Her brooding thoughts were broken by a set of heavy footsteps lumbering up the choir loft stairs. Georgia turned and took in the bushy silver eyebrows and grizzled, solemn expression. Jimmy Gallagher moved toward her, a meaty hand extended, then stopped, sensing some boundary between them. The hand hung in the air an instant, then flopped back at his side.
“I’ve looked for Richie everywhere, love. Lord knows, he’s probably out. Let’s at least take cover.”
Georgia recoiled. “Get away from me! I know what you did.” She rubbed a grimy hand across her face and fought back tears. All the misery of the last twenty-four hours came back to her in waves and she inhaled deeply, trying to suck it all back into some corner inside herself to keep from breaking down.
Gallagher froze and stared at her, pain bunching up the deeply etched wrinkles around his watery blue eyes. He went to say something, then simply shook his head.
“Not now, love,” he said softly, reaching again for her hand. “C’mon. Now’s not the time.”
He tried to lead her to the stairs, but Georgia pushed him away. “I found Quinn’s mask in your locker. And that computer disk—”
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he mumbled as if he hadn’t heard her.
“Jimmy, are you listening?” she shouted angrily. “I know you killed Terry Quinn. I trusted you. Every man I trust just…” Her voice trailed off.
He winced as if struck by a blow, then shoved his hands in his pockets, swallowing hard to regain his composure. He didn’t look at her. Instead, he leaned over the choir rail.
“Father in heaven,” he said softly. “I wanted to tell you everything…so many times…but then what? How would that help you? Or Quinn? Or his family?” He turned to face her. “I had to make a choice, love. Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” she said coldly. “I understand your choice: freedom or prison.”
“No.” He frowned. “Not that kind of choice. I could tell the world that a brother had screwed up and killed all those people—or I could let him die a hero.”
The words tore through her like a bullet.
“Are you saying that Terry Quinn set the Spring Street fire?” Not Quinn. Not a dead hero with a wife and two little girls.
“I never looked at what was on that disk Terry gave me. I wouldn’t know a floppy from a hard drive. But I did know Terry was in trouble. I just never put it together until the fire…”
“Put what together?”
Gallagher paced the choir loft now, the stark light of the construction bulb refracting off his silver hair. “Terry tried every legal means to stop that halfway house for sex offenders from being opened in his neighborhood. Nothing worked.” Gallagher ran a calloused hand, hardened from a lifetime of firefighting, through his hair. He took a deep breath and continued.
“Kathleen Quinn used to work for Michaels. Terry figured a rich man like that could put pressure on the right people. Instead, Michaels had the house burned, then fixed it so that if Terry ever said anything, it would look like he did it.”
“Why?”
“Because, love…when Sloane Michaels does a favor, he expects one in return. A year later, he ordered Terry to burn down Spring Street in repayment.”
Georgia felt her head spin. She stepped to the railing and looked out over the vastness of the cathedral, at the high altar with its gleaming bronze canopy and the overturned vases of lilies lining the red-carpeted aisles.
“Jimmy, you knew this?” she asked.
“I knew Michaels was pressuring Terry to burn a building. I didn’t know which one until the fire.” Gallagher closed his eyes and shook his head. “You gotta understand, love. Terry didn’t know about that party. He figured the building was empty and the fire would burn so fast, it’d be over before anyone got hurt. He was a good man in a bad situation, he was.”
Georgia wiped a hand across her forehead. She tried to shake off the incessant thrumming, like a swarm of bees, that vibrated through her—a mix of fear, exhaustion, and confusion. At every exit, there were still civilians pushing to get out and people lying beneath them, crushed and in need of medical attention.
“But you killed Terry,” Georgia said, her voice cracking with the realization of it all. “You took his mask…you stuck that cheater in his pocket.”
“I was angry at what he’d done—the stupidity, the waste. I knocked him out, I did…I could’ve pulled him out of there, unconscious…and I…chose not to.” Gallagher paused, smearing the back of his hand across his red-rimmed eyes. “I let him go. For his sake—and the department’s. He couldn’t have lived with those deaths on his head.”
Gallagher braced his trembling hands against the railing beside her. “What would you have done, love?” he asked softly. “Would you have wanted to see the department dragged through that? Or his widow and kids?”
He pinched his eyelids together. Tears spilled down his leathery cheeks and he looked away, embarrassed. He’d spent twenty-eight years crawling through the ashes. Twenty-eight years walking through walls of fire and bringing brothers back from the dead. And it had all come down to this. She sensed his deep lament and it touched her.
“Please, Georgia,” he said to her. “Please let me try to get you out of here. I don’t want another life on my conscience.”
She looked at her watch. It was ten-fifty-eight. She turned away from the railing. Suddenly, an anguished voice called up to her.
“Mama!”
He hadn’t called her “Mama” since he was two. He stood, arms outstretched, his navy blue jacket torn on the sleeve, his shirttails untucked, his black wavy hair matted on one side. Tears streamed down his swollen, bruised face. “Mama,” he sobbed again. He must have been knocked unconscious and trampled in the stampede.
“I’m coming down, baby.”
Georgia raced to the top of the staircase. When she turned around, Gallagher was still on the balcony, staring at the gleaming copper wire, sinewy and alive with its poisonous energy. The light from the construction lamp reflected in the pool of water beneath the strands.
“This thing works on electricity, right?” he called over to her.
“Yes, but those wires carry two hundred and fifty amps of current. And you can’t disconnect the power.”
“I wasn’t planning to.” There were tears in his eyes.
“Take care of yourself, love. Tell your mother I love her, always have…”
“Jimmy, you can’t.” Georgia took a step toward him, but he crossed himself and ordered her to stay back.
“Tell ’em, love, if they ask, that this is still the greatest job in the world.”
Then he stuck his left shoe in the puddle of water and clamped his right fist hard around the stripped copper wire. His body jerked violently, and he shrieked. Waves of convulsions racked him, and a halo of sparks buzzed overhead. Georgia stood back, waiting for the flash of the HTA firebomb. But it didn’t ignite.
Her knees gave out and she sank to the floor, shaking. Richie raced up the stairs now, and Georgia ordered him to stay back from the electrically charged site. Two firefighters came rushing over. One took the sobbing child; the other smelled the sickly-sweet odor of burned flesh, saw Gallagher, and made the sign of the cross.
Georgia reached for her handie-talkie and attempted to depress the button three times before she could get her fingers to work.
“Mayday! Mayday!” she croaked out across the airwaves. “Firefighter down in the balcony.” Greco came on the line.
“Can you evacuate him? It’s eleven-oh-two. The device was set to blow two minutes ago.”
“But Chief, it’s Gallagher who’s down,” she stammered. “He shorted out the device. He spared the cathedral.”
“How bad is he hurt?”
She looked across the balcony at his lifeless body. “Chief,” she said, trying to stave off the rising emotion in her voice. “Firefighter Gallagher made the supreme sacrifice.”
55
The department buried Jimmy Gal
lagher with full honors. His flag-draped casket was paraded before a throng of firefighters from all over the country. Georgia and her mother attended the funeral, which was held, fittingly, at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. Margaret put on her best face. At home, she cried a lot. She’d buried two men in her life. She seemed to age overnight.
Georgia tried to think of words of comfort, but there were none. Gallagher couldn’t have lived long with the shame of knowing he was a de facto accomplice to the Spring Street fire. Or that he’d given a lifetime to saving people, yet made a choice to let Quinn die rather than risk the good name of his friend or the honor of his beloved department.
Walter Frankel wouldn’t have fared any better under the scrutiny. For his funeral, Georgia bought a wide-screen version of The Terminator and stuck it in his casket. Maybe the next world had DVD and Dolby stereo.
For both Gallagher and Frankel, giving up their lives in the line of duty was the only way they could’ve ever—in their hearts—set things right. They knew it. And so did Georgia, though it was something she couldn’t share with her mother. So she became the mother for a while, cooking and consoling and arranging activities to bring some order to her mother’s loss. One afternoon, she started taking apart the pool table to refurbish.
At first, Margaret was appalled, insisting she could never play again. But gradually, as the white, mildewed wood turned to a rich, chestnut-colored hue in Georgia’s hands, her mother began to understand what Georgia had all along: Jimmy Gallagher wouldn’t have wanted them to grow old and musty in his absence, any more than he would have the pool table.
Wine, women, and wood get better with age. Wasn’t that what he’d said? Georgia’s efforts brought her closer to her mother than she’d been in years. Gallagher would have liked that. These days, she carried her father’s key chain with her everywhere—in honor not only of her dad, but of Gallagher as well.
Ralph Finney survived, if one could call it that. He spent two months in the hospital before being released to stand trial on multiple first-degree murder and arson charges. The prosecutor wanted mandatory life in prison. The defense pleaded insanity. Nobody spoke about the death penalty, probably because a jury might be disinclined to convict a man so horribly disfigured by his own actions. He had no facial hair, no lips, and only a small, strange lump of what looked like candle wax for a nose.
He had to be in a lot of pain. But when Georgia gave her deposition and looked into that hideous face, she thought of the brave young firefighter, Sean Duffy, who gave his life to save a little girl’s. She focused on his pain, fear, and suffering, and that of Finney’s other victims who could no longer speak for themselves.
Newspapers hailed Georgia as a hero. The publicity embarrassed her. Hero. What did that mean? Heroes greeted every encounter with undaunting courage and undiluted faith in themselves and the world around them. She could never be like that.
One morning a month or so after the ordeal, on a routine investigation, she bumped into the firefighter who’d helped her lift that infant and mother out of Saint Patrick’s. She didn’t even know his name. They nodded to each other and waved across the space of several fire trucks. And then he went back to helping a chain of fellow firefighters pack up hose in the back of a rig.
Watching him, no one would’ve guessed the risks he’d taken for a woman and child he’d never meet again. There was no camera to record it, no medal to note it. He didn’t get his name in the paper. He showed up. He did his job and he asked for nothing in return.
Georgia wondered if her definition of heroism had been too simplistic. Maybe heroism wasn’t a bright torchlight in the heat of battle. Maybe it was just a steady, smoldering ember of conscience that refused to surrender. Heroes were men and women who had suffered every bit as much despair, failure, and doubt as the rest of the world. They just toughed it out one minute longer.
Michaels’s computer disk was turned over to the IRS. The agency was quickly able to match up the names on the disk with figures in organized crime and international drug trafficking, and begin the lengthy process of tracing funds and auditing records. Some of Michaels’s “clients” fled the country. Others were arrested to stand trial. With Michaels gone and his name tarnished, his empire quickly crumbled. So did Amelia. Three weeks after the ordeal, she slipped into a coma and died. Georgia read later that the Knickerbocker Plaza was being sold to a French conglomerate.
Gene Cambareri, fully recovered, was given the biggest retirement party Georgia had ever seen. Half the department—or so it seemed—showed up at an Italian social club in Gravesend Bay, Brooklyn, to wish him well, which wasn’t surprising, since he’d split a box of doughnuts or played a hand of gin rummy at nearly every firehouse in the city. The entire task force went—all except for Carter, who couldn’t make it. He’d gone down to North Carolina—by himself—to visit Cassie’s grave. He didn’t mention it when he returned except to tell Georgia that his little girl had been buried in a lovely spot overlooking an open field of buttercups, rimmed with tall pines. When Carter told her about the place, he seemed at peace.
A month and a half after the fire, the mayor hosted a luncheon to celebrate the work of the Bureau of Fire Investigation. There, Lynch and Brennan circled each other like two piranhas. Nothing had changed between the commissioner and the chief fire marshal. Yet Lynch, the consummate politician, clearly saw no advantage to bringing up departmental misdeeds when his power was on the rise. Now Georgia knew those misplaced building records would never be brought to light. Nor the shenanigans at the La Guardia Arms. Nor the gambling den in Washington Heights. Crime gets punished, but corruption and inefficiency just ramble along. There was nothing more anyone could do but move on.
Georgia tried to do the same. In the weeks that followed, she spent a lot of time with Richie—taking walks, going out for pizza, and shooting hoops in the backyard. Mac Marenko stopped by often as well. His kind and steady presence buoyed their spirits and seemed to soften the disappointment Richie felt when week after week passed with no word from his father. Georgia knew there wouldn’t be any word—knew the hurt would always be there. But she kept those thoughts to herself. Sometimes you just have to allow people a chance to be forgiven, even if they never take it. Georgia wondered if the same applied to her. There was only one way to find out.
On a cloudless Sunday afternoon in early June, Marenko drove Georgia to a two-story, vinyl-sided cape in Valley Stream, Long Island. It was a street of modest houses, tidy lawns, and the clutter of small children. In the cape’s backyard, Georgia spotted bicycles, baseball bats, and a doll’s carriage. The front door, with its oval-shaped frosted glass pane, sported a wreath of fake roses in the center. The mailbox, with an American flag etched on the side, read MR. AND MRS. P. FERRARO. It had been more than two years since Petie’s death, but Melinda had never changed the lettering.
“I can’t do it,” Georgia stammered upon seeing the mailbox.
“Sure you can,” Marenko prodded. “She’s expecting you. You can’t back out now.”
Georgia wrapped a finger around the red-and-white string securing the box of Italian pastries in her lap. “What do I say to the woman?”
“Tell her how much you liked Petie. The good stuff you remember about him. Tell her about your own childhood, growing up after your dad died. What helped you. What got your mother through it all.”
“How do I”—she swallowed—“tell her how sorry I am?”
Marenko took his hands off the steering wheel and planted them on her shoulders, giving her a little, reassuring squeeze. “Just say the words, Scout. Say them and the rest will come.”
She stared again at the door and licked her dry lips. “Will you be here when I come out?”
“You bet.”
“You won’t leave?”
“Not if you don’t want me to.”
She looked at him for a long moment and thought she saw a trace of panic in those sparkling blue eyes. Like he wasn’t sure what she’d say. After all they
’d been through, he still wasn’t sure. She opened the car door and got out. Then she shut the door and leaned in the open window. “Mac?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t want you to.”
More from Suzanne Chazin
Flashover
Georgia Skeehan, a marshal with the New York City Fire Department, investigates the deaths of two doctors, both victims of fires that show signs of a "flashover"—the overwhelming combustion of a room and its contents by simultaneous ignition. Each worked on the board approving "line of duty" compensation for disabled firefighters.
Georgia is left grasping at straws when her best friend, a detective with the NYPD, disappears, and Georgia’s boyfriend and fellow marshal is found in her blood-spattered apartment. Betrayals—both private and professional—have never hit so close to home. Georgia finds frightening evidence that a long-ago tragedy may be behind these vengeful acts. The question is, can she stop them before they consume their ultimate target—Georgia herself?
Fireplay
After a fire kills two of New York's bravest, New York City Fire Department Marshal Georgia Skeehan is forced to collaborate with an FBI informant—a slick, vicious arsonist-for-hire known as "the Freezer". As Georgia is drawn deep undercover, the truth brings her face to face with the one person from her past she doesn't know she can betray. Torn between loyalty and her own desire for vengeance, Georgia will be forced to get closer to a killer than she's ever had to before.
Close enough to burn.
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