Flashover

by Suzanne Chazin

  “You don’t want me to look through this stuff, do you?” asked Georgia.

  “You go to your father’s old firehouse much?” Tricia shot back.

  Georgia nodded. “Point taken. Look, I won’t remove anything without your permission—okay? Can you give me half an hour?”

  Tricia grabbed a folding chair from the corner and pulled it open. “Have a seat,” she said. “You’ve got until the babies wake up from their naps.”

  The dust and mold on the carton made Georgia sneeze as she opened it. On the top was a sheet of lined yellow notebook paper with fourteen names across it. Beside each name was a ladder or engine company number, followed by a date of death.

  Georgia noticed right away that each name was from one of four fire companies Ed Delaney had mentioned in his 1984 Division of Safety report. The companies were also the ones in closest proximity to the blaze—the companies that would have gone inside the warehouse that night. And fourteen of the men were dead by the time Pat Flannagan compiled this list seven years ago.

  Georgia pulled out a sheaf of papers and heard something thud onto the concrete floor. It was a stack of photographs that had stuck together. Georgia leafed through them now. The top one was a black-and-white fire department photo, the “death shot,” as firefighters called it. It was the portrait the FDNY kept on file in case a firefighter died in the line of duty and the newspapers wanted a picture of him.

  The firefighter in the photograph was handsome in a bland sort of way. He had a square face and shoulders that suggested he was tall and muscular. He wore firefighter’s dress blues, and his faded blond hair was bushy like a character in a 1970s sitcom. Georgia guessed the picture had been snapped around that time. Beneath his thick blond mustache there was a hint of a smile. She guessed the man was about twenty-four years old. The pale eyes were eager—maybe too eager. He’d probably just come on the job. Along the bottom, someone had scrawled his name. Georgia stared at it and her heart stopped. Michael “Mickey” Hanlon, March 1978, it read.

  If she had any doubt about the connection, the very next photo—a color snapshot—showed a group of men with their arms around one another at a barbecue. There, next to Mickey Hanlon, was a muscular young man with watery blue eyes, a thick mustache and a slight fleshiness beneath the jowls. No one had to tell her she was looking at a much younger Seamus Hanlon.

  Georgia put the picture aside and turned her attention to the next photo in the stack. The sight made her draw back in horror. It too, was a black-and-white portrait, though clearly, this one never graced any FDNY personnel file. It was a photograph of a man in a wheelchair with sticklike arms and legs. His grizzled face sported a two-day growth of beard and was hollow and gaunt as if he were sucking on a lemon. The skin on his neck was black and purple, and his eyes had a frightened look. She felt her breath catch in her chest when she read the words on the bottom: Mickey Hanlon, August 1995. He couldn’t have been more than forty-one years old.

  Forty-one? It didn’t seem possible. Georgia flipped through to the next photo. Another department shot of a young firefighter, followed by another horrific shot of the man at the close of his life. And then another. And then another. Only the hair color seemed to change. The before-and-after shots made Georgia feel nauseated and clammy. She kept bouncing between the shots, looking for a clue that the men in the “before” shots would become the men in the “after”s. She could tell they were the same men around the eyes, but little else remained recognizable.

  Why didn’t Seamus tell me? Georgia wondered. His brother. His own brother.

  Beneath the stack of pictures was a manila envelope. She opened it up to find a mimeographed map of the Empire Pipeline, yellowed with age—the kind Georgia had seen in many firehouses, listing all the locations of valves and shutoffs from Staten Island to Brooklyn and up through Queens. Attached to it was a faded blueprint from the city Buildings Department outlining the original construction of Kowalski’s warehouse on Bridgewater Street.

  Georgia put the blueprint to one side, puzzled as to why Pat Flannagan would want it. It sat on a corner of the workbench, the paper so thin that the map of the pipeline bled right through it, with the roads and junctions lining up perfectly—and Kowalski’s warehouse smack dab over the Empire Pipeline.

  Georgia frowned at the blueprint, certain that she’d made a mistake. Buildings weren’t supposed to straddle the pipeline—yet this one had. Flannagan had uncovered a nasty little blunder. And then he was killed. By a hit-and-run driver who was never found. Though it wasn’t cold in the basement, Georgia felt a shiver travel through her body.

  She could hear the babies starting to fuss, so she began putting Flannagan’s notes away. A piece of letterhead at the bottom of the box caught her eye. It was from the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, a “work for hire” form dated February 1, 1978. The form authorized a firm called Tristate Trucking to remove “unspecified manufacturing by-products” from Kowalski’s Carting and Hauling and truck them to a firm called Camden Bonded Disposal in Camden, New Jersey.

  Georgia stared at the form. It was dated six months before the fire. Did the DEP know there were hazardous chemicals in that warehouse, she wondered? And if so, why weren’t the firefighters told?

  She heard a set of footsteps on the rotting wood risers at the far end of the room and turned. It was Tricia.

  “Time’s up,” the young woman told Georgia.

  “I was wondering if I could hold on to a few things from the boxes,” asked Georgia. “I promise to return them.”

  “What few things?”

  “This form,” said Georgia, holding up the DEP authorization. “A blueprint of a building. And some pictures and names of the men at the fire. I know the brother of one of the men. Captain Hanlon in Engine Two-seventy-eight.”

  Tricia descended the rest of the stairs. She folded her arms across her chest. There was a hard look to her beautiful green eyes. Georgia could see it now—the same thrust-out jaw of runaways in the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

  “My mother’s been through a lot, Miss Skeehan,” said Tricia. “I don’t want her dealing with depositions and subpoenas.”

  “I understand,” said Georgia. “I won’t put her through any more heartache. We’re all fire department here.”

  “All fire department? That’s supposed to make everything okay?” Tricia laughed bitterly. “My dad loved the department—loved it like he loved his own kids. All the men did. And what did they ever get in return? My God, Ms. Skeehan, the city never even put up a goddamn plaque in their memory.”

  27

  The Baltic Bar in Greenpoint was a narrow, dingy workingman’s bar with a glowing Budweiser sign in the window. It was a short walk from the Newtown Creek, an industrial canal of water that flowed—barely—into the East River. The creek was always black—even when the sun was shining on it.

  Marenko was sitting on a bar stool by the door. He’d showered and shaved, and was wearing a black polo shirt and tan khakis. But his eyes looked puffy and dark, and he had already smoked several cigarettes. Georgia walked over and nodded to what looked like an empty beer glass in front of him.

  “Nonalcoholic,” he muttered, catching her disapproving gaze. “Tastes like cat’s piss. You want something?”

  “Yeah,” said Georgia. “Answers.” She opened a large envelope she was carrying and thrust the stack of photos she’d found in Flannagan’s basement into Marenko’s hands. He thumbed through the pictures.

  “Holy…” He let out a long whistle. “What happened to these guys?”

  “The one thing they all had in common was that fire in nineteen seventy-eight on Bridgewater Street. Louise Rosen had a mention of it in her files. Seamus Hanlon wouldn’t talk to me about it, even though his own brother was there. And Connie had the name of the street scribbled in her sergeant’s binder.”

  Marenko put the stack of pictures facedown on the bar next to Georgia. The photos clearly spooked him.

  “There�
��s one thing I don’t get,” said Georgia, putting the photos away. “This fire happened twenty-five years ago. Why would anyone care about it now?”

  “Maybe it’s not the fire they care about.” Marenko shrugged.

  “What do you mean?”

  He slipped off the bar stool and slapped some bills on the counter. “C’mon,” he said.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To Bridgewater Street. I think you should see the site. There’s something about it you need to know.”

  Outside, the sky was the color of liquid mercury. Georgia could feel the air, gritty as pumice on her skin. Storm clouds were gathering in the distance. A gust of wind kicked up candy wrappers and tumbled them across the asphalt. The rain would hit hard when it finally came—maybe cool things down a bit.

  Georgia and Marenko cut across a small park that was more concrete than grass. Children rumbled by on skateboards, cherry ices in their hands red as spilled blood. Cars roared along the streets and music blared from open windows, exhaling the heat of the day.

  They turned down a street of body shops and scrap-metal yards. Up ahead, Georgia could see the concrete bulkheads of the Newtown Creek.

  “Me and my three brothers, we used to play down here as kids,” said Marenko. “Used to pitch rocks into the creek. My grandmother still lives about four blocks from here.” He told her about the unexploded World War II bombs and spent shells they found in the neighborhood. He pointed out the concrete stacks of the sewage-treatment plant across the street from several large white hatboxes—oil storage tanks. He seemed to know every crack in the cement like it was a birthmark on one of his kids.

  “A regular Leave It to Beaver childhood you had here,” said Georgia.

  “Yeah.” Marenko laughed. “Not the healthiest of places, Greenpoint. It’s got the largest sewage-treatment plant in the state, a sanitation depot, an abandoned incinerator, a dozen or so chemical manufacturers—all within the space of maybe half a mile. As a marshal, I think I was inside every one of them at one time or another. Hell, there’s even a fifty-acre oil spill below much of this neighborhood—seventeen million gallons. Can you believe it? When I was a kid, some of it leaked into the sewers and blew out the manhole covers.”

  “Sounds pretty horrendous,” said Georgia.

  “I guess.” Marenko shrugged. “But when you’re a kid, you kind of see it as an adventure. Anyway, not a whole lot’s changed around here since then.” The smile faded from his lips. “I wonder if thirty years from now…” His voice trailed off. He shoved his hands in his pockets. He was already gearing himself for a future in which life was measured in decades of lost time.

  Georgia put a tender hand on his right shoulder. He reached over with his left hand and held it there an instant.

  “I’m scared, Mac,” Georgia whispered, giving in to the strength of his touch.

  “Yeah…well.” He shrugged off the moment without meeting her gaze. He wasn’t going to go there. Georgia sensed it was all he’d been doing in the quiet of his apartment: picturing himself behind bars, a white cop from the suburbs of Long Island in prison, cut off for decades from family and friends. He was too good of an investigator not to know what he was up against. All the prosecution had to do was say the words lovers’ triangle, and the rest would fall into place. Marenko himself had helped put guys away on less physical evidence than what was facing him now.

  “I almost forgot.” Georgia opened her hip bag and fished out Bernie Chandler’s name and phone number. She handed the slip of paper to Marenko. “Here. Chandler’s supposed to be an excellent criminal defense attorney and he’s reasonable. In case it turns out that you need…”

  He stopped in his tracks and frowned at the slip of paper. “—Where’d you get this?”

  “A friend of a friend.” Georgia shrugged. She was a lousy liar, and Marenko knew it.

  “Cut the crap, Scout. You ask around some holding pen for a drug dealer’s attorney?”

  “No. And besides, what difference does it make where I got it? Chandler’s supposed to be good. He’ll work cheap and—not for nothing, Mac—you don’t have a lot of options.”

  “Then tell me where you got it.”

  “You are such a pigheaded…” She threw up her hands. “…Andy Kyle gave it to me, all right? His father’s a partner in the same law firm as Chandler.”

  Marenko crumpled up the slip of paper and tossed it on the sidewalk, next to a chain-link fence with a heap of crushed cars behind it. “I don’t need some rich kid’s handouts.”

  He walked ahead. Georgia retrieved the paper and caught up with him. “I told Andy you’d say that. That’s why he didn’t write the law firm name down.”

  Marenko turned to her and raised an eyebrow. “You and Kyle have been doing quite a lot of talking, I see. What else you tell him about me, huh?”

  Georgia shook her head at the irony. Marenko could discuss her all he wanted to with Connie. But let Georgia say one word to a fellow fire marshal, and he was indignant.

  “Mac, get real for a moment. Andy Kyle knows about us. All the marshals at Manhattan base know. Your privacy ended the moment you woke up bloody in Connie Ruiz’s apartment. Andy was trying to help—nothing more—and the sooner you get that through your thick head, the better.” She grabbed Marenko’s hand and stuffed the paper into it. “Grow up a little, okay? You may need this.”

  They walked the rest of the way to Bridgewater Street in silence. The sun’s brutal edge had passed, but the air was pearly with the hint of approaching thundershowers.

  “Here we are.” Marenko nodded to a vacant lot surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Smashed beer bottles sparkled like diamond chips on the decaying sidewalk in front, next to a lead-colored fire hydrant. “This is where the fire happened—right here at the former site of Kowalski’s Carting and Hauling.”

  “There’s nothing here,” said Georgia.

  “Yeah? Well, look long and hard, sweetheart. Because this is gonna be the fifty-yard line for the new football stadium Mayor Ortaglia’s fixing to build.”

  “Where’d you hear that rumor?”

  “Ain’t no rumor.” He nodded to the weed-choked lot. “There were four guys here an hour ago. Surveyors, Scout. They told me straight. When I checked around the bars, I heard the same thing. The city already owns several parcels of land around here, and they’re buying this one. The Empire Pipeline runs beneath here, but I guess that’s not moving. They’ll have to build around it somehow.”

  “Or over it,” Georgia muttered, thinking about Flannagan’s blueprint of the warehouse. She peered through the rusted fence, more certain than ever that the fire that took place here twenty-five years ago was in some way tied in to Rosen’s and Dana’s deaths, to Robin Hood, and maybe even to Connie.

  Marenko leaned his back on the fence, put a foot up and studied her. His eyes were as blue as two lapis-lazuli gemstones. “Scout—what are we doing here?”

  Georgia didn’t answer. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The sky darkened to an ominous shade of gray.

  “C’mon, man, this isn’t a game,” he pleaded. “This is my life you’re talking about.”

  Georgia looked down at the pavement, not trusting herself to gaze at him now. “It’s all conjecture,” she said, shaking her head. “A and E has the case. The only stuff I know for sure, I’m not supposed to talk about.”

  “But if it’ll help us find Connie…”

  “—I don’t know if it’ll help us find Connie!” she snapped at him. “How can I know that, Mac? How can I have looked at her apartment and know that?”

  Marenko closed his eyes as if he’d been hit. Then he turned and clutched the chain-link fence and thumped his forehead lightly against it. The rusted metal reverberated down the panel.

  “You’re right.” He sighed. “How could you know? Jeez—I don’t even trust myself right now. How can you?” He reached into his khakis and pulled out a pack of Marlboros and a lighter. He tried to hide th
e trembling in his fingers, but it took him several attempts to get a spark.

  They walked back toward the park in silence. Two teenagers were skateboarding near a fountain that had been turned off in some fiscal cutback and never turned back on. Across from the fountain was a large gray Roman Catholic Church. A banner announced a celebration for the Feast of Saint Hyacinth on Friday. Marenko nodded toward the church.

  “I was an altar boy there.”

  “Yeah?”

  He grinned. “Don’t look so surprised.”

  “Saint Hyacinth—who was she?”

  “He,” Marenko corrected. He stepped up on the lip of the fountain and peered into the base. On top of a pile of decaying leaves, Georgia saw several empty liquor bottles in paper bags and some fast-food containers.

  “I think his name was Jacob, but in Latin, it was Jacinthus, which means ‘hyacinth,’” Marenko explained. “He was this Polish saint who was supposed to have saved a bunch of people when a bridge collapsed. I like him, as saints go, ’cause he put his life on the line to help people. He was kind of like the firefighter of saints.”

  “What’s the feast like?” asked Georgia.

  Marenko stepped down off the lip of the fountain. “My grandmother always helps out at it. It’s usually a big parade followed by a picnic. You’ve never seen so many different kinds of Polish sausage in your life. And the bread. Nobody makes bread like the Poles.”

  He took another hit off his cigarette and slowly exhaled a stream of smoke. He ran a hand down his face. Georgia felt she could almost read the thoughts running through his head—the fears and the longings. She shouldn’t have dragged him back to his old neighborhood today. Too many memories.

  “There’s a bomb,” Georgia blurted out. She wasn’t sure why she had said it. Maybe she just wanted to make him understand why she’d brought him here.

  “A bomb?” He turned to look at her now. “Where?”