by Earl Emerson
“He knocked out one of my teeth. That’s when your father showed up. He told your father to go back to his rig. That he was arresting me. But that’s not what he did. He dragged me over to the fire and tried to throw me in. Can you imagine? You meet a stranger in an alley, you beat him up and throw him into a fire? I mighta done some bad things in my life. I’m not saying I have or I haven’t. But I’ve never done anything like that.”
“What about my father?”
“Your father tried to stop him. Finally, this guy hit your father. That’s when your father went into that window well. Headfirst. Just kind of slid into the window. He never came out.”
“How big was the fire at this time?”
“Not big.”
“What’d you guys do?”
“We watched.”
“What else?”
“We just watched. After a while you could see your father trying to find a way out. But then the fire took off, and he was still in there.”
I began leaning on the pike pole. He resisted for all he was worth, the strain of it evident on his face.
“The other firefighter? What’d he do?”
“He didn’t do nothin’. “
“He must have done something.”
“That’s just it. He didn’t. He just stared. That’s how I got away.”
“You telling me my father was in a burning basement and this cop or fireman or whatever . . . just stood there?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“You’re lying.”
“I ain’t. The Shasta cans. You know who I am.”
“You set the fires tonight?”
“On the outside of the house. I admit that. The other one. I don’t know how that happened.”
“Jesus, you must think I’m stupid.” We looked at each other for a moment or two. “What’d the guy in civvies look like?”
“That was a lot of years ago.”
I jiggled the pike pole. “And you’ve had a lot of time to think about it.”
“I’m being honest here, man. The more I thought about what him and your father looked like, the harder it was to bring their faces back. Right now I couldn’t tell you what he looked like if my life depended on it.”
I leaned on the pole. “Let’s pretend it does.”
“Ow. Ouch. Oochee. Okay. He was big. Like I said. Mustache. Glasses.”
“White? Black? Asian? What?”
“He was white.”
“Taller than you?”
“A lot taller.”
“How tall are you?”
“Five-eight. Okay. Five-six and a half. I’m taller in shoes. He had a voice like a football coach. He scared me.”
“You hear either of them call each other by name?”
“Naw.”
I leaned into the pole.
That was when he rolled and twisted away. By the time I got around the end of the fence, he’d vanished.
50. GREEN CHEESE IN THE PARSON’S HAT
Cynthia Rideout
DECEMBER 22, SUNDAY, 0800 HOURS
Last night I thought Wollf had gone nuts. Thirty minutes after taking off after that woman, he came back looking exhausted. As if he’d had some sort of epiphany out there in the dark.
Oddly enough, he wasn’t even mad at Eddings.
Maybe he’s come to expect backstabbing from her.
The rest of the night he acted as though nothing mattered. It was like he was on laughing gas. Everything was funny.
Then, before we left the scene, Marshal 5 questioned him for half an hour.
Wollf said the suspect was a white male, unimpressive except for the mauve dress. LaSalle believed this was our perp, while Connor remained unconvinced. She said, “Why would he be in a dress and a wig? I don’t get it. You’re talking two different pathologies here.”
LaSalle snapped, “Why was he in a dress? Why does he light fires? Why does he stand around and watch us put them out? His head’s screwed on backwards, that’s why. He probably bays at the moon and shits green cheese into the parson’s hat.”
Wollf’s chase was already the talk of the department. Opinion was divided among firefighters. About half thought Eddings’s negligence allowed the firebug to escape; the other half thought Wollf was losing his mind. Personally, I thought he’d found the bug and was losing his mind.
Towbridge said, “You gonna recognize this guy when he’s dressed like a man?”
“I don’t know. It was dark. He had makeup smeared all over his face. He was crying.”
“You made him cry?” I asked.
51. IDIOT’S DELIGHT
After the shift where the roof caved in, we had two days off. A Sunday and a Monday. I spent most of Sunday recovering, sleeping, reliving Saturday night’s confrontation with the perp, and watching old movies with a cup of hot chocolate next to the chair. My favorite of the day was Duel in the Sun with Jennifer Jones, Gregory Peck, and Lionel Barrymore. The Jones part was so overacted it was uproarious and never failed to keep me in stitches. Especially the part at the end where she takes about two weeks to crawl up the hill to Gregory Peck, who she’s just shot, and who’s just shot her, so she can declare her everlasting love for him and he can do the same for her. They kiss. He dies. Fade out. Wonderfully overwrought movie pap. It almost made me forget how close I’d come to killing a man the night before.
I spent Sunday night and most of Monday trying to contact my brother’s wife, Susan, or Mitzi as she now preferred to be called. She’d lost her place, but I talked to her former neighbors and called coworkers from her last job. Nobody seemed to know where she was.
Except for Neil, she was the only family I cared about, and I desperately wanted to spend Christmas day with somebody I loved. Our shift was scheduled to work Tuesday night, Christmas eve, so I would be free all day on Christmas.
At an import shop on Capitol Hill I’d bought her a pair of earrings from Uganda to add to her collection of jewelry from exotic locales.
I’d sent a package to my brother in Walla Walla. Two SFD T-shirts, which he said were a status thing in the joint, and a box of chocolate chip cookies, which he was addicted to—when he wasn’t addicted to other things.
Monday night I had nightmares about going to prison with my brother.
Eventually I got out of bed and sat in the big chair in my living room and watched Clark Gable and Norma Shearer in Idiot’s Delight.
Tuesday morning I rewound my tapes, shaved, showered, and walked to work. There had been no fires in our district since Saturday night, proof to me that I’d maimed the bastard and that he was having trouble getting around.
I’d been thinking about what he’d said after he slipped out of my reach.
“Your father was a dick,” he said. “He deserved to die. And that other asshole should have gone with him. And you and your whole crew. You’re all dicks.”
Clutching his ribs, he’d hobbled into the dark woods on a path kids had made. He’d tried to say something to hurt me, but what he didn’t say was that his story about my father was a lie. For a few minutes he thought he was going to die, and when he escaped, the invective simply spewed out. Had the earlier story been a lie, surely he would have said so then. Guys like that, they pull the wool over your eyes, they want you to know it.
After he left, I ran around the long end of the fence and followed him into the woods, but after ten minutes I knew I would never find him.
I’d lost the man who tried to immolate me and my crew; the man responsible for my father’s death twenty-five years ago. The man responsible for my mother’s fall into depression and drunkenness. The man who’d destroyed my childhood and my brother’s life.
The man I’d been dreaming of killing since I was four.
It was ironic because, had I slain him, I would have certainly lost the second half of my life to the man who’d stolen the first half.
With Dolan gone and stories circulating about how close the department had come to losing our whole crew, th
e antagonism between the engine and the truck at Station 6 seemed to lose momentum.
It was a relatively quiet shift. Crapps from Engine 13 was riding Ladder 3 with us, Towbridge driving, Rideout behind me. Dolan and Pickett were both home nursing their injuries.
Around eight that evening Slaughter came out of the phone booth in the beanery and said he had to take his father to the hospital. Eddings okayed it, and thirty minutes later somebody from Station 28 came in to fill for him. The guy from Twenty-eight’s put his gear in the tailboard spot, and Zeke moved up to the officer’s position, a prospect that made Zeke visibly nervous.
“You gonna be gone all night?” Gliniewicz asked.
“No point in coming back,” said Slaughter. “There’s no telling how long it’ll take.”
“I hope he’s better.”
“I hope he’s better too,” I said.
“Thanks.” Slaughter addressed Gliniewicz and did not look at me.
The engine had only three runs that day, all aid calls. We had a service response to an assisted-care high-rise to rescue three blind women from a stalled elevator. The same women had been stuck in the elevator a month earlier, and one of them had a crush on Towbridge. I’d always thought it was his good looks that made him irresistible to women, but even blind women were chasing him.
It was just after midnight when the main phone rang. Gliniewicz had the night watch, so it was his job to answer. Two minutes later I heard Engine 6 being fired up.
The apparatus doors closed behind them with a heavy metallic bang.
I stepped into my bunking boots and trousers.
In the watch office there was a paperback war novel next to Gliniewicz’s pillow. His uniform was carefully folded over a chair. Gliniewicz was overweight, sedentary, out of condition, yet he took obsessive care with his hygiene, and his uniforms always had razor-sharp creases.
Curious as to what sort of run they’d been called to over the main phone, I checked the daybook, but Gliniewicz had made no notation.
I turned on the television and sat in front of another holiday showing of It’s a Wonderful Life, one of the featured players Donna Reed, who, before she died, had lived nearby on Mercer Island.
Seven minutes later the main phone rang.
“Station Six. Lieutenant Wollf.”
“Lieutenant?” It was Zeke’s deep voice. “Uh. You better get down here. We found Slaughter’s truck.”
“Get down where?”
“That house where we had the fire a couple weeks ago. With the antique cars? The movie star? We found Steve’s truck, but we can’t find him.”
“Did you check the guest house?”
Gliniewicz got on the line. “Just get down here, God damn it! We need a ladder.”
“You want the police?”
“Hell, no. He said not to call the cops.”
“Who said?”
“Steve. He called the station. Said he was handcuffed to somebody’s bed.”
52. UGLIER, HEAVIER, CRAZIER, YEEHAA!
Lt. Stephen Slaughter AU6/C-3
You gotta love firefighter groupies.
After she called the station, I took a quick shower, changed my underwear, slapped on some Aqua Velva, and told the guys I had to take my dad to the hospital, half expecting this to be a joke Gliniewicz was pulling. But when I slid into the driveway, there she was at the back door of the mansion.
Jaclyn flirts like a ten-dollar whore, but then when I show up she wants to sit around and talk. The movie star’s off somewhere for Christmas. There’s a tree in the corner with phony ornaments and a manger scene.
So far we’ve had three shots each of the old lady’s vodka. Jaclyn tells me she’s headed for Hollywood, but as far as I know, most of the wannabes in Hollywood end up hooking and I tell her so. She says only, “Lieutenant Slaughter, you’re funny.”
“I ain’t kiddin’. “
She’s definitely on her way out the door. There’s a stack of suitcases in the kitchen.
Which means tonight is probably my last chance to tap into this.
I figure if I sleep over, I can get it again in the morning. Whatever else happens, I gotta be outta here before eight, showered and smelling like me. I get home on Christmas morning reeking of vodka and cheap perfume, and Connie’s going to hit the roof. That’s just what I don’t need on Christmas day.
I can’t believe how woozy I am.
“We ever going to fuck?” I ask, slurring the words.
“You cut right to the chase, don’t you?”
“You bet I do.”
“If that’s how you want it.”
She heads for the stairs, walking just out of reach. She smells great. So do I. We glide up the carpeted stairs to the second floor, and I’m thinking she’s going to stop, but we just keep going to the third floor, where she escorts me into a huge bedroom with a canopied bed and tells me to make myself comfortable. Lie down. Relax. Get naked. She’ll be back in a minute.
Talk about a perfect Christmas.
I kick off my shoes, step out of my boxers, and strip nekid. That’s how we used to say it in the Navy. Nekid. Yeehaa. Oh, I am a dirty old man.
I’m also one sleepy little buckaroo.
I crawl under the covers and prop myself against the pillows. I can see the light under the bathroom door. Can see the shadow of her moving around in there. Getting undressed. Probably putting her diaphragm in. Geez, I hope she don’t think I’m going to use a rubber. I don’t eat chocolate cake through a wool hat either. No sir.
I’m barely awake when she comes out.
She stands at the end of the bed. “You’re still dressed,” I say, only it comes out something like, “Ooo still dwesst.”
“You’re a tough nut, you know that?”
“I thought you were gonna give me a poke.”
“Don’t worry. We’ll have some fun. Just wait here. I’ve got a phone call to make.”
“Oh, come on, baby. You ain’t give me nothin’ yet. Break out them puppies. Let Daddy see ’em before you go.”
She smiles and lifts up her blouse, shows me the goods, and real loud like, I shout something along the lines of, “Yeehaa!”
“I’ll be right back,” she says.
It takes me a while to figure out where I am and what’s going on, but now that I’m awake I realize the lights are off. The house is like a cave. Drafty as hell. I’m alone in this big bed, trying to remember did we have sex? I can’t recall exactly what happened. Jesus, I haven’t been this drunk in years.
The cold was what woke me.
If she’d pulled the covers over me I’d be asleep still, but she didn’t.
I have a lulu of a headache. And a gut ache to boot. Hell of a way to start off Christmas morning. I cut a fart and most of the gut ache goes away. I try to look at my watch to see what time it is, but my wrist isn’t where it should be. In fact, my entire left arm is pulled around at an unnatural angle.
Jesus. I’m handcuffed to a thick post in the bed board. My wristwatch is missing.
“Jaclyn? Jaclyn? Where are you?”
Except for some movement downstairs which might be the wind, the house is silent. I don’t have a clue what time it is. My glasses are gone and I can’t see much in the dark.
I rattle the handcuffs, but they are tight and the bed board is solid.
“Jaclyn? Come on, now. I can hear you down there. This isn’t funny. You’re going to have to let me go sometime. Come on, Jackie. You hear me?”
Then, for just a moment, a shadow fills the doorway.
“Jaclyn?”
The doorway empties.
It’s spooky as hell. Moments later I hear somebody going down the carpeted staircase. My eyes aren’t that great, but I have a feeling it isn’t Jaclyn. In fact, I’m certain it isn’t.
I rattle the bed again, but all that does is tighten the manacle around my left wrist.
The only thing I can reach is a lamp on a side table. I turn the switch, but the bulb is burned out. I
can barely hook my toes under the chair where I left my clothes. Even without a light, I know my money is missing. My credit cards are gone.
I use my bare foot to pick the fleece vest off the back of the chair. It is heavy enough I know she hasn’t found my cell phone. Jesus, I’m like a monkey now, picking shit up with my feet. I’m buck naked and chained to some old lady’s bed.
Jesus. Talk about humiliating.
Grabbing the bedposts with both hands, I shake for all it’s worth. It would take a team of gorillas to take it apart. Jesus. My credit cards. Now I’m going to have to waste Christmas making phone calls to cancel them.
I squander another four or five minutes trying to shake the bed apart, but this thing was built to withstand a nuke. I can’t get out of the handcuffs either. Shit. Shit. Shit.
“Hello?” I yell. It’s a weird sound, my own voice, because except for the bed rattling, it’s the only real noise I’ve heard since waking up. “Hellooooo. Jackie? Is that you?”
Somebody is standing just beyond the bedroom door out of my sight. It occurs to me that I’m a prisoner.
“Ma’am. I’m Steve Slaughter of the Seattle Fire Department. I’ve got myself into a predicament here. Remember me? I’m one of the guys helped save you a coupl’a weeks ago. If you could get a hacksaw, I could just mosey on outta here.”
This is when I hear the propane torch. You can hear the hiss of gas, the poof when the striker ignites the tip. There is light too. Just beyond the doorway. The light a propane torch makes when you fire it up.
“Hey. I had a date with Jackie. I’m not a burglar. I’m not here to rob anybody. Can you help me out here?”
She steps into the room holding a torch. Is it the old Pennington woman? Looks more like that Norman Bates guy dressed up as his mother in Psycho. Bad makeup. Ill-fitting dress. Shoes too big.
There is only the light from the torch casting shadows on her face.
She steps into the room with the torch held out in front of her. Oh, God, I think to myself. This bitch is crazy.
“Get away from me with that.”
Now she has knocked the chair aside, is reaching for me, holding the flame out toward my buttocks as I arch away.
