Slide

by Gerald A. Browne

Dodd didn’t believe a man could enjoy having smoke in his eyes most of the time.

  “What’s your idea?” Croy asked.

  Dodd was picturing it.

  “We can’t use the aerial. We already thought of that.”

  “I know.”

  “Well, let’s have it.”

  Captain Dodd took out a note pad and a felt-tipped pen. He made a crude profile sketch of the breakaway, the chasm and the bluff. “We’ll go man for man on it,” he said. “One of yours and one of ours.”

  “Need the publicity?”

  A bad joke, to relieve the tension, Dodd decided, giving Croy the benefit of the doubt. “Just that it’s risky,” Dodd told him, and continued outlining his plan.

  The fireman chosen for it was Ed Larrabee, who had had special instruction in scaling the coastal cliffs.

  The highway patrolman chosen was Jack Madsen. He had done quite a bit of mountain climbing on his own time.

  Both men, in their mid-twenties, were in excellent physical condition. While things were being made ready they talked together amiably. It was by no means a contest. They genuinely wished one another luck as they were about to go over the side.

  It had been decided that rather than be lowered in tension they would repel down — that is, with a line around their hips, they would control their own rate of descent. It gave them greater freedom. They were each equipped with two-way constant walkie-talkies strapped to their upper arms, so at any time they could easily communicate with those above and with one another.

  Over the edge and down the line they went, spaced forty feet apart. With the repelling technique they used their legs to brace and push off from the face of the newly formed cliff. They went down virtually in leaps and bounds, yelling to let out what was part apprehension, part exhilaration.

  At about the hundred-foot mark they were across from the level of the bluff. At that point they moved laterally, searching.

  “Something, here,” Larrabee said.

  He kicked vigorously at the face of the cliff, causing considerable dirt to give way.

  “No good,” he reported.

  That same sort of hope and letdown was repeated several times by both Larrabee and Madsen. Finally, Madsen came across what appeared to be a really substantial outcropping — some kind of stratified rock, three or four tightly packed layers.

  Madsen kicked at it. It didn’t give, seemed solid. He called to Larrabee, who swung over. Together they stomped hard as they could, testing the outcropping. Then they worked on the dirt above it, causing the dirt to fall away. What they created was a small ledge.

  Madsen would try it.

  He rotated to be facing out from the cliff. He placed his feet on the ledge and gradually transferred his weight from the line until all one hundred ninety pounds of him was being supported by the ledge.

  Larrabee added his two hundred.

  “Got it,” he reported.

  “Maybe,” Madsen added.

  Above, the ladder was ready. A fifty-foot ground ladder that weighed two hundred twenty-five pounds. Under regular hurry-up fire conditions four men were assigned to carry it. Now, two lines were attached to an end of it and it was eased over the edge of the cliff and lowered, slowly, to within reach of Madsen and Larrabee.

  “Little more,” Madsen told them.

  “Another three feet.”

  “Give us a few inches.”

  “Keep tension until we give the word.”

  Would the ledge support that much more weight?

  Madsen and Larrabee guided the ladder to them, to the surface of the ledge. It required all their strength to keep the ladder close in. When they were sure they had it, Madsen said “Now!” and Larrabee said “Let’s have it!” and the men on the lines above released all the weight of the ladder.

  The ledge took it. And held.

  Larrabee and Madsen gripped the ends of the ladder’s rails, left and right, creating as much inward tension as they could, difficult with the ledge narrow as it was. When they agreed they were set, Larrabee shouted, “Let her down!”

  The men above paid out their lines. The ladder came down diagonally. It quivered in the wind, rocked and was almost flipped over but finally it was there, horizontal. The outward end of it just did reach the bluff across the way by a foot or two.

  Now came the tougher part.

  Larrabee claimed, being a fireman, he was more accustomed to ladders.

  Madsen stood on the end of the ladder to help balance it. Larrabee got down on all fours. He used the rails to crawl along, and at first he made good progress. However, when he was about halfway across the wind seemed to discover him. It hit him hard, swirled rain around him spitefully, rattled the ladder that was already bent some under his weight. To save himself, Larrabee had to go belly down on the rungs.

  From there on he inched along. The closer he got to the other side, the more the wind seemed to resent him. It tried its hardest to rip him off, kept at it, and then, at the exact moment Larrabee reached the bluff, the wind gave up completely.

  Madsen was hauled up.

  Captain Dodd had laced black coffee and personal thanks ready for him.

  Now rescue was imminent. A special line-throwing gun was put to use. It shot a projectile connected to a lightweight cord over to the bluff. Larrabee retrieved it. The cord, tied to a nylon line of five-thousand-pound test, was fed to Larrabee. He secured the line to the chassis of one of the cars on the parking lot.

  By then numerous press people were at the site on the highway. Television dominated, of course. There were the familiar-faced reporters, many technicians, men with sixteen-millimeter-film cameras and portable video cameras harnessed to them. Everyone wet, dripping, told to keep out of the way, complying as much as their competitiveness allowed. Always nudging forward, not to miss anything. Some cameras, for vantage, were placed atop remote transmission vans.

  From a distance, from out to sea looking coastward through the diffusing rain, this area of the highway glowed weirdly, near religiously.

  In the banks of television lights Chief Croy’s slick white helmet caused flaring blue aftertrails on the monitors each time he moved his head.

  “Is there any doubt now about getting those people out?”

  “I don’t foresee any trouble.”

  “How long will it take?”

  Croy thought, seemed about to reply but didn’t, committing the most awful sin of television reportage: silence.

  “What’s your guess, Chief?”

  “Two, three hours,” Croy promised and hoped he looked confident. His eyes challenged all the cameras.

  “Do you know yet if anyone down there is injured or dead?”

  “No.”

  For heightened drama behind those words the director cut to another camera hand-held on the ambulances parked in an orderly, ominous line. Ten, and more on the way from the nearby hospitals: South Coast Community, Hoag Memorial, San Clemente General. Some resident doctors of those hospitals had come with the ambulances, some on their own. Also nurses.

  The firemen had established several lines to and from the bluff. Going down would be a swift ride in a sling. Coming up would be slower and considerably safer via a powered pulley. A fireman took the first, the test, ride. He waited at the bottom along with Larrabee, while two young doctors made the trip, followed by a nurse, and another. Supplies and equipment were lashed to slings and sent down.

  Seven-thirty. No letup by the rain. In another half hour it would be dark.

  The rescue party hurried across the parking lot toward the supermarket. On the way it passed a Rolls-Royce limousine, overturned. There was a man inside it, dead. A chauffeur with his skull bashed in from having hit the separating glass partition.

  When they reached the supermarket the doctors and nurses couldn’t take time to indulge their amazement. They went right to work.

  “My God. Oh, my God,” was all Larrabee could say, while from above on the highway Chief Croy demanded a report. Larrabe
e finally described the situation.

  “How many dead?”

  “No way of telling exactly. Not yet.”

  “About how many? Fifty?”

  “More.”

  Several more doctors and nurses went down. Also firemen with a pair of acetylene torches. There was no way into the market, no way to get anyone out. They would have to cut the gate. They chose a spot, set up the tanks and began burning through. The gate was of tempered cadmium steel. It would be slow going. The firemen requested an additional acetylene torch and tank that were sent down.

  Meanwhile, inside the market the dead were placed off to one side. Some of the stock clerks did most of that work. Spider Leaks helped. So did Peter Javakian and Frank Brydon. First the front of the market was cleared of the dead and the glass. The dead were put into shroud bags supplied by the firemen. The kind of shiny black plastic bags with drawstrings used only for that morbid purpose. Best to get the dead from sight. The bodies took up a lot of room. They were placed side by side, but respectfully, not in any way atop or overlapping one another.

  The injured were carried to the gate, as close up to it as possible, so the doctors and nurses could attend them through the grillwork. The more seriously injured received priority treatment. For some the most that could be done was take them out of pain with injections of Demerol and morphine. Inverted bottles were hung all along the gate, bottles with rubber tubes running from them, feeding plasma into veins to offset shock and loss of blood.

  Now Larrabee reported: “First count, dead — one hundred twenty-two; injured — forty-one. Repeat.…”

  There was the hissing of the acetylene torches, the crackling jumps of the sparks they made.

  Night came.

  The firetrucks directed their searchlights down onto the front of the market. A five-thousand-watt floodlight and an equally powerful spot. Other lights on the pumpers contributed five hundred watts each.

  It was difficult enough for the doctors and nurses to do their work impeded by the gate, having to reach through its openings to reach wounds that often required swift and delicate attention. Now they also had to contend with shadows.

  Flashlights were provided.

  Some were handed to those inside the market. Brydon, Spider Leaks and Peter Javakian each got one. The flashlights were the type with a handle, powered by a seven-volt battery. They gave off strong beams but were unwieldy.

  Having the flashlights was what brought the three men together. They quickly introduced themselves and went searching. It wasn’t easy going, picking their way over broken glass, layers of cans, all sorts and shapes of products.

  Partway up Aisle Eight Brydon’s light lit upon something different. A small shoe. Peter and Spider tossed aside two shopping carts, removed debris. A boy. In his clutch was a box of breakfast cereal that featured an unbeatable hero. Brydon put his head to the boy’s chest. No heartbeat. He lifted the boy tenderly, as though the boy were alive, and carried him over to the rest of the dead.

  At another aisle they came upon an old woman, a thin old woman who appeared to be a Mexican. She was unconscious, a rivulet of blood from her nose. Peter and Spider got their arms beneath her, joined their arms and easily took her up and away. Brydon noticed her purse left behind, imitation patent leather. It was open. He was compelled to look into it: a handprinted unofficial identification card, creased and frayed, two dollars and some cents, twelve dollars’ worth of federal food stamps.

  When they saw to it that the old woman was being cared for, the three men continued searching. Up and down aisles, throughout the back rooms. Brydon and Peter got to know the market, even became familiar with its rubble.

  In the vicinity of the shelves that had held gourmet foods, Brydon found one and then another jar of Romanoff caviar. He recognized the unusual-shaped containers immediately. Two-ounce size. As a souvenir, provisional one at that, he put the caviar in his pocket. What he was really looking for, wanted more than anything, had come there for in the first place, was a beer.

  Peter Javakian uncovered a six-can pack of a local brew. It was so local it didn’t even have snap-off, easy-opening tops.

  “Anybody got an opener?”

  Spider borrowed one from a stock clerk. Each time the opener punched a triangular hole in the top of the can the agitated beer spewed out fast and high, so nearly half of it was lost.

  Brydon, Peter and Spider sat on the bottom shelf of Island Number One. The beer tasted fine. From there they could see the firemen cutting the gate. The blue hot beams of the torches.

  “How much more they got to go?” Peter asked.

  “Somebody said they’re half done,” Brydon told him.

  Peter asked Spider: “You from around here?”

  “Most of the time. You?”

  “Hollister,” Peter said — then to Brydon: “How about you?”

  “I live down the beach.” Right away Brydon thought, that word, “live.” Wasn’t there anything that didn’t remind him? He gulped the rest of the beer, opened another, and, with his mind elsewhere, got squirted in the face.

  He lowered his head, shook it slowly and laughed aloud at himself.

  The supermarket manager, Phil Kemp, was up on the ramp, which had come unbolted from the wall, was wobbly, giving. Kemp hoped to Christ it held long enough for him. He had waited until the firemen were close to through the gate before he came up to the safe. Kemp was disturbed anyway — with the cash registers. When the electricity shorted, for some reason the cash drawer of every register sprung open and couldn’t be shut. Before Kemp could get around to them someone had taken the money from four of the registers. He thought he knew who. He had noticed, or at least he was almost sure he had noticed that Negro box boy, the one who had been a convict, close by one of the registers that had been rifled. Sure as he was or not, Kemp believed that boy was the sort low enough to take advantage of such a moment.

  Kemp opened the safe.

  He had two large canvas money bags with “Brinks” stenciled on them.

  The safe was a double safe. Kemp opened the inner one. He didn’t bother with the rolls of coins, took only the paper money that was bound by sturdy rubber bands into five-thousand-dollar units. He put equal amounts, by estimate, into each of the bags, belted and buckled the bags closed. Double-checked them, used some heavy twine to hitch the bags together in such a way that he had a halterlike arrangement. He put on the money halter, and finally felt secure enough about it.

  As he went down the metal spiral stairs that swayed precariously, Kemp decided that from then on he would stay close to the gate, close to where the opening was being cut. He would tell the firemen who he was and why he should be first out.

  13

  Captain Royden Dodd was in Car Thirty-one with the front seat pushed back as far as it would go. Even then, when he slumped down, his legs were too long for comfort, pressed up on the hard underedge of the instrument panel. It wasn’t the car as much as it was the way Dodd was built. He was more than half legs, Gary Cooper style.

  He tried to relax his head, to let the top of the seat take all the weight of it from his neck and shoulders. But his neck especially hung on tight.

  It had been one more long day — worse than routine, which was usually bad enough — and it wasn’t over yet.

  First thing that morning they had found two more sun lovers at the State Beach in Balboa. A fellow and his girl, both about eighteen, parked head out to sea in a blue Olds-mobile Starfire with a pair of surfboards racked on it. His and hers.

  The car’s muffler was stuffed with their bathing suits and the end of it was tightly taped over.

  The couple were in the act of love, arms wrapped around, tight together in rigor mortis.

  There had been twelve almost identical cases since Friday last week. Eight of them had been in Highway Patrol Zone Six, which covered the entire southern section from Los Angeles to the border.

  Dodd took two deep breaths, used his second finger and thumb to squeeze th
e bridge of his nose, as though that slight pressure might help ease the pressure. It was something he usually did when he was discouraged.

  He closed his eyes.

  Instead of relief, that brought a busy blackness. Among his thoughts: Helen, his wife. She had broken her wrist ten days ago, had fallen on a sidewalk while shopping in Costa Mesa. Sidewalk slippery when wet. Costa Mesa’s fault. An attorney neighbor had advised Dodd to sue. Dodd examined the shoes his wife had had on the day of the accident. Slick leather soles. Besides, an area captain could, but shouldn’t, sue a city in his area. And his backyard roses. They were goners. Roots soaked soft, rotting, stalks and stems unable, for some reason, to stop guzzling it up. All their leaves turned pale yellow.

  The metallic drumming of rain on the car roof, not soothing, a lethal reminder by now. No more wind, though.

  Dodd opened his eyes, adjusted them to the refracting drops on the window. God, he was tired. Couldn’t recall when he’d been more so. Tired all the way in to his bones and down to his wet toes. Old bones, he thought, and tensed his legs and shoulders simultaneously, trying to squeeze the cramps out, the tiredness. Hell, he wasn’t even sixty yet, had nine and some to go before sixty.

  Executive Lieutenant Porter was rapping on the window. Dodd didn’t sit up, just lowered the window.

  Porter leaned in. “The latest count is a hundred thirty-one,” he said.

  Dodd gazed past Porter, at nothing. Only numbers so far, he thought, no names. “How long before they can start bringing the others up?”

  “Croy says an hour, maybe less.”

  “Madsen leave?”

  “No.”

  “I told him to go home.”

  Porter shrugged. “Eager.”

  “For what?”

  “Motorcycle assignment.”

  “Remind me.”

  “A couple of the television guys had a pretty good go at each other.”

  “When?”

  “Just now, over who was going to get to interview the first survivors brought up. One got an eye. They’re trying to cover it with makeup.”

  “Crazy bastards.”

  “Everybody’s edgy.”