“It’s Randy Carter,” he whispered. “You’re recuperating, remember?”
Georgia nodded, puzzled. Carter wouldn’t call unless it was important.
“I’m sorry to bother you at home, girl, but you’re the only one who can approve this.” Carter sounded shaken. “Marenko ordered a scan of Ron Glassman’s Visa receipts. And it shows he bought a bucket of spackling compound and lawn fertilizer last month.”
“Randy, he does own a house—”
“But that’s not all. This morning, Cassie’s momma faxed me a humdinger of a letter Cassie wrote her a couple of weeks ago. She told her momma she was afraid of this Glassman guy, that she’d contacted a lawyer to get an order of protection against him.”
“That goes to motive, all right,” Georgia said.
“Marenko wants to put some pressure on Glassman, get him to talk. I agree.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“And I want to do the questioning.”
“No. That’s where I draw the line.”
“But Mac won’t get diddly-squat from the guy. You said yourself—Glassman hates him. Suarez hasn’t been involved in this end of the investigation. And Lightning…”
“I’ll do it,” said Georgia. “Look, if he’s willing to spill his guts to anyone, it’s probably going to be me.”
“But y’all not in any condition to—”
“Randy, the only way I’m gonna get well is when this thing’s over and the perp’s behind bars. Set it up.” She sighed. “I’ll come in.”
32
Ron Glassman agreed to talk to Georgia without an attorney present under two conditions. First, she had to meet him on his turf—not at the task force. And second, she couldn’t bring, in his words, “that jerk Marenko.”
Her assessment precisely.
Georgia was in no condition to drive to Chappaqua. So Jimmy offered to go home, take a shower, and come back to chauffeur her up there and keep an eye on her. “You rest awhile, love.” he said, shaking a finger at her. “No working.
“I won’t,” she promised. But sleep eluded her. Something dark kept moving across her emotions. How did that halfway house in Yonkers burn? And who would buy a scorched piece of earth? A few phone inquiries wouldn’t hurt Quinn’s family. They—and Jimmy—wouldn’t even know.
Georgia dialed the Yonkers Fire Department. Five phone calls later (the department being two phone calls more efficient than the FDNY), she was put in touch with the marshal who had investigated the burning a year before. Williams, his name was. Georgia identified herself and asked him what he remembered about the investigation.
“You want to know why it was classified as accidental, is that it?”
“In a word, yes.”
“Off the record? Or on?”
That startled her. She wasn’t prepared for multipart questions. Not with a brain that felt like it had been used as a basketball.
“Everything you know or have a gut instinct about. And I didn’t get it from you.”
“You’re not taping?”
She shut the tape recorder off. “I’m not now.”
He took a deep, raspy breath. He sounded like a smoker. “The place burned to the ground. Every inch of it, in something like fifteen minutes. Even the five-hundred-gallon cast-iron oil tank in the basement. Our guys couldn’t get near it. They put water on it and—I know this sounds crazy—the fire got hotter.”
A chill ran down Georgia’s spine. “And I’ll bet you couldn’t find a point of origin, an ignition device or any accelerant residue.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” The fire marshal paused, suddenly feeling uncomfortable with the line of questioning. Probably wondering if this conversation would cost him his pension.
“Hey, you guys had no choice, right?” Georgia quickly chimed in. “You had no arson evidence, so you had no arson.”
“You got it.” He seemed to exhale. “We’re a small department, and there was a lot of pressure from the mayor’s office and the community to leave the matter alone, it being an election year and all. No one wanted these mutts in the neighborhood, anyway. You know how it is.”
“Sure. Tough situation all around.” She was on a roll. She decided to keep going. “So, who owns the land now? I heard some civic-minded big shot bought it.”
“You got me. The tax receiver’s office might know, though. Somebody has to pay the tax bills. Their payment window is open until noon on Saturdays.”
He transferred her over, but the clerk who handled the records was on the phone. Georgia left a message, along with her name and the number at the task force. Then she slipped into the last clean white blouse she had to her name and a pair of dark blue pants with a fire marshal ring around the cuffs. As she dabbed some water on her face, she caught the blur of a blue Buick pulling into the driveway. Gallagher was here. Quickly, she patted on some base makeup and blush to try to hide her bruises. It didn’t work. When she got into the car, Gallagher frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t think you should be doing this, love. Why can’t Marenko talk to him?”
“He did. That’s why we’re in this mess.”
“What about Carter?”
Georgia shook her head. “Don’t ask…and Suarez is out on interviews with ex-firefighters. And Lightning, well…let’s just say Gene couldn’t catch a cold in flu season.
Gallagher laughed. “Okay, you know best. I’m at your service.”
33
“My lawyer said I’m making a mistake talking to you.” Ron Glassman was dressed in a Cornell sweatshirt, Levi’s, and a baseball cap. He stood next to Georgia, in a park overlooking a serene pond rimmed by stately ashes and maples just beginning to turn green. The air smelled of moist earth and new-mown grass. A yellow latticework of forsythia graced a railroad-tie fence near the road.
“Then why are you talking to me?” she asked him.
“I don’t know. I’d like to think I’ve got a conscience.” Ducks sunned themselves along the banks of the pond. Glassman pulled out a plastic bag with two slices of white bread and handed them to his older daughter. The seven-year-old, dressed in overalls, her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, skipped down to where her four-year-old sister was standing. Gallagher was squatting next to the younger child, showing her how to skim rocks across the pond. He took the bread and balled it up for the little girls to feed to the ducks. Georgia smiled. Gallagher was always so good with kids. She was sorry he and his late wife, Rose, had never been able to have any of their own.
“If I tell you what I know,” said Glassman, “does it have to get back to my family?”
“That depends on what you know and how you know it.”
Glassman’s hand trembled as he took a sip from his cup of Starbucks coffee. He made a face as it went down. “I know what I’m facing here…It looks bad, doesn’t it?”
“You’ve got a record for fire setting. You were at that party. You’ve got motive aplenty. And the raw materials to have pulled it off. So, yes, Mr. Glassman, it looks bad.”
Glassman wiped a hand across his eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening.” He watched his daughters giggling as Gallagher quacked at the ducks. “I blame myself. I was drinking and I just get irrational when that happens.”
Georgia froze. Was this a confession? This was usually how they started. The perp can’t bear the truth, so he backs into it. First it’s an accident. Then a mistake. Then it becomes something the victim deserved. Any reasonable person would’ve done the same thing. And finally the raw details. If Ron Glassman confessed, she’d have to arrest him and read him his rights. In front of his daughters. In front of Gallagher, quacking at the ducks. God, his was going to be a tough one. She gritted her teeth and pushed ahead, keeping the image of Carter collapsed on that morgue floor in her head.
“Being under the influence can be a mitigating factor in situations like this, you know,” she offered. “If you didn’t realize your actions…”
G
lassman blinked back tears and stared at her. “No, you don’t understand. I was drinking, so maybe I got a little belligerent. But I didn’t set that fire.” He brought his coffee to his lips.
“You wrote Cassie Mott threatening letters. She was seeking an order of protection against you.”
He stopped in midsip. He probably didn’t think she’d know that. “I…I was angry, yeah. Cassie wanted to have the baby and I didn’t. She was planning to sue me for child support. But I never touched her. Never. I went to that party because I knew she’d be there. A guy she used to date worked at Nuance magazine. Cassie refused to talk to me except through her attorney. What was I supposed to do?”
“Why did you leave the party?”
“I…” He lowered the brim of his baseball cap and looked around. A man walking his dog nodded and waved, calling Glassman by name. He waited until the man had passed before answering. “I got thrown out.”
“Why?”
Glassman squinted out at the pond. “I got into an argument with Cassie…”
“You hit her?”
“No,” he said indignantly. “I’m not proud of my behavior, Ms. Skeehan. But it never went further than words.” He grimaced at the memory. “Two security guards escorted me to the elevator. I was so frustrated and blitzed, I didn’t even pay attention to what buttons I was pushing. I pushed ‘LL’ instead of ‘L,’ and it took me to the basement.”
His lips started to tremble. “When I got to the basement, I realized my mistake and hit ‘L’ for lobby. Then, just as the doors were closing, I heard this telephone start ringing from somewhere in the basement. And right afterward, I heard this little—explosion’s too strong a word. It was kind of like the sound a stove makes when the gas jets light up. A kind of whoosh.”
“Right after the phone rang?”
Glassman furrowed his brow. “I think so.”
Had a ringing telephone triggered some kind of ignition device? Georgia had read about arson jobs where a telephone was used as the ignition trigger. The phone’s relay could be hooked up to an electric match and activated simply by dialing the number. However, it was an old and unreliable type of ignition device—rarely used because a wrong number could set off a fire at the wrong time. But if for some reason the torch needed flexibility or was concerned about being in possession of a detonation device, starting a fire by placing a phone call could prove a clever way to conceal involvement.
“What did you do after you heard the whoosh?” she asked.
“The elevator doors were already closing. I was in the lobby maybe ten seconds later.” He shot her a quick, nervous glance, then looked away. “You probably think I got scared and ran. But I didn’t know it was a fire. It was cold in that basement. I figured maybe the oil burner was just kicking in or something.” He swallowed hard, averting his gaze. “I should’ve known that it was a fire, right? That’s what you’re thinking—that I ran away and left all those people to die.”
Like she was any expert in the bravery department.
“Look, I had too much to drink. I’ll admit it,” he explained, misreading her silence. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. But I didn’t just run away.”
Georgia could see the drama of that night unfolding in his pale gray eyes, that sick hindsight sensation of loathing and remorse that is the agony of those who can act and don’t. She wanted to tell him about the days ahead, when he’d vacillate between self-righteousness and self-doubt, always seeing that last moment he could’ve altered the equation, always asking the unanswerable: Why didn’t I?
“I’ll check out your account,” Georgia assured him. “If the call came in as you say it did, it’ll show up on phone records. But I still want a videotaped statement from you.”
“I have to talk to my attorney first.”
“Twenty-four hours.” She pointed to her watch. “After that, I’m getting a subpoena.”
“But tomorrow’s Sunday,” he protested.
“Hey,” she said. “If I can work weekends, so can your attorney.”
On the drive back, Georgia dialed the task force and briefed Carter.
“He’s lying.”
“Maybe, but we’ll know soon enough. Call Bell Atlantic and get them to forward the phone records on One-thirty-one Spring Street, ASAP. I want to know what calls were made and to whom. And if any came in at eleven P.M. the night of the fire, have Gene trace them back to the callers.”
Ideas were coming fast and furious to her now. “Randy? Can you phone UPS as well? The accelerant had to come into that building somehow. I’m beginning to wonder if it wasn’t delivered. Also, can you touch base with Walter Frankel? Ask him what he thinks about a phone triggering an HTA device.”
“Uh-huh,” said Carter. He seemed distracted.
“Have you got all that?”
“Yeah. Sure…”
“Look, do you need off the case? We can invent a reason, you know.”
“I’m fine, Skeehan. Quit asking, all right?” He caught himself. “I’m sorry. I’m okay, really…By the way, did you call the tax receiver’s office in Yonkers this morning?”
Georgia had almost forgotten. She flicked a look at Gallagher in the driver’s seat. She didn’t want him to know she’d made that call. “Yeah, I called. What did they say?”
“You wanted to know who bought a Yonkers property once owned by the county, right? It was bought by a group called Concerned Citizens of Yonkers. But the taxes are paid by a friend of yours…”
“I don’t have any friends with money.”
“Does the name Sloane Michaels ring a bell?”
34
Georgia had expected to find Sloane Michaels on a yacht in the Hamptons on a Saturday afternoon. Or playing squash in TriBeCa. Or perhaps opening a new art exhibit at the Guggenheim. Instead, when she called his beeper, an assistant told her she could meet up with Michaels in the basement of the Knickerbocker Plaza Hotel. Gallagher dropped her off in front of the hotel. He looked beat.
“Go home,” she told him. “You’ve done enough.” Georgia planned to take the subway back to Queens from here. “Are you coming over for dinner tonight?”
“That I am, love.”
Georgia kissed him on the cheek. He blushed.
“Tell Ma I won’t be late.”
“Ach, sure you will.” He frowned, then drove off.
In the hotel, Georgia was directed to a private bank of elevators that led down to a small garage-level room with brass lamps, a beige linen couch, and a television. A middle-aged black man in a chauffeur’s uniform got up from the couch as Georgia approached. A college basketball game was on behind him.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I’m looking for Mr. Michaels.”
From the corner of her eye, she spotted a figure emerging from behind a steel door. It was a man dressed in grease-stained blue pinstripe coveralls opened halfway to a faded black T-shirt. The T-shirt sported a Harley-Davidson insignia across the front. Georgia took in the face now and stared, dumbfounded, as the man wiped his hands on an oil-smeared cloth. His brown eyes stared back, equally surprised. She’d forgotten how bad her bruises looked.
“Marshal, what happened? Are you all right?”
“Occupational hazard.” Georgia shrugged. “It comes with the turf.” She nodded to Sloane Michaels’s grimy hands. “So, you’re a closet mechanic, huh?”
He grinned. “You caught me.” He motioned for his chauffeur to sit down. “I’m not leaving yet, Charlie. Maybe ten minutes, okay? Relax, enjoy the game.”
“Yessir, Mr. Michaels. Thank you, sir.”
Michaels turned to Georgia. “When I’m not riding, I tinker. I’ve done a lot of the custom work myself. Would you like to see my bikes?” he asked eagerly.
She hesitated. “I’m not here for a social visit…”
“Good. On my own time, I’m not very social. C’mon.”
Michaels ushered her through a steel door with a small window in it. On the other side was a large, L-shaped room, separated fro
m the rest of the underground parking garage by tinted windows. Georgia could see out—at the parking attendants, the rows of Mercedeses, Jags, and BMWs. But no one, she guessed, could see in.
“I’m shocked you’re not out playing cricket or flying a Lear jet or something,” she said.
Michaels made a face, retrieving a wrench he’d casually tossed on a grease-stained tool bench. “You know, I’m not the rich prick you seem to think I am. I grew up very modestly. Most of the stuff I do, I do because I have to. This is how I relax.” He led her around a corner to a room as well equipped as any mechanic’s garage. There were shelves full of spark plugs, motor oil, nuts and bolts. There were tanks of compressed air. And in the middle of all this sat the bikes. In the presence of their gleaming chrome, their lace wheels, their customized engines and jazzy paint jobs, Sloane Michaels seemed more relaxed than Georgia had ever seen him.
“This”—he gestured—“is my freedom. My escape.” Georgia couldn’t have said it any better. She stepped closer, oohing and aahing over a big red Harley Ultra Classic with custom bodywork, a light, nifty pearl-blue Ducati, a delicate Bimoto—another Italian racing bike—in violet. And, set up on custom-made supports, a retro-stylish Vincent Blackshadow shimmering under track lights. She’d heard that the Blackshadow, an English motorcycle from the 1950s, was so rare and coveted that it could fetch as much as $100,000 on the open market.
“They’re beautiful,” said Georgia.
“I can tell by your face you mean it.” Michaels toyed with his wrench. “But you’re not here to discuss bikes, are you?”
“No…” She sighed. “What’s your connection to Concerned Citizens of Yonkers?”
He pocketed the wrench, then leaned against the tool bench, folding his arms. “I grew up in Yonkers. Met my wife, Amelia, there,” he explained. “A local citizen’s group was having a problem with the county and I forked over a very small sum to buy some land and help them out.”
“You bought the land anonymously?”
The Fourth Angel Page 18