Chapter Fifteen

Well, I don’t like to be bored. It’s a good thing, too.

I took the half-tour for Bones, who went home with the flu. I don’t mind filling in when a guy is sick or needs a day, because it’s a chip you can always call in, and besides, it bugs me to think of the house being short a guy. The thing about having A, B and C shifts is that there is always a long list of people they can call, but if somebody asks, I say yes. No skin off my ass and generally comes in handy at some point.

It’s almost a rule, though. If you take an extra shift or a half, you’re in for some fun. Stuff that would never have happened seems to have a way of coming together -- what the news analysts are always calling a “concatenation of events” -- any time you’re overextended, you’re in for a ride. I don’t mind; it’s just how it seems to work out.

Tonight was no exception.

Early on, it was the usual for a Saturday night. There were a bunch of kitchen fires, an out-of-control barbecue in some guy’s garage -- by mid-February, Cleveland people are tired of winter and longing for a taste of outdoors -- and the usual smattering of false alarms and minor medical emergencies. Neighborhood stuff. Some lady locked herself out of her apartment, and she was half drunk, and I let Derrico talk to her, having had enough of that particular dish for awhile. She was pretty cute, but it didn’t help her case with me that her name was Jennifer, and as long as we could get her into the apartment, I really didn’t care to investigate the perks. I wore my hero hat Friday night, and it’s been my experience that if you’ve seen one drunk broad, you’ve seen ‘em all, at least for one weekend. It all depends, I guess, on how desperate you are and how lean a stretch it’s been, but after the Jenny debacle, I was good for at least a week.

Of course, Derrico the comedian was all jollies on the ride back to the house. “Drunk AND cute and her name was Jennifer. I think she smokes too, Sully. Shoulda given that one a go, brother.”

“Have I ever told you the joke about the shithead firefighter who keeps teasing his buddy about the drunk broad? No? It’s a long story. I’ll just give you the punch line: Fuck you.”

“Jesus, you’re not sore or anything, are ya, Sully?” He made a little noise like he had had too much to drink and was about to blow guts. Very convincing.

“Derrico, I hope your wife is in a three-day bad mood for ya. I hope your kid gets online with your credit card and buys a whole whorehouse. I hope the goddamn…”

The radio interrupted this cavalcade of kindly thoughts with a call for an address over in the ‘hood. The truck and engine were both called.

As we turned down the street, McCann, who was driving, said, “Payday, kids. Hope everybody’s rested up.”

It was obviously a good working fire, a hell of a blaze. It was about three o’clock in the morning, so it was likely a bunch of kids or drunks, arson. What we couldn’t make out for a moment was what type of a building it was, standalone on a vacant lot next to some apartments. It seemed like a strange place for a building. Maybe -- wait -- was it a trailer?

No, it wasn’t a house trailer, it was an 18 wheeler. Abandoned, perhaps stolen and abandoned -- but how likely was that? And why the hell was an abandoned 18-wheeler on fire? Must be a case of arson for fun rather than spite or profit, unless it was full of goods.

Well, it turned out to be full of goods all right, and as we rolled up, we also saw it was full of people. People were everywhere. Climbing out the back doors, standing in the lot, and some running and jumping the fence. A couple of CPD zone cars were pulling into the lot just as we parked. We got the pumper started, and the truckies got onto the roof and started venting it.

A guy was running across the lot and we shouted at him, “Hey! Anybody inside?”

“Oh, man, everybody was inside!” he yelled, and kept running. One of the cops shouted for him to stop but he was over the fence before they got out of the car.

It didn’t take long to get the fire knocked down, but the people standing around didn’t stick around to volunteer any information. They were off and down the street, melting away like the patches of February snow on the asphalt around the truck.

But when we got inside, the site itself told a story.

Inside the burned-out hulk of the eighteen wheel tractor trailer was the semi-destroyed remains of what had apparently been an illicitly operated bar, also known as a cheat spot. There were several folding card tables, a few wooden crates that had been draped with plastic cloths to serve as the bar, and an old plywood entertainment center stocked with a few dozen bottles of cheap liquor. They had everything -- brandy, vodka, bourbon, liqueurs, even a few fancy flavored vodkas. There were two Coleman coolers full of canned soda -- club soda and ginger ale, mostly -- and another cooler full of ice. Plastic cups were scattered everywhere, some melted together and stuck to the floor.

There were posters on the walls that looked like somebody had swiped them from a travel agency -- there was Italy, France, Spain and a huge outdated map of Russia that said “USSR” in block letters and hung crookedly over the bar back. There was also hanging over the bar a crudely lettered poster board that read: “Bar Drinks Three Dollars And No We Cant Take Checks So Don’t Even Ask. No Guns And No Drugs. The Management”. The sign was smoke-stained and warped by the water and hung crazily at an angle by its remaining thumbtack, but the printing was still clear. We weren’t sure whether the “No Guns And No Drugs” part meant they weren’t allowed or weren’t supplied. “Gotta bring your own, I guess,” said Derrico.

The source of the fire became readily apparent when the smoke had cleared. Running through the center of the truck was a collection of four or five frayed extension cords connected end to end. This was connected to a huge spotlight -- far too big to be supported by the power drawn by the misfit collection of cords -- which was trained on an improbably large mirrored disco ball suspended from the ceiling by a couple of coat hangers and some fishing line. Running off one of the plugs on the extension cord was a boom box. The cord had started a fire in one of the cheap throw rugs scattered around the floor, and the fire had spread to the glitter-impregnated gauze which someone had attached to the walls with a staple gun. It was a regular Four Seasons ballroom in a box.


“Hey, Sully,” said Cullen, “what do we do with the stuff that’s left here?”

A big red-faced cop whose badge identified him as Officer Degyansky had just lowered himself through the vent hole we had hacked in the ceiling. This really wasn‘t necessary since the truck‘s doors were wide open, but whatever. He bellowed out: “You don’t touch it. Crime scene.”

“He’s new,” I said. “He’s just trying to help. A probie.”

“Well, you better control your men,” snarled Officer D.

“Hey,” I said, “there’s no need to get that way about it.”

“Yeah,” said the cop, “and the next thing you know the booze disappears from the scene.”

“Oh, you know,” I said, “you’re right about that. That would be a goddamned shame, because then there would be none left for the cops.”

“Sully,” started Derrico.

“I got it,” I said. “Come on, Cullen, you don’t want to hang out with the criminal element here. You’re off to a good start and I don’t want ya getting corrupted.”

“Listen, asshole,” the cop began.

“Ah, keep yer goddamn hair on,” I said. “Come on, guys, let’s clear the scene. There’s stuff left here that hasn’t been stolen yet, so let’s let the cops do their jobs.”

“You got a problem with cops, jerkoff?”

“Oh, nooooo, Officer. In fact, one of my cousins is a cop. A uniform in the Second District.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s his name?”

“Pogue. Pogue Mahone.”

For the uninitiated, pogue ma thoin means “Kiss my ass” in Irish Gaelic. I figured there was no way somebody named Degyansky was going to get this unless he was half Irish, and this guy didn’t look half anything but stupid.

So we parted on fairly good terms. Derrico, who has hung around the mostly Irish firehouse long enough to become culturally enriched, turned away so the cop wouldn’t see him laughing. We walked outside with Cullen and started helping with the takeup.

As we rolled out of the lot, the cop waved a reasonably civil goodbye and asked warily, “Now what is this cousin’s name again?”

With a mind like a steel sieve, I had just about forgotten the exchange. Derrico was at the ready, though.

“Pogue Mahone,” he cried cheerfully. “If you know Pogue Mahone, you know every Irish firefighter in town.”

To say I found this funny is quite an understatement. I said to Derrico, “Ya know, for a complete shithead you do okay sometimes.”

We rolled back to the house, and when I got to my bunk and checked my cell phone, there was another message from Grace. I didn’t really want to call her so late, but Grace is a night owl just as I am, and since we’ve never stood on ceremony, I decided to go ahead and return her call. May as well get it over with, I figured. Her messages were never long or detailed, just “Call me when you get this.” If I wanted to know what was up, I was going to have to call her.

We have a little exercise room just off the shower room. I think it was meant to function solely as alocker room, but we’ve managed in the last few years to kick in here and there and raise ourselves enough money for some workout equipment. Nothing too fancy -- a couple of weight benches, a weight machine and a treadmill. Enough to keep us fit and keep us from going stir crazy in bad weather when we can’t get outside. Anyway, it’s far enough from the bunks to be somewhat private, so I took the phone in there and dialed Grace’s number.

“Hello?” Grace’s voice sounded tired, but not as if I had woke her up.

“Yeah, Grace, it’s me. Sorry I didn’t call you before this…”

“That’s okay; I never said what it was about.”

“Anyway, what’s up?”

“Sully, it’s…it’s Seanny. It’s…well, it’s about me and something I’ve done…”

“Grace, what? Are you okay?”

“No, no; let me finish. What I’ve done isn’t bad. But Seanny…”

“What did he do, the little shit? You want me to straighten him out for you?”

“Johnny Sullivan, will you please for once let me explain before you jump in, guns blazing? I’ve managed these last fifteen years on my own -- got married, had a baby, got divorced, all that -- and now you want to save the day for me. What’s going on is big and it’s going to take some explaining, and you can’t solve it with a bigger hammer.”

“Okayyyyyyy…then, what’s the trouble? I’m all ears.”

“Let me start at the beginning, or at least where the touble began…oh, Jesus, John, it’s such a mess….”

“Easy, Grace, easy. All will be well, remember?”

This had been our code phrase for years. “All will be well”. A school friend of Grace’s got it from the biography of some saint or something, Julian of Norwich, and passed it on to Grace, who passed it on to me, and we drew on it for everything from family deaths to running out of money before payday.

“Well, I hope you have some time to talk,” said Grace.

“I do,” I said, “and what concerns you concerns me, so let’s get it all out on the table.”

“Well, you remember in the old days how we used to drink and carry on?”

“Sure.”

“Well, Sully, that’s part of what went wrong in my marriage. I was still drinking long after the party was over. You know how I used to get so drunk sometimes that I wasn’t making sense and didn’t remember anything the next day?”

“Well, hell, Grace, everybody does that.”

“No, John, not everybody. At least, they’re not supposed to. And certainly I’m not supposed to. John, I’m an alcoholic.”

This struck me as pretty extreme. Now, that girl from the other night, Jenny -- she probably qualified as at least an alcoholic in training. But Grace? My Grace? Well, not that she was my Grace, but….

“Grace, don’t paste a label on yourself. I’ve never even seen you drunk. Sure, you liked to tie one on back in the day. We all did. Still do.” Here I ruminated on my own none too stellar history with the bottle of late. “But Grace, don’t be too quick to judge yourself. What is this, some kind of support group speak?”

“No, John, no” she said slowly. “I drank too much for too long. And this isn’t sudden. And I’m not drinking any more. As a matter of fact, with the help of God and the support of my fellows, I haven’t had to take a drink in eighteen months.”

“Wow. Well, that’s great. But the divorce? I thought that was recent.”

“It was. It was finalized last month. My marriage survived my drinking, but it didn’t survive my sobriety. It happens.”

“Oh….well….I’m sorry.” I mean, what the hell can you say to that?

“Anyway,” Grace continued, briskly shifting focus, “this isn’t about me. It’s about Seanny.”

“Yeah, okay, well, how can I help?”

“John, he’s lost. He’s totally confused and a mess. He started using drugs and drinking some time last year and I thought maybe he’d snap out of it, but it’s gotten worse. I thought the divorce and the move might actually help -- you know, the fighting and the tension ended, it got us away from his old crowd…”

“How’s Kate doing?” Kate, Grace’s daughter, is nine and looks and acts just like her mother, according to my many sources among family and friends. In my perhaps biased opinion, there needs to be a man in their lives in the future just to keep the shotgun trained on prospective suitors. Grace would probably be more than capable of handling that, though, if my experiences with her are any gauge. Anyway.

“Kate is fine. She isn’t happy, of course, misses her dad -- Brad and I have a split custody arrangement…”

Brad. Grace had actually married someone named Brad. I had forgotten that.

“…and Kate is doing fine in school, staying in touch with old friends, making new ones. But Seanny is about to drive me mad.”

“He in any legal trouble?”

“No, not yet….But John, this whole thing…it’s threatening my sobriety. I mean, I’m not about to rush out and get drunk. But it’s the water torture thing. He gets high in his room, I find the stuff, throw it out…he stays out all night, I change the locks, he climbs in the window…he gets mouthy with me, I call the police…they say there’s nothing they can do…”

“Wait a minute. Isn’t…err, Brad…isn’t Brad supposed to be helping you out here? How old is Seanny, anyway?”

“He’s nineteen. And Brad never had official legal custody anyway. And even if he had, John, they never got along.”

“Yeah, that sounds bad. Listen, Grace, do you think it would do any good if I talked to him? I mean, he may not even remember me…”

“Oh, yes he does. You know that little Tonka fire engine you gave to him when he was five? He still has it on his dresser.”

For God’s sake. The stuff we do that we never figure will matter a bit to anyone, and here come to find out….

“Listen, if you think it will do any good, I’ll talk to him for you. Just don’t hold me responsible for the results. Every time I’ve talked to anybody lately I seem to hve made bad matters worse.”

“Well, since he’s neither working for you, supervising you or sleeping with you, I’d say you stand a prayer in hell.”

“Thanks, smartass.”

“You’re more than welcome. When shall I expect you, then?”

“Tomorrow okay?”

“I have to work during the day, but why don’t you come over for supper around seven?”

“Okay; I’ll bring a bottle of wine. What kind…oh, wait….I guess I shouldn’t…”

“Sully, I don’t give a damn what’s in your glass; I only concern myself with what’s in my own. Kinda like the old days.” I could hear the sly mischief creep into her voice. “If you want something for yourself, bring wine. I’m drinking club soda. We’re having roast beef. See you at seven.”

“Okay…”

She had already hung up. God alone knew what I was getting myself into, but it would be good to see her. I wasn’t sure I understood all this business about her being an alcoholic, but I trusted her judgment.

Now if only I could be sure I can trust my own.