Клео Коул - Roast Mortem

With the FDNY here, there was nothing else to do but turn my focus back on the fire and literally begin to pray.

Behind me I was vaguely aware of boots hitting the ground, doors slamming, men yelling, police pushing back onlookers. I stayed on the hard concrete, cradling Dante’s head, my eyes fixed on blazing agony.

“Ma’am, are you all right?” (The first person to ask.)

“My friends are trapped!” I pointed, my focus still on those flames. I was shaking pretty badly now and I couldn’t keep the hysteria out of my voice —

“My friends! They’re in there! I don’t know what to do!”

A steady hand squeezed my shoulder. “Slow down, ma’am. Who’s trapped? Talk to me.”

I glanced up. Under a bulky fire helmet, intelligent eyes were leveled on mine. Wisps of wiry blond hair peeked out from under that Darth Vader headgear. The man’s pale skin was smooth. He was on the young side, late twenties maybe, but his voice and expression were cool and composed, his translucent blue eyes like clear beacons in the middle of this searing, dark fog.

“My friend... an elderly lady,” I said, feeling steadier in the presence of this man’s calm. “She’s in the basement with the owner of the shop. They’re both trapped. There are no windows down there, and the sidewalk chute was bricked up long ago. The only way into or out of that basement is on fire . Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“Yes. Anyone else in the upper floors?”

I blanked for a second. “No. There shouldn’t be. Enzo — the building’s owner — lives alone on the third floor, but he’s in the basement now. He mentioned the second floor was being rented, but the business went under a month ago and the space is still vacant.”

The fireman nodded, spoke evenly into a radio attached to his coat. “We have two civilians in the basement. The only means of egress is blocked. Fire is doubtful at this time. Repeat. Fire is doubtful at this time — ”

“Doubtful!” I cried. “You doubt you can save my friends?”

“Easy, ma’am. We’ll get ’em out. Try to calm down.”

While we spoke, three firemen reached the building, a length of hose unfurling behind them. Another man raised an odd-looking tool — like the long, skinny offspring of a crowbar and a claw hammer. Wielding the thing as confidently as a Yankee all-star, he tore the caffè’s front door off its hinges and swept away the jagged remnants of the plate glass window, deftly avoiding the spilling of razor-sharp shards onto the sidewalk’s already twinkling concrete.

“Ma’am?”

My fireman again — the one with the reassuring voice. I turned to find he’d waved over a pair of FDNY paramedics.

Two women in dark blue uniforms lifted Dante out of my arms and onto a stretcher. I rose and followed them to the back of their ambulance, watched them take vital signs, cover his mouth with an oxygen mask.

“Will he be okay?”

“He’s coming around,” one replied. “His vitals are strong, but he’ll need a CAT scan...”

A paramedic tried to take my pulse, but I waved him off. Knowing Dante was in good hands, I returned to the sidewalk to see if there was anything else I could do for Madame and Enzo.

What else can I tell these people to help them?

Another stocky, older fireman approached me. Like the rest, he wore thick, fire-resistant pants under a long, charcoal-colored duster with horizontal stripes of neon yellow, “a turnout coat,” that’s what the firefighters in Mike’s family had called it. Bunker gear was the more common term because they once literally stored it beside their bunks.

“We have a three-story attached commercial building,” the stocky man recited into a radio, “the fire began on the first floor and is going vertical — ”

“Yeah and fast,” my fireman added. He must have seen the shock and alarm on my face because he put a hand on my shoulder once more. “Take it easy, okay? The fire is moving up and away from your friends. Right, Lieutenant?”

The lieutenant threw a deadpan glance at my guy, and I finally saw his face full on. The shape, beneath that large helmet, was more oval than square — as if it had once been chiseled quite sharply, but time had added weight, rounding off the angled landscape. His skin texture was craggy, and he had one of those big, red drinker’s noses, the kind I’d seen among the crowd in my late father’s bookie days. But his celery green eyes were not cloudy or dulled like my dad’s old gambling customers. They were as sharp as his voice.

“Two victims are out, two more are trapped behind a fire door to the basement. The fire is confined to the single structure, and there’s no shared cockloft with the adjacent building...”

After completing his radio report, the lieutenant turned to my fireman. “What the hell were those people doing in that basement past Enzo’s Thursday night closing time?”

“You know Enzo?” I asked, surprised.

The lieutenant ignored my question. “Is this lady a victim?”

“Yeah, Loo. She got herself and another person out. Shaved-headed guy twice her size. That makes her civilian of the week, right?”

The lieutenant barely glanced my way. “Where’s her rescue?”

“He’s with the paramedics!” I shouted at the man, barely able to stay sane. “What about my friends? They’re trapped in there!”

“We know,” my fireman assured me. He was now strapping a bulky oxygen tank onto his back. “But they’re safe behind the fire door for the moment. Right now we’ve got guys on the fire escape. Look — ” He pointed. “And they’re on the roof doing their thing, too. Right, Loo?”

But the lieutenant was already heading for the caffè’s front doorway. I noticed the name Crowley printed in yellow across the bottom backside of his turnout coat.

“Okay, get ready with that hose,” Lieutenant Crowley bellowed at the nozzle team.

A loud crash sounded over our heads. A spectator cried out as black smoke began to pour off the top of the building’s roof.

I pointed. “Is that supposed to happen?”

“They’re venting the fire,” my guy replied. “That’s how we begin to control it, release the heat and smoke, direct it up and out — and away from your friends.”

Away from Madame and Enzo , I silently repeated, clinging to that thought.

“Okay,” Crowley yelled. “Let’s knock this monster down!”

The flat hose swelled like an overstuffed sausage. The men clutching the nozzle released the explosive water stream. Gripping the engorged hose, they moved closer to the blazing shop while more firemen scurried up ladders braced against the walls of the second and third floor. The sound of splintering glass filled the night as they broke windows and climbed through.

“Go, boys!” Crowley cried.

The men gripping the hose advanced through the doorway and vanished into the haze. As the first blast of cold water hit the broiling blaze, a sustained hiss filled the air, and the thick smoke pouring out of the caffè’s broken windows quickly faded from black to gray.

The firefighters moved even deeper, directing the stream of water toward the blazing ceiling as they advanced. Smoke billowed, obscuring everything for a minute. Just as the veil lifted, a hanging fan came crashing down, narrowly missing one of them. The firefighters didn’t appear to care — they just kept pressing farther into the conflagration.

“What’s happening?” I asked my fireman.

“The nozzle team is using the water to cool the combustible gasses at ceiling level. They’re cutting a path through the fire to the basement door, then Dino Elfante and Ronny Shaw — that’s the man you saw pull the front door off its hinges — those two will get that basement door down and bring your friends out.”