Georgia sat up straight. She thumbed the dog-eared pages again. Her hands grew sweaty with excitement. Her pulse began to race. She fumbled for her bag in a drawer of the side table. Inside a zippered pouch, crumpled but undamaged, was that list on yellow legal paper she had pulled together several days ago, summarizing the fires.
With a pen from one of her medical charts, she scribbled the chapter and verse numbers, in order, on a margin of the list: 16:8,10:8,11:14,19:12.
She stared at the numerals, then at the alarm box numbers of each HTA fire. A slow smile spread across her cracked lips.
Alarm box 1608 was Finney’s first HTA, at the furniture warehouse in Manhattan. Box 1008 was that vacant in Brooklyn. Box 1114, the vacant in the Bronx. And Box 1912 was the row-frame apartment house in Queens.
All this time, she had thought it was the verses that held significance. But it was the numbers that mattered—numbers a dispatcher like Finney would know in his sleep.
But what about Spring Street—Box 2310? Georgia flipped to the end of Revelation. It stopped after twenty-two chapters. This couldn’t have been his fire.
So that means…Georgia’s fingers trembled as she tried to locate Finney’s latest passage. Chapter eighteen, verse twenty-one…Alarm box 1821?
Could it be that simple? Was there an HTA device at a building near alarm box 1821? It was ten-oh-seven. The letter promised a fire at eleven A.M. She had fifty-three minutes. She reached for her phone to dial 911, but it rang before she could pick it up. The familiar nasal voice wiped the smile from her lips.
“Did you get my letter?”
Georgia gripped the cold steel rails of her bed, willing herself to be calm.
“Yes, I got it. And I know about this morning’s fire…at Box eighteen-twenty-one.”
Silence. She heard him breathing hard. I’m right, she realized with a jolt.
“And where is Box eighteen-twenty-one?”
“I’ll know when I call your old pals in Manhattan dispatch and ask them to order an emergency evacuation.”
“Go ahead.” He laughed. “Call in the alarm. By the time you convince those jerk-offs to believe you, I’ll be in a position to blow up half this fucking building.”
The receiver fell from Georgia’s hand. It clanged against the steel bed rails. She barely noticed. He’s in the hospital.
52
Save yourself, save the hospital, save the people at Box 1821. Her priorities had to run in that order, or no one would survive.
Georgia couldn’t call security. Finney’s firebombs had been capable of leveling whole buildings. She couldn’t chance his being strapped with HTA in a wing full of infirm patients and highly flammable oxygen. Luring him away from the hospital was the safest course. But in her flimsy gown and bare feet, she wouldn’t get far. And her own clothes were ruined. She gritted her teeth and yanked the IV out of her arm. Blood oozed from the needle-mark. Where can I find a bandage? Then she remembered Richie’s Pokémon stickers in her handbag. He had gotten them the other night at Burger King. She plastered a smiling Pikachu to the wound. If Finney didn’t get her, the germs probably would.
She slipped out of her room and scanned the ninth-floor corridor, searching for a room with a heavily sedated patient. She found one three doors down.
A closet beside the sedated man’s bed revealed a pair of brown trousers, a white short-sleeve undershirt, a blue-and-brown-plaid flannel shirt, and a Mets baseball cap. Sorry, mister, she thought as she changed into the man’s clothes, laced up his oversize Keds sneakers, and headed for the fire stairs.
A clock in the hall said ten-twenty-three. The ninth-floor fire-exit door squeaked as Georgia opened it. She stepped onto the landing and peered down the vertical shaft of concrete, steel, and cinder block. Sounds echoed through the stairwell, washing over her in a distorted, dreamlike manner. A dropped coin somewhere below had the clarity of a Buddhist chime. Fragments of voices ebbed and flowed, as if borne on the wind. The thud of Georgia’s sneakers down the steps mimicked a heartbeat. She became dizzy, fighting the urge to pitch forward. Her stomach sloshed about with queasy uncertainty.
By the sixth floor, she felt too weak to continue. Best take the elevator from here, she told herself. Less physical exertion. More safety in numbers. She tried the sixth-floor fire door. It was stuck. A small wire-mesh window was cut into the metal. She peeked through it. A face shot back at her—a man with horn-rimmed glasses and jet-black hair. Their eyes locked for one surprised moment, the man’s glasses magnifying the chill in those pale blue irises. Then his lips pressed together with mocking certainty. Georgia recoiled. She’d know that face anywhere.
He pushed hard on the door, sending Georgia reeling to the opposite wall. She stumbled down a half flight of stairs, so weak that only the rough porousness of the cinder block kept her from collapsing.
“You think you can outrun me?” Ralph Finney laughed. “You couldn’t do it ten years ago. You sure as hell can’t do it now.”
Trembling and wheezing, Georgia scrambled into the fifth-floor hallway and flattened herself against a wall. Her lungs burned as she felt her way forward, keeping an eye on the door. A cool metal cylinder twanged against her outstretched hand: a familiar sound.
Now, her reflexes shouted as Finney opened the hallway door. Sweat poured off her body. Her heart pounded wildly in her chest. She peeled away from the wall as Finney lunged for her. Then she grabbed the CO2 fire extinguisher, pulled the metal pin, and aimed the hose. A white cloud of CO2 blasted Finney’s face. He retreated into the stairwell, clawing at his stinging eyes.
“You’re dead, bitch,” he screamed.
Georgia put the canister down and raced toward a bank of elevators down the hall. It wasn’t until she was nearly upon them that she noticed something different about this wing. A mobile of black-and-white ponies hung above a nurses’ station. The wall behind a lounge sported a colorfully painted clown and blocks. Tiny cries floated from a patient’s door, which was taped all over with pink balloons.
She was in the maternity ward. Worse, Georgia realized, as she neared a large glass viewing window filled with palm-size infants, oxygen tanks, and monitors, she was in the premature nursery.
Finney was half a corridor behind her now. His eyes were red-rimmed from CO2. His shoe-polish hair was damp. His bulked-out jacket was pulled loosely around him.
Goose bumps puckered along Georgia’s bruised arms. Finney was in the perfect place to launch an HTA device. She had to do something fast.
Then she noticed it, just to the side of the nursery viewing window. A red metal box, chest high. A fire alarm!
Georgia pulled the handle. A sharp clanging echoed through the wing. Finney started as hospital staff, patients, and visitors poured into the hall. Maintenance men appeared. Nervous parents pressed anxiously against the nursery windows. Finney was jostled by the crowd, his moment gone. There was too much commotion to set a bomb or slip away.
The babies are safe, Georgia decided. The false alarm would bring fire trucks. The trucks would be a ready connection to Manhattan dispatch—and the location of Box 1821.
A beefy security guard grabbed Georgia’s wrist.
“That’s her,” yelled a nurse, gesturing over the crowd. “That’s the crazy woman who pulled the alarm! I saw her.”
The guard spun Georgia around and began to frisk her.
“I’m a fire marshal,” she shouted over the alarm. “If you’ll just give me a minute—”
“Yeah, yeah,” said the guard, patting her down. “You can tell it all to my boss the easy way”—he reached for a set of handcuffs on his belt—“or the hard.”
“But I’m not the one you want…” Georgia lifted herself up on tiptoe and peered over the guard’s shoulder at the throngs of patients and staff milling about the hallway. Finney had disappeared. It suddenly dawned on her how off balance she looked in her baggy brown trousers and flannel shirt with her bruised face and tangled hair, and how useless any explanation would be.
As the guard fumbled to unhitch his cuffs, she bolted. Painful spasms ripped into Georgia’s gut. Her windpipe constricted to a pinhole, making every breath feel like a punch to her solar plexus. She couldn’t keep this up. She had to find a way out.
Beyond a supply room, an unmarked door led to a flight of stairs. Georgia stumbled down them now. The guard, it seemed, was in pursuit. She could hear the metal clang of the door above her and footsteps thudding overhead.
The stairs ended in a windowless room of gray-painted cement. The sub-basement. High-pressure steam boilers rose twenty feet in the air, and generators hummed like giant washing machines. At the far end of the room, beyond dozens of color-coded pipes, catwalks, gauges, and dials, a glowing red exit sign loomed. Georgia held her side and raced toward it.
A metallic click from behind stopped her in midstride. It resonated over the white noise of the generators. Georgia froze, gasping for breath. Hospital security guards don’t carry guns.
“Turn around, bitch.”
She turned. Ralph Finney stood before her with a nine-millimeter semiautomatic aimed at her head. The dyed-black hair and glasses accentuated something odd in his face that had been easier to cover up before.
He stepped closer. “You’ve always been afraid of guns, haven’t you?” he asked with that deadly nonchalance he could slip into on a moment’s notice. “Maybe you knew you’d die this way.” He shook his head. “Funny, I’d planned to burn you. But with all the flammable stuff down here, I can’t take that chance.”
Georgia didn’t answer. All she could feel now were sensations—the rumble of the boiler behind her, the whir of the generators, the stark glare of the overhead fluorescents, the ceaseless noise and heat.
Finney grinned. “Too bad, really. You’d have burned pretty as a matchstick. Sort of like, oh…I don’t know…Petie Ferraro? How’d it feel, Georgia, to watch him fall into that fiery hole? To know you crapped out on a brother?”
She gritted her teeth. “Leave his memory out of this.”
“Why? Can’t face the truth? That you fucked up someone’s life? Like you did mine?”
“I never did anything to you.”
“You’re the reason I’m not a firefighter…You’re the reason!” he screamed, his voice reverberating through the cavernous interior. “You took something from me…ten long years ago…and you can’t give it back.” He aimed the gun close-range at her forehead. “So now I’m gonna repay the favor.”
She heard the safety click. The sound stripped her of everything but reflex and impulse. Instinctively, she ducked and rolled away as he fired. Above her head, a high-pitched whistle resonated, followed by a hissing. And then Finney hit the floor, screaming as a white cloud of vapor enveloped him. When it cleared, his skin was as pink as a slice of boiled ham. Blisters as big as jellyfish filled with fluid on his neck and face. Alarms rang. Buzzers sounded. Overhead, an invisible stream of deadly high-pressure steam continued to whistle from a small bullet hole that had pierced a pipe.
Georgia ducked under the invisible jet of steam and dragged Finney away, but already, his body was going into convulsions and shock. He jerked violently and gasped for breath. She tilted his chin up to do CPR. His eyes remained steady, his pupils dilated to the size of dimes. He was already starting to swell. He wasn’t screaming anymore. He was whimpering. A sound like a cat in heat. It made her skin crawl.
An engine company lumbered into the boiler room now—drawn, no doubt, by Georgia’s false alarm. One firefighter went to find the engineer to turn off the steam pipe and stop the deadly spray. The others began first aid on Finney. Georgia stepped back to let the men take over.
“What happened?” the captain asked, eyeing her suspiciously. Georgia looked at the clock on the wall. Ten-thirty-three. She had twenty-seven minutes.
“I’m a fire marshal, Captain. My name’s Georgia Skeehan. Please, I need to use your radio. There’s going to be a big fire at eleven A.M. A lot of lives could be at stake.”
He regarded her warily. “You have ID?”
“No…”
“Look, lady,” he explained. “The police are going to have to sort this out. Why don’t you just stand over there.”
Finney was convulsing. Georgia backed up to the exit door. When the captain turned away to direct the rescue effort, she ran for the lobby.
53
The uniforms were everywhere by the time Georgia made it into the lobby of New York Hospital. She searched for a familiar face among the firefighters, but with their helmets on, they all looked the same.
And then she saw him. He was perched awkwardly on a chair, dressed in gray sweatpants and a fire department sweatshirt, talking to a couple of the arriving firefighters. His face was red and slightly swollen, with a shadow of black stubble across it. He winced as he shifted in his seat. She never thought she’d be so happy to see Mac Marenko.
He stood tentatively as she approached him, towering above her as he took in her baggy clothes and tangled hair beneath a baseball cap. It took him a moment to realize who she was.
“Scout?”
“I pulled the alarm…”
“You what?” He led her by the elbow away from the other firefighters.
“I know where Finney’s fire’s gonna be. At alarm box eighteen-twenty-one. At eleven A.M. I just don’t know where that is. Please, Mac, help me.”
He frowned at her. “How can you be sure?”
“There’s no time to explain. You’ve just got to trust me.”
Marenko licked his blistered lips, then wiped them with the back of his hand, still bandaged from where an IV had been inserted. He squinted at an engine double-parked outside the revolving doors.
“C’mon,” he said.
“Where?”
“Just follow my lead.”
A jowly firefighter with thinning gray hair stood beside the rig, smoking a cigarette.
“Johnny?” Marenko called out.
“Mac?” said the man, stamping out his cigarette and breaking into a smile. “Jesus Christ, I heard what happened. How ya doin’?”
“Okay. Listen, this is Marshal Skeehan. She needs to use your rig’s radio.”
The big man took in Georgia’s clothes and furrowed his brow. Then he looked at Marenko and shrugged. “Yeah, okay, Mac. Whatever you say.”
“Thank you,” Georgia said to Mac and the chauffeur. Then she climbed into the rig and depressed the button on the radio.
“This is Fire Marshal Georgia Skeehan. Request mixer off.” “Mixer off” was a fire department term that meant the message would not be broadcast over the airwaves.
“Mixer off. Go ahead,” said the dispatcher.
“I have information about a possible firebomb threat at box alarm one-eight-two-one. Can you give me a location on one-eight-two-one, K.” The “K” meant the transmission was over. Her voice sounded smooth and in control—totally in contrast to what she was feeling. The radio had a way of doing that.
“Affirmative. Will run that check. K.” She heard the dispatcher tap in the numbers on his computer, then return to the line. “Box number one-eight-two-one is in Manhattan. Eighteen blocks due south of your current location. Five blocks due west. Corner of Fifty-first Street and Fifth Avenue.”
A lead weight settled on Georgia’s chest. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe. The blood drained from her extremities, replaced by a pins-and-needles sensation. Her hands refused to work, though strangely, all pain from her injuries ceased to exist. Every neuron was focused on that address. On the people inside. On her mother and son.
Mac, sensing something awful, hoisted himself into the rig.
“What’s wrong?”
The dispatcher’s voice crackled over the radio: “Box alarm one-eight-two-one is located at the northwest corner of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.”
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Georgia couldn’t believe it, even after the dispatcher said the words, then gave the time: 10:43 A.M. She closed her eyes and pictured the cathedr
al. The annual Fire Department Memorial Mass was always a standing-room-only affair. Twenty-four hundred people would already be jammed into the pews of the white marble landmark—firefighters, widows, children, all the department brass, and, at some point, though probably not yet, even the mayor. It was the perfect event for a man hellbent on revenge against the FDNY.
Georgia’s voice cracked from the strain. “Call it in to Battalion Eight. Advise Battalion Eight to evacuate Saint Patrick’s immediately.”
“On whose orders?”
“On my orders. I’ll take charges if I’m wrong.”
“I need higher clearance.”
Marenko grabbed the speaker from Georgia’s hands. “Jesus Christ! You goddamned prick! Pretend she’s the bomber, okay? She’s telling you an HTA firebomb’s gonna take the fuckin’ roof off Saint Pat’s at eleven. Do you wanna take that chance or not?”
The dispatcher hesitated. “This is on record.”
“Fine,” said Marenko. “Bronze it on my ass if you’d like. Just get those people out of there.” He clicked off the radio.
Georgia rubbed her palms together, trying to fight the panic thrumming through every organ in her body. She was drowning in it—the what-ifs, the why-didn’t-I’s. Finney’s plan seemed so clear to her now. Why hadn’t she seen it before?
“I’ve got to get down there,” she mumbled, listening to the calm, expressionless voices over the airwaves. In seventeen minutes, the service would begin. A wall of sound, rich and resonant, would spring forth from the organ and vibrate through the clerestory. No one would hear the first pop and crackle of flames until it was too late.
“Okay. Just relax,” Marenko told her, rubbing a hand tenderly across her cheek. “I know you’re worried about your mom and Richie. Maybe we can get the rig to take us down.”
“It’ll take ten minutes to get clearance. And another ten to go two feet in midtown traffic. By then, everybody could be dead.”
He looked up at the ceiling of the cab as if he were trying to sort through the possibilities. Then he exhaled and cursed. “Scoot over,” he commanded.
The Fourth Angel Page 29