“How youse holding up, Ralph?” Cambareri asked.
Finney hung his head and made his lips quiver. “Not good, Mr. Cambareri. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. Remember when Tony Savone at Engine One-thirty-eight got that DWI? And you called my old man to help straighten things out so he wouldn’t get axed? That’s how I feel now. Only a thousand times worse.”
Cambareri’s fat lips flapped open. “Geez, youse got a good memory, kid. Tony Savone? I remember that. Your dad got him into rehab and he stayed outta trouble after that…”
“Went on to make lieutenant,” Finney mumbled, then paused. “Thanks to you, sir.” He flashed an open, ingratiating smile at Cambareri. Just like he would a dog. A big, fat, slobbering Saint Bernard.
“Savone just had a bad turn, that’s all.” Cambareri shrugged, returning the smile. “It happens.”
“Yeah,” said Finney. “Tell me about it.” Suarez cleared his throat. The nervous little Pekingese, thought Finney.
“Ralph, my man, this isn’t a DWI,” said Suarez. “We’ve got your thumbprint at one fire, your blood at another. Your handwriting’s been matched to those Fourth Angel letters and a search warrant’s coming through on your apartment. You gotta stop playing games with us and come clean. ’Cause after today, it’s Rikers Island for you until you make bond or get a trial date. And then your lawyer takes over and we’re not in a position to help you anymore.”
“You want a confession. Is that it?”
“You’re a religious man, aren’t you?” Suarez asked him softly. “From your letters, I’d guess you must read the Bible a lot. A confession airs out the soul.”
Finney stared at his wrists, cuffed in front of him. “It’s hard to make a confession in chains. Do you think we can get rid of these?”
Suarez nodded to Cambareri, who waddled to the interview room door and asked Harlen to uncuff Finney’s wrists. Finney made a show of massaging his muscular arms. “Thank you both,” he said. “You’ve both been very decent to me.” He turned his blue-eyed wattage back to Cambareri again. Always cut at the weakest link. The drooling Saint Bernard over the jumpy Pekingese. Finney cocked his head at Cambareri.
“You’re about due to retire, Mr. Cambareri, aren’t you?”
“Three months to go.” Gene smiled proudly. “Then me and the missus are headed to Pensacola, Florida.”
“You got a place there already?”
“A place. A boat. The works.”
“Paul Ahearn and Doug DeStephanis retired there, too. You know them?” asked Finney.
“Know ’em?” Cambareri patted his chest. “Dougie’s the guy convinced me and Barbara to move down there…Hey, youse want some coffee or a doughnut or something, Ralph?”
“No, thank you.” Finney nodded to Suarez’s pack of Newport Lights. “Actually, if Marshal Suarez doesn’t mind, I’d like to burn a cigarette.”
A small crease appeared between Suarez’s brows. “I thought you didn’t smoke.”
“Calms me down.”
Suarez pushed his pack of Newport Lights and a red butane lighter toward Finney, along with a small tin ashtray. Finney pulled a cigarette from the pack, cupped the red butane lighter around it, and lit it. He took a long drag, then exhaled slowly across the table.
“Maybe you can clear up something for us, Ralph,” Suarez said evenly. “All of these fires seem to have been set as revenge fires—to punish and embarrass the FDNY. Am I correct?”
Silence. Finney smoked casually, confidently. The marshals shifted in their chairs.
“Are you choosing not to answer, Ralph?” Suarez finally asked.
“You’re divorced, Marshal, aren’t you?” Finney asked Suarez.
Suarez frowned. “I don’t see where that’s any of your business.”
Finney gestured with his cigarette to Suarez’s right hand, to the ruby-colored stone on his ten-karat gold fire department ring. “You don’t wear a wedding ring, but you do wear a department ring, so you’re not opposed to jewelry.”
Suarez pulled his hand away self-consciously.
“You’re not gay, and I don’t get the feeling you’ve never been married,” Finney continued. “So that leaves us with divorce. Maybe more than once…”
“Where’s this going, Ralph?”
“You never wanted revenge on someone who jilted you?” Finney asked with a slick smile. “Maybe some woman who slept with another guy first before she said Adios, Eduardo?”
Suarez’s eyes narrowed to tiny, dark slits. The smooth planes of his face grew taut as a trampoline. Finney licked his lips. “She did, didn’t she, Eddie? Cheat on you, I mean.”
Suarez clenched his jaw, but the tremor in his hands was unmistakable. “Listen, Ralph, you can play all the games you want. The bottom line is, the evidence is stacking up against you—”
“But not Spring Street,” Finney interrupted, gesturing with his cigarette. “That’s what’s bothering you. That’s why you’re here. You think you’ve got everything, but you can’t quite put it together.”
“All right, Ralph. You put it together for us.”
“Help you send me to death row?” Finney stubbed out his cigarette with an overly brusque motion, as if to accentuate his point. The tin ashtray slid across the table, knocking the cigarettes and butane lighter to the floor. A flurry of black ash flew like week-old Manhattan snow across the cement.
“I’m sorry,” Finney apologized. “I didn’t mean that.” He stooped to pick up the cigarettes and ashtray, then palmed the lighter and stuck it in his shoe. The motion was so fluid, the marshals so intent upon his words, that they only saw him wipe his hands on his orange jumpsuit before settling his gaze back on them.
“Give it up, my man,” Suarez reasoned with Finney. “We might be able to work something out if you give it up. Otherwise, all bets are off.”
“Okay.” Finney sighed and hung his head. “You win.”
Suarez tapped a pen nervously. In the bleak, windowless room, every noise was magnified. Cambareri took a seat and massaged his swollen ankles. He wheezed the same way Finney had as an asthmatic kid. It brought back the sensations again. The tight breathing that turned raspy as it traveled down the windpipe. The racing pulse. The short, panicked gulps of air that can easily induce hyperventilation. Finney placed both palms on the table and began gasping.
“I…think…I’m…having…an…asthma…attack,” he choked out. “I…need…to go…to…the…infirmary.”
“Do you get these often?” asked Suarez, rising from the table, alarmed.
Finney shook his head. “Only when I smoke.”
Suarez let out a string of Spanish expletives. Cambareri alerted Harlen at the door. The guard fumbled with the handcuffs on his belt.
“Will youse forget those?” Cambareri yelled. “Finney dies, we gotta answer a lotta questions. And I hate questions.”
Finney kept up the gasping, his body jerky from the effort to get air. The three men half carried, half dragged him down the hallway and two flights of stairs to the infirmary. A middle-aged doctor in a white coat regarded the sudden intrusion sourly. She was a heavyset black woman with short, frizzy hair flecked with gray.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked in a Caribbean-flavored accent, folding her arms across her ample chest.
“Finney’s having an asthma attack,” said Harlen. The guard was sweating heavily now as he grabbed Finney underneath his armpits and hoisted him onto the paper-covered examining table.
“All of you, clear out,” barked the doctor.
“One of us has to stay,” Suarez explained to the doctor.
“I’ll do it,” Cambareri volunteered. “Seeing as I kinda know him and all.”
Harlen closed the examining room door, but kept watch through a small glass window with wire mesh across it. Suarez stood behind him. In the examining room, Cambareri hugged the wall, trying to stay out of the doctor’s way. Even so, she kept backing into his fat belly.
The doctor poked rough
ly at Finney’s neck until she found his carotid artery, then stuck a finger on it to check his pulse.
“Sit up and lean forward,” she barked. She made harrumphing noises as she pulled down the top part of Finney’s jumpsuit, lifted his T-shirt, and ordered him to breathe while she listened to his back with her stethoscope.
“Your pulse is normal, there’s no blueness around your lips, so we’ll hold off on a corticosteroid. But since you seem in distress, I’m going to give you a nebulizer.”
The doctor turned to a contraption on the counter the size of a lunch box. Inside was a face mask, which she intended to put over Finney’s nose and mouth to help him breathe. Finney watched her reach for a vial of bron-chodilator preparation.
What happened next was part luck, part knowing what to do with it. For as Ralph Finney sat on the table, wheezing and seemingly listless, he spotted a plastic half-gallon jug of isopropyl rubbing alcohol on the countertop. He didn’t have to read the red lettering on the label: FLAMMABLE, KEEP AWAY FROM FIRE OR FLAME. He already knew. And he knew, too, that he would have just seconds to succeed. The doctor was out of his grasp, but Cambareri was right next to the metal table, his cheap polyester knit tie practically dangling in Finney’s face. Nobody had a gun—prison rules. And besides, Finney was in terrific shape. Cambareri had a body the consistency of pizza dough. Go for the Saint Bernard.
“Mr. Cambareri,” Finney gasped out. “I…got to…tell you…”
Cambareri leaned in close. “What, Ralph?”
Finney grabbed the marshal by his knit tie and spun him around in a choke hold before Cambareri had a chance to react. In a flash, Finney sprang from the table, reached for the bottle of rubbing alcohol, and twisted off the plastic cap. The doctor let out a little gasp and flattened herself against the far wall. She was a civilian. Finney’d have no trouble with her.
“Ralph—what’re youse…?” Cambareri cried out as a pungent odor of disinfectant filled the room. With Finney’s knee to the small of the marshal’s back, he managed to push Cambareri’s head forward and douse the wispy strands of his thinning black hair.
Alcohol flowed down Cambareri’s face and into his eyes, stinging them and temporarily blinding him. It soaked his white shirt until it was translucent, revealing a sleeveless white T-shirt beneath. His blue knit tie was saturated with rubbing alcohol. A small cry escaped Cambareri’s lips. Part pain, part disbelief.
Harlen kicked open the door, his truncheon ready to strike. But Finney was faster. From his shoe, he pulled out Suarez’s disposable red butane lighter and held it just inches away from Cambareri’s soaked tie.
“You want him to burn?” he hissed at the guard, at an ashen Eddie Suarez behind him. “That’s rubbing alcohol on him. I so much as touch this lighter to it, he’s gonna fry, I promise.”
Gene Cambareri, his eyes screwed shut from the pain, began to whimper. Harlen let his rubber baton fall to his side. Suarez came up behind the guard, also frozen by the enormity of the situation and how quickly it had spun out of control. They exchanged glances and by some unspoken agreement decided that Suarez should be the one to talk. Cambareri was, after all, his partner.
“C’mon, man,” Suarez urged softly, patting the air. “Put the lighter down…”
“Get me out of this place, I will.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Then the fat man burns.”
The only sound any of them could hear was the static from Harlen’s radio, buzzing with alarmed voices about what was transpiring on the third floor, and the choked whimpers from Cambareri.
“What’s this gonna get you, Ralph?”
“A front-row seat at tomorrow’s blaze. The one you morons’ll never figure out.”
So there was going to be another HTA fire. Suarez tried not to betray his astonishment. They had maybe fifteen hours to stop that disaster. This one could be all over within seconds.
“C’mon, my man,” Suarez reasoned. “Think about what you’re doing here. You know Gene. He’s not just a badge to you. He was on a first-name basis with your dad. And Tony Savone. And Dougie DeStephanis. You can’t wanna do this to him.”
Finney laughed and shook his head. His pale blue eyes were wild now—deep and sparkly, as if lit by a demon fire within. Suarez could feel the pulsating thrill behind that glare. It made him shudder.
“I can’t wanna do this to him? Well, I have news for you, my man,” Finney said mockingly to Suarez. “Those are the only kinds of burnings worth doing.”
44
FUTURE SITE OF QUINN MEMORIAL PARK, proclaimed a colorful banner strung between two large oaks. Georgia checked her watch and frowned. Six-thirty P.M. She was late. Already families and television crews were dispersing. Streetlights were ushering in the evening. She’d have been here earlier if not for the fact that she was down to a heel of bread and a can of Yoo-Hoo in the refrigerator. The guilt was so overwhelming that not only did she do a quick food shop, she also mailed Richie’s letter to his father. Hell, if there’d been so much as an orange in the house, Rick wouldn’t have seen that letter until July.
The event was bigger than Georgia would’ve expected. Sesame Street characters handed out the last of the balloons and ice cream sandwiches, while a parade of bagpipers in kilts blanketed the two-acre stretch of sycamores and willows with their shrill wail.
Michaels was standing to the side of a newly planted hedge of English boxwoods, looking regal in his navy blue silk suit. He was talking on a cell phone. A black stretch limo was parked nearby, the motor running. She wouldn’t have much time.
“Mr. Michaels,” she called, waving to him.
Two assistants in expensive suits hustled over, neither smiling. One was black and built like a linebacker. The other was a Latino with a shaved head and an earring in one ear.
“Can we help you?” the black linebacker asked. Georgia noticed one of his incisors was capped in gold. So much for the company dental plan.
“I need to speak to your boss.”
“No can do. He’s already late for a meeting.”
“This is important.”
“So’s the meeting.”
Georgia caught Michaels’s eye just as the bald Latino was about to put a less-than-friendly grip on her arm.
“Marshal Skeehan, I’m so glad you came,” Michaels said, walking over. “Congratulations on arresting that arsonist.” He shook her hand warmly. She stumbled over a reply.
“There are some things I really need to discuss with you, sir.”
He checked his watch. “I have to be at an event at the Four Seasons in an hour, but if you walk me to my car, we can talk.”
The limo was only about fifty feet away, but Michaels had to stop three times before he got there, to smile for photos, sign autographs, or simply engage in small talk with adoring residents. Georgia sucked in a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be easy.
“What were in the four fifty-pound UPS packages delivered to your brother the Friday before the fire?”
“I have no idea.” He ran a hand against the grain of his silvery beard. “Why?”
“Because the packages all came from dummy companies.”
A cluster of neighborhood residents passed by, giggling and waving. Michaels kept a smile plastered across his face and shot it in their direction as he spoke.
“If I had to hazard a guess, knowing my brother, I’d say they contained drugs.”
“Maybe. But you were the one who sent him on an errand designed to keep him out of the building Monday. You knew the department finally had a witness to the Spring Street fire. And now that witness is dead—under suspicious circumstances—after receiving a call traced to the lobby of your hotel.”
Michaels touched his chest. “You don’t think I made that call, do you? I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
“Where did you get that Fourth Angel letter that you showed me, Mr. Michaels? Did Finney really send it to you? Or were you just looking for a convenient way to ta
ke the heat off yourself—in case the department started tracing those UPS packages and discovered they were filled with HTA?”
“You’re talking nonsense.” They were at the door to his limo now. The motor was running.
“I’m talking motive,” said Georgia. Behind her, children scampered on the sidewalk and car engines revved up along the curb. Burly men with television cameras strapped to their shoulders walked by, readying themselves for their next assignment.
“You see,” Georgia continued, kicking at an ice cream wrapper at her feet, “the only one with a motive to burn down Spring Street”—she looked up, fixing her gaze on him—“was you. I know about the IRS investigation, Mr. Michaels.”
Michaels’s root-beer-colored eyes registered shock and profound sadness. He shook his head. “Why do you have it in for me, Marshal? Is it rich men you don’t like? Or men in general?”
“This isn’t personal.”
“The hell it isn’t.”
“Why are the Feds investigating you for money laundering?”
He opened the back door of his limo. “Get in,” he said tersely. She hesitated. “You want to level allegations at me, the least you can do is not broadcast them all over the goddamn park.”
She followed him into the car. There was a bar, a television set, and a bank of phones. She could see out, but no one could see in. Her heart thumped in her chest. Michaels told his driver to close the soundproof windows and kill the engine. Then he turned to her.
“Just because I’m investigated from time to time by the IRS doesn’t make me a crook. A man of my stature gets investigated.” He frowned at her. “You see that, don’t you? To judge me by that would be like”—he snapped his fingers—“like judging a doctor’s competence by the size of his malpractice premiums.”
“Okay,” Georgia said slowly. “I’ll buy that. If you can tell me one thing…”
“Anything.” He gestured expansively, sinking into the black leather upholstery.
“Who’s Locasa?”
Michaels sat up straight and stared at her now. She reeled off two more names: “Who’s Grushenko? Who’s Sopras?” His eyes narrowed into dark little orbs. His fingemails dug into the upholstery. Even his voice became flinty.
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