Pyro (24 page)

55. GHOST IN THE BASEMENT

         
Sunday morning while we were waiting for the freshly waxed floors in the station to dry, I fabricated a list of boneheaded excuses to telephone Vanessa Pennington. I was almost hoping she wouldn’t answer so I could chalk up the call to good intentions and bad luck.

Secreted in the small study room at the base of the stairs, I dialed her home number from memory. “Hello?”

“Hi. This is Paul Wollf—”

“Paul! How nice to hear from you. I got the locks changed on Friday. No sign of the ‘J’ person. Nanna won’t be back until Tuesday, so I’m going to pick her up from the airport and help her get settled. Actually, I have the whole week off, so I’ll probably spend some time up there. I’m so glad you called.”

She knew from our earlier meetings I was no conversationalist, and I could tell she was trying to make it easier for me by yakking a mile a minute. Either that or she was as nervous as I was. Not likely.

You didn’t know better, you might have thought she was happy to hear from me.

“Do you have plans for tomorrow?” she asked. “Maybe we could meet for lunch somewhere . . . if you’d like.”

“I’m going up to Sequim tomorrow morning when I get off work. I don’t know. Maybe you’d want to take a day trip to the peninsula?” I couldn’t believe the words had come out of my mouth.

“Sure. That sounds nice. Would you like me to drive? Then if you have a rough shift tonight, you can sleep in the car.”

“That’d be great. I’m shooting for the eight forty-five ferry.”

“How about I meet you at the station? What time do you get off?”

We talked for half an hour longer, which, except for the evening we’d gone to the Harvard Exit together, easily made this the lengthiest conversation I’d had in ages with a woman I wasn’t about to screw. After I hung up I was floating on air. Not that anything was going to come of this.

The shift passed uneventfully until 0223 hours, when we were sent to a garage fire at Twenty-ninth Avenue and East Pike Street. Attack 6 and Ladder 3. No other units. Flames showing.

Gliniewicz made a right-hand turn off Martin Luther King Jr. Way onto Union, thinking he would make another left on Twenty-ninth. Except Twenty-ninth didn’t connect to Union. A minute later Towbridge chuckled when we got to the location first.

Despite the fact that they weren’t on the right street, Slaughter radioed the dispatcher, “Attack Six at Twenty-nine and East Pike. We have a single-story two-car garage fully involved. Laying a preconnect. Ladder Three, help with the lines.”

“They ain’t even here,” Towbridge said.

“He knows nobody listening on the radio knows that,” I said. “Except us.”

The fire was in a concrete-walled single-car garage with no vehicle inside, flames lurching out a missing window on the south wall. Massive amounts of smoke had already filled the street.

When Attack 6 finally rolled in behind us, Zeke climbed out of the crew cab and pulled the preconnect while I motioned Rideout to help.

Slaughter had promised things would be better after we cut him out of those handcuffs, but things had grown worse.

“God damn!” Slaughter yelled, walking around behind the hose line where he could bark into Rideout’s ear. “That hose is for enginemen. Are you an engineman?”

“Sir, I’m a firefighter,” Rideout barked back, holding the nozzle tightly. She’d stolen it from Zeke the way a lineman steals a dropped football. “I adapt.”

“You adapt. Jesus Christ!”

“We would have put it out earlier, sir,” Rideout said. “But our engine company got lost, and we had to wait for them.”

Feigning disgust, Slaughter walked away. He hadn’t been expecting sarcasm from a recruit, and it disturbed him as much as it pleased me. Most bullies grew uncomfortable when somebody stood up to them, and Slaughter was no exception.

The garage was on a dead end amidst rows of Monopoly houses on either side of the street. The only exposure was an old apple tree. It was a fun fire. No risk to occupants or firefighters. No screeching chiefs.

As a matter of course, I surveyed the street for looky-loos or perps, but, except for a couple of homeowners peeking out their windows, the street was empty.

When Slaughter walked past me, he said, “You probably don’t even know how close we are to the basement where we found your old man.”

“You were there?”

“Afterwards I was.”

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Slaughter took a long while to reply. “It was an ugly fire. It was hard to talk about.”

“You going to tell me where it is?”

“There’s nothing you can do about it now.”

Before either of us could take a breath, I had him against the driver’s door of Ladder 3, his bunking coat in my fists. I could see Slaughter registering shock.

“Okay, motherfuck,” he said. “It’s across the street.”

I let him go. “The green house?”

“It’s turquoise, you fuck. You don’t know what you’re messing with here.”

The homeowner, a thick-chested black man with a sliver of a mustache, met me on the front porch in collapsed slippers and pajama bottoms. “Hey, man, was that another arson?”

“We think so. You mind if I look around?”

“Be my guest. You think he’s still in the neighborhood?”

“Could be. You got a basement?”

“Yeah.”

I walked around the house, switched on my flashlight, and swung the beam around the backyard. Last Saturday night the perp talked about an alley, but I didn’t see an alley.

I did see a basement window.

I was standing over the window well wondering if this was even the right house, wondering whether Slaughter was shining me on, when the homeowner opened the door to the basement from inside and let me in.

It was smaller than I’d imagined—concrete walls on three sides tapering to a crawl space that smelled of damp and dirt. Except for the washer and dryer, it contained only a hot water tank, a lawn mower, and a discarded Christmas tree dripping tinsel.

“Years ago there was a fire down here,” he said. “Hell, we were just kids. They rebuilt it, but you can still see a couple of spots where there’s char.” He pointed to a floor joist in a corner above the washing machine and dryer.

My father had probably died within ten feet of where I was standing. I couldn’t escape the emotions piling up on me. As I stood there thinking about it, it occurred to me that had we not caught the garage fire across the street, I might never have run across this. Slaughter might never have told me.

Which made me wonder if the fire across the street hadn’t been set for my benefit.

“Did you know a firefighter died right here in this basement?” asked the homeowner.

“You know where?”

“I always thought it was in that corner.” He pointed. “I got the newspaper article upstairs. You want me to get it?”

“Please.”

After he was gone, I tried to imagine what it must have been like to tumble into the darkness, to fight your way toward the exit, to feel the heat on your skin, to know you were never getting out. To call for help and know somebody was standing outside but wasn’t helping you. We were taught when lost to find a wall and follow it. The basement was almost empty now, but had it been full of junk, moving around would have been next to impossible.

“You okay?”

“Pardon?”

“You look like you’re getting sick.”

“I’m okay.”

“I got that article.”

Same as my own copy, this one had aged to sepia. If the homeowner realized I was the spitting image of the man in the photo, he didn’t say anything. The picture frame trembled when I handed it back.

“You believe in ghosts?” he asked.

I believed. I believed because I could feel my father in the corner. I could feel him looking at me. I could feel him wondering why it had taken me so long to get here. I could feel him begging me to find his killer. Begging me to avenge him.

I had never been this close to my father. Wearing the same uniform and gear he wore. Wearing his old bars on my collar. Standing next to the spot where he died.

My legs felt weak as I walked up the crude basement steps to the backyard, the steps they’d carried my father’s body up.

“Just out of curiosity, was there an alley back here at one time?” I asked.

“There was, but it’s all grown over.”

I could feel the blood draining out of my head. For a moment I wondered whether I was going to faint. I didn’t.

In the moonlight in the side yard I was greeted by Towbridge and a tall, curly-haired civilian with heavy glasses and an Adam’s apple that should have been on Mount Rushmore, a camera slung around his neck. He warmed his hands by cupping his palms to his face.

“You Lieutenant Wollf?”

“That’s right.”

“My name is Webber. I’m with
The Seattle Times.
You
are
Paul Wollf, aren’t you? The one whose father died in an arson fire twenty-five years ago.”

We were in the middle of the street, and I knew this buzzard would have a cow if he found out we were in front of the address where my father died or that there was a possibility the garage fire had been set to draw me here.

“There’s a rumor going around that the arsonist setting these fires might have been the one who killed your father,” Webber said. “How would you feel if it
was
the man who killed your father?”

We stared at each other for a moment. Then, sensing peril, he stepped back. “I assure you the chief of the department has given me permission to speak to firefighters in the field.”

“
I
didn’t give you permission.”

“Lieutenant. Your father died fighting an arson fire, and here you are working in the same part of town. Same kind of fires. Don’t you find that uncanny?”

I turned my back on him and walked away.

56. BAPTIZING HOUSEGUESTS

Vanessa Pennington

         
When I picked up Paul at the station Monday morning, it was obvious he hadn’t gotten much sleep. It was just as obvious that something had happened during the night that he didn’t want to talk about. I wonder how often that happens to a firefighter. I wonder too whether he might have opened up if he knew me better. It must be strange to see people dying or injured every time you go to work. Different from what most doctors and nurses deal with, since a firefighter is generally right there in the home or at the accident scene moments after the worst has occurred, surrounded by the victims, the fresh blood, the broken bones, and their worried relatives.

We drove down the hill to his condo listening to the radio in the car. At least I listened. He was focused on something else.

“I just need a shower and quick change,” he said as we walked the corridor to his unit.

When he put his key into the door, we heard music and voices from inside. He gave me a look that told me to remain near the doorway. I sensed trouble.

Scattered about his living room were newspapers, coffee mugs, and empty beer bottles, a pair of men’s striped trousers on the carpet like a popped balloon, dirty dishes and take-out food containers on his immaculate counters. In the back room I heard a woman talking. Music that sounded East European playing.

In the hallway there was a bearded man wearing a dingy V-neck T-shirt and a pair of sloppy socks and absolutely nothing else. He had Paul’s white hutch open and was manhandling a digital camera, snapping pictures of the walls and video racks. At his feet were two videos, the tapes ripped out. He didn’t seem to mind that Paul and I were there and made no attempt to cover his nakedness. I had the impression he was on drugs. Suddenly I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. This whole scenario was so at odds with what I had glimpsed of Paul’s private life the first time I was here. Was this man a friend of Paul’s or an intruder? I wasn’t sure which possibility was more disturbing and didn’t know how to react. Paul certainly didn’t give me any clues.

He calmly took off his coat and hung it in the hall closet, then took mine and hung it up. I still didn’t know what to think, but I knew one thing: If this man was a friend of Paul’s, I wasn’t about to stay alone with him while Paul took a shower.

Paul walked across the living room to the glass doors on the deck, gazed at the water for a moment or two, then opened the doors wide so that the condo began filling with cold air off the lake. The sun was coming up over Lake Washington, turning the sky pink and orange. He walked back to the man in the corridor, took the camera out of his hands, then reached up toward his head and walked him very quickly to the deck. It took me a moment to realize he’d grabbed the man by the ear.

The man hit the lake with a thunk that sounded like a large rock going in. I saw a life ring hanging on the deck railing, so I tossed it into the water next to the stunned swimmer. It’s pretty easy to drown when you hit water that cold, and the man had looked to be in a mental fog.

Paul didn’t seem concerned about what happened to him after he hit the water. He found a second man in the next room wearing trousers and no shirt, shorter and stouter than the man in the water. I thought for a minute he was going to put up a fight, but Paul grabbed his ponytail and dragged him past me and onto the deck, where he pitched him into the lake next to the first man. Neither man had had much of a chance against Paul. It was as if he were casually throwing garbage out. Which, I now realized with some relief, was in fact the case.

The two men began dog-paddling toward the dock next door with the life preserver between them.

It was about that time that a woman in panties and a camisole top came flying down the hallway and out the front door behind us, a bundle of clothing in her arms, her white thighs flashing. “I’m sorry, Paul,” she shouted over her shoulder, to my astonishment. “I must have lost track of time.”

“Susan, come back.”

But she didn’t come back. There was an uncomfortable silence in the condo after she left. Paul was so embarrassed, and I didn’t know what to make of any of this. I still had no idea whether these people were burglars or neighbors or what. One thing was certain. He knew the woman.

He did a walk-through of the apartment, gathering up all the loose clothing he could find, and handed the bundle to a police officer who showed up at the door a few minutes later. It turned out a neighbor had called in a noise complaint. “They’re gone now,” Paul told the officer. “They’ve left.”

“Where’d they go?” asked the officer.

“A couple of them are out there in the lake.”

After the policeman left, Paul set the destroyed videotapes aside, showing remarkably more emotion over the tapes than he had over throwing the men into the water. When he excused himself to take a shower, I began to rethink whether I wanted to spend the day with this guy. It wasn’t his fault if he’d come home to find three strangers in his condo, was it? On the other hand, he’d known the woman’s name and she his. I’d been too stunned by the events to ask him for an explanation, and I sensed that he wasn’t yet prepared to give me one. Now I would just have to bide my time until he got out of the shower.

The aftermath of this violence was the same as that evening in the street when he caught the wife-beater. My stomach was tied in knots, but with him, it was as if it hadn’t happened. He had shown no visible excitement. No adrenaline rush that I could detect. It was just housecleaning. I’d never known anyone even remotely like this.

I made coffee and closed the windows, which he’d left open to rid the place of the stench of spilled beer and B.O. There was so much that was contradictory in Paul Wollf. At times he could barely talk to me, but if I brought up the subject of films, he was right up there with the sharpest critics around. There were so many times when he seemed unsure of himself. Yet, when something physical came up, like rescuing Nanna or taking care of these two guys, he moved without hesitation.

After a long shower, he changed clothes and came out. “You must think I’m a lunatic,” he said.

“Who were those people?”

“The woman’s name is Susan Wollf. She’s my brother’s wife. The guys I never saw before.”

“What were they doing here?”

“I believe they were having a party.”

“Do you share this place with her?”

“No. She has a drug habit that comes and goes. My guess is she’s trying to clean herself up. She goes on these benders, and right before she pulls out of them she likes to rub it in our faces. Near as I can tell, the shame helps her hit bottom so she can resolve to turn herself around.”

“Why did she run?”

He poured himself a cup of coffee. I already had one. “I don’t know.”

“Where’s your brother?”

“He’s in Walla Walla.”

“The town or the prison?”

“The prison.”

Despite the delay, we managed to reach the ferry terminal in time for the 9:35 run.

It was a bright winter day. From the stern of the ferry we watched Seattle grow smaller, and then, when we were thoroughly chilled, we went inside and bought espressos and carried them to an empty booth against the tall north windows. In some ways I wondered what we were doing together, but in another sense I felt very comfortable and safe around Paul Wollf. Maybe that was what I’d been wanting my whole life, to find a man I could truly feel safe around. My father, while a good provider and a fine man, had always given off an air of incompetence in all things physical. He couldn’t fix his car or change a tire, and he never went out after dark, even though we lived in a comfortable middle-class neighborhood with almost no crime.

The trouble was, there wasn’t a whole lot I really knew about this guy. Getting facts out of him was like digging for water in the desert.

“The news said there are orcas this year,” I said. “Maybe we’ll see some.”

He smiled. “Let’s hope so.”

As had been the case when he knocked out the man in the street, I couldn’t get over the sudden flash of violence I’d seen in him this morning, the impassivity with which he dispensed it, or how quickly he settled back into seeming normalcy afterward.

As the Seattle side of the sound receded, I noticed a distant tanker headed in our direction. Drenched in fresh snow, the Cascades lined the eastern horizon like a heap of lace curtains, while Mount Rainier loomed in the southeast corner of the sky. It was truly one of the most breathtaking ferry rides there could be.

After a while his weariness got the best of him, and he lay lengthwise on the hard plastic bench seat.

“How did your brother end up in prison?” I asked as he closed his eyes.

He kept his eyes closed and spoke softly. “He used to steal people’s mail, get their bank account numbers. He’d make fake IDs, print out checks, and pass bad paper. He was pretty messed up on drugs, otherwise he never would have got caught. He’s very smart when he’s not doping.”