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By Root 1387 0

Golf Course with the steel mill kids, polishing used golf balls to resell to their former owners, about getting thrashed by the older boys at Cooper Elementary. He’d been small for his age and until high school had suffered for it. He’d had a paper route and a love-hate relationship with his father who’d been a harsh disciplinarian and a worse critic. “Tony and I never quite measured up—me even less than him. I always resented my mother for not sticking up for us, but now I realize she was barely holding her own. I didn’t realize the dynamics of our family until just a couple of years ago. In those days the department didn’t pay like it does now, and my father used to work a second job down at the steel mill in West Seattle. He had little patience to start with and less when he was tired. And he was always tired.

“In school I never did more than okay unless I really liked the class. I was a second-stringer on the basketball team. I wrestled and ran track. After high school I tried college, but my heart wasn’t in it. I worked at Boeing, then got a job with a paint company. I thought I liked it until one morning I woke up and realized I needed to get into the department. It shocked the hell out of my father. I wish we hadn’t wasted so many years yelling at each other.”

“In our house we never raised our voices,” Diana said. “You know what I like best about this job? I like when we’re downtown and some businessman in a three-piece suit sees me on the rig and realizes he’s looking at a woman. The double take. I love it.”

“I love the way little kids go crazy when we drive by.”

“You want kids?”

“If I ever get married again. You?”

“I think so. In a few years.”

They were quiet until she said, “So. You ever going to tell me why you carved your initials in the wheel well of Engine Ten?”

“You saw that?”

“Don’t worry. Nobody else caught it. Tell me what’s going on, John. Tell me why G. A. thinks you set the fire on Riverside Drive.” He was quiet for a few moments as they danced. “I want to help you,” she whispered into his ear.

Until now, he hadn’t trusted anybody with the full catalog of his suspicions, wasn’t sure he wanted to. “I’m being framed,” Finney said. “You really want to hear this?”

“Yes.”

The story took two slow dances and the better part of a fast number which they stood out, gazing out over the fog. From time to time they could see the blinking red lights atop a neighboring skyscraper, but mostly what they watched were the reflections of dancers and candlelit pumpkins in the dark windows. He told her about the dangerous buildings list, about following Monahan, about the counterfeit fire engine, the attempt on his life. When he paused, she said, “I saw Paul and Michael taking pictures of Engine Ten one day.”

“I’d like it better if you saw Jerry Monahan taking pictures of it. Paul and Michael probably carry snapshots of the rig in their wallets to show people next to them on airplanes.”

“Actually, I believe they do.”

He recounted the rest of it, and she listened sympathetically.

“There’s been speculation an arsonist was working last June,” Diana said. “Earlier this week Reese even set up a committee to look into it.”

“I’d hoped that was coming.”

“The committee was disbanded almost as soon as it was put together. Reese said their preliminary findings indicated it was a waste of time.”

“And the committee agreed?”

“I don’t know. I could ask Oscar Stillman. He was the chairman.”

“Don’t bother.” He hadn’t told her about seeing Stillman with Monahan on Airport Way.

When the band announced a short intermission and the dance floor began to clear, a man dressed as Abraham Lincoln accidentally clotheslined his stovepipe hat off on a mobile of witches and goblins, only to have it caught in midair by a man in a Superman outfit, much to the entertainment of the bystanders. People mingled, ran into old friends; the conversations grew almost as loud as the band had been.

“Somebody’s trying to frame you . . . ?” Diana said, thinking aloud. “Somebody was responsible for Leary Way, and they think you’ll expose them?