minute.”
Even Slaughter, who’d spent years as an investigator with Marshal 5, thought the two guys they’d arrested downtown had started our fires.
Not me. I knew few pyros worked in tandem, and my vision of our pyro didn’t include a partner. Our guy was still out there.
That morning before we went out to drill Rideout, I walked into the beanery to eat one of the bananas I’d brought and found they’d vanished off the chrome island in the kitchen.
“What happened to my bananas?” I asked.
Slaughter, Rideout, Dolan, and Boles all stared at me guilelessly. It was the sort of practical joke Dolan might pull, eating four bananas just to get a yuk out of it. Gliniewicz strutted into the room from the watch office and said, “What’s going on?”
“Where’s my bananas?”
Gliniewicz sat down and picked up the sports section of the Sunday paper. “You leave stuff out, it’s fair game.”
“You ate them?”
“It’s out, it’s fair game. Ask anybody.” Without looking up from the paper, Gliniewicz patted his stomach. “I was hungry.”
Dolan started laughing.
Slaughter joined in when he saw my face. “Next time you better nail those bananas down.”
“I’d put a padlock on ’em,” Dolan said.
They laughed even louder when I began searching the beanery and found them in the back of the refrigerator.
Banana snatchers. Rat skinners. I guess it was funny when you thought about it.
14. SOMETHING VERY WICKED INDEED
Cynthia Rideout
D ECEMBER 8, S UNDAY, 1345 HOURS
News of Patricia Pennington’s rescue was in
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post.
Everybody got it wrong, including the local televised news, who interviewed Zeke on camera and made it sound as if he made the save. We saw one of those reports before we left the station Friday morning, and boy did that give everybody a hoot. Zeke was embarrassed, but you could tell he liked it too.
I met Towbridge today. He’s a tall black guy around thirty; drop-dead handsome. He carries himself with a princely bearing, lifts weights at a gym five times a week, plays basketball at almost a professional level on about three different teams, and doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him. I’ve actually seen black women around here whistle at him.
For that matter, our driver, Jeff Dolan, is pretty cute too. He’s the oldest on the crew—in his late forties. He’s got streaks of gray in his hair and spends all summer working on his tan. He’s not as tall as the others, but he’s still taller than me. They’re all taller than me. Pickett has dark eyes and dark hair, a mustache to match.
The whole crew could be on a firefighter calendar, all except Wollf, not unless he was half naked. He’s got a great body. Although he’s not handsome, there is something interesting about the way he looks, sort of like a boy who knows he’s about to get away with something very wicked. Something very wicked indeed.
He doesn’t talk much, but I find myself watching him for his subtle reactions to the things people say.
Ordinarily there are four people working on Ladder 3, but because I’ve been sent here to do my ladder drills, each shift one of the regular people here has to take a detail to another station. The officer never gets detailed out and neither does the driver, so the traveling falls on Towbridge and Pickett. One of them works here one shift, then packs up all his gear and works the next shift at another station. Today Pickett is gone and Towbridge is here.
Towbridge speaks in a kind of an inner-city patois that is hard to understand. His first name is Harlan, but everybody calls him Tow. Or Bridge. As a sign of affection, Gliniewicz and Dolan, the drivers respectively of the engine and Ladder 3, call him Slowbridge.
This morning Towbridge took me aside and said, “The lieutenant’s going to take you out there, have you put on full bunkers and a bottle. Then he’s going to have you put up every ladder we got from
Even Slaughter, who’d spent years as an investigator with Marshal 5, thought the two guys they’d arrested downtown had started our fires.
Not me. I knew few pyros worked in tandem, and my vision of our pyro didn’t include a partner. Our guy was still out there.
That morning before we went out to drill Rideout, I walked into the beanery to eat one of the bananas I’d brought and found they’d vanished off the chrome island in the kitchen.
“What happened to my bananas?” I asked.
Slaughter, Rideout, Dolan, and Boles all stared at me guilelessly. It was the sort of practical joke Dolan might pull, eating four bananas just to get a yuk out of it. Gliniewicz strutted into the room from the watch office and said, “What’s going on?”
“Where’s my bananas?”
Gliniewicz sat down and picked up the sports section of the Sunday paper. “You leave stuff out, it’s fair game.”
“You ate them?”
“It’s out, it’s fair game. Ask anybody.” Without looking up from the paper, Gliniewicz patted his stomach. “I was hungry.”
Dolan started laughing.
Slaughter joined in when he saw my face. “Next time you better nail those bananas down.”
“I’d put a padlock on ’em,” Dolan said.
They laughed even louder when I began searching the beanery and found them in the back of the refrigerator.
Banana snatchers. Rat skinners. I guess it was funny when you thought about it.
14. SOMETHING VERY WICKED INDEED
Cynthia Rideout
D ECEMBER 8, S UNDAY, 1345 HOURS
News of Patricia Pennington’s rescue was in
The New York Times
and
The Washington Post.
Everybody got it wrong, including the local televised news, who interviewed Zeke on camera and made it sound as if he made the save. We saw one of those reports before we left the station Friday morning, and boy did that give everybody a hoot. Zeke was embarrassed, but you could tell he liked it too.
I met Towbridge today. He’s a tall black guy around thirty; drop-dead handsome. He carries himself with a princely bearing, lifts weights at a gym five times a week, plays basketball at almost a professional level on about three different teams, and doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him. I’ve actually seen black women around here whistle at him.
For that matter, our driver, Jeff Dolan, is pretty cute too. He’s the oldest on the crew—in his late forties. He’s got streaks of gray in his hair and spends all summer working on his tan. He’s not as tall as the others, but he’s still taller than me. They’re all taller than me. Pickett has dark eyes and dark hair, a mustache to match.
The whole crew could be on a firefighter calendar, all except Wollf, not unless he was half naked. He’s got a great body. Although he’s not handsome, there is something interesting about the way he looks, sort of like a boy who knows he’s about to get away with something very wicked. Something very wicked indeed.
He doesn’t talk much, but I find myself watching him for his subtle reactions to the things people say.
Ordinarily there are four people working on Ladder 3, but because I’ve been sent here to do my ladder drills, each shift one of the regular people here has to take a detail to another station. The officer never gets detailed out and neither does the driver, so the traveling falls on Towbridge and Pickett. One of them works here one shift, then packs up all his gear and works the next shift at another station. Today Pickett is gone and Towbridge is here.
Towbridge speaks in a kind of an inner-city patois that is hard to understand. His first name is Harlan, but everybody calls him Tow. Or Bridge. As a sign of affection, Gliniewicz and Dolan, the drivers respectively of the engine and Ladder 3, call him Slowbridge.
This morning Towbridge took me aside and said, “The lieutenant’s going to take you out there, have you put on full bunkers and a bottle. Then he’s going to have you put up every ladder we got from
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