The Smoke Room (32 page)

49. TWELVE MILLION DOLLARS SPLIT ONE WAY

SIX MONTHS AFTER
my mother’s death, Sonja and I drive to Mount Rainier, where we scatter my mother’s ashes along a portion of the Wonderland Trail Mom admired. There had been no request to have her ashes dispersed in the wilds. Her death, like virtually every minute of her life, includes no personal requests.

We never have that final chat you always believe you’re going to have with your loved ones before they die, that Kodachrome moment when you clear the air and say how much you love each other, when a lifetime of secrets gets unraveled and spills across the floor like a ball of yarn. To this day I have no clue who my father is. My mother didn’t speak of it in life and made no reference to it as she lay dying. She gave birth to me when she was seventeen and single, the same year she got kicked out of her parents’ house in Yakima. She spent the rest of her life dedicated to making sure my days were happier than hers.

A guess tells me I am the result of a high school romance, but after the age of ten, I stopped quizzing her. I have no brothers, no sisters, no father, only a set of grandparents who keep their distance emotionally and geographically. The only family I have now is the woman who sleeps beside me in the darkness. As if reading my thoughts, she says, “You awake?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t know you were.”

“You were tossing and turning. Talking in your sleep again. You said something about money.”

“I had that dream again.”

“You have it a lot.”

“Yeah.”

“Get some rest. We’re going to look at houses tomorrow.”

“Sure.”

You screw up and get somebody dead, you either get very hard, go nuts, or you get so you can surgically separate the event from the rest of your life. What they don’t let you know in murder school is how incredibly depressing it is to cause the death of another human being, or even to be involved in a death, and that the depression never entirely departs. The other thing they don’t tell you is that you’ll never be allowed to stop lying about it.

Perhaps because we are both accustomed to driving sports cars, we get carsick in tandem as we are chauffeured around in the expensive SUV our real estate agent drives just a smidgeon too aggressively. He’s so vain about his prowess behind the wheel, no amount of polite hinting can get him to slow down, take corners on a firm line, or remove his left foot from the brake pedal as we bob and wobble across West Seattle looking at houses.

He spends the morning taking us to homes we can afford and some we clearly cannot, seeming to take pleasure in showing properties for which the monthly payments are greater than our total monthly income. One of them is the estate on Beach Drive SW where Robert Johnson and I met Tronstad so many months ago, cleaned up and back on the market. When the agent walks us through, I give no indication I’ve been inside before.

Next to the front door they’ve planted a wisteria that must have cost a fortune, because despite its newness, it is eight feet tall and in full bloom, a delicate purple.

Despite the fact that I continue to feel an underlying depression, my life is blooming too.

Sonja and I plan a quiet wedding in three months.

Though Sonja visits them on occasion, I see her father and stepmother only infrequently. There are times when I fear my sweaty history with her stepmother will be the unmaking of our relationship, but Sonja seems cool with it. If Bernard knows about my liaisons with his wife, he gives no hint; Iola treats me as if I’ve immigrated from another continent, as if I’m of the servant class, someone she can barely tolerate. It’s hard to blame her, but I’m not giving up Sonja so Iola can be comfortable.

For the past year I’ve been driving Engine 29. I’m the youngest driver in the battalion.

Unwilling to place another firefighter’s life, or a civilian’s, under the crude hammer of my judgment, I’ve given up my dreams of taking promotional exams.

After Tronstad’s funeral, Robert Johnson transfered to Station 28 in the Rainier Valley, giving up five percent driver’s pay to relocate. Rumors surface that he’s become a heavy drinker. From time to time I get concerned that his buddy Jesus will tell him to turn himself in, and me with him, but so far it hasn’t happened, and we are fast arriving at the point at which it will be his word against mine.

Tronstad’s funeral is massive, the third fire department funeral in a month. Exhibiting a familiar eagerness to conceal unpleasant facts, as well as an unwillingness to dig into the truth behind the catastrophes that have dogged Station 29 for so long, the fire department refuses to finger Ted Tronstad for anything more than the fire at the Pederson place. They don’t reopen the investigations into the deaths of Sweeney Sears or Chief Abbott. I find the videotape of me in the water with Sears in Tronstad’s station locker, and I destroy it. As usual, I keep my mouth shut.

The death of the Browns goes unsolved.

Although it is common knowledge inside the department that Tronstad had been behaving erratically and that he may have set at least one other fire, news of his string of possible felonies fails to reach the media or the general public. Nobody seems curious about why he set fire to the Pederson home, although there are fictitious reports in the department that he’d been seeing Iola Pederson.

Rumors have gone around in the fire department that Tronstad’s death has traumatized me so badly, I cannot talk about it; consequently, few people press me for answers as to what happened that night or why I didn’t see him inside the house while I was making the rescues.

Two days after the funeral, the FBI locates a bank deposit box in Ghanet’s name with $546,000 in cash in it. After more weeks of poking around, they close the investigation, satisfied Ghanet either blew or lost the rest of his booty.

Waiting patiently for federal agents to show up at my door and arrest me, I sweat it out for weeks and then months, but by the first anniversary of our discovery of Ghanet’s bearer bonds, I realize they are not coming, that they aren’t going to question me about the money or about Tronstad’s death. I’m not quite sure why I haven’t turned the bonds in or run off to spend them, but I haven’t. Actually, in the back of my mind, I believe I subconsciously
want
to be arrested.

Sonja talks about the fire sometimes, but if she suspects me of rat-holing Tronstad in her father’s bedroom to die, she does not bring it up.

Sonja loves me. She is good to me. I love her, and I hope I’m good to her. Occasionally we argue, but we make up quickly and laugh about it later. It is easy to know we are going to be happy together for a very long time.

We share our first Thanksgiving with her stepmother and father and grandfather and a couple of aunts and uncles. Toward the end of the evening, when I am swollen with turkey and cranberries and pie, I begin to relax. Bernard corners me and gives me a lecture on how the U.S. government is protecting world peace with military might. Iola glares at us from across the room. Changing the subject to hybrid vehicles, he bends my ear for another twenty minutes, a man more concerned with machines and public policies than with the people around him. It is easy to see why Iola is drawn to serial affairs.

I’ve mistakenly believed my mother’s funeral is going to be just her and me, Sonja, and a couple of Mom’s elderly neighbors; but over 150 people attend: swimmers who’d worked out with her at the YMCA pool before she got sick, neighbors from her apartment house and the apartments where she’d lived in the past, co-workers from her last three jobs and the food bank where she’d volunteered, a doctor who cared for her, and the waitress we met at Three Fingered Jack’s in Winthrop, a woman who has driven five hours in a broken-down Ford to be here.

Four days after my mother’s death, I am in her apartment going through her things—she’d gotten rid of just about all her personal items to make it easier for me—and am shocked to discover a life insurance policy worth $900,000. I can’t bear the thought of receiving money as a result of my mother’s death.

I cash out the insurance policy and make donations to my mother’s favorite charities. The American Cancer Society. Northwest Second Harvest. The Goodwill, where she did much of her shopping throughout her life. I retain an attorney and dump the rest into an investment account, to be reviewed once annually on the anniversary of my mother’s death. Eventually the money will go into a trust for the children Sonja and I will have together.

I’ve had my mother’s mail rerouted to my place, so every time she gets a package of coupons or a renewal notice from the Sierra Club or Amnesty International, I get sweet little reminders of a life lived well.

A little more than a year after Tronstad’s death, Sonja takes a vacation to Hawaii with her three best friends, young women she’s been close to all through school and beyond. “You don’t mind, do you?” Sonja asks.

“Not at all. It’ll give me a chance to spend some time at the titty bars.”

“Quit it.”

“If I get tired of boobs, and the weather cooperates, I might drive over to Eastern Washington and go hiking. Maybe even an overnighter.”

“That sounds like fun.”

After her plane leaves, I drive home, pack up the bearer bonds in a large cardboard box, wipe it clean of prints, and take it to an attorney, where I lay out the entire story. The attorney contacts the local federal prosecutor and hashes out a deal. I will turn in the bonds in return for blanket immunity to any crimes associated with the theft. I will guarantee I’m not holding anything back, and they will trust my guarantee. Twelve million in bonds is far more than they were looking for. I will keep the names of any confederates to myself. In return, the government will not name me publicly. They will get the bonds, and I will walk away with a clean slate. Everybody will be happy.

Sonja comes back from Maui, and a month later we buy a two-bedroom fixer-upper on Thirty-fifth Avenue SW, a main thoroughfare near Station 37. We are pounding nails and restoring it one room at a time. The work is satisfying, especially my chores in what will be the baby’s room.

I strive to be a man who defines himself, rather than having his possessions define him. I do not wallow in luxury goods or run up tabs on credit cards.

It is ironic that in death my mother has given me what she could never provide in life, a surfeit of material wealth. Just as ironic is the fact that I cannot bring myself to touch it.

I ride Engine 29 and take pride in my duties. On alarms I deliver the goods, and when we have a fire, my crew gets water. We drill for the chief and I make no mistakes. Sonja and I talk about having babies, about her day in the patrol car, my day at the fire station, about national politics or the last movie we saw together. Whenever the weather allows, I skate. When she’s not at work, Sonja skates with me. We listen to music. We read books. We take walks after dinner. We enjoy each other’s company and the company of our friends.

Two weeks after I make the deal with the feds, my attorney calls. The government has flown experts from the Treasury Department to Seattle to examine the bonds and has learned they are fakes. Eventually the bank would have caught Tronstad for the bonds he cashed. The government bonds are counterfeit, and the private and foreign bank bonds are phoney, too. For twenty years Ghanet had been hoarding a treasure that is bogus.

It kills me to think about it. Three sacks of garbage propelled the runaway machine that chewed up my life and killed six people.

Once a day, sometimes more, black thoughts cross my mind, thoughts of pumping on Russell Abbott’s chest, of the charred corpses at the intersection of California and Admiral Way, of the tiny article in the
Seattle Times
noting Heather Wynn’s death. Sears twisting in the grip of the whirlpool. Tronstad choosing money over his very life. I lie to myself. I rationalize and I justify and I make the best of my part in all of it. I live my life and it is good, but underneath, I carry a secret that is as nasty as the cancer my mother walked around with.

These days, perhaps more than anybody around, I realize the value of law.

I do not trample rules. I do not roll through stop signs. I do not drive the interstate five miles over the speed limit. I do not hedge when filling out tax forms. I return my library books on time. I pocket my litter and that of the next man. Sometimes my punctiliousness annoys Sonja, but I will not change.

I have to admit there are times when I am tempted by the money my mother left, but I know I’m happiest when I’m living a normal life like everybody around me. A life with simple pleasures.

Sonja loves me and I love her, and I’ve found that’s more than enough.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

E
ARL
E
MERSON
is a lieutenant in the Seattle Fire Department. He is the Shamus Award–winning author of
Vertical Burn, Into the Inferno,
and
Pyro,
as well as the Thomas Black detective series, which includes
The Rainy City, Poverty Bay, Nervous Laughter, Fat Tuesday, Deviant Behavior, Yellow Dog Party, The Portland Laugher, The Vanishing Smile, The Million-Dollar Tattoo, Deception Pass,
and
Catfish Café.
He lives in North Bend, Washington. Visit the author’s website at
www.EarlEmerson.com
.