Forced Entry

by Stephen Solomita

  At first, Sylvia, trying to keep the sound inside her pleasant dream, mistook the buzzing fire alarm for the doorbell. She looked to the door, willing the intruder to be her husband, but the buzzing continued long after an ordinary visitor would have released the button. Suddenly, the dream evaporating as an idea took hold of her waking mind, she knew the buzzing could only be her alarm clock, inadvertently set. Instinctively, her eyes still closed, she reached out to shut it off, pressing the correct button (she’d done it thousands of times in the course of her working life) on top of the clock, but the buzzing only grew more insistent. It demanded that she attend to it immediately, that she close it down, no matter how badly she wanted to dream.

  The first thing Sylvia became aware of, upon opening her eyes, was the darkness. True, her nose and throat were sore, but the inflammation seemed no worse than the precursor of a spring cold. The pitch black was more puzzling. Exploring it, she glanced toward the windows at the eastern end of the room; they overlooked a well-lit courtyard (too well-lit for her taste) and, normally, a ribbon of light framed the shades. This morning, however, they were invisible.

  Puzzled now, she began to drag herself toward full waking; she reached out blindly and snapped on the lamp by the side of her bed. The hundred-watt bulb, normally blinding if turned on before dawn, cast only a dim glow, like the sun rising into a dense fog. She stared at it for a moment, obviously confused, then, without transition, she was wide awake and her mind was screaming, “Fire.” Just the one word, endlessly drawn out. A howl of terror.

  Sylvia didn’t stop to consider why there were no flames. Why there was no heat. She didn’t try to find the source of the smoke or even to assess the danger. Instead, she sat up straight, her frail body, propelled by a burst of adrenaline, rising into even thicker smoke. That same adrenaline, pounding in her chest, quickly exhausted the oxygen in her blood, forcing a deep, involuntary breath. The choking that followed drove her into panic; though fully awake, she could form no thought more coherent than the absolute compulsion to get out as quickly as possible.

  To Sylvia, “out” meant through the bedroom door, down the hallway and out of the apartment. The window might have been a better bet (the fire could very well have originated in some other part of the apartment); she might, in fact, be running directly into the flames. But, choking, retching, her lungs filled with smoke, she could only formulate that single imperative—GET OUT!

  Jerking herself into action (moving faster than she had in years), she tried to swing her feet over the edge of the bed, tangled her trailing foot in the blankets and fell heavily to the polished oak floor. She landed on her right hip and the sharp crack told her the bone was broken even before the pain roared up to overwhelm her fear of the smoke and fire. For a moment, she thought she was going to lose consciousness; she almost hoped for it. But the smoke was much thinner close to the floor and as she lay motionless, waiting for the pain to subside, her mind cleared and she found herself suddenly calm.

  All the realizations she might have had before lifting her head from the pillow suddenly flooded Sylvias mind. There was no heat and no visible flames and she became almost certain that the fire had originated in some other part of the building, probably somewhere else in the apartment, which made the windows the only sure way out. She was lying on the floor with the bed between herself and the windows and she couldn’t see them; she would have to crawl to the foot of the bed and use the wall to guide herself to the eastern end of the apartment.

  Then she realized that the windows were closed, the outer storm windows firmly in place (there hadn’t been a lot of heat lately and all the tenants were protecting themselves against drafts); she would have to stand in order to open the windows and the dull ache pulsating in her hip (and threatening to explode at the least movement) would never allow her to remain erect long enough to get through the glass. For an instant, she had a picture of herself breaking the glass with the straight-backed chair in the corner and diving through, then she rolled a few inches to the right, exerting a slight pressure on her hip, and the eruption of pain dispelled her fantasy as surely as an open window would have dispersed the smoke in her bedroom.

  As Sylvia understood it, she was left with two possibilities, both clearly formed in her mind—she could chance the bedroom door or wait for rescue where she was. The telephone (how many times had she resolved to put an extension in the bedroom?) was in the hallway, on a small table about fifteen feet from the bedroom door. If she got through the door, she could pull down the telephone and call for help. In any event, she could test the door by touching it. If it was hot, there was fire behind it; if it was cool, she could open it and get out.

  Not that it was going to be easy. Besides the pain (which she didn’t want to think about, not yet), there was the simple fact that she couldn’t see the door; if she took off across the carpet, searching for the shortest line, and missed, she might lose her way altogether. How, after all, would she know which side of the door she was on? No, she concluded, the only realistic way to get out was to crawl to the head of the bed, then use the wall for a guide.

  That was her final decision; afterward there was only the pain to deal with. Tentatively, an inch at a time, she thrust her arms to their fullest extension, dug her fingernails into the carpet and pulled herself forward, moving a few inches before the pain, hot and thick, overwhelmed her. Instantly, she resolved to stay put, to wait for rescue and just as quickly, the pain causing her to take a sudden, deep breath, knew the smoke was thickening, that her lungs were old and fragile, that if she were to be rescued, it would have to be soon.

  For a moment, as the pain subsided, she listened for the sound of fire engines, for the pounding of the sirens (which no longer screamed, as they had for most of her life, but now sounded like a ship’s foghorn). She heard nothing, not even the crackling of the fire, but her coughing diminished until she was able to maintain herself by pressing her mouth close to the carpet and sipping at the air. That was enough, for the time being.

  After several moments, a new idea, a very foreign thought from her point of view, began to filter into Sylvia’s mind. She began to think that she might die. That night, in her own bedroom. The idea frightened her more than the fire. She had spent much of her working life in neighborhoods that terrified other New Yorkers; many times, over the years, she’d faced down adolescent students who were quite capable of attack, who wouldn’t hesitate to pick up a weapon if one were handy. She’d refused to allow herself to be intimidated. Never. Not once had she let fear control her actions; if she did, she knew, she would never have found the courage to go back.

  But fear of pain was different; one stood up before a blow was struck in order to prevent the blow. The only preventable aspect of this situation was pain. Or, just possibly, she had to admit, death. Death might be preventable if there was no fire on the other side of her bedroom door. Or if she could bear the pain. She tried to sense the smoke without breathing it, to determine if it was getting worse, but all she could decide was that her eyes were burning and she could breathe if she was careful not to raise her head.

  She lay still for several, seemingly infinite moments, drifting back and forth between the two courses of action, until a third possibility, a possibility so simple she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it (as usual, the word Alzheimer crossed her mind, as it always did when she was careless or forgetful); she’d simply pull herself as far as she could. If she didn’t make the door, she’d be no worse off, even if she lost consciousness. The smoke, she was now convinced, was growing thicker. If she waited much longer she’d be too weak to try. She summoned up every bit of her resolve, all the intention that had so characterized her life, and began to move. Careful to keep her weight over her left hip, she again dug her nails into the carpet, pulling herself toward the head of the bed, toward a hole surrounding a steampipe, toward a cloud of black, oily smoke.

  She managed to move the length of her body before the rising heat broug
ht her to a halt. The smoke was much worse here, but it could be getting worse throughout the room. The heat, on the other hand, was definitely a new phenomenon. Somehow, though she couldn’t see any flames, she was drawing closer to the source of the smoke. The puzzle intrigued her momentarily, enabling her to ignore the pain in her nose and throat, then she realized the only possible explanation. The fire was in the basement; the smoke was coming up from the basement. There was no flame because of steel plates in the basement ceiling (there wasn’t supposed to be any smoke, either), but the smoke must be coming up through a hole in the floor.

  If the smoke was coming from below, the bedroom door was, indeed, a legitimate way out; the air had to be cleaner out there. That was the way to go; the way to go right now, before the smoke got any worse. She tried to move backward, but was unable to make any progress with only one leg. If she turned left, in the general direction of the bedroom door, she would have no landmarks once she left the side of the bed.

  I’m going to die if I stay here, she told herself. The statement seemed curious; it seemed like the kind of statement she might hear in a college philosophy class, an absurd consideration designed to undermine her resolution. She smiled contemptuously, then began to turn her body away from the bed, toward the door and escape.

  She lost her sense of direction almost immediately, veering to the right, toward the head of the bed. The smoke was very heavy now; she held each breath as long as she could, trying to avoid the oily taste that scorched her throat each time she tried to breathe. Funny, her leg wasn’t bothering her much. It seemed far away, as dull and empty as the bedside lamp when she’d turned it on a few minutes before. The leg was the easy part; it had always been the easy part. Will, on the other hand…well, that was another problem altogether.

  She made no conscious decision to stop, no conscious decision to lay her head on the carpet. She felt light-headed, almost girlish, as she inevitably did on those few occasions when she took a glass or two of wine. What, she thought, was I worried about all this time? There was certainly no problem here; she could breathe as easily as she could on those country vacations she took with her husband forty years ago. And she could also, for the first time, see the smoke, see its separate tendrils finding their way through the air currents. The tendrils looked like currents, like charts of ocean currents in the geography textbooks (although the charts were always multicolored and the smoke, of course, was gray or black).

  But, monochrome or not, the smoke was beautiful nonetheless, undeniably beautiful and not the least bit frightening. She listened for sirens, for the sounds of rescue. Thinking it wouldn’t make any difference, now. Even if they came, it would take them a long time to find her, because they’d probably go to the basement first; they’d go to the basement, put out the fire and, only then, come looking for old ladies trapped in their apartments.

  She fell asleep a few minutes later, knowing it was sleep because she returned to her original dream. Marilyn was a terrible pianist, barely able to pound out the chords while the fingers of her right hand doggedly poked their way through the melody, but her clumsy attack went unnoticed as all three bawled the words to the song, laughing as they went along. Sylvia, watching the girls (they were seated alongside each other on the piano bench) wondered why it couldn’t always be like this. Betty was so close to the family that she and Marilyn often fought like sisters. Well, better to be thankful for the peaceful times than perpetually angry over life’s problems; Sylvia was a firm believer in a positive attitude, despite the leading exponent of that philosophy, Norman Vincent Peale, being not only a goy, but some kind of Protestant priest.

  Marilyn was enthusiastically missing the last few chords of the song when the bell rang. Not the persistent insect buzz of the smoke alarm, but a deep gong that continued to echo through the house after the button was released.

  “I’ll get it,” Sylvia said. “It’s for me.” In her dream, she didn’t ask herself how she knew the visitor was looking for her. Marilyn had lots of friends in the neighborhood and they often came calling. But she did know.

  “What do you want to do next?” Marilyn asked Betty.

  “ ‘The Wayward Wind,’ ” Betty responded without hesitation, fishing through the sheet music spread across the top of the piano. “Here it is.”

  “Okay, you do the train whistle,” Marilyn commanded, already searching for the opening chords.

  Still smiling, Sylvia suddenly found herself by the open door. She was surprised to see her husband standing there; he rarely got home before six o’clock. “Bennie,” she cried happily, “what are you doing at home? It’s only four-thirty.”

  “I came to get you,” he answered.

  “I don’t want to go anywhere,” Sylvia said, doubtfully. “I’m having such a good time with the girls. We haven’t had this much fun together in months.”

  “Don’t worry about them.” He reached out and took her hand, an old familiarity that Sylvia, awake, would never have remembered. “The kids are doing fine. You come with me, Sylvia. There’s something I’ve got to show you.”

  SIXTEEN

  April 3

  “THE THING IS, I can’t go to funerals anymore.” Moodrow was standing by the window, trying to explain himself to Jim Tilley. He was looking out at the street, his back to the kitchen table where Tilley was playing with a cup of coffee. “When Rita died four years ago, I sat through the wake for two days. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Not the death, Jim. Sitting through those hours with her body right there in the room was a fucking nightmare. My blood was on fire. I felt like if I stayed there another minute, I’d ignite, but I sat by the coffin anyway. It was very bad. In those two days, I did all the funerals and wakes I had left in me. I can’t do no more.”

  Tilley, who’d never seen his friend in this mood before, tried to frame a response, but after a moment’s reflection, decided that no response was necessary, that Moodrow was only pausing for breath, that he needed a sounding board, not a counselor.

  “What’s making me crazy is that I know I fucked it up,” Moodrow said, turning back to the table. He was looking for the solid ground of police procedure. “I should have…”

  “Wait a second,” Tilley reminded him patiently. “I don’t know what happened out there except there was a fire and a fatality.”

  “It was arson,” Moodrow said flatly. “And the lady that got killed was named Sylvia Kaufman. She’s having her funeral right now. While we’re talking.”

  “You know for sure it was arson? You found a gas can and a blowtorch?” Tilley, like all cops, preferred to deal with the details of investigation. It’s always easier, when viewing the body of a raped and battered woman, to think in terms of semen traces and genetic matching. Of entry wounds and exit wounds instead of breathing, bleeding tissue. Instead of holy life slipping out of the body.

  “It’ll be arson, Jimmy. Take my word for it. The fire was all smoke and no heat. It was a warning that got out of hand and it was a professional job. No gasoline can. In fact, no accelerant at all. Gasoline, kerosene…they cause damage, Jimmy, and whoever set this fire didn’t want damage.”

  “What does the fire marshal think?”

  “I haven’t spoken to him yet.” Moodrow poured himself a cup of coffee, his fifth of the day, and sat down across from Tilley. “I have a problem with that. I’m not a cop anymore and I don’t know if he’ll even talk to me. For sure, he ain’t gonna let me argue if he thinks it’s accidental.”

  “No problem,” Tilley said. “I’ll go out there with you.”

  Moodrow looked up, appraising his friend. “I appreciate the offer, Jimmy, but I’m trying to line someone up from the One One Five. Make it an official police investigation.”

  Tilley was, to his surprise, relieved at not having to partner with Stanley Moodrow and he made a note to think about why he was relieved as soon as he had the chance. In the meantime, he kept to his role, absorbing his friend’s mood and method. “I hope you’re
not thinking of that Community Affairs Officer. What’s his name?”

  “Dunlap. Paul Dunlap, but I hear the cops in the house call him Porky.”

  “Maybe you should find a real cop.”

  “From where?” Moodrow waved Tilley’s objection away. “Dunlap’ll be okay as long as he lets me run the show. Plus he’s got a big advantage in that his job consists mostly of giving speeches and not too much of that. He doesn’t usually work during the day, which is another plus. I spoke to him over the phone this morning and he seemed eager.”

  “Is he coming here this afternoon?”

  “They’ll all be here later. They’re at the funeral right now. You knew Sylvia was Jewish, right? According to her religion, she has to be buried within forty-eight hours. Then her family sits around her apartment for a week. It’s called sitting shiva. I think it’s better to do the mourning without the body around. It’s easier. Anyway, Sylvia’s daughter, Marilyn, flew in from Los Angeles yesterday and she’s going to sit shiva, so I guess I’ll go over there tomorrow. That won’t be a problem. It’s being near the body I can’t stand.”

  Once again, Jim Tilley chose silence. He pushed back his chair, went to the refrigerator, and cut himself a piece of cheesecake.

  “The thing that bothers me,” Moodrow continued, “is that I should have known what was going on, but I was an asshole. I thought it was funny. Not the assaults, but the idea of a bunch of middle-class citizens running around in panic over something we see everyday on the Lower East Side. I checked the building and found two drug dealers and two prostitutes.” He stopped suddenly and raised his right hand in front of him, curling his fingers into a fist. “I got big hands. All my life, I’ve been using them to solve problems, especially in the job. I figured I could be a hero. Toss the dealers out on their asses and save the Jackson Arms. I shoulda known better.”