A tugboat drifted by in the distance. Georgia stared at it, trying to comprehend what he was saying. “So, two and a half to three months ago, two vacant, city-owned apartment houses went up in flames. Even though, on paper, they were already supposed to have been demolished. That’s why the building records and letters from the Fourth Angel are missing, isn’t it? The department wants to pretend those fires weren’t part of a string of HTAs, just so nobody looks bad for neglecting to put in the paperwork.”
Marenko said nothing.
“What about the fire in Washington Heights?” she asked.
“Nobody knew that was HTA…”
“At the time, perhaps. But everybody knew there was an illegal gambling den in the basement that cops and firefighters liked to frequent. That made revisiting the blaze a trifle inconvenient, wouldn’t you say? Didn’t it bother anyone that some kid could’ve died at one of these fires?”
He made a face. “No kids died. The world is full of ifs—”
“I can’t accept that I have to find those records and figure out who’s behind this.” She began to walk back to the car.
“Scout.” He raced after her and grabbed the sleeve of her black leather motorcycle jacket. “Don’t be stupid. When I say you could get hurt, I don’t just mean jobwise.”
“What are you saying? That I have to fear my own department?”
He didn’t answer, but his look was cold and eerie. She checked her watch. It was seven-forty-five. Richie’s basketball season final was in Queens at eight-thirty. She’d promised to be there.
“Take me back to the firehouse, please.” If she jumped on her Harley as soon as they arrived, she might make the opening tip-off.
Her chances were looking good as she settled herself across the soft, low-riding black leather seat and turned onto the FDR Drive. She could feel the deep, resonant purr of the engine as she roared up the east side of Manhattan. This was one place she could call her own, one place she was in control.
She got as far as Ninety-sixth Street when an unmarked car with flashing lights and sirens came up on her tail, motioning her to pull over. She checked her rearview mirror. The car was familiar—too familiar. Marenko was behind the wheel.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Marenko showed her his beeper. A five-alarm fire had been called in in Queens fifteen minutes ago.
“It’s a bad one, Scout,” he said breathlessly. “A firefighter’s dead, along with a bunch of kids and families. The marshals in Queens think it might be another HTA. They want us to have a look. C’mon, we’ll ditch your bike at the nearest firehouse, grab some gear, and head over.”
“But my son’s basketball game…”
Marenko looked at her sharply.
“All right.” She sighed.
“It better be.”
20
It looked worse than Spring Street, if that was possible.
Maybe it was the choice of target—a modest building full of families and kids—now blackened and caved in on one side like a loaf of bread somebody had stuck a fist through. Maybe it was the hordes of firefighters—on duty and off—clogging the smoke-charged streets. Or maybe it was just that no one thought it could happen again so soon.
“Six dead, including a brother. Fourteen wounded,” Marenko yelled to her, cupping a palm over his handie-talkie to drown out the television choppers overhead. “A battalion chief’s got witnesses telling him the building went from no smoke to fully charged in under five minutes. And Scout,” he added, looking at her gravely, “the first marshals on the scene are saying there were white-hot flames and sparks when they arrived.”
“HTA?”
Two fire department EMTs carried a screaming woman past them to an ambulance. Her face was beginning to blister and swell, her eyes disappearing into terrified slits. When she lifted her hands, Georgia saw that they were blackened to the wrists.
“I don’t know, Scout.” Marenko kicked at a child’s chalk drawing on the sidewalk, now covered with soot. An Easter bunny delivering eggs. “But if it is—as far as the serial-arson angle goes—you’ve made a believer out of me.
Georgia frowned at the firehouse just five feet away from the burned row frame. It was surface-blackened on one side, but otherwise undamaged. The incongruity taunted her. Help was so close. So close.
“I hear the firefighter who died was just a probie,” said Marenko, shaking his head. “He saved a little girl. The kid’s not hurt too bad, but the probie was a mess when they got to him. The fire burned right through his coat.”
“I don’t get it, Mac,” said Georgia. “Why was he up there alone?”
The roar of helicopter blades beat directly overhead. When Georgia looked up, she could see the letters FDNY emblazoned on the side.
“The brass is here.” Marenko sighed. “The commish, Greco, Brennan. Everyone’s in deep shit on this one.” He touched her sleeve and nodded to a couple of firefighters by the side of a rig, hastily rinsing out their mouths and popping breath mints. “The truck and engine weren’t in quarters…”
“Where were they?”
“There was some kind of party going on at a VFW hall around the corner.”
“A lot of them have been drinking, it seems,” Georgia noted. “Off-duty guys and on.”
“Tell me about it.” Marenko rolled his eyes. “One of ’em’s the chief of department’s son.”
Georgia fastened the clasps of her turnout coat and slipped on fire-retardant gloves. “Would you like me to poke around the wreckage a little?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna talk to our Queens guys and witnesses, find out what I can.”
They split up, and Georgia walked the perimeter of the row frame, which was now more skeleton than building. The roof was gone. The windows sported sooty black eyebrows and jagged edges of broken glass. In the rear, a charred cellar hatch had been ripped off its hinges, revealing a basement ankle-deep in soggy debris. Georgia shone her flashlight down there. Water dripped along splintered black beams. She stuffed her pants into her fire boots and descended into the slippery muck.
So many things in a basement could spontaneously start a fire. Old rags soaked in linseed oil. A spark from the boiler. A carelessly stored can of gasoline. Outdated electrical wiring. The list was endless. It could take days to sort out all the possibilities. She didn’t have days.
Something metallic caught her eye. A chain. She fished it out. The links appeared to be made of heavy-gauge stainless steel, yet three had melted like candle wax. Stainless steel couldn’t melt in temperatures of less than 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit. Georgia shuddered. She had to be looking at another HTA blaze.
Then she noticed something else strange poking out from the debris. It was a thin, pliable disk, maybe a foot and a half in diameter. White at the center, it had burned along the edges until they were charred and curly.
Georgia turned the disk over and brushed off the soot, revealing a stamped triangle of arrows with a 2 in the middle—a recycling designation—along with the initials HDPE. High-density polyethylene.
She stared at the disk, dumbfounded. Here she was in the wreckage of a fire hot enough to vaporize stainless steel, yet somehow not hot enough to melt a disk of recyclable plastic. Even allowing for the variations that can exist at different levels in a burning room—where temperatures along the floor can be a relatively cool 300 degrees, yet climb to 1,200 degrees or more at ceiling height—the evidence was extraordinary. And puzzling.
Marenko called her on the radio now. “Brennan and the commish want a meeting with us, ASAP.”
“Us?”
“The commish wants you there.” He paused. “So do I.”
The command post was across the street, surrounded by fire trucks parked two deep. Ash drifted overhead like snowflakes. Though the sky was dark, the glare of generator-powered spotlights gave it a washed-out color—like a navy blue shirt, laundered too many times. Even the red flashing lights from emergency vehicles, normally so b
rilliant, lost their dazzle beneath the strange, artificial glare.
Greco, Brennan, and Marenko were already at the command post when Georgia arrived. Lynch was in the middle, a head shorter than the others. Only his spotless white helmet could be seen, bobbing up and down as he paced between them.
“What the hell is going on here?” the commissioner yelled at the chief of department. Greco cleared his throat and stroked the ends of his black handlebar mustache, which sported ridiculous little curlicues. He looked like the baritone in a barbershop quartet.
“We had a Level One emergency, Commissioner. All units were deployed in a timely and strategic manner—”
Lynch spun around and poked a finger at Greco’s chest. “Don’t hand that bureaucratic bullshit to me, Frank. Do you think I’m stupid? A firehouse is five feet from a major blaze—five feet—and it takes four and a half minutes for anyone other than a probie to respond? I checked with dispatch. They weren’t out at another alarm.”
“I’m told the men were getting the meal. They responded as soon as dispatch notified them…”
“Did this meal happen to include a few cases of beer?”
Silence. Georgia looked at Marenko. Marenko looked at the pavement.
“There was a uniformed-members event at the VFW hall,” Greco stammered. “The men may have put in an appearance—”
Lynch cut him off. “A uniformed-members event? It was a fucking keg party, Frank. And you are going to order every man on duty here tonight to take a Breathalyzer. ASAP. Any man who doesn’t pass is fired. On the spot. No ifs, ands, or buts—not from the union and not from you. And Frank”—Lynch paused—“that includes your son.”
Greco opened his mouth to speak, but Lynch had already turned his back. The commissioner missed the curb, accidentally sinking an expensive-looking Italian loafer into an icy-cold puddle of hose runoff. When he pulled the shoe out, his sock was soaking wet, and a ring of white plaster dust had penetrated the fragile leather—fire marshal ring, as the guys jokingly refer to it. It was the badge of a catching investigator. Georgia must have ruined half a dozen pairs of shoes and pants the same way.
Lynch’s jowls thickened in disgust. He sloshed up to Brennan and barked, “Arthur, are we dealing with another HTA here?”
“Commissioner, it’s too soon—”
“Too soon? Do you realize what this department looks like to the mayor right now? To the media? The NYPD’s already prepping to take over. They do that, and the mayor’s gonna wonder why he needs a Bureau of Fire Investigation at all. So if you want to keep your job, you’ll answer me. Are all these fires related—yes or no?”
Brennan’s jawline hardened. The halogen lights illuminated every crevice of his rosacea-scarred skin. “No,” he grunted finally, his eyes boring into Georgia’s. “Marshal Skeehan was mistaken the other day when she told you these fires were related. We’ve received independent confirmation from the ATF to the contrary. As for this fire, I’m going to venture it’s not related, pending further investigation—”
“Chief,” Georgia interrupted. “I just found melted steel in the basement across the street. And those ATF findings? They were based on contaminated samples.” If Marenko could’ve misled her by highlighting the wrong information in the report, he could’ve misled Brennan as well.
“As I said before, Skeehan,” the chief uttered through clenched teeth, his beady blue eyes smoldering with rage. “You were mistaken.”
Georgia furrowed her brow at Brennan as it sank in. So you know—you know the fires are related. You know the ATF report supports that. Do you know where the building records are, too?
“What the hell’s going on?” Lynch demanded, shifting his glance from the chief fire marshal to Georgia, then back to the chief.
“I’ll tell you what’s going on, Commissioner,” Brennan answered tightly, never taking his eyes off of Georgia. “Marshal Skeehan is a rookie with a hero complex, making unfounded allegations to distort her own importance in this investigation.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” she protested.
“You wouldn’t make yourself into a hero?” Brennan smiled icily. “Why don’t you tell the commissioner how you crapped out on a fellow firefighter in Queens a couple of years ago, then had the gall to accept a medal for your cowardice.”
“I…” Georgia opened her mouth to speak, but the words wouldn’t come. Nothing could erase the hollow sense of having failed the only real test she’d been given in her life. She hung her head. So Brennan knows about that, too—has probably known all along. How could she justify her actions to the chief—to the commissioner—when she couldn’t justify them even to herself?
Marenko threw down his helmet and stepped between them, giving Brennan a sharp look. “Everybody’s pissing on one another and it’s not helping,” he said. “We—that is, I—didn’t take the serial-arson angle seriously enough until now. Marshal Skeehan may have had the right idea all along. If this fire turns out to be HTA, I’ll take responsibility for the mistake and change the direction of the investigation.”
“You’ll do better than that, Marshal,” said Lynch. “From this point forward, I want Georgia Skeehan to head the investigation.”
There was a pause, as if Georgia, Marenko, and the chief all refused to believe their ears.
“You’re not serious,” said Brennan. “She’s a rookie—”
“You’ll destroy the men’s morale—” Marenko sputtered.
“Not to mention embarrass the department,” the chief added.
“Sir,” Georgia pleaded. “The chief’s right. I’m really not qualified…”
Lynch held up a hand to silence them. “I don’t give a shit who likes this arrangement and who doesn’t. This is the way it’s going to be.” He turned to Georgia. “Look, young lady, you seem pretty sure of yourself, and I’m not really interested in what you did or didn’t do as a firefighter or how many Cub Scout badges you have. If you think you can put these arsons together, then do it.”
The commissioner gave a parting scowl to Brennan. “Arthur, I want you to hand over everything—and I do mean everything—having to do with this investigation. I’m tired of screwing around.”
21
The chief counted up the stories of the brown brick apartment building until he got to nine. The windows were still dark on this Friday morning. She was probably sleeping.
He cooled down from his morning run through Central Park, found a pay phone, and dialed her number from memory. Her voice was gravelly when she answered. He pictured her now: a tall, cool, dark-haired beauty with wide-set eyes and a smoky voice. She said hello a second time.
“I send you flowers and you don’t say thanks?” Easter lilies. For spring. And funerals.
There was a pause. There was always a pause. As if she couldn’t quite believe it was him. That pause made him tingle. “You don’t like flowers anymore?” he asked.
“Why are you doing this?”
“I just wanted to tell you I’m not sore about what happened.”
“I…I’m glad…”
“Hey, it was fun while it lasted.”
She didn’t answer.
“So,” he said jovially, “how about a cup of coffee for old time’s sake?”
“No…I don’t think so. That’s not a good idea.” There was a catch in her voice. The chief heard it right away. She wouldn’t accuse him. It would seem too rude. “Look, I…I’ve had some very strange things happen to me lately. I think it’s better we don’t…”
“What things? You can tell me.”
“Just things, okay? I’ve got to go. Please don’t call me anymore or send me anything.” She hung up.
The chief smiled to himself as he replaced the receiver. He could picture her now, racing around her Upper West Side apartment, making sure the doors and windows were locked, turning on all the lights, calling friends. She’d debate again what to do. Tell her supervisors? Call the police? And tell them what? That a guy she used to work with sends
her flowers and asks her out for coffee?
He crossed the street to the park behind the Museum of Natural History to stretch out his hamstrings. A fire engine sped past. A Seagrave pumper. His heart clenched at the rumble of the diesel engine, the gleam of chrome and red enamel. The memory was a decade old, yet it taunted him, a wound that wouldn’t heal. The chief could still picture that sweaty high school gym in Brooklyn, those drill instructors with their beady eyes and sharpened number-two pencils, that nervous twitch of energy in all the wannabe recruits. Their entire futures boiled down to a series of measurements: How fast can you run? How high can you jump? How much can you lift? Seconds counted. Inches counted.
The chief checked his pedometer. He’d run ten miles this morning—not bad. He was in peak condition for a man of thirty-nine. Fast. Strong. Able to pass the toughest physical fitness test the department could dish out. But it no longer mattered. He was too old. No one took him seriously anymore. Not even the woman in 9E.
He left the park and walked into a dry cleaner a block from her apartment. He’d watched her come in here often enough to know she had an account.
“Can I help you?” asked the small Asian woman behind the counter.
“Yeah.” The chief turned on his most handsome, winning smile. People always gave him what he wanted when they saw that face. “My girlfriend’s sick and she asked me to pick up her dry cleaning.”
“You have ticket?”
“Aw, man!” He smacked his forehead. “I knew there was something I forgot. She’s leaving for a business trip first thing tomorrow. She really needs the stuff.”
The Fourth Angel Page 12