There Will Be Fire

by Mark Von Kyling

  “No, I’m just saying that that’s a rumor. There’s also a rumor that he’s been spending a lot of cash lately and that he was dealing with some people who might care about their money more than others.”

  “Like criminals?” Howie asked, eagerly hoping this was true.

  “That’s just what I heard,” Ratledge said.

  “The jist is that maybe Howie is not the only person who would have liked to see him dead then?” Parminter said then added jokingly, “Besides yourself?”

  Ratledge rolled his eyes. “You could say that, yes. If the rumors are true. And in this town, it’s very likely that they’re not.”

  “But it’s just as likely that they are,” Howie said.

  Just then a loud, abrasive female voice called their number. They went up and got their food and sat back down and began eating.

  4

  After meeting Ratledge, Parminter dropped Howie at his hotel and drove home. As he made his way through the rapidly increasing rush hour traffic, he couldn’t help but be disturbed by the utter callousness that he had seen in both Howie and Ratledge. They were almost like vultures hovering over a carcass. Sure Ratledge had kept his jealousy and animosity more low-key than Howie, but it was still there. It was obvious to anyone who listened to him that he was pleased as punch that Goldman had died and now he was going to get to start picking the scraps. He understood Howie’s animosity and he knew just how badly Goldman had treated him when they were growing up, but the guy was his family, after all. Not to mention a fellow human being. And all that stuff that he had done to Howie had happened years ago. It just didn’t really seem appropriate. But then again Howie was always a person who liked to gripe and hold onto a grudge. Parminter knew that if there’s one thing that is common to all humans, it’s their ability to complain and Howie had more of this ability than others. He could always find the cloud behind every silver lining. He was also a blowhard. This made everything he said seem worse than he meant. Parminter realized he should give him some slack. But still.

  As he fought his way through traffic and drove towards his home, he thought about the images of Goldman’s wife, Nicole that had been shown on television. Obviously, she had been completely devastated. On one news report in particular, one of the first ones in fact, the reporter had been filming his segment when he had noticed Nicole being consoled. The cameraman had coldly pulled away from the reporter, at the reporter’s request obviously because those types of people never wanted to be out of the spotlight, and had shown her reaction at the destruction of her house and the death of her husband. It was a completely unethical thing to do yet it had been oddly compelling on a human level. It was almost too painful to watch as she teared up and thrashed around in her grief and sadness, yet one could not look away. The guilt she must have felt for surviving such a fire must have been overwhelming. This footage had been picked up by the national outlets and had been subsequently shown hundreds of times. It was obvious that she loved the man and this was the one thing that bothered him about how Howie and Ratledge had acted. If anything, it was just disrespectful to her.

  As he approached his exit, he thought more about what Ratledge and Howie had said and tried to look at it more objectively and eliminate any inappropriateness he had ascribed to their attitudes. While they had been completely out of line in how they had seemed to rejoice in the fact that Goldman had died, maybe there was something to what they were saying. Maybe he really was a bad guy. If he had been so rotten when he was younger, why would he be any different as an adult? While Parminter believed that some people truly did have religious and spiritual experiences that changed the trajectories of their lives, he knew that this happened to very few people. He was just too cynical to believe it could have happened with Goldman. Once rotten, always rotten was usually the best rule of thumb to follow.

  But it wasn’t any of his business. While he had the connection through Howie, he knew very little about Goldman other than what he read in the papers or saw on television. As a matter of fact, aside from Ratledge, who he couldn’t stand, he didn’t really have any friends at all anymore who lived in the area. He had failed to keep in contact with most of his old acquaintances after he had moved to Los Angeles and after the news had gotten out about the movie that his script had been turned into, all his old friends who had become holy rollers, as was the fashion in the area, had stopped wanting to have anything to do with him. Even though he was sure that they still read their romance novels and watched their soap operas as well as their pornography. He knew that they were simply jealous and would have changed places with him in a second. They would never admit this though. Because they had absolutely nothing interesting going on in their lives, they had assigned themselves the role of “The Guardians of Everything” which allowed themselves to authority to publicly disapprove “in the name of God” of things they didn’t like. The movie simply had given them just the opportunity they had been seeking to lash out at what they saw as the failure of their life.

  To be honest though, he thought that sudden change in some of his friends’ attitude towards him had helped weed out a lot of people that he didn’t really need to be associated with anyway. There’s nothing like a rumor being started about a person to see what people truly think of them. The friends he still had, aside from Ratledge, were fairly good ones. Also he had managed to stay on good terms with his ex-wife. But he wondered sometimes if this was just for the benefit of his daughters or if he truly liked her. It could have been the fact that she was on the police force and that was always a benefit. She was a good person though despite their differences.

  As he pulled up to his home, he noticed that a black Mercedes that he had first seen after he had left the hotel had just driven by his house. That was weird, he thought. Was he being followed?

  5

  As Parminter went on his nightly stroll through the neighborhood, he thought about the car he had seen earlier that day. It was common enough to see black Mercedes sedans in the area where he lived. Most of the residents were either on their way up or their way down as far as social classes went. This one was different though. He had never seen it before he had noticed it at the hotel and there was no reason for it to follow him from downtown all the way out here. There was absolutely no reason to even be out here unless you lived here. And whoever was driving this car obviously didn’t live here. It had driven through the development and had gone back on to the main road and disappeared like it had either found what it was looking for or had decided that what it was looking for wasn’t interesting anymore. It was just rather odd.

  It was early evening as he walked and there were other people doing likewise. There were also people, mostly older ones, outside sitting on their decks and porches watching their surroundings as if they were awaiting some grand display to present itself. Parminter had found that as many people got older they began to spend a lot of time waiting for something to happen. Or rather not to happen. Regardless, it was all just part of the early evening scenery.

  The development in which he lived was called Conquistador Meadows. It was so named because it was built in the area where Desoto’s men had camped on their way to the Mississippi River. Supposedly a conquistador’s helmet had been found when they had been clearing the property to make way for the development, however, this had never been substantiated.

  Since it was such a new development and had been built with the idea of promoting pedestrian traffic in a Masterplan style, it was the perfect place for people to get a little exercise while clearing their minds of all the stress they had accumulated throughout the day. A neighborhood like this needed this sort of diversion since it was largely filed with executives, bankers, doctors and lawyers. Stress was a way of life which meant that relieving stress was a way of life too. Having lived in Los Angeles, a place where stress and zen tranquility walked hand in hand, Parminter thought that it was weird that this sort of symbiotic and destructive relationship had made it’s way all the way out to the
Southeast.

  He just really didn’t understand it, but then again he was conscious of the fact that he had a rather narrow point of view on the subject. On most days, he wasn’t stressed at all even though he probably should have been. He made most of his income stock trading, but he had gotten to the point where he didn’t have to put himself in too much jeopardy to make money. Even though it could sometimes be very tedious, he went for the easy money. The low-risk stuff. As a result, he now slept much easier than he ever had when he had written full time. He had done well enough in his taking advantage of the several crashes since he had started to go into trading relatively risk free. He was disciplined enough to keep a lot of cash for any new crashes that might occur and only went with low risk stocks. He sometimes felt badly about he had done so well while other people had lost everything. But then again, he recognized that if he had jumped into the market only two months earlier, things would have been radically different for him. He would have lost everything and still scratching it out. He doubted that anyone would have felt badly about that.

  Still, this evening wasn’t doing that much to clear his mind. There was something going on with that car. If it hadn’t been for his conversation with Ratledge and Howie that day, he probably wouldn’t even have thought anything about it and chalked it up to someone who had gotten lost or was maybe looking to buy into the neighborhood. But there was something making his senses tingle about it. He knew that it was nothing that he could put his finger on, but it was definitely there.

  He looked at his watch. It was later than he thought. He realized that he should call his daughters before they got ready for bed. He also thought it might be a good idea to talk to his ex-wife, Robin, about the car. Since she was a cop, she might have some insight into the situation. He stopped for a second and winced. A sharp pain coursed through his leg almost bringing him to tears. He took a deep breath and soldiered on. He had to keep walking if he was ever going to get back up to full strength.

  Even though his leg was starting to ache, he finished his walk and went back to his house. He lived in a McMansion that was very similar, but just different enough to differentiate it from the other McMansions in the development. The conformity of the home was both comforting and slightly unsettling at the same time. It was a nice house even though sometimes he had doubts as to the construction. He tried not to scrutinize it too much though otherwise it just drove him crazy. If he started thinking about all the shortcuts that had probably went into building it, it would start to affect his sleep. He knew that the cracks and flaws would show eventually but tried as hard as possible to put them out of his mind until they actually began presenting themselves.

  He went into his home office and picked up the phone and called his daughters. Freddy, the man with whom his ex-wife had cheated on him and had subsequently left him for, answered the phone. It was obvious that Freddy did not feel that great about taking Robin from him because he always bent over backwards to make sure that Parminter got to see the kids whenever he wanted. He had even helped him move into this house. While Parminter could understand that at heart Freddy was probably a nice guy, he still couldn’t get around the fact that he had ruined his life as he had known it. The only thing that really helped him get around this fact was that he was nice to his daughters and that, like his wife, he was also a cop. One never knew when knowing one could come in handy.

  “Hi, John,” Freddy said apprehensively.

  Freddy was always nervous on the phone to him. This was odd considering that he was on the SWAT team. Angry ex-husbands should have been familiar to him since he dealt with them in situations much more dangerous than this every day.

  Parminter said hello and feigned friendliness and then asked to speak to his daughters. Freddy went and got them.

  “Hello, Daddy,” said the voice on the phone. It was Talullah his youngest. She was ten. They talked for a little bit and then she put her older sister, Margaret, on the phone. She was twelve. He was closest with Margaret and he knew that the girl had never forgiven her mother for divorcing him. He tried to help her let it go because he knew that she would be a much happier person if she did. Still, he was very proud of her loyalty.

  After a little bit of catching up, he asked her to put her mother on the phone.

  Parminter’s relationship with Robin had taken the usual and typical trajectory that is common to young love. They had had high hopes. He had planned on being a newspaper writer and she was going to go into the police force after college. They got married soon after graduation and had then gotten jobs in their respective fields. Sure, they were low-paying entry level positions but they were a start. They quickly had two kids and then she started cheating on him with a co-worker. Enter Freddy.

  What had irritated him most at the time was that she had seemed most upset that he hadn’t noticed that a change had occurred in their relationship. She had said that if he really loved her, he would have noticed that she was cheating on him. He could see her point in a way, but the condescension irked him. They had both worked long hours and spent too much time apart so early in their relationship that such betrayal was inevitable. Still it had hurt. It was after this that Parminter had moved across the country. Robin and Freddy had subsequently gotten married. Robin had worked herself up through the force and was now a detective. Now she had the job she had always wanted, the man she had always wanted and the home she had always wanted. She had gotten everything that she had wanted, he sometimes thought bitterly.

  “Hello, John,” Robin said to him as if she was expecting him to ask her for something.

  He didn’t disappoint. “Hi, Robin,” he said. Then he explained about seeing Goldman’s house and the Mercedes.

  She thought about it for a while. “You and those friends of yours,” she said chuckling. “It sounds like you’ve been watching too many movies.”

  Parminter was a little irritated at this, but knew that she had never been the most sensitive of individuals.

  She sensed his irritation and then changed her tone. “Listen, I’m just joking with you. It’s probably nothing. I wouldn’t worry about it until it happens again. I’m surprised that you even noticed it. You always were such an oblivious person,” she said before she realized what she was saying.

  He ignored the dig. He said goodbye and then sat down at his computer and started doing some research for the following days trading. He thought about calling Howie and telling him about it, but then decided not to. He didn’t want to sound paranoid and give Howie anything to needle him with.

  6

  For Parminter, it was a typical day was one filled with drinking coffee, looking at his computer and watching the news. He was in a good mood because he had a good morning at the market and had made quite a bit of money. Around noon, he got a call from Howie.

  “Hey, you’re coming to the memorial tonight for dear departed Raoul.”

  “I am?” Parminter said. “Didn’t that already happen last week?”

  “It did. That was the religious one. This one is going to be more informal.”

  “I see.”

  “Besides it’s not like the first one really counted because there was so little of the body left, it was kind of like, why bother? You know? We could have been paying our respects to his Eames chair for all anybody knows.”

  “Yeah, it said that he was almost practically cremated in the news reports.”

  “Anyway, I need someone there on my side besides Ratledge. The thing is at his wife’s condo downtown. We’re all going to eat and get drunk while reminiscing about how great the bastard was.”

  “She has a condo? What about the house?”

  “The house was mainly for weekends. And for the magazines. Apparently they spent most of their time in the city. I know I would. It’s a penthouse. It would be a real pain in the ass to go all the way up the mountain everyday. Besides, from what I heard, the house was very cool to look at but extremely uncomfortable to live in. The feng shui was off or some
shit like that.”

  “But I really didn’t know him that well. Do you really think it’s appropriate for me to go to this?”

  Howie started chuckling. “C’mon, John. Don’t act like a hick. They’re calling it a memorial, but it’s really just a dinner party. You know how these rich people are. Even in their darkest moments, they still want to show off.”

  “I see.” Parminter did know this. When he had been out in California, he had been invited to parties, weddings, funerals and all sorts of other events by people who had no idea who he was aside from seeing his name on a card or a list. For some people, sacred events weren’t about family and friends, but rather about filling the seats. The more people to share in an event, the more special it was, regardless if there was an actual connection or not. After Howie had told him the nature of the event, he figured that this was probably the case tonight.

  “One thing though,” Howie said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t bring up the dog,” Howie said and then started cackling.

  It took Parminter a second to figure out what he was talking about. “Oh, yeah, the one that got run over by the fire truck. I had forgotten about that,” he said. He had no intention of doing any such thing.

  After Parminter got off the phone, he figured that he probably needed to get an outfit together if he was going to have to go to such a swanky affair. He wandered into his bedroom and looked through his closet and saw that he really didn’t have anything appropriate for a high end dinner party. He would have to go shopping.

  He looked at his watch and saw that it was almost time for his girls to get off school. He called their mother who gave him her consent to go pick them up. The girls were tweens so he knew that due to all the TV they watched and magazines they consumed, they would have a better idea of what looked good and appropriate than he would. As his ex-wife had suggested, he had made it a point not to fixate on the Mercedes that had followed him. He would worry about the subject as it came up, but for the meanwhile, he would live his life as normal.