Firetrap (27 page)

56. IF CATS WERE AS BIG AS DOGS

TREY
>

Our materials spread out on a blanket on the grass, we worked for a little over three hours and then went to Café Flora, where Estevez paid for a leisurely lunch for both of us. Café Flora was in the Madison Valley neighborhood midway between my house and Stone Carmichael's mansion on the lake.

When I took her in my arms down at the lake, I knew in the blink of an eye that Estevez had feelings for me I hadn't noticed before. Like India, Estevez was one of those women most men assumed they didn't have a prayer with, and she'd been so damn snippy with me that it was a real ego boost to realize she'd been thinking about me in that way. For some reason, it changed the whole way I thought about her, made her more lovable.

At Café Flora we ordered Wu-Wei tea, and then I feasted on the Oaxaca tacos, roasted corn tortillas filled with spicy mashed potatoes served with black beans and wilted greens. Estevez nibbled at her organic wild greens salad. After the meal, she took out a notebook and said, “Let's talk about how it came about that people didn't get rescued.”

My phone rang before we could go any further. It was Kendra inviting me to visit our father with her that afternoon. “Sorry, I can't make that. I'm busy and can't leave my partner hanging.”

“What about Saturday? I could bring the girls and you could meet them. Father wants to see you badly. I think he wants to make amends.”

“I don't know if it's such a good idea.”

“I would love it if you and he could find some sort of resolution. I know this has been hard on you, Trey, but I would love it if we could work this out somehow. Please?”

“Okay, I'll do it for you. And I'd love to meet your kids. He at the same house?”

“No. Grandpa's old place across the lake. Saturday? Threeish?”

“Okay.”

As Estevez and I saw it, the Z Club fire was confusing for a lot of reasons. There were civilians giving contradictory stories to the IC. There was what amounted to a secret club operating on the second floor, and it was a long time before anybody in that club got to a window. The only two exits were blocked. But so far I hadn't seen anything to indicate fire department personnel had knowingly bypassed victims.

On the north side of the building, Engine 28 put a ladder up and found multiple victims on the second floor. At the time firefighters had been assured everybody was out of the building, while many of the onlookers had concerns that this was not the case. It appeared to many of these increasingly angry onlookers that the fire department was deliberately ignoring their concerns.

Approximately twenty-five minutes after the first units arrived, it was determined that firefighting efforts inside the building had become too hazardous to continue, and all rescue operations were suspended.

We'd already spoken to every firefighter who'd been on the second floor, where all the victims except Sweeting were found and where the people in the stairwell had come from. The cell phone call was what is known in the movies as the MacGuffin. It kept our search going, but that was all it was good for. The fact was, I was the only firefighter who ran into civilians inside the building, and we were fairly certain the caller had seen me pass by in the smoke more than once, and thus thought he was being passed by more than one firefighter. If the man hadn't been so heavy, I would have gotten him out. In the report, we would have to explain that rescuing him would have required two or three men. The community could make what it wanted of our not having enough manpower on side C to accomplish this. What we were finding out about the building ownership, and my suspicions about Stone being involved in some sort of cover-up, went a lot higher than the original charge of firefighters bypassing victims in the smoke. This was going to bring down an administration and maybe put some people in jail.

When we left Café Flora, we headed downtown on Madison, the only street in Seattle that stretched uninterrupted from Elliott Bay to Lake Washington. I explained as much to Estevez, who said, “You're just a fountain of information, aren't you?”

“Have you ever considered the fact that if house cats were as big as dogs, they'd kill us and eat us?” She laughed.

At Madison and Broadway we stopped at the light while a group of marchers carrying signs, placards, and a toy fire engine crossed the street against the light and blocked traffic. They were chanting, “We want the truth. We want the truth.” Instinctively I scanned the faces for Johnny, but he wasn't among them. One sign had photographs of Z Club victims under the words “We're not going to forget” written in red paint. I would have liked it if they'd included Sweeting's photo, but in all this conspiracy talk, his sacrifice went largely unmentioned.

We worked through Thursday and Friday, interviewing the rest of the people on Estevez's list. Nothing major came to light, and to my surprise, Estevez and I managed to keep our bickering to a minimum.

57. DADDY'S BOY

TREY
>

Palatial is the word the Sunday magazine used ten years ago when they profiled the Meydenbauer Bay estate where my father now lives—a brick-walled ivy-covered mansion with an English garden Kendra and I used to romp in as kids, and in which her children play now.

It was Saturday afternoon just before two o'clock when I pulled through the security gates behind a Lexus SUV, roared down the long driveway, and parked the bike in front of the main doorway near the portico and the wisteria I remembered from when we were kids. I twisted the throttle a couple of times just to make sure the neighbors knew the devil was in town, dropped the kick stand, and shut off the motor. I wore black leather chaps with jeans underneath, a beat-up black leather jacket, and a black helmet with sunglasses.

“Trey, it's good to see you again,” Kendra said, hopping out of the Lexus. She wore a sundress and sandals.

“You, too. I thought you were bringing your kids.”

“I, uh…they had a party I forgot about.” It was a weak lie, delivered without conviction, and we both knew she hadn't brought the girls because of lingering doubts about my character—and because she was afraid of the possible fireworks when I met our father.

Father was tucked into his chair in the living room with a blanket around his legs. It was all a little formal and awkward, even for him. Watching Father watch me, I recalled that India had told me how he went to pot the summer Shelby Junior died and I was banished from the clan: how he began drinking heavily, how his business affairs began to slide and continued to slide for years, and in the end, how he and my adopted mother went through some sort of rift they never really seemed to recover from until those last few weeks of her cancer. It was almost as if the guilt for what he'd done to me had undermined his life.

We handled the awkwardness of the situation the way Carmichaels always handled such things, by pretending it wasn't awkward, by plunging ahead as if nothing untoward were happening. “So why don't you tell us all about the Z Club?” Father asked after the conversation fell into a lull.

“It's not something I talk about,” I said.

“Stone tells me the investigation's gone off on a tangent.”

“I don't know where he's getting his information.”

“Is it going off on a tangent?”

“We're doing what needs to be done.”

“Sometimes a man thinks something has to be done, and later it turns out it wasn't right. It can haunt you.”

“Are you speaking from experience?” I said. The room grew silent. There were just the three of us, and we all knew I was referring to what had happened in the San Juans all those years ago. “You're not going to talk about it, are you?”

“Talk about what?”

“About why I was booted out of the family.”

“We all know why you left. You left the family because I made a deal with my business partner to keep you out of jail.”

“There was a lot more going on, and you know it.”

“Can't we let this go? For your sake, can't we?”

“For my sake? I've already done my suffering. I thought it was time we spread it around a little. You ushered me out of that house like somebody sweeping a dead mouse out of a closet. Couldn't get me out fast enough.”

“I wanted you out of Harlan's sight. He was getting madder and madder, and I was afraid of what he might do.”

“I told you I didn't touch Echo, but you didn't believe me.”

“No, I didn't. Because…” Father's voice was beginning to tremble. “Echo convinced us otherwise.”

“Did she?”

“I didn't believe it at first, but I couldn't let you get away with it, either.”

“Who
could
you let get away with it?”

“I don't know what you're getting at.”

“Sure you do. Echo's phoned you by now, right?” Father was quiet. “Right?”

“I may have spoken to her.”

“Oh, come now. How could you forget Echo calling to tell you she lied about who raped her, telling you the wrong son got pilloried? Or maybe it wasn't news to you.”

“She's been under psychiatric care for years. I'm not sure if anything she says can be believed.”

“You still don't want to admit you made a mistake, do you?”

“I made the best decision available to me at the time. It was a confusing night. If there were mistakes made, they were honest ones.”

“You and I both know that's a crock of shit.” The maid, who'd been heading into the room with a tray of lemonade, turned and scampered away. “There was nothing confusing about it at all. If there were, you would have come to find me after a year or two. But you didn't.”

“You seemed happy where you were.”

“How did you know where I was, and how could you possibly know whether I was happy or not?”

“I saw you playing ball.”

“It was convenient, wasn't it? You had two sons left. One white and one black. One of them had to get booted out of the family or your fortunes were going to wane. You had too many deals going with Harlan not to be worried about his reaction. And he wanted the black kid thrown out, didn't he? So out I went like a bucket of trash. Without letting me confront my accuser.”

“You have to remember the alternative was prison.”

“The alternative was a fair hearing.”

“Echo said you did it.”

“And nobody's ever been falsely accused before? What killed me was you believed her over your own son.”

“But why would she lie?”

“You know why.” We stared at each other for a few moments. “Kendra, did Echo call you?” I asked.

“She left a message last night. I haven't gotten back to her.”

“It's your lucky day, old man. You get to tell her. Go ahead. Tell your daughter what really happened.”

“Tell me what?” Kendra asked.

Father coughed. “It was…confusing at best.”

“A couple of nights ago Echo admitted to me that she lied,” I said. “She called him and said the same thing. She's going to tell you, too.” I glared at Father until he looked away. “They railroaded me. I got thrown out of the family so that the real perpetrator could run the family businesses and get elected to public office.”

“But you said that night…” Kendra said. “You said you had…relations out at the cottage.”

“With India.”

The room was suddenly full of silence and autumn sunshine, the gas fireplace burning as it always did when Father was home. “I was only doing what I thought was right,” he said.

“You knew the truth that night, didn't you?”

“There was so much going on, and Overby was crowing for blood. We had all those land deals intertwined, millions of dollars, and if he'd backed out just then it would have gone bad for us. Stone was thinking about asking India to marry him, and Harlan and I were like brothers back in those days. Helen and Elaine were best friends and had been for years. The whole thing was going to split the families apart like a suicide bomber.”

“Wouldn't want to break apart the big happy family, would we? For a while there, you and I were almost like father and son.”

“At least let me apologize.”

“I'm listening.”

But he didn't apologize. It wasn't the Carmichael way to admit having done anything wrong. Deny, obfuscate, and accuse others; but to apologize was bad form. Instead, he said, “I never look at Stone without thinking about that night. I knew he was lying when he was telling us about it by the little tic in his eye. Echo wasn't acting right, either.”

“Oh, no!” Kendra said, apparently without meaning to open her mouth.

Father continued, “My life went to hell after that. We lost all those state contracts. Then Helen was gone, and our net worth went down by almost half.”

“Could slice it up a few more times and still have more than most people see in a lifetime,” I said.

“Don't worry. We're doing better now. You're in my will, Trey. I never took you out of the will. You can rest assured of that. I never took you out of my heart, and I never took you out of my will.”

“You can take me out now.”

“Some day a third of this and a third of what I've got in the market will be yours.”

“Somebody say it,” Kendra whispered. “Say it out loud. I need to hear it in words.”

The room grew quiet, motes of dust swirling slowly in the sunlight near Father's head. He said, “You're going to have to tell her, Trey. I've done too much accusing to do any more.”

I turned, looked at Kendra, and said, “India and I were lovers. Stone and Echo went out to the cottage that night and found us, but they didn't make their presence known. After we left, Stone attacked Echo. Father knew it all along.”

Kendra turned to Father and stood over his chair. “This is the real reason you never let anybody mention Trey? Because you felt guilty? You let Trey take the blame for what Stone did?”

Shelby Carmichael looked a hundred years old now, silent, staring into the plaid blanket on his lap, biting the inside of one cheek. If he didn't have so much money and so many creature comforts, I might have felt sorry for him.

“You're getting a third,” Father said.

“I don't want it,” I said, heading for the doorway.

“Can you at least understand there was your mother to consider? She knew who
your
mother was. And who your father was. And we'd already lost one son that summer. Can you at least understand that?”

“What I understand is that you sacrificed
your
innocent son for her guilty one.”