13
At seven, the big doors were opened onto the driveway to Mrs Fritz’s house, and the police car drove in to park just off the gravel, facing out. The private security people set up their lectern on the left side of the entrance and stood around waiting, but no one was going to be unfashionably on time, and the first guests didn’t arrive till seven-twelve.
Each car stopped at the lectern, where the driver handed over to the guard the invitation the guest had received last night after making his sealed bid on one of the items up for auction. The guard checked the invitation against the list on his lectern, then politely nodded the guest through. At the main entrance, staff opened the car doors, the partygoers emerged, the driver was given a claim check, and the car was driven by a valet around to the parking area at the side.
Just over half a mile to the south, Melander and Carlson and Ross had started to dress. Stacked on the dining room table and on the floor were their fire boots, their rubberized gloves, red fire helmets, and black turnout coats with the reflective horizontal yellow stripes and, in block yellow letters on the back, PBFD. Leaning against a wall were their three black air canisters, also with PBFD on them in block white letters. When completely dressed, their visored eyeguards and the mouthpieces from their air canisters would cover their faces entirely.
‘I love a costume party,’ Ross said.
A few miles farther south, Lesley stood in the bathroom doorway and watched Daniel shave off that ridiculous little mustache. It changed him. Without the mustache, he was a hard man, very cold. She realized with surprise that, if she’d seen him this way at first, she wouldn’t have dared approach him.
He was still battered, though, and she didn’t see how he could hope to beat those three men. He’d stripped to the waist to shave, and his torso was still swathed in bandages, partly because of the bullet holes front and back but mostly because of the broken ribs. Why wouldn’t they just ride right over him?
And what happens to me? she wondered.
Mrs Fritz’s ballroom quickly filled. All the men wore essentially what they’d worn at the Breakers last night, and all the women wore something strikingly different. Staff moved among them with canapes and champagne, and special lights gleamed on the display tables where the jewelry was arrayed. Maroon velvet ropes kept the guests from getting within reaching distance of the jewelry. Everybody was here now except the musicians, who would arrive later, and play for dancing after the auction was complete. To one side, Mrs Fritz and the auctioneer, a professional man who’d worked any number of charity balls around here over the years, consulted together about timing.
‘I think it’s time,’ Melander said, and the three of them, encumbered in their full firefighter gear, tromped out of the house and around to the fire engine parked at the side. Carlson climbed up behind the wheel while Melander and Ross took up standing positions on the outside of the fire engine, just to increase the visual plausibility of the thing.
Carlson said, ‘Ready?’ and the other two agreed they were ready. Carlson picked up the two small radio transmitters from the seat beside him and pressed down on the buttons.
In the ballroom, the incendiary rockets came thundering out of the amplifiers still in the corner. Some of the rockets flew straight up, to embed themselves in the ceiling and spray sparks and flame onto the people below. Some shot directly back into the wall, gouting flame and smoke, and the rest drilled down into the floor. None were aimed at the guests or the display tables of jewelry.
Shocking heat and noise and smoke abruptly filled the room. No one knew what had happened, where this sudden disaster had come from. A lot of people thought rockets were being fired from outside the house. Everybody milled around in sudden fear, trying to find a way out. The display tables and the auctioneer’s stand blocked the terrace doors, so the only way out was through the broad interior doorway into the rest of the house. People jammed together, making a bottleneck in the doorway, clawing to get through.
Outside, the police and the security guards stared in amazement at the sudden fire burning on the roof, listened unbelievingly to the screams from inside the house, gaped at each other in bewilderment, not knowing what they were supposed to do. Then, almost immediately it seemed, they felt the great relief of hearing that approaching siren.
The fire engine came rushing up from the south, red lights flashing, siren yowling. Police and guards cleared everybody out of the entranceway, and the fire engine went tearing around the curve, Melander and Ross clinging to the handholds, the fire engine rushing full tilt at the house, where the first of the fleeing guests were just now beginning to stagger out into the clear night air.
Carlson didn’t hit the brake until the very last second, the big fire engine spewing gravel as it shuddered to a stop. He switched off the motor and took the key with him, to cause a little extra trouble down the line, but left the siren on, screaming away, so communication among the other people present would be just that much more difficult.
Lesley helped Daniel into his shirt, and the two of them gathered up everything that had been brought into the condo. She said, ‘Are you sure, Daniel?’
‘Time to go,’ he said.
The three firemen ran heavy-footed through the house, pushing the panicked guests out of their way, finally helping the last of the guests and staff out of the ballroom. They slammed the double doors and slid a massive sideboard over the polished floor and up against the doors to block them.
Alice Prester Young staggered out of the house alone, into the glare and scream of the big fire engine, with more fire engines coming now from far away, racing south. She’d lost Jack somewhere, she’d been terrified, she had to struggle through the awful crowd completely on her own.
Where was Jack? Was he hurt, crushed by the people back there? Where was Jack?
She stared around at the people collapsing on the lawn, and all at once she saw Jack, and he was carrying somebody, in his arms, like a groom carrying a bride. He was reeling like a drunken man, but he was carrying a woman, and as he at last put her on her feet on the lawn Alice saw she was young Kim Metcalf, Howard Metcalf’s sexpot stewardess wife. And as she saw them, Jack saw her and stopped dead.
The stupid thing is, she hadn’t thought anything until Jack stopped like that, like
like a caught burglar. And Kim’s look of shock and guilt when she met Alice’s eyes across the reeling, weeping, stunned crowd, there was that, too.
Movement to her left. Alice turned her suddenly heavy head, and Howard Metcalf stood there, near her on the steps, gazing out and down at his wife. With great difficulty, Alice turned her heavy head again and looked at Jack, and now he seemed to have no expression on his face at all, like a bad drawing, or a minor figure in the background of a comic strip.
In all that racket, there was a great silence, enclosing the four of them.
In the ballroom, Melander and Carlson and Ross quickly shimmied out of their gloves, helmets, air tanks, fire boots, and turnout coats. Beneath, they each wore a black wet suit and a large zippered bag on a belt around the waist. The bags now held nothing but divers’ face masks and headlamps, which they removed so they could load the bags with all of Miriam Hope Clendon’s jewelry.
Lesley and Daniel drove northward in her Lexus, neither saying anything, he resting his head back, eyes closed. Conserving himself. Then he opened his eyes and looked out ahead and said, ‘Slow down.’
She did, but said, ‘Why?’
