Seven Deadly Pleasures (19 page)

"Damnit Tommy, hurry," McNulty thought. His best fireman reached the foot of the dike and pawed up the slope. The yard worker cradled a scorched hand and made his way along the crest in a three-legged crawl. Disoriented, he went up on his knees. His hair was matted with blood.

Tommy straddled the lip of the dike, ran along it and reached out his hand. They clasped palms, and that is when the top of Crude #43 exploded.

There was a
whoosh
and a huge
thwack.
The ground shook and an orange, mushroom-shaped flare rocketed up against the gray sky. Then came a hearty
bang
that pressed McNulty's eardrums and rattled his skull. A tremendous wave of white heat followed and he fought to keep his eyes open against it.

Shrapnel flew everywhere. Small pieces whizzed overhead and a star-shaped hunk at least twenty feet square spun across the parking lot like a jagged Frisbee. It smashed into a guard shack and turned it to splinters.

A boiling sheet of black crude rained down over the dike area and ignited the ground in a ring of blue flame. The yard worker went up like parchment and rolled down the slope. The hot blaze swarmed the crest of the dike, grew, and caged Tommy Green in a wall of combustion.

The very air was on fire. Tommy's dark outline of headgear and long black fire-retardant coat danced and jerked within the orange shroud and even back where McNulty stood, each breath tasted like a hot spray of Quaker State. He gave a desperate look back to Zac and saw the young man working the Stang gun to an alternate position.

"Yes,"
he thought. "
It's our only chance."

"No!"
Melvin thought simultaneously.
"Whatever it is, futz it up please! We are so close!"

Zac aimed the bullet-like spray and hit Tommy square in the chest. It knocked him into the dike and he haphazardly splashed through the foamy surface of water. But what happened next made no sense to Melvin or McNulty. A flame at least thirty feet high shot up from the water where Tommy had broken the surface. It whooshed up like a huge torch and then vanished.

"But water and foam are not flammable,"
McNulty thought.

He dropped the walkie-talkie and threw his hands on the stepladder.

McNulty mounted the top of the truck and shaded his eyes. Tommy came up for air and broke the plane of foam. He'd lost his helmet and mask, he was exposed, he became a fireball, and McNulty caught a glimpse of skin melting on bone just before Tommy went back under. But the Captain's mind did not allow him to move toward sorrow. Not yet. He was steel. He jumped off the truck, he twisted his ankle, he threw Eddie aside and reached for the engine radio.

"Fireman down! Northwest side! Send rescue squad now! Fireman is down! Respond!"

McNulty fumbled for the dashboard controls. He hit the siren, threw on the flashers, and put the high beams on alternate blare. An audio-visual epitaph.

Tommy was gone. It hit him and he fell to the ground on his butt. He felt his throat closing with grief.

Melvin left McNulty's body and began his ascent. At the top of the raging tanker he looked down and silently applauded. Tommy Green was floating face down. Fire pools still burned the ground all around like jungle death candles.

The scene disappeared.

Melvin wiped away the tears that flooded his scalded eyes. His hands felt as if they were greased and his tongue held the taste of a crudded dipstick. He looked at his watch and it read 3:45 P.M. He took his kitchen timer, set it on seven minutes, and hit the ground running, his fingers in a mad chase across the keys to hunt down Tommy Green's social security number. At last, he found it.

It did not make him smile. There were hundreds of Thomas Greens, and eighty-nine of them were listed as firemen. The vein in Melvin's forehead throbbed. He clutched at his hair and some of it came off in his hands. His watch read 3:48, four minutes to go.

Melvin squeezed shut his eyes and tried to force his mind to march in a pattern of logical thought. It was not easy. Anger and frustration were a bright red blockade, and it took a supreme effort for Melvin to guide his brain toward the one identifying factor at hand, the social security number. He put both palms against his temple and tried to rush his thoughts through the tangent they were trying to explore.

Melvin's eyes flew open.

He scanned the screen and blinked. His jaw dropped and he crashed both fists to the desk. There were two Thomas Greens with the common exchange and a third just one digit off. All three were firemen. Melvin shut his mouth. For a moment his mind soared to calculate the sorry odds of actually finding three Philadelphia-born firemen with identical names.

He looked at his watch. 3:50 P.M. and thirty seconds. A minute and a half until kick-off and his mind was an angry traffic jam. He scratched his head furiously.

Melvin took his last index card, wrote down the three social security numbers, and checked his watch. 3:51, one minute to go. He made himself punch the keys with care, and backed out to screen number four.

O—ENTER SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

Melvin entered his own and hit the RETURN button.

S—ENTER SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

Melvin glanced down at the first number on the index card and raised his fingers above the keyboard.

"Melvin! It smells like smoke in here. What on earth are you doing?"

Melvin whirled in his chair. Dorothy's eyes widened in response to his appearance, but she looked ready this time. She took a step forward.

"We have to talk."

"You're in my room," Melvin whispered.

"Yes, and it stinks in here. What have you been doing?"

"You have interrupted me." Another whisper.

"You bet I have, and it's high time—"

"Get out! Get the fuck out of here, now!"

Melvin was on his feet, body shaking, fists clenched, tears flowing. His ankle hurt where McNulty had twisted it and he shifted his weight to point a finger.

"Out!" he roared. It hurt his throat.

"No, I will not."

"I said—"

"No."

The alarm on the kitchen timer sounded. Melvin looked at the device and then at Dorothy. His mouth made babbling motions and the rage in him was so hot it felt religious. Dorothy was oblivious.

"Melvin, there is something wrong here. There is something terribly wrong with you and I'll be Goddamned if I am going to let you—"

She stopped in mid-sentence. Something had changed, something new in the air, thick and heavy. The room still held the aftertaste of distant smoke, hot voices, and something else.

Melvin was smiling.

"Dorothy, I want you to assist me in a scientific experiment."

"What?"

Melvin shuffled past her and into the hall.

"Wait here," he said. "I'll be right back."

"But—"

Melvin put up his hands, gave his head a gentle shake, and re-lit the smile.

"The situation is under control. Wait right here and we'll talk, I promise." He hobbled through the kitchen and out the side door. The cold felt good. He laughed into the wind and made his way to the back yard shed.

To get his ax.

Dorothy Helitz felt the pang of danger, real danger the moment Melvin left the room. Her mind told her to flee the house while she had the chance, but she fought it. This was her house too, damn it, and hell if she was not going to get in the last word. Besides, she was dying to tell Melvin face to face what she had done, dying to see his expression when he was informed that she had phoned Gentle Giant Movers, that she had pre-paid by credit card for a pair of brutes to pack all his mechanical crap and cart it to the dump. She looked at the room and rubbed her arms.

It was too quiet and Dorothy had a sudden apprehension about confronting Melvin alone. It was a childish yet real sensation that bordered on terror. She tried to shake it and couldn't quite do it.

Dorothy smiled.

She approached the desk and took up Melvin's pen. It was slick with a oily film of sweat, and she frowned. No tissues in sight, no paper, and the index card file was empty. On the floor was a lone card with numbers on it. She picked it up, bent to write on the back of it, and looked up at the computer. She giggled.

Melvin reached for the ax and yanked it out from under the wheelbarrow and aluminum stepladder, that which had spider webs floating between the rungs. The weapon in his hands was a long-handled affair with old smudges and paint drops splattered up the shaft. A long split in the hickory just beneath the steel head was bound with old frayed duct tape and the micro-finished cutter was dotted with rust. Except at the tip. The keen edge was roll-beveled and sharp for added strength and increased splitting ability.

"The right tool for the right job," Melvin said. He hefted the ax, left hand at bottom and his right up at the head. His smile had not faltered.

Melvin limped back to the house.

Dorothy look up at the screen and cursed. She had just typed "Dear Melvin," but the letters were not showing. Aiming carefully, she hit the "D" key again, but it did not take either. The cursor just jerked in its place below the words,

S—ENTER SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER

"Ah," she said. "It doesn't take letters. It's a code. I've got to log on just like in the movies." She read the screen again and smiled.

Dorothy typed in Melvin's social security number. She snickered and raised her index finger above the RETURN key.

Melvin tiptoed up the hall. The element of surprise was key and the splat of wet feet on hardwood would be a dead giveaway. He heard Dorothy snicker and quickened his pace, careful not to bang the ax head along the wall. He rounded the corner of the doorway and geared his muscles for the rush, the set, and the downward stroke.

Melvin loped around the corner and froze. Dorothy's back was turned, that was good, but she was also bent over the computer keyboard, and that was very bad.

"Dorothy, don't touch that! You don't know what you're—"

Dorothy had not heard him coming. His harsh call from behind was startling, but her mind had already commanded the motor function of her finger. It was on its way down and there was no stopping it now. She hit the RETURN key.

The ax in Melvin's hands vanished. His feet were not cold or wet, and he was limping back down the hall to the side door. For a moment he was disoriented, as his body had been magically turned ninety degrees left and five feet to the East, set in motion against his will. Still, the overall sensation was familiar. It was the eerie feeling of becoming a Passive Passenger.

Melvin felt himself open the side door with his thoughts from five minutes before on replay. A keen anticipation of grabbing the ax was at the forefront.

"I'm in myself!" Melvin thought. "I'm the Operator and the Subject!" He tried to shout a warning to himself as he crunched out barefoot into the snow, but of course, he was "passive." The original Melvin had taken his sweet old time.

Melvin re-experienced pulling out the ax, appreciating the craftsmanship of the head, running his hand along the crude shank; it seemed to take hours. Finally, he was back inside, limping up the hall and quickening the pace upon hearing Dorothy's snicker. He rounded the corner, raised the ax and felt a new panic.

He felt himself shout at Dorothy. He saw for a second time, her finger punch down at the RETURN key.

Dorothy hit the RETURN key, and Melvin found himself back in the hall, ax-less and limping toward the side door for a third pass. This time he could feel the thoughts of two Melvins, the first tickled with the thrill of the hunt and the second obsessed with the five-minute-old fear of becoming his own Passive Passenger.

The thoughts of the first two Melvins clashed and overlapped. They made harsh echoes and squealed against each other like electric feedback caught in a closet. Back outside, back inside, up the hall and around the corner. Dorothy again struck the RETURN key as he knew she would.

Again, Melvin joined himself and he howled into the deafening roar of three Melvins plus one. His head had become a torture chamber, overcrowded with multiple, dizzying, collisions of thought.