The Smoke Room

by Earl Emerson

  If Johnson and Tronstad knew about Ghanet, they didn’t let on. Tronstad was bouncing on the balls of his feet and grinning ear to ear, and Johnson moved about the apparatus bay whistling as he checked the lights on the rig, the fuel level, and the water level in the tank, looking over the hose beds and equipment and glancing at his watch periodically.

  Johnson approached the workbench, where I was running the Lifepak through the morning tests. “You see the newspapers?” I asked.

  “I saw.” He grinned, his teeth white and even. “We got the real deal. Think about it. No taxes, either. We’re rich.”

  “We’re not rich, Robert. We’re in trouble.”

  “How do you figure?”

  “To start with, there’s a thousand cops looking for what we have. And Sears doesn’t know about Ghanet right now, but once he does, he’s going to figure out what that bond was all about. I wouldn’t be surprised if the chief of the department and the police show up for roll call.”

  The permanent frown lines in Johnson’s forehead deepened into trenches, as if this was the first time he’d considered the bonds a liability instead of an asset.

  “I think we should turn it in right now. Tell them we thought it was worthless. That Tronstad took it and we would have given it back earlier but we thought it was junk.”

  “No way in hell. I’m not doing it.”

  “What if I turn it in? I’m the one who has it.”

  “I’ll tell them you stole it.”

  “You wouldn’t do that.”

  “Try me.”

  “Jesus, Johnson. You’re losing your marbles here.”

  “You are, if you think I’m giving back twelve million dollars.”

  “You two having another lovers’ quarrel?” said Tronstad, grinning as he passed us on his way to the watch office for eight o’clock roll call.

  As usual, Sears had typed out a schedule for us. No other officer I’d heard of was as meticulous, or as obsessive.

  “Listen,” Sears said after we’d gathered in the watch office for roll call, “I’ve been out of town at a women’s rugby tournament with Heather, so I haven’t had time to think about this—” He pulled the folded bond out of his shirt pocket and tapped it against his mustache. “—but I know something is going on.” The shaved stubble on his face caught a shaft of sunlight coming through the window on the front door. I liked him. I couldn’t help it. He was going to write charges on us and probably put at least one of us in jail, but I liked him. He was a man who tried to do the right thing. “I don’t know what you three are up to, but I’m going to get to the bottom of it before the day is out.”

  He looked at each of us in turn. “I hope this isn’t what I think it is, because I’m so proud of you guys,” Sears said. “You’re the best-drilled company in Battalion Seven. You know, when I first got here, you were a joke, but now you work together like Chinese acrobats.”

  “Thanks, Lieutenant,” said Johnson.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I said.

  “How’d the rugby tournament go?” Tronstad asked.

  Sears handed him the list of chores he’d printed out and said, “You just worry about today. I’ve got a union meeting, but I should be back around suppertime. Maybe a little after. You’ll be acting lieutenant. The chief is sending somebody up here from Thirty-two’s to fill in your spot.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Tronstad, saluting smartly. In the fire department we didn’t salute our officers unless making a joke or mocking them. Sears gave him a withering look.

  The three of us walked down the hallway to the cramped beanery, where the television was tuned to one of the national morning shows. The interviewer was quizzing the attorney of a murder suspect. Johnson turned the sound up to cover our voices and said, “Gum thinks we’re in trouble.”

  “Don’t be an ass.” Tronstad slapped me across the shoulders and grinned. “What trouble?”

  “How about a bunch of FBI agents combing through Ghanet’s house?” I said. “We gotta give them back.”

  “They don’t even know Ghanet had the bonds. You don’t think I left any lying around, do you?”

  “How would you know in all that junk?”

  “And how’re you going to explain the one Sears has?” Johnson asked.

  “I can explain anything.”

  “Maybe we could make an anonymous phone call and tell them where the bonds are,” I suggested.

  “Oh, yeah,” said Tronstad, playing with his mustache. “That would be brilliant. They’d be on us like stink on shit. Go ahead and make the call, if you want to get jailed for grand larceny and obstruction of justice.”

  Johnson looked at me. “He’s right. We’re in this and we can’t get out. It’s like when you’re a kid on a sled going down a fast hill with a lot of rocks around. You ride it out, because if you bail, you’re going to get hurt. The sled keeps going faster and faster, and your only chance is to ride it out.”

  “Yeah,” said Tronstad. “Unless you want to go to jail and deal with a bunch of butt pirates. Pretty boy like you would be wearing lipstick and eyeshadow by the end of the first week.”

  “Geez, Tronstad,” I said. “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Don’t talk like what?”

  Tronstad and I had both been aware that she was coming through the patio door, but we’d kept talking, the way you do sometimes when you’re caught up in a conversation.

  The lieutenant’s wife was tall and athletic in a gawky sort of way, with thick, tattooed ankles and a mane of blond hair that was a chronic mess. The cargo shorts she was wearing showed off rugby bruises on both legs. She spoke to us as if she were one of the guys, and I liked that about her. Heather Wynn—she’d kept the last name of her first husband, who’d died in a car wreck. “You guys look like you’re having a meeting.”

  “We don’t have any secrets from you,” said Johnson, stepping forward for the obligatory hug. “What brings you here on this fine sunny day?”

  “I need to speak to Sweeney for a few minutes. Whose new truck is that out there?”

  “That’d be mine,” said Tronstad.

  “You bought a new truck?” I blurted.

  “There’s a new Cadillac SUV out there, too. Whose is that?”

  I turned to Robert Johnson, who at least realized the insanity of what he’d done and looked chagrined. “It’s actually . . . kind of a demo thing. We’ll probably take it back. I’m not really sure we can afford a new car right now.”

  We all knew the finance company had repossessed Tronstad’s original Ford F-350 for nonpayment. Since then he’d done the forty-five-minute commute from his apartment in Kent on his Harley. Most people who had as much time in the department as Tronstad had bought a house by now, but Tronstad fiddled away while Rome burned.

  “And what’s this?” Heather took Robert Johnson’s wrist and pulled it toward her. “Longines? This must have cost a pretty penny.”

  “I got a deal on it,” said Johnson, who’d bought a new Cadillac and a five-thousand-dollar watch.

  “And what about you, Gum? Everybody else has something new.”

  “He’s got a new girlfriend,” said Johnson.

  “Yeah,” said Tronstad. “Old enough to be his mother.”

  “Ooooh,” Heather teased. “An older woman? Is that true, Gum? What is she? Thirty?”

  “A little older.”

  “I’m tellin’ ya, she’s old enough to be his mommy,” said Tronstad. “She’s fifty if she’s a day.”

  “She’s forty-five.”

  “What’s she like?” Heather asked. “How old is she really?”

  Heather Wynn had eight to ten years on me and had always dismissed me rather casually, I thought, until this news about an older woman, which seemed to intrigue her.

  “Heather.” Lieutenant Sears appeared in the doorway behind us. “I thought I heard your voice. Why didn’t you come straight to my office?”

  “The guys and I were having a chat, honey. Have you met Gum’s ne
w girlfriend?”

  “I don’t believe I have.” Sears looked at me for a moment, then turned back to his wife. We knew they weren’t happy together, that she’d talked of divorce and left him several times, but we also knew he clung to her like a nonswimmer clung to an overturned raft.

  When we were alone again, I sat heavily at the table and looked at Johnson and Tronstad. “You both bought new cars? The cops are looking for Ghanet’s money, and you bought new cars? You don’t think anybody’s going to connect that?”

  “I didn’t know Robert was buying one,” said Tronstad, picking up the sports page from the morning’s PI. “I’m the one who needed it. He didn’t need that gold-plated watch, either.”

  “It’s not plate. It’s solid,” Johnson said. “And I didn’t know about Ghanet when I bought the Caddy. It didn’t come out in the paper until the next day.”

  “You must have gone directly from my house to the dealer,” I said.

  “I can buy a car if I want,” Johnson said.

  “It’s not like we called each other up and compared notes,” said Tronstad. “’Sides, I had a handful of the bonds, and I wanted to see if I could cash them.”

  “You cashed some bonds?” I cried.

  “Just enough for a down payment on the truck.”

  “We’re dead meat.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Tronstad. “This is a matter of bluffing our way through. Stuff like this used to happen in the Air Force all the time. I always weaseled out of it.”

  Johnson sat next to Tronstad and propped his elbows on the table. His uniform shirt was immaculate and stiff from the cleaners. “What else did you buy, Tronstad?”

  “I mighta bought some other shit.” He leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “I’ll tell you this. Those bonds are as good as gold. Maybe better, because they’re easier to pack around. Especially the U.S. Treasury bearer bonds. People at the bank thought I was an oil sheik.” He opened his wallet and showed us a hundred-dollar bill. “That’s all I got left.”

  “You spend everything, don’t you, Ted? Every red cent.” Johnson glared at him.

  “I just showed you a hundred bucks, didn’t I? Look.” Tronstad reached out and tapped the back of my hand. “Maybe after Sears leaves we can take the rig and pick them up, huh?”

  “I’m not getting the bonds today. Not so you can spend them.”

  Tronstad smiled. “Who put you in charge?”

  “You did.”

  “You did what?” Chief Abbott bustled into the room, grabbed a coffee cup, filled it, slopping some onto the floor, and pulled out a chair. Before he could sit down, his phone rang. “I’ll get that in my office,” he said, hustling down the corridor, his footsteps on the wooden floor like cannon shots, an aroma of black coffee and Aqua Velva aftershave wafting in his wake. I figured he was still jacked up from talking to Heather, on whom he had a crush. We’d heard them talking up the hall.

  “Around here we gotta shut up about this,” said Johnson.

  “No shit,” said Tronstad.

  I didn’t want the bonds, and I certainly didn’t want the trouble they were dragging down on us, but the only escape I could see was a confession. What worked in my favor was that Tronstad and Johnson had both squandered money and I hadn’t. What worked against me was the fact that they would both be pissed enough to tell lies about me and, worse yet, the truth about Arch Place. It didn’t help my case that I was in possession of the bonds. In fact, it sort of made me look like the ringleader.

  13. LAST CHANCE TO RESIGN

  AFTER HEATHER LEFT the building, Lieutenant Sears came into the beanery and shut the door, sealing us off from Chief Abbott in the other room. He tossed the wrinkled Sierre Leone bank bond note onto the table. “Okay. One last chance. Tell me where this came from.”

  My heart began pounding in my ears. This was my opportunity to send Tronstad to jail and avoid it myself, my opportunity to make everything right, to take the pain in my gut and medicate it with truth and justice. The problem was, I wasn’t sure I had the nerve to send a co-worker to jail, somebody I’d worked with for two years, somebody who’d made me laugh, somebody who’d protected me when nobody else would. What made it even tougher was that he was sitting right next to me. I needed time to think.

  The three of us sat at the table while Lieutenant Sears looked at each of us in turn.

  Johnson scratched his chin. “Gee, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know what?” Sears asked.

  “He don’t know what you’re talking about, Lieut,” said Tronstad. “None of us do. See, that piece of paper you got there? You’re right. It came from—at least I think it came from—Ghanet’s place. Musta had something sticky on my boot, because I found it in the rig on the floor. I was showin’ it to Gum and Robert the other morning when you walked in and copped it. I wonder if it’s worth anything.”

  “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you?” Sears said.

  “Is that an official fire department question?”

  Sears eyeballed Tronstad and then me. He’d been looking at me more than the others, and I had the feeling I was his lie detector, as if something in my face confirmed or denied veracity. I didn’t think I was quite that transparent, but perhaps I was. “I’m just asking,” he said.

  “Because if that’s an official fire department question,” said Tronstad, with a smirk, “I need to call my union rep.”

  “You’re taking this pretty lightly.”

  “I’m not joking,” Tronstad said.

  “Neither am I.”

  “Trust me. You’re all wet on this one, Lieut.”

  “I hope so.”

  A few minutes later, the detail from 32’s showed up and Sears left. The detail was a man named Bob Oleson, one of those big-boned men who’d come into the department a few pounds overweight but who had recently ballooned to even larger dimensions. Later, when Oleson was out of earshot, Tronstad looked at me and chuckled. “Even if Sears gets somebody to listen, how’s he going to explain he thought we were thieves and then left me in charge?”

  Somehow I didn’t believe Sears’s foolishness nor Tronstad’s reasoning was going to sway the FBI. We were in trouble here, and I didn’t know what to do about it. I was beginning to feel like that flying pig, whizzing through the deep blue twilight, no way to slow myself, much less stop.

  I had a lot to think about as we rode around the district taking care of the tasks Lieutenant Sears had left us: testing hydrants, doing a couple of building reinspections, visiting a preschool. He’d asked us to run three wet drills, too. Johnson, Oleson, and I were willing, but Tronstad sprinkled water on the hose bed so it would look as if we’d pumped water through it, saying, “The bastard drills us enough without us drilling us. It’s like asking a kid to go out to the woodshed and paddle himself.”

  In the back of my mind was the thought that I might end up in prison over this. I didn’t think so, but it was possible. Going to prison would keep me separated from my mother during her last year of life. After the way she’d dedicated her life to me, I couldn’t do that to her.

  Finding herself pregnant at seventeen, my mother left Spokane and centered her life around me. I never met my father. The official story is that my mother divorced him before I was born, but by the time I was ten I knew that was bogus.

  Her parents were hard-line Christians and never forgave her for her out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Mother was the youngest of five siblings, raised after the others had left home, so she wasn’t close to my aunts and uncles. My grandparents are in their eighties and now live in Spokane, a six-hour drive from Seattle, a couple of cold fish who for twenty-five years have treated my mother like an outcast. We rarely saw them when I was growing up, though I now visit on my own once or twice a year.

  My mother has good days, as the last four had been, days where you almost wouldn’t know she was sick, and then she has days where she gulps painkillers and gets a distant look in her eyes. All along she’s been d
esirous of the same privacy in death she enjoyed in life and has refused to inform anybody in the family she’s sick.

  Thinking of my mother made me even angrier that Johnson and Tronstad had splurged on new cars. We might have given the money back anonymously, but our chances of that were dwindling by the minute. I had assumed that under all their silly pranks they were mature individuals, but now as I viewed them through the clarifying prism of their greed, I knew I couldn’t have been more wrong.

  I saw how weak Johnson was, how flighty and vain Tronstad was. Johnson, who didn’t know his district and refused to study it, should never have been the driver on Engine 29. Anybody with a smidgeon of pride would have either learned his district or given up the post, yet he did neither. The department might have turned him out of the spot, but that wasn’t how things worked. Johnson liked to palaver about the fact that he was a small cog in a big machine, that he didn’t have control over his life, philosophizing endlessly without ever coming to any useful conclusions. Outwardly, he was jolly and always in a pleasant mood, but under the surface there was a layer of brooding most people didn’t notice.

  Tronstad was a different cat altogether; no deep thought there.

  Nobody who worked with Ted Tronstad ever forgot the impromptu stand-up comedy routines he put on at the drop of a hat. He was funny in a Robin Williams way. Everybody said he should audition for Saturday Night Live. He was gregarious and championed his friends, as he had me after the incident at Arch Place, yet on the downside, he had money problems, women problems, and a bunch of long-haired, tattooed, Harley-riding buddies who’d spent more of their lives in taverns and prisons than I cared to think about.