Corpse on the Grill

He struggled desperately with the tumbled wreckage; found the first fireman face down with his hands around his groin. Pedley used his axe like a man gone berserk, tugged the unconscious victim loose, staggered back to the staircase.

A huge mountain of a man in one of the emergency squad all-purpose helmets came down toward him ponderously, poking the beam of a powerful battery lamp ahead of him. Pedley got close to him, lifted his mask an inch; shouted: “Wall down on the right. Four more men there.” The big cop nodded his helmeted head his waders vanished in the steaming vapor. The Marshal lugged his burden as far as the door, turned the fireman over to a white-coated interne, slogged back to the fume-filled cellar.

Three back-straining, heart-breaking trips he made, while the giant from the emergency squad was making two. In the end they had all five firemen up on the pavement. There were more doctors there now; one of them gave Pedley first-aid for ammonia burns.

“Take a good slug of vinegar water every five minutes for a while, Marshal.” The surgeon doused him with a neutralizing liquid. “Thing like this is damn dangerous. You ought to get over to the hospital for a going-over.”

“Yeah. Sure, Doc. I’ll take care of it.” The Marshal looked over at Deputy Battalion Chief Wilmot, who was trying to hoist himself up on his elbows, gasping and waving feebly at Pedley. He said, “Got a job here to look after first.” He reached Wilmot.

“Ben,” coughed the battalion chief, weakly, “There’s a body... down there.”

“Another one of your boys?”

“No... no. A dead body. It was dead... when we... found it.”

“Hell, you can’t be sure,” Pedley growled. “That’s up to the doctors. I’ll—” he started for the smoke-clouded door.

“Wait, Ben. This one’s dead, all right.”

“Where is it?”

“In that big ice box. Reason I know it’s dead, Ben... the damned thing didn’t have any head!” Wilmot coughed up a thin trickle of smoke. “Or any legs or arms!”

The recall sounded; reserve apparatus clanged brassily away to their stations; the hose companies began taking up. A faint smudge, drifting up out of the gutted building through the cold night air was reddened by light spilled over street and sidewalks from hook and ladder headlights. Pedley slumped on the curb; an interne finished swabbing out the Marshal’s eyes with acid solution. The moisture streaming down the big man’s weathered cheeks was not tears, but might have been. He kept his head averted from the three figures lying motionless under rubber blankets beside the smouldering structure.

Wilmot and one other member of Company 86 had been rushed to the hospital; with breaks, they’d live. But those three were ready for the undertaker and a post-humus citation for bravery in line of duty. Three good men gone to their graves, Pedley thought bitterly, because some nameless maniac had used arson to hide a murder. For, murder it must be if Deputy Chief Wilmot was in his right mind.

An enormously stout man with a round face that was white with misery shuffled past the police lines. He wore shabby slippers, striped pajamas and florid bathrobe. He pointed at the blanketed figures.

“They... dead?”

Pedley nodded.

“Dreadful!” The fat man stared miserably up at the smashed windows, the smoke-stained brick. His eyes came to rest on the neon sign which the hose-streams had miraculously left intact. The tubing, under the bloodshot eyes of the fire engines, glowed faintly:

ICE-TAURANT

Skate as you Dine

He turned sadly to the marshal. “Wipes me out. Yeah. I’m Bill Biddonay.”

“Own this joint?”

“Most of it. With this,” he gestured, wearily, “I’m washed up. But God’s sake,” he pulled his bathrobe tighter, “I can start again. Those poor guys—” his voice was harsh — “they don’t get another chance.”

Pedley got to his feet, painfully. “D’you live over the cafe?”

“Sure. Third floor. Fixed up a couple rooms there. I don’t guess there’s much of my stuff left. I was asleep when I heard the engines roll up.”

The Marshal eyed him, coldly. “Covered by insurance, weren’t you?”

Biddonay shrugged. “We weren’t. Banks were. Ought to get nearly enough to pay off our notes. Herb Krass or I won’t get a lousy dime. Besides, it’d take us a month to get going again, somewheres else. Then the season’d be shot. Hell with it. I’m okay; plenty of people be glad to back me again if I want to start. It’s these men losing their lives that matters.”

“That’s the way to look at it,” Pedley agreed. “Bad enough to lose men as the result of carelessness. But when the fire was set—”

“Huh!”

“Yeah.” Pedley went toward the building. “C’mere. Want to show you something.”

Biddonay followed, snuffing and puffing, through the dining-room. They crossed the ice covered dance floor past the orchestra dais, on down the stairs to the basement.

Chapter Two Snowball in Hell