The Fourth Angel

by Suzanne Chazin

  “Did I interrupt something, love?” he asked, fumbling for a cigarette in the pocket of his uniform jacket.

  “Does Randy look different to you? He’s been very subdued since the fire.”

  “Everybody’s subdued today. You think the guys at Ladder Fifty-seven look any better? Quinn was from our house.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  Gallagher sneaked a few puffs of his cigarette and nodded. “Yeah. We were friends. Worked with him last night. One minute he was there, the next he was gone. Good, God-fearing family man. Born in the old sod, like me.” Gallagher’s parents had left Ireland when he was seven. He didn’t have a brogue, but his voice still carried all the Irish inflections. He wore them like a badge of honor, which, in the FDNY, they sort of were.

  “Quinn’s name’s familiar to me from somewhere,” Georgia mused.

  “You’re probably thinking of that court fight here in Yonkers about a year ago. The county wanted to build a halfway house for sex offenders in his neighborhood. Quinn headed a citizen’s committee to stop them. They got a lot of television coverage.”

  “I recall the headlines, but not the outcome.”

  “Place burned down before it could open.”

  Georgia raised an eyebrow.

  “I know what you’re thinking, love. And no, the fire was ruled accidental.”

  “So he saves his neighborhood and dies of carbon monoxide poisoning a year later—with half a tank of air still strapped to his back.”

  “Fire didn’t get him, at least. His widow was able to have an open casket at the wake this morning.” Gallagher nodded at this small blessing. “He looked good.”

  “How could he look good?” moaned Georgia. “He’s dead.”

  “I’ve seen it the other way. Trust me, it makes a difference to the loved ones, it does.” Gallagher stubbed out his cigarette with the heel of a polished black uniform shoe and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “I gotta go inside now.”

  “You’re too late to get a seat.”

  “Don’t want one. I’m standing in back. The sight of all that brass gives me a headache.”

  Georgia smiled. Jimmy Gallagher was a great firefighter, smart enough to have made chief by now, had he studied his way up the ranks. He never wanted to. Being a firefighter—doing the tough, dirty, brutal work himself— was in his blood. He was never one to put much stock in titles. She touched his arm.

  “Why don’t you come over for dinner tonight? Ma’s only ever really happy when you’re around. And Richie wants to finish that slot car you guys are building.”

  “Ah, no, love,” he stammered. “Another night.” Georgia pursed her lips.

  “You’re going drinking with some of the firefighters after the funeral, aren’t you?”

  “You make it sound like a party.”

  “That’s what it is.”

  “No, love, it’s not. It’s a chance to honor the dead and celebrate the living—”

  “Did you drink after my father died?”

  Silence.

  “I’m sorry,” Georgia apologized. “That came out wrong.”

  Gallagher took a minute with it, then looked at her squarely. “If I did drink, and that was eighteen years ago, then it was to commit to my heart one of the bravest men I ever knew. I pray to the heavenly Father that one day, half as many firefighters lift a glass in my memory as did for George Skeehan.”

  “Pray it’s not for many years.”

  He winked at her and grinned. “That’s for God to decide.” He checked his watch. “I have to go. Tell your mother I’ll call her tomorrow. And tell Richie we’ll get that slot car done before the memorial mass, I promise.”

  “But that’s only six days away,” Georgia called after him.

  “I promise.” He snaked through the crowd, glad-handing half a dozen firefighters along the way. Then Georgia saw him bend down extra low and gesture in her direction. She gave him a confused look until she caught the glint of Walter Frankel’s wheelchair. Frankel was the department’s forensic chemist. He was also a close friend. She maneuvered through the crowd to greet him.

  “I can’t believe you’re here,” she said, giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  “I go to department functions,” he said indignantly, pushing his horn-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  “Functions, yes. Funerals, no.”

  “I’m not into the Irish style of grieving. Can’t tell the difference between their funerals and their keg parties.”

  A few organ notes resonated from the church. Voices hushed. Men removed their caps and bowed their heads. The funeral mass was beginning.

  “You want the scuttlebutt I’m hearing?” Frankel whispered.

  Georgia bent over and put a finger to her lips. “Not now.”

  He plunged ahead anyway. “You’ve seen the autopsy report on Quinn, right?”

  “Walter,” she chided. “We’re at the man’s funeral.”

  “And what better time to talk about how he died? He had a cheater in his pocket and no facepiece.” Cheaters were illegal tubes fashioned by firefighters to get air from their tanks without having to wear the bulky facepiece.

  “I know about the cheater. I was there last night, remember?” said Georgia. “And I know—surprise, surprise—that he didn’t turn on his PASS alarm, either.” A personal alert safety system—or PASS alarm—is a yellow beeper that fastens onto the straps of an air tank and goes off if a firefighter remains motionless for thirty seconds. Georgia had yet to meet a firefighter who routinely turned his on.

  “Okay, okay,” said Frankel with a trace of annoyance. “But I’ll bet you didn’t know this: Quinn didn’t smoke—”

  “So?”

  “He apparently always wore a seat belt. He was a goddamned Irishman—accent and everything—and he didn’t drink.”

  “You know, Walter, that’s an ethnic slur. Not every Irish person drinks.”

  “You’re right. Some are in AA. Look, you can edit me for PC later. What I’m saying is, don’t you find it strange that a man this cautious about his health would use a cheater instead of a facepiece?”

  “This isn’t the place,” she said disapprovingly. “Or the time.” Snippets of the mass swirled overhead in the blustery cold. “The commissioner’s delivering his funeral address.”

  “This is the part where he says that an ordinary fireman is an extraordinary man.”

  Georgia made a face and straightened, just in time to hear Lynch speak the same words. Frankel shrugged.

  “I’ve heard his speeches before. They’re all canned, you know.”

  “You’re a cynic.”

  “I’m a realist. Lynch is killing time in this job until he can get appointed to something better. He wants a few headlines for his scrapbook. When he gets them, he’ll move on.”

  They remained at attention until the doors of the church were finally opened wide, and the gleaming mahogany casket of Terry Quinn was borne through them. A lone trumpeter played taps. Then the bagpipes started up again, their plaintive chorus echoing down the long blue corridor of men.

  The fire engine bearing Quinn’s casket, with its crown of white lilies, proceeded slowly up the boulevard. A phalanx of uniforms snapped their white gloves in salute. Georgia lifted her hand as well. Frankel, she noticed, did not seem as moved by the display. He was a civilian. As much as she cared for him, that would always be the difference between them. He could distance himself from the tragedy. She couldn’t.

  The crowd soon began dispersing. Georgia and Frankel tried to find Carter but couldn’t, so Georgia wheeled Frankel to his van.

  “These funerals…they must be especially hard for you,” he said softly.

  Georgia smiled sadly and nodded. It was one of the things she liked best about her relationship with Walter. They knew each other so well, all the big stuff could be pared down to a sentence or less.

  “Terry Quinn was only thirty-five—four years younger than my dad when he died,” Georgia no
ted.

  Frankel shook his head. “Such a senseless loss.”

  “It’s a loss,” said Georgia sharply. “But never senseless. He was a firefighter. He died doing his job. Maybe he didn’t save anybody, and maybe he was too cavalier with his safety, but he had a purpose in being there.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” Frankel sensed he’d touched a nerve, so he said nothing as he aligned his wheelchair with the van. A ramp from underneath the carriage slowly lifted him into position. “Are you still on this investigation?”

  “There’s no official word, but I doubt it,” said Georgia.

  “I’ve got some material you might want to take a look at. When you see it, you’ll know why I said Quinn’s death was senseless, why it didn’t have to happen. Not for him— not for any of those people.”

  “Better send it to headquarters,” said Georgia. “The NYPD’s already jockeying for the case. And even if our people get to keep it, Chief Brennan’s going to put someone higher up the food chain on this.”

  “Mac Marenko?”

  Georgia made a face. “Hard to think of him as higher up in anything.”

  Frankel laughed. “Georgia, do me a favor? Bring that new motorcycle of yours over to the lab tonight and take a look at my stuff. I send it to Marenko, he’ll bury it—the way the department’s buried all the others.”

  The wind had picked up. Georgia was certain she’d misunderstood him. “Others?”

  Frankel fixed a dark, sad gaze on her. “You didn’t see the first blaze of this kind in New York. And God help us, you may not have seen the last.”

  5

  Georgia had planned to grab a short nap after the funeral, then help her son, Richie, hang Easter eggs on the lilac bush out front. But by the time she awoke, the sun was melting into a filmy butterscotch light, and a scattering of garishly colored eggs already weighed down the lilac’s bare branches. She’d have just enough time to eat and meet Frankel at the lab.

  She found Richie downstairs, sprawled out on the living room couch, tossing a basketball in the air with a steady, rhythmic motion. He didn’t stop, even after his hazel eyes registered her presence.

  “The eggs are hung,” he said flatly.

  Seeing his profile—the smooth, creamy cheeks, the perfect bow of his lips—still brought to mind the chubby toddler who used to melt into her arms at the first crack of thunder, the bark of a dog, or the gaze of a stranger. Now, at nine, he seemed more concerned with the pedestrian aspects of their relationship—her physical, mute presence at “mom” functions, her willingness to be a chauffeur on demand.

  “You did a great job, honey,” said Georgia. “Sorry I overslept.”

  He propped himself up and gazed out the window. “Those eggs always look so dorky. I’m not hanging them next year.”

  Georgia wasn’t sure if he wanted her to agree with him or protest his indifference. Only last year, he was kid enough to cry when he got the flu and had to miss the school’s egg hunt. It wasn’t that many years ago he had believed a six-foot rabbit actually hopped through his window. Georgia looked down, searching for something neutral to say, and noticed his feet, still clad in sneakers, perched on the armrests of the couch.

  “Richie, this isn’t a locker room. Please take your shoes off the furniture.”

  “Grandma doesn’t mind.”

  “But I do.”

  The boy rolled his eyes and made an elaborate show of shifting his feet to the floor. “You slept all afternoon, and you’re still cranky.”

  “I was up all night. I slept for two hours. Two hours isn’t all afternoon.”

  He propped the basketball on his finger and attempted to spin it. It wobbled around once before careening across the floor, barely missing the laminated-oak coffee table and a glass hutch full of her mother’s Hummel figures. Georgia grabbed the ball.

  “Does this look like a gym?”

  The kitchen door swung open.

  “For heaven’s sake, Georgia. He’s just a boy.”

  Georgia pursed her lips at the short, shapely woman with auburn hair, standing in the doorway, wiping a paring knife on a towel. The knife was part of a twenty-piece cutlery set her mother had won in a magazine sweepstakes last year. Margaret Skeehan was always winning things. Everything from the complete recordings of Engelbert Humperdinck to a vibrating back massager. Useless stuff, mostly. It was the winning her mother liked, that sense that fate was on your side for one shining moment.

  “Ma, basketballs don’t belong in the living room. I don’t recall you letting me bring so much as a softball glove in here when I was a kid.”

  “You would’ve broken something.”

  “How would you know? You never let me do it.” Georgia flinched at how easily she and her mother fell into old patterns. Living in the house she’d grown up in created an uneasy alliance. Margaret Skeehan was a woman with fierce green eyes and the kind of Gaelic determination that shows its love through loyalty and stubborn faith more often than words or touch. Georgia had always been more drawn to her father’s warm, easygoing nature. He would’ve understood why, four months ago, she’d bought that fire-engine-red Harley-Davidson motorcycle with its raked front end and polished chrome handlebars. He would’ve understood that sometimes being a mom isn’t enough. Sometimes you just have to escape.

  Richie sat up straight now and put the basketball between his legs. “Do you want me to play outside?” The question was addressed to Margaret. He didn’t even look at his mother.

  “Would you, on the driveway? There’s a good boy,” she cooed. “Practice for that big game Thursday night.”

  Richie gave his mother a dirty look, stuffed the basketball under his arm, and disappeared out the front door. Minutes later, Georgia heard the thump-thump on the blacktop. Might as well have been a hammer to her heart.

  “He never listens anymore,” she said softly, watching him from the kitchen window.

  “Do you listen to him?”

  “Of course I do. He’s got a three-subject range: basketball, Pokémon, and the Mets.”

  Margaret sighed. “If you really believe that, then you’re not listening. It’s just like shooting pool. It’s all in the approach.”

  Margaret Skeehan was a champion pool player, a fact that seemed entirely at odds with her petite frame and reserved nature. Her father, Jack Reilly, had owned a pool hall when she was a kid, and she still competed occasionally in local tournaments. Georgia and Gallagher always got a kick out of watching some swaggering, tattooed hulk being roundly defeated by a five-foot-two-inch fifty-five-year-old grandmother.

  “I’ve got enough problems figuring out how to talk to guys,” moaned Georgia. “Now I have to figure out how to talk to my son?”

  Margaret took a cucumber out of the refrigerator and began to slice it. “Sometimes I think you’re too hard on Richie. Too hard on men in general. You don’t trust them.”

  “I trust men—”

  “And that’s why you show all your first dates your gun?”

  Georgia shrugged. “Some men have trouble dating a woman who packs firepower. Might as well get it out on the table, so to speak.” Georgia took the cucumber from her mother. “Here, let me do that.”

  Margaret gave her the knife and Georgia noticed, as always, how beautiful her mother’s hands were—manicured nails, soft skin smelling of Pond’s cold cream and Yardley’s lavender soap. Georgia’s nails were ragged and colorless, her skin a tapestry of scrapes and bruises.

  “Georgia, it’s not about you anymore. It’s about Richie. He needs a father. It’s not like Rick’s ever…” Margaret let her voice trail off.

  “Ever what? Coming back? You don’t think I know that? Ma, he walked away seven years ago. He’s married with another kid now.”

  “But you don’t try very hard to find a replacement.”

  “I don’t see Prince Charming knocking. If he did, it’d probably be to do his laundry.”

  “See? there you go again.” Margaret cleared a stack of
contest entry forms from the kitchen table. She was always entered in at least twenty. “Maybe you need to be Princess Charming first.”

  “Okay,” said Georgia. “Let me practice.” She pitched her voice an octave higher: “‘Can I get you another six-pack for your fourth football game of the day, dear?’ Or maybe this: ‘Tell me more about your sixty-four-kilobyte Intel Pentium processor. It’s soooo fascinating.’ And let’s not forget the all-time winner: ‘What a thoughtful gift. I always wanted a muffler for my birthday. And a surprise, too, since my birthday was last month.’”

  Margaret laughed and shook her head. “I wish you’d joke less and date more.”

  “Hey, I do both. I date the jokes—it kills two birds with one stone.”

  “Seriously, dear,” her mother insisted. “There are nice guys out there. Maybe if you did more traditional things, like coming with Jimmy and me to the memorial mass…”

  Georgia rolled her eyes. “We’re not going to start that again, are we?”

  “My goodness, Georgia, I don’t understand why, every year, you refuse to go. They’re honoring dead firefighters—men like your father.”

  “I honor Dad in my own way. And I don’t need the Catholic Church, the Emerald Society, or the Ancient Order of Hibernians to do it.” The Emerald Society was the fire department’s Irish fraternity; the Ancient Order of Hibernians was a national Irish-heritage organization. The annual memorial mass was less about mourning and rememberance than about posturing and politics. “Every one of those groups is a bunch of self-important men. And besides, I’m not looking to meet a firefighter. I deal with enough of them already.” Georgia nodded to her mother’s stack of contest entry forms. “Hey, maybe you can win me somebody decent. No purchase required, void where prohibited and all that…”

  “You forgot the most important condition: you must be present to win. With a man. With your son.”

  Through the window, Georgia watched Richie shooting hoops. His sneaker laces were undone. She fought the urge to run out and tie them.

  “If you’re referring to my not hanging the eggs, I already apologized. And not for nothing, Easter’s still almost two weeks away—”