Earl W. Emerson

by The smoke room: a novel of suspense

  “You really a cop?”

  “One thing I’m not is a liar.”

  A liar was the least of what I’d become in the last month. Maybe in the end Sonja Pederson would be the one to arrest me. Why not? She’d already beaten me up. I flipped around so that we were facing the same direction. Skating side by side, we reached the end of the path a few blocks from the lighthouse and turned around, heading northeast toward the city again, forging into the breeze. We glided along for a minute or two without speaking. When we passed my car, I noticed her Miata parked next to my WRX. She said, “I didn’t come here because you were here. I came despite the fact that you were here.”

  I didn’t know if I believed her. I flipped around and began skating backward again, did a couple of backward crossovers. It occurred to me that she couldn’t hate me too awfully much or she wouldn’t be here.

  “How’m I doing?” I asked, just as a skate hit a rock and I almost went down.

  “Nice recovery.” She increased her cadence, trying once again to pull away.

  She got up a good head of steam and held it while I turned around and skated alongside. She wasn’t breathing that hard, but then, she didn’t appear to have any reserves, either. “You’re in good shape,” I said.

  “Not good enough, obviously.”

  “You have slow wheels. I could switch the bearings out for you. I’ve got a faster set in the car. They’d be a lot nicer to skate on.”

  “Fast enough to get away from you?”

  “Oh, you’d never get away from me.”

  “Maybe some other time.”

  “Your father get pissed at you for having me there?”

  “No. It’s just that I don’t bring people around very often.”

  “Your dad sticks a gun in their faces, I can see why. I don’t remember you from the day the pig went through the roof.”

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  “I only stay over once in a while. I have a house out in Maple Valley. Funny you should mention it, though, because my dad told me he was so shook up after the pig incident he couldn’t remember if I was in the house or not.”

  We were moving along at a pretty good clip now; not as fast as I’d been traveling on my own, but a steady pace. We passed an old man limping alongside a dog that appeared to be as old as he was. Sonja looked at me. “Would you answer a question?”

  “Of course.”

  “What do you want out of life?”

  “That’s a strange question.”

  “It’s the first thing people should ask each other. You find out a lot.”

  “Why ask me?”

  “Because when I told Iola I knew about you two, she said something I haven’t been able to get out of my mind. She said you were sweet. ”

  “As in, maple syrup sweet?”

  “And as in stupid sweet. I think she was profoundly disappointed in you because you were a nice guy.”

  “Let’s not talk about her.”

  “Fine. Tell me what you want out of life.”

  We skated for half a minute before I said, “I want my life to be what it was a month ago.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Simple. Wonderful. I had a job that allowed me to help people. I had my car, my skating. Friends. We didn’t climb mountains or race yachts, but it was a life I felt comfortable with.”

  “So you had a near-perfect life a month ago and you want it back?”

  “I had an ordinary life a month ago. I didn’t realize what it was until I lost it.”

  “What happened?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  She thought about that. “Was she right? Iola? Are you sweet?”

  “She told me I was naive.”

  “I think sweet’s a better fit.” Even though she’d tried to skate away

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  from me and had beat me up twice, I took her words as a compliment. I couldn’t help thinking we had an easy manner between us that I hadn’t encountered with a lot of other women and wondered if she had it with everybody, or just me.

  As we headed around the point, I got in front of Sonja and told her to keep close. She’d never drafted before, but after a few miscues, she picked up the technique. In skating, most of the work involves pushing the wind out of the way, so that a skater following close on another skater’s heels uses significantly less energy. I caught her hand and rested it on my hip so she could maintain balance and position more easily. “Watch out for cracks in the pavement. I’ll point them out to you.” We got going fast enough that I heard her breathing increase. After a minute, I said, “Want me to slow down?”

  “No.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’ve never gone this fast. It’s incredible.”

  We worked hard for twenty minutes before I felt her flagging. We took it easy on the stretch back to the cars, and she rolled to a stop against her Miata. She unlocked it and sat in the passenger side, unbuckling her skates while I did miniature backward figure eights. We talked about city politics, global warming, and a recent police shooting in downtown Seattle that had caused a stir in the media but which I hadn’t paid much attention to. She told me she’d once applied for a position with the fire department and been accepted but had changed her mind at the last minute. “Why?” I asked.

  “I guess I found something I liked better.”

  At that moment I would have given anything not to have screwed her stepmother into delirium so many times. I’d run into Sonja three times now, but because of my relationship with Iola, the odds of another meeting were negligible.

  “Why’d you stop here tonight?” I asked.

  “I told you. I needed some exercise. Beating up guys is just not that taxing.”

  “You saw my car parked down here and wanted to see me again.”

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  “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “I’m glad you showed up. I was in a pretty sour mood until you got here.”

  “What were you looking for at my father’s place?”

  “My sanity.”

  Seated in her low-slung car, she looked up at my face for a good long while. I stopped the figure eights and held her look. “What the hell were you thinking with Iola?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Was it just sex? Was it . . . What the hell were you thinking?”

  I shook my head.

  I’d been thinking it was a lark. A sexual romp. An escapade. I’d been thinking there wouldn’t be any consequences. That Iola wasn’t married. That she wasn’t damaging me with her sharp tongue and derogatory comments. That she hadn’t been treating me alternately like a sex toy and a doormat. Someday I would look back on it with disbelief, knowing the only thing I’d accomplished with Iola was to bollix my chances with this woman.

  Sonja’s face was flushed from exercise, her hair combed roughly by the wind. I’d never seen anyone more kissable. She walked around to her driver’s-side door and got in. I skated behind her, my throat so dry, I nearly choked on my words. “Can I see you again?”

  She laced up her sneakers. “Sonja Pederson. Maple Valley. It’s in the book.”

  It wasn’t as if I had a future. Sonja Pederson was a glimpse through a window I would never enter again, a world I’d stepped out of when I agreed to hide the bearer bonds. If my affair with Sonja’s stepmother failed to obliterate my chances with her, getting arrested in a high-profile federal case and being carted off to prison would probably do the trick. 29. WE’RE BUFFOONS

  W ROBERT JOHNSON, Ted Tronstad, and I were waxing Engine 29 in the sunshine behind the station, a David Byrne tune blaring through the open apparatus bay as we took advantage of what we suspected would be one of the last sunny afternoons of the year. Just three multimillionaire murderers polishing a rig for the city.

  Johnson was up to his old tricks, playing a joke on Tronstad by waxing his helmet while Tronstad
worked on the other side of the rig. A dirty, battle-scarred helmet is a point of pride to any firefighter, so it was a testament to Tronstad’s state of mind that he didn’t react or comment at seeing his helmet, now shiny and clean, in Johnson’s hands, looking as though it had never seen any action. Not being able to get his hands on the bonds had put Tronstad in a foul mood; he’d been hectoring me about it all day.

  There wasn’t much conversation, partially because the music was so loud—an infraction Tronstad committed to deliberately nettle the irascible neighbors—and because we were about talked out. So far our shift had been relatively quiet, all the excitement and nightmares occurring in other people’s lives, which was the way it was supposed to be when you were a firefighter. You went to other people’s excitement and remained calm and unruffled because the trouble wasn’t yours, and because you’d been trained to handle it dispassionately. As expected, Tronstad came in hung over and throughout the day took catnaps when he thought he wouldn’t be missed. The only reason Tronstad had come to work was to make sure I didn’t blow town with the bonds.

  One way or another, we wouldn’t be working together again, and we all knew it. Tronstad would take his money and abscond. Johnson still hadn’t made up his mind whether to run or to stick around and attempt 194

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  to fake normalcy. Me? I was going to get arrested. Whatever else happened, whatever I decided to do, they would be coming for me. Sometimes you just knew when the jig was up, and I’d lived with this premonition for some time now.

  Our temporary company officer, Lieutenant Covington, was a dull man with a bald head and a passion for growing roses and breeding Scottish terriers. Covington had been with the department twenty-two years and spent most of his free time at work in front of the television. It was almost three in the afternoon, and some of the neighborhood kids were walking past the station with a soccer ball. I tried to savor what was probably my last day on the job.

  “We meet again,” came the booming voice.

  I was alone on the officer’s side of the engine, feeling the sun warm my dark blue uniform shirt. Standing in front of me was the ex–FBI agent, Brown, his wife lingering behind him in the apparatus bay. As before, he wore a dapper suit and polished shoes. He didn’t stand close, the way he had the other day, but kept a good ten feet off. For reasons I couldn’t understand, it was just as intimidating. “I may have intruded the other day,” Brown said, squinting in the sunshine. “You men just coming back from a funeral and all. Thought I’d make my apologies and get the truth this time.”

  “The truth about what?”

  “Son, I’ve put away more snot-nosed ass-wipes like you than you could count in a month of Sundays.” He stepped closer, seven feet away now. “You just tell me what I want to know, and we won’t have any problems.”

  “What would you like to know?”

  “For starters, what time do you get off?”

  “Tomorrow morning at seven-thirty.”

  “Jesus. Don’t tell him that,” Tronstad said, coming around the front of the tall fire engine. “You’re just going to tell him whatever he wants? This guy’s an asshole.” Then to Brown, “Fuck you. And fuck that old bag.”

  Brown made a move toward him, but Tronstad began dancing backward like a bantamweight fighter in the ring, retreating until he disappeared through the bunk-room door. “Don’t tell him nothin’!”

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  I smiled a crooked smile at Brown. Funny how even when a man was trying to steal your life you wanted to be civil.

  “You just tell me everything you know about Charles Scott Ghanet. Everything about that last night you were at his place. Everything you might know about whatever sparked your two buddies here to buy new vehicles shortly after.”

  “You’d have to ask them.”

  “Right now I’m asking you. Speak up, boy.”

  In the apparatus bay, Brown’s wife began nosing into our supply locker, only to be intercepted by Lieutenant Covington, who said something I couldn’t hear over the music, then escorted her into our living quarters.

  “Holy cow,” Johnson said, as he came around the rear of Engine 29

  and spotted the old man. “Where did you come from?”

  “Straight from the Federal Building downtown, son. And I’m here to tell you buffoons that if you don’t tell me what I need to know, you’ll be going there, in steel bracelets.”

  “You’re not even official,” Johnson said, uncertainly. “You’re retired.”

  “I can arrest you both. Oh, you bet I can.”

  “I want to see my lawyer,” Johnson said.

  “What about you?” Brown’s voice softened as if gentling a horse. “You willing to talk to the FBI?”

  “I thought you were retired.”

  “We’re not talking about me, son. We’re talking about some righteous fellas I know who pee battery acid and sleep with women got brass wire growing out of their cunts. Four of the toughest sons of bitches you’ll ever meet. They’re downtown right now, and if I give them the say-so, they’ll want to see you. Trust me, you’ll be sorry you met them.”

  “I’m sorry I met you.”

  Brown moved forward, five feet away now. “Don’t be sassing me, son.”

  “Leave him alone,” Johnson said, stepping alongside.

  “If you want to come back with your friends,” I said, “come back with your friends. For all I know, you’re a bank robber yourself.”

  “Bank robber yourself,” Johnson repeated.

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  opened the far door leading from the bunk room and sneaked across the front of the apparatus bay and outside through the open doors. I had no idea where he was headed, but I could tell he didn’t want Brown spotting him. Knowing Tronstad, he was going to egg the old man’s car.

  “Just tell me what you three took out of that house. You do that and I’ll let you go.”

  “Don’t say anything, Gum. He can’t arrest us. He doesn’t have that authority.”

  “What’d you boys take out of Ghanet’s?”

  Robert was beginning to get that deer-in-the-headlights look he took on when he went wrong on an address or when you tried to talk to him about it afterward.

  Brown said, “I knew you sons of bitches had done something. It just wasn’t possible our people could ransack that house and come up with nada.”

  “It was a standard welfare check,” I said. “A neighbor or relative gets concerned, and we investigate. If the place is locked and we think there’s sufficient cause, we break in.”

  “You broke in three doors, son.”

  “We couldn’t find him.”

  “I saw your place. Down there off Genesee Playfield. Saw your place, Mr. Johnson, over off Seward Park Drive. Got yourself a nice little homestead. Nice little family. Nice little girl.”

  “Are you threatening me?” Johnson asked. “Because if you’re threatening—”

  Brown stepped forward, smelling of licorice and mothballs and something that might have been booze. “I don’t have to threaten you. You got the U.S. government on your tail.”

  “We haven’t seen any U.S. government,” I said. “So far all we’ve seen is you.”

  “I want that money back, son.”

  “If you’re legit,” I said, “get the real FBI up here.” Brown glared at me.

  “I mean, if you think we did something. Which we didn’t.”

  “We didn’t,” Johnson repeated.

  Without taking his eyes off me, Brown said, “You got any idea what

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  it’s like in a federal prison, son? You think about that when you’re congratulating one another on how you dusted me off, because that’s where you’re headed. Lompoc ain’t going to be pretty.”

  “I don’t happen to think you’re pretty,
” Johnson said.

  “We’ll be in touch.” Brown pivoted and walked to his wife, who’d just stepped back into the apparatus bay, took her arm, and escorted her out of the station through the front doors.

  “What was all that about?” Lieutenant Covington asked, after they were out of earshot.

  “He’s just some weirdo,” Johnson said.

  “His wife told me he was with the federal government. She said he used to be postal inspector before he joined the FBI. She also said she was a ballerina with the Joffrey. You believe that?”

  “He could have been with the FBI,” I said.

  “No, I meant the Joffrey. She’s kind of wide in the beam for a ballerina.”

  “Maybe she gained weight after she quit,” Johnson said.

  “She was a nice woman. Wanted to know everything there was to know about you three. You’re twenty-two, aren’t you, Gum?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  Covington was still talking when Brown’s Lincoln appeared at the front of the station, the power steering squealing as he motored through the apparatus bay. For half a second I thought he was going to run us down, but at the last moment he veered to the right and screeched to a halt.

  “I’ll see you two again,” Brown said through his open driver’s window.

  “You’re going to have to remove that vehicle,” Covington said, stepping toward the Town Car. “You’re on fire department property.”

  Brown sped off, and Covington went back inside to watch TV. After a while, Johnson said, “That old fart’s been spying on us.”

  “I bet he’s the one who tried to break into my place.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I’m thinking he’s after that money himself.”

  “Brown knows Tronstad and I bought new vehicles after we found Ghanet. In retrospect, that doesn’t seem like such a great move.”

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  “You think?”

  When Tronstad showed up with a broad smile on his face, Johnson’s voice was steeped in sarcasm. “Thanks for the help. At least with three of us we might have had a chance if he jumped us.”