24
It was nearly 10:30 P.M. before Georgia caught the Number Seven train to Woodside. As the train lurched along the subway tracks, she tried to reconcile the man in the baseball cap she had seen earlier tonight with the boy she had fallen in love with more than a decade ago. Rick DeAngelo had always been a bit of a dreamer. He once sank his savings into buying a bunch of condemned bungalows in Rockaway on the rumor that the city was going to sanction gambling on the waterfront. It never happened. He not only lost all his money, the city sued him for back taxes.
About the only practical dream he’d ever shared with her was his lifelong desire to become a New York City firefighter. When she met him—at Mike Flynn’s bar in Woodside, where she waitressed part-time—he was already running five miles a day after putting in long hours as an apprentice electrician. He was twenty-two. She was nineteen and in college, but already itching to quit. She liked his dimpled chin and his Cheshire-cat smile. But more than that, she liked his wicked sense of humor. No one had made her laugh that much since her dad.
They trained together for the firefighter’s physical endurance test. To Georgia, it was just a lark—a chance to spend time with the young man she adored. To Rick, it was an obsession. He worked harder to get that job than any man she had seen. And he lost his chance on a technicality—he fell off a training wall on the day of the test and hurt his ankle. Georgia had always wondered whether their lives would have been different if he had passed and she had failed, instead of the other way around. She wondered with a sickening thud whether she finally had her answer.
“Sixty-first Street and Roosevelt Avenue, Woodside,” the conductor mumbled over the intercom. Georgia disembarked the train and walked up the steps of the subway station. A bitter wind stung her face and made her eyes water. Holiday lights flashed in the plate-glass display window of a Duane Reade drugstore. A plastic menorah had another yellow bulb glowing for the fourth night of Hanukkah. Outside the Blockbuster Video, a bored-looking fat man in a Santa suit and glasses rang a bell for the Salvation Army. All around her, people were hurrying with shopping bags and packages, even at this late hour. Christmas, as the television ads kept reminding her, was only a few weeks away.
She turned off the main thoroughfare and walked down side streets she had known her whole life. It was the kind of neighborhood her firefighter dad had felt right at home in: a good Irish bar, a strong parish church, rows of tidy, cookie-cutter houses filled with people who put their Virgin Mary grottos on display and kept their problems under lock and key.
Georgia pulled up the collar of her coat and walked beneath the yellow glaze of streetlights. Cars were sandwiched end-to-end along the curbs. Television lights flickered behind heavy drawn curtains. Only the occasional dog-walker still braved the bitter cold. Her house was in sight. She could see the chain-link fence and the bay window with the velvet drapes and her mother’s Hummel figures on the windowsill.
She went to cross the street. She never saw the door of the dark blue pickup truck open until it blocked her path. Georgia’s heart tightened like a fist as a man in a baseball cap and denim jacket stepped out of the truck. For eight years, she’d longed to see him back on her mother’s street. And now that he was finally here, she wished more than anything that he’d just go away.
“Gee Gee—what the hell are you doing? Do you realize how close you came to getting killed tonight?”
She had forgotten he used to call her that. Long ago, it had seemed endearing. Now, the sound of it on his tongue chilled her. She fumbled inside her coat for the reassuring outline of her Glock 9-millimeter on her hip.
“Did you get yourself in some kind of trouble?” he asked.
“You shouldn’t be here,” she answered weakly.
“I shouldn’t be here? You shouldn’t have been there. The fire department finds out about this and your boyfriend, Mr. Lucky Charms, the Irish Mafioso, you could lose your job.”
“That’s my business,” she said.
“Well your business is gonna get you killed.”
Georgia frowned. “Is that a threat? Is that what you’ve become? Some kind of bag man for a bunch of political extremists?”
He winced as if she’d just punched him. He took off his baseball cap. A Yankees cap. He had always been a diehard Yankees fan, while Georgia preferred the Mets. His dark hair was full and almost curly—just like when they were together. The face had filled out, though. It wasn’t a boy’s face anymore. It was a man’s. He smacked the side of his truck with his baseball cap and cursed. But he didn’t deny her accusations.
“Gee Gee,” he said softly. “Stay away from these people. For your own good. I could’ve told them tonight that you’re a New York City firefighter. And it would have gone down badly—very, very badly.”
“I’m supposed to thank you?”
“I’m trying to help you here.”
“Help me?” Georgia couldn’t stem the bitterness in her voice. She could feel eight years of anger and heartache boiling inside of her. A hundred painful moments of being a single mother. There was the time Richie fell off a seesaw and Georgia had to rush her bloody, screaming son to the emergency room for stitches. There was the time he caught head lice from a borrowed baseball helmet. Georgia spent two weeks on her hands and knees, scrubbing and boiling everything in the house, then picking nits out of his hair every night. There were the hundred-and-four fevers, the stomach flus, the nightmares. And the smaller things, too. The times her boy watched some man teach his son to bat a ball or reel in a fish or hammer a nail—things Richie would never get to do with a dad. Hell, Rick hadn’t even bothered to answer a simple letter Richie had written him last spring. And now, he claimed to want to help?
Georgia wanted to shoot him. She wanted to shout at him. She wanted to beat her fists into his chest. And she couldn’t do anything because it would compromise an investigation. It was the very thing she was certain McLaughlin wanted.
Georgia took a deep breath. “It’s too late,” was all she managed to choke out. She started to walk past him.
“Don’t say that. C’mon, Gee Gee. I need to know what’s going on here. Please.”
Rick grabbed her arm. She shook him off. His hand slipped toward her hip and he recoiled at the touch of something hard and metallic beneath.
“Whoa.” He stepped back, his hands in the air. “Holy shit. You’ve got a gun?”
Georgia pulled back her coat, revealing her holster. “I suggest you not lay another hand on me.”
“So you shoot people now? Man, it’s a good thing we never got married. You’d be hell in a divorce court.”
“Then consider yourself lucky.”
Rick dropped his hands. He fingered his baseball cap and examined her now. She had time to do the same with him. He didn’t look like a terrorist. He looked like someone Mac might work with on his side job. Beneath his denim jacket he wore a flannel shirt. His work boots looked like he actually worked in them. On his left hand, a wedding ring glistened. She knew he was married, but the glint of gold felt like a knife to her heart.
“How is he?” Rick asked softly. The question took her by surprise. She didn’t answer.
“Does he hate me?” Rick pressed.
“This is not the time to talk about that.”
“No sweat.” A favorite expression of Rick’s. And fitting too, since he’d never sweated anything in his life. He closed his eyes and spoke very slowly. “Put your coat down,” he said, his breath misting in the cold night air. “I don’t need to see the gun anymore. I got the message.” He shook his head. “You didn’t even like when I used to go hunting. Now you own a gun? I can’t believe you’ve changed that much.”
“You did.”
Rick leaned against the capped bed of his pickup truck. He drummed his fingers nervously against it. He had Richie’s fidgetiness—or rather, Richie had his.
“Forget about me for a moment. I’m a lost cause. But you? You’re a firefighter, Gee Gee. FDNY. Goddamn it, tha
t’s the best job in the world. What are you risking it for?”
After all these years, Georgia could still hear the ache in his voice when he talked about being a firefighter. She didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve got to go.” She turned and forced herself to begin walking away from him. They were the hardest steps she’d ever taken.
“You’re working undercover.” It wasn’t even a question. He knew. “Shit,” he said, punching his thigh. “Shit, shit, shit.” Georgia flinched. Then she forced herself to keep walking. He ran in front of her. “I’m gonna get busted, aren’t I?”
“Please don’t ask me any more questions.”
He looked confused. “But you’re a firefighter. How did a firefighter get…? Wait a minute, are you a fire marshal now?”
It’s worse than that, Georgia wanted to say, but didn’t. He went to reach out a hand to her then caught himself. He had no wish to have a gun trained on him. “All right. No more questions. Will you just hear me out then?” He caught her gazing at her mother’s house. He suddenly looked embarrassed. “I won’t ask to come inside. I know I’m not welcome there. Just sit with me in my truck. I’ll turn the heater on. Please, Gee Gee, for old time’s sake.”
25
“So the gun’s legit, huh?” asked Rick DeAngelo. “You don’t just keep it on you for when old boyfriends drop by?”
“It’s crossed my mind,” said Georgia. They were sitting in the cab of his Ford F-10 pickup with the engine and heater turned on. Georgia hadn’t frisked him, but it occurred to her now, belatedly, that she probably should have. At the very least, she should know if he had a gun in his glove compartment. She moved her knee up to the glove compartment button and pushed against it. It fell open. There was no gun. Instead, a child’s crayoned picture of a house with flowers tumbled out. Georgia glanced at it and noticed Rick shifting in his seat and tapping the steering wheel to a rhythm only he could hear.
“That’s, uh…that’s…”
“Your daughter’s. I know,” said Georgia.
“You do?”
“What? You think you live in the Himalayan Mountains? South Jersey’s not Tibet, Rick. I get news of your life whether I want it or not.”
He gave her a confused look so she elaborated. “Your cousin, Robbie.”
“Oh, yeah. His wife, Stacy—she’s the sister of your old friend…” He snapped his fingers. He was always bad with names.
“Mary Beth,” said Georgia. “You went to her wedding, remember?”
“I remember that you threw champagne at me.”
“I remember that when I caught the bridal bouquet, you said it should’ve been a shotgun, ’cause that’s the only way you were ever getting married.”
She waited for him to come back with a one-liner. He was always good with those. But instead, he just sank lower in his seat and shoved his hands in his pockets. He didn’t seem to want to talk about the past. “Can you get out of this assignment?”
“Why? Do you think that’s going to save your tail? They’re going to nail you whether I’m involved or not.”
“That’s not why I’m asking. I’m asking because these are dangerous people. More dangerous than you realize.”
“Are you dangerous?”
He pulled a face. “I’m an electrician, Gee Gee, not a terrorist. About the only thing I’ve ever destroyed is my credit rating.”
“Then what are you doing with these people? Why did you let them into that construction site? You had the key.”
He looked surprised that she knew that. “Aw, Christ,” he sighed. “This is so embarrassing. I don’t even know where to begin. Do I talk to you as a fire marshal? As my ex-girlfriend? As the mother of my child?” He allowed his famous Cheshire-cat grin to creep across his clean-shaven face. "As my cousin’s wife’s sister’s girlfriend?”
“I’ll take it any way I can get it.”
“You never used to say that,” he teased.
“You never used to give it. At least not after Richie, in any case.”
He took a deep breath and tried to distill eight years of separation into something logical and understandable. She knew the first part—or figured she knew. The rift between them started the day Georgia found out she’d scored high enough on the firefighter’s physical endurance test to have a decent shot at landing the job. Rick knew he’d failed the moment he fell off that wall. Georgia had tried to reassure him. She didn’t want the job, she kept telling him. She’d gladly turn it down if it made him happier. She cringed now thinking about her girlish impulsiveness, her willingness to throw everything away for a man. She was glad it had never come to that. It was the one thing he’d had the decency not to take from her.
The pregnancy came out of nowhere soon afterward. Rick hung around, but the bonds had already begun to loosen. Guilt kept him in the picture maybe a year and a half longer. By the time Richie was two and Georgia was a probationary firefighter, he was gone entirely from her life. He had an uncle in Toms River, New Jersey, who was a building contractor. Rick, who had always loved the ocean, drifted down there and found work as an electrician. Somewhere along the line he married and had at least one daughter—maybe more. Georgia never wanted to know too many specifics.
“I got that letter, you know,” Rick suddenly blurted out. “The one Richie sent me last spring.”
“Then why didn’t you write back?”
He shook his head and looked down at his hands. “Guilt, I guess. That was part of it. I figured, how could I have a relationship with Richie without helping to support him?”
“Why should that stop you? You never supported him before.” She couldn’t erase the anger from her voice.
“I gave you some money.” The justification died in his throat. He became contrite again. “It wasn’t enough, I know that. And I feel bad about it. Don’t you think I carry that around with me all the time?”
“You didn’t feel bad enough to do anything about it.”
“My work is cyclical, Gee Gee. When I make money, I make good money. But there are a lot of dry times, believe me. When we split up, I didn’t even have a job. And you? You’d just become a firefighter.”
“I was a probationary firefighter, Rick. That first year, I earned under thirty thousand, and I worked my tail off for every bit of it. I didn’t win the lottery. So don’t use my job as an excuse for ditching your responsibilities.”
“Look, if it was that important to you, how come you didn’t take me to court for child support? You could have, you know.”
“And spend my life chasing you? You never had any money anyway. You weren’t worth my time.”
He gave her a hurt look. Georgia turned away from him and caught her reflection in the truck’s rearview mirror. She didn’t like the face looking back at her—all pinched and bitter. They had regressed right back to where they were eight years ago. She wanted to let the past go, but it kept getting the better of her.
“You’re right,” Rick said softly. “I’m not arguing that you’re right. But that’s exactly why I didn’t write Richie back. I couldn’t without offering you some bread. And I haven’t got any. I’m broke. Facing bankruptcy, in fact.”
“What?”
Rick turned off the car engine and wiped the condensation that had formed on the inside of the windshield. “I started my own electrical contracting firm four years ago. Got overextended on a couple of jobs, and things just snowballed from there. I maxed out on every credit card and all my loans and still couldn’t meet the debts. Then I got a call from a guy named Louie Buscanti—ever heard that name?”
“You’re working for Buscanti? The South Jersey mobster?” asked Georgia.
“I work for myself,” said Rick indignantly. “But Buscanti controls the construction trade in South Jersey. Nothing happens in Ocean County without his say-so. So when he offered me the electrical contract on a hotel renovation in Seaside Heights, I couldn’t turn it down. The job was big enough to wipe out all my debts. And if I kicked back
his fifteen percent on time and did a good job, there would be others. I’d be in the clear.”
“So you took it.”
“So I took it. Then yesterday, Buscanti pays me a visit at the job site. Tells me he needs a favor. All I’ve got to do is pick up two people at a service station on the Turnpike and drive them to a construction site in the Meadowlands where my firm laid some cable about a month ago. I tell him ‘no drugs’—’cause I figure that’s what it’s about. Buscanti promises me they’re not drug couriers. It’s just a one-shot deal—‘For a friend of his,’ he says. Believe me, Gee Gee, you don’t say no to Louie Buscanti.”
Georgia frowned at him. “What do you know about the two people you drove?”
“Not much. At first, it was like picking up two college kids. Radical clothes, radical talk, but for the most part, they seemed pretty amateurish. I was just a driver to them. They didn’t talk to me, I didn’t talk to them. I just wanted the night to be over. Then they started talking about some dude named Coyote and his green army. That’s when I got really nervous.”
“Green army,” said Georgia. “Do you mean Green Warriors?”
“Yeah, that’s right. What are they?”
Georgia didn’t answer and Rick immediately caught her drift. “Oh, yeah, I’m the criminal. You’re the law. Pardon me.”
“Don’t make this personal, Rick.”
“Speaking of personal, that Irish guy who grabbed your ass—is he a cop?”
“No.”
Rick’s face paled. “He’s not really your boyfriend, is he?”
“God, no. And that’s all I’m going to say.” She paused a beat to make sure it sank in. “Did they mention any plans? Any places the Green Warriors might hit?”
“You kidding? They didn’t talk to me. I’m nobody to them.”
“Did Buscanti tell you why he wanted you, of all people, to drive these people to this meeting?”
“All he told me was that he was doing a favor for a friend and he knew I had access to that construction site. He didn’t tell me anything else and I didn’t ask. You don’t question Louie Buscanti.”
Fireplay Page 15