The Smoke Room Read online

  Knowing this was the last night I would wear turnout gear or be part of this army of hose jockeys, I tried to hardwire it all into my memory, soaking in the ethos, color, and sensibility of my firefighting life. After two years I was only just getting used to all this, and tomorrow it would be gone.

  I felt a wave of melancholy over the fact that I’d let my mother down. Just as surely as she’d devoted her life to making certain I got a solid foundation, I’d devoted the past month to bankrupting her efforts. Worst of all, her last days would dwindle away in isolation.

  City Light workers had killed the power to the fire building and the nearby streetlights, but on Dexter the flames along the face of the building provided so much light that a hundred feet away you could read a newspaper by it. I counted six teams of firefighters spaced on the street outside the building wall, most of them holding down two-and-a-half-inch hose lines or hunkered on monitors. The two-and-a-half-inch nozzles dispensed three hundred gallons per minute, the monitors eight hundred gallons per minute, and the back pressure from these appliances was such that at least one firefighter, and sometimes two, had to babysit them to keep them from kicking back or sliding around.

  At the far corner of the building, firefighters had strung lines out of every conceivable port on two pumpers, until the hose in the street looked like a plate of spaghetti. There were spots in the roadway where the layers of cylindrical hose were two or three feet deep, where you had to step over the hardened hose the way you stepped over a fence, and where water got trapped inside the twisted stacks and formed pools a child could dog-paddle in.

  In the dark along the south side of the building, a crew from Engine 6 dragged hose to a point at the southeast corner of the fire building, where they’d been told to set up a monitor for us. Sears informed us we were to man this monitor as soon as Engine 6 got water to it.

  Johnson and I dragged hose while Tronstad traipsed alongside griping, occasionally filming us with the small video camera he sometimes carried. It was vintage Tronstad: all mouth, no work. “Jesus. Why don’t they man it?”

  “They’ve got other jobs,” snapped Sears. “We don’t.” You could tell he’d about had it with Tronstad, too frustrated to even try to make him help.

  When you thought about it, this was a bizarre situation. Any other officer in the city would have turned us in back at the station, but our lieutenant couldn’t stand the thought of missing out on a 4-11.

  Micromanaging each phase of our task, Sears gave a series of unnecessary instructions but studiously ignored Tronstad’s lack of cooperation. When the monitor was set up, he watched for a few minutes as we poured water into the flames, then lost interest and wandered off, moving up the line of heavy appliances, chatting with the other crews. There was a time when he would have been pulling hose alongside us, when our sweat was his sweat, but we were lepers now. It was hard to blame him. I had no wish to be associated with this triumvirate of greed and folly, either.

  After thirty minutes of holding down the monitor alongside Robert Johnson, I approached Tronstad, who was forty feet away, and asked if he needed help with the two-and-a-half-inch line he was manning.

  “Fuck you, ya little snitch.” He put the video camera on me and began taping. He’d been taping us on and off all day.

  “Okay. Yeah. Sure.”

  “No. I mean it. Get the fuck out of here. I can’t stand to look at your face. Move.”

  He continued to film me as I walked back to the monitor, where Johnson was adjusting the stream, taking his job conscientiously, in contrast to Tronstad, who hadn’t moved his nozzle once.

  The fire continued to burn unobstructed, and in fact to grow, while we pumped half of the Cedar River Watershed into it. One way or another, most of the water we poured in flowed back out of the building, flooding the street and sending waves of lukewarm water up into our bunking pants and boots as we sat on the hose. My socks were sopping. At the hour mark we saw no signs that the water was having any salutary effect other than to keep nearby buildings from igniting. From time to time Sears showed up, gave more unnecessary instructions, watched for a minute or two, then rambled away as if he had another task on the other side of the building, which he didn’t.

  “He’s like a flea, ain’t he?” Johnson said, his face glowing sepia in the orange-yellow light from the flames. “You ever notice how he can’t sit still? It’s almost as if he thinks he’s in charge of the whole fire, you know. He talks about Tronstad having Attention Deficit Disorder, but he’s got it worse. Can you imagine being in a cell with him? He’d drive you nuts.” Johnson laughed dismally. “’Course, he’s not going to be in a cell. We are.”

  “I blew it. I’m sorry.”

  Johnson sighed. “We both blew it. We never should have let Tronstad keep those bags. I guess if I’ve learned one thing in life, it’s that you make your choices and you take your consequences. We threw the dice, and they came up snake eyes. “

  “Speak for yourself. I didn’t roll any dice.”

  “Sure you did, Gum. You knew the right thing was to turn us in, but you didn’t do it, did you?”

  “You didn’t do the right thing, either.”

  “We’re not talking about me. We’re talking about you.”

  “I shouldn’t even be part of this.”

  “Now you’re whining. You hid those bags. You covered up a crime. Then you came back from our four-off and found out the government was looking for Ghanet’s money. You had another opportunity to make a phone call. You didn’t, did you?”

  “I couldn’t throw you guys in the clink. Not after you saved my bacon at Arch Place.”

  “I appreciate that, but people don’t get fired for missing a single alarm. You should know that. We didn’t save you from anything but a spanking.”

  Much as I hated to admit it, Johnson was right. Failing to override my own timidity and taking the easiest path was my biggest flaw, and this time it had been fatal.

  After another half hour sitting on the appliances, it became apparent the other crews on the street were being rotated out and we weren’t. “He volunteered us to skip the normal rest periods, didn’t he?” I said.

  “Would you expect anything less?” Johnson said.

  “This bottle’s killing my back.”

  Flames curled high and licked the night sky, alternating colors in a myriad of hues as diverse types of materials in the structure were consumed. “Sure is pretty. You kind of wish we could have a fire like this about once a week. People forget how splendiferous a tragedy can be,” said Johnson.

  I was in so much trouble. I was in as much trouble as if I’d taken a gun and robbed a branch of the Treasury. Once, years ago on my skates, after I zipped out into the street on Alki without looking carefully, a car struck me and I went tumbling over the hood. The feeling I’d had for those few seconds as I flew through the air was a lot like the feeling I’d been having for the last hour tonight—acute disbelief. A feeling that it couldn’t be happening. That it couldn’t be real. That this couldn’t be my life. Maybe somebody else’s life, but not mine.

  Even if I managed to talk my way out of a jail term for the bonds, there was still Chief Abbott’s death to worry about.

  As the hours passed, the puddles in the street grew deeper and broader, and as happened sometimes at big fires, the water runoff itself became one of the problems.

  “You know, Gum, I’ll be seeing my attorney, J. P. Gibbs, first thing in the morning. You should see yourself an attorney, too.”

  “No shit.”

  By ten o’clock the fire hadn’t diminished. In fact, shortly before we were relieved, another interior wall collapsed and prompted a flare-up that shot over a hundred feet into the night sky. We oohed and aahed like schoolboys and then carefully redirected our streams to tamp down the hot spots, though our water was about as effective as a BB gun against a charging moose.

  Toward the end, I went back to Tronstad, who was getting weary and didn’t refuse my help this ti
me, although after a moment he said, “You are just the biggest friggin’ jackass I’ve ever known. You never should have said a word to Sears.”

  “You’re right. I should have turned you in that first night, at Ghanet’s house.”

  Tronstad held my eyes for a few seconds, then burst into anguished laughter. “That’s right. That’s exactly what you should have done.”

  After the crew of Engine 11 relieved us, the four of us trudged over to the rest area and took off our MSA backpacks and bottles. Sears crossed the street to the command post and began communing with a chief he knew. Johnson sidled up to another black firefighter and began talking in low tones, while Tronstad downed Twinkies and a Coke. I wasn’t able to force down anything but a cup of Gatorade. Afterward, I stood off by myself in a funk. I was angry with myself. With Sears. Tronstad. At my dumb luck for having been assigned to Station 29 out of drill school.

  We were in the rest area fifteen minutes before I spotted someone I recognized in the crowd on the other side of the yellow fire-scene tape.

  I walked over and stood in front of her for a nanosecond before her eyes came to rest on mine. When she realized who I was, she gave a little jump. The old guy she’d wrapped herself around wore a disheveled suit, his tie unknotted. He was maybe sixty or seventy. Hard to tell. I’d only seen him once before, the afternoon the pig fell through their roof, and his eyes looked dead then, too. They were black and flat tonight and never looked at you directly, always surveying some object in the distance. Bernard Pederson. Daddy.

  Iola wore tight designer jeans, high-heeled boots, and a fancy coat.

  When she spotted me, Iola whispered something into Bernard’s ear, sending him on an errand, and as he turned and lumbered gracelessly through the crowd, she gave him a pat on the butt. I was pretty sure he hadn’t recognized me.

  After he was gone, Iola turned to me, stepping forward until she was pushing against the yellow ribbon.

  “Firefighter Gum. How nice to see you in all your gear.” She whispered, “You know how hot that gets me.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “We came to see the fire. We were on our way home from Carmelita’s. A little celebration.”

  “What’s all the smoochin’ on the old guy?”

  “The old guy? That’s funny. I suppose from your perspective, he does look old. Surely you remember Bernard.”

  “Bernard’s not . . . but you call him Daddy.”

  Stepping forward, she cupped my face in her cool palms. “A lot of wives call their husbands that. Don’t be upset. I think it’s sweet that you didn’t realize he’s my husband. I mean, that’s what I liked about you from the beginning. Your naiveté. I suppose it’s only fair to tell you I’m tired of it now.”

  “You mean you’re tired of me?”

  “That’s right, sweetie.”

  “You’re ending our relationship?”

  “Is that what it was? A relationship? Yes, I suppose I am ending it.”

  “If I’d known you were married, I never would have had anything to do with you.”

  “I wear a ring, sweetie.”

  “I thought that was from your first marriage.”

  “This is my first marriage. It was a lark, sweetie. Something to fill my afternoons. Don’t look so shocked. I was mad at Bernard, so I had an affair. If you weren’t such a bumpkin, you’d understand. It was a hoot. I won’t forget you anytime soon. I’ve always wanted my own little fireman.”

  I watched the flashing red lights flicker across Iola’s face. “Were you going to tell me, or were you just going to stop showing up?”

  “Oh, you are hurt.”

  “I just want to know if you were going to tell me.”

  “I suppose I probably wasn’t. But, hey, men do it to women all the time.”

  “Not me.”

  “Don’t be so sensitive. It was a simple little flirtation. Now it’s time for you to find a girlfriend your own age. Hush now. He’ll be back soon, and I’d rather you two didn’t meet.”

  Frankly, I was struck dumb. Not because I’d been a mere flirtation. Or because she’d dumped me. I’d been on the verge of doing the same to her for weeks. What bothered me was that I’d seen anything at all in this woman, who was about as shallow as a puddle of milk in a house full of cats.

  “You’ll live, sweetie. These things can be so messy. Bernard had a little friend once who called the house for months after he was finished with her. It was so tawdry. You don’t want to be like that.”

  “There is one thing, though.”

  “What is that?”

  “I left something at your place. I’ll need to come by and pick it up. Maybe later tonight.”

  “Don’t even think about it. Since that pig fell through our roof, Bernard’s been worse than ever. He gets up a couple of times in the middle of the night and checks the yard. He takes a gun to bed with him. I’m not joking.”

  “Maybe I could swing by tomorrow morning when he’s not there.”

  “What could you possibly have left at our place? A jacket or something? Tell me what it is, and I’ll bring it to you.”

  “That won’t work.”

  “You’ll have to write it off, then, because this is the last time we’re going to see each other. Now shoo, before Daddy comes back. Shoo.”

  “It will just take a second.”

  “You show up, I’ll call the police.” It was an ironic threat, because by morning I would most likely already be in the hands of the police.

  I watched her float away through the bystanders.

  After a while, I felt a tap on my shoulder. “There you are,” said Lieutenant Sears. “Come on. We’ve got another assignment. Let’s go do something good for a change.”

  21. FULL TILT BOOGIE

  SEARS SWITCHED ON the heavy-duty orange battle lantern he’d been carrying all night, peering momentarily into the cone of light, so that his face took on a curiously impish look. Every once in a while he did something that amused me, and staring into flashlights was one of my favorites.

  “Come on,” he said. “We’re going to check the water damage down the road. I sent Ted and Robert ahead.”

  “Can we at least take off these backpacks?”

  “The backpacks stay.”

  On top of all my other problems, I couldn’t help obsessing about the way Iola had blown me off. What made me sore was how much of an ego massage it had been for her. I had the feeling jilting me had been on the program from the beginning, that she’d planned and choreographed the finale during those first minutes of sex at Station 29, that I’d been a pawn in a twisted marriage rite she and Bernard had been playing out for years.

  It was hard to believe I could feel such gnawing emotional wounds when I was on my way to the slammer, but even a man walking to the gallows can step on a thorn.

  Sears continued on while I stopped and bent over, hands on my knees, thinking I was going to vomit. When I caught up he was talking as if I’d been beside him all along. “We’re going to track down all this water, Gum. Make sure it’s not doing any property damage. Water can be as damaging as fire. There’s a lesson in that.”

  “Yes, sir. I want to keep learning lessons. I’m probably going to be a firefighter for another couple of hours.”

  Ignoring my sarcasm, he nodded at a photographer who’d set up a tripod on the sidewalk.

  “How long do you think before you guys put it out?” the photographer asked.

  “We’re not going to tap this one, sir,” Sears said. “It’ll burn itself down, but if you want a time line, I’d say another hour, hour and a half.”

  Sears led me down a quiet street that ran east and west and terminated at the south end of Lake Union several blocks away. The streetlights were out, and the roadway was vacant. The police had cordoned off the entire neighborhood. Here and there, sawhorse construction signs with flashing orange beacons stood like sentinels to warn people of an ongoing storm drain project that had left temporary holes in the str
eet, some as large as bomb craters.

  The farther downslope we proceeded, the deeper the water got as tributaries fed in from thoroughfares, all of it murky runoff from our fire. By the time we’d walked a block and a half, the heavy black water was deep enough that we were in danger of being swept off our feet. We picked our path carefully, hiking the center of the empty roadway, where the flow was shallower.

  “Looks like it’s headed for the lake,” Sears said. “We’re flowing over ten thousand gallons a minute, most of it straight out of that building. I wonder if this is causing traffic problems on Westlake. What do you think?”

  I said nothing.

  The street was a ghost town, dark and empty, just us and the black water. We used our lights to keep from stepping into holes.

  I kept thinking that now that we were a few blocks from the fire, I might make a run for it. Maybe if I got to the Pedersons’ place in West Seattle before Iola and Bernard did, I could retrieve the bags and escape. I had no idea what I would do with the bonds, for I had no intention of spending stolen money, but I knew I couldn’t leave twelve million dollars in bearer bonds lying around.

  It was the closest to hope I’d been in hours. It wouldn’t be as if I were running from the police, because the police didn’t know about me yet. I wouldn’t be running from anybody but Sweeney Sears, followed in a few hours by the full force of the federal government, of course. The feds would figure out right away that we had some or all of Ghanet’s money. Flight would keep me out of jail momentarily, and like every fugitive, I had already begun planning my life minute by minute instead of week by week or year by year. Postponement was not the same as exoneration, but it was beginning to feel as if it was the only goal I had a shot at.

  Knowing I wouldn’t have more than a few minutes to stuff a sleeping bag and a knapsack with essentials, I rehearsed what to pack when I got home. It went without saying that my Subaru WRX would be useless. They would put an APB out on the car first thing.