Our cab took us past the bustling nightlife in what, some said, had become a much-too-gentrified section of the Meatpacking District. The noise and the traffic were only a few streets deep, and by the time we got out of the cab at Phil’s converted warehouse, the glitz had been replaced by true city grit. The area was dark and deserted and almost quiet, except for the faint sounds of distant club babble.
The light over Phil’s front door, which had been burning brightly for my last visit, was now dark. That’s why, when the door opened, I couldn’t quite make out the figure that emerged from the building.
“Phil?” I called out.
Instead of replying, the figure darted to the right, then disappeared down an alley beside the warehouse.
“Guess it wasn’t Phil,” Gin said, with a nervous giggle.
The person who wasn’t Phil had left the front door ajar.
“Should we just go in?” Ted asked.
I entered the building and called out Phil’s name.
No reply, but there was the sound of loud voices and ricky-tick music from up above, and light flashed in the open elevator shaft.
I called again. Same lack of reply.
I led the way to the old elevator and put it in motion. Wheels grinding, it took us up a flight to Phil’s living space. The lights and the voices and the music were coming from the large TV monitor in the living room. Daffy Duck was in a spaceship, trying to avoid Marvin the Martian, who was wearing a helmet with a scrub brush sticking from the top. Duck Dodgers in the Twenty-fifth and a Half Century. A classic.
“Phil must be in his office,” I said.
I took a step from the elevator and a strong, almost toxic, chemical odor stung my nostrils. The carpet was squishy wet underfoot. The whole floor seemed to have been doused in fluid.
“What the hell?”
Before my mind clicked in on what was happening, there was a loud WHOMP and the door to what I remembered as Phil’s office blew open. A ball of flame leaped through it and began to consume that side of the large room, tongues of fire licking the walls, descending to the floor.
“Come back, Billy,” Ted called. “This place is going!”
I watched the flame eat through Claudio Bruno’s famous photograph. “Phil,” I shouted.
“Billy, we’re almost on fire,” Gin screamed.
The flames hit the carpet and began dancing in our direction at incredible speed. Smoke clotted the air. Daffy Duck’s raspy voice was being drowned out by the sudden intense sound of the fire, like a huge popcorn-making machine in overdrive.
“Billy! No time!” Ted yelled.
He was right. Ours were the only lives left to save in that building.
I jumped back on the elevator, and Ted sent it downward. We hit ground level just as the flames spilled over into the elevator shaft and started to travel down the oiled wooden sides.
We rushed from the warehouse. Luckily, we’d left the front door open. We barely made our frantic exit when the heat from the fire blew out the second-floor windows, scattering little shards of glass over us like snow.
From a safe distance, I stared in horror and, I hate to admit, fascination as the fire toyed with the building. I was aware of both Gin and Ted, drawing their phones like journalist gunfighters, calling in the story to their night staffs.
I was glad to have them there, glad I wouldn’t have to be the one to summon the firemen. My conscience wouldn’t allow me to just walk away, but I didn’t want to be the spokesperson for the group. I was still Solomon’s primary suspect in the Gallagher murder. My involvement in a new murder—and I was certain Phil Bruno’s body was inside the burning building—would only add to the detective’s belief in my homicidal tendencies.
With luck, Gin, the fifteen-million-dollar woman, would be the main-ring attraction of the soon-to-arrive media circus, and I could stay a few steps away from the action.
Just a thought.