Dirty Fire Page 5

April 17

  Chapter 6

  Much of what I knew about Gil Cieloczki was ancedotal, the blend of rumor and outright fiction that passes for conversation in most organizations.

  Some information I remembered from watercooler gossip back when he had first come to Lake Tower to head up the fire department, stepping in after the city eased out the former incumbent. Some I picked up over drinks with members of the cadre of firefighters who had worked with him in Chicago and subsequently had been recruited to form the nucleus of the professional organization he envisioned for Lake Tower.

  I learned a bit more from his wife Kay, who—rather than leave an early arriving guest sitting alone with a cup of coffee in her husband’s den—was easily coaxed to talk about him and his achievements. And a little I got from Cieloczki himself, gleaned from what I suspected he thought was important for me to know.

  I knew, for example, that he made it a practice to get to work early and leave late.

  Like most behavior that is publicly praised, it was a habit that privately made for curled lips and eyebrows half-raised knowingly. When Cieloczki’s name came up in gossip around the Lake Tower Municipal Center, terms like “workaholic” and “desk addict” were often used in the same sentence.

  Cieloczki knew what his fellow municipal executives said about his work schedule. When he thought about it at all —which was seldom—Cieloczki recognized it for what it was: a defensive weapon, deployed to justify the bankers’ hours schedule of their own arrivals and departures and occasionally over-long lunches.

  They need not have wasted their energy. As long as it had no impact on the firefighting apparatus that Cieloczki had spent the past five years building, the comings and goings in the other offices in the Lake Tower Municipal Center were a matter of almost complete indifference to him.

  The fact was that Cieloczki, who had spent almost twenty years in a firehouse environment where a twenty-four shift was the only time clock a firefighter punched, had never really adjusted to a bankers’ hours world. It had never occurred to him to try.

  In Chicago, where he had been promoted from ladder company to battalion and subsequently to Deputy Chief, Gil Cieloczki’s life revolved around the almost constant clamor of the fire bell. A talent for the strategic aspects of firefighting—quickly recognized by his superiors—was tempered by his affinity for the hands-on tactical. At home behind either a desk or a three-inch line at a fire, Cieloczki became a fixture both at Fire Department headquarters and at virtually every major blaze in the city. “My Iron Man,” his then-chief described Cieloczki. “Gil doesn’t sleep, doesn’t take a day off—I’m not sure he even owns a shirt that isn’t Department-issued.”

  It was, by and large, true; at their wedding, Kay had put her foot down on a bridal party in City-issued uniforms, even the full-dress variety. “So it was either T-shirts and jeans or Gingiss,” she had said, shaking her head at the memory. Cieloczki was married in sartorial splendor rented for the occasion.

  When it came to firefighting, Cieloczki was a driven man. Not by ambition, the fuel that powered others of his fellows; not even by pride in a job he loved and knew he did well. It was something more simple, and infinitely more complex.

  Veterans from the line companies nodded approvingly when Gil’s name came up during bitch sessions in the beer-and-a-shot taverns favored by off-duty firefighters. Cieloczki was not your typical cotton-top, they’d tell the rookies at the table, referring to the unscarred, pristine white firefighter helmets worn by the Department’s upper echelon; Cieloczki had the “bell in his blood”—he was a firefighter’s firefighter who had never forgotten what the job was all about.

  Which had made it all the more shocking when Cieloczki quit.

  By then, Cieloczki was in his late 30s—relatively young for a deputy chief, especially one with a reputation for having risen on merit rather than politics. He had been at the tail end of an eighteen-month stint supervising the Department’s Investigative and Forensic Services. The nuances of arson methodology, ignition source identification and accellerant trace analysis filled all of his waking hours and many of his nights.

  Late one Saturday afternoon, he was working alone in the renovated firehouse that served as the offices for Investigative and Forensic Services. The door opened, and Gil looked up from the memoranda and reports covering most of his desk.

  “My name is Talmadge Evans,” a man said. “And I need your help.”

  He sat in the visitor’s chair at Gil’s desk and set down a file folder, aligning it carefully with the edge of the desktop.

  Evans was a tall man in a suit that had been carefully tailored to a frame that was thin, almost emaciated. Then in his late 50s, Talmadge Evans had the air of a precise man—one who would have been quite comfortable running a major corporation. As it was, he ran the Municipality of Lake Tower. Evans had spent the past dozen years in that role, serving a long line of elected officials.

  All of them, upon taking office, quickly recognized the value of a city manager who knew his place. Evans took care not to interfere in matters of simple patronage, nepotism or other occasional political featherbedding. That is, unless and until such practices intruded on the areas Evans categorized under the phrase “efficient municipal management.” If something kept the trains from running on schedule, Evans could be uncharacteristically blunt.

  Still, accommodation was always possible. After all, as several past mayors and aldermen had assured each other, Evans was an employee, and a mere bureaucrat at that. As Evans himself was the first to admit, he possessed statutory powers limited largely to what they granted.

  Yet over the years, as their own political fortunes waxed and waned while Evans remained, a few of the more perceptive came to realize something profound. Inevitably, the accommodations they had reached with Evans had ultimately evolved to follow the course he had championed in the first place.

  Evans thumbed through the folder and selected a neatly cut newspaper clipping. He pushed it toward Cieloczki without a word. The headline type was large and black, the size usually reserved for major tragedies.

  NINE DEAD, FORTY INJURED

  IN LAKE TOWER APARTMENT FIRE

  By A. STEVEN MELSHENKER

  Beacon Staff Writer

  LAKE TOWER, Ill. - A fire of questionable origin roared through a three-story apartment complex yesterday in Lake Tower, a community of 25,000 north of Chicago. In its wake, seven children and two pregnant women are dead and dozens more being treated in several area hospitals. The fire, which broke out at approximately 2:30 a.m., also left five other children in extremely critical condition.

  Fire Chief Carl Devroux said that the fire began on the second floor of a forty unitforty-unit apartment building in the Westlake section of the city. Devroux declined to comment on reports that residents had repeatedly complained to the city that the building lacked working smoke detectors and that fire doors—used to prevent the spread of flames and smoke from one section of the building to another—were habitually propped open. The open fire doors allowed the smoke and super-heated gases to move rapidly through the hallway and may have contributed to the high death toll.

  According to residents interviewed outside the scene of the blaze, repeated complaints to the owner of the building, listed in county tax records as Monmouth Development Corp. of Lake Tower, were disregarded. Three complaints filed with the Lake Tower Building Department—the most recent less than four weeks ago—were also ignored, the residents charged.

  The cause of the fire is still under investigation, City Manager Talmadge Evans said this morning. Evans said that a total of sixteen apartments were destroyed by the fire, and that there was no evidence of working smoke detectors. He said that the fire was declared under control within an hour of its inception, but not before the smoke and flames took their toll.

  Evans declined comment on the reports of the alleged complaints. In responding to a question from the media, he acknowledged that safety inspections of existing
buildings were the responsibility of the city’s Building and Zoning Department. However, Evans added, in practice such inspections were routinely assigned to the Lake Tower Fire Department.

  Cieloczki had known about the fire. Even in a city as accustomed to tragedy as Chicago, this one had stood out. It was remarkable for the age and number of the victims, and for the senseless, preventable way they had died. Smoke detectors were inoperative or missing entirely; fire doors had been latched open and in some cases removed. Worse, inspections required by a litany of state law and local ordinance had been cursory at best. As a result, tragedy had been inevitable.

  “We weren’t—aren’t—prepared,” Evans said. “It’s just that simple. The same thing could happen tomorrow. At this moment, Lake Tower has a fire department that has become too comfortable with meeting minimal standards. That includes, I’m afraid, our personnel standards. Starting with our fire chief.”

  He locked eyes with Cieloczki.

  “Carl Devroux is symptomatic of a problem I have faced since I accepted my present position,” Evans said. “You are no doubt aware that Lake Tower has a tradition of…let us say, opportunism among its public officials.”

  “I’ve lived in Chicago all my life,” Gil said evenly. “And I read the newspapers.”

  “Then you know we have had more than our share of such men. For them, public service was little more than a license to enrich themselves. When I was hired as City Manager, it was on the heels of a scandal not unlike this one”—he tapped the clipping with his finger—“and part of my task was to keep it from happening again.”

  His face was grim. “I won’t lie to you, Mr. Cieloczki. I am still far from succeeding in that task.”

  The firefighter frowned. “Mr. Evans, I don’t quite understand what you want here. What does this have to do with me?”

  “Chief Devroux became head of our fire department the year before I was appointed City Manager,” Evans said. “As the city grew, the job grew. He did not grow with it. My failing was not making this issue a priority; I settled for what I thought was an adequate firefighting system. That’s why we need somebody like you.”

  Gil shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not—”

  “Please hear me out,” Evans interrupted. He pulled a sheaf of papers from the file. The photocopied top sheet, which carried the Chicago Fire Department logo, was the first page of Gil’s own personnel file.

  “I didn’t just pull your name from the telephone book,” Evans said, with a smile. “I know a number of people who know you. In the past few days, I’ve talked about you to people both inside and outside your department. Let me speak frankly, if I may. You are a valuable member of the Chicago Fire Department, but you are not valued, if you understand the difference.”

  “I don’t,” Gil said, wondering if he had just been insulted. “Enlighten me.”

  “From a career standpoint, you have risen as far as you will go,” Evans said flatly. “We both understand that your department is part of your city’s political environment. You are not a political animal by nature; you have no clout outside the department itself. For the next twenty years, the most you can hope for is to do what you are doing now—an increasing amount of administrative assignments, each taking you farther away from the ability to make a real difference. Oh, I’m certain they are important—but may I ask you this: are they what you became a firefighter to do?”

  “And that would be?” Gil asked, leaning back in his chair.

  “Saving lives,” Evans replied. “Building the kind of fire department that operates on a professional basis. One with the resources, the training and the personnel a city like mine needs to be fully protected. A department that knows what it must do, and does it fully and without favoritism.”

  Cieloczki’s eyes locked on those of Evans. Evans looked back from behind the steel-rimmed frame of his glasses. The silence held for several moments as each of the two men took the measure of the other.

  Gil spoke first. “You know of an opening, I assume?”

  “Chief Devroux will resign before the end of the week,” Evans said. “Very likely, before the end of the day tomorrow. I know this, because I know that in tomorrow’s edition of this newspaper”—Evans tapped the clipping, still on the desk in front of Cieloczki—“it will be reported that Carl Devroux is one of the owners of the Monmouth Development Corporation. The story will be quite explicit in showing that Monmouth, through a series of shell companies, owns a number of substandard, rent-subsidized apartment buildings—among them the building where this tragedy occurred. The article will also carry a quote from me expressing surprise over Devroux’s previously undisclosed relationship to the property.”

  Gil nodded. “Let me be frank with you, Mr. Evans. I appreciate the situation you’re facing, and I understand the…ethical problems involved. So even if I was looking for a new job, I’m not sure this would be the time to—”

  “The time will never be better,” Evans said. “I, too, want to be candid with you. First, the publicity this has received has damaged our image. Every member of our board has been embarrassed. Despite what some may see as a checkered past, Lake Tower does not like to be embarrassed. We require an immediate solution to the problem Deveroux has created.

  “Second, there is a purely practical matter. Our board has been advised to expect a number of lawsuits alleging that Lake Tower was corporately negligent. As a result, the tragedy was compounded. We anticipate some very large claims against us. And justifiably so, of course.”

  Evans shrugged. “Fortunately, we have been assured that our insurance will assume the cost of the settlements we will make. However, our carrier has notified the board that it is withdrawing future coverage. They are canceling us out. Worse, we are told that without an immediate, substantive correction of our Public Safety situation, Lake Tower will not be able to obtain insurance from any other carrier.”

  He smiled thinly. “Very honestly, a new fire chief—a professional, someone with the knowledge of what a top-flight fire department should be—would have the ability to write his own ticket. That is an advantage not to be wasted.”

  Evans had paused. Without appearing to, he studied Cieloczki. The firefighter was still silent, but there was something in his eyes that had not been there before. It was the right moment, and Evans had made his voice harsh and accusatory, with just the proper touch of personal regret.

  “But finally, and most important, we had nine human beings die in my city—and it didn’t have to happen! I am going to have to live with that fact every day for the rest of my life. I will do what it takes—whatever it takes—to keep something like this from happening in Lake Tower again. I’m looking for a person who shares that commitment to help me. And I need him now.”

  Gil Cieloczki and Talmadge Evans spoke for two hours that evening. They talked of budgets and personnel and the requirements needed to build a professional system. Somewhere in the midst of this initial meeting, Evans realized that Cieloczki had begun interviewing him. It was, he no doubt thought with satisfaction, a good sign.

  Evans left with a substantial volume of notes written in his precise hand in a leather-covered notebook. He did not leave with what he came for, but he also did not leave disappointed. Evans had a keen ability to read other people, and he was a man who knew the value of patience.

  Cieloczki had taken Kay to a late dinner that night. “Not Eli’s or the Fishmarket tonight,” Gil had proposed. “Someplace quiet where we can talk.” They had settled on Dannaher’s, a Near North restaurant where the decor favored dark walnut booths and the menu was printed in green. There, nursing a Bushmill’s to Kay’s single glass of burgundy, Cieloczki recounted every detail of Evans’s visit.

  “You want the job,” Kay said, studying her husband over the rim of her wineglass and marveling at how, after eighteen years of marriage, he could still surprise her.

  Cieloczki leaned back and lifted his hands, palms up. “I honestly don’t know,” he said, tacit
ly acknowledging Kay’s reaction. “And Kay, that surprises me. I’ve never been anything but a Chicago fireman—never wanted to be anything else.” His eyebrows knit together in deep concentration. “Before today, I never considered doing anything else.”

  Kay reached across the table and took his hand.

  • • •

  Later that night, after they had fallen asleep in the warmth of each other, Kay had awakened alone in their bed. Outside the room, light spilled from the stairwell that led down to the living room. Soundlessly, she walked to the head of the stairs.

  There, in a circle of light cast by the reading lamp at Gil’s favorite chair, her husband sat. His eyes looked into some unseen distance, and his forehead was furrowed in deep thought.

  He held something between the fingers of his left hand. From her vantage above and behind him, it looked like a story clipped from a newspaper. But the headline type was large and black, the size usually reserved for major tragedies.

  Chapter 7

  Many of those who knew about my father automatically assumed that they had uncovered the motive behind my own actions, even if they were convinced I had long since buried it in my own mind.

  They were perhaps right, though my own opinion is that the grave they had excavated was not as shallow as they thought. But certainly, the fate that Gerald Davey had brought down upon himself—and by extension, on my mother and myself—was the genesis for what had turned into my own sort of Children’s Crusade.

  I understood that. But I also understood something else, all too well. There is a self-knowledge that all zealots possess despite our denials: that buried deep inside each of us is not a revulsion but a secret fascination. The sins we profess to hate the most, we crave to commit ourselves.

  • • •

  “But I saw the story in the newspaper,” Father Frank Bomarito repeated. The priest frowned, his face no longer the non-judgmental mask it had been as he listened to the recitation of my sins. “You were acquitted.”