Georgia glanced at the driveway now. The rain had begun to splash down with the force of pebbles.
“I walked here,” said Georgia. “From the train station. You’re not going to send me back out in that, are you?”
“No,” he said. “I’m going to drive you back to the station.” He grabbed a set of car keys just inside the door.
“Answer me one question—one question, will you?” Georgia pleaded. “Why didn’t you tell me about your brother, Michael?”
Hanlon froze. “Leave Mickey out of this,” he said tersely.
“Why?”
“Because I said so,” he growled.
“I saw the pictures in Pat Flannagan’s basement,” Georgia explained. “I would think with all that happened to him, you’d want to do right…”
“—Do right?” Hanlon threw his car keys across the workbench. His fists opened and closed as if he wanted to hit something. Georgia stepped back.
“Do right, you say. Tell me, Georgia—what is doing right?”
“Not turning your back on your brother. Not closing your eyes to what happened to him,” she replied.
“You think I closed my eyes? Jesus.” He slapped the work bench, then swung around and looked at her, his face full of rage and confusion. “Mickey went from being a kid who could lift the front bumper of a car to a man of forty who couldn’t pick up a spoon, couldn’t use the bathroom.” Hanlon’s eyes glistened with tears and he blinked them back. “Christ almighty, he had so much cancer, they took out his insides. He had to use one of them bags around his waist. All his dignity, all his manhood—it was gone by forty.”
“I know,” said Georgia softly. “But you can do something about that now.”
“I can’t do anything,” said Hanlon.
“Because you’re afraid,” she said with disgust. “Like everyone else in this godforsaken bureaucracy. You’re afraid to take matters into your own hands.”
“I took matters into my own hands, Georgia. Lord almighty. And I’ve been suffering for it ever since.” Hanlon’s hands trembled as he wiped them down the sides of his denim trousers. “I did the one thing Mickey asked me to do. He asked to go out with something left in him. And I gave him that. God help me, I did.”
Hanlon’s voice cracked and he turned away from her. He tossed the roof of the dollhouse to one side of his workbench in disgust. “Can you understand what I’m saying, lass? Can you understand? That’s all the right I could do for my kid brother.”
Georgia felt frozen with the enormity of Seamus Hanlon’s confession and his conflict over it. She took a step toward him and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Seamus. I didn’t mean to bring up…”
“—Forget it.” He shrugged her off and took a deep breath. “It’s over. I never told anyone—not even Alice. Mickey wouldn’t have wanted me to.” He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “Times like this, I wish I could have a beer.” He laughed. “Or a case or two.”
“How ’bout a soda? Can we get a soda?”
“Sure,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve got a few cans in the fridge.”
Georgia could tell a big family had once lived in Seamus Hanlon’s house as soon as she stepped into the kitchen. The refrigerator was huge; the kitchen table was long and built to take the bumps and dings of a noisy clan. But it was empty now. Dust gathered on the counters and when Hanlon offered her a soda, she saw that there were only a couple of cans and some Chinese takeout cartons on an empty refrigerator shelf. Hanlon caught her assessment.
“No one in the house but me these days, I’m afraid. My daughter got married last year. My youngest son, Tim, is stationed in Germany. My boy Brendan’s working nights to make detective, and Doug—Jenna’s father—just joined the FDNY.”
“You must be proud of all of them,” said Georgia.
“Oh, yeah,” said Hanlon. “But it’s quiet here sometimes. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss ’em.” He drained his soda and put the empty aluminum can down on the counter with a smack. “Look, Georgia. I know what you want: that Division of Safety report. And I don’t have it.”
“—But you could get it,” she said.
He shook his head. “It wouldn’t bring Mickey back. And there’s too much heat on it, besides.”
“Ed Delaney told you that, didn’t he? Because he knows. He knows a leak on the Empire Pipeline caused the Bridgewater fire—a leak Empire failed to report. He knows Tristate Trucking was storing PCBs, toluene and benzene illegally inside the warehouse. And he knows the city was aware of the situation at least nine months before the fire and did nothing about it.”
“If you know all that, lass, what do you need the report for?”
Georgia stared at Seamus Hanlon. She could hear the hum of his refrigerator and the ticking of a grandfather clock in the living room.
“I didn’t, for sure,” she said finally. “You just confirmed it.”
Hanlon closed his eyes and shook his head in disgust. “So you know—so?” he asked. “Ed Delaney tried to do something about Bridgewater nineteen years ago. He couldn’t then and he can’t now. You can’t either. Let it go.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“I have my reasons.” Georgia put her soda can down and stared at him. “All right. You can’t get me that report. But tell me this at least: There was a boy in that photo you gave me of you and Jimmy. He was maybe ten—a kid named Carl O’Rourke. Was he…?”
“—Albert O’Rourke’s son—yes, Georgia. O’Rourke was one of the Bridgewater firefighters. I think he’d just died around the time that picture of Carl was taken.”
“What was the boy like?”
“You never met a nicer kid. Kind. Decent. Give you the shirt off his back. One time, my boy Timmy—he was about five maybe—lost this little pinball toy he’d gotten in a box of Cracker Jacks. Carl had one, too. Wanted to give Timmy his, since he was maybe four years older. That’s just the way Carl was. Me and Jimmy, we took a real shine to the kid—his sister, Mary, too, though she was a little older. We tried to do what we could for them, especially since their mother was already out of the picture.”
“Do you know anything about them now?”
A shadow passed across Hanlon’s features. “I haven’t seen either of them since they were kids. I don’t know anything about Mary. And Carl—I’ve only heard.”
“What did you hear?”
Hanlon sighed. “That he got involved in drugs.” Hanlon shook his head. “I guess you could sort of see it coming. He was such a soft kid. Maybe even a little fragile. O’Rourke really doted on his children. After he died, they were never quite the same.”
37
Georgia dialed Randy Carter’s cell phone as soon as Seamus Hanlon dropped her off at the train station.
“Where are you?” he asked her.
“Little Neck, Queens.” She told him about the Carl O’Rourke-Robin Hood connection and her visit with Hanlon. “How ’bout you? Any luck with Mrs. Flannagan?”
“Mostly dead ends,” said Carter. “Tricia left this morning for a week’s vacation on Cape Cod.”
“Damn. Does she have a cell phone or something you can reach her with?”
“Nothing, according to her mother. But she said Tricia will probably call home at some point and she’ll get me a number.” Carter could sense the disappointment in Georgia’s voice. “Skeehan, you’ve got to remember that Tricia may not know who Connie is, either.”
“Connie writes the word Bridgewater down, calls the family of the fire captain at that fire and then disappears? No, Randy. It’s no coincidence. Tricia Flannagan knows something. How about Northway?” Georgia asked. “Any luck?”
“I just got through with them,” said Carter. “Short of a subpoena, there’s no way for us to find out who the limited partners are. But it turns out Northway has an advisory board—and guess who two of their advisors are?”
“Who?”
“John Welcastle, chairman of
Empire Pipeline. And Gus Rankoff.”
“Rankoff and Welcastle are connected to Northway?” said Georgia in amazement. “The firm that bought out Tristate?”
“Now y’all know why they don’t want you to be looking too hard into that fire.”
“Oh, my God,” said Georgia. “We’ve got to tell Chief Brennan.”
“Skeehan,” Carter stopped her, “Northway is the general contractor for the new football stadium. The mayor wants this stadium. Do you honestly think Brennan is going to mess with that?”
“What do we do?”
“We leave Northway alone—that’s what we do. Nothing good can come of taking on those suckers. But we can try to run down this O’Rourke fellow, find out if he’s Robin Hood. Get him before he busts open this pipeline like a piñata on a string.”
Georgia looked at her watch now. One-thirty P.M. They had less than twenty-four hours, and there was still no word even about the money drop.
“I’ll pick you up at Penn Station,” Carter offered. “We’ll run some computer checks on this O’Rourke fellow back at base.”
Silence.
“Come on, Skeehan. Y’all got to walk back into the squad room at some point,” he reminded her. “The sooner you get it over with, the better.”
Suarez, Giordano and McClusky were at Manhattan base when Georgia and Carter arrived. But for once, they weren’t discussing the blonde. They were in the kitchen, conferring on a subject far more juicy. They didn’t notice Georgia and Carter as they passed by the open kitchen doorway. They were too busy unwrapping their sandwiches from the deli across the street.
“See?” said Sal Giordano in his thick Bronx accent. “That’s why dames don’t belong in the FDNY. Screws up the whole works. Me? I’m not gonna lose any sleep if Marenko gets a one-way ticket up the river. Man should keep his pecker in his pants, if you ask me. But Skeehan? She’s gonna be crying and carrying on all over this place. Gonna need a truckload of Kleenex just to get through a tour.”
Carter put a hand on Georgia’s arm, motioning her to forget their chatter and go to the squad room. But Georgia shook him off. She was no one’s entertainment. She stood and listened as Eddie Suarez chimed in.
“Truth is, I feel kinda bad for Skeehan,” said Suarez. “For a chick, she turned out okay, ya know? Even though she lost me a chunk of change in that betting pool. Man, I never thought Marenko would get into her pants that easy.”
“So who you think she’ll sleep with next, huh?” asked Giordano through a mouthful of sandwich.
“You’re safe, Sal,” said Suarez. “Trust me.”
“I’m with Giordano,” McClusky muttered. Three years as partners, and McClusky still couldn’t pronounce Sal’s last name. It always came out “Jerdano” instead of “Geeor-dano.” Any name that wasn’t Irish McClusky regarded as foreign.
“I think the female element messes with a man’s head,” McClusky rambled on. “Marenko might be free today if this department had had the balls to keep women out of a job they’re physically and psychologically unfit for.”
That did it. Georgia pushed Carter aside and marched in. “Who the hell do you guys think you are, anyway?”
“Skeehan,” stammered Suarez. He looked at the doorway and saw Carter standing in the frame, frowning. “We didn’t know…”
She cut him off. “You have the audacity to dissect me and my private life like I’m some TV-show contestant? You want to talk about whiners and complainers? Not for nothing, look at yourselves.”
She leaned over the kitchen table and pointed a finger at Sal Giordano. “You, Sal…” Giordano froze, his half-eaten sausage hero suspended in his hand. His mouth was full, and he’d forgotten to chew.
“…Your mother-in-law rules your house and you’re miserable and scared to death, but you haven’t got the guts to confront her. So you come in here and complain about it.”
She turned to Suarez next. He averted his gaze and toyed with the plastic saltshaker on the table. “You, Eddie…I’ve heard every blow-by-blow description of your divorce settlements—both of them. I know what your lawyer earned off you last year. I know what size shoes your second ex-wife wore and how much money they cost you. And you?” She turned to Don McClusky who was attempting, unsuccessfully, to inch his way out the doorway. “…You can’t get it through your thick, John-Wayne, Buzz-Lightyear skull that your fifteen-year-old son would rather play his violin than blow some poor defenseless deer’s brains out with you every October. And Goddamnit—that doesn’t make him gay. What it makes him is a hell of a lot smarter than his old man.”
She straightened up now. She could feel other eyes on her. The supervisor on duty, Rudy Hoaglund, was in the doorway, next to Carter, along with Andy Kyle. Behind them, several firefighters from downstairs were also eavesdropping. She didn’t care anymore. She was tired of the whispers. She was going to have it out with them now or go down swinging.
“I’ve never brought my private life into this base. I don’t discuss my son, my mother, my sex life or my past with you, and I’m not about to start now. So if you want to snicker about me like a bunch of pimply-faced adolescent boys who only get it in their wet dreams, go ahead. But do me a favor at least?” She slammed the table and they all jumped. “Have the courtesy to do it outside the job.”
She turned to the doorway and, as if on cue, the men parted. She was a head shorter than most of them, and she felt acutely aware of that as she passed by. She made a right out of the doorway. She couldn’t face the squad room—not yet. She needed a place to cool down. On the pretense of looking at case material, she disappeared into the file room—a narrow, windowless enclosure with metal filing cabinets along one wall and a table on the other. Every marshal had a drawer or two of his own cases.
She positioned her back to the door and popped open her case-file drawer. It was a low drawer. The men hated the low drawers because they were hard on the back bending over, hell on the knees squatting down. Georgia got around this by sitting cross-legged on the floor. She pretended to study the records before her, if only to steady the shaking in her fingers.
The door opened. Georgia turned, assuming it would be Carter, but it was Andy Kyle. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, all confidence and good humor. He never looked ruffled.
“You stole my heart in there.” He grinned.
“Yeah?” She turned back to her filing and shrugged. “Seems to me, I just set the cause of gender equality in the fire department back about twenty years.”
He walked around to the other side of her and squatted on his haunches, forcing Georgia to look at him. He wore no outward displays of his background and privilege—no college rings, no expensive wristwatches—but there was a sort of inward carriage about him that set him apart. He held his back very straight and there was a soft look in his brown eyes. He had none of Mac’s swagger, and that, in itself, had a sort of charm for her right now. Andy Kyle has a crush on me, Georgia realized. It would be so easy to return the feelings. What’s wrong with me that I can’t fall in love with a decent guy like him?
“You’re right, Georgia,” said Kyle. “I don’t have to fight your battles for you. You knock ’em dead on your own.”
“Just call me Slugger.”
He straightened up and elected a more comfortable position leaning on the table. “Bernie Chandler went to Riker’s this afternoon to see Mac,” he said softly.
“For Mac’s sake,” Georgia said coolly, “I’m glad.”
“You’re not going to go see him?”
Georgia looked up from her files. “I don’t know.”
“I’d tell you not to give up on him, but I’m the king of lost causes.” Kyle pursed his lips as if he didn’t know whether what he’d said was funny or just plain sad. “I, um…talked to my father last night about Tristate Corporation, Georgia. You know they’re out of business?”
“So Mac told me,” she said. “They were bought out by Northway—a firm headquartered in Brooklyn. Your dad
wouldn’t happen to know anything about Northway, would he?”
“I can ask him,” said Kyle. “Can you give me a hint what I’m looking for?”
“Ask him if any of the owners from Tristate still hold significant stakes in Northway. Ask him why John Welcastle, chairman of Empire Pipeline, and Gus Rankoff from Mayor Ortaglia’s office are on Northway’s board of advisors.”
Kyle frowned at her. “Tristate must’ve done something pretty bad for you to be this interested.”
“They killed firefighters, Andy. I can’t think of anything worse.”
He nodded. “I’ll see what I can find out.”
Carter cracked open the file room door. “Skeehan—Ajay Singh from the crime lab wants to talk to you. He’s on line two.”
“Dr. Singh? What does he want?”
Carter was about to speak, when he noticed a set of legs in gray linen trousers leaning against the file room table. He opened the door wider. He hadn’t realized Kyle was in the room. Carter was like all the longtime marshals—he never trusted a “new fish,” as he called a recently made marshal.
“Better talk to him yourself,” Carter told her.
Georgia walked into the squad room and picked up her phone. “Fire Marshal Georgia Skeehan,” she answered.
“Marshal Skeehan—yes. I had a question for you. It concerns Officer Ruiz.”
Georgia’s heart quickened. She leaned into the phone. Oh, God—no. The police have found Connie’s body.
“Yes?” she said brusquely.
“Did Officer Ruiz like to bake?”
“Bake? As in cookies—that sort of thing?” asked Georgia.
“Yes.”
Georgia was so relieved at the question, she began to laugh. “Doctor, if she made popcorn in her microwave, it was a national event,” she said. “Why are you asking me this?”
“Because I found a red screw cap from a bottle of McCormick’s vanilla extract in her kitchen. I could not find the bottle. I found no other spices. Her assailant had emptied the garbage before the police arrived.”
Flashover Page 24