Vertical Burn
Page 18
Finney’s day had been more tawdry than a two-dollar toupee, and although at first he’d regretted accepting Diana’s invitation, he found himself looking forward to the party as the day wore on.
Paddling off across the lake in the morning sunshine, he realized he’d become the houseboat equivalent of poor white trash, the neighbors dubious and gossiping as to when his remodel would be finished. It was hard to believe he’d drifted into this bog of neglect and procrastination, his days encompassed by one snafu after another, an endless mind-robbing syndrome of doubt and worry. He recognized in himself something he’d seen in the street people he assisted on the job: the beginning of a downward-sloping path toward the fringes of mental illness, toward total loss of self; and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
He paddled his kayak along the periphery of the lake and performed a series of sprints, trying to burn off his anger. Between efforts he basked in the sunlight glinting off the choppy water. He couldn’t help replaying Balitnikoff’s words. For months he’d lived in dread of an accusation like that, yet, amazingly, at the crucial juncture, he’d found himself unable to respond. Bobbing along in the lake, a thousand snappy comebacks sprang to mind, pencil-sharp rejoinders that had eluded him on the apparatus floor. Diana had been supportive and appropriately silent afterward, which somehow helped staunch his venom.
He couldn’t help thinking his ex-wife, Laura, never would have defended him the way Diana had. In his late twenties Finney had fallen in love with and married a woman several years his junior who, over the course of three years of matrimony, slowly dressed herself in the notion that she was born to be a citizen of the world, that life in Seattle was too restrictive and parochial, that her spirit needed the nourishment of travel, the taste of life in Europe or Russia, where she would write a novel or pen poetry or even compose music—although she’d never shown any inclination to write and everyone knew she had a tin ear.
Nothing he said dissuaded her, and after their divorce she made various sojourns abroad, eventually settling in Sweden. To date she’d penned six unpublished novels, sending each to him for his evaluation. Though he tried to be encouraging, they were uniformly horrid. She was living with a widowed proctologist who had six children, and she claimed she’d never been happier.
Late that afternoon Finney tried to nap, but after twenty minutes on the sofa, he gave up and made a telephone call to his auto insurance company and then to a couple of body repair shops. An hour later, the insurance adjuster arrived and snapped pictures of the Pathfinder.
Shortly after six Finney shaved and showered, climbed into his costume, and abruptly fell asleep on his face on the kitchen table. The house and sky were dark when he woke to the sound of knocking. It took a few moments to realize where he was.
Diana was dressed in a form-fitting black skin suit and wore a tall, red-and-white-striped hat, a floppy red silk bow at her neck, and four-fingered white gloves. Her cat whiskers twitched beguilingly when she smiled at Finney. Who would have thought the Cat in the Hat could look so seductively sexy? As far as Finney was concerned, this was Dr. Seuss’s finest hour.
“Listo, señor?”
Finney waved his black Zorro cape. “At your service, señorita. You look terrific.”
“You look suitably dashing yourself.”
“I hope I don’t cut myself on this sword.”
“I hope I don’t let all the little cats out of the big hat.”
“Wasn’t that Bartholomew Cubbins?”
“You might be right.”
“Nice houseboat,” Diana said, stepping inside.
“I’m remodeling.”
“So I see.”
Her Jeep, she explained as she drove, had taken her through college, several summer jobs, and twice to Alaska. It was now one year older than she had been when she bought it, a virtual relic on Seattle’s streets filled with shiny new SUVs and lightweight trucks.
Although the day had been clear and sunny, an evening chill had brought a dense fog that was beginning to trap airborne pollutants; the fog left a vaguely metallic tang in the back of Finney’s throat.
Seattle was experiencing an autumn inversion, one of several in succession in the past month, where warm air stagnated in the basin between the Olympic Mountains to the west and the Cascades to the east, trapping cooler air over the city. In the daytime the air warmed up enough to lift the ground fog, but at night it all came crashing back down like an intermission curtain. Ordinarily the pollution would be blown out of the region by southern winds and autumn rainstorms, but this year the wind and rain were absent.
They were headed for a Holidays for the Children charity ball, a benefit that was sponsored in part by the fire department. As a volunteer coordinator, Diana was invaluable not only as a hard worker but because of her family’s social connections throughout the Puget Sound area. In its seventh year, the event was becoming an institution in Seattle.
The party took up the entire seventy-fourth floor of the Columbia Tower. The event didn’t officially start until eight, but already several dozen people stood around admiring the decorations or gazing out the windows at the fog. Another half-dozen people scampered around on last-minute errands. On the floor were artfully arranged tableaus of brilliantly colored autumn leaves, cornstalks, sheaves of wheat, and candle-lit carved pumpkins of all sizes.
“Okay,” Diana said. “I need to make sure everything’s set. Back in ten minutes. Food’s over there.”
“Do I look that hungry?”
“Ravenous.”
“I get you anything? Green eggs and ham, perhaps?”
She laughed and disappeared.
Outside, only a few pink and purple vestiges remained from the sunset. The jagged ridges of the Olympic Mountains defined the horizon. Lights blinking, a helicopter cruised across the city.
Finney bought a hundred dollars’ worth of raffle tickets for a Dale Chihuly glass sculpture, knowing his cat, Dimitri, wouldn’t suffer a Dale Chihuly in the house for twenty minutes before knocking it over.
At the far end of the room the band was tuning up, each member made up like a famous musician from the fifties or sixties. Perfect for this crowd, Finney thought, mostly middle-aged, affluent, and nostalgic. First up was a Frankie Valli tune.
When Diana found him, she said, “I should have taken yesterday off. I’m beat. There were supposed to be two of us making all the last-minute preparations, but Angie’s suffering a personal crisis. Last Wednesday her fiancé announced he’s gay. I guess I shouldn’t have told you that.”
“I don’t even know Angie.”
“No, but she gets embarrassed for anybody to know. She thinks it’s a personal failure on her part.”
“Is that why you didn’t have a date until late?”
“Because I was afraid you would turn gay on me?”
He laughed. “No. Because you were jammed up doing the work of two people?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s why. Last year I didn’t have a date. It was a mistake, because once this thing starts, it more or less runs itself, and I found myself standing here gabbing with a succession of elderly married couples. Almost no singles come.” They were quiet for a few moments, unable to do anything but eavesdrop on a shrill conversation nearby. “You forgot about the party, didn’t you?”
“I’m afraid I did.” He smiled, discomfited by her candor. “You always just say what you think?”
“Usually. I do what I want, too.” She stepped forward, cupped his face in her hands, and kissed him on the lips. It startled him enough that he didn’t fully participate until it was nearly over, a mistake of timing he regretted immediately.
“What was that for?” he asked.
“The good-night kiss.”
He smiled. “I don’t get one later?”
“Who knows?” She laughed and glanced around the room. “I think we’re going to have a pretty good crowd. We had a lot of volunteers from the department this year.”
“Wha
t about Oscar Stillman?” Finney asked. “Or Jerry Monahan? Either of them take any interest in this? Reese?”
“Are you kidding? Reese’s contribution will be to show up just long enough to circle the room and allow everyone to shake his hand and congratulate him on becoming chief. I don’t think Jerry Monahan’s ever spoken to me, and Stillman’s favorite charity is the tip jar at the Déjà Vu.” The latter was a strip club just off Aurora in downtown. “Why do you ask?”
“No reason.”
39. TRAMPLING THE ELDERLY, THE INFIRM, THE HANDICAPPED
Slowly the room filled with body heat, music, and chitchat. Waitstaff in Mickey and Minnie Mouse costumes waded through the assemblage, balancing trays and dispensing hors d’oeuvres. People had come dressed as Marilyn Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Batman, the Mario Brothers, Madonna, Jesus, the Pope, Ty Cobb; there was even a man in a Bill Clinton mask sporting a SLICK WILLIE tattoo. There was a couple dressed as Laurel and Hardy and another costumed as firefighters. Finney was glad he’d come. It was just the sort of well-meaning diversion his life lacked.
Diana was only a few inches shy of Finney’s six feet, and when they danced he couldn’t help noticing they fit together like a hand and glove. He’d had a lot of surprises recently, few as pleasant as the kiss she’d given him earlier. There was something vaguely adolescent in the way he couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“So, you’re house-sitting, did you say?”
“My parents took their motor home to the Southwest so they could use up the last of the country’s petroleum supplies. Mom’s always wanted to see the high desert in the autumn. I’m sitting with eight parakeets, two hundred houseplants, and an answering machine that fills up twice a day. I swear my mother is the most gregarious woman on the face of the earth.”
“You are indeed a dutiful daughter.”
“It’s the least I could do to make up for all the grief I’ve given them.” She laughed. “No, really, two of my brothers live out of town, and the other one works fourteen-hour days and barely ever sees his wife and kids. It was me or a professional house-sitter, and I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you grew up on the Eastside?” he asked.
“Want to hear my sad tale, do you?”
“I do.”
“I wish it was sordid. At least that would be interesting, but I was a typical spoiled Eastside brat, raised on Pickle Point just off Meydenbauer Bay in a house almost as large as Ten’s. We lived about sixty feet from Lake Washington in a neighborhood of disgustingly conspicuous wealth. I had a stay-at-home mother with a master’s degree in English, who thinks all little girls should grow up to be just like her, and a father who is one of the founders of a law firm with offices in Seattle, Spokane, and Portland. I had three brothers who treated me like a boy until I was sixteen, which was how I wanted it.” She laughed. “Now for the sordid part. I had it all: private schools, tutors, my own pony at age three. We grew up with a full-time housekeeper and a summertime grounds-maintenance team.” She rubbed her nose against his cheek. “I broke this playing football when I was twelve. I broke it again when I was fourteen. My parents were apoplectic when I refused cosmetic surgery.”
“Ever regretted it?”
“Not for a minute.”
“It’s cold.”
“That’s why I’m warming it up on you. Did you know cats live their lives through their noses?”
“I did know that. And congratulations.”
“On what?”
“On breaking it twice. I haven’t even been able to get my nose to bleed.”
“We were soooo spoiled. I was chauffeured everywhere by my mother in a Mercedes. Ballet, piano, ski, gymnastics lessons. In high school my parents gave me an Alfa Romeo. Were they ever teed off when I traded it in for that Jeep. Except for that and being a tomboy, I was an exemplary child until I dropped out of Pepperdine five credits shy of a degree.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“I don’t know. I guess it was a pinch of postadolescent rebellion.”
“Then what’d you do?”
“Social work with kids, counselor at a summer camp, clerk in a Starbucks shop, and training for triathlons. When I eventually joined the fire department, my mother told me firefighters were tobacco-chewing rednecks or lesbians with crewcuts. I said, ‘No, Mother. The lesbians chew the tobacco and the rednecks have the crewcuts.’ Mother still talks about my completing a degree in communications and perhaps turning out a novel. Mother has two half-finished novellas tucked away in a dresser drawer.”
Finney didn’t mention his ex-wife’s ambitions in that direction.
“That’s enough about me. What about you?”
He told her about his childhood trekking around the West Seattle Golf Course with the steel mill kids, polishing used golf balls to resell to their former owners, about getting thrashed by the older boys at Cooper Elementary. He’d been small for his age and until high school had suffered for it. He’d had a paper route and a love-hate relationship with his father who’d been a harsh disciplinarian and a worse critic. “Tony and I never quite measured up—me even less than him. I always resented my mother for not sticking up for us, but now I realize she was barely holding her own. I didn’t realize the dynamics of our family until just a couple of years ago. In those days the department didn’t pay like it does now, and my father used to work a second job down at the steel mill in West Seattle. He had little patience to start with and less when he was tired. And he was always tired.
“In school I never did more than okay unless I really liked the class. I was a second-stringer on the basketball team. I wrestled and ran track. After high school I tried college, but my heart wasn’t in it. I worked at Boeing, then got a job with a paint company. I thought I liked it until one morning I woke up and realized I needed to get into the department. It shocked the hell out of my father. I wish we hadn’t wasted so many years yelling at each other.”
“In our house we never raised our voices,” Diana said. “You know what I like best about this job? I like when we’re downtown and some businessman in a three-piece suit sees me on the rig and realizes he’s looking at a woman. The double take. I love it.”
“I love the way little kids go crazy when we drive by.”
“You want kids?”
“If I ever get married again. You?”
“I think so. In a few years.”
They were quiet until she said, “So. You ever going to tell me why you carved your initials in the wheel well of Engine Ten?”
“You saw that?”
“Don’t worry. Nobody else caught it. Tell me what’s going on, John. Tell me why G. A. thinks you set the fire on Riverside Drive.” He was quiet for a few moments as they danced. “I want to help you,” she whispered into his ear.
Until now, he hadn’t trusted anybody with the full catalog of his suspicions, wasn’t sure he wanted to. “I’m being framed,” Finney said. “You really want to hear this?”
“Yes.”
The story took two slow dances and the better part of a fast number which they stood out, gazing out over the fog. From time to time they could see the blinking red lights atop a neighboring skyscraper, but mostly what they watched were the reflections of dancers and candlelit pumpkins in the dark windows. He told her about the dangerous buildings list, about following Monahan, about the counterfeit fire engine, the attempt on his life. When he paused, she said, “I saw Paul and Michael taking pictures of Engine Ten one day.”
“I’d like it better if you saw Jerry Monahan taking pictures of it. Paul and Michael probably carry snapshots of the rig in their wallets to show people next to them on airplanes.”
“Actually, I believe they do.”
He recounted the rest of it, and she listened sympathetically.
“There’s been speculation an arsonist was working last June,” Diana said. “Earlier this week Reese even set up a committee to look into it.”
“I’d hoped that was coming.”
“And the committee agreed?”
“I don’t know. I could ask Oscar Stillman. He was the chairman.”
“Don’t bother.” He hadn’t told her about seeing Stillman with Monahan on Airport Way.
When the band announced a short intermission and the dance floor began to clear, a man dressed as Abraham Lincoln accidentally clotheslined his stovepipe hat off on a mobile of witches and goblins, only to have it caught in midair by a man in a Superman outfit, much to the entertainment of the bystanders. People mingled, ran into old friends; the conversations grew almost as loud as the band had been.
“Somebody’s trying to frame you . . . ?” Diana said, thinking aloud. “Somebody was responsible for Leary Way, and they think you’ll expose them? That’s what’s happening?”
“Patterson Cole owned Leary Way. He also owns the building where I found the engine. That’s too much of a coincidence to be a coincidence.”
“Patterson Cole owns property all over town. He owns vacant lots in Medina that the city’s been trying to get hold of for twenty years. He owns this place.”
“The Columbia Tower?”
“Bought it over a year ago. He has an entire floor on forty-two.”
“I knew about the office, but I didn’t realize he owned the building. I guess it stands to reason.”
Diana said, “An engine has to cost close to three hundred grand. Why would anybody invest that kind of money?”
“I can’t even guess what they’re planning to do with the engine. But they want to tie up the fire department bad. They want to get us running around until we’re so busy they can set fire to whatever they want and nobody will be there to stop it. They want a conflagration. You know as well as I do, once you get a block or two going, you get a firestorm—and nobody and nothing can stop one of those. They’re going to burn down something, and it’s going to be big. The phony engine was carrying a prefire for this place.”