Where There's Smoke
I woke to the sound of someone pounding on my front door. Still drowsy, I thought I was back in Jersey and the cops were trying to bust me for running a numbers racket. I threw off the sheet, stumbled out of bed, and headed for my escape hatch.
The fire escape wasn't where I had left it back in that cold water flat I rented above the furniture store. I blinked several times until I realized I was in my new house in the foothills above Los Angeles, about a million light years from my days with the mob. I was now a respectable citizen living under an assumed name and with a new occupation.
I lurched toward the front door, my .38 clutched in my hand, and looked through the peephole. I blinked again. Something was out of whack. The house must have been transported to Mars because everything outside looked red.
A distorted face was squinting at me from the porch. Maybe I was still asleep. I turned around and headed back to my bed. Then someone called my name.
"Mr. Johnny! Wake up! Hair on fire!"
The voice belonged to my next door neighbor, Arthur Lo. I opened the door. He stood their in his bright red Mandarin pajamas looking like a character from a Chinese horror flick.
His hair wasn't on fire. I kept looking at him like he would suddenly burst into flame.
"What the hell is it, Art?"
"Hir! Hir!"
"Hear what?"
"Hir!"
He grabbed my arm and dragged me out on the porch and pointed.
Yep. The "hir" was on fire. Roughly translated: The "hill" was on fire.
"Get crows," he said.
I switched on my universal translator and decided he was right. I better put on my "clothes" and start packing. He ran back to his house. I could see his wife, Su Lyn, racing to their SUV with two large black garbage bags that she stuffed into the rear of the vehicle.
By then I had become aware of sirens all around me. The dawn was coming up like thunder with the special effects to match. The sky had turned bright red with the rising sun, while black smoke engulfed the back side of the mountain and threatened to roll down our side.
My hands were shaking as I wrenched a handful of garbage bags from the cupboard and dashed into my bedroom. California erupted into flames every year, but usually the mayhem confined itself to a strip of real estate near Malibu. I could sit and watch the news coverage from my La-Z-Boy with a beer in my fist. This time the destruction was centered in my own backyard. I didn't like that.
And I didn't like the thick acrid smell seeping through the screens and starting to make me gag, either. I yanked clothes from the closet, hangers and all, and stuffed them in the bag. I felt like Santa Claus pulling a heist. I pulled on a pair of jeans from the hamper and a fresh shirt. I slipped on a pair of oxfords without socks and felt my toes squish against the lining. I was sweating like a pig down to the soles of my feet.
Most of my stuff was still up at the cabin in Logjam, but I had carted a lot of my books down the mountain so I would have something to do on those long stakeouts if a client hired me to check out a philandering spouse. I pivoted from the bookcase in the bedroom to the nightstand and kept stuffing the plastic garbage bag with the bric-a-brac of my life.
The noise outside increased. I felt the rumble of a big vehicle coming down my street. Fire trucks, I thought. I stuffed even faster. For some reason I tore the sheets off my bed, bagged them, and then ran into the living room to see what I should salvage in there.
I needed a cell phone. I had quite a collection at that point. They kept coming out with new features and I had the budget to buy a new one every three or four months. I slipped one in my pocket, and swept the others on the desk into the bag, then looked around frantically for what else I might need.
"It's time to go, mister," said a guy in a black fireman's slicker. He had stepped into the living room and motioned me with a big, black glove.
I gathered my plastic garbage bags and dragged them through the front door. I was going to lock it, but he had other ideas.
"Leave it open in case we have to get inside. Anybody else in here?"
"Just me."
"Hit the road. Your neighbors are gathering at the grocery store parking lot down on Foothill."
He turned his black slickered back on me and put a big white chalk X on my front door, and then trotted over to Arthur's house. The Lo's were pulling out of their driveway as I was climbing into the Jeep. Flames rode the crest of the mountain behind our houses while thin streams of fire oozed down the hillside like molten lava.
I
looked at my house with the X on the front
door and wondered if I'd forgotten something
important.
....Continued.