Pyro (19 page)

43. I AM THE KING OF FLAME

According to Earl Ward

         
They think they’re hot stuff because they caught fire burners in different parts of the city. Retards and drunks. That’s who they’re catching. Kids, retards, and drunks.

For anybody with half a brain this thing is like stealing coins out of a blind man’s hat.

I hate this holiday season, I’m telling you. First, there’s Mom. Nothing turns her upside down like Xmas. All she can talk about is how miserable her childhood was and how I always had it so much better and how lousy this Xmas is going to be compared to last Xmas because I ain’t bringin’ in any money. What I’ve wanted to know all along, even when I was a kid, is how could Xmas be any lousier than having a mother who sits around all day croaking about it?

Anyways, I got the money thing halfway figured out. You think about it, there’s lots of money in my profession. I read where that place I lit on Dose Terrace a couple weeks ago is being rebuilt with $300,000 in insurance money. That’s where the dough is. Insurance.

I just haven’t quite figured out how to tap into it. I will, though.

One thought was that I could burn down Mom’s house and we could collect the insurance, but when I called the agent to ask about the policy, the half-wit practically accused me of
wanting
to burn it down. Maybe I asked the wrong questions. I mighta. There are times when I get a little excited thinking about lighting a match.

Anyways, the gist is there’s gotta be a way to make money off my specialty. I seen this all on TV. There are different ways to go about finding a profession. One is to adapt yourself to whatever job pays good money. Another is—and I prefer this—to find something you love doing and figure out how to make
it
pay. An example would be a whore. Some babe likes to screw, so she goes about making a living at it. Like that.

Now maybe I hire myself out and burn down other people’s property, help them collect insurance and take a portion of the proceeds. Sound good? Sounds good to me too. Or maybe there’s somebody out there who likes fires but doesn’t know how to start ’em. They hire me.

The trick in all this would be the advertising, because I can’t exactly use the yellow pages. Maybe an ad in the back of
The Stranger.
I bet the cops don’t read that.

Another way to make money would be to set up a bank account somewheres and tell people you’re going to torch their property if they don’t put money in. You don’t have to hold anybody up. Maybe two hundred bucks a pop. Enough to pay for Xmas for Mom. The trouble is, you’d need one of them offshore accounts, and I don’t know how to do that.

All this aside, I’m pissed. For starters, it’s Saturday night, so Mom takes her Dodge and doesn’t come back until almost one in the morning. Bingo and beer. Old ladies shouldn’t be driving drunk. Now I’m getting a late start. Know what else tweaks me? Them newspaper writers never get it straight.

I mean, I am the most accomplished arsonist in the history of this city. Maybe the world. I’m an expert to end all experts. Period.

I am the king of flame.

Yet all they talk about is the copycats. The papers are so concerned with numbers. A guy sets eight Dumpster fires gets almost the same coverage I do setting one flamer that burns a husband and wife and two dogs out of their house. It’s not right.

Tonight is the night I make them forget the copycats.

The night the whole West Coast learns I am the master.

What I gotta do tonight is listen to the scanner and make sure Ladder 3 is in quarters before I set this baby. No way I want to go to all this trouble and not nail the bastard. This was waaaay too much work. It’s gotta go perfect. Which is part of the problem with fire. You want to change something after it starts, you better hold your horses, because once it gets goin’, you’re stuck with what you got.

That’s the scary aspect to my profession—how all these accidents happen.

What gets me is everybody knows they’re accidents, yet the papers are always trying to say I’m to blame. An accident is an accident. I mean, that’s why they call them accidents, right? I give these guys plenty of opportunities to put my fires out, and if they don’t, it ain’t on my head. They’re the hotshots getting paid all that money, driving all those fancy vehicles out behind the firehouse. I’m just driving Mom’s old Dodge Dart with the clunking transmission.

This house I found is perfect. To start off with, it looks like somebody lives there. That always gets firemen worked up. Plus there’s another house next door that’s going to confuse the issue. The best thing about the house next door is that those guys never get home until after the bars close. That’s why they never heard me banging inside the first place.

I got the interior filled with boards and old furniture and you name it. I start the fire in the basement, it comes up the stairs, reaches the pile of combustibles right about the time the trucks get there. The fire reaches the middle of the house, it’s going to FLARE! I mean FLARE! The hose line will go in the front door, and my guys’ll go to the roof with chain saws. That’s when the fun begins.

Because I am the king of flame.

After this maybe the papers won’t be so full of copycats. Although I do have to say this. Them copycats have kept some of the pressure off me. I mean, as long as they’re stumbling around West Seattle and Ballard looking for retards, they can’t be in the CD looking for me, now can they?

I drive down along the lake and cruise Lakeside Avenue.

I light a fence. I light some brush, but it’s wet and goes out.

I drive to Cheasty Boulevard and I find some garbage in the woods, stuff people’ve dumped. I light that.

I go to the house on Twenty-first and Stevens. The house I’ve been prepping. The people next door are home early, but they don’t notice me.

I go inside, and I think, This is what happens when you piss me off.

44. NEXT THING I KNOW, I’M RUNNING FOR MY LIFE

According to Earl Ward

         
I poke through the house one last time, wiping my prints off everything. I’m nervous.

I go downstairs to the basement and wad up two Sunday papers, especially the color advertisements, which give off those beautiful blues and purples when they’re hot. I pack the paper under everything in the room, wad it up and stuff it under old chairs, boxes, a rack of clothing.

I light one wad of papers and watch. There’s nothing as sweet as a tiny little flame the size of your pinkie turning into a big flame the size of King Kong’s ass. Now a single flame licks up the leg of a chair like a rattlesnake, slowly gets the wicker bottom on the chair going with a snap, crackle, and pop. More newspaper wads are igniting. It begins slower than I’d anticipated. I’m getting a hard-on under the dress. One after the other the newspaper stashes catch fire. I should be leaving, but I cannot go just yet. Something this beautiful, it’s hard to tear your eyes away from.

The basement fills with smoke. It rises to the ceiling and banks down. Some of it flows up the basement stairs following the draft I’ve created by leaving the doors open.

There is a sense of luxury in this indoor fire, a feeling that I’m no longer in a hurry. This isn’t like outside, where somebody might spot you, where you set it and leave. Nobody’s going to spot me here. I sit near the double-bolted basement door and watch my handiwork.

Pretty soon the flame has spread into a series of stacked cardboard boxes. One of the boxes is full of jars somebody has lovingly stored. When the first box gets to burning, a jar slides out onto the floor with a dull pop, juice and broken glass everywhere. Moments later I smell peaches. Smells just like peach pie cooking. And then, almost without warning, the fire makes a big whoosh as it reaches the clothing rack, and the synthetic material on the hangers starts to go up like gasoline.

Godderned, I think, maybe I stayed too long. I tuck my dick into my panty hose and run for the door.

It is only by holding my coat over my face that I get past the flames. I head up the stairs, coughing and choking on the smoke. The air in the stairs is hotter than I thought it would be. It burns my eyes.

Upstairs the place is filling with smoke.

I sit by the back door, one leg of my chair in the kitchen, the other in the hallway, waiting for the rest of it to come roaring up, this creature I’ve created. My eyes fill with tears. I don’t know if the tears are from the smoke or from the gorgeousness of the whole thing. My work is filling the rooms, making its way upstairs to the second floor, from there to the attic, where I hope everything goes according to plan.

At the top of the stairs, I’ve piled clothing and bedding and mattresses.

These dumb-ass firefighters aren’t going to know what hit them.

Quicker than I thought it would, the smoke compresses down from the ceiling.

Knowing discretion is the better part of valor, I leave through the back door, making sure the lock clicks into place behind me.

In the dark in the backyard I finish my soda, wipe it clean of prints, and set it on the neighbor’s porch.

Then alongside the wall of that house I light the pile of clothespins, rope, and garbage. Fire will climb the vinyl siding like ferrets. No need to wait for this one.

I walk back to Mom’s car.

I drive down the hill on McClellan and park in the drugstore parking lot. It is late, and Rainier Avenue is practically deserted.

After a bit, I hear sirens. It is torture waiting, but I am a professional and I keep still.

Later, after the fire units have driven past me, I drive back up the hill and park just off Twenty-third. I walk toward the commotion two blocks away. I walk like it’s my prerogative. I stand near the fire trucks with the gawkers, cradling a can of soda in my coat pocket.

Pretty soon two firefighters race past carrying a ladder. Their helmet insignia says L-3, so I know things are on track. Wollf will be along in a minute. The ladder tells me he’ll be dead soon.

Even though my heart is pounding, I stand calmly and watch with the other women and a couple of men. Pretty soon some bitch in a white chief’s helmet comes along and screams at us to move out of the street. That we’re in the way.

We’re already on the parking strip, but we all take five steps backward until we’re ruining our shoes in the tall wet grass in some asshole’s yard.

The people around me are watching the firefighters take hose off Engine 13. They’re watching the chief. They’re watching the drivers running the pumps. I could tell them what each of these firefighters is doing, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself. Besides, I have my eyes on the roof.

It seems to take forever.

And then they’re up there. One of them is. No. There’s another one. They’re in the back. At first I cannot tell who is who. I know Wollf is the biggest on the crew. That there’s one woman, about my size, who is the smallest. Two of them are walking across the steep part of the north slope. One slips, and my heart leaps in my chest. I don’t need anybody to fall off. I want them all directly over the fire. Half a ton of human hope ready to be charbroiled.

They’re making their way across the north slope of the roof.

One is starting the chain saw. The other is standing by with an axe. Neither realizes he’s on a giant mousetrap. Standing where the cheese should be. A third firefighter makes his way to them. The only thing that would make this better would be if that bitch chief got up there.

They will go through that roof like a satellite dropping out of the sky.

This is going to be so un-fucking-believable.

Standing in the wet grass, I wait with the other looky-loos, my mouth hanging open. I begin to flog the dummy through the hole in my coat pocket.

Funny how things work out.

Next thing I know, I’m running for my life.

45. WE GOT FIRE! WE GOT FIRE!

         
Going to the roof was arguably the most macho of all truck operations, standing in the dark and the rain and the snow with a roaring chain saw, smoke and flame chasing past your face after you get the hole open. It was also possibly the most dangerous position on the fire ground.

At least the cold snap from last week had blown through. There would be no ice.

“We got fire! We got fire!” Eddings shouted into her radio when she arrived.

“Did you hear that shit?” Dolan asked.

“Settle down,” I said.

We were ripping along Twenty-third, maybe five or six blocks away, watching smoke curl up into the sky. These were all residential streets, quiet at night except for the occasional Metro bus. Single-family homes. Woodframe. Brick.

We took Stevens off Twenty-third, turned left on Twenty-second, and found our way blocked by the battalion chief’s Suburban. The street was full of smoke, so we saw everything through a gray-black haze permeated by ping-pong flashing red lights and bright wig-wag headlights from the rigs. In addition to the chief, Engine 13 and Engine 30 were already there. We were going to have to carry our ladders and equipment almost a block.

On the apparatus handset I said, “Ladder Three at location. We’re going to the roof to ventilate.”

Before we stopped rolling, I turned and shouted over the engine noise to Rideout and Towbridge in the crew cab behind us. “You guys take the ladder. We’ll follow with the saws and pike poles.”

“You want the twenty-five or thirty-five?” Towbridge asked.

“I can’t see the house. Better take the thirty-five.”

Dolan exited on one side of the rig, I on the other. I was wearing my bunking boots, trousers, and coat. I walked halfway back alongside the compartment doors to my mask compartment and slung a half-hour bottle and backpack onto my shoulders, cinching down the shoulder and waist straps.

From the ladder compartment at the rear of the apparatus I pulled a ten-foot pike pole. I was already wearing a four-pound pick-head service axe at my belt and carrying a six-volt battle lantern on a hook on my chest. On the other side of the rig, I passed Dolan, who was still getting his equipment together. “You bringing the saw?” I asked.

“Both saws.”

It never hurt to have a backup in case the Stihl didn’t start.

Shabbier than the rest of the neighborhood, two side-by-side houses sat on an embankment, volumes of smoke issuing from between them.

In front of me Rideout and Towbridge disappeared into the smoke as they carried the ladder up a steep paved driveway between the houses. Flame was pumping out a kitchen window at the rear of the house to the south, black smoke jetting out another broken-out window. Three ramshackle pickup trucks blocked the driveway.

Two firefighters hosed down the side of the house to the north.

Engine 30 had been assigned the south house. One of their members was having trouble getting his gear straightened out. His gloves were on the ground, his coat unbuttoned, his MSA backpack straps loose. His main problem, as far as I could tell, was that Eddings was six inches from his face squalling at him like a Marine Corps drill sergeant.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, Smith? Get your motherfuckin’ ass in gear! Get into that house with your crew, you worthless pile of shit! My God. My grandmother could . . .” And so forth and so on.

Except for the Pennington fire, all our arsons had been
out
side buildings, yet the house fire we were looking at to the south had been set inside.

“Where do you want the ladder?” Towbridge asked. I could hear him but couldn’t see him in the smoke.

“Around back,” I said.

From the basement to the roofline, smoke was coming out cracks in the house to the south. Smoke was leaking between the shingles on the roof. This was the perfect candidate for vertical ventilation.

Dolan was near Rideout and Towbridge now, pulling on the starter cord of a Stihl chain saw.

In the old days truckies went to the roof without masks, often choking on smoke so hot it singed their eyebrows. Unless the wind was just right, they took a terrible beating up there. Then the rule came down that we were to go to the roof with a mask on standby. Now it was compulsory to wear a mask in full operation.

Walking across a steep, slippery roof in the middle of the night wearing a mask that limited your visibility had become a major hazard in itself.

By dint of hand speed and initiative, I finished masking up and got up the ladder first, taking the first chain saw with me. I had to shake my head at the fact that the twenty-five barely reached the roof. I’d told Towbridge to grab the thirty-five.

Our portable radios were crackling with commands. At one point Eddings said, “Ladder Three. Split your crew. I want you to do search and rescue in the fire house and also in the exposure house to the north. Ladder Three? Did you receive?”

“Command from Ladder Three. We’re on the roof of the south house. We’re about to open it. You want us to cancel?” I asked.

No reply. A few moments later she gave the search-and-rescue orders to Ladder 7, the second-in truck company.

The roof was in two sections. I was on the first section over a porch and sun room.

Facing me was a flat wall with two windows in it. Above that, the peak of the second, higher roof was running from left to right. I could make the leap up onto the main roof, but it wasn’t a particularly safe evolution, given how steep the roof was. Going back to get a roof ladder now would leave the firefighters inside too long without relief. If I could make it, Towbridge, at six-one, the next tallest on the rig, could make it as well. Two of us could punch a hole in a roof.

A hose stream drummed an interior wall below us, water shooting out a window into the driveway in spurts. Broken glass fell onto one of the pickup trucks. A firefighter in the driveway objected loudly to being sprayed. An Engine 13 member gave a radio report saying they’d found victims. It was unclear which house they were in.

The main roof for the residence was a steep eight-twelve pitch. I tied my body loop around the chain saw and slung it over my shoulder to free my hands, then took my service axe out.

I cut a toehold, then another, began making my way to the peak of the roof, stepping in the stirrups as I hacked them out. Each toehold produced smoke. I moved quickly. By the time I was straddling the peak, Dolan was behind me, putting the toes of his boots into the holes I’d cut, the second Stihl in one hand, his own service axe in the other. We were breathing heavily through our MSA face pieces. It was dark up here, and we were on the north side of the house where the moss grew. Each time I tried my foot on the three-tab roofing, my boot slipped.

Straddling the peak of the roof as if it were a giant wooden horse, I scooted along it until I judged we were over the fire.

“Cut here,” I said. It didn’t take long for Dolan to begin sawing a four-by-eight-foot hole below me, just under the peak. I picked away at the section of roof as he cut the hole. The roof consisted of three layers of old roofing material that came up in chunks. Moments later Rideout was beside me, our service axes swinging in tandem.

Towbridge was below Dolan, his hands on Dolan’s hips to keep him from falling. Rideout and I picked off slabs of the roof and watched them slide past Dolan and Towbridge, off the edge of the roof, crashing onto the pickup trucks in the driveway.

Rideout strained to match my efforts. I could feel the sweat in my armpits and inside my face piece.

We cut a hole eight feet long. The black smoke pouring out of the hole wasn’t as fast-moving or as hot as I expected. Dolan looked at me; we were both thinking the same thing. There was an intact ceiling between us and the fire.

Rideout started across to get the pike pole she’d left hanging off the west end of the peak, took three or four steps, began to slide, then hammered her pick-head axe into the roof. For a moment I thought she was going off the roof, but she arrested her fall, sitting on her rump, her axe buried in the three-tab roofing material. Inertia was a wonderful thing when it was saving your life. She looked across at me, her brown eyes swollen with worry. Towbridge stepped up to the hole to see if he couldn’t reach the ceiling below us with his axe.

I walked west along the peak, a boot on either side in case I lost my footing.

I passed Rideout, retrieved the pike pole, sat, then angled it toward her until she grasped it and was able to make her way to the peak behind me.

In front of us, Dolan and Towbridge were bent over chopping in the heavy smoke. They still hadn’t breached the interior ceiling. I slid along the roof, braced myself, and slammed the tip of the pike pole into the bowels of the attic.

A shower of sparks and smoke shot upward past my helmet. Towbridge and Dolan backed off to avoid the rush of heat and sparks.

I slammed the pike pole downward two more times.

Each time sparks shot up past us, Towbridge turned to me and grinned inside his mask. You could only see it in his eyes. I grinned back. Sometimes this job was just too much fun to believe.

It was at that moment that the whole east side of the roof began to shake.

To my horror, the four-by-eight-foot hole we’d cut began disappearing in front of me, as did most of that end of the roof, including the section Dolan was on.

Towbridge vanished into the enlarged hole at the same time Dolan did.

The look of surprise in their eyes would haunt me for years to come.

Even after they disappeared, the roof kept collapsing, folding inward like a row of dominoes, working its way toward me and Rideout. We backed up hurriedly, scooting along the peak. It was slowly gaining on us. We were going in too. And then—

The collapse stopped just short of my crotch.

The whole top of the house continued quivering.

At the spot where Towbridge had been there was only flame and a hell of a lot of smoke roaring out. Hot smoke. More flame. The yellow blaze arched six feet above what was left of the roof, eight feet, ten feet.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. The peak sagged under my weight and began dipping into the chasm.

“Get back, Lieutenant,” Rideout yelled.

I reached the jagged maw in seconds. I’d just lost two men. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before.

“Stay where you are,” I said to Rideout.

“Like hell,” she replied, clambering alongside and below me. “We have to get them out.”

I could feel the sheathing bounce with her movement.

“We don’t need the extra weight,” I yelled, but she was at the lip of the hole, as was I. The roof bobbed like the end of a diving board with a fat man on it.

I keyed my portable radio and said, “Mayday. Mayday. This is Ladder Three on the roof. We’ve just had a cave-in. Two men fell through. We need hose lines in the attic. Now!”