The Fourth Angel

by Suzanne Chazin

  “Where did you get those names?”

  “They’re your clients, right? Drug lords who invest dirty money in your buildings, then get paid back with clean rental income.” Georgia could read it in his face. “Knickerbocker Plaza, the Bell-Chambers Theater, Heightsman Towers—they were all built on the backs of junkies, weren’t they?”

  Michaels didn’t move. It was as if he couldn’t quite believe what was happening.

  “That son of a bitch made a copy,” he muttered to himself. “A firefighter…a goddamned firefighter.”

  Tears welled up in Georgia’s eyes. Not Jimmy Gallagher. Dear God, no.

  “You had Ron Glassman killed, didn’t you?” Georgia prodded. She’d expected Michaels to protest, but instead, he laced his trembling fingers in his lap and stared at them without speaking.

  “It’s true, then,” she whispered, horrified at the realization. “You had him killed because he could testify that the Spring Street fire started in the basement—an area only you and your brother would’ve had easy access to. But who gave you Glassman’s name?”

  The question seemed to snap Michaels out of his daze. He punched the seat behind her. “Where are the files?” he demanded.

  Georgia flinched. “I don’t have them anymore,” she stammered. “They’re out of my hands.” She put a palm on the limo door, but Michaels grabbed it.

  “Do you understand what you’ve done?” he hissed. He was breathing hard.

  “Let go of me.”

  “Do you know what will happen to you if those files become public?” Michaels’s voice began to crack. He ran a hand down his face, fighting for control. “Look, Marshal—Georgia—listen to me. We can work out a deal—”

  “A deal? Fifty-four people died that night—my partner’s daughter, his unborn grandchild—and you want to work out a deal?” She regarded him with disgust. “I was right the first time about you. We are different.”

  He flopped back on the seat, looking defeated. And in that instant, Georgia saw her chance. She fumbled with the lock on the door for only a moment, then bolted.

  The sky was dark now. The streets were emptying. Lights were glowing behind pulled-down shades. She thought one of Michaels’s assistants might run after her. But when she finally looked back, out of breath, the car had sped away. Michaels was too smart, too powerful, to risk a public confrontation. But until Georgia got that computer disk copied and recorded into the official case file, she knew she was far from safe. She’d sent it via departmental courier to Walter Frankel’s lab. He probably wouldn’t get it until tomorrow, but she couldn’t be sure. She had to warn him.

  Frankel picked up his home phone midway through the answering-machine message. Breathlessly, Georgia began to pour out what had happened with Michaels in the limo. A Camaro roared down the dark street. Georgia stuck a finger in her ear.

  “Where are you?” Frankel interrupted.

  “Still in Yonkers. I need you to meet me at the lab in case the disk’s in the evidence drop box. We can’t have it floating around.”

  “Forget about the disk and listen to me. You’ve got to get home, right now…Georgia,” he said in a quavering voice. “Finney’s on the loose.”

  Georgia cradled the phone, transfixed, as a cold finger of sweat trickled down her spine. Even with her black leather motorcycle jacket pulled tightly around her, she was shivering. Finney had nothing to lose now—no job, no stature, no false sense of pride or belonging. The absence of those things would narrow his will to a single sharp focus: revenge. And of all the targets he could aim at, none would be more satisfying than taking down Georgia Skeehan, the woman who—in his mind—had cost him the only thing he really coveted: a place in the uniformed ranks of the FDNY.

  “Georgia? Did you hear what I said?”

  “I heard you,” she choked out. “Tell me what happened.”

  Frankel explained how Finney had threatened to burn Cambareri, how Suarez felt he had no choice but to let Finney go. Cambareri was in the hospital now, unharmed, but getting checked out. Suarez was with him.

  “At least Gene’s okay,” Georgia offered in her most sober, rational voice.

  “Darling, I haven’t told you the worst,” Frankel explained. “That fire Finney promised? For eleven A.M. tomorrow? He told Suarez it’s still out there—”

  “Armageddon,” Georgia mumbled to herself.

  “What?”

  “He called it Armageddon in his letter. Walter, we could be talking hundreds of deaths in what—?” She looked at her watch. It was almost seven-thirty P.M.“Under sixteen hours?”

  “I’m so sorry,” Frankel said softly. “I let you down. I let everyone down…I hope one day…you’ll forgive me.” There was a long pause, followed by an audible intake of air. It sounded like Walter Frankel was crying.

  “Shit, Walter—we all blew this one,” Georgia said with a trace of annoyance. “How could you know? You can’t let it get to you like this.”

  “I’ll take care of the disk,” he promised hoarsely. “Michaels won’t get it.”

  “It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Look, darling, whatever happens…” His voice trailed off. Georgia sensed he wanted to say more but couldn’t bring himself to. “Watch out for yourself.” He hung up.

  45

  Ralph Finney crouched in an alleyway and pressed the striker on Eddie Suarez’s red butane lighter, listening for a familiar metal click as the flame punctuated the darkness. He stared at the plume of orange. Shimmering. Contained. Then he removed his thumb, feeling the blackness surround him as if it had weight and mass. He did it again. On and off. On and off—intermittent as a flash from a lighthouse beacon. He liked the rhythm. The contradictions. In darkness, there is danger. But, he thought as he watched the flame flicker and grow again, there is danger in light, too. Maybe more.

  He waited until nearly eight P.M.—a busy time—before he breezed through the front doors of an Upper West Side fitness center and flashed his membership card at the spandex-clad brunette at the front desk. She barely noticed him. At first glance, there was no reason she should. “Ray Flynn”—the assumed name Finney had taken out the membership under, three months ago—was wearing a Syracuse University T-shirt and gray sweatpants. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  The little peculiarities about him would have taken a more alert mind to pick up. The fact that he carried no gym bag. That his sweat-soaked blond hair was plastered beneath a knit hat, though the temperatures outside were balmy. That his hands and fingernails were filthy—the result of keeping a low profile in the tunnels of Central Park until dark. Or that he was wearing sneakers without any laces—suicide prevention at the Manhattan House of Detention. No matter, thought Finney. All those peculiarities would soon be erased.

  Standing in the men’s changing room, turning the combination lock on his locker, Finney allowed himself his first deep breath since his escape. The initial run was the hardest. He had waited out the first hour at a bad Spanish movie. A busy Laundromat was his next stop. From an untended dryer, he swiped the T-shirt, socks, sweatpants, and hat.

  By early evening, he had made his way to a Barnes & Noble bookstore. His health-club membership card was stashed there in an obscure reference book. He wasn’t too worried about finding the book, however. He had told the club twice that he had lost his card and paid for replacements. Two other books in two other bookstores held those.

  He opened his locker. Fresh clothes, a bottle of men’s black shampoo-in hair color, money, fake IDs, and some interesting items he had retained as souvenirs greeted him. A good long shower, a dramatic change of hair color, some horn-rimmed glasses, and he could finish business in this town. He had plenty of business to finish.

  He stripped down and stepped into the shower, feeling its soothing warmth across his skin. With a small gel bottle, he squeezed coloring along the fine blond shafts of his hair, feeling a tingle of excitement as he imagined himself walking up to Georgia Skeehan without her realizing who
he was.

  Finney caught an odd reflection of himself in the chrome faucets. Who was this man? Celia Maldonado and her kids thought they knew—and they were wrong. And so was that fat old marshal, Cambareri. The Duffy family, whom he’d known all his life, didn’t have a clue that the man who’d held their hands at their son’s funeral had also sealed his fate. A one-way mirror, he was. He could see them all so clearly—their petty lies and hypocrisies, their jealousies and sorrows. But they never saw him until it was too late.

  He turned off the shower and rubbed a towel through his hair. Men wandered in and out of the locker room. Finney kept his distance. He wasn’t worried about the FDNY or NYPD finding him here. If they had managed to pinpoint his whereabouts, they would have made a big production out of it. He would have seen it coming.

  No, his real problem—his real fear—was the sudden bullet from behind or the tight band of twine around his neck.

  And that would only come from a man he’d never met.

  46

  Georgia nosed her Harley alongside Walter Franke’s lab on West Thirteenth Street, in the shadows of an abandoned elevated-freight bridge. Beneath it, two transvestite prostitutes stumbled about in high heels, their garish silhouettes framed by streetlights misty with the damp haze off the Hudson River.

  She cut the bike’s engine and listened. On a Sunday night at nine P.M., the only sound that punctuated the darkness was the clinking of rusty meat hooks under corrugated-tin awnings.

  A single lightbulb hung above the entrance to Frankel’s one-story building. Georgia leaned on the buzzer that was marked FDNY, FORENSIC INVESTIGATION DIVISION. She didn’t have a backup plan. Please be here, Walter, she prayed. She banged on the door, then noticed it was ajar.

  Inside, a fluorescent cylinder flickered from an overhead fixture, throwing odd shadows across the checkered asphalt tile and disappearing into darkness at the end of each hallway. Only the thin white glimmer of light coming from a frosted glass door at the end of the west hallway told her that Walter Frankel was in his office. She called to him, but he didn’t answer.

  The office door was open, the lights on. Frankel’s calico cat was mewing anxiously around his desk. Georgia called for him again but got no answer. A mug of coffee next to the telephone was still warm.

  He went to the men’s room. She’d take a seat and wait. Then she’d scold him for leaving the door open again.

  There was a faint sense of the macabre about the place, about the various pieces of equipment humming for unknown purposes and the cold, dull pewter gleam of the lab tables. Even the Arnold Schwarzenegger poster had a menacing edge to it in the harsh overhead glare.

  The calico leaped onto Georgia’s lap, and she jumped. The movement toppled a folder from a pile of papers on a side table, spilling its contents. Georgia picked up the papers. Building records of some sort. She glanced at them more closely and froze. These were the records Mac had given her, the ones that had disappeared from her car the night of the attack. What was Walter doing with them?

  A brief gasp, then a gurgling sound, emanated from Frankel’s inner office. The door was closed. Georgia tried to open it now. It wouldn’t budge. “Walter?”

  Frankel answered with a hoarse moan. Georgia threw her weight against the door and managed to push it open.

  He was lying on the floor, half wedged against the door. A dark red mass radiated from the middle of his chest where an assailant’s bullet had penetrated. His pulse was weak, his skin ashen. She elevated his feet in a feeble attempt to keep him from going into shock.

  “It’s okay. You’re gonna be all right,” she said. She pulled out her radio. “Ten-eighty-five. Marshals in need of assistance. Corner of West Thirteenth and Washington streets. Request an ambulance.” She spoke calmly, as she’d been trained to do, but inside she was shaking.

  Frankel fluttered his eyes up at her now. His skin was cold and clammy. “Let me die,” he choked out. “It’s better that way…”

  “Stop talking like that,” Georgia snapped at him. She took off her jacket and propped it under his head. “You leave the doors open, what do you expect? The Avon Lady?”

  “Michaels,” he gasped. “His guys…”

  Georgia’s stomach went into free fall. “Michaels came for the disk? But I never told him—”

  “You…didn’t…have to.” Frankel looked up at her darkly. Georgia reared back.

  “He knew you’d have it? Walter, you weren’t helping him, were you?”

  Frankel didn’t answer. A weight settled on her chest. She felt like crying.

  “But why? Why would you do a thing like that?”

  “I…never meant…to hurt you…” He coughed violently several times, then took a breath and continued. “I went to Michaels…to try to…stop the cover-up.”

  “You mean of Finney’s first three HTA fires?” Georgia frowned. “The ones the department didn’t want to make public?”

  Frankel closed his eyes and nodded. A logical chain of events began to percolate in Georgia’s brain.

  “Because you figured if you went directly to the commish about them, Brennan would retaliate and force you out of the job. So you went to Michaels—gave him copies of the Fourth Angel’s letters—because he was friends with Lynch. You assumed he’d prod the commish to investigate and you’d be off the hook, is that it?”

  Frankel winced and turned away. Georgia thought it was from the pain, but as she bent over him now, she could see it had more to do with the embarrassment and shame of her scrutiny. “Oh, Walter.” She sighed, stroking his forehead.

  “That’s why…I took the…records…from your car,” he croaked without looking at her. “I still want the truth…to come out.”

  “But how do you know Michaels?”

  “Amelia…at the hospital…”

  “Ah.”

  “I didn’t know he would…use it this way.” Frankel blinked back tears. “I didn’t know until—”

  “Until I showed you the letter,” Georgia gasped. “The one Michaels claimed to have gotten from the Fourth Angel…but he really got it from you, didn’t he? He used Finney’s fires as a smokescreen to destroy records under subpoena by the IRS.”

  “He…didn’t get…the disk.” Frankel turned and gave her a wan smile. “The poster…” He looked up at her like a child wanting to please.

  Georgia thought she understood. In Frankel’s outer lab, she tore back a glossy corner of the Schwarzenegger poster. A white legal-size envelope was neatly taped to the wall behind it. The envelope rattled about with the weight of a floppy disk inside. Please deliver to Fire Marshal Georgia Skeehan, FDNY, the lettering on the outside read.

  She ran back to Frankel waving the envelope, but he no longer seemed to see her. His skin was cold and a bluish tinge had settled in his fingers and across his lips. She held him close and stroked his face and hair. He couldn’t die. Not this way, not with all this unfinished business between them.

  “Hang on,” she whispered. He grimaced, and his breathing became raspy and inconsistent.

  “Don’t…search Finney’s place…Michaels…has it rigged.”

  “I’ll let the bureau know.” Georgia heard the squeal of an ambulance siren. “Our guys are here, Walter,” she told him, squeezing his hand. “You’re going to be okay.”

  His lips barely parted. She leaned in close.

  “Hasta…la…vista…baby,” he said. Then his jaw dropped open and his pupils became fixed and dilated. Frantically, she felt for a pulse. There was none.

  Fire department EMTs were running down the hallway now. They burst into the room. Georgia stepped back and numbly watched them check Frankel over and shake their heads. Police came and ushered her into the street while they secured the crime scene.

  She’d been calm until now. But as she watched the EMTs wheel out Frankel’s body with a sheet over it, she began to shake violently—so violently, she thought she was having a seizure. She stood by the curb, feeling a cool night breeze, listening to
the spaced-out chatter of street people. There was no place to sit down, so she sank onto the sidewalk and rocked back and forth, sobbing.

  The if-onlys came fast and furious. If only the fire department had heeded Walter’s warnings about Finney’s early fires…If only the marshals hadn’t screwed up the demolition paperwork in the first place…If only Walter had been honest with her about what he’d done…

  And the worst wasn’t over—not by a long shot. It was nine-thirty P.M. She had under fourteen hours to stop Finney’s last fire. And arrest Michaels. And confront Jimmy Gallagher. She slipped the disk into her purse.

  Her peripheral vision caught the shadow of a tall, lean, gray-haired black man talking to a couple of police detectives while he rubbed a crick out of his shoulders. Randy Carter was here. She looked up with gratitude as he walked over, dressed impeccably as always in a gray pinstriped suit and tie. He squatted down beside her and grunted with the realization that such a maneuver was becoming difficult for a man pushing sixty.

  “How you holding out, girl?”

  “Oh, Randy.” She blinked back tears. “You don’t know the half of it.” Then she remembered. “You’re supposed to be on medical leave.”

  He patted her on the shoulder. “I heard about Finney escaping. Y’all think I’m gonna sit on my butt after that?” He let a moment of silence pass between them. “I saw Frankel…damn. What happened?”

  “Am I giving you a formal statement, or are we just talking here?”

  “The statement can come when you want it to. You decide.”

  Georgia took a deep breath. “Are you up for Dunkin’ Donuts?”

  “Long story?”

  She nodded.

  “Long humdinger of a story?”

  She nodded again and smiled. He was teasing her. She needed that right now. They both did, actually.

  “All right,” he said. “But one thing. Don’t you be ordering no king-size coffees, then telling me you’ve got to pee, okay? I been there with you, remember?”