by Earl Emerson
Moments later, the speaker of the house ended his speech by announcing what we’d all guessed, that Stone Carmichael was in the running to be the next governor of the great State of Washington. Amid a chorus of whistling and party horns, thrown confetti, and a massive release of balloons, Carmichael leaped up the stairs to the podium and shook hands with the speaker, then with several other regional political figures. The band played a riff and ended with a staccato drum solo. Stone stepped up to the microphone, cleared his throat, and waited while the silence solidified.
“I’m going to talk politics in a moment, but first…Chief Smith has handed me a note that should give us all cause for concern. The fire department has suffered another tragic fire. A firefighter has been seriously injured. We don’t know how seriously, but he’s been rushed to Harborview. Ordinarily I wouldn’t give out a name this early, but it’s somebody we all know and respect. Most of you may remember Trey Brown as the man who made those valiant rescues at the Z Club a month ago. Right now our hopes and prayers are with this man.”
A smattering of applause. A couple of amens. Only a few people in the room realized Trey Brown was thirty feet in front of me, but even so, I could see a portion of the crowd react around him like a ripple in a pool.
Trey stepped through the crowd to the front of the room and stood under the podium. Something had stained the back of his white jacket, and as I got closer, I realized it was blood. The realization that he was bleeding made me want to scream. Rumble hadn’t volunteered any details about their evening, but at that moment the dark, brooding look I’d seen in Trey’s eyes began to make sense.
“Well, here he is now,” Stone said, noticing his brother for the first time. Again, applause halted the program. “Captain Brown, I’m glad to see you’re here and apparently doing well. The report we received was alarming.”
“Because I wasn’t dead?”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve wanted me dead for years.”
“Perhaps your doctor…” Stone addressed the crowd. “Did somebody come with this man?” By this time Carmichael had a simpering, half-embarrassed, angry look on his face. “I really think somebody should assist this man,” Stone said, gesturing to persons in the crowd I couldn’t see from my position. “He’s apparently under the influence of medication. Get him out of here before he hurts himself!”
The two security guys I’d seen at the elevators grabbed Trey and began walking him through the throng. Trey didn’t struggle, and because of this I got the feeling he was incapable of resistance. They hadn’t gone far when there was a loud droning as somebody tinkered with the sound system, and then voices came over the room’s speakers. I didn’t recognize the first voice, but Trey had already told me who it was. “Yeah. Thought I’d check in. I got that info. They’re definitely going after the owners of the club.” Of course, the first voice was Barry Renfrow speaking to Stone Carmichael, but it wasn’t until they’d had several exchanges that most people in the room realized they were listening to a taped phone call and that one of the parties was the mayor. “Yesterday he called the King County assessor’s office and then the city attorney’s office. He’s already got Silverstar Consolidated’s name. It’s only a matter of time before he finds out Overby owns Silverstar and has been funding your gubernatorial campaign and getting special favors in return. The direction he’s taking isn’t good. And we both know this isn’t some kid you can intimidate. He’s a captain in the fire department. He comes up with certain facts and people are bound to believe him. The whole city’s watching these two investigate, and the worst part is, I don’t know what the hell he’s going to do next. We’ve got to figure out some way to control this report so it doesn’t make us look bad.”
“Just keep an eye on Captain Brown and let me know what he’s doing.”
“It might be too late by the time we see what he’s up to. I think something needs to be done now.”
“Something harsh?”
“You can’t treat a guy like this with kid gloves.”
“Don’t worry about it. I have an inside source. When things start to get too scary, she’ll let me know and then I’ll let you know.” The reference to me hurt, even though nobody else in the room except Trey knew what it meant.
“But, Stone—”
“Christ, Barry, I’m late for a ball game with my kids. Okay. Have it your way. Stop him. Maybe you can distract him or something. Get him a white woman. A fat one. All the black guys seem to go for that. Overby has raised a lot of money so I can be the next governor, and we don’t need some hero messing it up by digging up the truth about Silverstar and our connection to the Z Club. But keep my name out of it. Keep my campaign out of it. Keep Harlan Overby out of it. Hell, Barry, you’ve been doing this for years. And I don’t care if you have to hurt him. Listen, my boys are waiting with the bodyguard out at the car.”
Stone Carmichael, who was beginning to shrivel in place, said, “This isn’t what you might think.” Everybody had recognized his voice, and it was common knowledge that Trey had been physically attacked on the street last week. Booing began to roll from the back of the room, then more from the front. I could see Stone’s brain turning over the different ways he might spin this.
Harlan Overby made for the elevators. So did Shelby Carmichael and his nurse. India disappeared for a few moments but came up for air near one of the far windows, gazing out at the city lights with something that looked remarkably like contentment on her face. Almost as if on a signal, the local press in the room rushed the mayor en masse, three cameras and almost a dozen print reporters surrounding him before his entourage could mobilize and block the assault. One reporter was off to the side interviewing the head of the local chapter of the NAACP, who was saying, “…everything in my power to make sure he never holds elected office again. We’re calling for a new investigation of the mayor and his participation in this cover-up.”
A few feet away, Miriam Beckmann from Z Club Citizens for Truth was giving an interview. “This is racism bare naked.” Several black people had angrily disengaged Trey from his two escorts and, free now, he made a beeline for India Carmichael at the windows. My heart broke to see him approach her, and it broke again when I saw the splotches of blood on the back of his jacket. Amid the uproar, nobody else in the room seemed to notice her. I remained far enough away not to impose, but close enough to come to Trey’s aid should he falter. Rumble showed up about then, but I held him at bay with a hand gesture.
Trey and India looked at each other for a long moment, spoke a few words I couldn’t hear, and then he turned and headed for the exit, draping an arm over my shoulders and taking me with him as casually as if he’d done it every day of his life. Rumble stared at India Carmichael for a few moments, then followed us. The ice queen, it seemed, had lost this round. It wasn’t until much later that Trey told me she was the one who actually won it.
67. WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
TREY>
“Hey, you’re not going to eat the last piece of chocolate, are you?” Estevez asked as I dropped the entire chunk into my mouth. She let out a groan of mock agony. We were at my mother’s house, Johnny wearing a fancy cummerbund over his church trousers and serving the food and beverages as if he were being paid to do it, Estevez and myself arguing over nothing, as usual. Rumble had brought his current girlfriend, and the women had been hovering in the kitchen preparing food while they talked about us. For months now Estevez and my mother had been getting on like sisters.
“I only had two chocolates,” I said.
“You ate one whole row out of that box,” Johnny said. “I saw you.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“I’m on the side of the chocolate.”
We all laughed. “I’m thirsty,” I said.
“That’s what happens when you take in too much sugar,” said Rumble.
Estevez and I have been together for over a year now, one minor breakup in the middle of last summer, which in
volved Jamie being offered a job in Washington, D.C., that probably would have spelled the end of our relationship. In the end we got back together, and she decided she wanted to stay in the Northwest. She reads the news on the noon and late-night news hours, so her schedule is just as erratic as mine.
As far as the Z Club goes, the dust still hasn’t settled. Maybe it never will. The lot has been bulldozed now, the land confiscated by the city, with plans for it to be turned into a small memorial park. There are half a dozen pending lawsuits, and rumor has it that Harlan Overby is doling out a small fortune to keep his business affairs out of the public eye.
Within minutes of the declaration that he was in the running for governor, Stone Carmichael announced he’d changed his mind. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so ugly. No matter how many times I hear that tape, it still makes me shake my head in disbelief. Two months after it first came to public attention, some reactionary antiracist clown punched Stone in the face when he spotted him outside a Starbucks. A white guy, even. Carmichael’s candidacy made records for being the shortest in the history of the state. He was made fun of on Letterman and The Daily Show and has become a staple of comedians across the country.
In Washington State it is illegal to tape phone conversations unless both parties agree, but the tape became public the night we played it, and legal or not, it has been quoted liberally on all of the local television and radio stations. Grand jury investigations were opened with the intent of exploring the mayor’s relationship to the Z Club and to the fire where I got chainsawed. It has become clear that Stone Carmichael has been linked to the Z Club fiasco from the beginning. Harlan Overby’s policy was to cut corners to keep any moneymaking scheme in business for as long as possible, always trying to squeeze a few more nickels out of anything, and the operations of the Z Club were no exception. After the mayor told him he would make the violations okay with the fire department inspectors, everything became fair game. Whether or not the mayor actually interfered in the fire department inspections is still under investigation, but witnesses are beginning to come forward to testify against him. His promises were enough to let the club owners, Overby, et al. think they could get away with a series of fire regulation infractions. Using political influence to help out campaign contributors wasn’t a particularly heinous crime, nor one we don’t see every day, but using it to allow people to break the law had led to fourteen deaths in the worst fire on the West Coast in years.
Stone’s lawyers dropped a protective umbrella of denial and obfuscation around him, and because of the smoke screen and the ponderous pathways of the judicial system, people are speculating that he may skate. Whatever else happens, his political aspirations are finished.
I’ve only been back to see my father once, and it did not go well. I denounced the old man for choosing the white son over the black one, for alienating me from my adoptive mother during her final years, and for taking advantage of my birth mother when she was sixteen; but instead of rolling over and playing dead, the old man accused me of playing the race card, saying he’d given me the best head start any black kid could ever dream of and decreeing that whatever success I had in life wouldn’t have occurred without the substantial foundation I’d been given by him. He was, he claimed, personally responsible for my success.
I exploded. “You don’t send two ex-professional boxers to beat the hell out of a kid and then tell him you gave him a head start in life.”
“What boxers?”
“The two thugs who beat the crap out of me when I came back to the island to convince you I wasn’t guilty.”
“This is the first I’ve heard. It must have been Harlan. Harlan must have been behind it.”
At that point the nurse asked me to leave. I was surprised she hadn’t insisted earlier, since Shelby had been looking ill ever since I walked into the room. Weeks later I was told my father’s health was in a steep decline; he’s twice asked for me to visit and I’ve twice refused. When you think about it, it’s kind of pathetic, a father who desperately wants forgiveness and a son who cannot give it. On the other hand, he still has not apologized or admitted any wrongdoing. It’s not spiritually or emotionally good for me or for him, and I’ll probably pay for it in the afterlife, but he sold me down the river and I will never forget it.
I see Kendra maybe twice a month, make the kids’ birthday parties and all the rest of it. Kendra is the only member of the family who remains on good terms with me.
The night after the tape was played at the Space Needle, there was an organized street rally asking for the mayor’s resignation, although for reasons nobody ever divined, Mayor Carmichael didn’t resign until two days afterward. Maybe he couldn’t get himself to give up the dream. Maybe he was up there alone in his mansion licking his wounds. Or maybe he was hoping the public would forget his current indiscretions the way his father had forgotten his indiscretions so many years earlier.
At the rally there were a few scuffles with the police—most initiated by knuckleheads—a couple of arrests, a couple of sprained ankles, and several people—Rumble included—who lost their voices from shouting. Johnny got his head busted again, this time by somebody in the crowd. We never got the whole story.
Our fire investigators said the fire where I got cut resembled the work of a well-known torch who worked out of Philadelphia, a former firefighter. Interestingly enough, two days after the fire, the suspected arsonist and another man were found shot to death on a side road near the Seattle-Tacoma Airport. The second man was Barry Renfrow, who the papers mentioned was an employee of Harlan Overby. For reasons nobody ever quite figured out, they’d driven out to a deserted part of the county and shot each other.
India Carmichael took her boys to Maryland to be near her mother. The divorce settlement is still pending and occasionally written about in the tabloids.
As far as Rumble goes, he and I still talk about everything except the fire where he saved Kitty and me. I know he still feels bad about chainsawing me, but I’m healed up now and have recovered most of my shoulder function. Rumble says if I’m ever fool enough to lose Estevez, he’s going to jump in and give it his best shot, even though he has a new girlfriend he met in the condom aisle at Walgreen’s, but that’s another story.
Rumble and I had a long talk about the night I went from being a rich “white boy” to just another black kid in the hood. The Overbys had been duped and honestly believed I’d raped their daughter, so it was a miracle they hadn’t prosecuted me or had me killed. Only their tight alliance and history with Shelby and Helen Carmichael had stopped it. After I heard the whole story and thought about it for a while, I had a hard time blaming a confused and shocked fifteen-year-old Echo for trying to shield the man she thought she loved. It was even hard to blame her for not having the gumption or impetus to change her story later.
I’m not holding my breath waiting for Stone to get what he deserves. The statute of limitations has run out for what he did to Echo, and the tangle over the Z Club may never be sorted out. Even though his political career is a train wreck, he’s making money hand over fist in the private sector, but that doesn’t surprise me; if you’ve been around a while, you know the rich don’t always get what they deserve, at least not in this life.
I can’t think of too much more to say. Everyone is in the other room gathered around the Christmas tree, and it’s gotten quiet, so I have a feeling this would be a good time to waltz in, take Estevez by the hand and pop the question. I know from things she’s said in the past she thinks it is unabashedly romantic when somebody proposes under a Christmas tree in front of family. The mistletoe my brother Johnny’s tacked up won’t hurt. Estevez is sentimental about mistletoe. I better get in there before I lose my nerve.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR>
Earl Emerson is a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department. He is the Shamus Award–winning author of Vertical Burn, Into the Inferno, and Pyro, as well as the Thomas Black detective series, which includes The Rainy City,
Poverty Bay, Nervous Laughter, Fat Tuesday, Deviant Behavior, Yellow Dog Party, The Portland Laugher, The Vanishing Smile, The Million-Dollar Tattoo, Deception Pass, and Catfish Café. He lives in North Bend, Washington.
Visit the author’s website at www.EarlEmerson.com.
BY EARL EMERSON>
Vertical Burn
Into the Inferno
Pyro
The Smoke Room
Firetrap
THE THOMAS BLACK NOVELS>
The Rainy City
Poverty Bay
Nervous Laughter
Fat Tuesday
Deviant Behavior
Yellow Dog Party
The Portland Laugher
The Vanishing Smile
The Million-Dollar Tattoo
Deception Pass
Catfish Café
Firetrap is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Copyright © 2006 by Earl Emerson, Inc.
All rights reserved.
BALLANTINE> and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN: 978-0-345-49366-8
v3.0
