Jack had been right. As soon as the petroleum-fire crew appeared, the party was just about over. Street traffic had caused some delay for the foam tankers, but when they came, they moved right in with their big hoses. At the same time, an aerial tanker dove in overhead and dropped its red slime on the flaming oil barrels. The blaze disappeared, but the stench of burning petroleum and rubber lingered.
The helicopters, one by one, turned off their spots and swooped away, leaving us in an eerie darkness. The flashing lights of the official vehicles, the floods set up by the news people, the streetlights, could not penetrate the dense black smoke beyond a few yards. Nonessential personnel began to go, each one leaving the scene darker, quieter. I watched them all, waiting for Mike to come back.
We were among the last to leave. The coroner wouldn’t be able to get to the corpse until daylight. Official identification and cause of death could take weeks. There was nothing left for us to do.
I felt a tremendous adrenaline letdown, exhausted and excited all at once. We stopped by my office to pick up the mail on the way home. Back on the freeway, Mike was quiet, lost in thought or reluctant to restart the argument. The ringing of the car telephone startled us both.
Roddy O’Leary was angry. “What do you have against Baron? He’s a decent guy, he’s done a good job for the county. Why are you crucifying him?”
“We both know the answer to that, Roddy.”
“What’s it going to take to make you stop?”
I said, “The truth.”
“Whose truth? Dang, Maggie, you know as well as anyone does that truth is a slimy bastard-keeps changing its shape. You have a version, Baron has a version, that fucking con has a version. You’ve taken some pretty dirty shots at Baron. You’re killing him in the polls.”
And killing you, I thought. A campaign director’s price is set by his last campaign. Lose one, move back two spaces. For Roddy, a loss in the D.A.‘s race would probably eliminate any chance of getting a governor-race gig, even state assembly would be reaching.
I want a debate,” he said. “I want you on TV, give Baron a chance to answer.”
“Sorry,” I said, “debate isn’t my format.”
“You owe him.”
“I don’t owe him a goddamn thing. And I’m not going to debate him.”
Roddy was persistent. “Ralph Faust says he’ll give us air time. Thirty minutes tomorrow afternoon, replayed at eleven.”
“If I do it,” I said, “the format is discussion, not a debate. And I bring a friend or two with me.”
“Who?”
“I’ll let you know, if I decide to go ahead.”
Mike thought it was a bad idea to have a face-off. After he let me know that, he had nothing more to say. All the rest of the way home, and while we got ready for bed, he was like a mute. Very unusual for Mike.
I didn’t get to the office mail until I sat down on the bed. In the middle of the stack, there was a plain envelope with my name hand-printed on the front. There was no note inside. Nothing except copies of the affidavits dated the week before and signed by Hanna Rhodes and LaShonda DeBevis. I passed them to Mike.
All he said when he read them was, “Hmm.” Then he rolled over and went to sleep. Or pretended to.
Chapter 27
Sometime in the middle of the night, Mike turned on the light beside the bed and sat up.
“Why not?” he asked.
I hadn’t been sleeping, but the light still hurt my eyes. I rolled over against him, buried my face in the pillow behind his shoulder. When the fire interrupted our first go-round on the topic of marriage, I had hoped against logic that it wouldn’t come up again. I said the only thing I could think of, “I love you too much.”
He gave this some consideration before rejecting it. His tone was sharp. “Try again.”
“I don’t ever want to go through a divorce again.”
“I didn’t ask you for a divorce.”
“Aren’t we happy, Mike?”
“I know I am.”
“Why mess things up?”
“How is getting married going to mess up our happiness?” I sat up then, pulled the sheet up under my chin, wrapped my arms around my raised knees. I said, “How did you feel about getting called to the fire?”
He looked at me askance. “After twenty-two years on the job, I have seen my fill. The only thing that gets me through it anymore is knowing that in two more years, five months, there won’t be any more roll-outs. No more nothing but peace.”
“The problem is,” I said, “I haven’t seen my fill. I love the roll-outs.” I put my arm through his. “We’re great together now, baby, because we are still in the thick of things. But what will happen in two years? You’ll be off walking on your deserted beach, and I’ll be in the trenches in Mogadishu or somewhere. I’ve been in a sort of holding pattern as long as Casey is still at home. My plan has always been that as soon as she’s on her own, I’m out of here. I won’t have to accept pissy domestic-themed projects anymore to pay the bills. I can do, I can go anywhere.”
All he said was, “But…”
When there was no follow-up, I asked, “Will you come with me?”
“To Mogadishu?”
“To anywhere.”
“If I came with you, what would I be doing?”
“Guess you have to figure that out. Then, you have to decide whether that’s anything you want to do for the next God knows how many years.”
He put an arm around me and pulled me close. “What’s wrong with walking on the beach?”
“Nothing. There are beaches all over the world. I hear Mogadishu has a great one.”
He said, “Hmm.”
“We’re in different places in our lives right now, Mike. In two years, five months, who knows? Can’t we just be happy being happy?”
“I don’t know.” He reached over and turned off the light, turned his back to me. “I don’t know.”
In the morning, early, Mike took me up to the hills above the Griffith Park zoo for a run. Mike has both greater speed and better endurance than I have. I run to keep everything from falling apart, he runs as a challenge, always pushing his limits. I should have known better than to stand my five miles three times a week up against his eleven miles a day, even for an easy Sunday morning outing.
For my benefit, Mike set us on a nice, slow pace. At first, it was fun. There was a dense, gray marine layer overhead that kept us cool. We ran through a rugged canyon filled with dusty scrub, withered sycamore trees, and poison oak flaming red and orange to mark the coming of fall. Now and then, little brown squirrels or packs of stray cats would dart across the pavement in front of us.
For such an out-of-the-way spot, there was unusually heavy vehicle traffic-the canyon is a major pick-up spot for gay men-so we had to hug the roadside. All the way up, the sides of the narrow, two-lane road were lined with parked cars, young men hoping to make a connection. Some got out to pose on the hoods of their cars, others sunbathed in bikinis in the pull-outs-like statues in a wooded garden.
Most stayed inside their cars and made eye contact with the men slowly cruising by. No one gave Mike or me more than a nod. Not that Mike would have seen a nod; his eyes never left the center line.
I enjoyed the run for a while, but the operative word for the course he set was up. The slope was steep, and it was all uphill. After the first few miles, I was straining to keep up, he was straining to hold back. As long as I could, I tried to cover the effort it took to hang in. But by the time we came out on top, I was breathing hard and the long muscles in my thighs were beginning to cramp.
Mike slowed, ostensibly to admire the magnificent view of the city laid out below us. “Beautiful, huh?”