Vertical Burn Part 24

"No, I didn't do my best. I didn't try to save him. I just ran."

"There are times when all you can do is run."

"I don't think that was one of them."

"Okay. Say you hadn't. Where would that have put you? Under those bricks with Bill. What good would that have done? You did the right thing. It's the same reason the airlines tell us to put that oxygen mask on ourselves first. If you'd slowed to help Bill, you would have both been trapped."

"But the only thing in my mind was getting out."

"As it should have been. You're saying you feel guilty for running away from that wall?"

"Yes."

"Okay. You want to hear my confession? At Leary Way when your mayday came through, we were in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Our radios weren't picking up anything. That's why we didn't have time to do much of a search. We weren't supposed to be down there. We screwed up."

"We searched the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"I know. We saw the tape on the door after we came back up. Maybe we could have found you and Bill if we hadn't been messing around down there. Bill would be alive today. We never even looked at the door on the way in. We forgot to check it for tape. You think I don't feel bad about that?"

Diana was still asleep in the easy chair when Finney's parents showed up Tuesday morning and let themselves in with a key. It would never have occurred to her that nodding off in Finney's living room would be awkward. There was some chitchat, a few avoided looks, a good deal of fidgeting on the part of Finney's mother.

Looking weak and pale and grasping a morning newspaper, Chief Finney spoke gruffly. "How's he doing?"

"Last night, not good. I haven't seen him this morning."

"He should be in the hospital."

"I agree. He took a lot of smoke. It could take weeks for it to purge from his system."

"If he ever purges it. Is he making any sense?"

"Well . . ." Even as she spoke, she regretted the bluntness of her statement. "He's spinning fairy tales. He doesn't know what he's saying. He thinks he does, but he doesn't."

"He usually tells a pretty solid story."

"Last night he was all mixed up. I found it hard to believe anything he said."

When the room grew quiet, Diana realized Finney was in the doorway in a robe and bare feet. It was easy enough to see he'd been standing there long enough to overhear her comments. He was staring at her, through her. This would be a good time, she thought, for the floor to open up and swallow her. She'd been defending John at every fire station she worked at, and the one time she was caught off guard and said something denigrating, he'd overheard it. "John. I'm not awake yet. I didn't mean that."

"Thanks for coming over, Diana."

"I really didn't-"

"Thanks for coming."

She glanced at his parents and said, "I'll get my things."

On the way down the dock she pa.s.sed a man lugging a television camera and a coifed woman in a long overcoat. They would have detained her if they'd realized she was a firefighter, but in civilian clothes with her hair down it never occurred to anyone.

53. POPPING MOTRIN.

G. A. stood in the backyard popping Motrin and staring at the mountain of debris the firefighters had hauled out of the house. There was enough garbage here for an entire apartment building. The pile was sopping wet, mostly clothing-but there were also stereo components, mail-order catalogs, pieces of a television, hunks of broken furniture, books, magazines, old shoes, wallboard, and ceiling tile.

Typically an overhaul was performed to make certain the fire didn't rekindle after firefighters left; anything that might spark up and start another fire was removed from the building, placed in the yard or on the street, and hosed down.

G. A. knew the building owner was planning to tell the insurance adjuster this junk had been in mint condition before the fire.

When the owner sauntered around the corner into the backyard, G. A. pulled his handcuffs off his belt and cuffed the man's hands around either side of a vertical support of the porch. The owner, a man named Ya.s.sar Himmeld, made a face that implied he was guiltless and said, "What for is this? I do nothing."

Ya.s.sar was short. He wore a suit and a starchy white shirt without a tie, and G. A. knew he owned two jewelry stores over on Jackson, as well as eleven houses spread throughout the Central Area. Ya.s.sar wore a Rolex and four gold rings. Gold necklaces clanked at his throat as he made futile efforts to free himself from the handcuffs. G. A. didn't like anything about him.

"For what is this?"

"I'm going to make it simple for you, Ya.s.sar. You got a nice little duplex here. A day-care upstairs that your wife runs."

"Dar is my sister-in-law. My wife is back in our country."

"Sure. Whatever. You have offices downstairs. You have a safe that you say was robbed by the firefighters who extinguished the fire this morning. I'm going to let that one pa.s.s. You have this stack of s.h.i.t here in the backyard."

"Firemen do that. Firemen wreck my house."

"No, Ya.s.sar. You wrecked your house." G. A. lowered his voice. It was getting dark, and Ya.s.sar was shivering. "You set fire to this place and you trashed it."

"I no set fire. How you say I set fire? Is accident."

"Sure it was, Ya.s.sar. It was an accident just like the one you had three months ago over on Sixteenth. What you did here was, you splashed some flammable liquid around the bas.e.m.e.nt, left the door open, and tossed in a match. I don't mind that so much. The problem I have is that you did it while your sister-in-law was upstairs taking care of fifteen children, six of them in diapers. But never mind that you set this fire while those babies were upstairs. What bugs me about this whole thing is how greedy you are. It isn't enough to collect for this house so you can remodel with the insurance company's money, but you have to haul in a bunch of clothing from somebody's rag bin so you can collect even more."

"No, I no-"

"You're going to prison, and when you get out, you'll be deported."

"I have not done this. What you say, I have not done. I swear."

"We got a piece of the wallboard with gasoline on it. We got a witness saw you with a gasoline can just before the fire."

Ya.s.sar Himmeld hung his head and collapsed against the support. G. A. looked up and saw Robert Kub gazing down on them from the back porch. "Wait out by the car, would you?" G. A. said.

"You going to beat me?" the handcuffed man asked, after Kub left.

G. A. spit into the wet gra.s.s. "Why should I bust my knuckles? They love you little Arabs in prison. You're going to have a good time, Ya.s.sar. You get out, you'll be wearing mascara and a padded bra."

"I no do this."

"What really p.i.s.ses me off is that you did such a c.r.a.ppy job. You might have gotten away with that fire over on Sixteenth, but there was no way you were getting away with this. Even an imbecile insurance adjuster would be suspicious."

"I can pay you."

"Pardon me? I didn't quite catch that." G. A. put a hand behind one ear.

"I can pay."

"For a lawyer, you mean?"

"For a lawyer. For my freedom. For you."

"Is that a bribe, Ya.s.sar?"

"Yes, yes." He nodded vigorously, hoping they'd struck a bargain.

"Yes, you're trying to bribe me?"

"I don't want to go to prison. Please. This hurts no one. I am a good businessman. One little misfortune for you and me to forget, eh? Why don't you be a good businessman, too, and consider my money an honorarium?"

"And how much money would that be?"

"Five hundred dollar?" When he saw the look in G. A.'s eyes, he said, "No, a thousand dollar and you forget this. You agree? Now let me out of these. I am Christian. I know Jesus. I have converted three times. I have ten children. I have two wives. Does none of this affect your humanity?"

G. A. pulled a miniature tape recorder out of his pocket. "How much do you stand to collect from all this, Ya.s.sar?"

The man in the suit heaved a sigh and squatted on his haunches. "The house? Not very much. The contents? Another hundred. I have lost some gold and jewelry. I have lost-"

"Okay, okay. Let's say three-fifty. Sixty percent of that would be two-ten. I'll give you a discount here. Two hundred. You f.u.c.ked up. Now you pay the piper."

"I don't understand. Who is the piper?"

"Me, Abdul. I'm the piper."

"My name is Ya.s.sar. Ya.s.sar Himmeld. I am a good man."

"There are plenty of good men in prison."

"But how to repair the premises? You leave me with less than half of my losses. You leave me with-"

"Sixty percent is about what it takes to keep you away from those tattooed biker boys up in Monroe. It's that or you shave your legs and dab on eyeliner. Your choice."

"How do I know this isn't a trap?"

G. A. popped a Motrin and chewed it, then held up the tape recorder, which was still running. "I don't need to trap you, Abdul. I've already done that. What I need is some of that extra green you got coming in from Aetna."

"Allah, help me," Ya.s.sar said, sagging against the porch support.

54. PARANOIA IN CHURCH.

Finney was escorted to the third pew in St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral on Capitol Hill, to the section reserved for speakers, family members, and dignitaries. Finney didn't feel as if he belonged in the pew, but by the time he realized where they were putting him, it was too late. He knew people were staring at him. He wanted to think it was only because the burns on his ears and the back of his neck were highlighted with white silvadine cream which stood out in a sea of black uniforms like some sort of misapplied clown makeup, but he knew it was more than that. He knew it and he hated it.

During the past two days he'd been out of the house only to visit his doctor. He continued to feel disoriented and at times dizzy, some of it from the medication, some from the delayed effects of heat stress and smoke inhalation, and from the chronic lack of sleep. He still hadn't sorted out the events of the fire in his own mind. Although he believed he and Gary had been set up, he wasn't certain. Even Diana hadn't believed him.

As did every other attending member of the Seattle Fire Department, Finney wore his black wool uniform, a ribbon of black tape across the coat badge. The church was filled with uniforms from departments all over the Northwest. Festooned in wreaths and black ribbon, Engine 26 stood outside waiting to carry Sadler's casket to the family plot in Bellingham.

Surrounding him in the first three pews were Sadler's mother, his two married sisters, their husbands, a.s.sorted nieces and nephews, some of Gary's old drinking companions, and a crop of current friends, mostly AA members and former girlfriends. Also in attendance were members from all the shifts at Station 26, as well as Charlie Reese and, at the opposite end of the pew, Captain G. A. Montgomery, who had been quoted extensively by the media over the past two days as saying their star witness had yet to give a statement. Finney was, of course, their star witness.

Finney found himself barely able to sit, unable to concentrate, and reluctant to listen to the eulogies. He caught a few words from the podium. Sadler had been an Eagle Scout. He was part of the Big Brothers program and had nurtured two young men to adulthood. He was an attentive uncle who took his nieces and nephews camping and fishing every summer, skiing every winter. He was an avid hunter as well as an amateur taxidermist. As the eulogies continued, sweat ran down Finney's neck and stung his burns like lemon juice on a fresh cut. He still couldn't figure out why Sadler was babying him during the fire, and that pained him almost as badly as the sweat on his burns. Sadler had saved his life, and Finney let him down.

With almost no conscious recollection of how he'd gotten there, he found himself outside the church among a forest of firefighters in dress uniforms. Engine 26 had left and so had the rest of the cortege.

"You okay, buddy?" his brother, Tony, asked.

"I guess."

"What you need to do, John, is you need to lay low for a while and let some of this blow over."

Diana Moore approached them. "h.e.l.lo, Captain Finney."

Tony nodded and swung his dark eyes back onto his brother, as did Diana.

"I've been meaning to come over to see how you were doing," Diana said, to Finney.

"Don't bother. I'm fine."

"You been listening to the news reports about the fire?" Tony asked.

"No."

"G. A. Montgomery was on KOMO saying Bowman Pork was set with a time-delay device. The way G. A.'s hinting around about what they found in the building, it was done by somebody who knew how to light a fire. Maybe a pro."

"Or a firefighter?" Diana asked.

"That could be, too."

Finney listened to his brother rehash the details. The initial fire had been set in a small room off the loading dock, additional devices set to kick in later at various other points in the building. At least one of those devices must have gone off between the time Finney put Sadler in the doorway and when he went back inside. That was a.s.suming he'd actually placed Sadler in the doorway and hadn't been hallucinating. He and Tony talked it flat, and then Tony said, "G.o.d, I feel bad about all this stuff."

"Yeah, well . . . it wasn't your fault."

After Tony left, Finney turned to Diana, whose hair was pulled into a knot at the back of her neck to facilitate the wearing of her dress uniform hat. The dull light from the sky made her face look radiant. He wished he wasn't so angry with her, but he was. "I know you don't believe me, but the fire was a trap," he said, dully.

"I'm sorry about what I said to your parents."