeal, that she would be there to the end, but it was a pathetic hope. Too bad there was no one else to hold my hand when I turned into a vegetable, not unless I wanted to resurrect my relationship with one of the Suzannes or Mary Kay or one of the others.

  “She’s still carrying the torch and you love it.”

  “Basically, we’re just friends.”

  “If there’s one thing you’re not, it’s friends. So what woman hurt you so badly you can’t trust any woman? That you want to torture them all like this?”

  “What’s trust got to do with it? Is that what Holly wrote in her diary? That I’d been betrayed?”

  “I’m guessing it was your mother.”

  The meal had been in front of us for some time. I sprinkled grated cheese on my tortellini and picked up my fork. “I’ll be dead by the end of the week. What does it matter?”

  “Dead?”

  “As good as.”

  “You won’t be dead.”

  “You think I’m a sonofabitch, don’t you?”

  “I think you’re just like anyone else, a complex human being who doesn’t quite understand all of his motivations. There’s nothing wrong with that. Most of us don’t understand what makes us tick. Look. I really am sorry I opened my big mouth.”

  “No. You’re right. I’ve known a lot of women, and I’m not sure I treated any of them the way I’d want my daughters treated. I’ve never been good with relationships. Every woman I’ve dated in the last couple of years . . . I start off thinking this is the one, and by the time I have her convinced of it, I’ve lost interest.” I broke off a hunk of bread and dipped it in olive oil.

  “Did you cheat on your wife?”

  “Why are you asking that?”

  “You cheated on Holly and this other person, Mary Kay.”

  “I didn’t say I cheated on Mary Kay.”

  “But you did, didn’t you?”

  “We were friends. It wasn’t—”

  “Did you cheat on your wife? Indulge me. I’m trying to get to know you. We don’t have that long, and I want to know you.”

  “You know plenty.”

  “I don’t, though. Not enough.”

  I didn’t know what kind of game she was playing, but as uncomfortable as it made me, it also pleased me in a manner that was hard to describe. I’d never been with a woman as brutally honest as her. Nor one who could put a knife in my heart as quickly.

  “Did you?”

  “What?”

  “Cheat on your wife?”

  “Never even crossed my mind. Well, toward the end it crossed my mind. But it never happened. And it never would have. Marriage vows are sacred.”

  “Your baby-sitter was staring daggers at me.”

  I broke off another hunk of bread. “Was she?”

  “She’s got the hots for you.”

  “I suppose you think I engineered that, too?”

  “I don’t know how it happened, but it’s easy enough to see what it does for your ego.”

  Oh, brother.

  31. JANE’S CALIFORNIA PROPULSION, INC.

  Digging into my lunch while she perused the list of company names I’d scribbled on the paper place mat, I thought about the script that had already been played out in Chattanooga. Had the problem there been addressed properly, firefighters in North Bend wouldn’t be dropping like empty shell casings under a drunken hunter.

  Stephanie said, “Canyon View Systems. Is that what this says?”

  “Yeah. Now that you mention it, Canyon View was on the manifest I got for Holly’s truck, too. But they were only shipping books, as I recall. And according to Charlie Drago, they were the only ones who helped out in Tennessee. Everyone else stonewalled or fought them tooth and nail. Canyon View sent two specialists down to answer questions and assist with the investigation.”

  “My Aunt DiMaggio? You saw her the other night at the hospital. Her husband founded Canyon View Systems. She runs it.”

  “That would make sense. Your aunt said Holly shipped stuff for them from time to time.”

  “It also makes sense that they sent people down to help when nobody else would. Aunt Marge has always had a fairly well developed social conscience. She did a lot to help Holly get on her feet when she first arrived here in Washington.”

  “Was she running the company three years ago?”

  “Phil was still alive then, so he was.”

  It was at about that point that I got a brainstorm and asked to borrow Stephanie’s cell phone. Mine had blown up with the engine back at Caputo’s trailer. On the first call I reached Mr. Stuart from Jane’s California Propulsion, the same man who’d told me they didn’t ship in February. I told him who I was and he said, “Lieutenant Swope? I guess you spoke to my colleague Ben Gray? It turns out we were shipping last February. I’m sorry about that. We very rarely send anything out during that time of year, and I could have sworn we didn’t last February. My mistake. Now what can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to know what you were shipping and if there might be any adverse health effects attached to it.”

  “We have a lot of materials we send by truck. Unfortunately, they’re all classified. I’m not really at liberty to talk about them. You say somebody’s been sick?”

  “Quite a few somebodies.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Do the symptoms include dizziness?”

  “Yes.”

  “Headaches? Ringing in the ears?”

  “Yes. How did you—”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. What does it mean?”

  “Nothing. Nothing at all.”

  “How could it mean nothing? Why ask if it means nothing?”

  “Just please bear with me. This is a standard list of questions we�
��re required to go over. What other symptoms are there?”

  I listed them, and he seemed to be writing it all down. Afterward, he said, “Not us. It wasn’t anything we have. We don’t work with any product that would cause anyone to go brain-dead.”

  “What about the rest of the symptoms?”

  “We don’t work with anything that could cause brain death.”

  “What do you work with?”

  “As I said before. Our work is classified. Lieutenant Swope, what if we were to send a couple of representatives up there?”

  “Listen, if you have anything that might be causing our problems, tell me. There are people going through this right now.”

  “We’ll have a couple of representatives up there in three hours.”

  “What? You have a company jet?”

  “No. They’ll be flying commercial. Good-bye, Lieutenant Swope.”

  “Wait a minute. Did your company have any products in a shipping facility fire at a place called Southeast Travelers in Chattanooga three years ago?”

  “I really couldn’t tell you. As I said, our representatives will be seeing you shortly.”

  We hung up and I related the conversation to Stephanie, who said, “They’ve probably been sued before and have instructions not to say anything. No doubt that’s why they’re sending people up here, too.”

  “It sounded to me like he knew what we had before I told him. I think these guys know what’s going on.”

  “I want to talk to my aunt. If her company helped out with the investigation in Chattanooga, maybe she knows something.”

  “Apparently she doesn’t know what the symptoms in Tennessee were, or she would have recognized them in Holly.”

  “Canyon View is a big company. She might not know anything at all, but somebody there will.”

  Stephanie picked up her cell phone and punched in a number, asked for Marge DiMaggio, and then listened for a moment and hung up. “Went to Portland this afternoon for a meeting. Staying overnight. She’s got a meeting up here at eight-thirty tomorrow morning. She’ll call beforehand.”