The Night Watcher

by Lutz, John

  “Is there some kind of crisis?” she asked. “High-rise fires are nothing new in this city.”

  Fagin stirred sugar into his tea and sipped. “You might say we’ve been lucky so far. But crisis?…I don’t know. You’d have to be the judge. What we can do in a high-rise fire has always been more limited than most people thought.”

  “What exactly is your definition of a high-rise fire?” Stack asked.

  “One that’s on a floor higher than your tallest ladder.”

  “What floor is that?”

  “Well, our aerial ladders will reach seventy-five feet, sometimes ninety. The rear-mounts up to a hundred feet.”

  “Ten stories,” Rica said.

  “About that. If a fire is on, say, the twentieth floor, it’s like I told you: firefighters use the elevators, if they’re operable, to move equipment to the upper floors and the fire. Sometimes the elevators don’t work or are too dangerous; then we got real trouble. We lug the equipment up the fire stairs and hook a hose into a standpipe valve on the landing below the fire. Then we pay the hose up the stairwell so someone can direct the stream of water toward the fire from that landing.”

  “Sounds reasonably effective,” Stack said.

  Fagin smiled. “Really? Well, it can be if the fire’s not too large. And the stairwells aren’t full of smoke. And the standpipe valves work as they should. And if nothing interrupts the water pressure.”

  “Does the FDNY know what floor the fire is on when the alarm or call comes in?” Rica asked.

  “Usually. It’s vital information in New York. We know what address and floor we’re going to, and we can know what kind of equipment we’ll need. Ladder trucks, pumpers, what kind of attack we’re going to be involved in.”

  Rica blew on her coffee to cool it. “You make it sound like a war.”

  “It is,” Fagin said. “We get there in force as fast as we can. The truth is, in your average high-rise office building, with a twenty-or thirty-thousand-square-foot floor area per story, we sometimes can’t extinguish a fire with one or two hose streams from standpipe valves. A fire hose with a two-and-a-half-inch nozzle produces three hundred gallons per minute. Sounds like a lot, but it puts out a fire on only about ten percent of the floor space fire we’re talking about. What we’re really trying to do is contain the fire to that one floor until everything burnable is consumed.”

  “Then it goes out by itself?” Rica asked.

  Fagin sipped some more tea. “Just like the half-smoked cigarette you flip away. No fuel, no fire.”

  “What if you’re an occupant on that floor and the flames are between you and the fire stairs?” Stack asked.

  Fagin shook his head. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you two, let you know what might happen here, how really serious the situation could get.”

  “Then Brand is right,” Rica said.

  “He doesn’t know jack shit what he’s talking about,” Fagin told her, “but he’s got the essential problem nailed. If our blitz tactic doesn’t contain the fire, we need about three times as many firefighters and lots more equipment. It goes from a battle to a war. Besides directing water streams through broken windows from adjacent buildings, we try other things, slinging lines, setting up nets for jumpers, using high-powered fans. But the truth is, not much in the way of exterior attacks works well in a high-rise fire. It’s interior work, grunt work in flames and smoke and superheated air full of toxic fumes.”

  “You make me glad I’m not a firefighter,” Rica said.

  “We earn our pay,” Fagin said, not smiling.

  “Haven’t we seen enough to realize that,” Stack told him. It wasn’t a question.

  “Learning about a high-rise fire as soon as possible is everything, since we have to get so much equipment there, then transport it up as many stories as it takes. If the fire’s taken hold and extinguishing it is out of the question, we can only begin our defense and containment. If we fail, and the flames and smoke move to the floors above or below…well, it can be one hell of a horror.”

  “You wanted to warn us how much of a horror,” Stack reminded him. “And you wanted us to know how many people might die.”

  “Horror’s relative, I guess. And as to casualties, I’m afraid you can just about choose your number.”

  “High-rise hell,” Rica said.

  “The FDNY is going to have to defend itself against Brand’s attacks,” Fagin said. “And so are you two. I thought it best you had some idea what you’re talking about.” He glanced at his watch, then snatched up the check that had been left on the table. “I’ve gotta get going. This is on me. I’ll get it on the way out.”

  Stack and Rica thanked him, then sat and finished their coffees while Rica picked on the half of cinnamon roll Fagin had left.

  “He paints a grim picture,” Rica said, after they’d both been silent for a while as they digested what Fagin had told them.

  “Grim seems to be all we get in this investigation,” Stack said, “other than confusion. Maybe because we started out looking for a serial killer, and now we seem to be looking for an arsonist.”

  “And the difference?”

  “Motivation. Is our firebug more of a murderer than a pyromaniac, like any other psychosexual serial killer? Or is it vice versa?”

  “Sex and fire have always gone together,” Rica said. “Haven’t you ever shared a candlelight dinner?”

  Stack ignored the question.

  “I don’t know if I can buy into the quirky sexual motivation,” Rica said, “with all the victims being men. And as far as we know, heterosexual men.”

  “Could be their sexual orientation makes no difference to the killer. After all, we’re dealing with somebody abnormal here from the get-go. Who knows how he thinks above or below the belt? Maybe it’s the sexual kick, the power trip, our firebug is after, not the fire itself. In other words, he isn’t a firebug any more than someone who shoots people is necessarily a gun nut.”

  “It might be a distinction without a difference.”

  “We’d be looking for a different kind of killer,” Stack said. He drained his coffee mug, then glanced into it and made a face as if he’d ingested poison.

  “Another possibility,” Rica said, “is that our killer is liking fire more as he goes along, is becoming more and more of a pyromaniac.”

  “A work in progress. Yeah, it could be that way: Problem is, there’s only one way to find out for sure, and that’s ask him.”

  “I forgot to ask you,” Rica said. “How was the interview session with the co-op board? The one your wife talked you into but you shouldn’t have listened?”

  Stack placed his empty mug on the table too hard. “Like a fire in a high-rise.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Bruni L’ Farceur pointed and said, “Put that there.”

  The mover from Fragile and Agile obeyed. He was over six feet tall and an easy two hundred pounds, and the delicate scrap-iron sculpture, heavily framed in two-by-fours, seemed almost weightless in his grasp. Bruni found herself wondering what he’d be like in bed.

  The mover, with the name Biff embroidered over the pocket of his white coveralls, left to go back down to the truck. His partner, a chubby little man whose coveralls proclaimed him to be Lou, entered with a long wooden case that was strapped to a hand truck. Bruni, dressed for the occasion in designer jeans, leopard (synthetic)-topped boots, and an oversize black sweatshirt, told Lou where to go with the case, which she knew contained a variety of steel rods that the artist would later assemble into a work titled Tall in the Saddle, a representation of the white man’s maltreatment of nineteenth-century Native Americans.

  Behind Bruni, at the other end of the loft space on McDougal in the Village, painters were still working to color everything but the floor white. Every beam and support pole and conduit and plumbing pipe and heating duct and corner brace and window frame and steam pipe—pure white. Blanco.

  This place would be perfect for her America in Motion exhib
it. Her gallery uptown wouldn’t have worked. Not only was it too small and the ceiling too low for massive mobiles, but the building itself, the neighborhood, wasn’t right for the sculpture exhibit of pieces that sometimes ran hundreds of pounds and depicted inconvenient truths. Just when Bruni and her partner in the gallery, Mil, were out of ideas and in an absolute blue panic, a customer had suggested staging the exhibit somewhere else, some vast and suitable place. Perhaps they should contact a real estate agency. “Illumination!” Bruni had cried, and dashed for the phone.

  The real estate agency happened to have just the thing, an unfinished loft space whose owner was being assigned an important executive position in Switzerland. He’d been about to decorate the loft, but he’d be glad to have it rented for a short while, and any cosmetic changes would be all right with him. He might even be able to incorporate them into his decor whenever he returned to the states.

  Movement caught Bruni’s eye, and she expected to see Biff returning with another load from down in the street. Instead it was the real estate woman, Myra Raven. Big in the biz, Mil had said of her. After meeting her, Bruni and Mil began referring to her as Raven the maven. Not to her face, of course. There was something about Myra Raven that suggested she was not to be treated in any way risky. Annie Liebowitz should photograph this woman. It was hard to look at her without the word bitch leaping to mind.

  “Myra, you peach!” Bruni cried, and tottered to her in the high-heeled boots. The two women air-kissed. “Everything is going marvelously,” Bruni said. “This place you found for us will be perfect!”

  Myra, dressed Upper East Side in every way except there was no Yorkie under her arm, looked around and said, “I came by to tell you the owner will agree to a third month on the rental agreement, at your option.”

  Bruni threw up her arms as if in tribute to a superior being. “You are truly a negotiator in the Trump mold, Myra! Now if the exhibit is the spiraling success I think it will be, we can extend it an extra month. You, of course, have a free pass for every night if you want. And do bring a friend! Some of the pieces are titillating to die for.”

  “Maybe I will,” Myra said. “Maybe I’ll buy something.”

  No kitsch for sale here, sweetie. “Don’t feel at all obligated, Myra. My God, you’ve done enough already!” Bruni laughed and winked. “Of course, that wouldn’t prevent you from getting a special, special price.”

  “Where do you want this box?” asked a husky male voice. Biff had returned from the van with another crated sculpture section of a piece Bruni knew would, when assembled, represent the Brooklyn Bridge with teepees for stanchions and strung ceremonial beads for support cables.

  “Over there by that large arrow,” Bruni told him, and pointed.

  Both women watched as Biff muscled the heavy case of steel parts to where Bruni had instructed.

  “Isn’t he absolutely Romanesque!” Bruni said.

  Biff had heard, and turned briefly to glance curiously at her before returning to work.

  “I wouldn’t be opposed to Greek,” Myra said.

  Bruni loved it.

  Stack had just won a coin flip and sent Rica for coffee when his desk phone rang. When he picked up, Sergeant Redd told him his wife was on the line.

  Stack pressed the glowing button on his phone. “Laura?”

  “I called to thank you,” she said.

  At first he wasn’t sure what she meant. Then he understood. “You got approval for the co-op?”

  “Yes! Your appearance before the board made the difference.”

  “I didn’t think I impressed them all that much.”

  “They thought you were arrogant and sarcastic and uncooperative, which assured them that you were at fault in our divorce. They all told me they felt much reassured after meeting you.”

  That rankled Stack. “They called me arrogant?”

  “They’re pompous asses,” Laura said, “but I needed their approval. And I was serious about thanking you. If you hadn’t taken the time and trouble to show up and let them grill you, I might have been rejected. It couldn’t have been fun for you.”

  “They could give the police lessons in interrogation,” Stack said. “You’re not moving in with nice people, Laura.”

  “They don’t actually represent everyone in the building. The ones who want the power take over those boards quite often, and discourage prospective board members who want to serve in a reasonable way. You wouldn’t believe some of the interviews I’ve had the past few weeks. It’s humiliating, dealing with those people, and I didn’t seem to be getting anywhere—a divorcing woman, new at a job. I really wanted this apartment, which is why I asked for your help with the co-op board. I figured the least you might do is scare them.”

  “I hope I scared the holy shit out of them,” Stack said.

  “You scared them enough,” Laura said, “Thanks, Stack.”

  Not Ben anymore. “If you need some more help…”

  “Your lawyer couldn’t have approved of your helping me this time. I’ll make sure what you did doesn’t come back to haunt you in court. We don’t have to do everything our attorneys say, Stack. We can be friends when this is over.”

  Stack wished she were right, but he wasn’t so sure. Wasn’t so sure he didn’t want them to be more than friends. “I better not tell my lawyer you said that.”

  She laughed, and thanked him again before hanging up.

  He sat there and felt a certain satisfaction after the call. People didn’t have to buckle under the weight of the system, to be reduced to pawns by a litigious society.

  Rica was back. She placed a foam cup of steaming coffee on Stack’s desk, then sat on the corner of the desk herself. Another offering. “You’re smiling.”

  “Sitting here thinking how unnecessary half the attorneys in the world would be if we quit taking their advice.”

  “Your wife called.”

  “To thank me. She got the apartment. She said it was because of my appearance before the co-op board.” He dipped his fingertip in his coffee to test how hot it was. Yeeowch! “You wouldn’t believe those people.”

  “Question might be,” Rica said, “would a divorce court judge believe them?”

  Larry Chips drove Mirabella’s five-year-old Neon along Deering Street in a suburb outside Newark. He made a left, then another into the lot of a strip shopping mall, drove past the row of small shops and the Big-K that anchored them, and pulled up to one of the self-serve gas pumps in the station at the corner. The pay-at-the-pump kind. He liked those, nobody remembered you there even if they happened to glance at you. Using Mirabella’s Visa card, he waited for authorization, then pressed the 92-octane button on the pump. He braced the nozzle so it wouldn’t fall from the fill pipe, and while the tank was filling he walked back to the trunk and got out a battered red spare gas can. When the Neon’s tank was full, he withdrew the nozzle and filled the red can, then returned it to the trunk.

  He made one more stop, at the supermarket at the other end of the shopping strip, and bought ten half-gallon glass bottles of orange juice. The checkout clerk asked him if he had a vitamin C deficiency, and Chips laughed convincingly as if he thought the dork was funny and said no, his vision was fine, thanks. Give him one back, and plastic rather than paper, please.

  Back on Deering Street, he drove to Mirabella’s house and made a right turn into the driveway.

  The driveway was long and needed paving or some more gravel dumped and spread around on it, and was crowded by fir trees and overgrown juniper bushes. That was fine with Chips. It made for more privacy. People were less likely to use a driveway like that to turn around in, especially since they couldn’t quite make out what was behind the foliage at the far end.

  He’d dropped Mirabella off for work in the city a few hours ago, at a place called Claybar’s where she waited tables and sometimes danced, so he had privacy now.

  The modest clapboard house, in the bedroom of which he and Mirabella had made desperate and lonely
love the last two nights, sat next to an even more run-down garage. The house merely needed paint. The garage needed siding replaced, and the roof sagged in the middle. Chips couldn’t walk into the thing without thinking it was about to collapse around him.

  He left the Neon parked outside and struggled to open one of the garage’s heavy plank doors. The door resisted all the way, scraping on the loose gravel. One of Chips’s feet slid out from under him and he almost fell, cursing and banging an elbow on the balky door.

  Chips stood for a moment rubbing his elbow and peering into the garage. Once his eyes adjusted, it wasn’t so dim in there. Enough illumination streamed through the spaces where the siding was missing that there was no need to turn on a light.

  He got the red gas can from the Neon’s trunk and carried it inside, listening to and feeling the liquid slosh around in it with each step. He set the can on an ancient wooden workbench that sat against the garage’s east wall. Then he went back to the car, got the plastic grocery bags containing the orange juice he’d bought, and carried them inside the house.

  Carefully removing the bottles from the bags one by one, he poured the contents of each down the drain in the sink. He washed the empty glass containers, put them back in the plastic bags, and carried them out to the garage. It didn’t matter that he’d bought orange juice or any other kind of liquid, just so the containers were glass. Gasoline, all petroleum products, had a way of eating through waxed cardboard or plastic containers.

  In the garage, he used a funnel he’d noticed on a shelf to transfer the gas in the red can to the empty orange juice bottles, carefully capping each bottle when he was finished. When the can was empty, he went out and used a short section of garden hose to siphon more gas from the Neon, then repeated the process. He smiled, satisfied. Now the liquid was in smaller, more manageable containers.

  Chips hid the bottles in a box of old rags beneath the workbench, then replaced the gas can in the Neon’s trunk—with the airless spare tire, the way Mirabella was used to traveling—so she wouldn’t suspect anything had occurred. He pulled the Neon into the garage and wrestled the wooden doors shut.