IT TOOK LONGER than I expected. The two of us worked out a system. One would check the room, looking under the bed, behind the shower curtain, in the closet, and then the other would start the curtains on fire, light the matchbook, and toss it on the bed.
We started on the seventh floor, in the rooms we hadn’t investigated before we went into the penthouse. Those rooms looked like they hadn’t been touched in years.
We avoided the penthouse entirely without even discussing it. I think we both believed that it would vanish with the hotel. Or maybe that the story the penthouse suite told would give a different impression of the events of the morning.
Either way, we didn’t start a fire there. Instead, we worked our way down, floor by floor.
We worked fast, except in the first few rooms we went into on the sixth floor. Those were the rooms where the girls had been held. We both stopped at the filth, the stench, the conditions. Sinkovich kicked a long chain that I recognized from history books about my own people. And I shivered,
regretting that I had simply shot the son of a bitch upstairs. I should have castrated him first.
We wanted to trust that the women had gone through every room, that the place was clear. But neither Sinkovich nor I were built for trust. We moved faster the lower we went, because the smell of smoke trailed us. We knew if we weren’t careful, we could become victims of the fire we set.
When we reached the second floor, Sinkovich saw flames on the far wall. He hit me on the shoulder.
“We gotta get out,” he said.
“No more burning,” I said, “but we have to check the rooms.”
He nodded and went left while I went right. We ran through the remaining rooms, yelling for people to get out, get out, but no one answered. The hotel was empty except for the two of us.
When we reached the main floor, we saw the desk clerk. He was still tied up, but he’d been shot multiple times. I figured Loring killed him, but I didn’t know. The level of overkill suggested something personal, something I didn’t want to completely understand.
Sinkovich and I both ran through the restaurant, which looked no different than it had when we first looked at it. The kitchen was empty, but the griddle smoked.
Sinkovich gestured at a vat of cooking oil, but I shook my head. Let the fire work its way down.
We needed to get out.
We went out the kitchen door and stepped into thin morning sunlight. The operation had taken a lot longer than we planned. I took a deep breath, then turned around.
The entire upper story of the hotel was engulfed in flames.
The whole place had been a tinderbox just waiting to ignite.
“I hope we got everyone,” Sinkovich said.
“Me, too,” I said.
Then without consulting each other, we hurried to the corner. No cars went by. The ice was slick beneath our feet.
The coffee van was gone, just like it was supposed to be, on its way to a hospital where Marvella had already set up some of the staff to handle the incoming patients.
Sinkovich put a hand on my shoulder. “Damn women.
Didn’t expect it of them,” he said.
I hadn’t either.
We walked across the street to the school parking lot. My van was the only remaining vehicle. Marvella must have gotten the woman out. I hoped she figured out a place to take her.
“We gotta dump these clothes,” Sinkovich said. “They probably smell like smoke.”
I nodded. I swung the van out of the lot, and headed back to my place.
“The kid’s gonna ask about the smell, ain’t he?” Sinkovich asked.
“He’s with Laura,” I said.
“Good,” Sinkovich said. “Then he ain’t gonna see me having a beer at eight in the goddamn morning.”
As if that was the thing to worry about. We had caused the death of seven people, and burned down a hotel, and Sinkovich was worried about drinking a beer before noon?
I grinned at him. He shrugged. He looked awful. His face was smeared with soot. He had blood along one sleeve.
“You still got matches in your pocket?” I asked.
“Shit,” he said, and rolled down his window. Freezing air blasted us. It felt good, especially against my smoke-encrusted lungs.
He tossed matches out the window like breadcrumbs.
“You could’ve asked me if anyone was behind us,” I said.
“I looked before I dumped. Whadda ya think, I’m dumb? Now, gimme yours.”
I freed one hand from the wheel and emptied the matchbooks out of my pockets. This time, I saw him glance behind us, and then he dumped them. It looked like a matchbook truck had lost control and spilled its load all over the street behind us.
“Isn’t that a driving hazard?” I asked.
“Shit, the ice in this parta town is a driving hazard,” he said. “That’s just free matches for the smokers of the world.”
I looked at him.
He shrugged and opened his hands like a man expecting to get in trouble. “What? It is.”
“Thank you,” I said. “You were right. I couldn’t have done this without you.”
He caught my tone. It was serious. “Them women were something else too. They’re gonna be messed up when they realize what went down.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “They were a lot tougher than both you and I expected.”
“I ain’t calling them ladies no more,” he said. “Not that I know what to call them. Because really, they’re broads, in the best sense of the word.”
I smiled for a second time. “You’re not going to tell them that either, are you?”
“Hell, I ain’t talking to women again until someone approves my vocabulary. Seems from the time I met my wife to now, everything in dealing with the female sex has changed.”
I nodded. I drove us to my apartment. I would bag our clothes and toss them out. Sinkovich was smaller than me, but he could wear my clothes home.
Maybe by the time we were done, Marvella would come back. Maybe by then, she would have news on the girls.
We didn’t dare show up at any of the hospitals.
We had to pretend this hadn’t happened at all.
I could do that. And I now believed that Sinkovich could.
When we reached the apartment, I would join him in his early morning beer. We deserved it.
We got rid of the damn hotel. We got rid of Turner. We had cleaned up the neighborhood, just a bit.
And we had come out of it alive.
That was more than I expected.
It was a small victory, but it was a victory all the same.