Pyro (3 page)

4. TIPS ON APPROPRIATE CONDUCT AFTER YOU GET CAUGHT MASTURBATING IN TIMES SQUARE

According to Earl Ward

         
You want to be famous, it’s simple, all you need is a book of matches and the willingness to spend the rest of your life in prison. Period.

I tell you this, but it’s not the way I landed in the Powder River Correctional Facility and then later at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

I
will
tell you this: If I never spend another second in the august state of Oregon, it will be too soon.

Fire is what I know and fire is what I love, but fire is not why I spent the majority of my sorry life being Nelson’s bitch; I almost wish it had been. On the other hand, had I gone into the joint as a firefly, they might have treated me worse.

What I got now, if you stop and think this through clearly, is my mother’s 1976 Dodge Dart when she’s not at work or out playing bingo or driving her idiot friends to doctors’ appointments, a criminal record that keeps employers at bay, and a girlfriend named Jaclyn.

In some ways losing the right to vote is the worst. I think the Republicans are having a hard time, and every vote counts.

If things had worked out the way our dear Lord Jesus intended, I’d be riding one of those big red engines and nobody would have to worry about me walking up a dark alley with a book of matches. It’s
their
fault, not mine. What I really wanted to be, from the time I was two, and what I should have been, was first and foremost—a firefighter. You look at things from that perspective, it’s their fault. Everything. Period.

Seems like nobody’s ever been fair with me.

And now this hassle with Jaclyn.

We were in the caretaker’s house, Jaclyn and me, behind the main house, at the back of the garden. It was wet outside but it wasn’t raining. From time to time you could see the moon poking through the clouds. Eight days I’d been free. Each day a small miracle.

“Get out of my house,” said Jaclyn. “Who told you to come sniffing around here at midnight?”

“It’s not midnight. It’s eleven-thirty.”

“Okay. Who told you to come at eleven-thirty?”

It would be the third time she’d thrown me out of her place in a week.

Jaclyn Dahlstrom. Late twenties, blond from a bottle, sexy like a cheap porno mag you find alongside the road. Likes to write prisoners. Hell, I was the one who got her this job, taking care of the old woman. Mom told me about it and I told her. Then when I showed up last week, all she did was laugh and throw me out.

“You come here at eleven-thirty and bother me when Leno’s about to come on. And God help your sorry ass if you woke up Mrs. Pennington. You didn’t ring her bell, did you?”

“I didn’t wake up anybody.”

“Jesus Christ. Look at that. You made me miss the monologue. Now he’s going to a commercial.”

“I thought we were going to have something between us. You and me. Something—”

“What we had was a bunch of letters. And you lied in those letters. You said you were in for murder.”

“I
was
in for murder.”

“What? You run over a chipmunk with your mother’s car? Listen, punky. There’s
nothing
between us. So get out.”

“I don’t get it. You were flirting with me before.”

“I get so tired of people saying I’m a flirt. What did I do that you interpreted as flirting?”

“For one thing, you asked me how much I would pay to see you naked.”

“And you said you didn’t have any money. That wasn’t flirting. That, my friend, was an aborted business transaction.”

“Jaclyn.” She went over to the dark window where light from the courtyard fell on her hair and about took my breath away. “I didn’t have any money. But I do now.”

“I’m not going out with somebody who doesn’t have two nickels to rub together. How much do you have?”

“Jesus, Jaclyn. How much does a guy need? What if I were to ask my mother for money?”

She tapped her bare foot on the floor and stared a hole through me. Even her feet were pretty, the toenails painted crimson. “How old are you, Earl?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not a trick question. Just answer.”

“Forty-four.”

“You’re forty-four years old, and you still have to ask your mother for money?”

“I—”

“Do you realize how pathetic that is?”

“Jaclyn . . .”

A minute later I was in the Pennington garden looking up at the lighted window in the caretaker’s house.

That’s the thing with beautiful women. Their lives are too damn easy. She wouldn’t have it too easy if I went back up there and fucked her. I could do that. I could stomp back up those stairs and kick the door in. I know how to fuck somebody. That’s one thing you learn in prison. Boy, wouldn’t she be sorry? I could wear a mask. I could put a hood over my face. Maybe a paper bag. They’d never prove it was me.

Except I don’t have a paper bag.

I walk over to the shadows by the side of the house and wait under Jaclyn’s window, the big house behind me dark and quiet.

I’m where I’ve been many times before, alone, in the shadows, crying.

After a while it starts to sprinkle.

Getting spotted lighting a fire—it’s a little like getting caught masturbating in public.
You
know you were doing it and
they
know you were doing it, but when you get hauled up in front of the judge, you’re going to say you weren’t and they know you’re going to say you weren’t. It’s the nature of the beast.

It’s always so simple.

A book of matches and the willingness to light something. That’s all
I
ever had.

Period.

I got a whole scrapbook from my merrymaking. A scrapbook and then some. ’Course, I was famous and anonymous at the same time, and that last part hurt. I never wanted to be anonymous. For a while there I had the fire department running around like the Easter bunny with a dog after it. It was funny, though. Not ha-ha funny but funny in a way that makes you put your hands in your pockets and smile.

From my point of view lighting things always makes everything better. Been doing it since I was a tyke.

I look down at my Bic lighter. I flick it open and stare. Amazing. There isn’t anything like it. I mean, take water. You can’t start out with a drop of water and end up with an ocean, now can you?

There is a newspaper recycle bin next to the big house, and from this bin I remove last Sunday’s paper. I tear a strip off and light it. Then another. The flames are comforting. In the drizzle I feel the heat on my face.

The house behind me is two stories plus, with basement window wells. I step into one of the wells and push the window open with my foot.

The room beyond the pane is dark. I tear off a strip of newspaper, light it, and let it drop inside.

I pull the basement window shut. Looking back at the cottage, I watch the blue light from a television set and wait.

5. NOTHING VISIBLE

         
It was half past midnight when the house bells and lights woke me. At the front of the apparatus Rideout was getting into her bunking coat when I squeezed past.

It was a “reported Dumpster fire—possibly spreading to the building.” Twenty-third and Cherry.

Gliniewicz pulled Engine 6 out of the station and raced down the street while Jeff Dolan held Ladder 3 close behind, bitching that Gliniewicz was driving too fast. At Twenty-third and Cherry we found nothing but wet streets and a minimart on the corner. No smoke or fire. By the look of the streets, it had been raining hard, water puddling in the ripples in the roadway.

Slaughter gave a brief radio report. “Attack Six at Twenty-three Avenue and East Cherry Street. Nothing visible. Investigating. Let’s code yellow all incoming units until we find out what’s going on.”

The dispatcher said, “Okay, Attack Six. Nothing visible. Investigating. All units responding to Twenty-three Avenue and East Cherry—code yellow.”

My father had worked these same streets. He must have felt, as I did, that there was nothing stranger than waking out of a deep sleep and racing down the street on a thirty-ton rig, red lights and sirens blaring. It was one of the reasons I loved the job.

The first call was a false alarm, but before we got back to the station we responded to three more fire calls, all arsons. One was a tree fire. Attack 6 caught a fence fire. We caught a garbage can on fire behind a residence. When Pickett and Rideout came around the truck with pump cans, I watched Rideout make a point of getting water on the fire first. I liked that.

We ended up missing two more fires while we waited for an investigator. There’d been multiple arsons in this part of town over the last two weeks, and the department’s investigative arm, Marshal 5, wanted to see every one of them.

“Who do you think’s setting all these fires?” Rideout asked.

“Probably some probationary firefighter who wasn’t getting enough action,” Dolan teased.

At two
A.M
. Marshal 5’s investigator arrived, a woman named Connor. After she snapped her photos and poked around, we headed back to the station, where Rideout and Dolan refilled the pump cans and pressurized them, Pickett went to bed, and I wrote the fire report on the computer in the cramped inspection room just outside my office.

Thirty seconds after my head touched the pillow the house lights came on again, the big bell on the apparatus floor clanged, and we heard the dispatcher over the station amplifier. “Porch fire. Flames showing.”

“I get my hands on this arsonist, I’ll fuck ’im up,” said Dolan, using the steering wheel to pull himself up onto the rig. “I’ll fuck him up good. We’re supposed to be in bed.”

6. YOU BE BURNIN’ ME OUTTA MY HOME

         
Both rigs were fired up and everybody was on board except Zeke Boles. For whatever reason, Boles hadn’t reported to the apparatus floor, and now Slaughter and Gliniewicz were shouting his name in an attempt to wake him up.

Their efforts might have been more effective if one of them had gone to the bunk room to get Boles, but they preferred to sit on the rig screaming until their neck veins bulged and their mustaches twitched. Being effective was not their goal. This was about enjoying their rage, and I had the impression they both relished the sight of a black man screwing up.

“Let’s go,” I said to Dolan, even though by the book we were supposed to follow behind the quicker engine.

It was a porch fire on Thirty-first Avenue South. We were the first firefighters on the scene, but there wasn’t much we could do except mark the location and give a radio report. Ladder 3 carried almost no water. We had the hundred-foot aerial built into our truck, half a dozen ground ladders, hundreds of tools, pry bars, machinery of all sorts, ropes for high angle rescue, so much equipment the apparatus compartments could barely contain it, but only five gallons of water in two pump cans.

“Ladder Three at eighteen twelve Thirty-one Avenue South,” I said into the black telephone-style handset. “We have a preconnect porch fire attached to a two-story wood-frame residence approximately thirty by forty. Engine Thirty, on your arrival lay a preconnect. Ladder Three is doing search and rescue.”

I turned around and looked at Pickett and Rideout. “Make sure everybody’s out. Take the thermal imager to see if the fire has spread. Rideout, take the irons.”

As I spoke, Engine 30 rolled up from the other direction.

Two men climbed down out of Engine 30’s crew cab, ran around to the back of the apparatus to pull out the two-hundred-foot 1
³
⁄
₄
-inch preconnected line, and tapped the fire, all in less than ninety seconds.

When an elderly Filipino man and woman emerged from the house in their pajamas, Rideout escorted them down the concrete stairs so they would be safe from the hose stream.

My guess was the perp was still somewhere in the neighborhood. Two vehicles had driven past: a station wagon with a family in it, and a young man and woman in a Jeep, who looked as if they were coming home from a date—if people still dated these days.
I
didn’t. Not like that.

The fire was out and we were regrouping when the dispatcher sent Attack 6 and Ladder 3 to Thirtieth Avenue South and South Judkins, mere blocks away.

Attack 6 took off and a minute later we found them on Thirtieth South parked in front of a fence fire. Zeke Boles was using a pump can to put water on the flames. Had this been your first glimpse of him, you might have thought he was firefighter of the year.

“Damn! Look at that,” Pickett said.

“That’s Zeke,” Dolan said. “Fall asleep in his spaghetti one minute, save your life the next.”

While we were mopping up and talking to neighbors, Engine 30 was dispatched to a residence a block or two west of the original call on Thirty-first. It was clear our fire-setter was still working the area.

“Don’t this bastard ever sleep?” Dolan asked.

“I don’t get it,” Rideout said. “Why would somebody go around lighting fences and porches?”

“So this is how many tonight?” Dolan asked. “Six? Six.” He turned to Rideout with a glint in his eye. “Hey, little girl. This the first time you ever had six arson fires in one night? The probie buys ice cream for every first.”

“My name is Rideout.”

Dolan grinned. “Okay. But you owe us ice cream.”

“If you say so.”

Engine 30 came on the radio. “Engine Thirty. We have a fully involved car fire. No exposures. Laying a preconnect.”

“Okay, Engine Thirty,” said the dispatcher. “Fully involved car fire. Preconnect.”

“We’re going to be up all night,” said Pickett. “I got a golf game tomorrow morning.”

Minutes later Battalion 5’s Suburban pulled up and Chief Johnson asked us to return to the first alarm on Thirty-first to pick up Engine 30’s hose line, which they’d abandoned when they got the car fire. We were shoulder loading and draining it when Attack 6 was dispatched to a garage fire down the hill on Lake Washington Boulevard South. Moments later the dispatcher added us to the alarm.

Until now we’d been saved by luck, insomnia, and drivers with cell phones. But there was no guarantee the next fire would be spotted in time. Most of the city was asleep. Any wall fire could spread to the eaves, flash through the attic, destroy a house before the family inside could roll out of bed. What we had here was a murderer looking for victims. The thought made my blood boil. I’d always hated arsonists, but this was the first time I’d run up against one this bold.

Our garage fire was “out by occupant“ when we got there.

We were on our way back to the station when we ran into the biggest fire of the night quite by accident. As we were driving past, we spotted some orange light flickering off the walls of a nearby house.

“Sonofabitch!” said Dolan.

As we pulled around the corner and headed down the residential block under the trees, a thick pall of smoke hung in the street. “How the hell did they miss this?” Dolan asked. “Attack Six must have driven right past it.”

“They were probably busy yelling at Zeke,” said Pickett.

The fire was in a garage directly across from a nursing home on a little-traveled street.

I called it in on the radio, asked for a full response, and told Dolan to park in front of the nursing home, where we wouldn’t be blocking the hydrant or any other incoming units.

There were two large houses on the south face of the block, with a garage between them at the top of a long driveway. Black smoke was boiling from under the eaves of the garage.

“I’m going to the roof,” Dolan said, as I came around the front of Ladder 3.

“Take Rideout with you. Let her cut the hole.” Pickett had rendered himself useless by running up to the fire building for a gander, “scouting,” he would explain later when I chewed him out. “You and I’ll carry a ladder,” I said to Rideout.

Across the street Attack 6 pulled around the corner and Gliniewicz jumped out so quickly he fell onto his hands and knees. I’d noticed earlier he was excitable on alarms. Slaughter was already screaming at Zeke Boles. “God damn it, Zeke! Where the fuck are you? I said preconnect. When I say preconnect that means you get the preconnect. Are you deaf, man? Jesus Christ. Do I have to do everything for you? You want me to wipe your behind too? You like four squares or do you want me to shove the whole goddamn roll up your ass?”

Even though he was already one jump ahead of his officer, you could see Zeke beginning to buckle under the abuse. I had never had that reaction when I was a rookie working under Slaughter. I’d been as close to clobbering him those first few times he screamed at me as I’d been to clobbering anyone. Fortunately I hadn’t, or I would have lost my job. His yelling on the fire ground was odd behavior for somebody who prided himself on being so reasonable and measured around the station.

Rideout and I slid the heavy three-section, thirty-five-foot ladder from the rear ladder compartment on Ladder 3 and walked across the street with it. Avoiding both windows on the side of the oversized garage, we dropped the spurs into the flower bed and I steadied the ladder from one side while Rideout stood on the other and tugged on the halyard to raise the sections. I’d given her the fly side to test her strength. A lot of people weren’t strong enough to raise the flies on a thirty-five-foot ladder. Others were strong enough during daylight hours but couldn’t do it in the middle of the night. Rideout raised it without a hitch.

In front of the garage Slaughter and Zeke were straightening the kinks in a two-hundred-foot section of hose Zeke had laid from the engine. Through the smoky opening I saw two automobiles. You could hear glass breaking, the crackle of fire, a popping sound as a can of paint exploded. Inside sat a Fifties-era Buick, pristine and shiny. Another automobile looked to be a decade older: whitewall tires, running boards, and a suicide door—collector’s items.

Taking a lungful of black smoke, I shouldered the heavy door open. Zeke opened the task force tip on his 1
³
⁄
₄
-inch line and threw a spray of water into the interior.

“What the hell are you doing?” Slaughter barked. “You see any fire? You see anything? You don’t just go squirting at smoke. Look for the seat of the fire.”

Chief Johnson showed up a moment later, his words muffled by the yowling of the chain saw on the roof. “Who called this in?”

“We did,” I said. “We spotted it from the road.”

Even if we lost control of the garage fire, which was not going to happen, the only other building in immediate danger was the residence to the west. The larger residence to the east was separated by the driveway and a small garden embroidered with ivy.

“What the hell’s going on? I been hearing sirens all night, and now you people be burnin’ me outta my home.” A large, angry-looking man climbed the slope of the driveway.

“You’ll have to go back, sir,” said Chief Johnson. “This area is under fire department jurisdiction.”

“That’s my home next door there. My wife’s over there right now coughin’ her fool head off ’cause of the smoke. Whatsa matter wi’ you people?” He’d been drinking.

“Sir,” Johnson said. “We didn’t start this.”

“You tryin’ to say
I
did?”

“Sir, you’re going to have to leave this area until we get things under control.”

I found Rideout at the base of the ladder we’d put up. “Why aren’t you opening the roof?”

“Pickett said we were switching partners.”

“He said what?”

“He said we were switching partners, that he and Dolan were opening the roof.”