Where There’s Smoke

Chapter Fifteen “She Hasn’t a Prayer.”

He flung himself as flat on the floor as he could, with the linoleum beneath him sliding away at a 50-degree angle. He felt as if he were dropping through to the basement; but he didn’t hit hard, merely slid up against a pile of something soggy that had been an ottoman.

Then a ten-ton truck smacked him in the small of the back, knocked the wind out of him, pinned him face down against the smoking upholstery.

He fought for breath in air clogged with brick dust, fiercely hot from steam. The pipes had been torn loose somewhere close to him. He’d better get elsewhere in a rush unless he wanted to be parboiled.

He stuffed the crown of his hat between his teeth so the wet felt would filter out some of the heat.

He couldn’t move forward. It seemed to him that it took hours to twist and wriggle backward so his shoulders were beneath the beam that held him fast. After that it was a matter of straining every last ounce he could summon into heaving the heavy timber up a fraction of an inch at a time, until he could squirm out from under.

Snow beat in at him as he rolled free. A yard away was the edge of nothing. Beyond and beneath were lights from the next block.

He backed away, crawled through a jumble of smashed furniture, splintered wood, piping, wires. Luminous lines of blue raced in waves across the floor ahead of him, crisscrossing in his path.

There was no way to tell where the doorways or the walls had been; he reached a stair landing before he knew what it was. He went down slowly, a step at a time, listening for the splatter of water in order to duck the force of a stream, if the boys were shooting in here.

At the second-floor landing a white-helmeted figure glittering with ice shoved a flashlight in the marshal’s face, barked hoarsely, seized him in a bear hug. “Godsake, Fred! You don’t have to bust—”

“Thought we were going to have to send lilies, sure, that time. You all right?”

“Sure, except you’re busting this box I’ve been hanging onto.”

The deputy chief turned his flash on the bit of charred cardboard. “What is it?”

“Ancient Navaho firemaking apparatus. Candy box filled with ethyl. Set on top of the gas stove.”

“Delayed-action bomb?”

“Yair. Take a while for the gas to soak through that glazed cardboard enough to make it soft so it would sag open at the seams, let the gas spill out.”

“I’ll be a son!”

“Give somebody time to get quite a ways away from here before enough vapor collected for the pilot light to ignite it. Only thing — the ingenious bastard who thought this up evidently expected there’d be enough of a fire to burn up the box here.”

The deputy chief swore with accomplished fluency. When he had relieved his feelings he added, “Wouldn’t think the girl would have gone to all that trouble to blow up her own place.”

“No. You wouldn’t. I don’t. I think the party who arranged this delayed-action doodad wanted the girl to burn up, too.”

“You know who it is?”

“I know quite a bit about him, Fred. He’s an amateur, improvises as he goes along. He’s well-fixed with dough, because when he had the chance he wouldn’t touch a roll that would choke a hippo. He’s in or close to show business.” Pedley started down to the street. “Also, he cuts a lot of ice around City Hall.”

He left the deputy chief puzzled, shaking his head. Down on the street, he spoke to a police surgeon working over a fireman on the sidewalk.

“Broke his hip,” explained the doctor. “Slipped on the stairs.”

“Any other casualties?”

“Couple smoke-chokers. You look as if you could stand a little jelly on that ear, yourself, Marshal.”

“I’ll let ’em treat it at Saint Vincent’s.” He put the remnant of the candy box in a white-enameled photographer’s tray, tied the lid on, stuck it on the ledge back of the seat in his sedan.

At the hospital he parked by the EMERGENCY platform, went along a corridor smelling of ether and antiseptic. The night matron led him to a corner of the women’s ward.

“She hasn’t been conscious a second. They keep her going with adrenaline.”

“I know. She hasn’t a prayer.” He stood at the cotside, watching the doctors work over her.

Where the bandages didn’t hide it, Kim’s face was putty-gray. Her lips were gray; there was a metallic sheen around her mouth and nose.

One of the medical men spoke without looking up. “Only a question of time.”

“Yair. Has she talked?”

“Mumbled a little. Delirium, of course. Nothing the nurse could take down.” The doctor nodded toward a probationer standing by the condition chart with a notebook.

“I’m going to phone. Be in the booth, down the hall. Call me if you see any chance of an in extremis.”

He rang his office. “You don’t have to dig up anymore dope on the Wasson kid, Barney. She’s through.”

“Holy cats! The Horatio Street blaze?”

“That’s right. Same bug who sparked the theater. Same technique.”

“Son of a bitch!”

“He got her because she’d been talking to me.”

“Speaking of which, boss, Shaner’s been calling in every ten minutes to get hold of you.”

“What’s his complaint?”

“The Lownes babe. She got away from Maginn.”

Pedley swore with conciseness; added, “Where is she now?”

“Well, she’s back at the Riveredge, boss. But Mag lost track of her for a while and it took Shaner a little time to retrail her.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Took a hack to Twenty-third and Madison, then switched to another that let her out at Christopher and Seventh.”

The matron tapped on the glass of the booth door. “She’s going—”

“Said anything?”

“Tryin’ to—”

Kim’s eyes were still closed, but her swollen lips moved torturedly.

The probationer whispered, “While you were out, she said ‘Three minutes—’ and something about a curtain. I couldn’t catch it.”

“Three minutes to curtain time,” Pedley said. “She’s not calling it far wrong.” He bent over.

Kim’s slack lips twitched. “…ill.”

He could just make it out the second time. “… Bill.” Then the thin lips were still.

The doctor sighed. “Did all we could for her, Marshal.”

“Not quite. Not yet.”

The physician frowned uncertainly.

Pedley motioned. “See you a minute?”

He and the medical man went out in the hall for a brief consultation. The doctor began by shaking his head; ended by nodding dubiously.

“I can’t guarantee anything, Marshal. But I’ll do what I can.”

“That’ll be enough.”

“How about yourself? You look as if you ought to pile up in one of our private wards.”

“If you feel like putting some tannic salve on this ear, I won’t say no.”

While the jelly was being applied, the doctor made one more attempt. “What you really need is about fourteen hours of good, sound sleep.”

“The raveled sleeve could stand a little knitting. Tell you — a couple of Benzedrine might pick me up. How about such?”

He took his own medicine in a quart of the blackest coffee the Sheridan Square Wagon could serve up, scanned the morning papers while he ate.

There was plenty about the theater fire. None of it was new, except some slants on Ned Lownes:

Pedley detected the fine hand of Terence Ross in the phrasings.

And there was one line that made the marshal smile wryly over his coffee cup:

He wondered how she’d feel about Kim Wasson.

There hadn’t been any brotherly love lost between Leila and her brother. But Kim had been close to the singer, had been a friend of Bill’s.

Conover had been pretty cheerful about Ned’s passing. What happened to the Wasson girl might affect him differently. Still, the lieutenant had seen a lot of killing, close up, and not so long ago — maybe death didn’t disturb him very much.

In that case, it might be a good idea to take precautions. But quick—