Vertical Burn

by Earl Emerson

  This was a clone.

  He climbed up into the high driver’s seat, trying to figure out what it meant.

  The glove box contained an elevator key and an air gauge, assorted paper clips, a couple of ink pens with teeth marks, and ear plugs in their cardboard envelopes. He found official fire department Notice of Violation forms and Form 20Bs for aid runs, one of which was arranged on a standard brown SFD clipboard the way it would be in a working rig—ready and waiting for the next patient. The radio bracket on the officer’s door held a portable radio, and when he turned it on and switched it to channel four, he heard fire department dispatchers sending Engine 39 on a call. There was a prefire book for the Columbia Tower along with a standard department map book of the city, marred by smudges and thumbprints, as if it had been in use for years.

  This was the rig that ran him down last night.

  He wondered how he was going to report this to the police without getting arrested for breaking and entering. The only windows in this part of the building were thirty feet off the ground, so he couldn’t say he’d seen it through the window.

  He was pawing through the drawers of the tool box when his pager went off, a full response to Eighteen Avenue Northeast, a residential neighborhood just a few blocks north of the University of Washington.

  “Air Twenty-six responding,” Finney said, after the dispatcher asked for confirmation.

  The first unit was already on scene, reporting heavy smoke from the basement of a two-story house. The fire had started in the kitchen in a basement apartment and spread through heating vents. Nobody was hurt, but they lost most of the basement, along with several rooms on the first floor.

  Ninety minutes later, when he was released from the scene, Finney drove Air 26 to Robert Kub’s house on South Ferdinand Street. A shiny black BMW with custom wheels stood in the driveway next to a battered gray Ford Tempo. Finney didn’t recognize the Ford, but the BMW was Kub’s.

  36. OH, IT’S GOOD ALL RIGHT

  “This damn well better be good,” Kub said, as he climbed into Air 26.

  “Trust me.”

  He had no hypothesis, just the splash of excitement that told him he was on the fringe of something big. The phony engine must have cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars, to think nothing of the incalculable trouble somebody had gone to in replicating Engine 10 down to the last detail.

  “Drag me outta my home, away from a woman I been thinking about for two years. Sweet Jesus. She better be there when I get back. Lavernia. You see her?”

  “This is important.”

  “At least tell me where we’re going.”

  “Just down the hill here. I’ll have you back in twenty minutes.”

  “Before she gained some of that weight, Lavernia was in Jet magazine. I got close to poking her once, but she started thinking about the Lord and feeling guilty. This’ll probably be just enough time to get her feeling guilty again. You probably read about her husband. A Baptist minister, one of those righteous political activists who keeps Jesus in his back pocket.” Kub smiled, his teeth gleaming in the light from the dash. “Know what’s going on tonight? She caught him playing around. Guess what I am. The revenge fuck.”

  “I’m going to need advice. This place I’m taking you to . . .”

  “I get back and she’s gone, I’m going to be pissed. I never been a revenge fuck before.”

  “I know,” Finney said, stopping on Eighth Avenue.

  It was almost midnight and cold. Finney went through the ritual with the Knox box while Kub watched. “Come on, Robert.” Finney pushed the front door open with his fingertips.

  “Not unless you own this place.”

  “I hear an alarm. Let’s go investigate.”

  “There’s no alarm. No way.”

  “We’re on a street that probably won’t see another vehicle until seven in the morning. There’s something in here you have to see to believe.”

  “What?”

  “Like I said, you have to see it.” Clad in slacks, a dress shirt he’d hastily buttoned, loafers, and no socks, Kub was shivering. He glanced up the vacant street in both directions.

  “What the hell!” He hopped up the four concrete steps and followed Finney inside and across the expanse of unlit, empty warehouse floor to the portable screen. “This better be good,” he said, cantering along several paces behind the beam from Finney’s flashlight.

  “Voilà!” Finney said, stepping around the tall screen and raising his light.

  Kub poked his head around. “What?”

  They were gone—the engine, the newspapers, the tool chest, even the paint cans. Finney had been away only two hours.

  “Okay, John. Quit dickin’ around.”

  “It was here.”

  “What the hell you talkin’ about?”

  “They must know I found it. That’s the only explanation. Come on. Let’s talk outside.”

  “Not until you tell me what we’re supposed to be looking at.”

  “It was a mock-up of Engine Ten.”

  “Say what?”

  “A perfect replica of Engine Ten. Exact right down to the greasy rag under the driver’s seat.”

  “You’re talking ’bout a plastic model?”

  “Full size.”

  “Out of cardboard, or something?”

  “Steel and Fiberglas. You wouldn’t have known it wasn’t Engine Ten.”

  “You kidding me?”

  “Last night about half a mile from here an engine ran me off Airport Way and almost killed me. Tonight I found it right there.”

  “So where is it?” When Finney didn’t reply, Kub said, “I don’t know which is worse, what you’re telling me you thought you saw, or the fact that you’re telling me you thought you saw it.”

  “It was here. I swear.”

  “Maybe they’re out on an alarm.”

  “Not funny.”

  Kub’s laugh echoed off the walls in the empty warehouse. “I think it’s hilarious. But let’s assume you saw it. It was probably some rich collector building a model so he can drive around in parades. God knows there’re enough firefighter freaks out there, and now with all these Microsoft millionaires running around . . .”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Maybe the building has a silent alarm,” Kub said.

  “All I saw when I came in was the fire panel.”

  “The best burglar systems, you don’t see them.”

  At the front entrance, Finney turned off his flashlight and peeked out through the tall, narrow window alongside the door. They stepped outside and Finney pulled the door shut just as a brilliant light swept across the wall next to him. “You guys need help?”

  “SPD,” Kub whispered. “Shit fuck shit! I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”

  Finney couldn’t see a squad car or the woman speaking or anything else except the light.

  Traditionally the police and fire department in Seattle were amicable. Cops came into fire stations to use the telephones or the rest room, to write reports, and to bullshit, and if a traffic cop pulled over a firefighter for speeding, more often than not the firefighter was let off with only a warning. Until thirty years ago their unions had even negotiated city contracts together.

  “I’m commissioned,” Kub said. “Marshal Five.”

  “Hands on the wall. Step back.”

  “I’m commissioned,” Kub protested.

  “You heard me.”

  They were frisked by two uniformed police officers, one male, one female. Though he couldn’t see much of her in the glare of the spotlight, Finney recognized the voice of the redhead who’d taken his accident report the night before. Kub knew them both.

  “What’s going on, Robert?” the woman asked.

  “We were out driving when we heard an alarm. Thought we’d investigate before the dispatchers sent out a full response.”

  The male police officer said, “Monitoring company said somebody was on the premises.”r />
  The female stepped to the front door while the second police officer kept his eye on them. The officer cupped her eyes against the dark window and tried the door handle. “Okay,” she said, turning around. “You two be careful. Some officers would get real jumpy seeing two guys in the dark like that.” She looked at Finney closely. “Ever find your fire truck?”

  “Nobody reported an accident.”

  A minute later when they were alone, Kub said, “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. They got here two seconds sooner and we’d be in their backseat sitting on our hands. I would have lost my job.”

  “Sorry, Robert.”

  “Turn on the damn heat.”

  After they’d driven a mile, Kub said, “You really saw an engine?”

  “I know how weird it sounds.”

  “Do you? Somehow I don’t think you do. Goddamn! Lavernia better be there.”

  The Ford Tempo was still in the driveway when they got back to Kub’s house. Finney said, “Do me a favor?”

  “What now?”

  “That night at Leary Way when we bumped into each other?”

  “Not this.”

  “I was changing my bottle. You were on the other side of the rig. Bill was over there talking to Stillman.”

  “I don’t remember what they were talking about. Whatever it was, it was just talk. Bill went into the building and the next time I saw him he was dead.”

  Loud music drifted from the front door as Kub disappeared inside.

  37. WE HAD THE BASTARDS FALLING OUT OF THE SKY ON US

  Still clad in his department T-shirt and uniform trousers, Finney circled Engine 10 until he was certain it was the original, then reached into the rear wheel well on the officer’s side and used the tip of his Buck knife to nick his initials into the thick red paint above the dials. It wouldn’t be visible without squatting and then probably not without a flashlight, but he would be able to feel it anytime he wanted.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Paul Lazenby asked, his voice a low growl. Sheathing the knife, Finney wondered how long Lazenby had been watching.

  Lazenby’s thick hair was mussed, his face puffy. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt with an SFD logo across the chest, the veins in his forearms and biceps as prominent as the noodling on his neck.

  Diana appeared behind Paul, her chestnut hair plaited and trailing down the center of her back. Paul gave her a sour look and left.

  “He seems a little on edge,” Finney said.

  “The fire this morning didn’t go well for them.” It had been in a small, two-story office building located in a strip mall. Someone left a coffeepot on all night, and it caught the wall on fire and then spread to an attic space. Finney was there on Air 26, but he hadn’t spoken to anybody. “Michael made a mess of the hose at the front door, and when Paul charged it, it turned into a giant knot. Engine Thirteen marched right past them and tapped the fire. They were all whooping it up.”

  “That’s what Paul and Michael do when they take a fire away from Thirteen’s.”

  “They don’t like it so well when the shoe’s on the other foot. Paul’s furious at Michael for messing up the hose, and Michael blames Paul for charging it before he was ready. Balitnikoff says they’re going to drill all next shift.”

  “What’d you guys do?”

  “Put up a twenty-five and opened the roof. Haven’t done that in a while. Baxter and I cut the hole, and then Ladder Three shows up and cuts another one right next to ours, upwind. We were all wearing masks, but if there’d been any heat coming out, it would have been an ugly situation.”

  “Why’d they cut a second hole?”

  “I don’t know. In the beginning I thought they were racing us. They got off their rig and ran to the building. None of them had anything in their hands.”

  “Violates one of the first rules of truck work. Never go to the building empty-handed.”

  “When they tried to use our stuff, we told them to go get their own.”

  “Second rule of truck work. Never give up equipment to another crew.”

  She thought about it for a moment. “Used to be, every fire the truck went to the roof. Now we’re using those fans about eighty percent of the time. I kind of miss it. Going to the roof was part of the adventure.”

  “I’d give anything to be back on a truck.”

  “There’ll be a spot on Ladder One soon. Baxter’s going to retire this year. Now that his divorce is final, he wants to go back to Tennessee.”

  Finney knew that even if Reese didn’t block a transfer, he could never work at Station 10 again. The memories were too painful and always would be. It was ironic that Reese, who had never much cared for the physical act of firefighting, would endeavor to punish Finney, who loved it so much, by placing as much distance as possible between him and any real chance to fight fire.

  Before they could say anything else, Paul Lazenby came around the front of the rig again, opened the cab door, and began swabbing out the floorboards with a damp rag. It was clear that the floorboards didn’t need swabbing.

  A moment later Michael Lazenby sauntered around the front of the rig with a dirty pike pole and behind him, Lieutenant Balitnikoff. “What the hell are you doing?” Balitnikoff asked, when he saw Finney.

  “Came for the station tour. You out of coloring books?”

  Balitnikoff glanced from Diana to Finney and back again, as if seeing the two of them together confirmed some pet theory of his. “Well, why don’t you just take your tour somewhere else?”

  “Ease up,” said Diana.

  “Ease up? What the hell does that mean? Ease up. Jesus!”

  “Hey,” Finney said. “You guys are tired. Go home and kick your dog. Leave her alone.”

  “You think you’re hot shit because you saved some old dame? Both of you? Is that what you think?”

  “Come on,” Michael Lazenby said, stepping close behind his officer and placing a hand on his thick shoulder. “John’s right. Let’s go home and get some sleep.”

  “Bill and me were eating smoke before you were out of fuckin’ diapers, either one of you,” Balitnikoff said. “Hell, at the Ozark we had the bastards falling out of the sky on us. Back in them days we fought more fire in a year than you’ll see in your lifetime. Bill was a good man. He was a friend of mine.”

  “He was a friend of mine, too,” Finney said.

  “Then why did you let him cook?”

  “Come on,” Diana said, tugging on Finney’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  “If you’d been a real firefighter, you mighta had the balls to drag Bill out of that room instead of just crawling off to safety and saving your own ass.”

  The five of them lapsed into silence. Even Balitnikoff seemed in wonder at what he’d said, the words that until now nobody had dared utter, the words Finney knew were on everyone’s mind, just as he also knew that by noon Balitnikoff’s outburst would be quoted and discussed and dissected in every station in the city.

  Finney was so angry he couldn’t breathe. It was ironic that Marion Balitnikoff of all people would be the one to say it, because he’d once rescued Balitnikoff, though the wily old bastard would never admit it. If it hadn’t been for Diana’s gentle tug on his arm, he probably would have taken a swing at Balitnikoff.

  “That was uncalled for,” Diana said. “You don’t know what happened in there.”

  “Nobody knows,” Michael said. “Come on, lieut. Nobody knows. Lay off, will ya? Bill was your friend, sure, but the fire killed him. Come on. It coulda happened to any of us. You know that. Lay off.”

  Balitnikoff stalked off.

  Michael Lazenby said, “We had a long night.”

  “No, he was right,” Paul Lazenby said. “What sickens me about the whole thing is this dude comes out and pretends he can’t remember.”

  “What’s wrong with you guys?” Diana asked, tugging Finney to the rear of the apparatus floor.

  As they left, Paul muttered under his breath, “Can’t under
stand normal thinking.”

  Diana walked over to the workbench with the service axe she’d been carrying, sprayed the gummed-up blade with WD-40, and began scrubbing nubs of tar off the metal.

  “What was that last?” Finney asked.

  “It’s an acronym.”

  “Christ. That sorry bastard.”

  “Don’t worry about him. Being a jerk is its own reward.”

  It wasn’t Balitnikoff’s diatribe that had stung so much as it was the self-assured look on Paul’s face as he’d watched Finney’s reaction. He hadn’t been there to clean Engine 10’s floorboards. He’d gotten wind that Balitnikoff was going to tee off on him and had shown up for a ringside seat.

  Finney took a few deep breaths and watched Diana polish the axe. “Engine Ten lose a map book recently?”

  “I know they have a new one. They get beat up. You know how that goes.”

  “What about a prefire book?” There had been only one oddball item on the mock Engine 10, a prefire book for the Columbia Tower.

  “You know they don’t carry prefire books on board.”

  “I thought maybe the station captains had changed the policy for the Columbia Tower.”

  “No, we still keep that in the watch office,” Diana said. After a few moments, she continued, “All ready for tonight?” It took a few moments for Finney to realize what she was talking about. This was the thirty-first of October, Halloween. The costume party. “You can’t come?”

  “No, my truck. I was in an accident. I don’t have anything to drive. I mean . . .”

  “I’ll pick you up. A little before seven?”

  “I’ll be ready.”

  They both knew he’d forgotten all about it. Her gray eyes registered disappointment for a fraction of a second, but she was nice enough not to mention it.

  38. THE CAT IN THE HAT