The Fourth Angel

by Suzanne Chazin

  “You blame the dispatcher for that?”

  The Latino man Bello had been speaking to earlier walked over to the shelf of reference manuals next to Georgia. He eyed her with curiosity. They probably all knew she was the marshal who’d filed that formal complaint against Dispatcher Number 35. Georgia shifted in her seat as the man skimmed the binder titles on the shelf. The Cole Directory, a kind of reverse telephone book, lay on top. Look up a listed phone number in Manhattan and the directory will give you the corresponding street address—very useful for tracking down civilians who report fires. Georgia returned her attention to Bello.

  “Last August, a witness phoned in a fire,” she explained. “All I wanted was her phone number and the callback address so I could get her statement. Three times I called Dispatcher Number thirty-five. By the time he walked over to this”—she slapped the Cole Directory—“my witness had skipped to the Dominican Republic. Without her, I had nothing to arrest the torch on, and two people later died because of it. How would you feel?”

  The Latino dispatcher turned now and nodded to Georgia. “The dude’s gone, you know,” he said.

  “Ramirez…” Bello muttered tightly. Ramirez ignored him.

  “The dispatcher who didn’t call you back? He was fired.”

  Georgia blanched. “I didn’t mean to get the guy—”

  “You didn’t.” Ramirez shrugged. “He was fired on an unrelated incident. But I figured you’d like to know.” He closed the manual he was looking at and began to walk back to his desk. Georgia spoke up.

  “He wasn’t by any chance blond, in his late thirties to early forties, was he?”

  Ramirez frowned. “You think he—?”

  Bello jumped to his feet. “This has nothing to do with these firebombings.”

  Ramirez called across the room to the woman who had gotten Georgia coffee. “Hey, Annette. Are you tied up? You should hear this.”

  The woman finished handling a call, then sauntered over, tucking a wad of black hair behind an ear pierced with a silver cross and two tiny silver hoops.

  “Tell her,” Ramirez urged Georgia.

  “The task force is looking into the possibility that the serial arsonist behind all these superhot fires may be—or have been—a dispatcher,” said Georgia.

  The woman took a moment to process the news, then sank into an empty chair and massaged her temples. Her hands were trembling.

  “Ramirez.” Bello leveled a stubby finger. “You wanna play detective, do it on your own time.”

  “C’mon, Annette,” Ramirez pleaded softly, squatting on his haunches in front of the woman and pointedly ignoring his boss. He could see over to his computer. At the moment, no calls were coming in—for him or Annette. “You know he’s been doing this stuff to you. Maybe he’s a lot more dangerous than you thought.”

  Bello paced like a caged tiger. “Back to work, Ramirez. You too, Nolan,” he snarled at the woman.

  Georgia turned on him. “Supervisor Bello, you are interfering with a criminal investigation. And let’s not forget how good I am at filing complaints.”

  Bello stopped pacing. He folded his arms across his gut. “I still don’t see how any of this—”

  “It’s not related,” Annette Nolan interrupted. “This guy…he’s just got a problem with me, that’s all. But it’s not related.”

  “Bullshit, it’s not.” Ramirez straightened, then looked at Georgia. “In November, Annette’s tires were slashed. In December, she found sugar in her gas tank. In January and February, a bunch of false alarms were called in on her apartment building.”

  “That’s not even the worst of it,” Annette said, a dark look in her eyes.

  Bello shrugged, as if all this was news to him. But the surprise seemed too feigned. Georgia suspected Annette’s situation was anything but news to the dispatchers and supervisors here.

  “Who’s doing this to you?” Georgia asked.

  Annette sighed, shooting quick, sideways glances at Bello. “I’ve only been on the job two years. I don’t want to get a reputation as a troublemaker.”

  Georgia regarded Bello with disgust. The words, she knew, were his, most likely delivered during a fatherly speech about the need to keep such matters quiet. You cowardly bastard, she thought, watching him squirm under her scrutiny. You let this woman deal with this harassment for six months—six months—because you didn’t want to make waves with superiors.

  “I think maybe you and I need to get some fresh air,” Georgia said, taking the woman’s hand. Annette looked at Bello, who made a face then caught Georgia’s glare and relented.

  “All right, go ahead,” he said. “Ramirez and the others will cover for you. Take all the time you need.”

  “Believe me,” said Georgia. “We will.”

  38

  What Georgia hadn’t realized was that taking a walk anywhere from Manhattan dispatch was like crossing out of a medieval fortress. Although the place sat in the middle of Central Park, it was entirely cut off from it. A high, spiked wrought-iron fence surrounded both the building and the adjacent parking lot. Only a padlocked gate on Seventy-ninth Street—which was more highway than street where it bisected the park—provided access to the compound. The wooded trails of Central Park, a stone’s throw from the building, could be reached only by walking a quarter mile east along Seventy-ninth Street—essentially, under the park—then backtracking west from Fifth Avenue.

  Annette Nolan and Georgia did that now, walking single file below a park overpass and along a narrow sidewalk flanked by ten-foot-high stone walls. At Fifth Avenue, they turned back into the park and hiked across a wide grassy field dotted with sunbathers. There, Georgia decided to break the uneasy silence.

  “Bello told you not to make waves about this guy, didn’t he?” she asked softly.

  Annette pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her handbag and offered one to Georgia, who declined. The woman’s hands were still shaky.

  “His name’s Ralph Finney, by the way. Bello said if I ignored him, the harassment would stop.” She took a deep drag and exhaled. “You must know how it is, being in the department and all. The men expect you to take whatever gets dished out, without complaint. If you don’t, they figure you’re weak and freeze you out. I couldn’t decide which would be worse.”

  “I know the feeling.” Georgia sighed. “The macho code—put up and shut up.”

  On the other side of the field, they spotted a playground. Fair-haired tots climbed monkey bars, their laughter as warm and sweet as the dappled late-afternoon light through the trees. Nannies shot Georgia and Annette suspicious glances as they sat down on one of the playground’s benches. They made an odd pair: Georgia, with her bruised face; Annette, towering above her, smoking—neither of them with kids or strollers.

  “I probably shouldn’t be smoking in a playground,” Annette ventured.

  “Forget about it,” Georgia said, staring down a frowning nanny. “The kids’ rich parents will air them out in the Hamptons later this weekend. They’ll live.” She leaned back on the bench and closed her eyes, catching a shaft of sunlight across her bruises. The warmth felt healing.

  “Annette?” she asked, keeping her face pointed up at the sun. “Do you mind my asking why Finney had it in for you?”

  Annette laughed, a breathy sound. She’d have made a good disc jockey, Georgia decided.

  “Do you know, when I first came to work here, Ralph was the only dispatcher who’d even talk to me? Teddy Ramirez is a sweetheart. You see him. But he barely said hello.”

  Georgia glanced over at Annette’s hands. She didn’t see a wedding ring. “Maybe Finney wanted to date you.”

  Annette shrugged noncommittally, stubbing out her cigarette.

  “Maybe I should rephrase that,” said Georgia. “Did Ralph Finney date you?”

  “Ralph’s good-looking and all. And he can be charming. But…” her voice trailed off. “The thing about Ralph is…he likes people to look up to him. And I did, big-time—f
or a while. Nobody knows more about fires and fire operations than he does.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He was supposed to move up to supervisor. And he—” Annette stopped, suddenly embarrassed.

  “What?” Georgia opened one eye.

  “That incident happened. He didn’t give you the callback number and you filed that grievance. So his promotion got delayed.”

  “Oh boy…” Georgia massaged a thumb and index finger across her eyelids. She’d known Ralph Finney simply as Dispatcher Number 35. Maybe Annette wasn’t the only woman he was nursing a grudge against.

  “He must hate me,” Georgia suggested.

  Annette grew red-faced without answering. Georgia could only guess at the venom Finney had unleashed about her.

  “Look, you didn’t do anything that bad to him,” she reassured Georgia. “He was still going to become a supervisor—it was just a six-month delay. In any case, they made him a supervisor-in-training, which, in the end, was probably what did him in.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One night tour last November, I got this ten-twenty-eight transmission from the captain of Engine Company Sixty-two. They were investigating a smoke condition in a subway tunnel, and the captain requested backup. I wanted to dispatch the nearest engine, but Ralph told me not to.”

  Georgia bolted upright now. “He what?”

  “There was a three-alarmer going on in the neighborhood. Ralph wanted those companies available in case the fire got worse. He told me to wait ten minutes, check with the captain, and if things still weren’t good, to dispatch an engine outside the immediate vicinity.”

  “Did you?”

  Annette toyed nervously with the tiny silver cross in her right ear. “I had to. Ralph was the acting supervisor. By the time I dispatched another engine company, the captain had taken some pretty serious smoke. When the shit hit the fan, it looked like I might lose my job because of the delay. I told my supervisors the truth: that Ralph had ordered it. The audio tapes and my computer notes backed me up—”

  “And they fired him,” said Georgia.

  “Yeah,” mumbled Annette. “I didn’t want to see that happen. But really, by that point, what could I do? He must’ve thought otherwise, because bad stuff’s been happening ever since.”

  “What kind of bad stuff?”

  Annette kicked at a patch of grass. Her hands were still shaking. “You know, before all this happened, Ralph was actually very sweet. He used to bring me flowers on my birthday. And he helps out this family…bought one of the kids a bike…takes them out to McDonald’s when their mother’s welfare money runs out.”

  “Was he religious?”

  Annette furrowed her brow. “I don’t think so.”

  “He didn’t read the Bible or like to quote from it?”

  “Ralph could look at a piece of paper for ten seconds and quote from it a week later. He had a photographic memory. He could tell you alarm box locations and street addresses in his sleep. But he wasn’t religious, as far as I know.”

  The two women sat in silence for a few minutes, watching the children scamper between the monkey bars and their nannies, trailing cookies, juice, and an assortment of toys.

  “So, um…,” said Annette nervously. “Do you really think Ralph could’ve set those terrible fires?”

  Georgia turned to her, her gaze sober and direct. “Yes, Annette. I do. What’s more, I think getting fired may have been what set him off. In his mind, you put him there. That means your life’s in danger, too. Do you live alone?”

  “Yeah,” she said glumly. Georgia sensed she always answered the question this way.

  “Move in with somebody right now, okay? Keep a low profile until we find him and question him.” She checked her watch. “Are you ready to go back?”

  “I suppose we should.” Annette sighed.

  They took the same circuitous route back to dispatch. On the way, Georgia called Cambareri on her cell phone. “Any luck finding Randy?”

  “None,” replied Cambareri. “Ditto for Marenko and Suarez.”

  “How about Ron Glassman—the witness? Is he safe?”

  “Don’t know. He’s gone.”

  “Gone?” Georgia started. “Gone where?”

  “Youse won’t believe it. His wife said somebody called him, said they was from the task force, and asked to meet with him right away.”

  “Did she say where they were supposed to meet?”

  “No, but Georgia—Carter wouldn’t do anything stupid.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right.” She asked Cambareri to pull an address on Finney and have Marenko and Suarez bring him in for questioning. “And get Frankel to run a check on Finney’s prints and blood type off personnel files.”

  By the time the two women reached dispatch, the sun was beginning to set. Already, the trees were darkly silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky, and Seventy-ninth Street was bathed in shadow. The padlock on the parking lot gate was unlocked. A shift would soon be ending, no doubt. Annette punched in the alarm code on the front door, and Georgia followed her back to the operations room to thank Bello and Ramirez for their time.

  At Annette’s desk, Georgia paused, staring at a black-and-white video monitor perched atop a file cabinet. It was trained on the parking lot. A pair of legs in dark sweatpants stuck out from underneath a late-model Toyota Corolla.

  “Looks like one of your colleagues is having car trouble.” Georgia nodded at the monitor.

  Annette looked up at the screen, then frowned. “That’s my car.”

  The figure slid out from beneath the vehicle. His face was covered with a black ski mask. Georgia sprang into action.

  “Radio the NYPD,” she told Annette. “And Gene Cambareri at Engine Two. Don’t let anyone in the parking lot. And don’t let anyone touch your car.”

  “Will do,” said Annette, getting on the headset.

  Georgia raced outside. The parking lot gate, not thirty feet from the entrance to Manhattan dispatch, was still ajar. There were no pedestrians on Seventy-ninth Street. He had to be trapped inside this wrought-iron cage. This was the only way out. Instinctively, Georgia reached for her hip holster and unfastened the safety latch on her gun. She’d hold him here until help arrived.

  She took several cautious steps forward until she spotted him. He had scrambled to the roof of a pickup truck on the far side of the lot. If he managed to jump from the roof over the fence and into Central Park, she would never find him. She swung the gate wide open and trained her gun on him.

  “FDNY. Hands in the air,” Georgia shouted, moving cautiously into the lot. The man hesitated for only a second. Then he grabbed the fence with both hands and lobbed his body over it, landing awkwardly on an asphalt bike path on the other side. He seemed to be betting she wouldn’t shoot, betting that the woman who wore a sweater over her holster wouldn’t fire unless her life depended on it. It had to be him.

  Shit. I’m going to have to go over that fence or lose him, Georgia realized. She holstered her weapon, then clambered up the roof of the truck. Grabbing two spikes in the fence, she wedged her right foot onto a lateral crossbar and hefted herself over. Her exhilaration at clearing the spikes was short-lived. She landed heavily on the asphalt. Blood spurted from cuts and scrapes along her arms and legs. Her palms stung.

  He was still in sight, about fifty feet straight ahead. But Georgia would lose him if she didn’t hurry. He was limping into the hilly, winding section of Central Park known as the Ramble—full of blind curves, rocky crevices, and densely wooded thickets. Georgia fought back the pain and pushed forward, reaching for her gun.

  Once inside the Ramble, she lost him almost immediately. The narrow, deserted trails were like a maze; the paths splintered again and again. Lamps flickered to life, but instead of bringing clarity, they merely defined the shadows. Every twitching branch or rippling leaf brought forth a new, warm spurt of adrenaline in her veins. The winding paths, flanked by huge granite boulders, cl
osed in on Georgia, making her feel lost and claustrophobic, like a child in a sea of legs. Her pulse raced furiously at each bend in the trail.

  Desperate and exhausted, she scrambled over an outcropping of rocks, perhaps ten feet above the trail, hoping to get a better view. That’s when she heard it. A scrape of sneakers on loose dirt, an audible gurgle somewhere on the other side of the vegetation below. She couldn’t be sure it was him, yet she had to take that chance. She crossed over the rocks, crouched behind some bushes and waited. When the figure passed beneath her, she pounced.

  He was large and powerfully built. Georgia had hoped to land on top of him and let gravity do the rest. Instead, she managed to catch only the back of his sneakers. But it was enough to make him tumble onto the muddy, unpaved earth, where he lay on his stomach, moaning.

  She sat on his back and pulled off his ski mask. A burst of static crackled from his fine wisps of blond hair. Georgia could see only the side of his face, smeared with grime and contorted with pain—the strong, square jaw, the slight upturn of his nose. Still, a small quake rippled through her body. A prickly sense of déjà vu. She took out her gun and trained it on him.

  “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Finney.”

  He answered with a groan. Georgia fumbled for her radio, then called in her approximate location to dispatch. I’m beside the huge granite boulder—which huge granite boulder? I’m a city girl, for Chrissake—not a park ranger. She frisked Finney and began to rattle off his rights. But as she went to cuff his wrists, Finney surprised her. In a sudden burst of strength, he thrust his shoulders upward, jerked his arm from her grasp, and tossed her off his back.

  Georgia landed elbow-first on the packed earth. The gun tumbled from her hand, landing in a pile of last winter’s leaves not six feet from her grasp. Finney, neither as hurt nor as weakened as he had pretended to be, pinned Georgia on her back and sat on top of her. Dirt streaked his face and hair, giving him a wild, otherworldly appearance. Yet he still looked familiar.

  “You’ll never shoot me, Georgia,” Finney mocked. He spit a wad of saliva onto the ground for emphasis. “You know me, and it’s bothering you.”