Chapter 43

Although the plaque on the wall indicated the site had been Gibbs’ Tavern & Smithy in 1777, clearly the building dated from the early part of the 20th century. It was wood frame construction, with a brick facade facing Mechanic Street.

It wasn’t clear if the fire had originated in the back of the aromatherapy spa and spread up to the meth lab, or vice versa. In any case, when the fire hit the meth-making chemicals it exploded like a bomb, blowing gaping holes in the floor and ceiling. Now the fire was threatening to spread in all directions. Mechanic Street was a natural firebreak on the north; unfortunately it was an unusually narrow one-way street. To the rear were several more shops and a parking lot. The biggest threat was to the attached buildings on Old Kings Road. Immediately adjacent to the south was Sahadjian’s Fine Oriental Carpets.

Chief Cushing wanted to get a team on the roof as soon as possible. He needed to create a vent for explosive gases and, if possible, carve out a strip ventilation trough to keep the fire from spreading to the rug shop. Those would be the tasks for the ladder company. The two engine companies would attack the flanks of the building. One would enter through the rug shop and hose down the walls on that side. The other would head up Mechanic Street and create a water curtain. Once they’d controlled the perimeter of the fire, they’d turn in on the building itself and drown the fire.

Simple to plan, difficult and dangerous to execute. The searing heat of the fire, toxic fumes from the chemicals, structural uncertainty of an older building and the X-factor, the danger of hostile activity, combined to make this an especially hazardous assignment.

The ladder company wheeled around the block, turned at the Friends School and came up Mechanic Street from the rear of the fire. Chief Black asked the two engine companies to park parallel, close together, on Old Kings Road. The trucks formed a defensive rampart, providing some protection for the firefighters.

Michelle and Harry were responsible for crowd control. They used wooden barricades to create a police line one block in every direction. Biff and Randy were armed with assault rifles and were stationed at each end of the two engines, keeping a lookout for snipers, assassins, terrorists, etc. Chief Black prayed that no poor fool would disobey the evacuation order and peek out from a second-story window. Biff would be all over him like a scalper on a corporate lawyer needing playoff tickets.

Officer Gary Malone was assigned to the hazmat team working with the ladder company. It would be his job to enter the meth lab and check for booby traps. Once he gave the all-clear, he would pull back to help with security while the firemen extinguished the blaze.

With the men deployed, the two Chiefs took control at the command station.

“Any people trapped inside?” asked Chief Black.

“Fortunately, the aromatherapy spa wasn’t open yet. Seems their clientele has already achieved health, wealth, and wisdom without getting up early, so now they’re free to pursue unwrinkled skin in the après-midi.”

“That’s lucky. What about the apartments?”

“Caught a break there, too. Seems that speed freaks are the only ones who can handle the stench of the aromatherapy oils, so that was the only apartment that was rented. All of those kids have families, right? So none of them actually lived there?”

“That’s right,” Chief Black confirmed. “But this was a new deal for them. We can’t say for sure if any of them were in there or not. I’ll get Debbie to call the families.”

Bruno was watching from the sidewalk in front of the Starbucks. Chief Black noticed him when he finished talking to Chief Cushing. He pointed in the direction of the Pine Barrens, as if to say, “You still hanging around? Go home.”

The psychic held his ground.

Chief Black realized he’d been coming down hard on Bruno all day. He stepped closer and said, “Look, whoever trashed your place may be somewhere in this crowd. I’m not saying you were the target here, but who the hell knows what’s really going on? So get inside someplace and stay out of sight.” Then he added an afterthought: “Check back in with me tomorrow. We need to talk.”

Though he would have preferred to stay out on the street, Bruno ducked into the Starbucks as ordered. There, things were proceeding more or less as usual. The sound track was a jaunty Modern Jazz Quartet CD, with Milt Jackson on vibraphone and John Lewis on piano exchanging sophisticated riffs. The music seemed very out of place. Bruno felt worse than out of place. He felt useless, guilty, and somehow responsible for the whole mess. He watched Gary suiting up in a brown fireman’s jacket with DayGlo yellow stripes. He would be one of the first in. He was capable—nimbly climbing up the fire escape—unselfish and heroic.

In fact, Gary was numb with fear. An adrenaline junkie, he actually relished the challenge of working undercover with drug dealers and mobsters. But he was in his element there.

Here, they wanted him to climb up a rickety old fire escape and enter a building engulfed in flames. Any sensible person would run the other way, he told himself. “But me? No. I’m goin’ to go right in. Why? Because I’m the black man. Every time they’s a tough job to do, who’s gotta do it? The black man!”

Gary knew full well that every member of the Gardenfield Fire Department was white. They all had other jobs, many of them cushy white-collar jobs, but they all volunteered to drop everything and fight fires whenever they were needed. They were brave men and he respected them. He just needed to steel himself to face a truly dangerous and terrifying situation, and talking trash to himself was how he did it. “Worst thing is, they’re making me wear this ugly raincoat with a bulletproof vest underneath. How’m I supposed to climb up these old steps dressed like that? And once I get inside, I gotta go looking for—what: refrigerator door triggers for an incendiary bomb? Honest, I was just looking for a cold beer. DVD players packed with plastic explosives? I had my heart set on watching Die Hard again. Who else’d be fool enough to do something like this? The black man.”

From Bruno’s perspective, the men of Ladder Company No. 1 seemed to have superhuman agility and courage. They scaled the ladder as though it were a toy and began attacking the roof with axes and chain saws. Almost instantly, gases rushed up through the vent, flared up and died back just as quickly. Somehow the firemen managed to dodge the blast of flame. And then the men from the engine company came up, aiming water from their pressure hoses at the blaze.

When it was over, Gary would claim he’d had the time of his life. He’d talk about how hard it was to see anything. How sections of the floor were gone, so you’d have to pray you weren’t stepping into a hole. How burning sections of the ceiling and walls came crashing down around him. Gary was supposed to work through an official checklist of known meth lab booby traps. First was electronically controlled detonators. No worries there. They’d shut down the power right off the bat. Check. Number two, light bulbs filled with gasoline. Wouldn’t be a problem either: If there had been any, they surely would have exploded by now. Check-check.

No man or bear traps by the front door; no boards with nails driven through under the window that allowed access to the fire escape.

Rattlesnakes did not seem likely to present a problem. Those were on the list as a tribute to the ingenuity of cookers in rural areas of states like Florida and Arkansas. No attack dogs either.

Trip wires were a trickier problem. Gary had to crack open cabinet doors and closets—gently, gently—then visually inspect, if possible. In cases where visual inspection was not possible—like when there was so much smoke you could barely see—then he could risk inserting a blade, using extreme caution. According to the manual, this technique was “not recommended, for emergencies only.” But in Gary’s experience, whenever you were poking around for bombs to defuse in a meth lab, it was always an emergency. Who were they kidding? You just had to get good with the blade and hope to God it never encountered resistance.

Gary worked his way around the kitchen, testing as many cabinets as the fire would allow. The blaze raging next to the sink suggested that was where the chemicals had been stored. No sign of a tank, though. Was that a good sign? Yes, if it meant they hadn’t stolen any anhydrous ammonia yet. No, if it meant the tank was someplace else.

He retreated to the living room. It was empty of furniture and did not have any closets. All clear. Gary let out a sigh and headed for the bedroom. Just a few more minutes, he told himself. With any luck he’d be out of this hellhole and back on the street in time for lunch.

Unfortunately the bedroom door was either wedged shut or locked from the inside. No way he was going to break it open. He could sense the heat in there; forcing this door would be asking for all kinds of trouble. They’d need to go in through the roof—and fast.

It was time to go. Gary placed a backwards-check next to number six and got his black ass moving out as fast as he could.

As he downed his third latte, Bruno saw nothing but chaos. He was in limbo looking out at perdition. Hoses snaked everywhere. The water curtain cascaded toward the street, while the smoke just got thicker and thicker. Not many people were gawking at the barricades. The news that there were hazardous chemical vapors kept all but the most curious and foolhardy souls at bay.

Besides, they could watch it at home on TV. There were multiple crews filming the blaze from a safe distance with telephoto lenses. One diminutive reporter, dressed in a Barbour jacket, Timberline construction boots, and a Maine lobsterman rain hat was right in the thick of things. Who’d let her in? She seemed to be interrupting firemen while they were working and asking them for comments. It could only be Peaches. She had a respirator in one hand, tape recorder in the other, worrying the crowd like a hungry jackal on the fringes of a savannah barbecue.

The Starbucks crew was pouring free beverages and sending them outside to anyone who needed them. Bruno was tired of feeling useless, so he volunteered to pass out coffee. As he moved from group to group, he kept overhearing snatches of conversation:

“These guys are real heroes. They got day jobs, for Chrissakes.”

“See that man over there with the droopy mustache? That’s Farouz what’s-his-face, the owner of the rug shop. He looks like someone who just sold his entire inventory at retail.”

“The cops didn’t find any booby traps; now they can put out the fire.”

“I hear it’s a Nazi lab, which is way worse than Red P.”

“Everything bad that could happen has already happened.”

Miraculously, the fire company contained the fire with minimal damage—most of it from water sprayed at the building next door. All of the firemen and police were present and accounted for. Two were suffering from dehydration and heat exhaustion, but nothing serious. With the fire out, the Chiefs were giving interviews to the press. “No, we haven’t determined what caused the blaze.” “Yes, there will be a complete investigation.” “No, we do not have any tentative conclusions. The investigation will take a while.” “Yes, it was a meth lab.” “Yes, of course we are surprised it blew up …” On and on.

The police and firemen waited for the camera crews and reporters to leave. Then Chief Cushing sent two firemen back inside. Five minutes later they reappeared, carrying what was, unmistakably, a body bag. They loaded it into an emergency vehicle, which pulled away on the long, slow ride to Dr. Cronkite’s lab in Pennsauken.