Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [104]
“John, we need to know what happened. We need to know. Where’s your partner? We’ve got a man missing, and you’re the only one who knows where he is. John, this is Chief Reese. Your old friend, Charlie. Stop and think and try to make sense. John, where is Gary?”
“I carried him out.”
“You couldn’t have. You could barely walk when they found you.”
“Before they found me. Left him with a couple of firefighters in the doorway.”
“John? Don’t go to sleep. Where’d you leave Gary?”
Finney could hear voices, but he couldn’t get his eyes open.
Reese barked out orders. “Get somebody to check all the doorways. Get moving. And don’t let those newspaper people know what you’re doing.”
It was then that a bulky figure in a dirty yellow bunking suit parted the white-shirted workers, an older man with a fleshy face and ruddy cheeks. It wasn’t unusual for Finney to see Bill Cordifis. He was dead, obviously, but Finney saw him once or twice a week. Sometimes in the visage of an old man collecting aluminum cans behind a supermarket. Sometimes he was a utility truck driver, or a face on a passing bus, a man in the passenger seat of a motor home on the freeway.
Leaning close, Cordifis said, “Bet you thought you were rid of me, huh, Sport?”
“I tried to get you out,” Finney whispered. “I tried my best.”
Unbuttoning his bunking coat, Cordifis said, “See what you did?”
From deep down in his stomach, from somewhere near the base of his spine, Finney could feel the scream coming even as he tried to staunch it. Although he’d lost most of his voice from the smoke, the sound he made was hideous. Hands struggled to hold him down, and as he screamed he knew he sounded like a gut-shot dog. The knowledge did not arrest the howl coming out of him. He screamed and screamed again.
51. JERKED OFF BY A MORON
Tuesday morning Oscar was forced to park nearly a half mile away from the site. Besides the gawkers who mobbed the intersection near the smoldering ruins, there were hundreds of firefighters who’d come to mingle in the smoke and early-morning fog. With one man missing and another possibly dying in the hospital, the mood was distinctly gloomy. Intermixed in the crowd were a few female fire groupies, but mostly male wanna-bes with bulging muscles and military haircuts, or fire-buff types, pocket protectors swollen with pens, medical flashlights, EMT cheat cards, and chief’s badges they’d bought mail-order from the back of Firehouse magazine. What a circus, Oscar thought.
Nearly every civilian vehicle passing through the intersection slowed as the occupants stared at the ruins. Some of the passersby rolled down their windows and shouted questions at the traffic babe under the light. Others turned on their headlights or pushed flowers out their windows onto the roadway—which by noon was carpeted with crushed roses and carnations, the sweetness blending with the bottom-of-the-shoe odor of last night’s fire.
Oscar wished he had a nickel for every time Finney’s name was invoked.
It was a bad time for the fire department. The medics said they’d be surprised if Finney survived, and even though he was officially listed as missing, everybody knew Gary Sadler was dead.
It was all so needless, Oscar thought. For Christ’s sake, a fellow who five months ago had been as badly injured as Finney, you’d think he would do anything to avoid Operations Division. Yet the dumb bastard couldn’t get back into combat fast enough, clearly a man who couldn’t stay out of trouble. Look at that mess on Riverside Drive.
Everybody knew barking dogs got shot, and it surprised Oscar that a man as intelligent as Finney could get himself into this kind of bind.
The newspapers were bound to regurgitate the Leary Way story. Last summer both Seattle papers had run multiple features on Leary Way, the Seattle Fire Department, and firefighting in general. Oscar remembered some of the press clippings: FIRE CHIEF’S SON NARROWLY ESCAPES BLAZE. CAPTAIN DIES, CHIEF’S SON LIVES. FIREFIGHTER’S BEST EFFORTS UNREWARDED.