Slaughter (5 page)

“Yeah. But I don't know what that means.”

“He wrote
Peyton Place,
didn't he?”

Quinn said, “Good luck, Harley,” and hung up.

 

 

Half an hour later, the packages were declared safe. Quinn and Renz had each been the recipient of a jigsaw with a charred wooden handle. As they suspected, there was no clue as to who had placed the packages in the mail. Not a very direct clue, anyway.

J
ust looking at it, no one would guess that the building in the West Village had once been a bakery. In the early seventies it had been converted to a three-story apartment building, with a small foyer. In the nineties, the building had been renovated again, and in a major way. Twenty more stories had been added, and the building had become a boutique hotel, serving both guests and residents. Stone had replaced brick on part of the exterior, the foyer had become a legitimate lobby, complete with leather easy chairs and potted plants, and an elevator had been installed. Upstairs, most large rooms had become suites or been subdivided into small rooms. The halls were carpeted in a deep red, and paneled halfway up to cream-colored wallpaper with a subtle rose print.

Emilio Torres, the head of maintenance in the building, lived with his wife, Anna, in a separate, super's apartment below ground level. He could open his door, take two steps forward, climb three steps, and be in the lobby near the elevators. During certain late-night hours one of the elevators stayed in service, while the other was used only by the staff. When that happened, whatever workmen or equipment needed was shuffled between floors, using the other elevator.

The virtually new building was named Off the Road, in a sort of salute to the beat generation of the fifties, and the rates were reasonable—by Manhattan standards.

The West Village was home to artists of all types, some of whom were doing at least okay financially. Off the Road was a success. Units were purchased for ownership or rental, and recently all had become occupied.

Emilio slept well. All of the systems in the building were almost new. Everything worked as it should, and almost everything was designed to make maintenance and upkeep as easy and infrequent as possible.

He wasn't sure what had awakened him at three a.m. At first he thought he must have something to do, and either he or Anna had set the alarm. After all, it was precisely three o'clock.

But he knew it was unlikely that either he or Anna had set the alarm as a reminder of some task.

He felt worry slip away as he felt himself drawn again to sleep. The apartment—the entire building—seemed quiet now. All he could hear was the steady rhythm of Anna breathing.

She stirred and turned away from him, drawing up her knees. Her familiar, gentle snoring comforted him.

Maybe that was what had awoken him. Anna had for some reason cried out in her sleep. Emilio punched his pillow to fluff it up, then rolled onto his stomach and rested the right side of his face on the cool, soft linen.

He might have gone back to sleep. He wasn't sure afterward.

There was a muffled shuffling sound from out in the lobby. Anna put out an arm so she could reach the lamp on her side of the bed, and switched it on.

She and Emilio lay facing each other, staring puzzled into each other's eyes.

Anna started to say something, but Emilio lifted a hand and put his forefinger to his lips, urging her to be quiet.

Sirens were wailing off in the distance. A lot of them. It took less than a minute for Emilio to be sure they were converging on Off the Road.

His building!

Emilio sprang out of bed and yanked on his pants, which were folded on a nearby chair. He fastened his belt, slid his bare feet into slippers. After cautioning Anna to stay in the apartment, he pulled a wifebeater shirt over his head and went to the door.

He felt the brass doorknob first, to make sure it was cool. Then he was through the door, and up the steps to the lobby.

 

 

The smell hit him first. Something burning. Then he saw a thick pall of black smoke clinging to the ceiling. Tenants were running and sometimes tumbling down the fire stairs, pursued by the smoke. A paunchy, white-haired guy, wearing nothing but Jockey shorts, shoved Emilio out of the way, cursed, and ran for the street door. Voices were calling back and forth. At least no one was mindlessly screaming. Not yet.

Though the fire was obviously upstairs, the elevator was at lobby level. As its door slid open, people tried to stream out but were blocked by others. Every few seconds someone was ejected by force out onto the lobby floor.

Finally they managed something like order, and came stumbling out one after the other. The last one out, a woman whose name was Karen and who Emilio thought was a painter, paused at the elevator door and reached back inside before stepping away.

“No!” Emilio cried. “Don't send the elevator back up! Don't use it! You can be trapped in it.”

Karen stared at him, comprehended, then stopped the elevator doors from closing and stuffed her purse in the door. The elevator stalled, stopped, and began to ding over and over. It was already filling up with smoke.

Karen, in a blue robe and one blue slipper, stopped running and gripped Emilio by the bicep, squeezing hard.

“Get out, Emilio! There's nothing you can do.”

But there was. “Anna!”

“There!” Karen cried, and pointed.

Anna was crossing the lobby toward Emilio. He slipped from Karen's grasp and went to save her. They hugged, but quickly, and he began to lead her through lowering, thickening black smoke toward the street door.

The door hung open, its vacuum sweep dangling and broken.

They were three feet away from it when a huge apparition burst in. A New York fireman in full regalia, boots, slicker, gloves, a hat, and some kind of respiratory mask.

Emilio and Anna jumped back out of the way as several more fireman streamed in and headed for the stairway.

The first one who'd come in stared at Emilio from behind the mask.

“I'm the super,” Emilio said.

“Get out for now,” said the gruff voice on the other side of the mask's visor. “But don't go away.”

“We've got no place to go,” Emilio said. “This is home.”

“Better leave it before it falls on you,” the fireman said.

One of the firemen who'd gone upstairs was back. The one talking with Emilio and Anna went over to him, and the two men started shouting at each other. The big fireman, with the hat that suggested he was in charge, glanced over and noticed Emilio and Anna and waved them toward the street door.

The smoke was thickest where it was backed up at the door, though the door itself had been removed and lay shattered off to the side. Emilio and Anna made their way outside and began coughing. A fireman led them away.

“How did this happen?” Emilio shouted, as if maybe the fireman was at fault.

“Don't know how yet,” the fireman said. “But it looks like it started on the upper floors first, then another fire in the basement. On timers, so the fire would move up and down, catch people in a kind of pincer movement of flames.”

“Then somebody did this on purpose,” Karen said.

“Yes, ma'am. That'd be my guess.”

“Whoever did it wanted to kill people.”

“Oh, yes, ma'am.”

Emilio and Anna had stopped on the street.

The fireman studied the flames for a moment. “Don't waste time, then,” he said. “Get some distance between you and the fire.” He patted them both on the shoulder. “Go!”

The fire seemed to close in on them, and the smoke thickened, as if the flames wanted to take advantage of the firefighter's departure.

But they both knew the way. Emilio knew these streets.

The acrid smoke made their eyes sting and caused them to water. Their throats felt raw, and every cough hurt.

Squinting so he could see at least partially, Emilio took Anna's hand, and they made their way among shadowy desperate figures, python-like coils of hose, flashing multicolored lights. There was a lot of shouting and cursing. A police car arrived, its siren dying as the vehicle pulled to the curb half a block away, then backed around at a right angle so the car blocked the street. Two uniformed cops got out and redirected traffic even as they jogged toward the intersection.

Emilio and Anna made their way along the far side of the street and sat on the stoop of a building across the street from theirs. Anna produced tissues from somewhere and they dabbed at their eyes.

When they could see better, Emilio looked more carefully at Off the Road. The building was burning fiercely. Flames seemed to show in every window.

Almost at ground level, toward the rear where it wasn't noticeable from the street, there was movement. Emilio knew that a basement window was there; it was small, but it let in light.

Now it was letting someone out. A small figure fleeing the fire. At first Emilio thought he was imagining it. He used a wad of tissue to wipe tears from his eyes. Yes! A woman, judging by her size, was exiting the building via the basement window. Both arms were visible now, a leg crooked sharply at the knee. The figure didn't look so much like a woman now. Something in the way it moved.

It was a small man, wearing a baseball cap crookedly cocked on his head. Outside the window, he glanced around, noticed Emilio staring at him, and trotted, then walked to join the gawkers down the street.

He glanced back again. In the brightness of the streetlight and police and FDNY flashing lights, Emilio noticed an elfin quality about him. Because of his ear. One large ear stuck straight out from his head and came to a sharp point. He had his head turned so Emilio couldn't see the other ear. The jockey-size man moved away, back among the gawkers. He was so graceful that he almost danced. Within seconds he was invisible.

“Did you see that?” Emilio asked.

Anna shook her head and dabbed at her eyes with her tissue. “I can hardly see my toes,” she said. “What was it?”

“I thought I saw somebody, a small man, climb out of a basement window.”

“Getting away from the flames,” Anna said. “Did he make it?”

“Yes. He seemed to have plenty of time. Seemed . . .”

“What?”

“To know what he was doing. It was very strange, Anna.”

She moved to sit nearer to him on the hard concrete step. “This whole night has been very strange.”

“There's something else that's strange,” Emilio said, staring at the water from the fire hoses running like a small creek toward a storm sewer. “I see them directing their hoses to put water on the lower floors of the building, but not the upper.”

“It looks as if the streams of water won't reach that high.”

“There are standpipes on the landings of the high floors. All they have to do is carry the hoses up and attach them.”

“That's where the fire seems to have started,” Anna said. “Maybe they already decided they couldn't save it.”

“Maybe.” Emilio looked again at the gurgling stream of water hugging the curb. “It seems that for such a big fire, we've seen very little water.”

Anna shook her head. “Water, fire, they both ruin things.”

Emilio snaked an arm around her and hugged. “Not everything.”

S
even people were dead. Thirteen more were still hospitalized, most of them the victims of smoke inhalation.

The morning after the Off the Road hotel fire, Quinn and Fedderman stood in the building's ruined basement. Most of the ashes were soaked, and the acrid smell of the fire, which was still smoldering here and there, was enough to sting noses with every breath. There was a lingering, nauseating smell that Quinn recognized from other fires and their aftermaths. He wouldn't eat steak for a while.

An Arson Squad investigator stood near the collapsed stairway, near a blackened furnace that was the origin of the fire. His name was Hertz, like the car rental company, but he wasn't family, or what would he be doing analyzing fires? He was in dark blue uniform except for oversized green rubber boots that came almost up to his knees. He was carrying a clipboard with a thick sheaf of paper, which he now and then jotted on with a stubby yellow pencil. All three men wore yellow hard hats. Hertz's had his name stenciled on it and it looked as if afforded more protection than the helmets on Quinn and Fedderman.

“We don't wanna stay around too long here,” he said.

Fedderman glanced around nervously. “This place about to fall?” he asked, obviously trying to stay calm.

Hertz laughed in a way that was a kind of snort that aggravated Quinn.

“I wouldn't be here myself if I thought it was dangerous.”

Fedderman looked at him. “You just said—”

“We believe in every measure of precaution,” Hertz assured him.

Quinn wasn't sure what that meant but let it pass. “You sure the fire was deliberately set?” he asked. Already knowing the answer.

Hertz nodded his helmeted head. “Look at this.” He moved over a few steps to his right and pointed at a blackened, half-melted mass. “See that?” He pointed at a charred arc of metal, and something else, a tiny black arrow. “That's the top of a minute hand. This is what's left of a wind-up alarm clock. When it rang, a key rotated and wound some string that pulled two wires together and triggered an incendiary blast.” He gestured with his hand. “See how the alligatoring starts here and moves out in all direction? The floor looks that way, too, only on a larger scale. There was some kind of accelerant on it that caught fire and spread flames fast. People wouldn't believe how fast.”

Quinn believed. He'd seen the results of fires set by clever arsonists.

“This guy know what he was doing?” Quinn asked.

“Judging by the results, he knew enough.”

“I mean, was he a pro?”

“I don't think so. The timing device is jerry-rigged, but good enough to strike a spark. But it doesn't look like the work of a really skilled arsonist. I'd describe this guy as a clumsy but talented amateur.” Hertz jutted out his chin and looked out to the side, thinking. “Unless. . .”

“What?” Fedderman asked.

“Unless he was an expert pretending to be an amateur,” Quinn said.

Hertz looked at him, obviously miffed that Quinn had been a step ahead of him and had stolen his line.

“Exactly,” he said, smiling. “Very good, Captain.” As if Quinn were an apt pupil. “But there's also the sabotaging of the coiled fire hoses.”

“We didn't know about that.”

“When there are fires higher than our ladders and hoses can reach, there are standpipes installed at each landing. Fire hoses are coiled in glass front cases near them. They're usually not long enough to reach very far along the halls, so extension hoses carried up by the FDNY are coupled to them. Improvised steel clamps are used to pinch the standpipe hoses about seven feet from the standpipes, where they couldn't be seen when the hoses were coiled. They backed up the water and the crimped hoses burst under the pressure. It took valuable time to replace them, especially considering that the brass on them had been beaten out of round. Amateur work, but effective.”

Quinn understood now why the flames had so fiercely ravaged the building's upper floors. A simple shortage of water.

Hertz grinned in a way that wasn't pleasant. “He's a clever arsonist, our firebug.”

“A clever killer,” Quinn amended.

Hertz snorted. “That, too.”

Something shifted above them, making a loud groan.

“Let's get out of here,” Fedderman said. “Before the place falls on us.”

No one argued with him.

Back across the street from the burned-out building, the three men removed their helmets and smoothed back sweat-drenched hair.

“You need a shower after each of these inspections?” Quinn asked.

Hertz laughed and emitted his peculiar snort. “That'd be nice. 'Specially for my wife.” He looked from Fedderman to Quinn. “So, what's next for you guys?”

“We're going to interview the super,” Quinn said. “We'll copy you.”

“Vice versa,” Hertz said. “Supers know everything in these buildings. See if he's missing any alarm clocks.”

He was smiling again, obviously enjoying his work. Quinn liked him for that.

“His wife, Anna, is not to be taken lightly, either,” Hertz said. “She's the beauty and the brains.”