1 Breakfast at Madeline's (10 page)

BOOK: 1 Breakfast at Madeline's
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I got so engrossed in the application, I didn't notice the unpleasant smell in the room getting stronger.

And I didn't notice the fire until I looked up and black smoke was already racing through the broken windowpane.

15

 

I was so lost in Penn'
s words, the smoke didn't regis
ter at first. I just stared at it blankly.

But then that old chestnut flashed into my brain: "Where there's smoke, there's fire." No shit; the whole stairway was lit up in bright orange, and burning wet wood was crackling loudly. How the hell had the fire gotten so big, so fast? Snatching up Penn's application, I ran for the door and opened it.

Big mistake. Smoke poured through the now open door, choking me. I gasped, coughed, and jumped backward.

Then, insane with fear, I charged forward into the hallway, covering my nose and mouth with my sleeve. Another big mistake. I was so blinded by smoke, I couldn't even find the steps at first, and when I did, I only made it down three of them before the smoke and flames drove me back. My lungs were burning up.

I dashed back into the office, tripped on a chair and fell down. I leaped up again and ran through the smoke to the nearest window.
I ripped down the windowshade and, since my hammer was lost in the smoke, kicked at the window.
Nothing happened. The windowpane, though
old, was made of stern stuff—ei
ther that or I was weakening fast.

I reared back my foot for another, stronger kick, but lost my balanc
e and fell down again. Smoke en
veloped me. I tried to scream, but all that came out were desperate coughs.

Served me right, of course. If I died of asphyxiation, it was only fitting punishment for having written
The Gas that Ate San Francisco.

Actually though, I probably owe my life to B flicks. Because just then an image of Bruce Lee somehow popped into my brain. I jumped up and delivered a classic kung-fu B-movie kick at the window, and it crashed open. As the glass splintered onto the ground way down below, I stuck my head out and gulped the fresh air. I coughed and sputtered, then gulped some more of that delicious stuff.

Feeling revived, I held my breath and looked behind me. Suddenly I felt my right arm getting hot. I glanced down and realized I w
as still holding Penn's applica
tion, and it was in flames—it must have caught on fire in the hallway. I dropped the application and was about to stamp out the flames when I saw my jacket sleeve was on fire, too.

Terrified, I wriggled out of the jacket and threw it to the floor. But my arm was still burning hot; there were angry red sparks parading from my wrist up to my elbow, and even higher. I frantically rubbed the fiery spots with my other arm, trying to get them to go out.

Only now I couldn't breathe. The smoke was getting thicker and thicker, blurring the room. I leaned out the window again, but smoke was billowing out of it like crazy now, right next to my head, so even when I stuck my head way out, I s
till could barely breathe. Mean
while, the wet wood was crackling so loud it sounded to my frightened ears like explosions. From across Broadway, I heard a siren wail. I didn't know if they were cops or firemen, but either way, they were too late. I had to jump.

I looked down. Two stories, with nothing but grass
to ease my fall. I'
d break something for sure—hope
fully not my head. Two concussions in two nights would probably not do wonders for my neurological future. I started cough
ing and it turned into an uncon
trollable spasm, racking my body. A sudden flame shot out at me from the wooden desk. No time to think; I better just pray I had some kangaroo in my blood. I got up on the windowsill and bent my knees.

But wait—what about that goddamn application? Holding my nose, I turned and looked back. A couple of feet away, through the smoke, I saw a small pile of yellow and orange fire. Perfect. The '98 application had been stolen, and n
ow the '97 application was turn
ing into ash.

First I just felt disappointed, but then, out of the blue, a burst of fury s
eized hold of me so hard I actu
ally started shaking and almost fell off the windowsill. This was so unfair. Here I commit a felony offense, my ass is burning off, I'm about to jump sixty feet and risk turning into a paraplegic—and all for nothing? Screw that!

I got down on all fours. The smoke wasn't quite as harsh down there, and I actually managed to get something resembling oxygen into my lungs. As tears fell from my stinging, half-closed eyes, I felt my way around the desk to the bookcase where I'd left the box labeled
nyfa
, 96
. My hands found the box before my eyes did. I grabbed it and crawled back to the window, then climbed up on the sill.

Beneath me a cop car, siren blasting, roared up Broadway and screec
hed into the Arts Council drive
way to my right. When the cop leaped out I thought about shouting down to him, then thought better of it. A quiet little burglary was one thing; a four-alarm fire was something else. If I got caught now, I was in for
some serious grief. So I watched silently as he raced around the back of the building.

The cop car's headlights lit up the grass beneath me, and I looked down dubiously at the sparse-looking stuff. Hopefully no o
ne had mowed it for a while, be
cause I needed every extra eighth-inch of cushioning I could get.

What's more, I had better hit that tiny little patch of grass, and not the concrete sidewalk right next to it.

And I better not land on any jagged shards of windowpane.

And I better not hit my head again, or I'd spend the rest of my life doing the Muhammed Ali shuffle.

I was so scared, I didn't even remember to pray.

I just closed my eyes and jumped.

 

I opened my eyes just in time to see the grass hurtling toward me at warp speed. My feet hit first. My knees buckled and hit the grass a nanosecond later, then my whole body buckled. The hard sidewalk came rushing at my head.

I still think that box of grant applications saved my life. Certainly it saved me from another concussion. Because by some primitive survival instinct, I thrust the box at the sidewalk just before my head got there. And instead of banging right into the concrete, my head landed on fifty grant applications loosely filling a soft cardboard box. Painful but not deadly, and not bad enough to mash my brains into overripe broccoli.

At first I didn't realize how lucky I was. I lifted my head and was somewhat surprised to find it was still attached to my body. Then I moved my knees—or tried to. But they wouldn't budge. I tried again. Still nothing.
Oh Jesus, this is it, I'm paralyzed
. I was already imagining life in a wheelchair, wondering if I'd ever
learn to enjoy wheelchair basketball, when I tried a third time and at last my knees lifted up.

Mud
. That's all it was. The ground was so soggy from the rain, my knees had gotten stuck in six inches of mud. I wobbled to my feet, and took a tentative step. My God, I could actually walk! I hobbled around in a small circle to prove to myself that my walking was no fluke. I was so thrilled and relieved I started laughing hysterically.

"Hey, you!" someone shouted. I looked up—oh no, the cop! I had forgotten all about him. Now he was moving swiftly toward me from the driveway.

It was still dark out and I thought about running, but I wasn't exactly operating at full speed. More like quarter speed. In the light from his headlights I could see the cop was fat and balding, but unless he'd had knee replacement surgery in the last week or so, he would catch me, no problem. And sirens were coming from everywhere now. I better just give up and beg for mercy. Trying to escape would definitely not be a smart idea.

But it's funny how
clichés
can come into your head at the strangest times.
This time it was my agent's fa
vorite standby, which had also become my favorite ever since I struck it rich with that hack movie: "It's better to be lucky than smart."

So I trusted in luck and ran. The cop ran after me.

I ducked into the back alley. The cop ducked after me shouting "Halt! Police!" just like in the movies. Amazing, I thought—the movies actually got it right.

He was gaining on me. I heard his footsteps, and I felt myself running out of gas. This was the end. Fuck luck; I put my hands up and started to turn around.

And then the guy fired his gun at me.

BOOM!
A piece of wall chipped off right above my head. Maybe he was aiming above me and not at me,
but I didn't wait to find out. Talk about incentive. I found new gas. I found gas in places I didn't even know I had gas. I became Michael Johnson and the Roadrunner combined,
on fast forward. That fat, bald
ing, trigger-happy cop didn't stand a chance. I raced up one alley and down another one, zipped across a side street and through some back yards, and left him in the dust like Wyle E. Coyote.

I hid behind a rott
ing picket fence for twenty min
utes or so until I was pretty sure he'd given up. Then I crouched down low, scurried alongside some hedges, and darted warily across driveways until I made it back to my car. I had to hurry; dawn was coming, and I didn't want the cops catching me with no jacket on and little burn marks all over my arm. They might wonder. So I opened the car door as quietly as I could, checked to make sure no cops were around, and started the engine.
CHUGGA
VUGGA!
Oh God, I thought, that's it; no more burglaries until I buy a new car.

I backed into someone's driveway and took off down Washington Street. My car felt like the loudest thing in all of Saratoga at that hour. I might as well have had a bumper sticker that said,
here i am! arrest me
! But I guess the cops were hanging out watching the firemen or something, because I made it home without incident.

No question: It's better to be lucky than smart.

I picked up the box of '96 grant applications from the seat beside me and
went inside. Then I tiptoed up
stairs and peeked in our bedroom. Andrea was still sound asleep, her long
black hair flowing off the pil
low to her bare shoulder.

And that's when it hit me: I had almost died. Not only that, I had almost lost Andrea forever.

I took off my smoky clothes, lay down in bed, and
snuggled up close to her. But then she shifted in her sleep and her nose twitched, and I thought: What if she smells the smoke on my body? I'd never be able to explain that away. Andrea had gotten pretty pissed off about my little safety-deposit box episode. How would she react to my breaking and entering, jumping out of a burning building, and getting into a foot chase with a wild and crazy gun-toting cop?

Probably not too well. In fact, if Andrea found out I did something so stupid I almost got myself killed, she might kill me herself.

So I eased carefully away from her and slipped out of bed. I wasn't ready for sleep anyway. Even though I felt totally burned out, pun intended (why do people always say "pun not intended" when it really is?), my mind was still running a marathon inside my head. I went downstairs and
opened up the box of '96 appli
cations. My hunch was right: The Penn had applied that year, same as '97 and '98.

I glanced at the top of The Penn's application, where the grant panel had recorded their verdict:
Rejected
. Same as '97. No doubt his '98 application would have been rejected too, if he'd still been alive. But he wasn't. He died just two days before the grant panel met.

Someone killed him.

In my bones, I was sure of that now. Just like I was sure in my bones that someone had just tried to kill me.

Or at the very least, someone knew I was in that building when they set it on fire. The fire had spread too fast for it to be anything but arson.

So what was the
deal here? That nondescript mid-
sized sedan that followed me briefly on my way to the Arts Council, then disappeared; maybe it kept right on following me and
my kamikaze muffler from a dis
tance. And then whoever it was saw me breaking into the building, figured out I was searching either Penn's
digs or the Arts Cou
ncil for evidence about the mur
der, and panicked. So they got hold of some gasoline and...

But wait, who had that screaming cat been running away from? Maybe the
arsonist was already there out
side the building, prepar
ing to set the fire, when I hap
pened along and drove him off temporarily—or should I say
her
, given those high heels. Then, when I went inside, she decided to go ahead and torch the place anyway. Probably figured torching me was just an added bonus.

I shivered. How many people was I dealing with here? Burglaries, int
imidation, arson, someone possi
bly following me
...
could this all be the work of just one person? Maybe Penn's murder was a conspiracy.

Or maybe there were two or more unrelated people running around and committing desperate crimes in order to keep Penn's writings from ever seeing the light of day. How many people had Penn blackmailed? His words,
"No one is a saint, and no one is
immune,"
rang through my head. I got up to make sure all the doors were locked, the
n realized it didn't matter, be
cause the windowpane was broken.

BOOK: 1 Breakfast at Madeline's
12.59Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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