Stolen (19 page)

I
used two of the gas containers to give the wood a good soaking and carried the third over to a rectangular border of light some thirty-odd feet to my right. I figured that light border was the same door I had tried to open from the street—the one Uretsky had promised was unlocked. Trying the knob, I found the door opened easily from the inside. A little bit of light spilled into the room, and that was when I noticed a stairwell to the other floors directly in front of me. Even though the pallets would burn for just a minute, I figured I should check the second and third floors for any people, as I had on the first.

I noticed the time before heading up.

Five minutes.

I climbed the rickety steps quickly, nervous that the flimsy boards would splinter from my weight. I got out on the second floor and shone my flashlight into the darkness. The upper level was a twin to the one below it. I jumped at the sight of a fat, hairy brown rat as it scurried in and out of my flashlight beam. I had a feeling it would escape the flames just fine. The wood floor creaked and groaned under my weight, and I wondered just how quickly it would burn if it caught fire. Very quickly, I decided.

“Hello!” I shouted. “Anybody here? I’m not the police. Please answer me!”

I trained my flashlight on a few scattered piles of debris, just like below, but no movement. Again, only my echo answered back. I called out once more, and I waited—waited—but no answer. I looked at my watch.

Four minutes.

I raced up to the next level, the top level, and to save time, only popped my head out of the stairwell and repeated my call.

“Hello? Anybody here?”

My voice spilled into the darkness. I listened a few seconds for rustling noises, any movement at all, but heard nothing. As I descended the stairs, the powerful odor of gasoline reminded me I wasn’t a concerned citizen on the lookout for people in danger, but rather the person about to set a fire that would put them in harm’s way. Taking Uretsky’s suggestion, I made a trail of gasoline from the wood pallets to the door as quick as I could. When I exited the warehouse, I had to blink until my eyes adjusted to the light. My breathing was labored from all the gas vapors still swimming in my lungs.

I saw Ruby across the street, standing in position.

I held up my right hand—
Get ready
.

I checked my watch.

Two minutes until the deadline.

I lowered my hand as though starting a drag race. Ruby pulled the fire alarm, and I expected to hear a piercing shrill, but there was no sound at all. I reset my stopwatch and started it again. Five seconds later—ten at the most—I heard the sound of sirens in the distance. Ruby looked at me with a fresh concern. I couldn’t believe how fast the fire department had responded.

I struck a match and let it drop. I stood in the doorway with my mouth agape and watched as the burning trail of gasoline wound its way across the floor on a collision course with the gas-soaked pile of wood pallets. In an instant the darkness of the warehouse erupted into a bright and blinding fireball. There was a powerful
whoosh
sound as all the air in the room seemed to get sucked toward the flame.

A ball of fire shot upward, licking at the varnish on the wood ceiling above. Flames crackled and spit angrily in all directions. Soon I couldn’t see the wood pallets anymore. Smoke began to billow up from the fire and unfurled across the ceiling like a noxious black tide.

Meanwhile, the sirens from a fleet of fire engines sounded louder— help was on its way. Ruby and I needed to make our getaway, and fast. We couldn’t be seen anywhere near the fire I had just set. I raced across the street and grabbed hold of Ruby’s arm.

“Start walking,” I said, pulling down my handkerchief, taking it from a disguise to part of my wardrobe. “Just act normal. Just be natural.”

Of course, I was breathing heavy and hard on our leisurely stroll—nothing at all natural about that.

I could see the fire engines coming, racing toward us.

Ruby and I walked nonchalantly down West Third, thinking the fire trucks would zoom right past, but before they reached our location, the trucks took a sharp right turn onto C Street as if headed for City Point, a Southie neighborhood near Castle Island. I looked behind me and saw black smoke seeping out of the warehouse’s broken first-floor window.

“John, what’s going on?” Ruby asked. The sirens began to fade off into the distance. “Why aren’t they going to the fire?”

My phone rang.

I answered the call.

“We’ve done what you’ve wanted,” I said. I didn’t have to ask who was on the other end of the line. I just knew. “Where’s Winnie? Let her go.”

“Aren’t you wondering why the fire trucks aren’t coming to save the day?” Uretsky asked.

My legs went weak.

Uretsky spoke again. “Did you know that when an alarm is struck, the fire department automatically dispatches three engine companies and two ladder trucks to the scene?”

“What’s going on?” I asked. “Where is Winnie?”

Uretsky ignored my questions. “Did you know that South Boston has two engine companies and two ladder trucks total? Total! A third engine would come from Columbia Road, maybe even Edward Everett Square.”

“Stop playing games!” I shouted, shaking. “Where is Winnie?”

Uretsky went on speaking. “But if two fires break out at the same time, the fire department won’t divert the trucks from one fire scene to another. The second call could be anything—a false alarm, even. Can’t risk sending engines from a real fire to a fake one. So if all the engines in South Boston are tied up answering a call when another fire in Southie breaks out, the dispatchers will send engine companies and ladder trucks from another firehouse farther away. Just so you know, the closest ones to you are on Harrison Avenue in the South End and maybe Atlantic Avenue in the financial district.”

“Why are you telling me all this?” I asked.

“Because it’s going to take at least another ten minutes for the engines from those locations to reach the fire you just started. Now, I bet you didn’t think I’d set another fire in City Point right before your deadline hit.”

My stomach clenched. I had to hold on to a parked car for balance.

“Too bad for Winnie,” Uretsky said.

“What . . . what have you done?”

Uretsky made a little “tsk” sound with his mouth, as though he needed to recall some details that had gotten away from him. “Let’s see. . . . Oh, that’s right. . . . I gave Winnie a big narcotic cocktail and left her unconscious on the first floor of the warehouse that you just set on fire. I tucked her behind the big pile of trash nearest to the pallets, but I’m pretty sure the fire department won’t reach her in time. Well, at least she’ll die in her sleep—unless, of course, you go back to save her. Once again, I’m wishing you good luck, John. This time, you’re really going to need it.”

I looked behind me. Black smoke poured from the warehouse window. I watched as the smoke rose like the fingers of the devil’s outstretched hand, reaching up to scratch and scar a beautiful and cloudless sky.

A
ll I said to Ruby was, “Your mom.”

I broke into a run for the warehouse. At first Ruby kept pace with me, but she soon pulled ahead. She reached the warehouse door first and made a move to go inside. I grabbed her from behind and yanked her back.

“You can’t go in there!” I shouted.

Foul-smelling smoke continued to pour out the broken window and seeped from underneath the shuttered door, too.

“She’s my mother!” Ruby yelled back at me, her face twisted in agony.

“You’ll never be able to pull her out,” I said. “You don’t have the strength. Think about it! The drugs. The cancer. You’ll never get her out, and you’ll probably die trying. I’ll go.”

Ruby screamed, “No!” as I pulled the door open. A plume of smoke sent both of us staggering back several feet. Ruby yelled, “No!” again, but that was after I had vanished inside the burning building.

My first thought was that the movies made it look easy—cover your nose and mouth with your arm, get low to the ground, and go barging into a raging fire. What they don’t show is the survival instinct kicking in. They ignore the invisible wall that pops up and halts your advance the moment that first poisoned gulp of air slides down your throat. Your eyes close up and water, your lungs cough in rebellion, while the heat lashes at your skin and produces nearly intolerable pain. I felt every bit of that and more, and I’d taken only three steps inside. The fire had been raging for a grand total of two minutes. The fire department would be here in seven minutes at most, maybe sooner. But “sooner” might mean “too late.”

From behind me I heard Ruby screaming, “John! Mom!” She continued to call my name as I plunged deeper into thick plumes of smoke that turned the warehouse into the darkest night imaginable. The pestilent fumes burned my lungs. I fell to the floor, forced there if I wanted to breathe. Down low, I could see an inch or two in front of my face, but no more. Waves of heat washed over my body. Imagine holding a hand to a flame, unable to pull it back, not even after the skin begins to sear.

Bit by bit the pain ratcheted up.

One thought kept me going:
Save Winnie. Save Ruby’s mom
.

I crawled forward, moving an inch at a time, trying to orientate myself within this dark and alien world. How far in were those burning pallets? How far from that was the first pile of debris?

The only thing saving me was the size of the warehouse. Smoke was spreading out across the ceiling, with thousands of square feet still to cover. If Uretsky had put Winnie on the upper floors, it probably would have been easier to reach her. He knew that. The fire had yet to burn a hole into the ceiling. The accumulating smoke had no place to go but down on top of me, like a thick black curtain signaling the end.

I tried to scream, “Winnie!” but the smoke suffocated my voice. Even if I could have shouted, the snap and crackle of the fire would have drowned me out.

At this point I wasn’t thinking about being brave, or trying to make amends for what I’d done; I was thinking,
I want to get the fuck out of here
. That desire beat like a war drum in my head, getting louder and louder as I crawled farther from the exit. For a second, I thought this was just a nightmare from which I’d soon awaken. And when I did, I’d be in bed, in our Somerville apartment, with Ruby right there beside me, and it would be B.C., before the cancer, and our life would be beautiful again.

At that moment, a tendril of fire reached down from the ceiling and whipped the ground inches from my face, as if to say, “This is a nightmare, all right, but you’re not dreaming.”

I couldn’t think clearly under the constant roar of fire. My lungs were burning for air. Did I have enough oxygen to make it back out? Still, I moved forward, slithering on my belly as quickly as I could.

I covered my mouth with my arm, as if that would protect me from the smoke. My lungs seemed to laugh at the attempt. A hacking cough exploded from inside me, hard enough to shake my bones. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. Above me, I heard the floor moan and hiss as the flames below it converted trapped moisture into steam. I reached a place where the fire burned hotter, and I knew that I was directly across from the wood pallets used to start the blaze.

If I hadn’t just been in the room, I might not have been able to orient myself in total darkness. But I remembered that if I headed in a northwest direction, the pile of debris closest to the pallets was about twenty feet from my current location. I moved ahead, my fingers doing the work of my eyes, and ended up crawling maybe another fifty feet before I found the trash pile. Cardboard boxes, concrete bricks, an overturned sofa, trash barrels, and scraps of sheet metal that had formed a makeshift wall kept me from seeing Winnie while I was dousing the pallets with gas. But I found her. Unconscious. Inert.

I didn’t have time to see if she was alive. The smoke was descending more rapidly. I figured I had fifteen seconds at most to drag Winnie out of the building before we could both kiss the land of the living good-bye. My chest screamed for relief, poisoned by a thirst for pure air. Every breath exited my body as a cough.

Still, I had enough strength to grab hold of Winnie by her wrists. I was on my knees, with my head bent low, crawling backward toward the door, pulling hard. Winnie came along with me, I assumed on her back, but I couldn’t see her through the smoke. I couldn’t see the light of the door, either, but at least I could hear sirens, so I figured I was getting closer.

I’m not going to make it
.

Every fiber of my body screamed out for oxygen. How bad my lungs hurt. How hot my skin felt. A deeper darkness overcame me.

This is what forever feels like
.

Before I knew what was happening, before I blacked out, I sensed myself being pulled. A human chain had formed—someone (a firefighter?) on one end, Winnie on the other, and me in the middle. I don’t know how long it took to drag us outside, but in that kind of situation, a second passes like eternity.

The next thing I knew, I was on the ground with an oxygen mask on my face.

Rebirth.

I looked to my right and saw a group of EMTs working on Winnie. I could tell she was unconscious. But was she breathing? Was she alive?

Ruby stood with the EMTs working on her mother for about half a minute. Then she came rushing over to me. I motioned to the EMT to give us privacy—it was too hard to say the words. He understood and backed away, but only a little.

“She’s alive,” Ruby said, brushing away her tears. “She’s alive because of you.”

Fire trucks were everywhere: hoses and water and people with oxygen masks, wearing thick fire-retardant coats, rushing into the burning building, doing what firefighters do best. I pulled away my oxygen mask. I needed to feel Ruby’s touch. Her fingers came away black with soot. She was holding on to me, trembling, calling my name over and over. She kissed my forehead and stroked my blackened arms.

“We don’t know her,” I said, coughing out the words.

“What?”

“Winnie,” I said, still coughing. “We don’t know her. We can’t explain that.”

“I know,” Ruby said.

God, how I loved her.

“What did you tell them?” I asked. “The firefighters, I mean.”

“We were passing by and saw the fire. I pulled the alarm. You heard a woman call out for help. You went in to save her.”

This time I said it. “Ruby, I love you so much.” Then I said—or more accurately, managed to wheeze—“We’ve got to get out of here. I don’t want to make the news again.”

Ruby nodded. “They want to take you to a hospital,” she said. “I’m fine,” I said. “I don’t have to go.” Then I coughed. A lot. I couldn’t see my reflection in a mirror, but if my arms were any indication, my face was almost entirely black. I coughed again and spit out something black and nasty on the ground. “Find out where they’re taking Winnie,” I said, “and then let’s get out of here.”

I saw a police officer, youngish, fittish, and wearing a look of concern as he approached. He knelt beside me and asked, “How are you doing?”

“Fine,” I said, just as I started to hack and cough. Again, I spit out something terrible.

“You need to go to the hospital,” he said, not a question but a statement of fact.

I waved him off. “No, really. I’m fine,” I said. “I’m actually allergic to hospitals. They give me hives.”

That inspired a little smile.

“Look, I need your statement for the police report,” he said. “Do you think you can manage that?”

Maybe he caught my apprehensive look, but he probably thought I was about to cough again. In truth what really got my heart rate going was a vision of a thousand reporters all clambering for an exclusive interview with the hero who saved a mysterious woman from a burning inferno. If somebody recognized me on the six o’clock news, the police would be one step closer to linking us to Winnie.

“I don’t want the reporters hounding me,” I said.

“Your personal information will be redacted from the police report. They can’t know you if you don’t want to be known,” he said.

I grimaced as I took a breath and probably flashed the cop my blackened teeth in the process.

“Okay,” I said.

“Good,” he said. He took out a pad and pen from his utility belt. “Let’s start with your name.”

I didn’t hesitate. “Elliot Uretsky,” I said.