“Mac?”
He looked up in a dazed sort of way, his face a sickly yellow under the bright fluorescent lights, his eyes bloodshot and red rimmed. Georgia had assumed he’d be relieved to see her. Instead, he shuffled his large frame uncomfortably on the folding chair and looked down again at his cigarette, shaking his head.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he muttered, running the back of his other hand across the stubble on his cheeks and chin. His fingers were stained black from having his fingerprints taken. One of his ankles was cuffed to a leg of the table, and it jingled when he moved. He caught her looking at it now.
“Cops are afraid I might try to tackle ’em and off myself with one of their guns,” he said hoarsely, then went back to staring at his burning cigarette.
Georgia scrounged a metal folding chair near the wall and brought it to the edge of the scarred wooden table, facing him. She sat down close enough for their knees to touch. He shifted his legs in response. He didn’t seem to want her intimacy right now. Her eyes skimmed the length of his body.
“They took my clothes, loaned me these,” he said, sensing her scrutiny.
“Why?”
“’Cause mine are covered with blood. Her blood.” Marenko stubbed out his cigarette and put the heels of his palms to his eyes, pressing down on them hard. “It feels like someone took a crowbar to my brain.”
“Mac, if you were attacked, they’ve got no right to assume…”
“—I wasn’t attacked, okay?” he said gruffly, taking his palms away from his eyes. “There isn’t a scratch on me. Zip. I’ve just got a monster headache is all.”
Georgia put a hand on his knee. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “That’s what I keep telling ’em. I don’t know.”
Marenko ran his blackened thumb over a gouged-out moniker in the table. JA, the iceman, it read. Some sixteen-year-old hit man with a wish for immortality.
“Somebody heard shots coming from Connie’s apartment and called the cops,” he said. “Her door was locked, they busted it open and found me in her bathroom, throwing up and covered with her blood. No sign of Connie, no sign of my gun, but two bullets that match my ammo had been fired into her couch. That’s all I know, Scout—I swear. I don’t know anything else.”
“You don’t know how you ended up at Connie Ruiz’s apartment?”
He kept his eyes on the iceman’s graffiti and licked his parched lips. “That part, I know,” he said tonelessly.
“And?”
“She called me.”
Georgia took her hand off his knee. “Why would my best friend call you?”
His eyes, the color of stonewashed denim, met Georgia’s unblinkingly. “’Cause I know her, Scout.”
“Know, as in, ‘we’re both members of the International Association of Arson Investigators’? That kind of know?”
Marenko allowed a small, sad smile to play at the edges of his lips while he fiddled with the overflowing ashtray. Georgia sat staring at him for what seemed like an eternity. The weight of his words sank in gradually, eclipsing the sputtering of the fan and the buzzing of a fly that had found its way into the windowless room.
“I don’t believe you,” she whispered finally. “I don’t fucking believe you.”
Marenko winced. He seemed too tired even to defend himself. Instead, he leaned back in his chair, causing the flimsy metal to groan from his weight and the cuff around his ankle to jingle again. He combed a hand through his matted hair and stared at the ceiling. Brown water stains played at the edges of the acoustical tiles.
Georgia rose and kicked her chair aside. It fell sideways and clanged loudly on the bare concrete floor. A phone rang somewhere down the hall, and two cops conversed in agitated voices. The room felt like it was closing in. She needed air.
“You son of a bitch,” she spat out. “I hope they nail your sorry ass to the wall.”
“It’s…It’s not what you think,” he said softly, more to himself than to her, as if he’d given up all hope of convincing her. He massaged his forehead, like a man seriously hung over. “Nothing happened tonight.”
“Get your story straight, Mac. You just said you don’t remember anything—remember?”
“I’d know if I…” His voice trailed off and he frowned. “Look, Scout, Connie and I are ancient history. It’s not like that between us anymore.” He tipped another Marlboro from his pack. “I met her around the time of my divorce. We were both working on the same case. It was over almost as soon as it began.” He lit the cigarette and inhaled deeply. “I didn’t even know you then,” he said on the exhale. “You were still a firefighter.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
He grinned to himself, the old Mac glimmering beneath the fog. “Oh that would’ve gone over big: ‘Hey, Scout, I used to sleep with your best friend.’ Either you’d have ditched her, or you’d have ditched me. And for what? Hell”—he took another hit off his cigarette—“Connie must’ve figured it the same way, ’cause she never told you either.”
“What were you doing at her place, then?”
He slid his cigarette along the side of the ashtray and shaved a wad of gray ash off the tip. “She called me up, crying.”
“Connie? Crying?” Georgia frowned. She’d never seen Connie cry.
“I know,” said Marenko. “She hadn’t done that since…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head. “…She told me she’d gotten this threatening phone call maybe ten minutes earlier. Not just a crank call—something much worse. I asked her if it was some old boyfriend. She made it sound like it was related to some case she was working on, but she didn’t give me any details. All she kept saying was that this guy was for real, that he wasn’t kidding around.”
A small crease appeared in Marenko’s brow—as if he were replaying the events, asking himself if he should have done something differently. “Scout, she was terrified. What was I supposed to do? Tell her to call nine-one-one?”
He shook his head. “The cops are all thinking I either went psycho and killed her, or I have some accomplice I’m protecting. It doesn’t help that the door was locked, my gun’s missing and the only fingerprints Crime Scene can find in that apartment are mine and Connie’s.”
“Jesus, Mac, you say you’d remember having sex with her. But you can’t even remember how she got hurt? Or whether she’s alive?”
“No. I…” He kept his eyes on the gouge marks in the table. “…I keep trying to remember, Scout. It’s just some big blank spot in my head.”
“Were you drinking?”
“I had one beer—honest—that’s all. I checked her locks and windows. We watched a little TV and talked about you. I told her I was gonna leave at eleven-thirty and she should report the threats to her supervisors in the morning and get one of those caller IDs. Next thing I knew, I was covered with blood, puking up my insides, and the cops were busting down the door.”
“You smoke anything there besides tobacco?”
Marenko made a face. “I don’t do that shit. You know that.”
“Connie does.”
“Used to,” he corrected. He knew Connie pretty well, indeed, thought Georgia. “Anyway,” said Marenko, “she never did it around me.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Look, Scout, I know I was all messed up when the cops came, and I have no idea why. But I passed my Breathalyzer. I pissed in a cup at the scene and I passed a drug test.” He reached for her arm. “Georgia.”
She cocked her head at the sound of her name in his husky voice.
“I’m as scared for Connie as you are,” he said wearily. “And I swear—dear God, I swear—I don’t know what happened.”
18
Marenko wanted Georgia to go home, but she didn’t feel up to explaining everything to her mother and Richie right now. She decided to spend the rest of the night in the bunk room at the Queens fire marshals’ base in Fort Totten, twenty minutes from Flushing. She gave De
bbie her cell phone number and asked her to phone when Marenko got released.
“Now, how do I get out of the precinct without getting caught?” asked Georgia.
“I know a good route,” said Debbie. “Through the female officers’ locker room. There’s an exit door across the hall on the other side.”
The locker room was nothing like what Georgia had experienced as a firefighter. The toilets were in clean, lockable stalls with seats in the down position. A tampon dispenser hung on the wall, and the shower boasted a curtain. Female officers were commonplace in the NYPD. In the FDNY, out of more than eleven thousand active members, only about thirty were women.
“I’ve been in the fire department too long,” Georgia muttered, as she walked across the unstained carpet. “The men I work with think a lock on a bathroom door is a major feminist concession.”
They were nearly at the exit door when Georgia froze at the familiar figure barreling toward her, his tie loosened about his fleshy neck. Beads of sweat dampened the up right shafts of his thinning silver hair. He did a double take when he saw her as well.
“Skeehan,” Arthur Brennan’s voice boomed. “What the hell do you think you’re doing here?”
“Chief, I’m sorry. I was just…”
“—Detective Leahy requested an interview with the marshal,” Debbie explained without troubling to mention that Georgia was already in the precinct when he made his request. “I was escorting her out.”
Debbie’s words immediately took the steam out of Brennan. He could bully Georgia all he wanted to, but Debbie was NYPD, and Brennan knew he had no authority over her. Georgia shot Debbie a look of thanks.
“I’d like to speak to the marshal myself,” said Brennan. “Can the PD spare an interview room?”
“I’d be happy to check, Chief,” she said.
The room Debbie got for them was small and hot.
Brennan shifted and grunted—looking for all the world like Khrushchev with a bad case of hemorrhoids. A big fat fly buzzed around the room, bumping into the Plexiglas covering on the fluorescent lights. Georgia watched its frantic efforts to escape. She knew the feeling.
“I want to know what the hell is going on,” said Brennan. “And I do mean everything.” He saw the crease beginning to form on her brow. “And don’t hand me any crap about giving your statement already to detectives. I don’t care what they asked you. I’m asking the questions now.”
“Shouldn’t Mac…?”
“Marenko, because of his detention, is under union protection. I’m forbidden from talking to him without a union attorney present. You, however, have the pleasure of answering to me. First off, I want to know what your relationship with Marenko is.”
“But sir, that’s priv—”
“Don’t hand me that ACLU garbage, Skeehan. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you do it with a monkey covered with peanut butter. But I want to know if my people are clean. So you’ll answer me: What’s your relationship with Mac Marenko?”
“We’re dating,” Georgia answered stiffly.
“You’re sleeping together, then.”
“Yes.”
“And this police officer from A and E who’s missing? She’s a friend of yours?”
“Yes.”
“Were you aware that Marenko was with her tonight?”
“No.”
“Were you aware of their relationship?”
“Not before tonight.” Georgia could see the wheels turning in Brennan’s head. He was sizing up the situation as a lover’s triangle gone sour. As much as he had always liked Mac, Arthur Brennan was too politically savvy to stick his neck out on something as personal as this.
“On Monday, you asked Officer Ruiz to brief you about A and E’s interest in the Louise Rosen case, did you not?”
“How did you…?”
“Damnit, Skeehan, just answer the friggin’ question.”
Georgia tugged nervously on her fingers. “Yes, I did.”
“And what did she tell you?”
“Sir, I don’t think that has any bearing…”
Brennan slammed the table. “I’ll decide what has bearing around here. What did she tell you?”
Georgia took a deep breath. Connie was missing. Whatever it took to find her, that’s what she would do.
“Officer Ruiz told Marshal Carter and me that there had been a bomb threat against the Empire Pipeline and that the person who made the threat mentioned a Dr. Rosen.”
Georgia looked across at Brennan. There was no surprise in his features. So it’s all true, thought Georgia. The commotion at A and E, the men with metal detectors, the dog sniffing the pavement—there really might be a bomb. And Brennan knows about it. Georgia stifled a shudder. If it was out there, hundreds of innocent lives were at risk. She tried to collect her thoughts enough to continue.
“Officer Ruiz said A and E was investigating the possibility that Louise Rosen was the Dr. Rosen the blackmailer was referring to,” Georgia explained.
Brennan studied her a moment, drumming his fingers absentmindedly on the table. Then he leaned forward, the buttons on his white shirt straining at his belly. “What else do you know, Skeehan? What aren’t you telling me?”
Georgia felt her heart migrate into her throat. He knows I broke into Dana’s house. He knows, a voice inside her screamed.
“Sir, I…I’ve told you everything…”
“Bullshit, Skeehan. Bullshit…I don’t know what went on among the three of you, and I’m not sure I care yet. But you are at the center of something, and I want to know why.”
Brennan reached into his suit jacket across the chair and pulled a small tape recorder from the pocket. He set it on the conference table and pushed Play.
“It’s Robin Hood again.”
The voice was slow and deep; the vowels strangely drawn out, like sound in water. It took a moment for Georgia to realize why. The caller was running his voice through a synthesizer.
“You found Dr. Rosen, I see. And Dr. Dana, too. Those bastards deserved a little payback. And now it’s your turn: one million in cash by Friday at noon, or I will blow up the Empire Pipeline. I’ll be in touch to work out the details. There’s just one more condition: the little female fire marshal who helped me get rid of Dana? She does the drop—got that?”
Georgia’s shoulders began to quake while her hands did just the opposite, freezing in a clutch of the table rim. She felt as if a giant tuning fork were reverberating through her body. Who is this Robin Hood, she wondered? And why is he involving me in his blackmail schemes?
“Where did you get this?” she stammered.
Brennan turned off the tape recorder and regarded her closely. “It arrived at Mayor Ortaglia’s office this morning.”
Just like the tape Connie told me about on Monday, thought Georgia. “Why me?” she asked softly.
“That’s what I’d like to know,” said Brennan. “Why you?”
“I don’t know.”
“I think you do.” Brennan sat very still, looking at her. It was a classic interrogation move—the long, uncomfortable pause. Georgia looked down and bit her lip. She was a rookie—surely not important enough in the FDNY to single out. And yet this blackmailer had. Why? Because she was a woman? Because she’d handled that high-profile serial arson case last April? Or was Ajay Singh right? Was Robin Hood a firefighter? And if so…
“Do you think he knows me?” Georgia asked, giving voice to her worst fears.
“Knows you…” said Brennan, leaning forward. “—Or knows something about you. He didn’t mention Carter helping him get rid of Dr. Dana, Skeehan. He only mentions you. Why?”
Dear God, thought Georgia. Robin Hood knows what I did back at Dana’s house. Could he have seen me?
“Chief, I…I don’t know if this has any bearing, but I broke into Dana’s house. I saw the clicker to open his garage on his kitchen counter, so I slipped the lock. It was a stupid, rookie thing to do…Marshal Carter’s got nothing to do with this. Nobody d
oes—except me.”
Arthur Brennan did something Georgia was totally unprepared for. He smiled. A tiny one—almost imperceptible. He actually looked relieved.
“Do you think that’s why Robin Hood wants me?” asked Georgia.
“I don’t know,” said Brennan. “I’ll ask the PD to send a patrol car at regular intervals to check on your home and family. In the meantime, you will not mention a word about Robin Hood or the bomb threat to anyone. Are we clear on that?”
Brennan rose. Georgia rose in response and saluted. “Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
“Don’t thank me. I’d toss you out in a minute if I could. But you’re our only link to Robin Hood at the moment.”
Brennan dismissed Georgia. She left the office, shaky and light-headed from the encounter. She understood suddenly how panicked Connie must have been when she got that threatening call last night. Georgia felt the same way herself now. Someone could see her, but she couldn’t see him. In one fell swoop, he’d gotten complete control over her life. She had to find a way to get some of it back, to make sense of the seemingly random, catastrophic events of the last few hours, even if all she got back was the illusion of control.
On the way out she spotted Leahy.
“I thought I told you to scram.” He gave her an annoyed look. She might be law-enforcement at other times, but here, she was strictly the girlfriend of a suspect.
“I’m leaving now,” Georgia told him. “Detective Leahy, do you have any of your people looking for Connie’s red Suzuki?”
“Marshal, don’t tell me how to do my job. We’ve already had the vehicle impounded, along with the suspect’s. And that’s all I’m going to tell you.”
A chill traveled down Georgia’s spine. Leahy referred to Marenko not by his name, but as “the suspect.” He had already pegged Connie’s disappearance and possible murder to a love affair gone sour—just as Brennan had. In Leahy’s mind, Marenko had killed her because of jealousy, or because Connie was horning in on his new relationship—not because of anything connected to her work as a police officer.
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