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Table of contents | Previous chapter Playing with Fire A novel by Scott Lazenby
Chapter 17  awoke from a vivid dream. In it, Kate and I had been somewhere in Montana at an isolated cabin by a mountain lake. We cooked dinner and sat on the floor and drank wine in the candlelight. We slept curled up under blankets in the cool nights of early spring. We went for a walk by the lake, and were caught by a downpour. We ran to the cabin, and took a steaming shower and kissed under the water. We huddled under a blanket in front of the fire and let ourselves be mesmerized by the dancing of the flames.The images were so strong that they stuck in my head for days, and I started to think that it was a recurrence of a dream I had had years ago. I debated with myself about writing to Kate about it. I had a hard time putting it into words, but I finally tried, partly to re-live the experience. Kate said she read the message twenty times on the day she got it, in the hope that she could launch herself into the same dream that night. • • • The Trillium Business Leadership Committee used our cable public-access channel to televise their call-in poll. It looked like a low-budget version of a Jerry Lewis telethon. Every few minutes they ran the results on the bottom of the screen. “Should City Manager Ben Cromarty be fired? Yes-38 No-25” In the background, Todd Pritchard and his friends were busy answering phones in the crowded office of the Walter Mitty Real Estate Headquarters. I switched the channel to catch one of the games in the NBA playoffs, but during commercials I found myself getting drawn back to the public-access channel. The results stayed pretty much the same — there wasn’t an overwhelming number of calls, but the ones that came in were about four to three in favor of getting rid of the city manager. I remembered Seth’s advice, and tried to distance myself from it, but I couldn’t.The camera zoomed in on Pritchard. He held the microphone like Mick Jagger and told the viewers how the citizens had clearly lost their confidence in the city administration over the Nova housing issue. “Why don’t you just turn it off?” Mary asked. “Morbid curiosity, I suppose.” “Well, it’s awful. Don’t pay any attention to it. Go back to your basketball game and forget about it.” I sneaked a peak when the ball game ended, but the coverage was over. The headline in The Oregonian the next morning read, “Straw Poll Calls for Firing Cromarty.” In the article, Mayor McTavish characterized the phone poll as merely a vendetta by some disgruntled business owners, and she pointed out that the final decision on the Nova housing project was made by the planning commission and the city council, not the city manager. Rob Titus was quoted too, saying that the city manager was appointed, not elected, and the straw poll would be one of many things the council would look at when the next performance evaluation came up. I made it into the office that morning, without much enthusiasm. The staff were supportive, but the first few hours were awkward, as if I had my fly open and no one wanted to mention it. Eventually, though, the press of routine business drove the whole thing out of my mind, mostly. I was in the middle of a phone call when Betty Sue came in, holding a dozen faxed sheets of paper. She paced near my window until I was finished with my conversation. “City/County came through with a proposal,” she said. Her eyes were sparkling. “Check this out.” She perched on the edge of my side chair. I scanned the papers until I found the cost quote. I whistled. “Not bad, huh?” Betty Sue said. “It’s half of what Oregon Ambulance was talking about.” “Maybe they just low-balled it to get us hooked,” I said. “How long is the proposal for?” “Five years, with a firm price. They propose a fudge factor for inflation and increases in calls for service, but it’s still a smokin’ deal.” “Did you look it over pretty carefully? Anything that might come back to bite us if we sit down to negotiate a contract.” “Yes. I mean, I read the proposal a couple of times. It looks straightforward enough to me.” “So ... what do you think we should do with it?” “Easy. Take it to the city council. This is too good an opportunity to pass up.” I thought about it for a while. I noticed the ring wasn’t on her finger any more. “If the fire union’s hot now, this will really get them going,” I said. “Yeah, but how can it get any worse?” Betty Sue asked. “Our contract negotiations are still tied in knots. We spent hours last week arguing about why the captains get personal chauffeurs.” “How’s that?” “Didn’t Ken tell you? It turns out that for the last few years, the fire captains haven’t driven anywhere — the rookie firefighters are assigned to drive them. They pick them up at home in the morning, take them to meetings and drive them home. It’s a cushy deal. The captains are supposed to be management anyway — how did they ever get into the union in the first place?” “Past bargaining, I suppose.” All the management positions — except the chief — were members of the union. For obvious reasons, the brass were glad to join, and once they were in, the concept of management rights became a joke. “You’re thinking you took up the wrong profession, I’ll bet.” “No kidding,” she said. “I had to go through six years of college, and I still don’t have a personal chauffeur. How about changing my title to captain?” “Captain what?” “Uh, just management captain. Or maybe captain fantastic. That wouldn’t be too presumptuous, would it?” I laughed. I was going to ask her about the ring, but changed my mind. None of my business. “So you think we ought to go ahead with this?” I asked. “Definitely.” “What about Max?” “Oh.” She leaned back in her chair. “I forgot about him. He’s not going to be too thrilled with this, is he?” “Nope.” “But if he had better control over his staff, we wouldn’t even be looking at it. He’s got to live with the consequences of a renegade department.” I looked at her for a moment. “Don’t be too hard on him. I don’t think any of us could manage that department.” Betty Sue gathered up the fax papers. “Well, it isn’t the end of the world for him. He could still be the public safety director, with both police and fire. Do you think the loss of EMS will be that big a deal?” “Yep. But we’ll see.” • • • Later, Sabrina Chan called to say she wanted to talk to me. I assumed it was a follow up interview on the TLBC straw poll. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to. But when she showed up in my office, she surprised me by not pulling out her notepad; instead, she simply asked me how I was doing.“Fine, considering,” I said. “Why?” “What the TBLC did — that was a crummy thing. You didn’t deserve it.” What kind of interview was this? It was a side to Sabrina I didn’t see very often. I shrugged. “Just goes with the job.” Her fingers worried a strand of her black hair. “Listen,” she said, “I’m going to tell you something, but — this is weird for me to say — it’s got to be off the record. Okay?” “Sure.” “Last night ...Walter Mitty’s real estate place ... they had caller I.D. on their phones.” “Oh yeah?” Not too surprising, come to think of it. A lot of businesses had it. “Yeah. So here’s the thing. Apparently the TBLC boys were taking down names, especially the ones that had it in for you. I guess they reckoned they could build up a mailing list of people with similar views, maybe use it for fund raising or political action, that sort of thing.” “Hmm. So much for an anonymous poll, huh?” “Really. So anyway, I got ahold of the list — ” “You’re kidding!” “No, and don’t ask how I did it. I got the list, and started going through the names. A few of them rang a bell, especially after I saw them listed a few times.” “How’s that?” “Think about it,” she said. “Didn’t it occur to you that a few people might want to jack up the numbers by calling more than once?” “Oh, of course.” It hadn’t. “Anyway, a lot of the names were from your fire department. I didn’t have much time to dig into it, but I pulled out a voter registration list, and got some of the maiden names of the wives of the firefighters. Sure enough, there were some of those names too.” I leaned back in my chair. Sabrina sat quietly. “So they organized a call-in campaign, huh? They had plenty of time to do it. But the poll was about the Nova housing project. I wouldn’t have figured they would care that much about affordable housing and zoning issues ... but that wasn’t the motivation at all, was it?” She just looked at me. “I’ll be darned....” “If it’s any consolation,” she said, “when I took out the names that I could connect to the fire union, the poll actually turned out in your favor.” “Great.” I searched Sabrina’s eyes. “What are you going to do with this information? Use it in a story?” “No.” She smiled wistfully. “I can’t. It would put my source in an awkward position, and I can’t afford to lose it. But as you might guess, it’ll be great for background information as the issue unfolds.” “Mmm.” She was right — it sure didn’t hurt to have a reporter who was at least a little sympathetic. “Thanks, Sabrina. I do appreciate it.” “Sure. And good luck, Ben.” • • • My strategic goal was clear — I had to get the council to make a decision on the City/County proposal, and quickly. But the tactical situation was more complicated. I went to Ken Longstreet for advice.“Here’s the deal,” I said. “I can’t spring it on them cold. We need time to brief them on it, and let them think about it — ” “But you know that as soon as you talk to Rob and Maggie, the word will leak out, right?” “Exactly. It might not be intentional, but we can’t expect five people not to talk to somebody about it.” “And then,” Ken said, “the Fire Association picks up on it, and all hell breaks loose.” “Uh huh. In hindsight, if we could have had some calm, rational community discussion on this whole thing, that would have been the way to go. But we’re past the point of no return — there’s no way we’re going to have anything like a civil dialogue on it now.” Ken rubbed his forehead. “Let me think about this.” He took a pen out of his shirt pocket and doodled on a pad of paper. “How about this,” he said after a few moments. “Get Pete to brief them on the proposal in executive session, as a contractual issue. He could remind them that it’s illegal to divulge the executive-session discussion.” “Yeah, I thought about that, but it really doesn’t qualify under the state law. It would probably make things worse — a council member or two would leak it anyway, and the press would accuse us of violating the open-meeting law.” “Umm, you’re probably right.” Ken drew a series of small boxes on his paper. “City/County offered to hire any of our paramedics who would be laid off, right? So no one’s going to be out of a job here.” “Yes.” “Okay then. Maybe the best defense is a good offense. Just go public with the thing. Put it on the council agenda, but circulate copies of the staff report to as many people and groups as you can think of. Give it to Gallagher, and to the Rotary Club and even the Business Leadership Committee. Present it as a logical next step in the city’s mandate to provide services at less cost, to operate the city like a business, to encourage privatization. Hit as many hot buttons as you can. Make as many arguments for accepting the proposal as you can. But anticipate every argument anyone can make, and state them up-front, along with counter-arguments. You know, you can mention that the paramedics may see lower pay and benefits at first, but they would have more long-term career opportunities, that sort of thing. That way, the Association will be stuck in a defensive position. They’ll have to scramble to re-gain the initiative.” I thought about it. Ken stopped doodling and waited for a reaction. “It might work,” I said. “But there are some negative consequences to the contract that we just don’t have good answers to.” “Like what?” “Well, for one, it isn’t a reversible decision. Once we lose our staff and rescue equipment, it would be pretty hard to get back into the business. And Oregon Ambulance has served us well for years, and they would be a casualty in all this.” Ken tapped his pen. “Maybe that’s not so bad. Just admit there’s a downside to it, like there is in any major decision. Acknowledge the downside risk, but emphasize that on balance, it’s a good deal for the community. Take possession of the whole decision, both the good and the bad sides of it.” I laughed. “This is a good one. I’ve got our chief negotiator — the master of intrigue and secret strategies — advising me to be totally open and honest about our strengths and weaknesses.” He smiled. “Yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it very often. But sometimes you’ve got do what you’ve got do.” I never knew if the tactic was the best one, since I didn’t get the chance to try anything else. Betty Sue and I spent a day writing and refining our cover staff report. I called Matt Monroe at City/County a couple of times to clarify details of their proposal, and faxed him our draft staff report. It was a pleasure to deal with him — perhaps because he was still trying to gain our approval, but I sensed it was just the way he did business. My meeting with Max Oakley had been as difficult as I had anticipated it would be. I assured him that the City/County proposal had been unsolicited, which was the truth, but I didn’t tell him that I had known it was coming. “Are you seriously going to consider this?” Max had asked, with an edge to his normally controlled voice. “Of course. It looks like too good a deal for the city and the taxpayers to ignore.” “It may look like that in the short term, but you’re ignoring the tremendous cost to the community due to the turmoil this will cause. It would be an irresponsible thing to do.” “Max.” I tried to sound as sympathetic as I could. “Don’t personalize this. We’ve got to step back from it, and do what’s really best for the city. I realize that this would be a major change to your department, but it isn’t the taxpayers’ duty to maintain our organizational structures. Sometimes we just have to adapt.” “Perhaps, but this just goes too far.” “Does it? But we were ready to consider it when we negotiated with Oregon Ambulance.” Max was silent. “Look,” I said, “it’s still a council decision. If they go with it, you’ll still have plenty to do in making the transition, and it could really make your life easier, in the long run. All I ask is that you keep an open mind.” “Ben, that’s awfully easy for you to say, but it isn’t your department that’s being decimated here.” “Yes, Max, it is. It’s as much my department as yours, and it isn’t a decision I take lightly. But ultimately I’m the one who makes the staff recommendation, and the council makes the decision. You knew that’s the way it works when you took this job.” Max reached for a stack of papers, as if to dismiss me. “Well,” he said, “don’t say I didn’t warn you.” • • • One of our police officers hand-delivered the proposals, along with the regular council agenda packets, to the city council members’ homes. We simultaneously delivered them to Brian Gallagher and the rest of the union officers, and to everyone else on Ken’s list. I steeled myself, and stayed close to the phone. I didn’t have to wait long.The first call was from Gallagher. “Well, Ben, I just got a copy of a staff report from you, and I have just one question: what exactly is this shit?” “It’s just what it looks like; read it, Brian.” “Don’t be cute. You’re never going to get away with this, and you know it. You may think that the threat of a private contract will beat us into submission, but I guarantee it, it’s going to do just the opposite. You better be brushing off your résumée.” “You’re still a member of my staff, Brian. This is sounding a lot like insubordination. Keep it up, and I’m going to have to get Terri on the line to make a transcript of this call.” The line was silent for a moment. “What really pisses me off,” he said, “is that you didn’t even bother to talk to us about this before suddenly springing it on us. What happened to the great labor/management communication that you keep talking about?” “Don’t give me that crap, Brian. I offered that to you from the beginning. I handed it to you on a silver platter, and you refused it. You flat-out told me you would fight it and didn’t want to have anything to do with the decisions.” “I never said anything of the sort. I have always insisted that the rank and file have a full say in any ... decisions.” “What were you going to say? A full say in management decisions? That’s ridiculous, but that’s exactly what I offered, and you refused.” “Bullshit.” “Okay, I’m not going to debate you on it. Did you actually call with a question, or did you just want to get into a pissing contest?” He ignored the question. “All I got to say is this time you’ve gone too far. From here on out, you better watch your back.” “All right, Brian.” I hung up. I told myself I was calm and collected, but I could tell that my face was hot and my pulse was pounding. I found myself in the conference room and got a glass of water from the sink. When I got back to my desk, the phone was ringing again. This time it was Joe Secomb from Oregon Ambulance Service. “Ben, this is your decision, but I must say I am disappointed that you would consider contracting with an out-of-state company.” “Yeah, I tried to contract with a local company, but it didn’t work out.” “Touché. But have you looked into our franchise provisions? My understanding is that the franchise has another eight years.” “Yes, we did check into it. You’ve got a non-exclusive franchise, and we’re not doing anything to change that. You would still be free to do business in Trillium, and you can transport private patients. But if we go ahead with this, it does mean that when we get a 911 call, we’ll dispatch City/County, not you.” “That will have a major impact on our business.” “In Trillium, maybe, but we’re small potatoes in the overall metro area. Look at it this way: you’ll be able to shift resources into the other communities that you’re so concerned about.” He chuckled. “Okay, Ben, don’t rub my nose in it. And I’m not going to give you a hard time about it — my guess is that you’ll have your hands full anyway.” “No kidding.” “Well, good luck to you, whichever way it goes.” “Thanks, Joe.” I couldn’t wait much longer to talk to the council members, but I didn’t want to be far from my phone. I switched on my cell phone and forwarded my calls to it, and got a car out of the city hall motor pool. Hank Arnold wasn’t home, but Maggie Henderson was. She was surprised to see me. She hadn’t opened her packet yet. I briefly explained the City/County proposal. I emphasized that there were disadvantages as well as advantages, but to my amazement, she was supportive. “We have to do what’s best for the people,” she said. “I agree, but you realize the firefighters are going to be upset.” “That’s all right, they already are anyway,” she said. “I don’t see how it could get any worse. I kind of resent some of the things they have been doing, so I — ” My cell phone rang. Maggie started skimming through the rest of the council packet, so I flipped open the phone. “Interesting report, Ben,” Sabrina Chan said. “So what’s the bottom line — how much of the fire department would you lose under this proposal?” “About two thirds of them,” I said. “But don’t forget that they could transition to City/County. They’d be doing the same job and wearing the same uniform; they would just get a paycheck from a different organization.” “Sure, but the paycheck would probably be smaller.” “That would be between them and City/County.” “Yes, I can see why that would appeal to you. What did Brian Gallagher have to say about it?” Had Brian told her about our conversation, or was she just guessing? “We did discuss it, but I can’t comment on the specifics of what we said.” She laughed. “I can imagine the conversation, though. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall. What about the mayor and council?” “Actually, I’m talking to you from a cell phone at councilor Henderson’s home. The council got the proposal at the same time you did. Feel free to talk to them directly about their reaction. In any case, we’ll have a full open discussion of it at the council meeting. What you see in the staff report is the full picture — there really isn’t any behind-the-scenes maneuvering on this one.” “Is that so? Well, it’s going to make a good story. How can I reach somebody at City/County?” “Call Betty Sue and get the number for Matt Monroe. I don’t have it with me.” “Okay. Thanks Ben.” Maggie asked if there was anything else interesting on the agenda. I said no. As if the City/County proposal wasn’t enough for one night. Over the next three hours I managed to track down Hank Arnold and Rob Titus. Hank ushered me into his kitchen and had me sit at a small breakfast table. A pot of spaghetti sauce was burbling on the stove, making me hungry. I had forgotten about lunch. Two small grandchildren were scurrying around on the floor. Hank and Gretchen were taking care of them while their son was off on a construction job somewhere. Hank was noncommittal about the proposal, but he was pleased to have another option, and without looking at the staff report, he had pinpointed most of the pros and cons that we had included in it. He talked about it cheerfully, while gently scolding the kids and stirring the spaghetti sauce. Rob was harder to read. I sat in a small chair in his office. It felt like it was several inches lower than the massive executive chair behind his desk. He skimmed the staff report and proposal, occasionally asking questions. When he was done, he simply put it down and thanked me for bringing it by. He said I would have to excuse him because he expected a client in a few minutes. “Actually, you might be interested to know that it’s John Collins. They’ve asked me to research the name ’Nova Corporate Park’ to make sure it hasn’t been trademarked somewhere.” Warning bells were going off in my head. It was an obvious conflict of interest, especially if any more hot decisions reached the council. And why hadn’t Nova used it’s own lawyers? I thought about it and realized they probably already had — they wouldn’t have gone ahead with their marketing effort if there had been a legal question about the name. Clearly they were just throwing Rob a bone. I couldn’t figure out why. “You know, you’ll have to declare it if the council ever has any quasi-judicial proceedings involving Nova.” “Sure,” he said. “No problem.” It was getting late by the time I got back to my office. I had fielded a few more calls on my cell phone, but had let the voice mail take them when I had been talking to Hank Arnold and Rob Titus. I replayed the messages. Most were related to the City/County proposal, but a few were on completely different topics. It reminded me that, in spite of the conflict and tension of the moment, life goes on. The sixth call was a brief message from an anonymous muffled voice. “You don’t know who I am, Ben Cromarty, but I’m warnin’ ya, you’re takin’ a dangerous path. It ain’t gonna be healthy for you and your family.” There was a pause and some unintelligible sounds. “...so I gotta tell you, you better watch yourself.” I saved the message and called Simon Garret. “It probably doesn’t mean anything, but I just got what sounded like a threat.” I described it to him. “Yeah, you’re right to take it seriously. I’m heading home in a minute — let me stop by and listen to it.” When he got there, Simon pulled a small dictation machine out of his coat pocket and held it against the earpiece of the phone as I replayed the message. Low-tech, but it seemed to work. “Probably just some jerk who’s messing with your mind.” Simon wrote a few words in a note pad. “Let me know if you get anything else like this, okay?” “Sure.” He looked at me for a moment. “Say, do you want to stop for a beer?” I sagged in my chair. It sounded good, but I was anxious to see Mary too. What the heck. I called her and told her I’d be late for dinner. She said that was fine; she had worked late, and it looked like we’d be eating out. Simon and I took a back booth at the Plow and Harrow pub, and ordered a plate of calamari with hot sauce and two pints of Haystack Rock Hefeweizen. “So how’s it going?” he said. I unloaded it on him, describing my conversations with Oakley and Gallagher and the other members of my fan club who had called. I didn’t though, mention Sabrina’s revelation about the TBLC phone poll. Simon and his staff had to work too closely with the firefighters to risk building more barriers there. “That’s rough,” he said when I finished. “I guess that’s why you get the big bucks.” I laughed, without much humor. “If that was all there was to it, I should be playing the stock market or selling real estate. But you know, Simon, as messy as this is getting, I still get some perverse pleasure out of it.” “You just like danger. You should be a cop.” “No, taking verbal shots is enough for me.” Simon swirled a piece of calamari around in some red sauce. “This stuff really squid? It tastes sort of like onion rings.” “Maybe that’s what it is. They figure if we have enough beer we won’t know the difference.” The owner of the Plow and Harrow was from a town called Camden — New South Wales, not New Jersey. He had a great Australian accent and an outgoing personality that made up for the quality of the food. I never figured out what a harrow was — something to do with a farm and plows, I guessed. I watched the after-work crowd mingle by the bar. Most were at least a decade younger than us, flirting and rubbing against each other. A brief image of Kate in a Montana mountain cabin flew through my mind. Simon’s voice broke through my reverie. “Damnedest thing happened last night,” he said. “I was working late, and one of our reserves came in. One of the greener kids. He had his sidearm on; I found out later he hadn’t had a hell of a lot of experience with it. Anyway, he goes to sit down at a spare desk to write a report. He’s got his radio and his gun on his belt, and has a hard time getting it all to fit between the arms of his chair. So he goes to pull the gun out of his holster. Caught it by the trigger, and the damn thing goes off. I flew out of my office to see what the hell was going on. Damn bullet hit the floor and bounced through the wall into the rec center next door.” “You’re kidding.” There must have been a report on this in my in-basket that I had been too preoccupied to read. “Nope. There was an aerobics class going on in there, but they had a boom box going and didn’t hear a thing. The bullet just stuck itself into the ceiling.” I whistled. “What’d you do?” Simon chuckled. “I asked the kid if I could take a look at his gun. Then I just took the bullets out and handed it back to him. He was a little shaken — must have wondered at first if he’d shot himself in the crotch.” “Ha. But thank God it didn’t hit anybody.” “Damn straight. I had a few words with Ramos about our firearms training. I can’t for the life of me figure out what the guy was doing with the safety off. He said he thought it was on. That’s the kind of stunt one of our snot-nosed gang wannabes would pull — makes me a little nervous seeing it happen with one of our own guys.” The talk of gunfire reminded me of something. “Say, Simon, whatever happened with the Seven-Eleven murder? They ever catch the guy?” About a year ago, a hold-up at a convenience store had resulted in the shooting death of a young female clerk. Our police were the first on the scene under our mutual-aid agreement, but the store was outside the city limits, so the sheriff’s office took the lead on the investigation. They had, through several eyewitnesses, come up with a strong suspect, and plastered the Portland area with the man’s picture, but he had apparently disappeared into thin air. “No, they never caught him.” Simon eyed me for a second, then leaned forward. “But the guys and me, we’ve got a theory about it.” “Oh?” “Yeah. See, a couple of our guys know the father of the little gal that got killed. He’s real handy with guns, a top-notch hunter. Plus, we guessed from the beginning that this dad knew where the suspect hung out. A few weeks into the case, and he sort of cools off on prosecuting it — almost like he didn’t care.” “Really? How come?” “’Cause he took care of it himself. Just went out and thumped the asshole. That’s our theory, anyway. Body’s probably buried deep in a ravine in the woods somewhere, and we’ll never know for sure.” I whistled. Justice in the wild west. We sat for a few more minutes and watched the crowd. As usual, Simon wasn’t in uniform and didn’t attract any attention, even with the service revolver tucked under its Velcro strap on his side. The waitress knew who he was though, and flirted with him. “I just don’t get to see you enough, honey,” she said. Simon put an arm around her waist. “Aw, that’s just ’cuz the missus found out about us.” “Speaking of which, I’ve got to head out,” I said. “All right. Take care of yourself, Ben, okay?” “Sure. Thanks, Simon.” • • • Trixie was at a friend’s house, so Mary and I had a nice candlelight dinner at an Italian restaurant. We spent most of the time talking about school politics, and the friction that was building between the principal and a few of the teachers. Both sides saw Mary as a neutral third party to be won over to their side, and she was caught in the middle. To me, the issues almost sounded trivial. I had to remind myself that, from a cosmic perspective, my struggles were just as insignificant: a flash in the pan. I was too tired to talk much about them anyway.• • • The week moved slowly. There wasn’t much more I could do about the fire situation, but I was too preoccupied with it to do much else. It gave me an opportunity to talk to a lot of people about it — both supporters and fence-sitters — and that was therapeutic, if not otherwise useful. I was feeling some relief at not getting any more threats, until I checked my messages after lunch one day.“You better back off from the City/County contract,” a woman’s voice said, “if you don’t want the world to find out about your correspondence with Kate.” The message clicked off and my heart froze. For a minute, the building went silent — I couldn’t hear the sound of the heating system or the traffic below. Then a thousand thoughts crashed into my head. Who knew about Kate? What did they know? Did they have copies of our e-mail? I tried to think how incriminating it would be. No matter how I looked at it, the situation was no good. It had to be an inside job. I had always been careful to delete Kate’s messages as soon as I read them, and I had disabled the gizmo that automatically saved sent messages. But that didn’t mean that some computer geek couldn’t have dug around on my hard drive and spirited them out. But how had they got to my computer? I had an open-door policy, but we did lock the office up at night, and there were too many people around to get at it unnoticed during the day. Then it occurred to me that the network would have let anyone get onto my machine. But it had to be a city hall staff person; the fire department was on a completely separate network, and we had a pretty good firewall to protect against access through the Internet. Who in city hall would do it? A few names popped into my head, but there would be no way I could find out for sure. I could ask Ken for help from our information technology department, but I would have to explain the problem, and that wouldn’t get me anywhere. And what should I do? Try a pre-emptive strike, and tell Mary all about it? But that would only — maybe — avoid a disaster on the home front; there would be no way to keep from being a runaway issue in the community. As sympathetic as she might be, Sabrina would smell a great story. And really, that would only be the beginning of my problems. Someone once said that you can’t enjoy writing if you’re worrying about how your parents would react, but the fact was, there were a lot of people whose opinion I valued, and I would be mortified if any of them saw some of the notes I had sent to Kate. I figured that Bill Clinton had more on his mind than just Hillary and the presidency when Monica made her oral report. “What’s wrong, Ben?” Terri Knox had started to come in to re-load my inbox, but stopped at the doorway. “Oh. Uh, nothing. Just more of the same. Come on in.” “You sure? Have you caught my morning sickness?” So she was pregnant. “Maybe that’s it,” I said. “What’s the cure?” “Ha. It’s worse than the disease. Go out and get some fresh air or something. You look awful, no offense.” “Good advice.” I had to walk and clear my head. The hard part was that there was no one I could talk to, except maybe Kate, and I was afraid to send a message. Should I risk a phone call and warn her? Or was I the only target? I found myself heading for the fire station and stopped walking. It wouldn’t do to step foot in there right now. I found a bench that wasn’t too wet, and just sat down. • • • Twenty-four hours passed, and nothing happened. I felt powerless, but I couldn’t think of anything I could do. I just waited for the shoe to drop.Brian Gallagher called, but I couldn’t tell if there was any question. He had cooled down, at least compared to our earlier conversation, and simply asked if I had re-considered my position. I told him no, I hadn’t, but it was still a council decision. It sounded chicken, but it was the truth. All he said was, “Okay, just checking.” In the middle of it, I got a long message from Kate. I was afraid someone else was reading it, and I wasn’t thrilled to see it — a thought that provoked some guilt. But there was nothing I could think of to stop her. She talked about the progress of her business expansion, and her frustrations with her boys, and she concluded with a few hot paragraphs that caused a rise, in spite of myself. She was getting quite adept at turning me on without touching me, which made me wonder how she had acquired that talent. I deleted the message, wondering what kind of trail it was leaving. On an impulse, I sent a reply.
In the meantime, Trillium was causing a stir in the Portland area. Our fire issue made the front page of The Oregonian. Sabrina had done a good job with the lead story, although I felt she had too many quotes from people who were whining that we had just sprung this on the community. Sabrina’s article was accompanied by contributions from other writers, who didn’t normally cover our beat. One covered the union reaction, which was pretty universal. The teachers, Teamsters, food handlers, and pipe fitters all came out in vocal opposition to it. Their arguments seemed more grounded in emotion than logic, but the effect was the same. There was a story from a guest writer from the Nevada Plain Dealer that gave the full history of City/County Fire Services, including some time-worn rumors that the company had got some of its seed money from the Las Vegas mob connections. The same reputation had dogged the big national solid waste companies, but I had discounted it as mere bellyaching by smaller companies that weren’t able to compete. I called Max to set up a meeting with him and Matt Monroe, but his secretary said he was out for the day; she didn’t know where, but she offered to page him. I wondered where he was; I hadn’t remembered him talking about taking a day off, but then again he had a habit of taking off for week-long vacations or conferences without bothering to let me know. By the next morning, I was starting to think that nothing was going to come of the threat about revealing my correspondence with Kate. When I got to the office I made a routine check of my internal mail and my Internet messages. There was nothing from Kate, and I disgusted myself for feeling relieved. But there was a message from an unknown sender under the subject “Pay Attention.”
But it didn’t matter who it was — they had me checkmated. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t find any way out of the mess. I could cave in at the council meeting — if I was smart, I could come up with some fatal flaw in the proposed contract — but there would be no guarantee that that would be the end of it. The fire union — assuming that was who was behind it — would have me by the neck, and they could control any issue that came up. Next chapter: vote of no confidence Copyright © 2001, Scott D. Lazenby. Reproduction in any form without the written permission of the author is prohibited. Illustration: Paul Salmon |
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