Fireplay

by Suzanne Chazin

  “I’m sure it will,” said Georgia. She turned to Marenko. “Thank you,” she mouthed softly. Men usually came into her life and wrecked everything she’d tried to build. This was the first time one had ever tried to build anything. And now she was doing all the wrecking.

  “We’re gonna give it a white pinstripe,” said the boy.

  “Not tonight, though. Right, Sport?” said Marenko. His tone was overly bright. He was fighting to keep himself in check while Richie was awake. “Time for bed for you.”

  Upstairs, Georgia put Richie to bed. Then she ditched her clothes in favor of jeans and a sweatshirt. She looked in on the child one more time before she went downstairs. His eyes were closed, and he suddenly looked much younger than ten. It was hard to run her eyes along that dark wavy hair and the little dimple in his chin, and not see Rick—not the Rick of memory, but the flesh-and-blood man who had fathered her boy. She wished she could tell her son about his father. But she couldn’t. It wouldn’t do the boy any good. And yet it hurt to keep it inside, like a helium balloon you have to keep both hands on to hold down.

  Mac was still in the basement cleaning up when she found him. She sat on the stairs and watched him a moment from behind. He was squinting at the tools, trying to figure out which ones were his and which ones were Georgia’s. He tossed his in a gray metal toolbox on the floor. He was a big man, well built, with a head of thick blue-black hair and a nonchalant way of carrying himself that never ceased to make him attractive, even in old jeans, work boots and a denim shirt.

  “Chief Brennan told you, didn’t he?”

  “Yep.” He kept his back to her.

  “About who I was meeting? And what happened?”

  “Everything,” he grunted. Georgia could hear the hurt in his voice. Chalk up one more part of my life McLaughlin has ruined.

  “I’m sorry, Mac. I wanted to tell you, but Krause told me I had to keep the meeting in strict confidence. This wasn’t a pleasure visit, believe me.”

  “He almost killed you.”

  “Someone almost killed us. I don’t think Rick had anything to do with it.”

  “Convenient how he left the truck before it blew up, don’t you think?” Marenko patted his shirt pocket for a piece of nicotine gum, unwrapped it noisily and popped it in his mouth.

  “Rick wouldn’t do that. I know him.”

  “Do you now?”

  “C’mon Mac, don’t be jealous.”

  “Hey, you do what you want. There are no chains on you.”

  “But I want you to understand—I didn’t choose this.”

  He gave her his “cop” look—intense, distrusting and cold. “The Feds think you know where DeAngelo is. Do you?”

  “No. He believes if he can see Louie Buscanti, he can straighten things out with him. I don’t know where or when that will happen, or if he’ll even survive the encounter.”

  “You’re not hiding him?”

  “No.”

  “Why did you let him run?”

  Georgia closed her eyes and searched for an answer. “Because things aren’t adding up.”

  “No, Scout. You don’t want them to add up. You’ve still got feelings for this guy. And you’re putting your career—your life—on the line for him.”

  “I met Rick for the first time in eight years at an undercover operation the other night—an operation McLaughlin set up. You don’t think that’s a big coincidence?”

  “Even if McLaughlin set you up initially, that’s got nothing to do with tonight.”

  “It’s got everything to do with tonight,” Georgia argued. “Nobody was supposed to know about tonight’s meeting except Charles Krause, Rick and me. If Rick didn’t rig that truck bomb, then Buscanti probably did. How did he find out about the meeting?”

  “DeAngelo told him.”

  “Rick’s frightened to death of Buscanti. No, Mac. Buscanti found out because he knows McLaughlin. The FBI’s own data files say so. How do you know McLaughlin didn’t tip him off?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “The thing I don’t get is, why?” asked Georgia. “I’m just a cop to him. If I get killed, some other marshal will take my place. It won’t necessarily get him off the hook for the Café Treize fire.”

  “Maybe that’s not what he’s trying to get off the hook for.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Marenko closed his toolbox. “Come upstairs. I think you’d better look at something.”

  On the dining table, Marenko had spread out stacks of old incident reports, each with a decaying rubber band around it and a summary sheet, yellowed with age, on top.

  “You got hold of Brophy and Sullivan’s old cases,” said Georgia. She stepped closer and noticed something else. There were several nicotine gum wrappers balled up on the table. A half-pint of ice cream had been emptied and left on the side with the encrusted spoon still in it. Four toothpicks had been shredded. Marenko was fighting the urge to smoke in a bad way. Maybe it was just nicotine withdrawal. Or maybe it was something more.

  “You asked me to come up with every fatal fire that Broph and Sully handled together and labeled accidental,” said Marenko. “In eleven months, they handled twelve such fires.”

  “Twelve. That’s more than I would have expected in such a short time,” said Georgia.

  “It was a busy period for fatal fires in Queens. Lots of immigrants were moving into the borough and subdividing single-family homes.”

  “Any sense whether any of those fires might have involved McLaughlin?”

  “No way to tell. He’s not mentioned. But there’s something I did come across that I think you should know about. Could be just a creepy coincidence. Or it could explain why Sully’s dead, Broph is missing and Carter never wanted you on this case.” He spit out his nicotine gum into the empty ice cream container. “Georgia,” he said hoarsely. He rarely called her Georgia and the sound of it always made her sit up and take notice. “One of the twelve fatal fires? It was your dad’s.”

  “Brophy and Sullivan were the marshals who investigated my father’s death?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Are you saying maybe they blew it?”

  “It’s possible. Then again, it could’ve been some other fire that Cullen Thomas was referring to when he offered to testify against McLaughlin. We’ll never know.”

  “Randy knows,” said Georgia.

  “No, he doesn’t,” said Marenko. “I spoke to him this evening. All he has are suspicions—the same ones we have now. That’s why he pulled the incident report on your father’s fire. That’s what he was doing the other day at the records department at headquarters. But he doesn’t know. None of us do. The only one who really knew was Cullen Thomas and he’s dead.”

  Georgia felt a wave of anger like a hot poker across her skin. She wanted to hit something—hard. To feel it succumb like Silly Putty beneath her fist. She tried out the words in her head and refused to believe them. My dad was murdered. My dad died by an arsonist’s hand. And not just any arsonist. Michael McLaughlin. The man who killed Joe Russo and Tony Fuentes and turned Doug Hanlon’s life into a living hell. A man so vile he’d burn a woman’s face for the sake of a few dollars. When would it end?

  “What am I going to do?” asked Georgia. She felt lightheaded and nauseous. “You’re telling me that Michael McLaughlin might have murdered my father, but all the people who can help me piece it together are dead or missing?” She thought about McLaughlin’s words on the tape Nathan Reese had given her: So a couple of firefighters died—so what? You think this is the first time an accusation like this has been leveled against me?

  “I want back on the FBI case,” she said.

  “No can do,” said Marenko. “You heard Krause. You’re off. And I agree. You’re too close to this.”

  “I’m not sitting on my behind while that sonofabitch waltzes out of yet another murder rap.”

  Marenko tried to pull Georgia close. She resisted. “No, Mac. I want justice. If I don’t get
it from my department, then I’ll go about it on my own.”

  He shook his head. “Look, I know what you’re feeling, but you can’t go there. You’re a fire marshal. A cop. You can’t take the law into your own hands.”

  “I want him dead. I want him to suffer. The way they all suffered.”

  Marenko tried again to pull her toward him. This time she didn’t resist. “I swear to you, Scout, I’ll do everything I can to nail this bastard.”

  34

  Doug Hanlon went out for a late-night run. It was the only thing these last few days that seemed to make him feel any better. Inside the house, he felt claustrophobic, unable to breathe. Everyone was always looking at him, measuring him—wondering. Even tonight, he could hear his father and father-in-law talking in the kitchen. He noticed how their voices hushed when he walked over to the refrigerator to grab a beer. He caught the disappointment on his father’s face. You’re a fine one to judge, he felt like yelling at him. But he said nothing. And they said nothing. He was drowning and all anyone could do was stand and watch. And so he ran. It was the only thing he was good at anymore.

  He ran along the boardwalk under the stars, the wind off the sea so cold that it felt like needles on his face—especially on the tender burns that were still healing. He welcomed the pain. It was the only sensation he could feel. The rest of him felt numb.

  Tomorrow was Tony Fuentes’s funeral. Hanlon knew he had to go, had to face Tony’s widow, as pregnant as his own wife, Kerry. And the girls—one of them the exact same age as Jenna. His stomach churned with the thought. He had never been good with words. Tony was the funny one, the one who always had a sly remark at a drill, the practical joker who could spend half his day coming up with raunchy punch lines to deliver across the P.A. system. A chuck on the shoulder from Tony Fuentes along with a mumbled “well done” was the best compliment Hanlon had ever received. He loved the man. He’d learned from the man. He wasn’t ready to bury him.

  And yet, the words that flew freely through his head when he was running got all tangled up inside of him when he thought about seeing Fuentes’s widow tomorrow. He burned with shame, a shame so hot and fiery that he felt like he was watching himself from afar, making his hands and feet move like a marionette. Smiling felt like the oddest muscle spasm to him. Where before, he hadn’t been able to keep his hands off Kerry, now he lay beside her at night, feeling cut off from her body. Inside of him was a great void that no one could fill up. Not Kerry. Not Jenna. Not his father.

  His father. In some ways, facing his father was the toughest of all. The man had buried a lifetime’s worth of friends after nine-eleven. Neither of them imagined Doug would be the reason he’d have to relive the nightmares all over again. Captain Seamus Hanlon embodied everything Doug wanted to be: a highly decorated officer in the FDNY. A combat veteran with a purple heart and a silver star. His father’s only weakness had been alcohol, and he had even managed to conquer that—he’d been clean and sober for sixteen years. Doug hadn’t fallen too far down that hole yet, but he had a sense that he might. So did his dad, and that seemed to pain each of them more than anything.

  He was like his father in one respect—he solved his own problems. And he did it with his own two hands. But here was an unsolvable problem. He couldn’t bring those men back. And he couldn’t live with the guilt.

  He stopped running and bent over, hands on the thighs of his sweatpants to catch his breath. His side hurt. He knew he’d run a long way. Sweat poured off his body and the wind raced past his ears. He pulled his black wool knit cap down over them and looked out at the deserted beach. He had run a long way—past Rockaway, past Seaside. He was in no-man’s-land now—the bleak, barren oceanfront that formed the dividing line between the high-rise projects in Arverne and the modest one-family homes in Hanlon’s neighborhood. Out here, homeless people wandered. And packs of stray dogs fed on piles of garbage dumped from passing cars. He could walk into the ocean out here and no one would find him. He could disappear. Save his family the heartache and shame of living with a coward. He was slowly dying anyway. Why not just speed things along?

  Doug Hanlon wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing on the boardwalk, under the halogen lights, staring out at the blackness of the sea. But the sweat had chilled on his skin, and he could hear a car slowly spinning its wheels over bits of gritty sand and gravel as it came to a stop on the road that paralleled the boardwalk. Hanlon turned to see that the car was his own—a Dodge Neon. He crossed the street and saw that Kerry was at the wheel, tears streaming down her face. She unlocked the door and he climbed inside.

  “What are you doing out here?” he asked her. “What’s wrong?”

  She started to speak, but her words were unintelligible. She cut the engine. Hanlon pulled her close and tried to calm her down. “Are you hurt? Are you having contractions? We’ve got to get you home.”

  “No. I’m fine,” she managed to choke out. She reached down to her handbag and pulled out a tape recorder with a tape inside. “It’s this.”

  Kerry handed the recorder to Hanlon. He frowned. He’d seen the tape recorder before. It belonged to his father-in-law, Ray Connelly. Connelly used to tape confessions on it when he was a city detective. Hanlon pushed Play and heard a scratchy sound, followed by a gruff voice with a slight brogue.

  …So a couple of firefighters died—so what? You think this is the first time an accusation like this has been leveled against me? This is Mike McLaughlin you’re talking to. Not some street hoodlum. Trust me on this. In a week or two, no one will remember their fuckin’ names. They’re just a couple of nobodies, anyway….

  Hanlon rewound the tape. He pushed Play and listened again. There was no sound before it or after it. There was nothing else on the tape. Mike McLaughlin. Mike McLaughlin. He would never forget that name as long as he lived. He pounded a fist on the dashboard. The glove compartment flew open. Maps and FDNY parking placards flew out across the floor. Hanlon spewed out a string of expletives. Normally, he tried to curtail his language around Kerry.

  “Where did you get this?” he asked her.

  “My father and your father were talking in the kitchen tonight. I knew they were upset about something, but they wouldn’t discuss it with me. They kept talking about a tape. When my dad walked your dad out to his car, I found the tape recorder in the kitchen and listened to the tape. As soon as I heard it, I knew I had to find you.”

  “Who the hell is Mike McLaughlin?” asked Hanlon. “He killed my friends and I don’t even know who this bastard is.” Hanlon ran a hand down his face and tried to get his emotions under control. “I’ve got to find him, Kerry.”

  “No, Doug. No. I’m sure that’s why our dads didn’t share this with us. I’m sure it’s because they thought you were better off not knowing.”

  “Who else knows about this McLaughlin guy, huh?”

  “I don’t think anyone knows, Doug. I don’t even know whether my dad got ahold of this tape—or your dad did. Certainly the widows don’t know about this. I just spoke to Tony’s wife, Rosa, today.”

  “I’ll tell you who must know,” said Hanlon bitterly. “The marshals. That Georgia Skeehan. She knew who killed Tony and Captain Russo. She knew goddamn it—and she never told me. All that bullshit talk about doing justice to their memory and finding a way to honor them. It was nothing but talk.”

  “Maybe you should speak to her.”

  “Maybe I should do more than that,” said Hanlon.

  “Doug, please. I don’t like it when you talk that way.”

  “I can’t help it, Kerry. Everyone’s treating me like a child. And I’m a man. Or at least I was. I handled things. I didn’t just sit around letting everyone else solve my problems.” Hanlon reached up a hand and brushed away his wife’s tears. “Can you drive home?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I just want to run some more. I need to think.”

  “Will you be all right?” asked Kerry. “I’m worried about you.”
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  “I’m fine,” said Hanlon. “I’ll be home in a little while.” He picked up the maps and stuffed them back into the glove compartment without meeting her gaze.

  “We’ll talk to my father and yours tomorrow,” Kerry assured him. “I know they want to see justice done just as much as you do. I’m sure the marshals do, too.”

  “Uh-huh. Okay,” said Hanlon. He kissed his wife on the cheek and stepped out of the car. His breath clouded in the salty air as he watched Kerry do a U-turn and drive away. He walked across to the boardwalk rail. His legs seemed to lose all feeling and he collapsed against it. Justice, my ass, thought Hanlon. Chump justice—that’s all that was. He’d allowed everyone to lie to him and coddle him long enough. It was time, Hanlon decided, to do the one thing he could really do for Captain Russo and Tony Fuentes—to hell with the consequences.

  35

  Georgia awoke early on Monday morning after a restless night. She couldn’t get her father’s fire out of her mind. Richie was still asleep and so was her mother. The house was dark. It would be another forty-five minutes before she’d have to get her son up and ready for school. She didn’t have to be at Tony Fuentes’s funeral until noon. She pulled on an old pair of jeans and sweatshirt and walked into the upstairs hallway.

  The cape-style brick house Georgia’s parents bought when she was seven had a pull-down stairs in the hallway ceiling. The stairs were almost like a ladder—made of plank wood with a damp, musty smell that reminded Georgia of the passage of years. The attic was full of the castoffs of a life that seemed like somebody else’s now—her father’s helmet and dress uniform, her brother Dennis’s old skateboard, Richie’s playpen, a box of Georgia’s old maternity clothes. Dusty clumps of cotton-candy-pink insulation clung to the rafters. Georgia shivered in the unheated space, lit by a single bare bulb. She didn’t like being up here, surrounded by memories.