Triangles of Fire Read online

  TRIANGLES OF FIRE

  “A compelling, explosive story of an ultimate moral dilemma…”

  John D. MacDonald

  Author of the Travis McGee series

  “In a highly entertaining read, TRIANGLES OF FIRE lays bare the little known secrets of the world of arson”

  Patricia Highsmith

  Author of The Talented Mr. Ripley series

  “... Siler is extremely knowledgeable on the subject of arson, and his characterizations of firemen and low-lifes are razor-sharp. And the conclusion to this ironic and neatly plotted tale is compelling.”

  Publisher’s Weekly

  “This is a crisp, compelling cat-and-mouse yarn of arsonist vs arson investigator set in the Bay Area that engenders empathy for the good guy and bad guy while detailing the methods and madness of arson-for-hire.

  Siler shows great care for his characters, his story and subject area, and his language.”

  Los Angeles Times

  “... As San Francisco becomes blistered by suspicious blazes, the two men are pitted against each other, drawn by a common bond and both faced with classic moral dilemmas. The author draws an authentic view of “the fastest growing crime in America”.”

  Los Angeles Times/The Book Review

  “... a hot summer read…Siler was once an arson investigator, and it shows in his inside stuff about fires, how they start, and how firefighters combat them. The plot is another plus... Siler’s yarn crackles like a five-alarm fire.”

  New York Daily News

  “Arson, a fascinating crime for the often darkly psychological motivations of the arsonist, for the utter devastation of lives and property, and for the tons of dirty money being made on it, does not get the attention it deserves from the writers of thrillers. But here, set in San Francisco, is a story far more dramatic than most murder mysteries. ... A compelling, explosive story of an ultimate moral dilemma, according to John D. MacDonald, who knows a compelling, explosive story when he sees one.”

  Chicago Tribune

  “This is an unusual book. Every firefighter will identify with this novel.”

  Fire Chief (Magazine)

  ARSON-FOR-PROFIT

  LIFE INSIDE THE WORLD OF CRIMINAL FIRES

  STRETCH JACKSON—He torches buildings for a living. Handsome, honest, fresh from the Midwest. Caught in a race more deadly than he ever dreamed. Seduced by the corruption of San Francisco. In love with a woman who wants something more.

  TOM FARLEY—The ultimate private investigator. One of the tough new breed dedicated to fighting arson – the fastest growing crime in America.

  KAREN CANFIELD—A tarnished innocence. Fleeing a past of abuse, in search of a wholeness her love needed, but fate had denied.

  JONAH WEST—The fireman’s fireman. Rock solid. A front-line firefighter who discovers that the battle against arson is not only on the fireground.

  The first book to expose the respectable men, the powerful money, and the terrifying tricks-of-the-trade that caused arson-for-profit to explode across America and around the world.

  A book about those who fight – and sometimes die – to stop that crime.

  The real story of their loves, their lives, and their lethal conflict are the secrets hidden within…

  TRIANGLES OF FIRE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jack Siler’s life has been constant contrasts: raised between a small farming town near St. Louis and the cultural life of the city itself, educated at the University of New Mexico, but graduated from the University of Illinois with several degrees, then living and working, literally, from one end of America to the other.

  Siler was an independent investigator for insurance companies. Arson cases fascinated him, because they always included high drama. Eventually, he specialized in catastrophic damages, a 16/7 job that took him from Miami to Portland, LA to NY, yet that left him free to live large chunks of each year in Paris, the Kenya bush, Italy, or Mexico, learn 6 languages, and write. His passion is studying social diversities from nation to nation, from America to Egypt. And skin diving!

  He is currently finishing both a new thriller and, after years of research, a history mystery exposing what the real fate was of Aristotle’s Alexandrian Library.

  First Published 1984 By

  Dell Publishing Company, Inc.

  New York, NY

  Published 2018 By

  Willoughby Editions

  [email protected]

  Copyright © 2018 by Jack Siler

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Print ISBN: 9781625361301

  Ebook ISBN: 9781625361295

  To Kim—

  and the firemen, who risk their lives to protect the public, and to the arson investigators, private and public, who try to reduce that risk (with a nod to Rick Schmitt—one of The Best in The West).

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  1

  Late afternoon sunlight filtered lazily through the open doors. It made the big room sparkle with reflections of chrome and candy-apple red. Yet no matter how pretty, how peaceful the quiet made it seem, the calm at Station House 1 always held a subtle undertone of menace, for this was home to the men who wait for the Fire God to breathe.

  Behind the glass in the little corner room the man on duty took a call, listened intently, jotted down a note, and immediately pushed the alarm button, which long ago someone had painted with red nail polish. Much of it was still there. A finger on that button always had the same effect—suddenly all hairy hell was unleashed! Above the door, the clapper slammed at the bell in a frenzy, and the deafening result pierced the building with violence and life.

  The duty man swept up the microphone and the loudspeakers blared out his message. “Task Force Eleven! Ladder One, Engine One, you’re on!”

  Men who had been dozing in the upstairs bunk room were instantly wide awake and moving. The tillerman did not even take the time to scrape his change off the card table—he knew it would all be waiting for him when he got back. If he got back.

  Oakland’s main fire station housed a ladder truck, two fire engines, and a chief’s buggy. Jonah West, captain of Ladder 1, and Mannie Rojas, captain of Engine 1, broke their conversation in midsentence and leaped to their feet.

  “Okay, let’s hope it’s worth the trip!” Rojas shouted as both men ran for their units.

  Feet were shoved into boots. Fumbling fingers stuffed shirttails into pants with legs already in motion. Flies were zipped, helmets grabbed. Men grasped the glistening brass pole and disappeared t
hrough the hole in the floor into the engine room. In a mere thirty seconds the fire station was transformed from a scene of tranquillity into a throbbing cube of chaos.

  The engine under the chrome and candy-apple roared to life, belching an embarrassing little cloud of blue exhaust. Red lights began to whip out their warnings and the siren added its ominous wail to the din. In a thunder of yells and flashing color one of American La France’s finest hundred-foot ladder trucks moved out of Station House I with Rojas’s shining engine right behind.

  As quickly as bedlam had come, it left. The concrete cavern was more still than ever. A small puddle of oil mutely testified to the brilliance that had just been parked above it. From the doorway a fireman looked wistfully after the fading siren sound.

  ***

  The din in the cab of Ladder I didn’t let up. Between the siren, the motor, and the radio’s high-pitched cackle an infernal racket followed every zig and zag as the truck weaved through traffic. It was a mobile box of noise.

  “Engine Company Four responding,” spat out of the. radio.

  “Ten-four.”

  “First-due unit reporting. Fireground red! It’s a working fire. Give me a second alarm.”

  Jonah West, captain of Ladder 1, leaned toward the driver and screamed above the furor, “Fireground red and two alarms! It must be a son-of-a-bitch!”

  And so it was. An old three-story factory was but a shadow of its once bustling self. A small machine shop still occupied a corner of the ground floor, but most of the rest of the building had been slowly abandoned. Flames were quickly trying to finish what years of deterioration had not yet accomplished.

  Twilight rapidly turned to darkness as fire gnawed through ancient grease- and grime-soaked floors. The fire’s sinister roar was accentuated by snaps and pops as the building’s innards gave way.

  An organizational relic from the days when army men were the firefighters, every vehicle is a company, and every company has its officer. Since all industrial and commercial buildings in a city are classified by the risk they represent, a report of fire calls out a predetermined task force composed of units that are coordinated to deal with the risks involved. Each task force is drawn from several stations and commanded by a Fire Chief. Once on the fire site, he assesses the need for more equipment. Each call for another alarm brings an additional prearranged task force. The Chief of Task Force Eleven had not waited long to call for a third, then a fourth, alarm.

  Trucks, hoses, men, and water were everywhere, bathed in the light of soaring flames. The parking lot and the adjoining streets were blocked with pumper units sucking water from hydrants and rushing it to the fireground nozzles. The top priority at the moment was to keep the fire from spreading to an adjacent building that had managed to maintain an active life as a factory. The owner of Gloria Pump and Suction Equipment, Inc. was frantically trucking everything out of his threatened factory that wasn’t bolted down.

  Jonah West stood before the blaze like a block of granite, getting a moment of badly needed relief. Above him a pane of glass popped and the pieces tinkled on the pavement a few yards away.

  As Jonah watched, a fireman staggered out of the door, gagging from smoke. He bent for a moment, hands on his knees, gulping air, trying not to vomit. A medic rushed up to ask if he was okay.

  “Yeah—soon as my lungs cool down. Where’s the water jug?” He retched anyway. The medic hurried off.

  Jonah moved over to him. “It’s a goner.”

  The fireman looked up. “Sure is. And it’s a torch job, the motherfucker—” He halted in a fit of coughing.

  “We’ll get him,” Jonah replied, his voice ringing with determination.

  The man straightened up and shot the captain a grim look. “Like hell we will, Jonah,” he said disgustedly.

  Jonah had to accept the truth with a sigh of resignation. “Yeah. You’re probably right. Doing any good at all in there?”

  “Not much.”

  Jonah didn’t know the man, but the firefighter knew Jonah. Almost everyone in Oakland knew Jonah. He had often seen his own name and photograph in the newspapers as well as in the fire trade journals. He was one of the leaders of the Oakland fireman’s union. Also, in his twelve years on duty he had received three citations for bravery at fire sites, one of which merited the city’s highest award and a Presidential Citation. On that occasion, ten children had been trapped on the third floor of a blazing nursery school. Jonah had carried two of them on his 5 foot 11 inch frame while leading the others out of danger. For an on-line fireman he had acquired quite unusual renown.

  West looked like a statue whose sculptor had forgotten to chisel in the details. Everything about him was square and rough-hewn. His head, nose, cheeks, jaw, body—all were heavyset and angular. Surprisingly, his eyes were kind. They were the only hint of a gentler interior.

  Jonah decided he had better head back to his truck. He hopped aboard three hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of the latest in tractor-drawn, hundred-foot, aerial ladder trucks. As with any semitrailer, the turntable between the cab and the ladder section allowed a short turning radius—necessary for Ladder 1 to maneuver the tight corners of the Berkeley Hills streets. The rear wheels of the trailer had a separate steering wheel known as the “tiller” high up in a cab. At a fire the tillerman doubled at the ladder controls, changing the ladder’s direction and height and keeping a close eye on the load indicator so that the men and equipment on the ladder did not become top-heavy beyond the unit’s safety level.

  The tillerman gave Jonah a wink. “Got it up for the panoramic view again, Captain?”

  Jonah replied, “You just make sure I don’t tip this baby over,” and swung himself upward.

  As Jonah moved up the rungs, he stopped for a moment to survey the several hundred spectators who had gathered to watch the blaze. Their number always intrigued him. Even though he was paid to do a job, Jonah knew there was something else that linked him to the gawking onlookers, something that binds every person to fire whether or not he is in one of the fire professions. The link is in some biological, psychological umbilical cord to man’s prehistoric past. In the million years since pre-man started heating his caves in southern France, fire may have been domesticated, but it has stubbornly refused to become totally tame. From the fireplace to the blast furnace, the camp fire to the forest fire, the candle to the holocaust, flame feeds both our fear and fascination. Captain West knew that was part of the reason he was on the ladder doing battle—the work was too grimy, too dangerous to be just another job. No child, man, or woman is immune to that double face of fire’s horror—and attraction.

  Jonah turned his eyes away from the people lining the street and stared beyond the ladder to the angry orange flames. Maybe someday they’ll get me, he, thought, and maybe they won’t. Meanwhile, there was duty. An extra dose of adrenaline surged through him and he moved on upward to take command.

  2

  Tom Farley’s stomach began speaking to him with greater urgency than his drive to continue working. It was, after all, eight thirty and Saturday evening. He heaved a sigh of exasperation at the forces of nature, which demand so much time for sleeping and eating. Resolving his conflict in favor of food, Tom closed the file and stuck it in his briefcase to finish after dinner. He swiveled around, glanced through the office window to the beauty of San Francisco at dusk, then grabbed two more files from a shelf and added them to his homework.

  Despite the drive of Farley’s mind, everything else about him seemed relaxed, from the loose, easy frame of his body to the round contours of his face. Even his suit usually looked as though the cleaner had forgotten to press it. At first glance, one would have assumed he was the classic absentminded professor, or perhaps a middle-level bureaucrat, forty-five and stuck in a rut. Neither was quite the case.

  Farley rose and grabbed his hat. He was not pleased about the thinning of his dark hair in the back, but the hat concealed that. He had an engaging face—not quite plain, not quite h
andsome, marked by high, round cheekbones, an indelicately chiseled nose, and a firm, relaxed mouth above a remarkable dimpled chin. His eyes had a piercing and effervescent quality that let you know not a single detail escaped them. Tom Farley’s overall image was a peaceable facade for a main-frame brain—he was not the easy mark his exterior implied. The Sunday-golfer bearing hid an ex-paratroop captain; the unflappable calm was a mask for the feverish determination that ruled his mind. Farley locked up his office and left for a quiet evening of overtime—although “overtime” was an unknown word in his vocabulary.

  In the parking lot he started his black-vinyl-topped white Pontiac, hit reverse, and turned the sixteen-band scanning receiver to the San Francisco Fire Department wavelength. Not much was going on. He pulled smoothly into traffic, heading for home and Oakland, which lay across the Bay Bridge. He switched the radio to the Oakland wavelength. That was where the action was. As soon as the dimensions of the fire that menaced Gloria Pump and Suction Equipment became clear, Farley’s foot pressed heavier on the accelerator.

  San Francisco’s twilight twinkle rapidly faded behind him and the lights of Oakland came into focus. When the red glare and the ponderous column of smoke in the industrial area became visible, Tom kicked the car above the speed limit.

  A police officer stopped him at the barricade, took a quick look at his I.D., and promptly pulled the sawhorse aside. Wiggling the Pontiac through the clutter as best he could, Farley finally gave up and parked. He opened the car door and stood up, his big six-foot form filling the opening completely. He placed his fist on the black vinyl top and rested his dimpled chin on his hand. Silhouetted against the flames, Tom Farley surveyed with restless, bright eyes the two things he knew best in the world: fire—and arson.

  Farley could immediately tell that this inferno was no accident, for he had spent twenty years honing himself into the best private arson investigator in the West—possibly the best in all America. He had a “sense” that most others lacked. What intuition didn’t tell him, his scientific knowledge of fire did. What those two failed to ferret out he filled in with what he liked to call “patient, plodding, and persistent investigation”—in a word, legwork. Farley had flair, all right, but as often as not his technique consisted of simply putting one foot in front of the other until he had walked his quarry into the ground.