Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [113]
“Everybody searched the west side of the fire wall at Leary Way.”
“That’s what I mean. Who do you think told Smith you guys were on the west side?”
“Dad, we were on the east side.”
“You sure?”
“I’ve been back. I’ve traced the whole thing. They were all searching on the wrong side. And nobody found me. I was on my way to the exit when I bumped into Reese and Kub. I’ve talked to everyone. They were the only team on that side.”
“Don’t that beat all? It goes to show sometimes a little information is worse than none at all.”
“What it goes to show is that I’ve been in trouble at two fires, and for no discernible reason. Oscar Stillman was at the IC post dispensing information that could, if acted on, make things worse for me at both of them.”
“I don’t think he meant any harm.”
“You don’t think it’s odd he was at both fires?”
“Does seem strange.”
They sat back and watched the rest of the footage on Leary Way. When G. A. Montgomery showed up on the tape, Finney said, “You worked with G. A. What was he like?”
“Biggest pussy I ever worked with. George Armstrong? God, he hated combat. He worked at Thirty-four’s when I was Battalion Two, and every time I said I was coming down to give them a drill, he’d have a bloody nose when I got there. People used to call him Captain Kotex. Said he should keep one up his nostril in case his period started again. I haven’t thought about that in years.”
“You think he might be crooked?”
“No way. I knew his uncle. Good people.”
“What about Oscar Stillman?”
“Oscar used to ride Attack Ten in the days when they were getting a lot of fires. That boy could eat smoke. I swear he’d still be in operations if he hadn’t hurt his back. He tried to get out on a disability, but they called it phantom back pain. Instead of handing him a pension, they ended up sticking him down at the Fire Marshal’s office. For a while there, he was real bitter.”
Finney got up and stood at the window of the family room looking down over the backyard. As children, they were never allowed to leave so much as a toy in the yard, but when he was ten he’d asked his father for permission to build a tree house in the apple tree behind the garage, and his father, for some reason, said yes. Finney worked on it alone for weeks, and then one overcast Saturday afternoon while he hammered away, his father showed up and began helping. It had been uncharacteristic of him. His father worked with him all afternoon, and the memory of that day remained one of the brightest of Finney’s childhood; he rarely visited home without checking to see if the faded boards of the tree house were still in place, always felt an inner warmth when he saw they were.
His father stood beside him at the window. “I ever tell you about the Ozark Hotel, John? The college basketball championships were on TV. I was on Ladder Four. We could see the column of black smoke from the station, and then we rolled up on it just as two jumpers hit the sidewalk right smack in front of us. Smoke and flame coming out of everywhere. Every window had a head in it. Me and Samuelson, we got the thirty-five, and we put it up to the first person we came to. The guy jumped for the ladder before we even got it upright, almost knocked it out of our hands. He missed the ladder, of course, fell at our feet. Brains exploding all over our boots.”
Finney knew the details by heart, but he let his father ramble, knowing the telling of it was somehow soothing to his father, perhaps in the same way that telling the tale of Leary Way would be therapeutic to him some day.
“They had transom windows above all the doors to the rooms, so the fire went down the hallways and burned through these simple-ass windows and got into each of the rooms before the poor bastards knew what hit them. We put up every goddamn ladder we had and then