The Thousand - Kevin Guilfoile [166]
They walked out into the service hall, Peter in front with the knife, Nada pointing the gun at his back under the pile of laundry, which reeked of gasoline. When they approached the corner, Peter pointed down the hall and to the left, toward her room, and he motioned for her to hold back. She peeked around the wall just as two men in suits were disappearing into a bedroom, only steps away.
Peter nodded and Nada rushed into the wide hall. She raised the sheet up over her head and snapped it like she was making a bed. Socks and other laundry now soaked in household petroleums and phenols dispersed every which way. Nada pointed in the other direction, toward the Woodward stairs, and then pulled out a match and struck it against the side of the long box.
The sheet lit up like flash paper, igniting the thick red drapes on the north windows with a whoosh and trapping the two men inside the bedroom and a third, from his shouts at least, on the other side of a hot wall of fire and smoke.
Within seconds, the expensive wallpaper began to peel and melt and burn. Oil paintings in gold frames lit up like castle torches. The carpet runner underneath, fringed with some unknown flammable dye, caught like a fuse and two narrow columns of flame chased them down the hallway, toward the Woodward stairs, like runway lights.
68
WAYNE HEARD A SOUND almost like a race car speeding down the hall outside. He felt the heat and smelled the smoke as it rolled under the door. He groped around in the dark for a thick bath towel, which he placed over the crack.
This was bad.
In a panic, he tried to find the back wall of the closet. He fantasized it might be made out of particle board or paper or some other material he could rip apart with his bare hands or cut through with his knife. Plaster. If there was time, maybe he could dig through it, but there would be another wall on the other side and the shelves were deep and the spaces between them small. He would die trying to escape that way.
His clock was down to seconds. He couldn’t see anything, but the air in this closet was half smoke now and the door, pressed against his back, was uncomfortably hot, burning him through his shirt.
Wayne had one knee on a wooden shelf that wobbled under his weight. He put his hand underneath and it lifted, as if on a hinge. He pushed the towels that were sitting on it to the floor and lifted the shelf as high as it would go, maybe ten inches, and he felt below it with his arm. He couldn’t touch the bottom. A laundry hamper maybe?
Or if he was very lucky, a laundry chute.
He tried to get his legs inside, but the shelf would only lift so far, and the space between the shelf and the closet was only so wide and his body just wouldn’t fold that way. He stuck his head in and by throwing his shoulders, one and then the other, he was able to force himself into it, almost with the same determination with which the smoke was forcing itself around the frame of the door.
The only way in was headfirst.
His hands explored the space—still no bottom. Knife in one hand, he braced his arms against the sides and tried to drop his hips through the opening. A week ago, before those days and nights practically starving on the road, Wayne Jennings never would have fit.
The rest of him followed in jerks and stops, as if the house were eating him. Finally his feet cleared the top of the bin and he let himself go, wherever this went, into the dark belly of the old house.
69
KLOSKA DIDN’T KNOW how he was supposed to tell the good guys from the bad guys. He wasn’t sure there were any good guys. Hell, without his star, he wasn’t sure which kind of guy he was.
After Jennings had forced him from the kitchen, he waited outside, trying to interpret the muffled conversation on the other side of the heavy door. After a few minutes, it opened.
“Where did he go?” Kloska asked the butler.
“Up,” the butler said without explaining.
Bobby checked the wounded kid. He would probably live, but Kloska had no idea when the paramedics were coming or how many