I've Got A Plan

“I’ve got a plan.” My voice offers assurance to Mister Big-Shot. A salvation from this burning hell. He scoops up his Yorkie. “I’ve got you, Stella. Daddy won’t let anything happen to you,” he coos to the dog, coughing, putting his face in hers. Stella’s little pink tongue a blur as she licks at his nose.

We crawl between the glass-paneled French doors to his private, upstairs home office. A victorian mahogany desk, staged in the center like an altar, sags the beams beneath with the weight of a drafthorse. Acquired from Sotheby’s for an amount that could buy a modest single family home in the blue collar ‘burbs, the desk’s provenance includes a Robber Baron and a past Secretary of State. That he outbid a French Noble for the desk and subsequently bequeathed it to The Smithsonian gave birth to a fawning article attesting to his generosity and patriotism, this article now framed prominently on the wall.

The fire started downstairs and grew quickly. An accelerant will do that. Most casualties of home fires die, not from the fire itself, but from smoke inhalation and suffocation. It’s still not a great way to go, your lungs choked out with soot, but better than burning to death with flames licking at your fat, the drips from your thighs like hamburger grease on a backyard grill. Mister Tithing-Catholic doesn’t know this.

Crawling, his knees chasing a single palm, he struggles with just one arm, the other protectively cradling Stella. His baby. She yips and strains to get free of his grip. “No Stella,” he admonishes, coughing deeper. “We’re being saved by the firefighter.”

We crawl across a Turkish wool runner, the acrid smoke less thick as we make our way, but even through my mask it burns my throat and lungs. The cancerous smell of incinerating carpet and drywall and furniture and wires and flame retardant chemicals. “Follow me,” my voice scratchily commands. We crawl beneath year after year of Distinguished Alumni plaques, beneath city keys. Mr. Citizen of the Year’s ample belly wobbles as he struggles beneath his weight and his fear and his overburdened heart and his high blood pressure and his precious doggy cargo.

Sooty smoke streams up the staircase like an angry, black river, rolling and boiling, staining the barrel vaulted ceiling and snuffing out the stars from the double-high windows. The flames roar and the house cracks under the pressure like a faulty boiler. The ornamental decorations of a rich life accumulated into a home, pictures and paintings, pendants and chandeliers, heirlooms and sculptures, all take turns crashing to the first floor’s marble tile in an unrelenting cacophony of noise.

Mister Hot-Shot-Lawyer coughs caustically, from the bottom of his lungs, retching, slime spooling out of his mouth in gelatinous strings. He cradles Stella. His grip weakening, his labored breathing a distraction against her straining and barking. His eyes red with fear and smoke, pleading, trusting that my actions will lead to his salvation. Conservation of energy and karma, we’re well past that.

“I’m here to help!” My voice had been loud on arrival. Authority demands volume and with enough confidence, a person learns you can get away with anything. Add to that my full fireman’s suit, and in his full panic, Mister Philanthropy hadn’t even questioned my presence. No smoke alarms blaring. No fire trucks or other fireman. No emergency calls to 911. You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

We crawl beneath framed photos. Mister Diamond Supporter shaking hands with the Governor. Mister Twenty-Grand Dinner shaking hands with the President and the Ex-President and the Ex-Ex-President. Photos and favors from countless Senators collected and stacked like baseball cards.

An explosion blows out the first floor windows in a crescendo of glittery chimes. Flames rage up the chimney launching the spark-arrestor into a neighboring yard, the arcing path leaves a trail of embers like a falling star. A new fire starts in the dried, Autumn grass, the mother fire spreading.

Congealed cords of spittum and phlegm hang from his mouth like the strings of a tennis shoe. Stella, loosening from his grip, furiously licks at them. His face grows redder with each grasping movement. The thud-thud of his pumping heart visible in the engorged, purple vein that connects his eyebrow to his horseshoe bald scalp.

Dragging leaded knees he crawls across the floor, behind the heavy mahogany desk. The solid oak, castered chair shoved towards the far corner, spins in a pirouetting dance and smashes into a book shelf. The thick chair mat, pulled to the side, exposes the face of a hidden floor safe. Confused, he looks to the window for escape. For fresh air. He tries to bypass me but his salvation lies here in the safe. Blocked, he punches and kicks, the impacts of resistance glancing and weak. His floppy cheeks accordion-fold between my yellow-gloved fingers, forcing his head side to side while pantomiming the action, my face his mirror.

“I’m here to save you!” Yelling into his face with growing anger, this moment a dream years and months in the making.

He again attempts the window.

My mask pulled back, resigning myself to suck the dirty air with him, this so he can see my face clearly, my profile from his past, renewed again. “Remember me?” My voice growls the anger building yet more. The smoke and fire and fear and belabored breathing delay the moment until finally, the recognition settles in, his face flashing from confusion to recognition, then, anger.

“Open it!” My voice enraged with visions of smashing his head into the oak floor, cracking his skull open like an egg shell.

He holds Stella out, eyebrows raised. “She’ll run.” Stella barks and squirms. Her little, white teeth a gnashing blender of anger and fear at my outstretched gloved fingers. Ignoring her protestations, I grab her and transfer her to a football cradle against the padding of my sooty, yellow jacket. Her diminutive form and weight disappears as she settles down immediately. Little dogs are yellow-bellied bullies like that. The adage that dogs impersonate their owners rings true.

He reaches blindly behind into the hollow of the desk. His arm and hand clumsily pushing around the underside in search. No attempt at concealment, his brain overloaded with fear and smoke. “Looking for this?” I ask, retrieving his gun from my jacket and pointing the dead end at his piece-of-shit fat face.

“Just fucking shoot me then!” he yells, that forehead vein now ready to rupture.

“Open it!” My free glove points at the floor. “Now!”

He doesn’t move. Improvising, this moment not going how it had been envisioned, my hands pivots the barrel of the gun until it rests on the stop of Stella’s head. Her little face looks up, black eyes and fur, pink tongue takes a lick of the barrel.

“No!” he sobs. “No!” From anger to defeat in that instant. Reaching out, fingers stretched, for Stella. His head drops and he presses his middle finger to the fingerprint reader, punches in a long code, and the door pops open. Within the safe, a row of sealed envelopes, each meticulously labeled, these documents of horrors, these proofs of guilt, these sins of his omissions. His clients deeds, but his soul equally culpable. A deal with the devil in exchange for this luxury. His life a crime in need of its own atonement. Without asking he hands me the one marked ‘J.E.’ Within the envelope, the flight book to his client’s private island, a log of guests, and multiple USB drives.

The floor cracks and hitches, the weight of the desk like an anvil. From my pocket I retrieve a photo of my daughter, one victim of many of Mr. Big Shot’s most famous client. Holding it to his face. “Do you remember her?” Between the coughing and retching he nods and sobs more. Nodding and begging. Nodding and begging. And sobbing.

She had been a witness at the trial. An incredible, brave, strong girl. My beautiful child. Mister Just-Doing-His-Job grilled her mercilessly, without compassion. Questioned her every word. Called her a liar. Treated her like a criminal. Brought her to tears. My child. There in the court room, I sat helplessly muzzled by a judge and a bailiff and a judicial system that allowed this unjust justice. He had only done his job, his excuse for himself, his soul sold for notoriety and free press and name recognition and fees measured in priceless antiques and third homes. My daughter, her suicide the product of that trial, her ashes spread at her favorite beach two years past, not far from this oceanside mansion in flames. One final price to be paid.

“A lawyers must defend his client.” Crying the words in self defense. This famous measured voice that labored before juries for untold treasures now labors squeaky and high and sobbing before me for that most precious of treasures.

Until this moment, the outcome of this night had not been settled. Never sure exactly how all the variables would play out. The floor shakes and shimmies and hitches again. He sobs more. Stella barks in my arms, a raspy, fading yip. The end, how this story ends, is now clear.

“Say her name!” Screaming into his face, restraining the desire to punch holes in his head with the lead from his own gun. That end too easy, too quick, too full of evidence. Spit flies out of my mouth into his fat, alcohol-veined face. Mr. Just-Doing-My-Job can’t even remember her name. He sobs and squeaks. A pathetic lump, he backs himself into the space beneath the desk, retreating like a child hiding from monsters.

“I am going to save you.” The truth spoken, my voice migrating from anger to calm. The rage leaving. Salvation comes in different forms. He sobs and spits and lets himself believe me. A glimmer of hope flashes in his expression. The floor creaks and drops again. A hiccup towards the inevitable. He grunts a stifled, weak scream. Sobbing.

My heart doesn’t feel happiness. Not sadness. The final outcome of my plans finally, after all these years, now a forgone conclusion. My heart doesn’t feel vindication. Not remorse. Not doubt. The abdication of justice soon to be rectified. The feeling is that of setting the universe right.

Retreating until my back hits the sill, my feet planted beneath the window, waiting, watching. With one final loud crack, the floor gives way and Mister May-Justice-Be-Served plummets to the first floor below. Into the flames. Screaming, shrieking, spasming limbs, torso pinned by the monstrous desk of a Rockefeller or a Carnegie. The pungent smell of burning flesh and antique mahogany, this barbecue from hell, is simultaneously repulsive and pleasing.

The fire trucks arrive, sirens blaring, their noise overtaking his screams. Stella grumbles weakly. Helmet donned, stuffing the dog and the envelope inside my jacket, my legs bolt for the exit. The hallway curtained with flames. The stairwell creaks and cracks and groans. My escape from the roaring inferno a necessity, the precious cargo in my jacket still needs to be delivered and disseminated. That client list. Those USB drives. Front page news. Careers to destroy. Prisoners to round up.

Turning the corner towards the fire trucks, a firefighter heads my way. “Found the dog inside the rear entrance.” Presenting Stella, still nestled inside my jacket, as evidence. He reaches out to pet her head and she’s having none of it. She snarls and gnashes with what energy she can muster, then burrows back in deeper. I’ll hold onto her I tell him. He nods. Around the inferno, the entire block lit up in orange and yellow and strobing red lights from the firetrucks, surrounded by other men dressed as firefighters, these real firefighters, walking past them, through them, unnoticed, distracted with their tasks, I disappear into the night.