Slaughter - Lutz John - Страница 9

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?”