The Smoke Room (31 page)

“That’s not much of an apology,” says LaSalle, displaying a silly grin.

“She’s got reasons.”

“So let’s get back to business. Oleson told me Tronstad was here in full bunkers. Said he even had an MSA backpack and bottle.”

“Robert Johnson told me he got it off the reserve rig last night.”

“When was the last time you saw Tronstad?”

“He was in the backyard wrestling with Oleson.” The lies flow out of my mouth like oil.

“Oleson says he went up the ladder sometime when you were inside. You didn’t see him in the house?”

“No.”

“Oleson says there was a gun.”

“It should be back there in the grass somewhere.”

“We’ll look for it. You don’t have any idea why Tronstad would torch this place?”

“No.”

“That’s all I’ve got for you now. Talk to me before you leave.”

“Sure.”

After a few minutes, Bernard crosses the yard behind Iola, taking special care to avoid the man his wife has just slapped. In the morning light it is easy to see why I’d thought he was her father.

Sonja approaches and takes my arm, kissing the same cheek her stepmother just pasted. “They’re a little upset,” she says.

“Are you all right? Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

“Why aren’t
you
?”

“I’m fine.”

“Good. I’m fine, too. I convinced them to let me leave.”

But she isn’t fine. Her voice sounds painfully hoarse; she has Silvadine cream on both ears, her nose and cheeks, and the back of her neck; her hair has been singed; and there are first degree burns on every visible part of her body, making her look badly sunburned. One hand is wrapped in gauze.

“You should have stayed at the hospital,” I say.

“It’s okay. I’m fine. Really.”

“Hell of a way to wake up, huh?”

“Whew! My heart’s still racing. From now on I’m sleeping in a full-body canvas suit with a hood and big rubber boots, just in case. Maybe I’ll get me a pickax to keep by my bed, too.” She grins and coughs, then gets serious. “I can’t believe you do that all the time. I’m so grateful you were there.”

“I don’t do it all the time, and I’m glad I was there, too.”

“It was your friend, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” As we speak, Bernard signals Sonja from across the yard.

“We’re going to get breakfast and some real clothes,” she says, looking down at her out-of-season ski parka with a shrug.

“Sonja. Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Drink lots of fluids. Keep it up for a couple of days.”

“I will.” She flashes her dimple. “You take care, too, Gum.”

The three of them drive away in Bernard’s truck. After the chief leaves, there are only the two fire investigators, the two crews, and me. I continue to carry crap from the front porch to the debris pile. The garage door remains open. From the yard I can see the Volvo, where I stashed the garbage bags. In front of the Volvo are six or eight lawn mowers, their handles tilting this way and that like drunken soldiers.

I find myself getting jumpier and jumpier as I contemplate what I need to do. Finally there comes a point at which both fire investigators and most of the firefighters are inside the house. Taking advantage of their absence and ignoring the two civilians watching from the street, I stalk over to the garage, step around the lawn mowers, and pop the back door of the Volvo. No wonder Tronstad didn’t spot them. They are nearly invisible in the unlighted garage, the three black plastic garbage bags where I left them on the floor behind the front seats. Hoisting them out by the knots in the necks, I carry all three bags across the yard at an unhurried pace, walking to the street and down the block to my WRX.

Without turning back to see whether anybody is watching, I drop them onto the ground behind the car, unlock the rear hatch, hurl them in, and close it. As I lock the car, a large, black SUV with government plates rolls up the street, stops beside me, and reverses toward Hobart Avenue and the house fire. The passenger, a stern-looking man of about fifty, eyeballs me as if trying to match my face to a Wanted poster. I am pretty sure he’s FBI.

48. I MISTAKENLY TELL THEM TO SEARCH MY CAR

AFTER CONFERRING WITH
LaSalle and his partner, the two men from the government car walk purposely past the debris pile to the edge of the yard, where I stand. It feels like forever, but only a few minutes have passed since Sonja and her family left for breakfast. Less time since I placed twelve million dollars in stolen bonds in my car.

It seems as if the two government agents are walking in slow motion.

“Your name Gum?” Both agents wear suits. The older man’s temples are salted with gray, a bald spot glowing on top of his head. He’s tall and lugubrious, his mouth has down-turned ridges at each end, and his sad, brown eyes make me think his life has been gloomy, that he’s lived through one tedious tragedy after another. The younger man has plump cheeks that have gone rosy in the crisp morning air.

“I’m Gum.”

“We want to talk to you about a burglary.”

“A what?”

“You know what we’re talking about.”

“I guess . . . I guess I don’t.”

They stare at me. I stare at them. They’ve seen me with the bags. They probably have a confederate getting a warrant to search my car even as we speak.

“Your house get broken into this past week?”

“Sir?”

“The place you’re renting,” the older agent says, irritably. “It got broken into, right?”

When I still don’t answer, they flash their IDs and identify themselves as Smith and Jones. “No jokes, please,” says Jones. “Just tell us what was missing. The police report wasn’t specific. We received some fingerprints from SPD taken from your back door, from a possible perp.”

They give me penetrating looks. A month ago my life was an open book. Now there are a million things I don’t want people to know—actually, twelve million.

“Man named Jesse Brown. Died in a car fire. His fingerprints were found on the outside of your back door. He ever visit you at home?”

“Not while I was there.”

“Can you think of any reason he’d want to break into your house?”

“He was looking for some money he thought we might know about.”

“Who’s ‘we’?”

“Me and the rest of the crew. This was at the station.”

“What money would that be?”

“It had something to do with a patient we had.”

“Go on.”

“His name was Charles Scott Ghanet.”

Both men raise their eyebrows. “And what did Brown think was going on between you and this patient?”

“He accused us of some sort of conspiracy to steal money Ghanet had. We had to practically throw Brown out of the station.”

“And you had some of this money at your home?”

“God, no.”

“What do you know about the car fire that killed Brown and his wife?”

“I know it happened after he left our station. And we were the ones who tapped it.”

“What exactly did Brown want to know when he visited the station?”

“If we saw anything at Ghanet’s place the night we found his body.”

“Did you see anything?”

“You could barely walk through the place. He’d been collecting junk for years.”

“How long were you in the house?”

“Long enough to find the body. When the lieutenant called for a C and C, we went out to the rig. Then the cops got there and we left.”

“That was it?”

“Yeah.”

“This happened in the middle of the night?”

“Right.”

“What was the lieutenant’s name?”

“Sweeney Sears.”

“Where can we find him?”

“He died at that fire down on Dexter Avenue.”

They stare at me for a long time. I get the feeling they hadn’t believed what we did was as important as what they did until they learned Sears was dead. A newfound esteem blossoms behind their eyes as they digest the news. “Who else was on your crew that night?”

“Robert Johnson and Ted Tronstad.”

“Where are they?”

Tronstad is about sixty feet behind them, lying in the charred remains of the Pederson house. As patient now as he’d been impatient his whole life, he will wait until we have the time or inclination to unearth him. I note he’s died just about where the falling pig died, one story higher but in the same vicinity. It is ironic, because it all started and ended in the same spot. “Johnson just got off work. I don’t know where Tronstad is. He might be in some trouble.”

“Why is that?”

“He set this fire.”

“This one here?” The younger agent is speaking for the first time. He’s been eyeballing my yellow WRX over my shoulder in a manner that makes it hard for me to decide whether he’s admiring it or checking it out for professional reasons. Perhaps I looked suspicious with those garbage bags in my hands. Or maybe I look suspicious now.

“That your car over there?” asks the younger agent.

“Yes.”

“What’s in it?”

“Bunch of old dirty laundry.”

“You mind if we look inside?”

“Not at all.”

This is just another of my choices that hardly seems like a choice at all. Had I said no outright, it would look suspicious, perhaps suspicious enough for them to hold me and try for a warrant. I might cite some minor misdemeanor drug violation and tell them I don’t want the local gendarmes looking in my car, but I doubt that would work, either. There doesn’t seem to be any right answer.

I am finished. I know it, and from the way he is fixating on me, the younger agent knows it, too.

Looking sober and grave, LaSalle joins us and says, “I thought you guys might want to know, we found a body on the second floor.”

“There were four people inside?” I ask. “They told me there were only three.”

“It’s Tronstad.”

“Jesus. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. The wallet in his hip pocket didn’t take that much damage.”

“This the guy you just told us about?” the older FBI agent asks. “The one who set this fire?”

“Yes, sir.” I am dismayed at the use of the word
sir.
I know it makes me look suspicious to be overly submissive here.

“He’s dead?”

LaSalle nods. “He was acting crazy last night. He set two fires that we know about.”

LaSalle looks at the three of us in turn. We are quiet. I am because I know the jig is up, that I am going to jail in a few minutes, and later, after the trial, to prison. The two agents are because they are about to break the back of a major conspiracy. “You guys want to see the body?”

The agents nod and follow LaSalle toward the house. Before they’ve gone too far, LaSalle gestures in my direction and says, “You guys realize you were talking here to the man who’s made the most single-handed rescues of any firefighter in department history?” Both agents turn back and ogle me while continuing to walk toward the house. Hard to know if I am looking guilty, heroic, or dim-witted, though I feel the latter more than anything.

Awaiting my fate, I loiter at the edge of the yard in the blinding sunshine while firefighters straggle out of the house in ones and twos, heads hung low. Tears streaking her broad cheeks and mingling with traces of soot, Stanislow comes over to me. The guys on her shift call her
pigpen
because of her uncanny ability to accumulate dirt just about anywhere.

She steps close and gives me a hug, snorting into my ear as she weeps. “He’s gone, Gum. Tronstad’s up there on his face. He’s dead. There was so much debris stuck to his PASS, we couldn’t hear it.”

Chief Mortimer shows up before the FBI and our two fire investigators are out of the fire building, bustles over to the Ladder 11 crew, and exchanges a few words. “How the hell could we lose a firefighter and not even know it? This is unacceptable! There’s no excuse for this sort of incompetence.” As if aware that the surest source of incompetence on the fire ground is me, he says, “Gum! What the hell went on here? How could you people lose a firefighter and not know it? Goddamn it! Answer me!”

“It’s Ted Tronstad, sir. He wasn’t working yesterday.”

“What do you mean, he wasn’t working? How the hell did he get in that house, all burned to shit, if he wasn’t working?”

“He set the fire.”

Chief Mortimer grows quiet, then moves to the front door and waits until the two FBI agents come out, exchanges words with them, and then watches them walk purposefully to their vehicle, climb in, and drive away. They seem to have forgotten about me.

I remain in the yard, waiting to get handcuffed. Thirty minutes later I am still waiting when the chief of the department and his entourage show up. Shortly thereafter, the Pedersons come back and the police begin questioning Bernard and Iola. After a while, Sonja comes over to where I am standing.

“Gum.”

“Sonja.”

“Somebody died in there?”

“The man who set the fire.”

“Bernard’s telling them he thinks the dead man was somebody Iola jilted. Is that possible?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“That he came here for revenge. You knew him pretty well, didn’t you?”

“You never know anybody very well.”

“I think I know you.”

“I wouldn’t bet anything important on it.”

“Bernard’s going to get an attorney. Iola’s pleading ignorance. And I sure as hell don’t know what’s going on.”

“Neither do I.”

They say, when threatened, human beings react in one of five ways: fight, flight, freeze, fidget, or faint. I believe I found another F to add to the panoply of human reaction—falsehood. It has become my weapon of choice.

After another ten minutes elapse, I tell LaSalle I’m leaving. “Sure, man. You had a rough night. These guys are taking over. They have any questions, they know where to find you. It looks like we’re going to tie this in with that car bombing last week, the house fire on Beach Drive, and about six grass fires last night. It’s beginning to look like he just cracked. People do that.”

“Yeah. They do.”

Out of sight of Bernard and Iola, who are both on borrowed cell phones, I kiss Sonja good-bye and walk to my car. I drive up Bonair at speed, then wait at the top of the hill to see if anybody is following. They aren’t.

I drive to my mother’s apartment house on California Avenue, remove the three garbage sacks from the back of my Subaru, go inside, and knock on her apartment door.

“Jason?”

“Hi, Mom.” I give her a kiss. “I need to store some stuff.”

“Sure. Use the spare bedroom.”

We talk for a while, and after I realize she’s fallen asleep on the couch, I head back into the spare bedroom, where I open all three garbage sacks, my heart jumping in my chest like a frog on a hot sidewalk. Slowly and carefully, I spread out the bearer bonds and count them, making the tabulations in ink on the sweaty palm of my hand. Tronstad’s arithmetic was spot-on. Just over twelve million dollars. It is small consolation, but at least all these people haven’t died over three sacks of rubbish.

I tie the bags and hide them in the back of the closet.