by Julie Smith
He sighed and handed Sardis the envelope. “Here’s the five grand.”
“Thank you.” She handed over the tape.
“When can I get the other tape?”
“As soon as you get ninety-five thousand dollars together.”
He grabbed her arm. “You bitch.” I felt sweat pop out on my forehead. “You said ten thousand for both tapes.”
“Let go of me.” He did, and she reached for something under the gray sofa she was sitting on. She held the object up so he could see it, then took a step away from him. “The other ninety grand is for this.” The object was a tape recorder. She took a tape out of it. “I just made a new one.”
Koehler sprang at her, but Sardis was expecting that. She dropped the tape down her blouse and sidestepped away from him. She got into a martial arts pose about as convincing as the one I’d struck in the med center library. “You’re going to have to kill me for it, Mr. Koehler.”
“With pleasure, Miss Kincannon,” he said, and went for her again. But she wasn’t fast enough this time. Her arm went up and his went down under it. He had her by the neck.
If it made me sweaty to see him grab her arm, I could have drowned watching this. I had little prickles all over me and my throat was completely closed— I swear to God, I couldn’t breathe at all. I was afraid she was going to die and I was going to have to watch, not knowing what to do. My mind was paralyzed.
Though I have no recollection of it, I suppose it unfroze at some point during the next split second. Because all of a sudden I was in the room with Sardis and Koehler, broken glass flying all around. I landed on one of the sofas and used that as a springboard to Koehler’s back. I grabbed his arms with my arms and pried. Sardis squealed.
“Let go, you son of a bitch. Let go!” That was my voice, I think.
He let go and bent over. I somersaulted over him, hitting my head on the side of one of the sofas. That felt like somebody had shoved a conduit through my brain, but I had to get up. If I didn’t, Koehler might kill Sardis. If anything happened to Sardis, the world would resemble the Mojave Desert. I couldn’t let that happen. The future was up to me.
Those things came to me more as feelings than thoughts, and they came right out of left field. I had no more idea they were somewhere inside me than I’d known I was going to be coming through a window thirty seconds earlier. But there they were, so I got up. Freddie was on his way through the window, the same one I’d crashed through. Sardis was flopping, hard, onto one of the plushy sofas, and Koehler was withdrawing his arm. His hand had a tape in it.
Koehler took off down the corridor, making for the way out. I caught him in the reception room, bringing him down with one of my leftover high school tackles. We rolled over and over, from one end of the small room to the other, neither able to get the advantage.
I had him by the jaw, trying to push it back and snap his neck, and he had me by the jaw-holding hand. I heard a commotion and then someone— Freddie, I realized later— started grabbing at Koehler. Koehler kicked and Freddie went down, knocking over the wood stove.
It separated from its chimney, pouring smoke into the room. The door fell open and burning wood flew out. The drapes caught fire.
Koehler was on his feet before I was, battling Susanna and Sardis, who by now had made it to the reception room. They flailed at him, but he got past and started up the stately wooden stairway to the second deck. The fire roared up past him. We ran back down the corridor, toward the back stairs. Or Sardis did, and I followed. Susanna and Freddie followed me.
The sensible thing to do at that moment would have been simply to go out the front door, leaving Koehler aboard the burning ferry. But I wasn’t going anywhere without Sardis. I didn’t know what Susanna and Freddie were thinking of, though later it came clear— Freddie had left his Minicam in the focus group room and they weren’t going anywhere without it. I found out later they picked it up, then tried to get out the front door like grown-ups, but by that time the fire was blocking the exit. So they ended up tearing up the back stairs somewhat behind Sardis and me.
The air on the second level was already gray with smoke and rapidly turning black. Up there, there was also one sensible course— go out on deck and yell for help. But Sardis, in some primitive frenzy, tore down the corridor, apparently bent on killing Koehler with her bare hands. My plan was to catch her, subdue her, and drag her to safety, by the hair, if necessary.
I was gaining on her, only inches away, when she bumped smack into Koehler, who was running right toward us. The impact spun her toward me and I hit the side of the corridor. She fell back against me, and Koehler, once recovered from the blow, tried to run past us. Sardis stuck out her foot and tripped him. Then she hit the deck, arms flying, boxing his ears, his shoulders, straddling him, pounding him with her tiny fists. Then she started to cough.
I pulled her off him, and once again he started running toward the back exit. The smoke was awful and I was pretty sure we were going to a watery grave if we stayed there much longer, but it turned out there was no choice.
Just as Koehler got a good start, and we had a certain momentum behind him, he hit something and reeled back toward Sardis, who reeled back toward me. All three of us went down. There was an awful crash up ahead as Freddie, the thing he’d hit, reeled back toward Susanna and they both went down.
The smoke was pretty black now, and besides that, it was so irritating you couldn’t really keep your eyes open. So I guess Koehler and Freddie didn’t see each other when they scrambled up. I could see them only as silhouettes. The silhouettes bumped heads with a nasty whack. Freddie reeled again. Really reeled— went around almost a full turn— and landed in Susanna’s arms. She hit the side of the corridor and swayed for a minute. Then her knees buckled and she started sinking, Freddie weighing her down. Koehler zipped past them.
Freddie was coughing and so was Sardis, and so was I by that time. But Susanna wasn’t, and that worried me. I wanted to get her out of that smoke fast.
Neither Sardis nor I could catch her before she hit the ground, Freddie on top of her. They completely blocked the corridor, so we couldn’t have chased Koehler even if we’d been free to.
I heard the sound of broken glass— Koehler breaking out a window to get outside— and then there was a big whoosh and the fire roared closer, a thick orange cloud sweeping the corridor. Suddenly it was a furnace in there. And the orange cloud was gaining on us.
Freddie got up and made retching noises while Sardis and I examined Susanna. Sardis slapped gently at her face, but it was no good. She’d passed out.
Sardis took her arms and I took her legs, but we couldn’t really pick her up. We were coughing too hard and our eyes were tearing too much and we were weak from not getting enough air to breathe. We had to drag her as best we could, Freddie stumbling along behind us, apparently unable to see anything at all now, because we kept hearing him bounce off one wall and then another.
Bits of ash and embers flew around in the thick air— or atmosphere— it wasn’t really air at that point. Sometimes the embers landed on us and burned little holes in our clothes and shoulders or backs or wherever they happened to fall. The flames licked us and now and then our clothes caught fire and had to be swatted.
When we got to the window Koehler had knocked out, Sardis heaved Susanna up. But she got only halfway. She dropped her. That wouldn’t have been so bad— Freddie and I could have managed— but Sardis’ nerves had hit their outer limit. She screamed once, and then started sobbing, sitting down where she was, apparently forgetting Susanna. The flames caught her hair. I had to drop Susanna and beat them out, with Sardis’ arms and hands grabbing at mine, trying to flail them away. I should have remembered Sardis’s trick for calming hysterics, the way she’d touched Lindsay’s face. But I didn’t till Freddie leaned over and hit her.
I whirled around. “You son of a bitch.”
I went for him, but he caught my wrist. “Easy, man. You get her and I’ll get Susanna
.”
I saw the wisdom of it and reached for her. Suddenly she snapped out of it, or recovered consciousness after being hit, or something. She put her arms around my neck and let me help her stand up. With her face close to my ear like that, she said something into it. “I love you, Paul,” she said, coughing out the syllables.
I guess she said it because she thought we were going to die. I thought we might, too, and at that moment I loved her more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything.
CHAPTER 24
Once compos mentis again, the three of us lifted Susanna through the window and onto the deck. And then my knees buckled and all of a sudden I was lying down, trying to take in all the air the cool gray city of love had to offer. Freddie and Sardis seemed to be doing the same, and Susanna suddenly made a huge gulping sound. She rolled over on her side and threw up. She made more gulping sounds and pretty soon all four of us were more or less all right, except maybe a little weak.
Freddie apologized to Sardis for hitting her and she said it hadn’t really hurt at all and thanked him for it, and about then we remembered we were aboard a burning boat with a murderer. I thought I heard sirens in the distance, but I wasn’t sure.
The fire was still crackling and smoke was boiling out of the broken window, but it seemed oddly safe on the open deck after what we’d just been through. Koehler had to be somewhere out there, but it was shadowy and we couldn’t see him. We joined hands and ran, single file, to the bow, to see if we could climb down somehow. I got there first and looked over the rail. I could see someone, I thought, in the shadows on the pier. The others joined me.
Marilyn Markham stepped out of the darkness and raised her right arm. “Freeze or I’ll blow her head off,” she said. She was holding a pistol, pointing it at Sardis. In retrospect, I’m not sure we were in handgun range, but the effect was very impressive at the time. We froze.
In fact, we stayed frozen for a few seconds, just staring at her. Then I heard a noise like unnnh right beside me. I jerked my head around and stared into a pair of terrified brown eyes. Sardis’s. Koehler was holding her from behind, a knife at her throat. Not a switchblade or a Bowie knife or a machete. A crummy Swiss army knife. But at the risk of repeating myself, the effect was impressive.
Koehler backed Sardis out of range so that none of us could try any funny stuff. He spoke to Freddie: “Dump the camera in the water.”
Marilyn trained her gun on Freddie. “No.”
Freddie looked from one to the other, like someone watching a tennis match. The sirens I thought I heard were loud and clear all of a sudden.
I heard something else. A thud, like something hitting the deck behind me. It was Sardis. Koehler had pushed her, and now he was running toward the stern. It turned out I was chasing him. I’m not sure how it happened, really, but I was, without any message getting from brain to legs, much the same way I’d jumped through the window and, come to think of it, probably the way Sardis had chased him earlier. My feet were pounding after his. That was all I knew about it.
I was gaining on him, nearly had him, I’m pretty sure, when all of a sudden he went over the rail. All of a sudden I did too. Monkey see, monkey do.
If you’ve never jumped into 45-degree water from the second-story deck of a large ferry boat in the middle of the night, you’ve got no right to use the word shock ever again. I mean, even if your great-aunt Louise makes out with a Brahma bull or you accidentally stick your tongue in an electric socket. Because that word is mine now.
Pain? All up and down the spine and in the brain and capillaries and hair and fingernails.
Cold? Don’t ask.
And fear? As many gallons of it as gallons of water in the Pacific, and each of the latter out to get me.
I registered those things on the downward plunge. When I surfaced, all three of them were centered in my chest. I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t even know where my nose was. Just knew there was nothing in my lungs like there ought to be. I tried to say Sardis’s name, but that was no good because I didn’t know where my mouth was. I tried to tread water, but it was the same old story. My arms and legs may have been there, but you couldn’t prove it by me.
It must have been another case of body operating without brain, because somehow I stayed afloat and got some air in the old thorax. You’ll forgive me if I’m hazy on the details. I was a little on the numb side.
Hearing returned first. I heard sirens and crackling and a lot of yelling and screaming. After a while I got so I could separate the voices doing the screaming. Some were men’s voices, hollering things like “ladder” and “hose.” One was Freddie’s, yelling something about a net. One was a woman’s voice— Susanna’s, I guess— shouting at Freddie to forget the film and get the fuck down the ladder. One was Sardis’s, wailing my name. And one was quite near me in the water. It was Koehler’s, yelling for help.
“I’m coming,” I yelled back. “I’m here.”
“He’s there,” shouted Sardis. “He’s there.”
“Where?” yelled a male voice.
“I’m here,” I yelled, swimming now. Some of the numbness went. Stabbing chest pains took its place.
“Help!” yelled Koehler.
And then he was quiet.
I saw him go down. He was only about ten feet away.
I swam to where I thought he was, but I miscalculated— he wasn’t there. I kept swimming around in circles, right around there. Then one of my legs kicked something, just glanced off. My chest hurt like a son of a bitch.
But there was nothing to do but dive, so I did, and came up with Koehler. I got him in some sort of amateur carry and found I could hardly swim with a hundred-eighty pound weight.
“Now what?” I said.
Apparently, I yelled that, too, because someone shined a light on me, a fireman. “Hold tight,” he said. “We’ll throw you a line.”
I faced facts. It wasn’t a matter of “hardly”— I couldn’t swim at all. I treaded water.
That didn’t work out too well, either.
The pain in my chest was killing me, and I was starting to feel faint. I wondered if I should let go of Koehler. My grip started to relax.
But then the fireman did throw me a line, and I grabbed it. I tightened my grip on Koehler.
If I could just get the bastard back on dry land, he was going to fry for three murders. It might be my last revenge, but by God, I was going to have it. That son of a bitch was going to fry. Like bacon. Like burgers. Like liver and onions. He was going to curl up at the corners and sizzle in the pan. I was going to serve him rare, with mustard maybe. Or beamaise sauce.
I held onto him like death to a dead man, thinking how delicious he was going to be. But I was confused and I knew it. He wasn’t going to be delicious. It was. Revenge. My last revenge.
It ought to be sweet, though. Maybe I’d bake him in a pie.
That wasn’t right, either. In California, you didn’t fry, you didn’t even bake… what was it you did? I blacked out.
“Paul, what is it?” Sardis was frantic. “Say it again, Paul. What is it?”
“The green room,” I said.
That was it. The gas chamber. I opened my eyes and saw Sardis kneeling beside me. I was lying on the pier. So was Koehler. A resuscitation team was working on him. Suddenly someone hollered again: “He’s breathing. It’s okay. He’s breathing.”
Maybe I smiled. At least I tried to. He was going to the green room.
I went to sleep again.
I had a lot of dreams about frolicking animals, some with funny headlights. Someone was singing in my dreams. My mother. The way she used to when I was a kid. It was a song about pretty little horses. “One will be black,” she sang, “and one will be white and one will be the color of Paulie’s shoe.” It was a weird dream for a grown man.
When I woke up, my chest was still killing me. I was in a hospital room. Sardis was there.
“Are you okay?” I said.
She nodded. “Smoke inhalatio
n. Treated and released. The same for Susanna and Freddie. The tape’s safe, by the way. Freddie wouldn’t go down the ladder until the firemen let him throw the Minicam into a net.”
“How about Koehler?”
“He’s not going anywhere. He hit the water wrong— broke both his legs. How do you feel?”
“I was afraid you’d ask that. I don’t think I want to talk about it.”
“Oh, don’t be a baby.”
She left and came back with a man in white. “This is Dr. Patella— the resident who took care of you.”
Patella grinned. “How you doin’, guy?”
“Chest hurts.”
“Two broken ribs. No lung puncture. No sweat.”
“Yeah?” All of a sudden I felt great. Two broken ribs? Hell, that was nothing. It took a lot to get Mcdonald down. Raging fires, freezing oceans… hell of a lot.
“Yeah. Also, smoke inhalation and exposure. Minor bruises. Nothing much at all. You could walk out of here right now.”
“I don’t think I want to.” I didn’t feel that great.
Patella nodded. “Want some Demerol?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
He left and a nurse came with a shot. I drifted in and out for the next several hours, mostly sleeping but thinking sometimes, too. That song about the little horses kept running through my head.
Sardis was still there when I came out of it. She said, “Do you feel up to seeing Susanna and Freddie?”
“They’re here? Absolutely.” I sat up, painfully, while she went to get them. Susanna and Freddie were just the people I wanted to see, along with Sardis. The four of us had things to talk about.
Susanna looked worried, but Freddie seemed on top of the world. “Tape’s great,” he said. “Couldn’t be better. I even got you going through the window. But look here, there’s one thing I never understood. How did you know Koehler was the murderer?”
