A Question of Will Read online

  "Why not?" Paul asked. "I mean, what’s stopping us?"

  "Yeah, right," Julie said, her thoughts drifting off. "Like when?"

  "I don’t know," he replied. "Next weekend? We’ll just go…"

  "Mmmm," she murmured sleepily. "We’ll see…" She kissed him goodnight, then curled into the crook of his arm, slipping into dreamland with nary another moment wasted. She had to get up early.

  Paul’s mind, meanwhile, hummed along, wide-awake. For some reason, good sex always left him fully conscious, his intellect striving to reclaim ground so recently ceded to sensation. As he lay on his back, sated and pleasantly numb, Paul’s mind turned from thoughts of lusty escape, took stock of other things.

  It was okay for Kyra to spend the night at Jennifer’s, he decided. And Julie was right, he needed to lighten up. After all, if she hadn’t, would they have been able to go at it with such animal abandon? No way; even if they wanted to, the parental governors would have gone on auto-pilot, pinning back the passion, muffling every cry. Stealth sex. Experience had proven that coitus and child-rearing were an uneasy mix, a wet diaper on the fires of frenzy.

  Besides, Kyra was a good kid. Correction, he amended, she was the best. Familial frictions notwithstanding, Paul loved his daughter more than life itself. It continually made him a sucker in the discipline department — all snarl, with very little snap — and while Paul knew that ultimately there was nothing he wouldn’t do for her, Kyra knew it, too, and though they both knew where the line was, she pushed it at every available opportunity. And Julie was right — when all was said and done, maybe he was just having a hard time letting go.

  That settled, his thoughts drifted over the landscape of his life. All things considered, there was a rhythm to his existence that Paul greatly enjoyed. It was measured not by the ceaseless grind of nine-to-five wage slavery, but rather something organic, almost mysterious. It was unpredictable, yet patterned according to a plan he could not so much see, as feel.

  Like the cycle of seasons or the ebb and flow of ocean tides, there was always a sense that periods of maddeningly hectic and death-defying pace would invariably be followed by an almost dormant stillness, a time to fall back and regroup, recharge his internal batteries, and tend to loose ends.

  Then invariably, just as he began to itch for the moment-to-moment rush of action again, something would come along to jar him out of thinking that things were too easy, that everything was too neatly in its proper place and life was getting stale. Maybe not exactly when he liked, or the way he liked it -- but it always came. With time and experience he had learned to watch for clues, to read the lay of things the way a fisherman can assess the surface of seemingly still waters, or a farmer can foretell the coming storm by the way the breeze ripples through a field of wheat, long before the first cloud appears.

  There were troubles, to be sure. There were always troubles. But Paul had never really expected any different. Trouble was simply a part of the rhythm of things, as inevitable as the changing of seasons or the pull of the tides. He sometimes speculated on different people’s order-to-chaos ratio -- the relative percentage of stability-to-upheaval in life, both his own, and in those of the people he loved.

  Some people -- Julie, for example -- were intensely ordered in their worldview, and the first sign of instability or flux would unnerve her no end, pitching her into control mode. Control was Julie’s default setting; it was one of the things that made her a good teacher, as well as a devoted and doting mother, and even a world-class lover, and Paul both admired and depended upon her for it. And he, in turn, became her antidote to becoming too strictured, too anal in her outlook. Paul was Julie’s wildcard, perpetually full of surprise. Then again, flipping the mental coin, she was perfectly capable of blindsiding him with a thought or a word, knocking him out of his own boxed perceptions when he least expected it. Indeed, she was almost an expert at it. So, in a way, they balanced each other out.

  His mind drifted to other people in his life. Like Dondi, the archetypal chaos junkie: thriving on utter madness, most comfortable when things were burning unchecked or careening out of control. With Dondi, it translated into everything from his personal habits -- he was a gleeful, unrepentant slob -- to his unflaggingly cheerful outlook and almost reckless willingness to dive headfirst into situations where angels feared to tread. It lent him a resiliency and an aura of balls-out courage that Paul both respected and counted on. And Paul was the eye in the hurricane of Dondi’s life, centering his best friend’s manic abandon, channeling his energy.

  Both were comfortable roles, and ones to which Paul felt himself naturally cast. To the best of his knowledge, he was a creature caught somewhere between the two. He knew from experience that he could handle uncertainty and danger seventy-five, even eighty percent of the time, so long as he had that critical twenty to twenty-five percent margin of security. It was his psychological safety net, a fallback mechanism that allowed him to function at his best, and it continually shifted in response to the forces at play.

  When the job wore on him too much, he had his family to keep him grounded, seeking refuge in the love and comfort of Julie and Kyra. Paul genuinely loved being a family man. He made a conscious effort to be a good husband to his wife, a good father to his daughter, a good provider and protector, a good man.

  This had come as a surprise: years before, Paul had wondered about his own innate capacity for either commitment or fatherhood. His own experiences on the pay-end of bad parenting had been uninspiring: biological pater missing in action since before Paul’s birth, stepdad Ken a blue-collar cretin who Paul always felt viewed him as one would an unruly pet -- something to suffer grudgingly, and whip when it went on the rug.

  Paul’s mother, Ellen, was not much better in the nurturing department; she loved him, but was too burdened with her own emotional baggage to have much to offer beyond a roof over his head and the most self-serving expressions of affection. She had feared life alone, and so had sought security in the form of a man, any man, only to end up walling herself into a low-wattage domestic hell with a husband whose most sterling character trait was that he was there.

  The resulting imprint left Paul embittered and alienated, high on self-reliance and short on trust. He grew up hungering for a sense of home, yet innately distrusted the very concept of such a thing.

  But the warm woman sleeping beside him had changed all that. From the first, she was strong-willed, kind-hearted, and deeply caring. She was also blessed with a no-nonsense hopefulness that was the natural antidote to Paul’s deeply ingrained cynicism. She saw through his armor, knew instinctively how to reach through and unlock the fortress around his heart. And, perhaps even more miraculously, she actually wanted to.

  Falling in love with her was like the climax to their lovemaking tonight -- tumbling off a steep cliff, only to find yourself rising. It had been like that from the first, and only deepened over the years. As time went on, he could not imagine a life without her. Julie made it easy for Paul to believe. She made the dream seem possible.

  And when she gave him Kyra, it became a reality.

  Paternal grousing aside, Paul was still astounded by the depth of love he felt for his daughter. It went way beyond the fact that she was his only child -- and given Julie’s fragile health, the only child they’d likely ever have. It even transcended the anxiety born of a difficult breech-birth labor that almost cost both their lives.

  No, it was a simple truth born the moment he had held the blood-smeared, squalling bundle in his hands. Kyra was borderline preemie, but the power contained in that small form was immense. As he cradled her in his arms and her tiny fingers instinctively locked around one of his own, Paul felt his entire universe spiral and re-align itself, yielding to the life that was its new and unequivocal center.

  The old saying went, any fool can make a baby, but it takes a man to be a father. It was true. Julie had given him many things, but it was his daughter that made him a man. She was the most astoni
shing person he had ever known, or ever would -- a miraculous baby, a bright and vibrant child... now fast becoming a smart and wonderful young woman... who still hadn’t cleaned out the gutters or raked the yard.

  Paul smiled. Domestic bliss was not without its fair share of grief. But when tensions ran high, he would invariably gravitate back to the bustling fraternity of Rescue One; hanging and joking with the guys at the station, playing softball or just kicking back after hours at the Gaslight Tavern.

  At the odd times when both work and home were getting on his nerves, he found release in his seemingly inexhaustible roster of projects; teaching at the Academy, or public relations in the form of fund-raisers and charity events, or his renovation of the house on Marley Street. It was rare that all three bottomed out at once. In the grand biorhythmic scheme of things, the laws of probability virtually ensured that at least one curve would always be on the upswing when the others were falling. It was a balancing act of sorts, but it worked.

  All in all, Paul felt a deep satisfaction with his life. He went to bed at night knowing he had done the best he could, and woke up each new day determined to meet the challenge of whatever came his way. He had a job he loved, a wife and daughter he adored, and a funky, comfortable home that he had restored with his own hands. Hell, he even had a nest egg saved up and a pension not too many years down the road, and the promise of time to enjoy it while he and Julie were relatively young.

  I’m only thirty-eight, he thought. Thirty-eight is young. Paul curled into his wife’s warm body, spoon-fashion; Julie murmured and stirred agreeably. Paul sighed. All in all, it was as fine a life as a poor boy from the mean streets of Jersey could reasonably have hoped for. Life was hard, but life was good. Life was fair.

  Paul drifted off, as the tacit fabric of thought unravelled into sleep. Thirty-eight years to reach a point of sublime balance. Thirty-eight years to build something that was worthwhile. It was a labor of love. The labor of a lifetime.

  And it would take less than a night to obliterate it.

  SEVEN

  It was just after nine o’clock on Thursday evening. It had been a slow week, marked by low-level crises; false alarms and fender benders, Stovetop Stuffing fires, people smoking out their homes because they forgot to clean the chimney flue or suburban outlaws burning leaves in flagrant violation of city ordinances.

  Even the weather had turned rainy and gray, a depressing pre-holiday gloom. The skies lay heavy and dark over the city; fallen leaves windswept into gutters and mashed into clammy brown paste. A good night to be indoors, a better one to stay there.

  Inside the station, the mood was low-key, genial. Rescue One was housed in a two-story building built in 1927, and it still carried a worn Norman Rockwell vibe in its vaulted, embossed tin ceilings, red brick, and black-and-white tile. On the downside, the years had taken their toll, as evidenced by drafts that wormed their way through casement windows and radiators that hissed and gurgled like something out of a bad horror movie.

  The first floor was consumed by the huge truck bay that housed the Rescue One rig and its attendant gear lockers, and a large common room that functioned as combination dispatcher’s office, dining area, and general down-time hang space. In the common room, a 27’’ Zenith monitor and 4-head VCR sat atop a scarred wooden hutch that held videotapes, piles of dog-eared magazines, a stack of equally well-thumbed paperbacks and softcore porno mags. A neat pile of hardcovers were set off from the rest - Paul’s private stash, which ranged from gritty non fiction like Mark Baker’s Cops or William Dunn’s Boot to more intellectual fare such as Gavin DeBecker’s The Gift of Fear or Adam Hoschchild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, along with novels by William Goldman, Thomas Harris, and Kurt Vonnegut. Dondi’s tastes ran to pulpier fiction and seamy true crime tales, though he could be coaxed into a good Dashiell Hammett; as far as anyone could tell, Tom and Joli read only under duress, apart from training manuals, and were innately suspicious of anything that didn’t have pictures and big print.

  A bruised and ancient table served as work surface for the countless hobbies that whiled away down time. In the opposite corner, a government issue metal desk sat next to a refrigerator and an old Coke machine. The desk sufficed as the dispatch station, neatly packed with the telex unit, a multiline phone, and the clipboard that held the daily run log. The wallspace above and beside it was plastered with OSHA and FBA bulletins, cartoons from everything from Firehouse to Penthouse, and yellowed newspaper clippings. One article stuck out from the others, relatively fresh and underscored with magic marker; the headline read MYSTERY BLAZE CLAIMS ONE, LEAVES DOZENS HOMELESS. It was page-two coverage, not glamorous enough to unseat the ceaseless parade of more press-worthy evils. The origins of the blaze were described as simply, suspicious; the rescue of the child was mentioned as a highlight. There was an action shot of Paul, holding the bawling baby girl. Across the margin, someone had scrawled a sarcastic message in magic marker: Our heeero!!

  Paul sat with his feet up on the table, reading. Technically, he wasn’t even supposed to be in today, had in fact planned on spending the day changing the locks and tackling the boiler from hell on Marley Street. But Tom had called in sick with the flu, and Paul agreed to cover his tour.

  A fire company never rested; even on a slow day, there was still the ceaseless cycle of chores: equipment and apparatus upkeep, housekeeping duties, food prep and paperwork. By six he had finished doing inventory on the medical supplies and restocking the wagon from the locked supply cabinet in the basement, doing his weekly maintenance checks on the battery-powered defibrillator units they kept on hand to jump-start cardiac patients, and making a shopping list for their next food run to the Price Club.

  He was just settling down to a mountain of technical information in preparation for the upcoming lieutenant’s exam. Dondi was out in the bay, making busy with Wallace, the new probationary cadet. Joli was seated at the other end of the long table, absorbed in a bootleg videotape of Tarantino’s True Romance and absently playing with a latex rubber Freddy Kreuger mask. Halloween was on the following Wednesday, and Paul had opted to go ahead with the whole Hell-House thing, with or without Kyra’s help.

  "Check it out," Joli said. "This is my favorite scene." On the tube, Patricia Arquette’s bruised and bloody Alabama Worley had just gotten tossed through a shower stall by James Gandolfini’s leering Mafia errand boy.

  "You’re a sick fuck," Paul mumbled, not looking up.

  "Seriously," Joli continued, "this is the part where she blows this guy away with his own shotgun and then beats him to death with it." Onscreen, Alabama brought the gun up and down, up and down, maidenformed breasts bobbing in slo-mo, face a mask of thespian rage. Joli stick his hand inside the Freddy mask, working the rubber jaw, the world’s worst ventriloquist.

  "Great tits," Joli growled. "Whaddayasay Pauleee?? Patricia Arquette’s got some happenin’ hooters, eh?"

  Paul didn’t even look up. "Isn’t it your turn to clean the crapper, or something useful?" he said.

  "Let Wallace do it," Joli said, waving it off. "That’s what probies are for. Say, what do you think of my mask? Good burn sculpting." Joli slipped it on, immediately became a leering latex monstrosity. He fumbled with the mouth-hole, stuck his tongue out lasciviously. "I’m Miisster Toast!!"

  "You’re a moron," Paul countered. Insults bounced off Joli as if his ego were Scotchguarded; he shrugged and made an obscene gesture. Just then a blast of cold air rattled the windows; Paul looked up to see a shivering figure push through the front door. The man was thin, fortyish, with thin dark hair and thin, craggy features offset by oddly warm brown eyes. He looked like Crime Dog’s distant, rumpled cousin.

  "Detective Buscetti," Paul said, mock-formally. "What’s shakin’?"

  "Me... s’nasty as a motherfucker out there." Buscetti said, beelining for the coffee pot. He turned and saw the deadpan, molten-faced man sitting silently before him.

  "Heya, Joli..." he said.

  "Shit." Joli pul
led the mask off, tossed it on the table. "How’d you know it was me?"

  "I’m a trained professional," Buscetti shrugged and filled his cup. He sat, glancing at the spines of Paul’s books. " ‘Fire Stream Management, Principles of Departmental Organization, and Protocol of Command’." He rolled his eyes. "Woo-woo."

  "Oh, yeah," Paul said. "I’m thinkin’ about sitting on the shock paddles, just to liven things up." He closed the book. "So, what’s happening in the big bad world of law enforcement?"

  "Same shit, different day," Buscetti replied, then added, more seriously, "We’re still looking into that apartment fire last weekend."

  "Really," Paul’s eyebrows arched. "I thought arson was handling that."

  "Technically, yes. But there was a body involved, so that makes it homicide."

  "No shit," Joli turned away from the tube. Real-life carnage was always more interesting. "Think it’s the Toastinator?"

  "Dunno," Buscetti shrugged. "Could be anything from an insurance scam gone bad to a pissed-off ex- to some psycho flicking his Bic. We canvassed the neighborhood twice, got nada. I wanted to ask you guys if you noticed anything odd on the scene."

  "Not really," Paul replied. "Same m.o. as always: fire starts in the basement, yer basic Charmin starter." Buscetti shrugged; Paul clarified, "Roll of toilet paper unstrung like a big fuse. Probably uses some kind of accelerant, given how fast it travels, but whatever it is, it burns off clean. No residue."

  "Lovely," Buscetti murmured and sipped his coffee. The kind of go-nowhere case that could drag on for years, unless the perp got an attack of conscience and fessed up or they caught him in the act. "By the way," he added, "good work with the kid."