“No, lad. But I’ll see the three of you Monday.”
“You’ll see Richie and Ma,” Georgia corrected.
“Working?” asked Gallagher, but he caught Margaret’s frown and already knew the answer. Her mother had a solid number ten in position to sink, but she missed. Georgia sensed she was the reason.
Margaret put down her cue. “I’ll check on dinner,” she said stiffly. Gallagher touched her sleeve as she brushed by—a gesture of understanding that made her visibly exhale. He always knew the right thing to do. Margaret turned to Richie. “Want to help me with the rolls?” she asked him.
“Sure,” said the boy. Margaret padded up the stairs. Richie ran after her. Georgia waited until they were out of earshot to speak.
“I’m sorry, Jimmy,” she said. “I’m not trying to cause trouble, but it’s the same thing every year. Ma thinks I’m dishonoring Dad when I don’t go to that memorial mass. But I take one look at all those pompous chiefs and clergy and all that Catholic rigamarole. I can do the funerals, but this?” She took a sip of beer and rolled the can, gorgeously beaded with sweat, across her forehead. “Religion died for me the day that bodega ceiling fell on my father’s head. An inch to the left or the right and he’d have lived. I can’t listen to some priest stand there smugly telling me there’s a God in that. I just can’t.”
“I understand, love.” Gallagher squeezed her shoulder, then began putting the cues away. “Things happen and they change people—maybe in ways we don’t even want to be changed.” She sensed he was talking about himself. He laughed. “Me? I believe the good Lord must have a plan. But, that said, I’ll be damned if I can figure it out. Sometimes I just think He has a wicked sense of humor.”
Margaret called out that dinner was ready, and they went upstairs. Gallagher grabbed a knife to carve the chicken. Margaret began rummaging through drawers while Georgia dished out salad.
“What’s wrong, Ma?”
“I thought I had matches. To light the candles.”
Gallagher patted his pants pockets and tossed a book to Georgia. “Here, love, take these.”
Georgia caught the shiny red book and walked into the dining area. She flipped open the cover, removed a paper shaft, and struck it. Instantly, the flame sprang to life, and she coaxed it to the wicks of the brand-new red candles. A flicker of honey-colored light spilled across the white linen table. She refolded the matchbook and read the gold stenciled writing on the cover, HO YEN CHINESE RESTAURANT. It listed a Manhattan phone number and an address on West Twenty-third Street.
It took her a minute to place the name. By now, Gallagher was opening the kitchen door, and Margaret was placing the chicken on the table. Georgia handed the matchbook back to him with a mumbled thanks. Firefighters probably ordered food at Ho Yen all the time. Ladder 57, Gallagher’s company, was just a few blocks away. Hell, Cambareri liked the place enough to order a double portion of spareribs there. So what if Jimmy Gallagher had been to that restaurant? So what?
“Where are you going?” Margaret asked later that evening as Georgia was grabbing her coat and keys. Richie was already in bed.
“I just want to get a couple of videos. I’ll be back in a little while.”
At the video store pay phone, Georgia called directory assistance and got a number for Ho Yen. A man picked up with that annoyed, hurried attitude of Chinese waiters and short-order cooks in New York.
“This is Fire Marshal Georgia Skeehan, is Sam Chu there?”
“He go home already.”
She asked if anyone at the restaurant had been working the front counter Monday night.
“I work counter. You got order?” She could hear voices and commotion in the background. The restaurant always seemed busy.
“No,” she said. “I just need to know one thing. Do you recall any firefighters in your restaurant around eleven on Monday night? Maybe they made a call from your pay phone?”
“You no got order, I can’t help…”
“Look, please. I’ll give you my Visa number. Anything. Just don’t hang up.”
There was dead air on the line. Then she heard the rattle of paper and throaty conversations in Chinese and realized he was talking to another worker.
“Yes. Two firemen in here. They pick up big order. They have uniforms and radios.”
“They made a phone call?”
“Yes. They ask where pay phone is.”
“Do you remember what they looked like?”
“One young with funny accent. Not American…”
Irish, thought Georgia. Maybe Terry Quinn. Then again, to this guy, maybe they all sounded funny.
“Other man older. Heavy. Gray hair. He smoke. I say, ‘We no allow smoke at counter. Only in smoke section.’ This what you want?”
No, thought Georgia, bitter bile gathering at the back of her throat. This definitely not what I want.
41
An early-morning light glanced off the red bricks of Manhattan’s Ladder 57 and Engine 11 as Georgia nosed her Harley into a parking space out front. An American flag flapped crisply over the firehouse doors, breaking the street’s Sunday stillness. It wasn’t until Georgia unstrapped her helmet and dismounted that she noticed the black-and-purple funeral bunting draped across the entrance. It had been just six days since Terry Quinn had died in the line of duty. For firefighters here, it was still a raw wound.
Georgia took a deep breath and tried to still the quake in her stomach. You’re about to commit the worst crime a firefighter can commit, she reminded herself. But even this knowledge couldn’t stop her.
A firefighter buzzed her through the metal side-entrance door. He was in his mid-twenties, with the dark eyes and olive skin of an Italian. His black hair was shaved to a crew cut that accentuated his broad shoulders. Rick, had he scored high enough to get the job, thought Georgia. She remembered Richie’s letter to him in her purse. She still hadn’t mailed it.
“My name is—”
“Georgia Skeehan—Marshal Skeehan,” the firefighter corrected himself, leaning forward to shake her hand. “I saw you on TV. Jimmy talks a lot about you.”
“Nice to meet you,” Georgia stammered, feeling the tremble of anxiety again. “I need to look at some files in juvenile. Can you ask the captain if he has a key to the room?”
Georgia knew from Gallagher that the hundred-year-old building’s labyrinthine back rooms had been reconfigured a dozen or more times to house everything from a battalion headquarters to a short-lived juvenile fire-prevention unit. For once, Georgia was thankful for the inefficiency of city bureaucracy. If Gallagher had worked in a single-engine house, she would have had no plausible excuse to get inside.
“Captain Hessler’s doing drill, but I’ll get him,” said the firefighter.
Hessler emerged from the kitchen now, a thin man with prematurely gray hair and the deeply lined face of a longtime smoker. She had met him through Gallagher once before. He took in her jeans, T-shirt, and fire department sweatshirt underneath her cropped black leather motorcycle jacket—hardly fire marshal attire. All her good clothes had either been stolen by Finney or chewed up on the job. She had nothing left.
“Glad to see you collared that creep,” Hessler said as he walked her up a flight of stairs to his office on the second floor. “I’ve dealt with Finney over the radio. A very smart, capable dispatcher. Who’d have figured?”
“People will surprise you,” said Georgia. Take me today, for instance, she thought.
Along one wall of the captain’s office, a gray metal cabinet and a chest-high set of file drawers competed for space with two ripped brown vinyl chairs. A simple cot, crisply made, hugged the wall in the back corner, across from the officer’s bathroom and shower. Except for the computer humming on the battered metal desk, it looked like a prison cell. But then again, so did every fire officer’s bunkroom.
“Are you and Gallagher going to that ceremony this afternoon?” asked Hessler.
“What ceremony?”
&nbs
p; “Here.” He tossed a folded-up Sunday Daily News to her. “See for yourself.”
Splashed across the front page were pictures of Ralph Finney’s arrest. Georgia was reduced to a blur in the shot, which was just as well, since between her bruised face and muddy clothes, she didn’t think of it as a Kodak moment. On an inside page was a picture of a patch of green in Yonkers with an inset photo of Sloane Michaels, detailing his plans to turn that land into a park in Quinn’s memory. The groundbreaking was at five-thirty P.M.
“Jimmy’s somewhere off the Long Island Sound, fishing,” said Georgia. “I don’t think he knew about the ceremony.”
“No one did, it seems. Very last-minute,” Hessler agreed. “But I know a lot of my men are going.” The captain jiggled open the center drawer of his desk and sorted through an enormous ring of keys. “What do you know? I have it,” he said, holding up a key that looked identical to all the others.
He walked her to the third floor and unlocked a small room with only one window overlooking an air shaft. “The bureau wanted you to read files—on a Sunday—and didn’t give you a key?”
Georgia shrugged. “You know how the department is—right hand doesn’t know what the left is doing.”
“You got that right.”
The room had three file cabinets and one desk, all covered with a layer of dust. “I’ll get a couple of my guys to clean the place out for you,” Hessler offered.
“Thanks,” said Georgia. Anything to buy time. She couldn’t do a thing until both the engine and ladder were out on runs. Worse, she had only until one P.M. Richie had softball practice at two. If she missed that, she might as well turn in her mommy credentials.
It was a slow morning. The truck went out twice for false alarms, the engine three times, for two medical emergencies and a water leak. It was eleven-thirty before both the truck and engine went out together—but not for a fire. Just to get groceries to fix lunch. Georgia had been on enough meal runs to know that they usually took about half an hour. It would have to be enough.
She crept downstairs into Hessler’s office as soon as the automatic garage doors closed. Already her heart was pounding. The plank floors creaked. The heating ducts rumbled. The computer, still on, hummed. In the kitchen below, the telephone rang, and she jumped as the answering machine spewed out a recorded message and a beep for the caller. The sounds resonated through the cavernous interior.
The enormity of what she was about to do made her as skittish as a wild animal. Inside Hessler’s office, a dozen black and blue looseleaf binders gazed back at her from shelves. She read the spines and was disappointed to realize that they all dealt with fire department procedures, not the company itself. The computer might have helped her, but Georgia surmised that poring over disks could take too long. She would have more luck finding what she needed in some binder. By process of elimination, she settled on the metal file cabinet behind Hessler’s desk. She pulled the handle. It was locked. The metal doors puckered, sending a thunderous rattle through the building. It was eleven-thirty-five. Five minutes had passed. In about twenty-five more, the men would be back. The key to the lock was probably on that ring of keys in the desk drawer. But which one? Her hands shook with the possibilities.
The phone rang again downstairs, and the answering machine clicked on. A layer of cold sweat formed on her fingers, making the keys slippery beneath her touch. The first, second, and third keys failed to open the lock. She eliminated the fourth and fifth as too big and too small. The sixth looked right, but wouldn’t turn and nearly got lodged in the cylinder. The seventh one slipped in. She turned it to the right and heard a click—
And a voice.
“Hey Cap, you up there? I just want to get my paycheck.”
Her blood froze. An off-duty firefighter. She could hear his heavy footsteps lumbering up the stairs. The light in the office was on; the key, wedged in the cabinet lock. Georgia was trapped with no escape.
The officers’ bathroom. It was her only hope. The door was open. She backed up and stepped behind the shower curtain. She was breathing hard now. If the men came back, she would have no reasonable explanation for being in the officers’ shower, fully clothed. Nor would she be able to explain why Hessler’s keys were stuck in his cabinet.
The office door squeaked open wider. “Cap? Anyone around?”
The firefighter opened the captain’s desk drawer and cursed as he thumbed through the contents. Georgia’s limbs were locked so tight, her thigh muscles ached. She heard the crunch of paper and the rattle of pens in a drawer. He was leaving Hessler a note.
She closed her eyes and breathed in slightly at the sound of his heavy footsteps trudging down the stairs. Firefighters were never quiet. They walked as if they had cement in their shoes. That was her one salvation. She heard the door by housewatch slam. He had left the building.
Slowly, she crept back into the office and opened Hessler’s cabinet. A row of looseleaf binders greeted her eye—all meticulously labeled. Thank God for the anal retentives who run this department, thought Georgia. Every friggin’ thing in a firehouse is coded. She found a binder with the company roster and thumbed through it. Gallagher, James J., one entry read. Locker number 27. Combination 07-63-82.
Georgia copied the numbers onto her palm, then read them twice for accuracy before putting the book away and returning Hessler’s ring of keys to his drawer.
She slipped out of the office and into the locker room adjoining the communal bathroom. Eleven-fifty-three A.M. She had under ten minutes left. She spit into her palm and rubbed off Gallagher’s combination number while mentally chanting it to herself. “Oh-seven. Six-three. Eight-two.” Her hands were so sweaty, she feared losing her grip on the dial and having to start over. Yet somehow she managed to open the locker on the first try.
The dark, narrow space looked orderly and unremarkable. A couple of clean uniform shirts. Fire-retardant bunker pants. A black turnout coat with bold yellow stripes. A helmet. Two $20 bills. Nothing that seemed even remotely worth the risk she was taking. Then her muscles clenched as she looked down at the bottom of the locker, at an oval black frame surrounding a clear plastic shield.
In five years of firefighting, Georgia had worn facepieces to breathing masks dozens of times, simply grabbing one off the apparatus floor at the beginning of a tour and returning it at the end. She’d never stashed one in her locker. For who would need an extra?
You know who I belonged to.
Her legs wobbled unsteadily. She could smell the smoke on Gallagher’s turnout coat. She could see him now in her mind’s eye, last Monday night at the fire. Him and Quinn and Lieutenant Russo, climbing the fire stairs in that adjoining building, through a veil of smoke that grew darker with each step. Three men from Ladder 59 went into that building—but only two came out. She stared again at the oval frame, at the round hole in the plastic shield where an airtank regulator could be hooked up to supply air. It looked like a face with a shrieking mouth. It mocked her.
You know who I belonged to.
On the locker shelf, Georgia noticed a plain brown padded envelope. It was open and unaddressed—empty but for an unlabeled floppy disk. She frowned. Gallagher couldn’t even type, never mind use a computer. Her mother did all his paperwork.
It was eleven-fifty-six A.M. NO sign of the firefighters yet. Maybe they had hit traffic. She prayed for an accident, a fire, anything to keep them away as she scrambled back to Hessler’s office and slipped the disk into his computer.
The disk contained more than two dozen files—all with names that appeared to be abbreviations for building addresses: Htsmn Twrs had to be an abbreviation for Heightsman Towers, a luxury apartment building off Central Park West. Bll-Chbrs Thtre looked to Georgia like an abbreviation for the Bell-Chambers, a prominent Broadway theater. Knck Plz…Knickerbocker Plaza? Knickerbocker Plaza was owned by Sloane Michaels. Georgia recalled with a sudden jolt that he’d also been involved in the purchase and renovation of the Bell-Chambers Theater a few
years back.
Georgia opened the Knickerbocker Plaza file now. It was a spreadsheet. Down the vertical entry lines were names she’d never heard of. Some sounded Latin—Locasa, Bardellin, Sopras. Some sounded Russian—Mirakov, Grushenko, Paglinsky. Next to the names were dollar amounts that ranged from $2,000 to more than $500,000. Her head spun. What was Jimmy doing with a computer disk of this stuff in his locker?
A high-pitched series of beeps on the apparatus floor startled her. The rigs were backing into quarters. And across the hall, Gallagher’s locker door was still wide open.
Georgia pulled the disk out of Hessler’s computer and shoved it down her T-shirt. She would send it to Walter Frankel later, via departmental courier. Right now, she dashed across to the locker room. Already, the men were bounding up the stairs—all seven of them, minus the engine and truck officers. They would find her next to Gallagher’s open locker. They would know she had broken in—broken trust, the most unforgivable crime a firefighter can commit. Georgia shoved the empty padded envelope back on the shelf and closed Gallagher’s locker by slamming her body against the door.
“Hey, you morons deaf or something?” she shouted as soon as they came upon her. No defense like a good offense. She was a Queens girl. She had a mouth that could stand up to anybody when she had to. Fugedabowdit.
“Didn’t you jerkoffs hear me pounding the lockers?” She pretended to zip up her jeans. “Not for nothing, I had to take a leak. Do you mind giving me two friggin’ seconds of privacy?”
“Relax, Skeehan,” said one of the firefighters, patting the air. He was a beefy older man whom Georgia vaguely recognized from firehouse parties Gallagher had invited her to. The firefighter flicked a look at the other men, who shrugged. “What are you getting so upset about, Skeehan?” he asked, nodding at her hands. “You’re shaking like a leaf.”
Georgia saw the men look quizzically at her now. She had to deflect their curiosity. She never thought she would say something this stupid. But Marenko would buy it, and so would they.
The Fourth Angel Page 23