spread to the outside of the building.
All of the fires have occurred between eleven P.M. and six A.M.
Fire department officials refused to confirm or deny reports that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has plans to assist in the investigation. Total losses last night were estimated at $15,000.
I picked up a pair of family photos from the time period. There were a couple of curly-haired boys roughhousing with their father. There was a mother so beautiful you could actually see a young man in the park turning his head to look at her just as my father snapped the picture, her auburn hair flashing in the sunlight.
13. BANANA SNATCHERS AND RAT SKINNERS
On Sunday I walked to the station, taking the long route down along the lake and up Madrona to Thirty-second and then to Cherry, carrying a rucksack and hiking the uphills almost at a running pace.
I’d spent two days flopped in front of one Patricia Pennington movie after another, a marathon of B movies in the sequence they were made, watching the celluloid woman age before my eyes. It was like sitting next to God.
When I walked into Six’s, the beanery was filled with A-shifters mingling with our shift. Having arrived with half an hour to spare, Zeke was standing along a wall, quiet and smiling in that sleepy way he has. Everybody liked Zeke. He was a gentle soul and meant well. Even his officer, Slaughter—when he wasn’t yelling at him—liked him.
Gliniewicz was swapping gossip with the driver on A-shift. Slaughter was talking to their officer on the engine.
There were four shifts working in the station, which meant four officers: three lieutenants and a captain for each rig. On Ladder 3 our captain was a man I’d worked with in the past, Frank Keesling. We shook hands and he congratulated me on my transfer to Ladder 3. We both knew I wasn’t likely to stay here. Keesling was in his fifties, balding, a grandfatherly sort who didn’t take too many things seriously outside of deer hunting and raising thoroughbred house cats.
“There’s this rat-catcher thing going on,” Keesling said. “I told your chief, Eddings, it was one of those in-house squabbles, but she had to come down the other day and get mixed up in it. Now it looks like it might be headed downtown.”
“Rats?”
Gliniewicz and the A-shift driver were making so much noise it was hard to concentrate. In addition, there were at least two other conversations going on, and the television was broadcasting a women’s tennis match. I wanted to hear what Katie Fryer was saying to Rideout because it sounded like a pretty good yarn, something about a GSW they’d responded to yesterday. Gunshot wound.
I turned back to Keesling, who said, “We had a rat problem out back. A couple of them got into the station, so I told the guys I’d buy a half gallon of ice cream for every rat they caught. B-shift told us they killed two, but some of our guys accused them of making it up. You know how that goes. They were just having fun.
“So my crew told their crew they had to
prove
they caught a rat to get the ice cream. The next shift we found a tanned rat hide pinned to a piece of plywood downstairs. That’s when you-know-who”—he made a gesture at Katie Fryer and continued in a lower voice—“complained to her officer that there’s a state law against trapping animals with steel traps. I thought she was kidding. Next thing I know your chief is up here reading us the riot act. Now I’m writing letters. Katie’s writing letters. Who knows where it’s going to end?”
“Heard anything more about the arsons?”
“Last night the cops arrested a coupl’a homeless guys lighting a Dumpster fire down by the Market. That was probably the end of that.” Keesling had a way of drifting off on you, losing interest in the middle of a conversation. “If you’re ready, I could scoot out and get home in time for church.”
“I’ll have your stuff off the rig in a
All of the fires have occurred between eleven P.M. and six A.M.
Fire department officials refused to confirm or deny reports that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has plans to assist in the investigation. Total losses last night were estimated at $15,000.
I picked up a pair of family photos from the time period. There were a couple of curly-haired boys roughhousing with their father. There was a mother so beautiful you could actually see a young man in the park turning his head to look at her just as my father snapped the picture, her auburn hair flashing in the sunlight.
13. BANANA SNATCHERS AND RAT SKINNERS
On Sunday I walked to the station, taking the long route down along the lake and up Madrona to Thirty-second and then to Cherry, carrying a rucksack and hiking the uphills almost at a running pace.
I’d spent two days flopped in front of one Patricia Pennington movie after another, a marathon of B movies in the sequence they were made, watching the celluloid woman age before my eyes. It was like sitting next to God.
When I walked into Six’s, the beanery was filled with A-shifters mingling with our shift. Having arrived with half an hour to spare, Zeke was standing along a wall, quiet and smiling in that sleepy way he has. Everybody liked Zeke. He was a gentle soul and meant well. Even his officer, Slaughter—when he wasn’t yelling at him—liked him.
Gliniewicz was swapping gossip with the driver on A-shift. Slaughter was talking to their officer on the engine.
There were four shifts working in the station, which meant four officers: three lieutenants and a captain for each rig. On Ladder 3 our captain was a man I’d worked with in the past, Frank Keesling. We shook hands and he congratulated me on my transfer to Ladder 3. We both knew I wasn’t likely to stay here. Keesling was in his fifties, balding, a grandfatherly sort who didn’t take too many things seriously outside of deer hunting and raising thoroughbred house cats.
“There’s this rat-catcher thing going on,” Keesling said. “I told your chief, Eddings, it was one of those in-house squabbles, but she had to come down the other day and get mixed up in it. Now it looks like it might be headed downtown.”
“Rats?”
Gliniewicz and the A-shift driver were making so much noise it was hard to concentrate. In addition, there were at least two other conversations going on, and the television was broadcasting a women’s tennis match. I wanted to hear what Katie Fryer was saying to Rideout because it sounded like a pretty good yarn, something about a GSW they’d responded to yesterday. Gunshot wound.
I turned back to Keesling, who said, “We had a rat problem out back. A couple of them got into the station, so I told the guys I’d buy a half gallon of ice cream for every rat they caught. B-shift told us they killed two, but some of our guys accused them of making it up. You know how that goes. They were just having fun.
“So my crew told their crew they had to
prove
they caught a rat to get the ice cream. The next shift we found a tanned rat hide pinned to a piece of plywood downstairs. That’s when you-know-who”—he made a gesture at Katie Fryer and continued in a lower voice—“complained to her officer that there’s a state law against trapping animals with steel traps. I thought she was kidding. Next thing I know your chief is up here reading us the riot act. Now I’m writing letters. Katie’s writing letters. Who knows where it’s going to end?”
“Heard anything more about the arsons?”
“Last night the cops arrested a coupl’a homeless guys lighting a Dumpster fire down by the Market. That was probably the end of that.” Keesling had a way of drifting off on you, losing interest in the middle of a conversation. “If you’re ready, I could scoot out and get home in time for church.”
“I’ll have your stuff off the rig in a
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