Firetrap

by Earl Emerson

  “Actually, I don’t. Finish your story.”

  “Is he…” I say, gesturing at Renfrow.

  “This is confidential. He won’t repeat any of it.”

  “Echo and I…well, what happened…we had sex. Afterward, Echo got up and got dressed and ran out of there. I started chasing her. I was hoping to catch her before she got to the house so I could try to talk some sense into her. I don’t think either one of us had any idea everybody was still up. I think she just stumbled into that crowd out there and then had a hard time coming up with a story.”

  “Unlike you. You didn’t have a hard time coming up with a story, did you?”

  “It was true. I did see him leave the cottage. What I left out was I saw India leave, too.”

  “Why didn’t India say something? No. Don’t answer that. She’s not going to be anxious to announce to everybody she was out there getting sexed by Trey. Especially when you and she are practically engaged. You realize we’re in a bit of a bind now, don’t you, Stone?”

  “You’re not going to tell them it was me, are you?”

  “They want blood. Right now they want the blood of my son.”

  “Give them Trey. He’s adopted.”

  Father gives me a disappointed look. “For that comment I should drag you out there right now and help Harlan beat the living hell out of you. I can’t believe you even said that. You’re both my sons, goddamn it. And don’t you ever forget that.”

  “No, sir. But—”

  “Just shut up a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Boy, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You weren’t thinking.”

  “No, sir. I was blind drunk.”

  “Don’t bullshit me. I’ve been drunk more times than you’ve played with your pecker, and I can tell you right now, nobody’s ever that drunk.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What the hell are we going to do? Harlan is out there expecting some sort of resolution, and I can’t let him take all his anger out on Trey. All Trey’s guilty of is seducing your girlfriend. Or maybe she seduced him. Hell, the only reason I got evidence before Harlan was I made a deal with Barry to keep whatever he found at the cottage confidential until he spoke to me about it. He said he found evidence there had been two couples out there. And probably not at the same time. But then, I already knew you were lying. I just couldn’t figure out what happened.”

  Renfrow doesn’t bother to glance away from the window. Standing there, he’s looking like a pretty good imitation of a wooden Indian, getting paid twice for his dirty work, once from Echo’s father and once from mine. Father is shouting now. “I asked you what the hell we are going to do now!”

  “I don’t know!” I shout back.

  “Shit, Stone. It was bad enough we lost Shelby, but now you have to go and pull a stupid stunt like this. It’s going to kill your mother. You know that, don’t you? If it was Trey, like you said, it might not be so bad. It would be bad, but not as bad. She’s resented Trey in her heart all along, but this is going to kill her, and it’s going to kill me, too. You’re her last natural son.” Father sits on a stool in front of the sofa and drops his face into his hands. I’ve never seen him this distraught, not even when Shelby died. “Jesus, we have so much at stake. It’s not only the family stuff. I mean, hell, we’ve been friends thirty years, but all the business we’ve got going together this year. Do you know how bad he could shaft us if this doesn’t come out right? I know Harlan, and if he thinks we’ve hurt his family, he’ll put the screws to all of us. It’s the way his mind works. It’s one thing if he thinks Trey did it. He’s been against my adopting Trey since the beginning. But when he finds out it was blood…”

  “We could—”

  “Shut up! Let me think.” I’ve never seen Father in such a foul mood, but this is nothing compared to the state Harlan Overby will erupt into when he learns the truth. “God, this is a mess,” Father says. “I don’t know what to do. Goddamn you, Stone. I cannot lose two boys in one summer. Your mother cannot lose two boys in one summer.” When he looks up, Father is crying. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen him cry. “Okay. Let’s think this through.”

  Father keeps his face in his hands for a long time. I can hear the grandfather clock ticking in the corner. Finally he pulls a neatly folded handkerchief out of his jacket pocket, unfurls it, and mops his face. “I’ve got two sons left and I love you both. I do. But you, you son of a bitch, have put me in a position no father should ever be in. You’re intelligent, and you’ve finished law school with honors, and you could have gone anywhere. Then there’s Trey…everybody adores Trey.” After another long pause, Father looks up and says, “I know you’ve never liked him. And I know in her heart your mother loves him but that some part of her wishes I’d never brought him into the house. I still remember that night I saw him at the DSHS office thinking he wasn’t mine, and then seeing that little dimple when he smiled and knowing he was, and seeing how screwed up his life was going to be if I left him with that woman. I just fell in love with the little guy. God, Stone…I should take you out in the gravel and beat you half to death…putting me in this position.”

  “Yes, sir.” Although I’d suspected it for years, it was the first time I’d had it confirmed that Trey was his biological son.

  Renfrow speaks from his position at the dark window. “If I might make a suggestion?”

  “What is it, Barry?”

  “Why don’t we go back out and wait for him to come back and then see how it plays?”

  “You mean keep the blame on Trey?”

  “If it works out that way, why not? You’ve already got a deal worked out with Harlan. It seems as if you’re only playing with fire here if you change the players. He’s come to terms with this in his own way. He agreed to let you throw Trey out and leave it at that. We both know how he’ll feel about this new development. It won’t be good.”

  After a few moments staring into my eyes, Father arches his head up at Renfrow and says, “Will you go along with it?”

  “It’ll cost you, but not nearly as much as it’ll cost if Harlan hears the truth.”

  “What about Echo?”

  “She’s not going to change her story. She’s cemented in.”

  Turning back to me, Father gives me a withering look and mutters under his breath, “Don’t ever put me in a position like this again. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you,” Father says, turning to Renfrow. “You breathe a word of this, and I will pay to have you killed.”

  “I know that,” Renfrow says.

  “God, I can’t do this. I just can’t. Jesus. He didn’t do anything to deserve this.”

  “You’re going to have to give up somebody,” Renfrow says. “Harlan’s out there waiting. Think of it as a business decision. In business you do what’s expedient. Which choice does the least amount of damage to your holdings?”

  “I’m in hell here,” Father says, dropping his head into his hands.

  54. MORE LIES FROM CHESTER

  JAMIE ESTEVEZ>

  I began crying after I went to bed last night. It might have had something to do with the first guy I’ve been most attracted to in the last ten years having dinner at my place and being friendlier than he’s been since I met him, and then watching him receive a phone call and rush off to have sex with his blonde while I took a bath and watched an old movie on TV. The whole thing was so damn depressing. I wish I could stop feeling this way, but it’s one of those syndromes you can’t stop once it begins.

  And of course when I woke up in the morning, my eyes looked like I’d glued tea bags under them. Ice, a cold shower, and even a couple of dabs of Preparation H under my eyes didn’t help, and when Trey showed up at eight, I was still putting the finishing touches on my makeup. Hard to know why I even tried.

  I buzzed him up and met him at the door, searching his face to see if he could tell I’
d been crying, but he didn’t seem to notice my face, or me even. Not in those first few seconds. And then in a heartbeat everything changed. He took his briefcase off the counter and looked at me with those big gray eyes, and for the first time in our short but contentious relationship seemed to be looking directly at me. Me.

  “How are you this morning?” he said.

  “Fine. You?”

  When we got into the car, I said, “What do you want to do today?”

  Both hands on the steering wheel, he turned to me and said, “You’re the boss.”

  “Not this again.”

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what I would like to do, and you tell me what you would like, and we’ll see if we even need to say anything else. Heck, maybe we’re thinking the same thing.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  “I’ll bet you a lunch we’re thinking the same thing,” he said. “If you’re honest, I’ll win.”

  “You’re on. And I’m always honest.”

  He looked at me and smiled slowly with that contagious grin I’d seen him use on others so frequently. I smiled back limply.

  “Okay, what’s your proposal?” I said.

  “I think we should catch Chester McDonald before he can get out of the house. Ask him why he’s claiming to own the Z Club. Ask him about Renfrow. What was your plan?”

  “That was it,” I lied.

  “It was?”

  “That was it.”

  “So you owe me lunch.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ll buy dessert.”

  “You have a deal.” We both laughed. I believe it might have been my first shared laughter with Trey Brown, ever. I’d lied and it would cost me lunch, but maybe there was some hope for the two of us after all; hope that at least we might be friends before this was all finished.

  The weather had turned balmy, which it does in the early autumn in Seattle, cumulus clouds threaded through blue skies, sunshine bleaching the clouds a blinding white. Trey drove in silence. I could see there was something on his mind other than our impending visit with Chester McDonald. I was hoping he’d had a fight last night with his girlfriend and they were history, but that was a lot to hope for. More likely they’d figured out a way to spend the night together, and she’d sent him off with a kiss and a pat on the butt just minutes before he showed up at my door. Whatever was on his mind, it caused him to nearly run a red light on Lenora Street.

  Chester McDonald’s drapes were drawn, and two windows on the north end of the house above the rockery had been boarded over with plywood, shards of broken glass under the camellias.

  “Who you?” McDonald asked when he finally answered the door, ignoring Trey while staring me up and down. It was hard to tell if his eyesight was bad or if he was just being rude. I’d forgotten how ugly and frail he was.

  “My name is Jamie Estevez. We spoke last week.”

  “Don’t have time now. Too early. Just got up. No breakfast. Don’t have time.” He tried to shut the door, but Trey wedged his foot in the doorjamb so it wouldn’t close. At first, McDonald couldn’t seem to figure out what was happening.

  “Mr. McDonald,” I said, “Chester. Please let us in.”

  “Can’t find my meds. Gotta find ’em. Feelin’ sick.”

  “Then this is the perfect man to have at your side,” I said, stepping in past McDonald. “He’s trained in emergency medicine.” Trey followed while McDonald remained in the doorway, flummoxed by our invasion.

  “Can’t be warming up the outdoors,” he said, closing the door and shuffling through the living room and into the kitchen as if we weren’t there. Dinner plates crusty with food sat next to the couch. In the kitchen, McDonald opened cabinets and drawers, leaving the doors ajar when he didn’t find what he was looking for.

  From the doorway, I said, “We noticed some broken windows at the side of the house.”

  “They threw bricks! I had the po-lice out here. It’s them damn kids up the street. They claim their uncle was in the club, but I think it’s bullcrap.”

  “When we were here the other day, you led us to believe you owned the Z Club.”

  “Can’t find shit in this place,” McDonald mumbled.

  “You don’t own the Z Club, do you, Chester?”

  “I got blood pressure medication here somewhere.”

  “Chester? Who owns the Z Club?” He stopped scrounging through the kitchen and looked at me. “We’re looking for the truth, Mr. McDonald.”

  McDonald squinted at me in the dim light of the kitchen. “I owned it.”

  “I owned a Buick once,” Trey said. “Somebody else owns it now.”

  “I sign so much I can’t keep track of it myself. That’s what I got lawyers for. I buy and sell real estate. I make the calls, and they just come along and suck cash out of every deal. Used to have a good attorney, J.J. Pickles. I trusted J.J. Got himself”—McDonald began rummaging through a pantry near the other doorway to the kitchen—“…got himself drowned in some river out east. Went out there to put his mother in a nursing home and got drowned trying to fish in some dadblamed river had fish you couldn’t eat anyway. All polluted and shit.”

  “Mr. McDonald,” I said, “who owns the Z Club? We have tax information that says Silverstar Consolidated owns it.” McDonald’s rummaging came to an abrupt halt at the name, then started up again, though more slowly.

  After a moment he hobbled to the front door. “I’d like you to leave.”

  “You sold it to Silverstar Consolidated, didn’t you?” Trey said. “Then after the fire, they asked you to pretend you still owned it.”

  “I signed papers. Signed lots of papers. Ever since J.J. died, my affairs have been in the shitter.”

  “You ever see this man?” Trey asked, holding up a photo of Renfrow. McDonald, who’d been looking more and more annoyed, suddenly became frightened.

  “I don’t have my glasses.”

  “We’ll wait while you get them,” Trey said.

  “Was in the hospital four times last year. My life isn’t as wonderful as it looks from the outside.”

  “Your life could get a whole lot worse if you don’t answer these questions,” Trey said.

  Wearing a mask of anger and stubbornness, McDonald tried to stare him down. He was a little man, but he was tough, and at first I waited for them to finish the staring contest, but then I said, “Chester, who owns Silverstar Consolidated?”

  “Look it up in the records.”

  “We’ve tried. They’ve concealed it pretty well.”

  “Okay. That’s it. I didn’t invite you in. Get out of my house.” He pulled the door wide and stepped to one side, a slight breeze ruffling the flapping cuff of his flannel pajamas against the artificial leg.

  “This isn’t going away,” Trey said softly.

  Outside, we leaned against Trey’s Infiniti, and for a few moments neither of us said anything. I could see Trey thinking hard. Finally he said, “Somebody’s been telling the mayor everything we’re doing.”

  I felt like I’d been slapped. “I don’t know what—”

  “I thought you said you were always honest.”

  “I am, but I made promises. When I make a promise…Trey, I’m…”

  “Don’t tell me you’re sorry. I don’t want to hear that.”

  “Beckmann asked me to give the mayor a daily update. I made the promise before I knew you, before I knew he was your brother.”

  “You tell him I was trying to track down the owners?”

  “I’m afraid I did.”

  We drove wordlessly down the hill to Lake Washington Boulevard. He passed Seward Park and pulled into a parking lot alongside the water. Across the sun-dappled waves sat Mercer Island. To the distant north, the Mercer Island Floating Bridge. Trey shut off the motor, turned to me, and said, “Do you mind explaining why you’ve been spying on me.”

  “I wasn’t spying. I don’t like that word. He wanted a daily briefing. He had reasons. There are riots. He wanted to kn
ow how we were progressing, and…”

  “He asked about me, didn’t he?”

  “He mostly wanted to know how we were getting along.” Trey got out, slammed the door, and leaned against the driver’s fender, his back to me. I walked around the back of the car, feeling vulnerable walking toward him in the open air. It was a small parking lot, one car at the other end, probably a homeless guy because the car was old and full of belongings. Arms folded, Trey stared out at the water.

  “You were spying on me for my brother.”

  “I told you—”

  “I can’t believe you were doing this.”

  “It’s not going to have any effect on our findings. It’s—”

  “You know the history we have together.”

  “You’re the one running around with your brother’s wife.”

  Trey glared at me, his eyes full of fury. We stood like that for a while until he relaxed and said, “How did you figure that out?”

  “I deduced it. I’m not a fool.”

  “Okay, listen. I like you, Estevez. I really do. Maybe we should start again from scratch. You stop phoning the mayor, and I’ll…I’ll lead my life the way I please.”

  “If I stop calling the mayor, he’ll think something is up.”

  “Something is up. He’s got a connection to the Z Club he wants to hide. My guess is it was just a loose favor. Silverstar Consolidated was getting some income from renting the place out while they waited for the light-rail line to be completed. After that, they were probably planning to tear it down so they could put up something more profitable. From what I know now, Stone promised Harlan Overby and his minions he would keep the fire department off their backs to keep the costs down. I’m sure the promise meant nothing at the time he made it. So the guys at the club went ahead and played fast and loose with the fire regulations. Then the unexpected happened. And now we’re in danger. My ex-brother has Barry Renfrow working on this. That means you and I are both in danger.”