Into The Inferno Part 21

How many others had Steve Haston contacted, and why would he disband the committee?

Before I could give the news to Stephanie, a voice on the station intercom paged me to the watch office. I was barely out the door when my girls ambushed me in the corridor.

"Daddy, Daddy. Look what we got," Britney said, leaping into my arms. She had a stuffed animal, a grisly-looking creature that could only have been designed by someone on PCP. Allyson held a similar toy at arm's length, and I knew it wouldn't be long before Allyson's distaste would poison Britney's feelings for her own gift.

"Where'd you get these?"

"Grandma and Grandpa," Allyson said. "Grandma said you forgot to pick them up at the airport. Grandpa's mad, but he's pretending he's not. Grandma already pinched my face. She says I look like Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street Miracle on 34th Street."

"You do look a little like Natalie Wood."

"Really is he mad?" Britney asked, squirming out of my arms. "I'm gonna go see."

"Don't say anything, Brit!" Allyson called out as her sister disappeared. "Blabbermouth."

I said, "I forgot all about them."

"They're so boring."

"They love you, even if they are a little-"

"Don't say they're different, Dad, 'cause they're a lot more than different. I didn't want to see them last summer, and now it's already this this summer, and here they are again. OmiG.o.d. My life is just draaaaaggging on. If it weren't for Stephanie and Morgan, this would be the longest of the nine summers I've had to live through. I suppose they're going to stay at our house again? Daddy. Can't you tell them we're contagious or something?" summer, and here they are again. OmiG.o.d. My life is just draaaaaggging on. If it weren't for Stephanie and Morgan, this would be the longest of the nine summers I've had to live through. I suppose they're going to stay at our house again? Daddy. Can't you tell them we're contagious or something?"

"They've come a long way to see you."

"Grampa smells like BO."

"Let me put it this way: We can pick our friends. We can't pick our relatives."

"You picked Mommy."

"Allyson, you're getting too smart for me."

Wesley Tindale was retired from Alcoa Aluminum, and Lillian from retail sales. They had only the two grandchildren and doted on them, insisted on speaking to them on the phone once a week, an ongoing ordeal both girls had to be coached through. The Tindales saw Allyson and Britney as their second chance. They'd had two daughters themselves, my ex, Lorie, and Elaine. Elaine was doing drugs somewhere in New York, and Lorie, also involved in drugs, was wanted by the law. It was hard to tell which of Lorie's offenses was worse in their minds, the drugs, the forged checks, or the lesbianism. It drove me to distraction that they blamed Lorie's conversion to h.o.m.os.e.xuality on me.

Wesley was almost as tall as I was, saturnine, invariably in baggy slacks and today sandals with black dress socks worn so thin his toenails showed through. His long sideburns were left over from the seventies-or was it the sixties?-and his eyebrows were so overgrown, both my girls were frightened by them. He had severe dark eyes that were always a little blurry, yet he spoke in a commanding voice, his best feature.

Coming from a family of teetotalers, it had taken me years to realize Wesley was drinking before breakfast. He did most of his driving drunk, did most everything drunk. Lillian, on the other hand, was arguably the worst driver in the Western Hemisphere, drunk or not. The irony was that, with over a century of driving between the two of them, neither had a mark on their driving records. Go figure.

At less than five feet, Lillian was short enough she looked like a joke walking alongside Wesley, her torso round as a ball. Today she wore madras pants and a large loose-fitting blouse in a color I couldn't describe-a garish purple-mauve-yellow ensemble. They both wore straw hats. Each year it was a different fun fun gimmick. Last year for the entire week they'd worn matching bow ties with battery-powered blinking lights. gimmick. Last year for the entire week they'd worn matching bow ties with battery-powered blinking lights.

Britney and I found the blinking lights oddly amusing, but Allyson had not been happy about the extra attention while out in public.

"Sorry about the airport," I said, shaking hands with Wesley, holding it until he gave up. He trotted out the marine-sergeant death grip every time we met. "One of the men in the department died this week, so I've had a lot on my mind."

Putting on a false joviality that Karrie, always fascinated with the specter of bad relatives, was quickly picking up on, they mentioned the airport fiasco several more times, rea.s.suring me after each reference that being old and abandoned in a strange airport hadn't bothered them at all, that they'd rather enjoyed the long line at the car rental place, and that being independent with their own vehicle would be a pleasant change from having me cart them around as in years past, that neither of them minded getting lost in Federal Way, and that they were finally learning how to read their two-dollar map.

I would be reminded of the two-dollar map again and again the way a sailor's wife reminded him he'd gotten the clap from a two-dollar wh.o.r.e. Had Lorie been here, the guilt factor would have whittled her down to nothing, but I had no time for it.

"Look," I said as Mayor Haston walked through the front door and greeted Karrie. "I understand you want to see the girls today. Fine. Take them out to lunch. Go to Snoqualmie Falls, whatever. Just have them back in time for dinner at five. We're going to eat at my place. Can you be there?"

"Of course we'll be there," Wesley said. "That's why we came."

"Just the three of us?" Lillian asked. Her table count always left out Allyson and Britney, a fact that Allyson never failed to take note of.

"If you bring the girls back, that'll make five. I'll be bringing a friend. So there'll be six."

The room filled with an uncomfortable silence as Wes and Lillian realized I was stepping out of my usual pattern-that I was taking charge.

After half a minute Lillian said, "Well, girls. I suppose we'd better shake a leg. We wouldn't want to be in anyone's way, would we?"

They were halfway out the door when I turned to Haston, his face still stained from yesterday's explosion, bandages on his chin and across the bridge of his nose.

"Did you cancel the committee?" I asked. "Because if you did, I'll have channel five out here. They talk to me, I guarantee you're going to end up looking like a jacka.s.s."

Ben Arden and Ian Hjorth must have heard the word jacka.s.s jacka.s.s, because they were both in the room in a flash. Wes and Lillian were listening in the doorway, my curious daughters behind them.

"I formed the committee. I can disband it."

"G.o.d, Haston. Your only child was in the back of that truck. I don't know if she has any symptoms yet, but if she does she's on the seven-day timer just like . . ." I remembered my girls in the doorway and stopped myself. Motioning for my in-laws to leave, I continued. "Why did you call the committee off?"

Until that moment, this had been a contest of wills between the regulars in the department and Haston. That it hadn't occurred to him he might be endangering his own daughter's life amazed everyone in the room, him included, because when he began speaking he stuttered. Karrie stared at her feet.

"Do you?" he asked, turning to his daughter. "Have any symptoms?"

"I can't believe you canceled everything, Father. Why did you do that?"

"You have symptoms?"

"I want to know what difference it makes. Jim has them."

"He does?"

"Yes."

The room grew silent. My in-laws and daughters had left. I hadn't been aware that Karrie knew, but the look on Ian's face told me everyone in the station was aware of my predicament.

"I made a few calls," Haston said. "That was all there was to it. Some of those people must have misinterpreted what I was trying to tell them."

"Oh, get off it, Dad."

The room was quiet for a few moments. "You going to call them back?" I asked.

Haston turned to me. "I know about you and my daughter."

"What?"

"I know you've been taking advantage of her. She's twenty-two years old, for cripes sake."

Wes had put his head back in the doorway. A car outside was making noise, so it wasn't obvious how much he could hear.

"I haven't been doing anything with your daughter."

"You weren't kissing on her at the Christmas party?"

"Where did you hear that?" Karrie asked, outraged that our rendezvous on the sofa had become public knowledge.

"Never you mind, missy. You were acting like a wh.o.r.e."

"Oh, Daddy. Grow up. This is so embarra.s.sing. Okay. So we were making out at the Christmas party. We had too much to drink. So what?"

"I can't believe you tried to cancel the committee," Ben Arden said.

"I'll make some calls. If there's been a misunderstanding, I'll put it to rights. But I'm not going to forget about Christmas."

Haston stepped out the front door, forcing my former father-in-law away from his listening post. After the door closed, Ben slapped his hands together several times as if he'd just cleaned up.

Karrie said, "Sorry about that."

"Do you?" I asked. "Have any symptoms?"

"No."

"Good. I hope you don't get any."

"Thanks, Jim."

35. GETTING SUCKED INTO THE HAY BALER.

Icalled Jane's again, but Hillburn and Dobson must have gotten through to them before I did. n.o.body would talk to me. When I asked for Gray or Stuart, I was told they would both be in meetings for the rest of the day. I called Southeast Travelers Freight in Chattanooga, but that remained a dead end. They referred me to their law firm, and from there I was asked to write a letter requesting an interview.

When we still hadn't heard from Marge DiMaggio by eleven, I said, "Does your aunt know I'm on a timer?"

"I don't know what she knows. I'll go see her. You stay here and-"

"No way. I'm coming with you."

Stephanie insisted on driving, but rather than squeeze into Holly's cramped Pontiac, we took the Lexus. Neither of us relaxed as we cruised up Highway 202 past lush farmland and treed hillsides, talking at length about our quest, painstakingly revisiting the details of our phone calls. I was virtually certain the source of our problems came from Jane's California Propulsion, Inc., even more so after the way Dobson and Hillburn retreated when they found out we didn't have any physical proof that their company was implicated. "b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" I said.

"You may be overreacting simply because you didn't like them," Stephanie said. "I didn't like them, either. But don't let that affect your judgment. It might not be them."

"I'm not overreacting."

"I'm just trying to help you do this with your reason and not your emotion."

"Easy for you to say."

Much like the tough-nut farmer who cuts off his trapped arm with a piece of tin to keep the hay baler from pulling his whole body in, I was developing an incredible will to survive, to beat this any way I could.

After learning we'd spoken to Charlie Drago, the Chattanooga Fire Department PIO called us and handed out the official CFD account of the Southeast Travelers incident, sounding as smooth as melting b.u.t.ter and as sharp as a stomach cramp.

Her statement, which sounded as if she were reading it verbatim off a script, was riddled with buzzwords, evasive language, and carefully sculpted commentary. Yes, they did have three casualties, but whether or not those casualties were related to the Southeast Travelers incident or even to one another was still a question to be determined by law. Yes, the families were suing the shipping company in ongoing separate actions.

When I prodded for an off-the-record opinion, she would only say Charlie Drago had undergone psychiatric hospitalization after the incident and the last she'd heard he was still on Prolixin and Haldol, which I knew to be antipsychotic medications. I knew right away she was giving me this information to discredit Drago, and guess what: it worked.

"You need more help besides me," Stephanie said at one point. "If people are going to be playing games, you should have somebody to look out for your best interests. Someone able to speak to the media, too."

"Who would you suggest?"

"A friend. Somebody you trust."

There was a pitiful dearth of candidates. It was bad enough to die when everyone around me was going to keep on going, but to die realizing I had no real real friends left was a patch of rough pavement I didn't need just now. Stan Beebe or Joel McCain would have been my logical choices. It would have been a perfect job for Chief Newcastle, but we were a month late. friends left was a patch of rough pavement I didn't need just now. Stan Beebe or Joel McCain would have been my logical choices. It would have been a perfect job for Chief Newcastle, but we were a month late.

Ben or Ian might watch my back, but they were both young, and I wasn't sure they could handle it.

The thought occurred to me that I might call one of the fifteen or twenty women I'd dated in the past couple of years, but I discarded that notion. I'd made a pretty good mess of all that.

As we drove, I spotted a kingfisher with a tufted crown sitting on a wire alongside the highway. The little b.a.s.t.a.r.d probably wasn't going to survive the winter, but he didn't seem to care, was intent on taking the summer minute by minute.

Maybe we could stop this syndrome; maybe we couldn't. Whatever happened, I determined not to go down in a panic. I would do this with dignity. Same as that kingfisher on the wire.

Suddenly a greater sense of calm descended on me than ever before. The one big mystery we all face-our own death-was right in front of me. My mood today was a strange mixture of detached serenity and introspective hysteria. Serenity because I finally knew my end. Hysteria because time was running low. And because I'd always been, down deep, p.r.o.ne to hysteria. Maybe that was why I'd become a firefighter, in order to confront my basic nature.

Canyon View Systems was on a tree-filled campus in Redmond, three large buildings, an artistic collage of steel and gla.s.s and neo-something-or-other architecture. It was situated on a hillside, but most of the property had been graded until it was nearly flat, three or four wooded acres, no structure older than ten years, a score of sixty- and eighty-foot Douglas firs to shade the buildings in summer and keep out the worst of the winter storms, two fountains, a pond, and a bewildered flock of Canada geese s.h.i.tting in the parking lot.

Stephanie swung past the guard gate and parked. As we got out of the Lexus, we found ourselves pursued by a heavyset guard in uniform. I had the feeling if we'd been getting out of my pickup truck instead of a Lexus, he might have pulled his pistol.

"Guess we were supposed to stop at the gate," I said.

"I never have before."

A Jeep roared up behind us with two more guards. "You been shoplifting?" I joked to Stephanie.

"This is crazy," she snapped.

I kept quiet while Stephanie alternately chastised and argued with them. She was a doctor. Mrs. DiMaggio was her aunt. She had business here, and furthermore, if we weren't allowed inside immediately, she would make it her goal in life to ensure that all three men lost their jobs. I believed her. They must have, too, because they left us alone, though one of the men from the Jeep trailed us into the building, pretending to pick up litter on the grounds when I looked back at him.

Inside, a Muzak version of "I Got You, Babe" spilled from hidden speakers. There was a large atrium reception and waiting area with two twelve-foot bamboo plants and a tall oak-and-bra.s.s counter with a woman behind it.

After we got past the receptionist, we went up a long open staircase and along a corridor full of offices. Although DiMaggio's door was locked, we could see through a narrow, vertical window that n.o.body was inside.

"I think I know where she might be," Stephanie said.

I followed her to a room two doors down, paint-splattered canvas tarps on the floor, a ladder in one corner, DiMaggio standing alongside two men in coveralls, the three of them flipping through carpet samples on a metal ring.

"Stephanie!" she said. "Stephanie, darling. What on earth are you doing here? I thought you were flying today."