A Question of Will Page 7

  "Thanks," Paul replied, slightly embarrassed.

  Suddenly a voice cried out from the bay, swearing a purple streak, followed by the clanging of metal on metal and the sound of oxygen bottles pinging off concrete. Paul, Joli, and Buscetti all glanced up, then Paul looked back to the detective and shrugged.

  "Probie," he explained.

  Dondi entered, still swearing. "Jesus fucking Christ, I tell the kid, fill the tanks to twenty-three hundred psi, so what does he do? He fills ‘em to thirty-two. I swear to Christ, that kid is dyslexic and spastic both. He’s spaslexic." Dondi spied the lanky detective in mid-rant and beamed. "Buscetti! How the hell are ya? And here I was just telling Paulie you’d gotten too good for us." He reached out to the visitor, shook hands warmly. "How’s Angela, and the baby?"

  "Angela’s great," Buscetti said. "Labor was brutal." He smiled. "Twenty-two hours, then the baby pops out like one of the Flying Wallendas." He pulled his wallet out, proudly flipping to a photo of a red-faced gnome with a full head of wispy black curls. "Dana Jean Buscetti, seven pounds, two ounces, lungs like a banshee," he said. "She’s already running us ragged."

  "She’s a doll," Dondi said.

  "Liar," Buscetti said flatly. "She looks like Tor Johnson with a bad weave."

  "This calls for a toast," Dondi said. He went over to the Coke machine and keyed it open, pulled four cold Budweisers from a stash secreted inside.

  "Not in front of the children," Paul admonished. Dondi, who was acting captain on the tour, peeked over his shoulder at the door to the bay.

  "Ah, fuck’im," he said, "This is a special occasion." He popped the tops and handed them around. "To kids," Dondi intoned, raising his bottle. "Can’t live with ‘em, can’t leave ‘em by the side of the road." Glass clinked, then each took an illicitly celebratory swig.

  "Shit, that reminds me," Paul suddenly blurted. "I gotta make a call." He stood and headed for the payphone in the hall. Buscetti watched him go, then glanced at Dondi questioningly.

  "Fam stuff -- he’s had a bug up his butt all week." Buscetti nodded; Dondi took another swig. "You just wait," he added sagely, "they hit a certain age and bam -- fahget about it. Boys are easy: just one big walking gland, like a hard-on with a learner’s permit. But girls..." Dondi whistled low, like a prophet of doom. "Girls are a fuckin’ mystery. By the time Dana’s in high school, you’ll be what, in your fifties? You’re gonna be up to your eyeballs in estrogen. Shoulda started earlier, while you still had time to recover."

  "Thanks," Buscetti lamented. "I feel so much better now."

  "Man, I ain’t never havin’ kids," Joli piped in. "Way you guys talk about it, it sounds like a fuckin’ death sentence."

  "Nah," Dondi countered. "They’re a pain in the ass, but nothin’ compares to watchin’ ‘em grow up and become something."

  It was at that precise moment Wallace Clyburne loped in. He was fair-haired, freckled and rail-thin, twenty-two on paper, but he looked about half that. "Sorry about that," he said sheepishly.

  "On the other hand..." Dondi muttered, and the other men snickered.

  Wallace looked around, vaguely aware that he’d walked in on a private joke just in time to become its punchline. "Did I miss something?" he asked.

  Dondi waved it off. "Wallace, this is Stephen Buscetti, the most badass detective in Glendon PD. Stevie, Wallace Clyborne, our new probationary cadet. Wallace is a Rescue man." He intoned the last part sardonically. Joli scoffed. Wallace turned beet red.

  "Uh, hi," he said to Buscetti. "Good to meet ya."

  "Likewise." Buscetti nodded. "Listen, don’t let these degenerates give you too much guff. They’re good guys in a pinch."

  "Thanks," Clyborne said, as if waiting a set-up he could but barely fathom. He turned to the other men. "I’m gonna hit the rack now, if that’s okay?"

  Nobody said anything, but as he started to head for the hall Joli cleared his throat conspicuously. "Oh, Rescue Man," he said snidely, "I believe there are some toilets in dire need of rescue." Dondi winked at Buscetti, telegraphing the joke. "You’re on shithouse duty, son."

  "But..." Wallace began, then glanced at the schedule sheet on the wall, saw that that wasn’t right. He looked back to Dondi and Joli, saw no mercy.

  "Uh, yeah, sure," he finished. "No problem." He looked at Buscetti. "Nice to meet ya."

  "Sure, kid," Buscetti smiled. As he left the room everyone waited a beat, then busted up laughing. Buscetti whistled. "Bit young, isn’t he?"

  "He’s a fetus," Joli said. "Straight outta the womb."

  "Nah, he’s okay," Dondi caught Buscetti’s look, then explained. "Earlier this week, we got called out on a bullshit run -- somebody scorched their Hamburger Helper and set off every smoke alarm on the third floor. Real no-brainer, right?

  "So Engine 13 is already on site as we pull up," he continued, "and already it’s all over. But as they’re cleaning up Maytag asks the kid to hump some hose back to the pumper. And the kid says -- Dondi scrunched his features into his best Wallace imitation — ‘I don’t hump hose, I’m a Rescue man!’ "

  Joli snorted; Buscetti just winced. "Ouch." Probies were to firefighters what Boots were to cops; two clicks above plankton on the evolutionary scale, until they made their bones. Dondi grinned evilly.

  "You got it," Dondi continued. "Needless to say, Maytag about tore him a new hole... then Georgie heard about it and damned near stuffed his head up it." Everybody cracked up. "So now our Wally is about the most eager little probie in all of Glendon. But we’re still busting his balls, though. On general principle."

  "Moral imperative," Joli nodded.

  "You guys are cold," Buscetti said, but he understood. It wasn’t the kind of job that catered to elitists -- especially probie elitists. Just then they heard Paul’s voice raise a notch in the hall.

  "GodDAMMIT..." His tone peaked, then notched back down to a tense burble, as the other men exchanged wary glances. A heartbeat later Paul appeared in the doorway, looking decidedly peeved. He shook it off, looked at the guys.

  "So what’d I miss?"

  "Nothing," Joli said brightly. "We were just toasting fatherhood." Paul laughed ruefully.

  "Problem in the nest?" Buscetti asked.

  "No, no problem," Paul said flatly. "My daughter’s just grounded until she’s fifty, the second she walks through the front door." He groaned. "Stevie, you want my advice? Shoot yourself now, get it over with." He swigged angrily off his beer; everybody looked at Paul as though waiting for his head to explode.

  But before he could say another word, a piercing bell went off, huge and clanging. The tone of the room changed instantly; Paul’s mood evaporating in a blast of adrenaline as they all scrambled -- Paul grabbing the call sheet off the rattling telex as Dondi and Joli headed for the bay. He paused at the door, looked back at Buscetti.

  "Congratulations, dad."

  Buscetti nodded, waved him off. Paul followed hot on their heels, all business now, as Buscetti hovered at the threshold and watched. His wallet was still in his hand. Buscetti looked down at the photo of his newborn girl.

  He sighed, murmured. "Dad."

  ~ * ~

  The Rescue One bay lit up like a Christmas tree on speed -- lights strobing as the men jumped into turnout gear lining a bench on the wall, boots and waders turned out for instant access, coats hanging ready on pegs above.

  "39 Ramble Street, near Westminster." Paul called out, hauling on his bulky rubberized turnouts.

  "Got it!" Dondi yelled back, already at the driver’s side, then shouted at the ceiling. "WALLACE, MOVE YER ASS!"

  "WALLACE!!"

  A second later, the probie came sliding down the brass pole behind them, literally caught in the crapper with his pants down. Paul climbed up, slid into the shotgun seat as Wallace grabbed his gear and climbed onboard the rear jumpseat, landing so hard he banged his head on the firewall. Paul glanced back. "Easy, boy," he cautioned. "No sense killing yourself before we get there."

  His words were
drowned by diesel roar as the rig rumbled to life. The garage door rumbled, yawning wide. Wallace notwithstanding, they had done this hundreds of times before, and together they moved swiftly, with an economy born of experience. They were out the door and down the street in sixty seconds flat, sirens howling, lights ablaze. Each feeling that, whatever crisis awaited, they were ready for it.

  And never once dreaming of just how wrong they would be.

  EIGHT

  They roared across town, banshee-wailing into damp night as the tinny voice of the radio dispatcher blasted in the cab.

  "Rescue One, what’s your twenty?"

  Paul keyed the handset. "Dispatch, this is Rescue One," he relayed. "We’re eastbound at the corner of Clough and Melhorn, ETA five minutes."

  "Roger, Rescue One. Wlil advise." Dispatch signed off. Paul racked the handset a little too hard and sat back. They drove in silence for a good ten seconds, then Dondi couldn’t stand it anymore.

  "So," he said, "you wanna get it off your chest, or should I break out the Prozac?"

  "That was Julie," Paul sighed. "Apparently today Kyra says she needs to go to the library, and Julie tells her, ‘be back by eight-thirty.' Like this is news, right? School night curfew is eight-thirty. Not eight forty-five, not nine. Eight-thirty. "

  "You mean, as in eight-thirty," Dondi said sarcastically. He glanced at the LCD clock on the dash: it read 9:25.

  "Oh," he murmured.

  "Bingo," Paul replied, annoyed. "I tell ya, there’s gonna be some changes around here, starting tonight. I shit you not." The rig hit a pothole, jostled mercilessly. Paul sighed, put it behind him, again flipped on the map light, reading the jostling printout.

  "So what do we got?" Dondi asked, as he nudged through the intersection and gunned it, running the light.

  "Thirty-six units," Paul read. "Two floors, brick construction, tar roof, shutoffs in rear, annunciator alarm system."

  "How’s access?"

  "Elevator in the east wing. Stairwells east and west. Service ramp in the back."

  Dondi nodded and racked the wheel, ducking around a Ford Fiesta. "OUTTA THE WAY, YA PRICK!" he shouted, sounding the klagg horn. The little car visibly shook, as if the sheer decibel level would blow it off the road. As they raced past, Dondi glanced at Paul. "Anything else?" he asked.

  "Yeah," Paul said. "Says here, it’s a rest home." Dondi cackled.

  "Not for long," he said.

  ~ * ~

  The sign out front read Shady Acres, but it was neither. On a good day, it was a low-slung, ranch-style warehouse wedged between a funeral parlor and a low income housing unit, a Medicare gulag for inconvenient elders. At the moment, it was a circus.

  The fire itself was no big deal: some near-sighted oldster sneaking a smoke in his room had tossed the butt at the toilet and hit the trash instead. A lot of smoke, a lot of panic, but no real threat. But by the time they arrived on site the night staff had already evacuated the building, and by quarter to ten Rescue One was up to its armpits in wheelchairs and walkers: a sea of shivering shut-ins, Night of the Living Dead on Geritol. Everyone was agitated and harassed, the staff fearful of pneumonia and lawsuits, the firefighters almost as overwhelmed as their disoriented charges.

  "Hang on, lady," Paul said, reaching down to free spoked wheels from a stray shrub. "We’ll get you back inside in a flash." As he stood he caught sight of Joli and Wallace passing out blankets, lost in the shuffling fray.

  The woman in the wheelchair was tiny and frail, somebody’s forgotten grandma, on the far side of senile. Osteoporosis had bowed her back into a painful dowager’s hump; pendulous goiters hung from her shriveled neck like withered fruit. Her eyes were huge and uncomprehending, pupils irised wide and black.

  "Eenie-meenie-miney-moe," she murmured urgently, fingers frittering at the edge of her blanket. "Eenie-meenie-miney-moe."

  "Leggo, ya bastid!!" a voice growled somewhere behind him. "I know all about ya, pricks!!" Paul glanced over and saw Dondi struggling to maneuver a hairless geezer with one leg and the meaty forearms of an ex-dockworker. Huge and leathery hands clutched vainly, locking onto everything in sight: lampposts, bushes, other patient’s chairs, the other patients themselves.

  "LEGGO ME!!" he growled.

  "Relax, pal, I’m trying to help you..."

  "Bastid!" The old guy took a wild swing, missed by a country mile and almost fell out of his chair. Dondi lunged and grabbed, caught the back of his robe. "Help!" the old man cried, his voice gruff, oddly vulnerable. "He’s tryin’ to KILL me!! HEELLLP!!"

  "Eenie meenie miney moe..." the old woman quivered and fretted. "...eenie meenie miney moe..." Dondi drew abreast of Paul, and the old man grabbed onto the other chair, pulled with surprising strength. The wheels of the two chairs gnashed and locked, stopped dead. Grandma and grandpa stared at each other blankly, then suddenly grinned gummy grins.

  Dondi leaned over to Paul. "Love Connection..." he whispered.

  Paul managed a rueful grin. "C’mon, folks," he said. "Let’s get you inside before you freeze."

  They had just separated the chairs and begun to roll them inside when they heard a scream coming from behind. Paul and Dondi turned in time to see an elderly stray stumbling down the drive and onto the rain-slick street, bathrobe belt trailing like a soggy tail. Up the block, a pair of headlights, bearing down way too fast. The old man was oblivious, lost.

  Paul and Dondi’s hearts ballooned into their throats simultaneously, collision course vectors all too grimly clear. "JOLI!!" they cried in unison.

  But Joli had his hands full already. He followed their gaze and started to shout himself, as firefighters and orderlies scrambled, too slow on the pickup. The driver saw him, too late. Brakes locked. The old man froze. There wasn’t time. The car screeched and slid. No one was close enough. There wasn’t enough time...

  ...and that’s when the miracle in black canvas flashed past, vaulting the hedgerow, rubber boots slapping the street as he closed the distance like an Olympic track star. His helmet flew off as he scooped the old man off his feet a split-second before the car careened past. But Wallace somehow dove clear without falling, without losing balance or crushing his fragile cargo as the car skidded to a heart-attack stop, rear tire grinding the fallen helmet to shrapnel with a sickening crunch. There was an adrenalated beat of silence, then the driver of the car floored it, screeching around the corner of Westminster, and gone.

  Wallace Clyborne slid into the curb, the old man slung over his shoulder in picture-perfect fireman’s carry. The elderly gent’s hair was a tousled white shock; his eyes wide with clueless surprise. Wallace looked up, a little surprised himself.

  "Did you see what I just saw?" Paul said, in shock.

  "Fuck me," Dondi murmured. "It’s super-probie."

  Wallace beamed. Suddenly there came a moist, popping sound, and the kid suddenly found himself hosed with waste, as the colostomy bag under the old man’s robe ruptured and rained down the sleeve of Wallace’s coat.

  As the nursing home orderlies raced up, Wallace set him down as gently as possible, then gazed at the stinking sleeve and groaned.

  Paul and Dondi approached, laughing in spite of themselves. Paul patted him carefully on the back.

  "Welcome to the life," he said. "Backdraft, it ain’t."

  Wallace smiled queasily, as the other men grinned and jostled the probie; then together, they turned back to matters at hand. There were still patients to tend to, more work left to do. It took another twenty minutes to finish herding the over-excited residents back to their beds; mercifully, no one else seized up, keeled over or otherwise jeopardized life or limb. But everyone seemed slightly transformed in the aftermath; as the patients were packed away some of the nursing staff disappeared into the kitchen, came back with coffee and snacks for the frazzled firefighters.

  Wallace himself seemed different; after his amazing stunt the probie’s bumbling station-house demeanor was nowhere in evidence. He cleaned himself off, then was right
back at it, tackling the rest of the job with gentle efficiency and an understated confidence. Even Joli was impressed; he looked at Paul and shrugged, go figure...

  As they wrapped things up, Paul laid a brotherly hand on the probie’s shoulder. "Way to go, kid," he said. "You did good back there..."

  "Yeah," Joli chimed in. "Nice save. Where’d you ever learn moves like that?"

  "I dunno," Wallace smiled, then added, "My Dad had a stroke couple years before he died, came out half-paralyzed, kinda senile. I got used to dealing with all kinds of crazy shit."

  "Hey, kid." Dondi came up, holding a handful of donuts. "You saved someone and got shit on. Guess you’re a rescue man after all, huh?" He smiled as he said it, then offered the kid a sugar fix; Wallace grinned and accepted. The men split left and right, heading for their respective seats on the truck. As Paul and the kid moved toward the passenger side, Wallace paused to scoop up the shattered remnants of his wasted headgear.

  "Jesus," he said.

  "Better that than your head." Paul opened the door. "Hey, don’t worry about it," he added as he climbed onboard. "We’ll fix you up later."

  Wallace nodded and took his position, one of them now. The dispatch radio crackled to life. "Rescue One, respond to possible body at Kozy Kove Motor Lodge..."

  "Why us?" Wallace asked.

  "Availability," Dondi answered. "Well, kiddies, it looks like the weekend rush hit early."

  "Figures," Joli groaned. "When it rains, it fuckin’ pours."

  "You got that right," Paul nodded, then to Wallace. "Word of advice, kid: hope for the best, but always plan for the worst."

  Paul glanced back, saw Wallace nod in dawning comprehension.

  He had no idea.

  NINE

  Joli’s voice sounded over the roar of the rig. "Hey, Paulie," he called out. "I need a favor."

  "You got it," Paul said, then, "what is it?"

  "I, uh...", Joli hesitated, tried to sound casual. "I need to borrow some books, dude."