I had entertained images of lycra-clad bearded ladies, acrobatic midgets, and impossibly rotund fat men in the days leading up to our meeting, making the drab man behind the chipped pressboard desk all that much more incongruous. I expected Len Conroy to be some colorful amalgamation of a tattooed freak and a human pincushion, but he wasn’t. He didn’t look the part at all. His distressing plainness made me question whether I wandered into the wrong office, but the brass and marble nameplate on his desk assured me that this was in fact the office of Leonard F. Conroy, Attorney At Law. I should have felt comforted by that confirmation, but I wasn’t.
Len wore a cheap but nicely pressed dark suit over a faded green button down shirt and a tie that matched in a vague sense of the word. His head was shaved close but the shadowy dark stubble around his temples suggested it was a preemptive strike against male pattern baldness rather than some act of hairfree rebellion. His face was thin, but not “See the Amazing Skeleton Man” thin, and the jet-black tips of tribal ink peeked out from under the cuff of his suitcoat, but overall his impression was nothing that would have merited a brightly-colored signboard outside a freak show tent.
“Shut the door, would you?” It wasn’t a question so much as a command. His oversized chair gave an audible groan as he rose to his feet. The chair caught my eye – it was obviously expensive, with beautifully carved mahogany and cherry-colored leather. It would have looked out of place next to the particleboard desk if not for the fact that the chair was worn within an inch of its life. The armrests bore the grime of years and bowed in the middle from the weight of many elbows. It had to be a dumpster-diving score from a far more prestigious law firm.
I closed the door and took a seat opposite his desk without being invited. “I don’t have a lot of time,” he said without my asking, “but I can talk for a bit. I have a deposition here at the office this afternoon, but fortunately for you this guy’s attorney has never been on time for anything in his entire life so if by some miracle he shows when he should, I’m happy to make him wait a little longer.” He held up a finger to silence the question I was about to ask, and with another finger he pressed a button on his desk phone. A loud beep and crackle followed. “Lynn, let me know when Buzz gets here.” A woman’s voice crackled a muted response that Len appeared to understand. “Did you have any trouble finding the office?”
“No, your secretary’s directions were just fine.” Len’s office was part of a small suite of offices in a fading strip mall on Milwaukee’s south side. Alongside Len’s own shingle hung signs for a title company, and an acupuncturist, and they all shared the same entryway on the mall’s west side. The nail salon next door had its own entrance. “Do you mind if I record our conversation?” I asked as I pulled my voice recorder from my pocket and set it on a vacant corner of his desk. I had bought the pricey Olympus model just for this project. It still had its protective plastic on one of the panels.
“I’d rather you not,” he replied. His tone wasn’t unfriendly.
“Understood.” I returned the device to my pocket. I pretended to fish a pen out of my purse to compliment the notepad already on my lap, and while I was there I pressed record on the other device I had concealed in its inside pocket. Sorry, counselor: ours is a one-party-consent state, and I’m consenting to this recording. I took a deep breath. “So, you know what I am here to ask you about, right? The fire?”
“Right. July 15, 2009. 10:14 p.m., according to the official reports. I would swear it wasn’t a minute past ten, though. Is this going to be for a piece in the Journal?”
I had interviewed enough attorneys in my days as a reporter for the Journal-Sentinel to recognize the gleam in his eye. The potential for publicity was music to an attorney’s pocketbook. For a solo like Conroy, any mention in the paper could nudge him just a few bucks closer to a brand new office setup from Ikea.
“It might be,” I lied. Well, it wasn’t exactly a lie. Certainly there was a chance, perhaps one in a million, that this project could bring me back into the Journal’s good graces. It wasn’t completely out of the question to think that that some higher-up on the newspaper’s dwindling staff would be so wowed by my work that he would beg me to take my job back. After all, it wasn’t like they fired me for cause. The once thick periodical had been sliced apart little by little over the years until it became a mere sliver of its former self. After years of seeing my peers and my mentors leave the Journal offices with a lifetime of their work unceremoniously dumped into glum moving boxes, I knew was lucky to have hung on as long as I did. “I’m just laying the groundwork for the piece at this point, so it all depends on where my research takes me. In fact, you are my first interview.”
He nodded approvingly and removed his glasses to polish them on a stained handkerchief. “Well, I’ll do my best to tell you what I know about the night of the fire—“
“Could we start with some background information first, Mr. Conroy? About you?” I interrupted. He, like most attorneys, was probably used to steering the conversation, but I didn’t want to give him the chance to get into the driver’s seat. And if he was pressed for time as he claimed, I needed to cut to the chase.
“Alright,” he said, returning his glasses to his face. “But call me Len. What you are really wondering is how an attorney became a part of a freak show, right?”
Well, that was much more blunt than I would have been. On second thought, maybe he can drive. “Yes, actually. That’s exactly what I was going to ask you.” I had set my purse on the floor next to me and nudged it just a little closer to Len to make sure the recorder could pick up what he said. He didn’t seem to notice.
“I went to law school on sort of a whim. Did you see The Firm? Tom Cruise movie? It was around 1998 or so. I think everyone saw that movie. I made the mistake of seeing it in college on a night after having a few beers and wallowing in the existential horror of my own existence. I was a history major, so my job prospects on graduation were close to nil. Grad school sounded tedious, but I was within a year of graduation and had no idea of what to do with my life. I decided to take the LSAT, just for shits and giggles. I registered the next day, and when test time came I scored well and ultimately got into my first-pick law school. I graduated from law school with debt past my ears and took the first place that offered me a paycheck. It wasn’t like it is now – back then there were jobs for lawyers, even ones who didn’t do great in school. I spent my days downtown defending traffic tickets, domestic violence charges, evictions – whatever anyone would pay me to do, I would do. And I hated it. I was about six beers into a long lunch alone one day when I noticed a poster for a Freaks on the Creek show over by the Milwaukee River. The more I drank, the more I thought about it, and the more it made sense. I came back from lunch and did the only reasonable thing: I quit my job and joined the freak show.”
I nodded, unsure of what to say. I had been preparing for this meeting for weeks now. The neatly printed list of questions on the yellow pad on my lap were forgotten. “I, uh. How?” I felt my face flush. “I’m sorry. I must sound so unprofessional right now.” My hands were sweating and I wiped my palms on my skirt.
He smiled. “You’re fine. I understand. You aren’t the first person to find my career path a little unusual, you know.” He pulled a pack of Marlboros out of his shirt pocket and offered me one. I shook my head. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen anyone smoke indoors, in an office no less. “Not a smoker, eh?” He shrugged and pulled a cigarette out of the pack with his teeth and produced a blue disposable Bic from his pocket, A ragged black tattoo peeked out from beneath his shirt cuff as he lit the butt and took a deep drag. The tattoo intrigued me - it was the only hint I had seen so far of this freak show past of his - but before I could interject, he continued. “I packed up everything in my office, which wasn’t much. A couple of coffee mugs, my notary stamp, my diploma, a few pens. I took off my tie and my suitcoat and shoved them into the trunk of my Ford Fiesta – you’re impressed, right? Lawyers have such glamorous lifestyles.” He shook his head and examined his cigarette. I wanted him to hurry up, but at the same time I wanted him to take his time and tell this story. “When I told my friends I was going to be an attorney they expected to see me driving a BMW or an Audi straight out of law school. I’m sure that happens for some people, but not me. I drove down to the river where Freaks on the Creek was setting up for the weekend. They had a big red and white tent set up along the river, just like an old-fashioned circus tent. There was a ticket booth and some food stands. It was early so some workers were still lugging things around and unloading equipment from semi trucks. I parked the Fiesta and started walking around. I figured that someone was bound to me wandering through their setup, but I was there for a good twenty minutes before anyone said anything. Finally, a guy came out of this beat-up little RV. He was stocky and about as tall as he was wide, with fingers like big fat sausages. He told me to get the fuck out and come back later when the show opened, and for a second I thought about getting back in my car and leaving. The guy may have been little, but he was built like a truck. If he balled up that fat fist of his, skinny little me wouldn’t have had a chance. But I sucked it up and told him I wanted to join the show. Once he stopped laughing long enough to realize I was serious, we talked. He was impressed that I walked off of my job – ‘that takes some big fucking balls,’ he told me. I’ll never forget that. Long story short, that night I was eating fire.” He pinched the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and looked at it as he exhaled a puff of smoke.
“Just, like, go ahead, you can be our fire eater?” I didn’t believe it. This guy was an attorney. His bread and butter was telling good stories by leaving out the details that didn’t make his case.
“Well, more or less. I swore I knew what I was doing, sort of. I learned fire eating back when I was a teenager. I thought it would be a cool party trick, you know? I thought I would impress the ladies. I read a book on it, believe it or not, and that’s how I got my start. Out of a fucking book from the Milwaukee Public Library. I used a coat hanger with some cotton on for my first torch. It looked cool, but you may be surprised to learn that the women weren’t flocking to me because of my new talent. Have you ever belched up camper fuel? Women don’t find that attractive. But after burning myself a bunch of times I was starting to get it, or so I thought, and I loved it, fuel burps and all. My break, if you can call it that, came when I returned the fire eating book to the library. The librarian took one look at the book and one look at my burned up, blistered lips and asked if I was trying to learn fire eating from the book. I admitted that I was, and she just sort of shook her head and told me to meet her in the library after school so we could talk. I almost didn’t go - I was expecting her to show up with the guidance counselor so we could have a pow-wow about my life, but as it turns out, her uncle was a fire eater. She hooked me up and he taught me everything I knew. I even performed with him a handful of times, just at local picnics and things. Nothing big, but as a teenager I thought I was the shit. Over the years I’d do it as a party trick. It still didn’t impress any girls, but when the chance came I knew I still had it, even if I was a little light on the performance aspect of it all. But I figured if I could be an attorney, if I could get up and tell a judge why some drunk fuck should get to keep his driver’s license so he can get home from the bar that weekend, I could put on a show with fire. And I did.”
I hadn’t noticed the small scar at the corner of his lip when I first met him, but now I couldn’t stop looking at it. It looked a little like a cold sore, but I wondered whether it was a burn from his experimental early days as a fire eater. I noticed that he kept the cigarette close to the scar, covering it with his hand.
“So what happened, then? What was your first night onstage like?” I didn’t dare look at my watch but knew I was running short on time. I had no idea whether the background information he was giving me was going to do anything for my story, but I couldn’t help but want to hear more. And he seemed more than willing to talk.
“I wasn’t exactly onstage. They had stages for the main acts: the tattooed acrobat twins, the mermaid, the strongman and the contortionist. The acts would move along one to the next in rapid fire. Our emcee was brilliant. He orchestrated everything and kept it all going. But there was a whole cadre of performers who weren’t onstage at all: we played the crowd. They had me set up just behind the main ticket booth. Since I used camper fuel to relight my torches I had to make sure that no errant cigarette butts got tossed into my tank. For safety’s sake I stowed the fuel by Jemmie’s booth. She was a ticket taker…ugly old cuss of a woman, God bless her, but she was a great ally there that first night. She kept talking me up to the people who were coming in, and she made sure I had a great crowd right off the bat. I was nervous at first, but once I started it was really easy for me to work the audience. I like to talk, so the banter came easy. And fire eating isn’t as hard as it looks. I haven’t done it since I left the show, but I could still do it if I wanted to.” He stubbed the cigarette out into an ashtray on his desk. He looked at me as though he was waiting for me to ask him to show me. I may have been tempted.
“And they invited you to travel with them afterwards?”
Len nodded and fished another cigarette out of the pack. He didn’t light this one. Instead, he held it between his fingers, right by the scar, as though the force of habit compelled his hand. “After the show everyone gathered around the back, behind the main stage. We drank and talked, and we all really hit it off. The ticket takers, Jemmie especially, said some great things about me, which helped a lot. Before the night was up they asked if I’d come along for the next six cities. Thank God, because I had no other plans for my life at that very moment. And so I toured with them. It was hard work. The next morning everyone pitched in to take down the tents and the buildings, to pack up the trailers. We took turns driving. We worked hard and played hard. To be honest, it was kind of a blur. I drank a lot in those days. We hit a few rough patches, too. Our emcee got arrested outside of Detroit. I never practiced in Michigan so I wasn’t much use to him. I don’t think anyone else in the group knew I was a lawyer, anyway. I sure didn’t tell them. They would have thought that suspicious, or at least weird. I did two whole seasons with the group before the final show, the fire.”
“Mr. Conroy,” Lynn’s voice crackled through the intercom. “Attorney Mathis is here.”
“Tell Buzz I’ll be a few minutes yet.” He leaned back in his chair, a satisfied smile spreading across his face. He sat up abruptly and pressed the intercom button. “Tell him to make himself comfortable.” Len leaned back again, tucking his hands behind his head. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long, long time. Anyway, the fire. Not all of our shows were done in the tent. Later in the season, in some of the northern cities, we booked halls for the show. We lost a bit of our ‘big top’ feel, but that allowed us to extend the season even into the colder weather. The troop didn’t play by the river on its return to Milwaukee that last season. I guess the venue was already booked or something. Instead, they booked The Eagle Room, which was a first for the group, but everyone seemed pretty excited about it the place. I’m from here, so I had been to a ton of concerts at the Eagle, and I knew this great after-hours bar nearby that we could hit after teardown. We were all in a great mood. Mic, that’s the emcee, was back with us. Someone sprung him out and he wasn’t afraid of a warrant. Things were going great. And then, the place just went up.” He flicked his lighter as he said it.
“Tell me about that. What did you see? What happened?” I slid the chair with my purse a nanometer closer to Len to make sure the recorder inside picked up everything. My eyes didn’t leave his, and I could tell he didn’t notice the maneuver. This was what I came for.
Len shrugged. “Truth is, I don’t know more than anyone else that was there that night. I was outside, eating fire for the crowds as they filed into the building. I remember that night: it was cold for July. The show started at ten, so by half past all of the stragglers would had made their way in. The fire started just after ten so I saw nothing. Well, not nothing. I saw ambulances come in, and a whole slew of fire trucks. I heard lots of screaming and there was a huge mob that pushed out of the building. But if you’re looking for me to remember Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicking over the lantern, I didn’t see anything.”
I nodded and tried to conceal my disappointment, but it had to be evident. This guy couldn’t tell me any more than I had learned from reading the news reports. “Do you know anyone else I can talk to about the fire? Do you keep in touch with anyone else from the freak show?”
Len smiled and shook his head. “My story isn’t good enough for you, then? That’s a shame. I don’t get to share these tales with my lawyer buddies, and my clients don’t want to hear that their respected counselor swallows fire. I’m sorry I don’t have more to tell. I didn’t even get to say a proper goodbye to the troop. I was pulled away for questioning by the police almost immediately. They held me for hours, and by the time they let me go, everyone had already scattered.”
“Why did they question you?” I asked.
He shrugged. “When a building goes up in flames, I guess the fire eater is the first guy you talk to.”