“So a leak of the magnitude we just saw couldn’t happen?” asked Georgia.
Welcastle shook his head. “Even if we instantly shut down the system, we can’t do anything about the fuel already in that section of the pipeline.” The chairman ran a nervous hand through his sawdust-colored hair. “Chief Delaney’s scenario is not incorrect.”
One pipeline leak in forty years. Georgia mulled that record over in her head. So what was that 1984 Division of Safety Report about?
“Mr. Welcastle? Was there ever a pipeline leak in North Brooklyn in 1978? At a warehouse on Bridgewater Street?”
The crow’s feet thickened around Welcastle’s colorless eyes. A nervous energy seemed to radiate through his lean body. He licked his thin lips without answering. Georgia saw him shoot a look around the room. No one spoke. Georgia turned to Delaney now.
“Chief? You wrote a report on that fire, I believe.”
Delaney’s ex-military posture seemed to slump a little. “I have no memory of such a report,” he said thickly.
“You are mistaken, young lady,” said Welcastle tightly. “There was no leak on the pipeline ever—with the exception of the incident I just told you about. We have teams of engineers as we speak, scouring every inch of the pipeline for evidence of tampering,” said Welcastle. “We’re using X-ray monitors, infrared scanners—you name it. So far, we’ve come up with nothing.”
“Can’t you just shut down the pipeline?” asked Georgia.
“This is not a simple process,” said Welcastle. “The airports are absolutely dependent on us to supply jet fuel. Without it, New York businesses, shipping and mail delivery would grind to a halt. The city would lose millions.”
“And then we’d have to go to the public and explain why we’ve shut everything down,” Gus Rankoff added. “Most New Yorkers don’t even know we have a pipeline. That’s why it’s imperative that we handle this situation as quietly as possible. No task forces. No Feds. No press. And most of all, no blowups on the pipeline. Empire will supply the million in cash. We have no choice.”
“You see, young lady,” said Welcastle, “I know my pipeline’s safe. But I’m damned if I’m going to try to convince eight and a half million New Yorkers of that.”
25
Chief Brennan offered to get one of the fire marshals at Brooklyn base to take Georgia back to Woodside, but she begged off in favor of the subway. She needed time alone to sort through the events of the past couple of days—Rosen’s and Dana’s deaths, Connie’s disappearance and, perhaps most of all, why Robin Hood would choose her to set up the blackmail of Empire. This last complication scared her. She found herself staring into the faces of strangers on the subway, wondering if behind one of their bored stares were the watchful eyes of Robin Hood. Every firefighter gave her pause now. Their casual glances and innocuous remarks seemed fraught with new meaning. Are you the one? Did Connie figure you out? Is that why she wrote the word Bridgewater in her binder? Is that why she’s missing?
In the rumble of the subway, Georgia kept coming back to the same ancient link: a twenty-five-year-old fire in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, that no one seemed to want to talk about. Who would know about a warehouse fire that old?
Greenpoint was an industrial waterfront neighborhood, heavily Polish in makeup. There were lots of warehouses in the area and probably plenty of fires over the years. This one would mean nothing to most people. But Mac knows Greenpoint, thought Georgia. Marenko had spent half his childhood there before his family moved to Long Island. When Marenko first became a fire marshal, Brooklyn was his base of operations. Georgia fished out her cell phone and dialed his number. He picked up on the first ring.
“If this is another goddamned reporter, you can take your story and shove it up your…”
“Mac, it’s me.”
“Oh.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Story’s all over the friggin’ news,” he said. “I haven’t even been charged yet, and everyone’s acting like I’m going to the chair. Christ,” he said softly. “I had to tell my kids. I feel so torn up inside.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah, I know. Thanks.”
“Listen,” said Georgia. “I need to ask you about something. I was in Connie’s apartment this morning.”
Silence. “You…shouldn’t have gone there,” he muttered. Georgia sensed him shuddering on the line.
“I know,” said Georgia, thinking the same thing herself. “But, Mac, Connie wrote something in her sergeant’s binder. She wrote the word Bridgewater. Does that mean anything to you?”
“Only Bridgewater I know is a street in my old neighborhood in Brooklyn. Why?”
“Because there was a fire at a warehouse there in 1978 that seems to tie into a lot of stuff I’m working on right now—including Connie’s disappearance. And no one wants to tell me anything about it.”
“I don’t know about it, either,” said Marenko. “My parents had moved us to Long Island by seventy-eight. But I betcha some old-timer out of Ladder One-twenty-one would know. That’s their response area.”
“I’ll call the firehouse. In the meantime, can you talk to some folks in the neighborhood and see what you can find out about this blaze?”
There was a pause. “Scout,” Marenko pleaded. “I’m about as desperate as a man can be to find out what’s going on. But I don’t see how some twenty-five-year-old fire’s gonna tell us anything.”
Georgia hung on the line without speaking.
“There’s something else, isn’t there?” he said. “Something you’re not telling me.”
“C’mon,” Georgia coaxed. “You sit in your apartment brooding all afternoon, you’ll go crazy.” His apartment was on the sixth floor of a tenement walkup in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. It consisted of a sagging sofa, a mound of old Sports Illustrateds, a weight bench and a view of a fire escape. It would be depressing even if he weren’t facing a murder rap.
“Why don’t I see what I can find out through the firehouse,” said Georgia, “while you talk to some of the old ladies in the neighborhood. They’ll love a nice Polish boy like you.”
“I’m half Italian,” he reminded her flatly.
“So? Fake it.”
“What? I’m supposed do a polka or something?”
“No, just stand there and look confused. That shouldn’t be hard for you.”
He sighed. “There’s a bar in Greenpoint called the Baltic. On McGuinness Boulevard and One Hundred Eighty-ninth Street. Meet me there in an hour and a half. We’ll compare notes, all right?”
“You can’t drink, you know,” Georgia reminded him.
“I can inhale, can’t I?”
26
In the typical seesaw fashion of city fiscal logic, Ladder One-twenty-one and Engine Two-oh-three were closed up in the mid-1980s because of budgetary cutbacks, then reopened in spanking new quarters eight blocks away in the early 1990s. The result, unfortunately, was that there were no old-timers in the new Greenpoint firehouse. They had long ago been scattered to other parts of the city.
Georgia stood at the entrance of the sleek new firehouse, all concrete and beige tile, and interviewed Lieutenant Prager, the officer on duty. Prager was simply too young to know anything about a twenty-five-year-old fire. Georgia was ready to leave when he snapped his fingers.
“Denise Flannagan,” the lieutenant said suddenly. “She might know. She’s Captain Flannagan’s widow. He was the captain of the old Ladder One-twenty-one. She comes around here sometimes with cakes and cookies for the guys. Nice lady. She runs a day-care center out of her row house here in Greenpoint.”
Prager didn’t have Denise Flannagan’s address, but Georgia got it from a phone book and walked the few blocks to a yellow aluminum-sided row house with crepe-paper cutouts of children on the front windows and the squeal of youngsters out back. It was a cheerful house with flowers in the window boxes and balls in the front yard. And yet, on closer inspection, it was a house in sore ne
ed of repair. The concrete stoop was crumbling. The iron railing was rusting into the cement. The gutters looked old and pitted, and there were stains along the edges of the roof where it had been leaking. Georgia walked up the long concrete stoop to ring the doorbell.
A woman about Georgia’s age answered. She had fine, dark blond hair pulled up in a straggly bun and the greenest eyes Georgia had ever seen. Although she wore no makeup, her skin was smooth and flawless, all except for a certain tiredness about the eyes. She had a baby on her shoulder.
“Excuse me,” said Georgia. “I’m looking for Denise Flannagan.”
“I’m Tricia, her daughter,” said the woman. The baby started to cry. “Can I help you?”
Georgia showed the woman her badge. “I was hoping to talk to your mother about a fire that happened in the neighborhood many years ago.” Georgia had to shout over the baby’s cries. “Have I got you at a bad time?”
Tricia nodded to the child. “With Kolya, every time is bad.”
“Your son?”
“Kolya? No, I’m not Polish, but a lot of the kids we care for are,” said Tricia. “My two are in back. My mother and I run a day-care center. We’ve got six besides mine we take care of. Come in.”
Georgia stepped through the front door. There were baby swings and playpens and sippy cups of juice everywhere. In the corner, Barney the purple dinosaur danced across the television screen. Above the television, a crucifix hung on the wall and next to it, a cross-stitch of the same Irish blessing Georgia’s mother had in their kitchen: May the wind be at your back…May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you’re dead.
“My mom’s just putting a couple of the children down for a nap. Which fire do you want to talk to her about?”
“A fire that happened on Bridgewater Street back in 1978.”
Tricia’s smile disappeared. “The fire at Kowalski’s warehouse?”
“Do you know about it?” asked Georgia.
“My father did.” The baby fussed some more on her shoulder. Tricia’s hair loosened in its bun and fell down onto her sweaty neck. A little voice called out from the kitchen for cookies. “I’ll get you cookies in a minute, Caitlin,” she snapped. “Go outside and play.” Then she turned back to Georgia. The baby was screaming now. Tricia bounced him on her shoulder in an attempt to quiet him down. “I don’t think my mother will want to talk to you.”
“Why?”
“Because my father’s obsession with that blaze was almost worse than his illness. Both nearly bankrupted the family. We almost lost the house. My mother’s still barely able to hold onto it. Look, Miss Skeehan, please don’t upset her. She’s been through enough.”
“I don’t want to upset her. But this is really important.”
“Important?” Tricia’s face hardened. “My father died from this job, Miss Skeehan. Do you have any idea what that’s like?” The hoarse, emotional sound of Tricia’s voice made the baby stop crying. The two women stared at each other, both breathing heavily.
“When I was twelve,” Georgia said softly, “my father went to work one night in Engine Two-seventy-eight in Woodside. He never came home. I still hate the smell of incense and red roses. I hate the sound of bagpipes playing ‘Amazing Grace.’ I can’t walk into his old engine company and not get a lump in my throat. I miss him every single day, and it never gets any easier. So yes, I do know what it’s like.”
Tricia swallowed hard. “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I didn’t realize…”
She hefted the fidgety child on her hip. “Wait here. I’ll get my mother for you.”
Tricia took Kolya upstairs, leaving Georgia in the living room—just her and a little boy teething on a rubber pretzel in a playpen in the center of the room. The pretzel dropped to the floor, beyond his reach, and he let out a little squeal.
“I’ll get that for you,” Georgia cooed to the child. He beamed—a big, grateful grin, just like the ones Richie used to give her at that age.
“You’re a real charmer—yes you are.”
As she babbled on to the delighted child, Georgia found herself fantasizing about life with a baby attached to her hip instead of a nine-millimeter Glock. She’d bake cookies, volunteer in the PTA and spend her evenings talking to Mac about birthday parties and picnics at the beach. Richie would come to see her as the kind of mother she’d always wanted to be. A real mother. Joined to a real father.
“Miss Skeehan?”
Georgia rose from the side of the playpen. A small, reed-thin woman shuffled forward and extended her hand. It was nearly impossible to gauge her age. In her youth, Denise Flannagan must have been a beauty. She had the same deep green eyes as her daughter. Even wrinkled, her skin had a milky white glow to it—all except for under her eyes, which were dark with shadows. She walked with a slight limp, the result, Georgia suspected, of an arthritic hip. She looked like a kind woman, but she seemed too old to be caring for so many young children.
“Mrs. Flannagan?” Georgia shook her hand. “I’m so sorry to bother you. I don’t know if your daughter told you why I’m here.”
“She did.”
The little boy in the playpen reached out to Denise Flannagan. She picked him up, wincing from the effort.
“You must really love children to do all this,” said Georgia over the drone of cartoons.
“Oh, I do.” The woman smiled. She felt the child’s diaper. It was time for a change. “I raised six of my own. But I think I’d give the day care up if I could. It’s getting awfully hard on me.” She walked the child over to a changing table.
“Why don’t you?” It was a bold question, and Georgia felt suddenly embarrassed for asking it. But Denise Flannagan only laughed—a warm, good-natured laugh—as if words were the least of her troubles.
“Because, dear,” she said kindly, “I need the money. I would’ve lost the house without it.”
“But your husband was a fire captain…”
“—Who retired many years ago on a small, basic pension. Pat was sick a long time, and the medical plan only covered so much.” She finished the diapering, found a rocking chair by the front window and rocked the boy on her lap.
“May I ask what he died of?”
“Well…” She sighed. “He had the cancer.” She whispered the word cancer the way older people in Woodside sometimes did, as if it were an all-purpose illness, synonymous with death and far too personal to make an issue of. Georgia knew right then that Denise Flannagan would never say what kind of cancer.
“But he didn’t die of that, you see,” Denise added. “Pat was leaving his doctor’s office one day, stepped off the curb and got hit by a car. They never caught the driver.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Georgia. “Your daughter said he was obsessed with the fire at Kowalski’s warehouse.”
“He was, indeedy,” said Mrs. Flannagan. “He believed that’s what made him so sick.”
“Why did he think that?”
“Well,” she said, “it was just about the worst beating Pat ever took. Tricia—Patricia, she’s named after my husband—she was a little girl at the time, but she still remembers how bad he looked. He was green when he came home the next morning, and he had these sores all over his body. It was horrible. He couldn’t eat for two days. He couldn’t keep anything in his stomach.” Denise Flannagan had that polite, older-person way of talking, Georgia noticed. She’d never say her husband “vomited.”
Tricia came down the stairs now. Denise Flannagan nodded at her. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“What?”
“Daddy was so sick after that fire?”
The baby was fidgeting on Denise’s lap. Tricia picked the child up. “I don’t want to talk about it.” The younger woman wandered down the hall. Georgia heard a refrigerator door open.
“She was very traumatized,” Mrs. Flannagan said in the kind of conspiratorial whisper she’d reserved up until now for cancer. “All the children were. But it hit Tricia the hardest, I think. She
was so close to her father.”
“I know the feeling,” said Georgia, thinking about her own dad. “When did Captain Flannagan start to get sick? Was it right after the fire?”
“Not really,” said the older woman. “He recovered from that initial bout after a few days. And then, for a long time, Pat didn’t pay it no mind. He was so strong and healthy. He smoked—all the men did back then. But he also ran in a couple of New York City Marathons. It was five or six years after the fire that things started happening to him. Small things, at first. He started trying to track down the men who were there. They closed the firehouse, you see. So the men were scattered all over the city.”
“Were a lot of the men sick by then?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “There were maybe a hundred men at that fire. A lot of them seemed just fine.” The old woman clasped her hands in her lap. The knuckles were bony, the fingers bent from arthritis. “I had the children to think about and when Pat got sick, I concentrated on him—and the medical bills. I was too busy to keep track of much else.”
“How long has it been since he died?” asked Georgia.
“It’ll be seven years next month, God rest his soul. But he had to retire eight years before that—he was so sick.” She cocked her head. “May I ask why you’re interested?”
“Because the Bridgewater fire might have something to do with a case I’m working on, and no one seems to know much about it.”
“My husband could’ve helped you,” said Mrs. Flannagan. “Before he passed away, Pat was putting together a case history of that fire. He had files and records all over the basement.”
“What happened to the stuff?” asked Georgia.
“I just boxed everything up and left it there. Would you like to take a look?”
“I’d love to.”
“Tricia will have to show you,” she apologized. “I don’t take the basement stairs more than I have to. It’s hard on my knees.”
The basement was unfinished. White asbestos sleeves covered the pipes. Mold and dust covered a stack of cardboard cartons by a workbench. Tricia grudgingly pulled one of the cartons out and plonked it on top of the workbench.
Flashover Page 16