Rankoff on the other hand, was looking at hard time. The mayor had immediately disowned him, and the Brooklyn D.A. was reinvestigating Pat Flannagan’s hit-and-run death and Rankoff’s possible connections to it. Georgia expected to be testifying for months. Yet oddly, throughout all this frenzy of media coverage, two things remained unchanged: The mayor still planned to build a football stadium on Bridgewater Street And the blaze that had poisoned all those firefighters—the impetus for Connie’s rage—remained largely out of the public eye. A twenty-five-year-old fire didn’t make good copy, she supposed.
Georgia straightened her dark blue silk blazer and tried to put these thoughts out of her mind as she stepped up to receive her medal at City Hall a week after the incident. Richie was in the audience, along with Georgia’s mother. The whole Marenko clan was there as well—Mac’s parents, his grandmother Ida, his three brothers and their wives and children, along with Mac’s ten-year-old son, Michael, and seven-year-old daughter, Beth.
At one point, Ida waved at Georgia, then elbowed Mac’s father hard in the ribs and whispered something in his ear. Trust Ida to tell them, thought Georgia. But then she noticed Mac’s father, a big, gray-haired man with those same sparkling blue eyes, nod his head. Not a surprised nod or an astonished nod. Just a nod. As if he already knew. Mac told them. I’m not a ghost anymore.
She caught Mac’s father sneaking a sideways glance at the seats just across the aisle where her mother and Richie were sitting. Then she saw him smile. And he knows about Richie, too. She exhaled a long, soft breath. They know.
After the ceremony, while Georgia was showing Richie and her mother her medal, she felt a gentle hand on her shoulder. It was Marenko. He looked very handsome in his dark suit as he shuffled about nervously. He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck.
“So…uh…You and Richie and your ma want to meet my family?”
“I’d love to,” said Georgia. She found her gaze drifting to the exit door behind Marenko. A group of the mayor’s aides were already on their cell phones, making arrangements to move Franco Ortaglia to the next event. In a moment, he would be gone—and with him, the promise she had made to Connie in that tunnel below Grand Central Station. She turned back to Marenko.
“Would you do me a favor, Mac?”
“Sure.”
“Take Richie and Ma. I’ll catch up with you later. There’s something I have to do first.”
Marenko looked shocked. “You’re kidding—right? I finally ask you and…”
“—It’s the asking that matters.”
“Women.” He rolled his eyes.
She made her apologies, then snaked through the clusters of families gathered around the room, keeping her eyes on the tight-knit circle of men in suits headed for the exit. Mayor Franco Ortaglia was in the center. Georgia would have just one chance at this bluff. If she blew it, she’d never get another.
“Mr. Mayor,” she called out breathlessly, pushing through the crowds to reach his entourage. Franco Ortaglia turned. He tried to smile, but he still looked like a man suffering from a bad case of heartburn. He probably thought she wanted his autograph or something for her son.
“Please, sir? Can I speak to you a moment, privately?”
There was a small chamber off the auditorium. Ortaglia hesitated. A short man with a pointy nose touched his watch and whispered in the mayor’s ear.
“Hmmm, yes, well, Marshal. Perhaps you could make an appointment through channels,” Ortaglia suggested. “I’d be happy to meet with you then.”
“Hizzoner has a busy schedule,” the pointy man added, putting a hand on Ortaglia to usher him out the door. Georgia leaned in closer and caught the mayor’s wary eyes. She tried to steady the quake in her voice and remind herself that she was speaking for the men who could no longer speak for themselves.
“You walk out that door, Mr. Mayor, and I’ll take the copies of all the documents I have about the Bridgewater fire straight to the New York Times. You will never build your football stadium.”
Georgia had no documents. Delaney’s report was gone. The DEP form from Flannagan’s files was gone. She had only the CIDS card from the old firehouse. And, although it proved that some firefighter had noted potentially hazardous chemicals in the warehouse nine months before the fire, there was no way of proving that the card had ever made it to dispatch. Still, the bluff seemed to be working. Franco Ortaglia froze. He shot a look at the aide.
“What documents?”
“The report prepared by the FDNY’s Division of Safety in 1984 that outlines how this city, Empire Pipeline and Tristate Corporation conspired to cover up a major environmental disaster on Bridgewater Street in Brooklyn—the very spot you want to put your new football stadium on. Gus Rankoff owned Tristate, you know.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. None of that has anything to do with me,” Ortaglia said with disgust.
“You’re right.” Georgia feigned a shrug. “I’m sure the people of New York won’t mind that you’ve done nothing to clean up that dump and now you want to build a stadium there.” She pretended to turn away.
“Hmmm, yes, well,” said Ortaglia. His thin lips twitched. He nodded toward the small chambers off the Blue Room. “In there. Make it quick.”
Georgia followed the mayor and his aide into the room. It had a couple of overstuffed leather chairs and bookshelves of leather-bound city documents. Georgia picked one up to steady the shaking in her hands. She was talking to the most powerful man in the most powerful city in the world, and she had nothing to back up her threats. She’d either succeed or he’d bury her. But she couldn’t live with herself if she turned a blind eye—as so many in the department had done before her.
“Remove your jacket,” said Ortaglia, nodding to her silky blue blazer.
“Excuse me?”
“Hizzoner doesn’t want to hear his words played back for him on Dateline next week,” the aide explained.
Georgia understood. She removed her jacket and patted her silky white blouse. “No wires—see?”
Ortaglia nodded.
“Who sent you? Delaney?” he grumbled. “Because that prick’s not going to be commissioner, so he wants revenge?”
“Chief Delaney has nothing to do with this. I’m acting on my own.”
“I could destroy your career,” Ortaglia hissed.
“I realize that,” Georgia said, trying to control the tremble in her voice. “But since you just decorated me and I’m one of the few women you have in the FDNY, I don’t think it would look too good.”
“What do you want?”
“Gus Rankoff and his firm, Tristate, were responsible for dumping toxic waste in a warehouse on Bridgewater Street twenty-five years ago. The city covered up the crime and secretly removed the waste—but not before twenty firefighters sickened and nineteen of them died from a fire on that site because no one told them what they were up against.”
“Hmmm, yes, well.” Ortaglia paced the floor. There was no surprise in his face. Clearly, he knew the whole story.
“It’s a tragedy,” he muttered. “But that doesn’t make it my problem. Rankoff and his firm—they were the problem. Rankoff’s in jail. Jerome Kyle and Northway are being investigated. I knew nothing about any of that.”
Georgia raised an eyebrow, but already, she suspected it was fruitless to try to accomplish what even the Brooklyn D.A. was unlikely to be able to do. Ortaglia was too politically savvy to get himself linked with anything overtly underhanded.
“How about Empire, Mr. Mayor? Did you know that a leak from the Empire Pipeline sparked that blaze? That the warehouse was built illegally straddling the pipeline and that Empire covered the whole thing up?”
“New Yorkers want a football stadium, Marshal—not a history lesson.”
“They won’t get a football stadium if that report comes out,” said Georgia. “That land was never properly cleaned up. It will be the subject of lawsuits for the next twenty-five years.”
That got his
attention. “What is it you want? To have the site restored to some pristine condition it hasn’t been in for two hundred years?”
Georgia clasped her hands in front of her to keep them from shaking. “I want it cleaned up the way it was supposed to have been cleaned up. I want Empire’s record more closely scrutinized by an independent panel.”
He leaned against a bookcase and ran a finger along the bridge of his bony nose. “I can probably work the cleanup costs for Bridgewater into the overall stadium budget.” Ortaglia shot a look at his aide, who whipped out a calculator, punched in some numbers and nodded at the mayor. “As for Empire…Hmmm, yes, well,” said the mayor. “—I can use what just happened to justify the panel. It could even be a good move politically. Shows the city won’t allow itself to be pushed around by big business interests.” He nodded. “All right.”
Ortaglia was done, but Georgia wasn’t. “On a more personal level, Mr. Mayor, I’d like the city to erect plaques to the men who died at Bridgewater and install them in the new firehouses, along with a ceremony for their families.”
“That can be arranged.”
“And in return for never making that safety report public, I want the City of New York to authorize retroactive three-quarters service-connected disability pensions and medical benefits for the twenty Bridgewater families to provide for the widows until their deaths…”
“—Absolutely not.” Ortaglia pushed himself off the bookcase now. “Are you crazy? Retroactive? We’re talking millions of dollars. I can’t do that.”
“Every one of your staff-chief friends gets a three-quarters disability pension when he leaves the FDNY. Even the doctors who turned down those men’s claims got three-quarters. A week ago, you authorized ten million dollars to put Plexiglas partitions and LoJack warning devices in livery cabs because you were getting political pressure from the minority communities. If you can authorize ten million for the cabbies, you can certainly authorize a few million for these families.”
Ortaglia banged on the bookcase and cursed. “You goddamned, two-bit civil servant. Where the hell do you get off pulling a stunt like this? I could have your badge—you hear me?”
The aide punched some numbers into his calculator and cleared his throat. Then he showed the mayor the figures. Georgia saw them too.
“You see? The most you’ll have to authorize is $500,000 per family. The most. That’s an outlay of probably well under ten million. For firefighters who gave their lives for this city. No one’s going to oppose that.”
“What do you get out of this? Huh?” he asked.
Georgia thought about walking up that metal staircase in her father’s old firehouse and seeing the bronze plaque in his memory set into the tile wall. Men worked in that firehouse who were still in diapers when George Skeehan died. But they were reminded of him every day as they walked up those stairs. Someone remembered. Someone said thanks.
“What do I get out of this?” asked Georgia. “A little bit of peace.”
“If I do this—if I do this—you may never breathe a word about it to anyone. Ever,” said Ortaglia. “That report of Delaney’s gets destroyed. The city changes their pensions and cuts these checks and you say nothing—nothing—about your involvement.”
“Agreed,” said Georgia. She held out a hand, and Ortaglia shook it. “I have just one more request,” she said.
“What now?”
“There’s one check I would like to deliver myself.”
55
The old yellow row house in Greenpoint was quiet on this Monday morning in early September. It was Labor Day, and for once, Denise Flannagan did not have to struggle to carry a baby on her arthritic hip or strain her gnarled fingers undoing the buttons on a toddler’s pants. Families were off work and at the beach or getting ready for their last barbecue of the season. Georgia could smell charcoal lighter fluid wafting onto the sidewalk from someone’s backyard.
Marenko parked his silver Honda Accord in front of the Flannagan house and rolled down his window to drink in the sunny, balmy air. It had been two and a half weeks since his release from Riker’s, yet he still greeted the simplest sensations with a pleasure Georgia had never seen in him before.
“I almost lost everything,” he told her one night after he and Richie had been dunking each other in Georgia’s pool. “That’s when I found out what it was all worth.” That same evening, he invited her to his brother Pete’s Labor Day picnic in New Jersey.
Georgia never mentioned Connie to Marenko. She knew that was an open wound. Yet strangely, for all the grief Connie had caused, Georgia still felt connected to her. She attended Connie’s funeral and felt a certain peace when she saw her laid to rest next to her father’s grave. She and Carter managed to get her brother, Carl, into a good drug rehab center, too. Now, with the mayor’s new deal, there would be enough money to get him the care his sister had wanted. It was the least they could do for what was left of Albert O’Rourke’s family.
Walking up the crumbling stoop of Denise Flannagan’s row house, Georgia felt a lift in her step as she rang the doorbell. The sun caught the wrinkles in the old woman’s milky-white face as her arthritic fingers struggled to open the door. It took her a moment to place Georgia. She had never met Marenko before.
“Oh,” she said, taken aback. “Hello, Marshal. Did you need some of my husband’s papers again?”
“No, Mrs. Flannagan,” said Georgia. “I came to give you this.” She put the sealed official envelope from the City of New York into Denise Flannagan’s knobby fingers.
“What is it?” the woman asked warily. Official papers had never meant good news.
“A check, Mrs. Flannagan. For four hundred and fifty thousand dollars retroactive pension. Plus a statement upgrading your husband’s pension to three-quarters tax-free for the rest of your life. It’s a thank-you for your husband’s sacrifices in the line of duty to the New York City Fire Department. There’s also an invitation inside to a plaque ceremony for your husband and the other men he served with at Ladder One-twenty-one and Engine Two-oh-three.”
“Oh, my Lord,” said the woman as she fumbled to unseal the envelope. Tears filled Denise Flannagan’s eyes, and she brushed at them. She was a proud woman, Georgia could see. She wasn’t used to crying. The years of holding her family together while she watched her husband and his men fall apart had steeled her to be stronger than that. Her hands were shaking. Marenko cupped his big palms around them now.
“You okay, Mrs. Flannagan?” he asked her. Georgia could see a little glassy sheen in his eyes as well.
“Yes, thank you,” she said to him. “Oh, please excuse me. I’m so sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about,” Marenko assured her.
“But I just don’t believe it,” she said. “After all this time? After being ignored for so long—why now?”
“Because,” said Georgia. “A thank-you was long overdue.”
“I don’t know how you made it happen,” said Marenko thickly as he nosed his car onto the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. They were heading to his brother Pete’s house in New Jersey. He pretended to adjust his sunglasses. When he thought Georgia wasn’t looking, he reached under them and wiped his eyes.
“You did a good thing there, Scout.” Then he reached around under his seat and pulled out what looked like a wad of pink tissue paper. “Here,” he said, handing the wad to her. “I almost forgot.”
Georgia unwrapped the tissue paper now. Inside was a china piggy bank, painted pink with a slot on top and a rubber stopper on the belly. The pig had garish red wings and a goofy smile. It reminded Georgia of something a child might win at an arcade game.
“It’s uh…nice, Mac,” said Georgia.
“You don’t remember, do you?” He looked stricken. “I asked you if you could ever trust me. And you said…aw.” He shrugged. “Forget it.”
Georgia held up the pig now, and it all came back to her. It was the ugliest—and best—present any man had ever given her. She start
ed to giggle. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”
“I remember everything, Scout.” He grinned as he ran a hand along her thigh. “Everything.”
More from Suzanne Chazin
The Fourth Angel
When an inferno in Manhattan claims fifty lives, Georgia Skeehan, a rookie marshal with the New York City Fire Department, is thrust into command of the investigation. Georgia suspects the fire may have been started by something New York has never seen before: HTA, a kitchen-sink concoction with the thermal power of rocket fuel. HTA fires—though rare over the last decade—are so ferocious that they can melt a building's steel and concrete framework in minutes.
Georgia soon unearths another startling possibility: the blaze may be connected to three other unsolved New York fires—and to several eerie, scripture-laden letters from a madman who calls himself the "Fourth Angel." As she races to unravel the clues before more lives are lost, she is troubled by the erratic behavior of her partner and by the betrayal of another marshal—a man she trusted with her heart and her life.
As Georgia battles for respect in the nearly all-male bastion of the FDNY, the "Fourth Angel" tightens his grip on his real quarry—and plots an even more catastrophic and fiery finale.
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.
Connect with Diversion Books
Connect with us for information on new titles and authors from Diversion Books, free excerpts, special promotions, contests, and more:
Flashover Page 33