A tier of cardboard drums obscured part of the northeast comer. I blundered around the drums, and then I could see it —a freight elevator like a black-gated hole in the firelit wall. When I got to the gate I had to lean against it for a few seconds to battle air into my clogged lungs, to cleanse sweat out of my eyes. The elevator was on this floor . . . a piece of luck if the fire hadn't yet burned out the electrical system, a funeral pyre for me if it had.
I heaved the gate up, stepped inside, threw the gate back down. I couldn't see the controls clearly, had to fumble around until I located the panel and the two buttons on it. Nothing happened when I punched one of the buttons . . . oh Christ . . . and I felt the hot breath of the flames and jabbed frantically at the second button.
A whine, a whir, a sudden jerking motion, and the elevator began to grind downward.
Relief jellied my legs; I leaned panting on the gate. The handkerchief was all but dry from the heat and no longer acting as much of a filter . . . pass out if I didn't get clear of the smoke pretty quick and the elevator seemed to be creeping, creeping. I couldn't see any of the lower floor—and then I could, a hairline of it that slowly widened until I was looking into a seething cauldron of smoke and flame. Steam, too, from melted sprinkler heads and the first jets of water from firemen's hoses out front. Sparks erupted here, there, in a succession of bright blooms. The images were mad, surreal, like a Cotton Mather vision of the Old Testament netherworld.
The elevator shuddered, suddenly stopped.
But it hadn't come all the way down; the floor was still a couple of feet below me. I jabbed at the control button. Nothing happened—the electrical system was gone. I yanked on the gate, couldn't get it to lift; crawled clumsily over the top of it; lost my grip before I was ready to let go. Short drop, but my feet went out from under me and I was down in a rushing convergence of blue-edged flames. The heat drove me right back up again. It felt as though the soles of my shoes were burning.
More glass splintered somewhere. Thirty yards away fire and ugly coils of black smoke vomited out of a jumble of bales and barrels. I threw an arm up over my head, lurched away from the elevator.
When I came out from under the ell, into the cleared area in the middle of the warehouse, I could see most of the way to the front, where the fire was hottest. Portions of the front wall were a mass of flame. Hammering noises came from the roof up that way: firemen on aerial ladders trying to cut ventilation holes. I took a couple of shambling strides toward the back wall—and then stopped when something else caught my eye through the swirls and billows.
Man-shape, loosely sprawled and smouldering, partway up the center aisle.
Despite the heat and the smoke-blockage in my lungs, I changed direction, took myself toward the blackened form. The stench of cooked flesh reached me before I reached him, made me gag and then vomit again dryly as I moved. He lay face down, one leg drawn up toward his middle. Charred, roasted to a cinder: little tongues of fire still licked hungrily along his back and buttocks. Dead—long dead. I didn't need to see his face, if he had a face anymore, to recognize him. The size and shape of his corpse were enough.
Savarese.
Blackwell's deathtrap hadn't been just for me; it had been designed for Savarese too. Eliminate two threats at once. Cook two birds in one giant oven.
The heat drove me back, into a sharp about-face. Toward the rear, a dull muffled thunder came from the roof: extra-heavy streams of water pounding violently against the superheated sheet metal. The whole building seemed to tremble under the impact. More sparks erupted; fragments of crate-lumber rocketed upward, then fell in blazing parabolas. One of the fragments landed on my left arm, burned fast through the cloth of my coat sleeve. I felt a jolt of pain, smelled again the stink of burning flesh before I could swipe the thing off.
The rear loading doors were visible ahead, shimmering in the fireglow; I stumbled toward them on legs of iron and splinters. Scalding water, streaming from the roof, ran down the back of my neck. There was a pulsing pressure in my eardrums, but faintly I could hear men yelling outside, the throbbing roar of some kind of big engine. I tried to shout as I ran, to let the firefighters know I was in here, but I had too little breath and a throat as dry as sand.
Sudden low booming, like a mortar shell going off. Almost instantly the air cleared and the constriction in my chest eased and the pressure in my ears was gone. Part of the front wall must have collapsed, or there had been an explosive backdraft through one of the ventilation holes—releasing pent-up gases, feeding fresh oxygen to the inferno. Around me the flames seemed to lift and soar. The heat against my back was a thrusting force.
Frizzling, crispy sound: my hair starting to singe. Jesus! Heat in here must be nearing 175 degrees. A few degrees more and the wax in my ears would melt, slosh around like water; and at a few degrees above that, my ears and nose would blister and then all of me would ignite like a struck match. . . .
I was thirty feet from the doors when the jet of water hit them full on, burst them apart with terrific force. One instant I was running, streaming sweat, close to collapsing from the heat, the next I was engulfed by icy brackish water, down on the floor, being rolled over and swept sideways. I banged into something, caught hold of something else and managed to hang on, gasping, choking . . . and then the stream quit punishing my body, lifted and aimed higher. The water that fell on me then was like a hard, steady rain.
I flopped over, got up on one knee, brushed at my eyes until I could see. The loading doors had been driven wide open and now the stream of water was lifting toward the roof. Underneath it, firemen were moving inside, the first wave of them crouched behind the wide-angle spray of a fog nozzle. The ones behind them carried powerful flashlights, wore plastic helmets and oxygen masks and Scott Air-Pak tanks on their backs: rescue squad.
I hauled my feet under me, stood, managed to stay upright. I still couldn't make any sounds but it didn't matter now. It only took a couple of seconds for one of the torches to find me.
"Over there!" I heard the squaddie shout. "Man alive over there!"
They ran and I ran and I would have fallen if hands hadn't caught and held me. An urgent voice against my ear asked if anybody else was in the building. I choked out a response: "One man but he's dead."
Deft fingers laid a Scott mask over my nose and mouth and I could breathe again. Then there was a confused period of time and movement, and finally we were out of the fog and fall of water, out of the burning warehouse and on the pier. The wind off" the bay beat at me, made me shiver; the air in my lungs was cold and sweet. And I was seeing the huge lighted silhouette of the city's fireboat, Phoenix, lying just off the pier on the south side. That was where the heavy jet of water was coming from—one of the four big monitor nozzles mounted on her deck.
One of the squaddies was chattering into his walkie-talkie, telling somebody about me. Another asked if I could walk all right. I nodded, but he put an arm around my waist anyway— a good thing, because I needed the support. We went around the side of the warehouse, past other black-garbed men outfitted with Scott Paks and walkie-talkies, across bulging hoses to the front.
Frenetic scene out there: China Basin Street was clogged with pumpers, ladder trucks, support rigs; dozens of men running this way and that, shouting orders, laying down more hose, working the equipment. Two alarms, maybe three. Fireglow, glaring headlights and klieg lights, swirling red flashers; the pulsing drone of the pumpers, the thrum of the blaze, the sibilance of water from big ladder-pipe nozzles atop a pair of 100-foot aerials exploding into steam as it struck red-hot metal.
Other men converged on us as we appeared. A babble of voices, and more hands guiding me across the fire lines and out through the gate in the fence. They sat me down on the running board of an auxiliary truck drawn up in midstreet. I was shivering violently by then, still a little disoriented. Somebody put a rough blanket around my shoulders; somebody else gave me more oxygen, told me to breathe slowly and deeply. The oxygen clear
ed my head, eased some of the hurt in my chest. When I'd had enough I pushed the mask away. Then I was looking into the impending face of a big guy in a battalion chief's white hat.
"Okay now?" he asked.
"Okay."
"You need medical attention?"
"No."
"Sure?"
"I'm sure."
"What happened in there? How'd the fire start?"
I shook my head. I wasn't going to talk to him about that.
"The other man, the dead one . . . who is he?"
"Savarese. The owner."
"You work for him?"
"No."
"Then what were you doing in there?"
"Trying not to die," I said.
He looked at me hard for a couple of seconds; the fireshine reflected off the moisture on his face, made his features seem as hard as stone. Then he said, "Yeah," and hurried off toward the front lines.
Fire had claimed all of the warehouse now, throwing great cauliflowers of dirty smoke into the night sky. The air was wet with wind-blown mist off the half-dozen streams of water pouring from different angles into the building's shell. Part of the front wall and roof had already collapsed; the rest of it wouldn't last much longer. But the scurrying movement of men and equipment continued unchecked. Even though the boat club and salvage yard were some distance away on either side, there was still the threat of wind-carried cinders. Voices rose audibly here and there, hurling sentence fragments that had little or no meaning for me.
"Hold fast, hold fast!"
"That goddamn fence . . . can't lay any more spaghetti through there without risking a foul-up. . . ."
"Is that line charged? All right, haul it through. . . ."
"Stretch it over there! Stretch it!"
"Too late to knock it down now, even with a master stream. . . ."
I wondered if they'd gotten Savarese's corpse out—and less than a minute later I had the answer. Two squaddies carrying a black body bag appeared along the near side of the warehouse, brought it through the tangle of hoses that stretched through the fence. A white-outfitted paramedic joined them, took a look, moved away. The coroner's wagon wasn't there yet; they put what was left of Savarese down in the street.
Nobody was paying any attention to me.
I was no longer shaking; the blanket had insulated my sodden clothing from the wind. I got to my feet. My legs were still pretty wobbly, and there was a sharp, steady pain where the fragment of wood had burned my arm, and my chest kept producing hard little coughs. But I did not seem to have suffered any serious damage. I could get around all right.
I moved away from the auxiliary truck to where I had a better view up and down China Basin Street. Savarese's Plymouth van was no longer parked in front of the fence; the firefighters had moved it to make room for the pumpers and hoses—across and down the street, next to the network of old railroad spurs. As soon as I had it located I moved that way. I had to walk slow; when I tried to hurry my pace, the dizziness started up again.
The van was parked with the driver's door away from the fire. I went around on that side, leaned in across the seat. With the aid of the dome light I could see well enough to make a fast search of door pockets, glove box, seats, floor, and cargo space. There was not much to look at anyway, nothing that tied Savarese to Blackwell or did me any good. Blackwell was both shrewd and thorough; he'd been through the van before leaving here tonight, sure as hell, and he hadn't overlooked anything. The only lead I had to him was the credit card receipt I'd found under Savarese's desk blotter—and by this time it figured to be no lead at all.
I backed out, shut the door, started around to the front of the van. A shout went up from the firemen, and there was a concussive noise like a sonic boom that made the ground shudder under my feet. I turned in time to see spears of flame, great gouts of sparks and smoke boiling upward as the rest of the warehouse roof caved in on itself. Men ran toward and away from the heat and fallout, their eyes and minds fixed on what was happening inside.
I kept walking, not too fast, not letting myself think. My car was still parked where I'd left it in front of the boat club; I covered the distance to it unchallenged. Inside, I shed the blanket, started the engine and set the heater on high. When I could feel the warm air against my feet I put the car in gear, then swung in a tight U-turn around a red fire inspector's car before I switched on the headlights.
Farther down the street the police had set up barricades to keep the rubberneckers at bay. Out beyond, where China Basin Street hooks left to Third Street, hundreds of people were milling around, laughing, chattering, having a grand old time for themselves like celebrants at a pagan ritual. Bastards, I thought; I almost died in that frigging warehouse. But it was misdirected anger and I choked it down. One of the uniformed cops was gesturing for me to stop, and I did not want him to see what I was feeling.
He wanted to know who I was and where I was going. I gave him my name and a lie about taking myself to the emergency room. I'd been caught in the fire, I said, but I was all right to drive and the paramedics had told me to go ahead on my own. He thought about it. He could see I was telling the truth about being in the fire, and when I showed him the bum on my arm it made up his mind for him. He went and moved one of the barricades and let me through.
And that was a relief, because if he'd tried to detain me I don't know what I might have done to get free.
Chapter 19
I drove straight home. Not fast, not slow—safely.
It was the right place to go, the right thing to do, but I had to fight myself all the way. The dark, savage side of me wanted to go straight to Fisherman's Wharf, find out if the Harborside Inn was where Blackwell had been staying, see if he was still there . . . get my hands on him as fast as possible. But looking the way I did, nobody at the Harborside was going to tell me anything or allow me to wander the halls; and it was likely that Blackwell was long gone by now anyway, on his way south to the Salinas Valley. None of what he'd done tonight—torching the warehouse, killing Savarese, trying to kill me—made sense unless he knew or had a pretty good idea where Grady Haas could be found. So the most important thing for me to do was to call Arlo Haas, have him alert Constanza Vargas and her husband. After that, change clothes and do something about the bum on my arm. Then I would be ready to go hunting.
All the parking spaces near my building were filled; I left the car slanted across a neighbor's driveway, the hell with it. There was no reason Blackwell would have come back here, be waiting inside my flat, but I unlocked the door cautiously and went in and through the place the same way. Kerry had tidied up before leaving; she never could stand a messy house. Kerry . . . ah Jesus, Kerry. I had another flash of her lying on the closet floor, and my throat closed up and the beast inside began yammering again to be let loose.
I couldn't remember Arlo Haas's telephone number. My pocket notebook was soggy, soot-stained, but I could read the number all right. I punched it out. Paced back and forth, waiting, because I could not remain still.
No answer.
Fifteen rings, twenty rings—no answer.
The bedside clock said that it was nearly half past midnight. Not much more than two hours since Blackwell had trapped me inside the warehouse office. Even if he'd left straight from there, even if he drove recklessly fast, he hadn't had enough time to get to San Bernado. He couldn't be the reason Haas was not answering his phone . . . or could he? Haas had been adamant about standing a twenty-four-hour watch on his property; a crisis involving Grady was the only thing that would have pried him loose from there, day or night. Some kind of telephone ruse by Blackwell? No. He didn't operate that way; his methods were sly, covert, sudden. If he knew about Haas and the farm, he'd go there and take the old man by surprise, just as he'd done with Bellin and Kerry and me.
So why wasn't Haas answering his phone at this late hour?
I called Monterey County information. There was a listing for Emilio Vargas on San Benito Street in San Lucas; a
recorded voice gave me the number. But when I rang it all I got was some more empty circuit noise. Nobody home at the Vargas house either.
Something wrong down there . . .
I stripped off what was left of my wet clothes, kicked them into a corner. The burn on my arm was a hellish-looking thing, red and blistery and oozing. I ran cold water over it, dried it gently, pawed through the medicine cabinet and found a tube of something called Neosporin that Kerry must have bought and slathered that on. A wrapping of gauze, some adhesive, and then I washed my face and ran a comb through my hair, and all the while I was aware, like a harsh accelerated ticking in my mind, of the passage of time.
Bedroom, fresh clothes. Tick, tick. Another try at the Haas number, with the same results. Tick, tick. The Vargas number; still no answer. Tick, tick, tick.
And I was out of there.
* * * * *
Blackwell was a torch, a bug, a professional arsonist for hire.
He had to be, I thought as I drove the short distance to Fisherman's Wharf; everything pointed to it. Take any of the things that had happened, starting with the events of April Fools' Day, and you could explain it if Black well was a torch. Hell, you could explain Blackwell himself—his use of different names and addresses, his devious behavior, his cold-bloodedness. I'd done enough work for insurance companies, read enough literature put out by the arson department of the National Board of Fire Underwriters, to know that those tendencies were part of the psychological profile of most professional firebugs. They're the same breed as hit men for the Mob— amoral executioners who use fire instead of guns and who have the same disregard for human life. I remembered reading about one who'd been caught in Baltimore, a few years back, after setting a series of tenement fires. When the police told him seven people had died in those fires, he'd said, "So what?"
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