I ducked into a crouch, reached his side and knelt beside him. Debris and ash rained down around us. The fire was spreading. I knew more explosions would follow as it reached the dozens of combustible barrels and cans that littered the shop property. I had to get Jake out and away from danger.
In the distance I heard the siren on top of the firehouse begin the low, steady wail that signaled the volunteers to assemble. I had no illusion that men could stop work, drive to the station and reach us before the shop burned to the ground.
I felt Jake’s neck for a pulse and was rewarded with a low moan.
“Hang on,” I told him. “Help is coming.” It was a lie, but I felt better.
I tried to move the post, felt it give slightly and shudder to a halt as something blocked its momentum. A car fender, mangled by the blast, had pinned the beam to the ground. I edged my way closer, feeling the heat from the fire singe the hair on my arms and face.
The metal was too hot to touch. I sat on the tarmac and used my legs to push the heavy fender out of the way. The fire was spreading toward us. I felt my heart beating painfully against my chest. We were running out of time.
I leaned back against the base of the pump station and brought my legs up almost to my chest. I held my breath and shoved against the post, slowly rolling it away from Jake’s leg.
It seemed as if I’d found strength within my body that I had never before known. I remember sliding my hands under Jake’s arms and pulling him across the littered parking lot to relative safety behind the shop. It seemed he was no heavier than a small child. I moved him back and away from the smoke and fire, almost to the edge of his property, positioned him between two rusted-out cars, and began checking his injuries.
He moaned and struggled to consciousness, his eyes opening into a wild, panicked stare.
“Stop that! She’s inside!” he gasped, shoving my hands away. “Got to get her out!” He pushed up, trying to rise into a sitting position. “I have to save her!”
“Jake! No! You can’t!”
He couldn’t seem to hear or understand me. He was looking around, obviously confused. He started to push up off the ground again, cried out in pain, and slumped back to the ground, unconscious.
I felt panic rise in my throat. Jake needed medical attention. I looked down at him and saw blood soaking his pants leg. We needed to stop the bleeding. Jake needed help. I stared back at the fire. Thick black smoke rose into the air as the tires ignited. I looked at the building and felt a sudden rush of anxiety. What if Jake’s visitor hadn’t left? What if that was what Jake meant when he said, “She’s inside!”
I stood up and began to run toward the shop. I came within ten feet of the back bay door before I was forced back by the heat. I dodged between disabled vehicles and tried the far side of the building, hoping I could gain access through a window.
I looked over my shoulder, trying to scan the area in front of the property. I could hear sirens and the rush of engines as the firefighters arrived. I couldn’t wait for them. There wouldn’t be time for explanations or caution. If Uncle Benny’s possible mistress was still inside Jake’s office, it was up to me to save her.
I moved to the side of the building and began to approach the window. The glass had been blown out by the force of the explosion, but the metal burglar bars still clung to the window frame. Smoke billowed around the brick wall, choking me and making it almost impossible to see more than a few feet in front of me.
I reached the window, cupped my hands around my eyes and peered inside. I had a clear view of the waiting room, now a mere shell of broken glass and brick. The wall between the front of the shop and Jake’s office was almost gone. The inferno was about to destroy the interior of the building. I realized that if Jake’s visitor had been trapped in his office, she was most certainly dead.
The heat and smoke forced me back. I staggered, aware suddenly of how difficult it was to breathe, and began limping back toward Jake. I was only conscious of needing to reach him. He was seriously hurt. What if no one saw him lying back there? I had to be where I could signal the emergency personnel when they arrived.
I remember all of this, the sense of desperation I felt, the pain and exhaustion that suddenly seemed to weigh my body down with each step I took, and the unbearable heat and smoke. I do not remember losing consciousness. I only know that the world was black and all thought seemed to vanish into a thick, gray mist.
Chapter 9
“I’m tellin’ you, Paint Bucket, I never forget a face. It’s her, all right. I mean, her grown up, with her hair dyed blond, and, you know, tits.”
The voice, male and high-pitched, came from a million miles away, echoing through a tin-can tunnel that seemed to end at the tip of my very last, irritated nerve.
“No, that ain’t her,” a deeper voice argued. “Stella Valocchi didn’t never look that good. She was a brain, remember? She wasn’t like the rest of ’em. Her kind don’t go in for colored hair. Besides, she was terminally flat-chested. Time don’t do shit for women that’s got little tits. You gotta pay for them puppies.”
A bony hand suddenly gripped my left breast and squeezed hard.
“You are wrong, my friend,” the squeaky voice argued. “Them tits is all hers. Gen-u-wine! Trust me!”
I shot out a hand, gripped the offending wrist and twisted hard. I was rewarded with a howl of pain from my admirer.
I opened my eyes and saw two very grimy men swim into a blurry focus before me. The man attached to the wrist I held was reed thin, with a sparse, black five-o’clock shadow covering the lower half of his pressed, ratlike face. His companion was short and stocky, with long red hair and a thin goatee that hung down to the center of his chest. Both wore dirty yellow coats and heavy black firefighter hats and boots.
“Ma’am,” the redhead said, “please! Let go of my partner’s arm. You’re hurting him! He was checking your vital signs.”
“He was groping me, you malevolent ignoramus!”
The redhead looked at his partner. “No shit, Weasel! You were right! It is her! Listen to them big words!”
He looked down at me again, only now he grinned. “Stella! Yo! How you been? Long time no see! It’s me, Paint Bucket! Remember?”
“Hey, yo!” Weasel squealed.
Paint Bucket seemed to suddenly recall his friend’s presence. “Stella, you remember Weasel, don’t you?”
He looked from me to Weasel and back again. Weasel moaned as I used his wrist in a futile attempt to pull myself up into a sitting position.
“Yeah,” I said. “I remember you. Who could forget you guys?”
James Zybelski and Eddie Roman, a.k.a. Weasel and Paint Bucket, were the two class cutups voted most likely to suffer brain damage from inhaling gasoline and smoking pot throughout our junior high school and high school careers. Now, apparently, they’d grown up. Weasel still looked like his nickname, but Eddie didn’t look at all like his alcoholic, house painter father.
“You look good, Stella,” Paint Bucket said. “You’ve changed! I almost didn’t think it was you at first, but old Weasel recognized you right away, didn’t you, buddy?”
Weasel paled and a soft groan escaped his tightened lips. “Un-huh,” he managed to say.
“Yeah, you can take the girl out of the town but you can’t…”
“Bucket!” Weasel wailed.
“Oh, yeah!” Bucket said, suddenly aware again of his buddy’s predicament. “Uh, Stella?”
“What?” I answered, irritated beyond my ability to think clearly.
“Would you mind?” Paint Bucket gestured to Weasel’s wrist. “I think you’re hurting him!”
I glared at the two space cadets, pulled harder on Weasel’s arm and managed to sit up. Weasel screamed like a baby. I released his wrist and tried to focus on the scene beyond the two men.
“What happened?” I asked.
I was sitting on the edge of the Acme parking lot. The remains of Jake’s auto body shop burned with an int
ensity that generated a sweltering heat wave. Firefighters swarmed the perimeter of the blaze, training hoses into the center of the building and onto what was left of the pumps.
“Somebody probably tried to light up while they were pumping gas,” Weasel answered. “Blew themselves to smithereens! I mean, there’s probably body parts all over town. Really. I think they found a foot or something on top of the sign over the door at the Tap Room!”
“James,” Paint Bucket scolded. “You don’t have to be so fucking graphic. There’s a lady present!” Weasel looked around, focused back on me, and frowned. “Bucket, it’s only Stella,” he said.
Paint Bucket stroked his goatee, shook his head sadly, and looked to me for sympathy.
“Weasel here ain’t the sharpest knife in the rack, you know what I mean? Besides, that fire’s way too hot to leave body parts intact. If the victim was at ground zero, they won’t find so much as a filling to bury.”
“Yo!” Weasel protested. “I’m not stupid! You think they’d let us be volunteer medics if we were dummies?”
I looked at the patches attached to their uniform jackets and shuddered. These two were medics? They were responsible for saving the lives of innocent citizens?
And then I remembered Jake.
“Where is Jake?” I demanded. I tried to stand, felt the world start to turn black and shook my head to clear it.
“Yo,” Paint Bucket said. “Easy! Take a hit of this oxygen. It’s good stuff!”
Weasel started toward my head with a plastic mask, but I waved him off.
“Where’s Jake?”
Blank stares from the peanut gallery.
“Paint Bucket, where’s Jake Carpenter?”
He and Weasel looked toward the shop. “Well, if he was in there…” Weasel said, unwilling to go any further.
I looked at the blackened remains of Jake’s shop. The flames were dying out as firefighters poured water into the charred building.
“He wasn’t in there,” I said. “He was out here, between two cars. His leg was broken and he’d lost a lot of blood.”
Paint Bucket and Weasel attempted to pass a look over my head, but I saw them.
“I am not hallucinating,” I said. “I pulled him over there myself!”
Weasel raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You?”
“He’s a big dude, Stella,” Paint Bucket offered. “No offense but…”
I stood up slowly and scanned the lot. There was no sign of Jake, but I saw the two cars where I’d left him.
“He was right there,” I said, pointing. “Maybe another ambulance took him.”
Paint Bucket and Weasel were shaking their heads. “We only got one ambulance. We’re the only medics in the department,” Bucket said.
Weasel nodded solemnly. “It’s us or nobody,” he said.
“Honest, Stella,” Paint Bucket said, “we’ve been here five minutes and you’re the only victim we’ve seen!”
“How long have they been here?” I asked, nodding in the direction of the fire trucks.
“Not much longer than us,” Bucket said. “Maybe ten minutes.”
A familiar pair of figures emerged from behind one of the fire trucks, Detectives Poltrone and Slovineck. I almost felt relieved. At least they would be able to tell me about Jake.
I glanced back at Weasel and Paint Bucket. Weasel was bending down over the oxygen tank, adjusting a valve and frowning.
Paint Bucket caught me staring at Weasel and smiled gently. “Bet you’re wondering how two losers from high school got to be medics, huh, Stel?” I started to protest, but he raised his hand, palm out, to stop me.
“Don’t worry, everybody wonders.” He shook his head. “This is what we do, Stella. It’s the one thing me and James do right. I don’t know why. I guess it’s our gift. Anyway, we don’t mess around with saving lives, you know?”
I nodded, seeing the serious expression on Eddie’s face. “People always like us cuttin’ up, you know? So we keep doin’ the act—everywhere but here. Don’t blame Weasel for playing with you. He just can’t be any other way.”
I nodded again, touched by the realization that Weasel and Paint Bucket were stuck in their childhood identities, and stayed that way now so their friends would continue to like them. It was so sad.
I left them, moving toward the two detectives, but stopping as I came to the spot where I’d left Jake. He was gone, but he’d been there. I knelt down and touched the blood-soaked clump of grass that had been crushed by the weight of his body.
Surely he hadn’t left under his own power? He had to have had help. Someone else must’ve taken him to the hospital. I stood up and scanned the path between the junked cars and the back of the lot. I inspected it for blood drops, footprints or anything that would give me a clue as to Jake’s whereabouts, but found nothing.
“Ms. Valocchi, what are you doing here?” Detective Slovineck stood a few feet away, watching me with an unreadable expression on his face. His partner lagged a good five yards behind him. I ignored Slovineck’s question and pretended to study Detective Poltrone. She was panting, her face streaked with soot marks. For a moment she reminded me of a bulldog, or maybe Winston Churchill.
“Ms. Valocchi?” Slovineck repeated.
“Where’s Jake Carpenter?” I asked.
“I thought you might know,” he said. “What happened here?”
I shrugged, stalling. “Some kind of explosion, I guess.”
Slovineck eyed me warily. “You saying you don’t know?”
Poltrone closed the gap to where Detective Slovineck stood and paused, almost gasping for breath. The underarms of her blue-and-white-flowered dress were rimmed with darker bands of sweat-soaked material, and she seemed even more irritated than usual.
“So you weren’t the victim, huh?” she asked. She frowned her disappointment in my direction. “Damn!”
“Not this time,” I said. “What’s your excuse?”
Detective Slovineck motioned his partner off and took a step forward. “How about we go down the street to my office and talk?” he said. “I’d like to know more about what happened here.”
“So would I,” I said.
“Oh, right!” Poltrone sputtered. “Like you didn’t…”
Slovineck cut her off with a sharp look, but not before I guessed where they were going. The two actually thought I had something to do with the explosion!
“Maybe some other time,” I said. “I don’t know a thing. I was just passing by and…”
“Oh, bullshit!” Poltrone said, but fell silent again as Slovineck gave her another warning look.
“So was there a female victim?” I asked him.
“Why do you think that?” Slovineck asked, trying to play coy.
I frowned. “Gee, I don’t know. Maybe it was on account of her,” I said gesturing to Poltrone. “She said too bad I wasn’t the victim. To me, that implies that there was a victim and it was female.” I smiled. “Damn, I’m good! Too bad you guys don’t have someone on the force with my natural abilities.”
“That does it!” Detective Poltrone said. “One more smart-ass remark from you and we’re going down to the office to talk.”
“Try it on, honey,” I said. “Maybe you want to add assault on a moron to your list of bogus charges!”
“Ladies!” Slovineck thundered. “Enough!”
Poltrone jumped back as if she’d been stung and I smirked. Whatever hold Slovineck had on her had to be a good one. Poltrone looked as if she wanted to kill me yet she did as he commanded and backed off.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere,” he said. “Now I need information and you look like the only one in a position to tell us what happened. Don’t make me do this the hard way.”
“Ask nicely and we’ll talk,” I answered. “Trump up false charges and you don’t get shit.”
It was a standoff for a few moments, then Slovineck shrugged his thick shoulders. “You look like you could use a cup of coffee. What d’ya say?”
He looked over his shoulder at Weasel and Paint Bucket.
“I’d rather go someplace where we won’t be overheard,” Slovineck added.
“All right. But let’s make it neutral territory.” I pointed to a diner down the street. “The Coffee Cup looks good to me, only she’s out,” I said, indicating the fuming Poltrone.
“Detective Poltrone’s my partner. She stays.”
I shrugged. “Okay, then so do I. See ya!”
In the end, Detective Poltrone remained behind to sniff the fire marshal’s butt while Slovineck and I had our discussion over coffee and a bagel. He was pissed and I was suffering from a powerful headache so our talk had an edge to it, an undercurrent of suspicion and wariness. I knew I shouldn’t have jumped Poltrone’s case. On any other day, I wouldn’t have allowed her ineptitude to bother me, but this wasn’t a normal day and I felt that time was being wasted.
Detective Slovineck listened while I told him about coming to pay Jake a visit, leaving and then returning just as the building exploded. I left out the part about the blonde. I knew she could’ve been the victim, but I didn’t know her name or anything. It wasn’t as if that information would necessarily help Slovineck. Jake would be the better source of that information.
My real reason for omitting any mention of her was that I needed to know what had gone on between her and my uncle before anyone else let the cat out of the bag to Aunt Lucy. She didn’t need more pain. What Aunt Lucy didn’t know about Uncle Benny’s life wouldn’t kill her, but if something he’d been doing secretly had wound up killing him, I wanted to be the one to nose it out.
Besides, if Jake thought I couldn’t handle the blonde and whatever trouble she’d brought with her, I could only imagine what faith and confidence he’d have in our local police force. No, the blonde was a secret I was going to keep to myself. She’d been shocked by my uncle’s death, so I wasn’t counting her as a suspect, but she knew something helpful; I could almost bank on it.
Slovineck knew I was holding back. He watched me through heavy-lidded eyes and waited until I’d finished before he moved in on my story.
Stella, Get Your Gun Page 10
