The Fourth Angel Page 9

  The words were rolling now, and she was powerless to stop them. “You want me to quit? Fine. But before I do, I’m going to have to explain to the commissioner why it is that one of the buildings that burned in a fire you say isn’t HTA and isn’t related shouldn’t have been standing in the first place.”

  Marenko reared back in his chair, openmouthed, the toothpick wedged into the corner. “Say what?”

  “That vacant apartment house in East Tremont. It was supposed to have been demolished. The paperwork never went through. The building records are missing—on purpose, I suspect. And that furniture warehouse in Washington Heights? No one investigated that fire too closely, either. Could it have been because the badges liked gambling there so much?”

  Marenko looked up at the ceiling and cursed. “Lightning told you.” It wasn’t even a question.

  “You were right, Mac.” Georgia reached over and yanked the toothpick from his astonished lips, then threw it in the wastebasket. “A rookie like me can learn a lot from an experienced hand.”

  He stared at her now, gaping like a schoolyard bully who didn’t quite know how to fight a girl. Slowly, he ran a hand through his wavy mop of hair and let his eyes wander the length of her body, beginning at the band of skin separating her navy blue pumps from the hem of her pants and resting a half beat on each curve, all the way up to the silky white collar of her blouse. Then he laughed. It was a deep, rich sound. Totally unexpected. She’d never heard him really laugh before, and it caught her off guard. He threw an eraser at her playfully, and she threw it back.

  “You win, Skeehan.” He grinned, shaking his head. “You’re all right for a girl.” He rose and grabbed a blue twill sports jacket off a coat tree in the corner. A set of keys jangled in the pocket. He tossed them up in the air and caught them with the reflexive grace of an athlete. “C’mon,” he said with a wink. His eyes were as blue as the denim of his shirt.

  She hesitated. “Where are we going?”

  “You wanna work this case for real, or not?”

  15

  The chief hadn’t been out to Howard Beach, Queens, for months—not since his old man died. He sipped a foam cup of bitter black coffee to steady his nerves and rolled down the windows of his graffiti-covered van.

  A strong breeze lifted off the marshy flats of Jamaica Bay. Overhead, a plane roared as it began its descent into Kennedy Airport. If the chief closed his eyes on this warm, balmy April Thursday, he could still drink in the sensation of sitting in his dad’s motorboat, the sun on his fair skin, the smell of diesel fuel, listening to big, leathery men with smoky voices talk fire over cigarettes and beer.

  Even then, it was all he craved. And by rights, it should’ve been his—would’ve been his—if things had gone the way they were supposed to. Late at night, in Washington Heights, when sirens wailed like cats in heat and bullets punctuated the darkness, the what-ifs seemed to have the power to physically crush him.

  He turned onto a quiet street of tidy bungalows with grottoes of the Virgin Mary on postage-stamp lawns. Near the end of the block stood his dad’s old firehouse—a rectangular sandstone-colored structure, two stories high. To its left, inside a gate, firefighters’ cars were crammed at odd angles. To its right, separated by a narrow airshaft, was a three-story row-frame apartment building with a flat front and flat roof.

  The building, covered in dark green asphalt shingles, looked like an upended shoe box. Six families lived there, and despite its drab appearance, it had always been well maintained. Fake geraniums sprouted in window boxes, and Easter bunnies were taped to the glass panes. Out front, two little girls with blond braids were drawing chalk figures on the pavement, just as he once had.

  In front of the firehouse, a firefighter was hosing down the engine. The chief recognized him now: Sean Duffy, a probie, or first-year firefighter. Six-foot-three, twenty-four years old, he had a broad, square face, a neck like a tree stump, and a crew cut the color of bark. Duffy’s older brother, Tim, a homicide detective, had gone to school with the chief. His father, Ted, and uncle Dennis were firefighters. Sean Duffy did a double take at the sight of the van and waved. The chief pulled over to the curb and reached across the passenger seat to shake Duffy’s hand.

  “Hey, stranger,” said the probie, wiping his wet hands on his blue uniform pants. “Long time, no see.”

  “No see, all right.” The chief grinned. “You’re putting on weight.”

  Duffy rubbed a small ripple of excess flesh bulging beneath his navy blue uniform shirt. On his left shoulder, the red flame of the FDNY insignia glistened in the sun.

  “Firehouse cooking, man. And not enough work.” Duffy waved to the little girls giggling next door. From the right front pocket of his uniform trousers, he produced a candy bar. “Hey, Molly,” he called out to one of the girls, a freckle-faced child of about five with long blond lashes and bright green eyes. “Wanna share this with your friend?”

  The child skipped over and snatched the bar from Duffy’s outstretched hand. He towered over her, but she seemed perfectly at ease. Like Ramon, thought the chief. He wondered idly what hellhole the kid was in. Orlando was out of jail, but not back with Celia. He almost felt sorry for her.

  “Thank you, Sean,” said the little girl now, in an accent that sounded faintly Irish. Duffy patted her golden hair and returned to his conversation. “Good kids, but I swear, I coulda gotten more action if they’d put me in a graveyard.”

  “Hey, your old man probably pulled strings to get you someplace safe. You’ve got years to see action.”

  The probie’s face clouded over. “Listen, I heard about what happened. I’m real sorry, man…”

  “Yeah, well, my dad was getting on…”

  “That, too, of course,” said Duffy, his eyes taking in the chief’s paint-smeared clothes. “But I meant the other stuff.” The probie shook his head. “If it was me, I’d want to kill that chick. You helped her. You taught her the ropes and then she does that…”

  “It’s not the first time that’s happened to me.”

  “Yeah, but you just know if things had been the other way around, she’d have been hollering harrassment or some such crap.”

  The chief forced a tight smile. “I’m trying to put it behind me, Duff. Get on with my life. I pull in good money as a painter these days. So I’m okay about it.”

  “You’re a better man than I am,” said the probie. “Hey, you coming to the…um, celebration tonight?”

  “I thought the firehouse got in hot water over last year’s little party.”

  “The brass was pissed off for a while, especially since Chief Greco’s son is one of our engine officers. But downtown did their damage control. And you know those guys—if it didn’t happen on television, it didn’t happen. This year, they’re having it around the corner, at the VFW hall.”

  “What about the guys on duty?”

  “They’re all going and bringing their radios. Me? I’m still a first-year probie. I don’t think it’d look right to be over there and all…”

  “You should go,” the chief urged. “What’s anyone going to do to you when Greco’s own son is there? You just said nothing happens around here.”

  Duffy considered the point and nodded. “You’re probably right. The guys in the firehouse are telling me the same thing. It’s gonna be a wild night, I think.”

  The chief smiled. “I’m sure it will be, Duff. I’m sure it will be.”

  16

  “Do you mind telling me where we’re going?” Georgia asked as Marenko eased one of the department’s dark blue Chevy Caprices northbound onto the West Side Highway. Traffic was at a crawl. The afternoon sun shimmered like crushed glass across the Hudson River.

  “It’s all here,” he said, tossing her a folder labeled Ronald Glassman. “But first you gotta understand something…about that other stuff.”

  “You mean those embarrassing little sidebars to the HTA fires?”

  Marenko winced, then tried to collect his thought
s. “Screwups happen,” he said slowly. “Anybody in this department long enough knows where the bodies are buried. But you go to the commish with that, you’ll make it sound like a cover-up.”

  “That’s what it is.”

  “No,” he said, running a hand through his hair. “Incompetence, yeah. Guys being guys, yeah. But Skeehan, Lynch’ll just use this for his own political ends. Brennan’ll screw you big-time and it won’t solve the Spring Street arson. Look, trust me on this one. I’m trying to save your ass here.”

  “You want to save my ass?” She laughed. “Now there’s something I can take to the bank…So who’s Ronald Glassman?”

  “The cowboy on that surveillance tape. I got a positive ID from the guy’s secretary this morning. Judging from the tape, it looks like he left One-thirty-one Spring Street as the fire started Monday night. We’re heading up to his house in Westchester to find out why.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Georgia, studying the folder. Marenko’s notes said Glassman, an advertising-agency sales director, was married with two daughters and lived in Chappaqua, an affluent town about forty miles north of Manhattan. “If this guy was at the party, why didn’t he come forward?”

  Marenko made a face. “Think about it, Skeehan. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist—”

  “Okay, okay.” She rolled her eyes. “So he was there with another woman. And you’re figuring maybe he’s a witness.”

  “Witness, my ass. He’s got motive—enough to hang him. That black chick down at the ME’s office? A relative from North Carolina ID’d her as Cassandra Mott. She used to work at the same ad agency as Glassman. Glassman’s secretary said it was rumored they were getting it on. She died four months pregnant. I’ll bet you this jerk knocked her up and maybe didn’t like that he was gonna have to pay for it. We can do the DNA, simple enough, if it comes to that. I left word for Carter to contact the family in North Carolina and find out what he can about her and this guy.”

  Georgia closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. What was this news going to do to Randy? Bad enough his little girl died in a horrible fire, but to think that some rich, white, married guy did this to her on purpose?

  Georgia thought about Cassie Mott now. They were so much alike in so many respects. They’d both reached adulthood without their fathers, then turned around and fallen for men who packed up themselves when fatherhood came a-calling. Rick, at least, didn’t try to kill her. She smiled darkly, thankful for small favors.

  Marenko reached inside his blue twill sports coat for a pack of gum. He offered her a stick. She declined.

  “Still not smoking?” she asked.

  “Trying not to. Every time I quit, it’s just as hard. I’m always hungry, which reminds me, when we get to Chappaqua, we’ll get a bite to eat. My treat.”

  “That’s not necessary.”

  He read the concern in her eyes. “It’s a meal, Skeehan. An apology for giving you a hard time. I’ll say one thing about you—you’ve got guts. I don’t think I could’ve stood up to Brennan like you did yesterday in his office.”

  “I hadn’t planned to, believe me.” She stared out the window as the road opened up, flanked on either side by deep thickets of woods and grassy meadows. “Mac, was what you said in Brennan’s office yesterday true? That you’d never seen those letters from the Fourth Angel before?”

  “Yep.”

  “How about Brennan? Was he telling the truth?”

  “Far as I know.”

  “So where did they come from?”

  “Beats me.” He turned the knobs on the radio until he got WFAN, an all-sports station. The NHL playoffs were under way, and some guy named Joey from Brooklyn was spouting off about the Rangers’ defense. Guys and sports.

  “See, you’ve got to realize,” Marenko said, “crazy people write letters. It doesn’t always mean they set fires.”

  “Why won’t you at least consider the possibility that there’s a serial arsonist out there?”

  “Because the MOs on all these fires are entirely different. Different kinds of buildings, different parts of the city. And there are other problems,” Marenko continued, ticking them off on his fingers. “You’ve got the traces of diesel fuel in Red Hook that aren’t consistent with HTA. In East Tremont, our Bronx guys found the bottoms of three plastic buckets in the ruins. The whole friggin’ place burns to the ground and we’ve got these three plastic buckets. How does anyone explain that? Especially since there was nothing like that in Spring Street.”

  “You never told me about the bucket bottoms,” Georgia said stiffly.

  “Hey? I’m telling you now. So you understand why the fires aren’t related. Walter Frankel gave you those letters. And don’t tell me he didn’t.”

  Silence.

  “Okay, so you’re protecting him, fine. But he’s setting you up—”

  “He was trying to help me—”

  “Yeah. Help you right out of a job, I’d say.”

  “You think I’m naive,” she offered.

  Marenko shifted his eyes off the winding road and gave her a long, searching look. The skin beneath those azure lakes was mottled and beginning to take on the wrinkly texture of unironed rayon.

  “In some ways, yeah. I’d say you’re as naive as a Girl Scout. Nice quality in a woman. Bad one in a cop. My motto is: nobody tells anybody everything.”

  “Even you, huh?”

  “Especially me, Scout.” Marenko winked at her. From anyone else, she would have bristled at the nickname. From Mac, it seemed oddly sweet and well intended—certainly better than things he’d called her in the past.

  In Chappaqua, they found a Chinese restaurant with red paper lanterns in the windows and sat down to watch the ebb and flow of small-town life. Georgia ordered sweet-and-sour pork and a Diet Pepsi. Marenko ordered Szechuan chicken and a Budweiser. Georgia frowned.

  “You gonna tell me that one beer’s gonna keep me from doin’ my job here? Man, in a firehouse, I’d just be gettin’ started.”

  “Were you like that as a firefighter?”

  “Me?” Marenko touched his chest. “Uh-uh. I was always stone-cold sober on the job. Went home and drank. So I ended up with a couple of commendations in my folder and a big, fat legal bill from my divorce.” He took a gulp of beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How about you?”

  “How about me, what?”

  “You’re divorced, right?”

  “No…”

  “Separated?”

  She took a sip of soda and shook her head. “Never married.”

  “But you’ve got a kid.” Marenko caught her sharp gaze. “Sorry. I wasn’t trying to judge. I guess I’m just old-fashioned.”

  “Me too.” Georgia laughed. A woman with a small boy wandered past the restaurant, making her think with a pang of Richie. “I wanted to marry Richie’s dad. He just didn’t want to marry me.”

  “Then he was an asshole. Better off without him.”

  The food came and Marenko made a brave stab at using the chopsticks, but finally opted for a fork. He ate with gusto, entertaining her with an assortment of X-rated Chinese dish names.

  “You get the cultural sensitivity award of the night,” she told him between giggles.

  “Hey, I ain’t prejudiced. My insults are equal opportunity,” he explained. “You must’ve known a guy like that when you were a firefighter in Queens.”

  Petie Ferraro. Her smile faded. The pork suddenly tasted like carpet underpadding. She could barely choke it down.

  Marenko stopped chewing. “I say something wrong?”

  “You reminded me of a firefighter I knew. He was killed in the line of duty.”

  “Was he the guy you tried to save?”

  She put her chopsticks down. It never occurred to her that he would’ve heard. “You know about Petie Ferraro?”

  “I recall something about you getting a medal for helping to rescue a firefighter before you got promoted to marshal.”

  Georgia rolled her ch
opsticks under a sweaty palm without meeting his gaze. Like a water main that had sprung a leak, images of Petie spurted up from the recesses of her memory. The thickset body that shook like a bowl of Jell-O when he laughed. The black Fu Manchu mustache that he stroked when he told a funny story. He loved to build slot cars and race them with his three kids. He loved camping and fishing with his wife, Melinda, in the Adirondack Mountains every summer. He smoked the foulest cigars, told the dirtiest jokes, and made the best chicken parmigiana in the world.

  The waiter came by with a dish of fortune cookies and the check.

  “You know,” said Marenko, misreading her silence, “lots of guys feel bad when someone they save dies. It’s just that much harder when it’s one of our own. But hey, you can’t do more than put your life on the line for a brother. That’s what the job’s all about.”

  Georgia pushed her meal away and glared at him. “You think, huh? You think all that training, all that bullshit talk about brotherhood and bravery and pride in the uniform is gonna carry it. And then that moment comes and you meet yourself face to face and you can’t even recognize who you are.”

  He reared back.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself. This thing’s still eating me alive.” She sighed. “I’m just tired of making excuses.”

  It had been almost two years since that fire, but Georgia remembered every detail. “Ferraro and I were doing a second-floor search at a house fire in Queens. I got turned around in the smoke, started running out of air, and I couldn’t find the exit.”

  The house had been part of a row of sagging, dilapidated frame structures, sided with gray asphalt tiles. Out front, a rusted red tricycle lay overturned on a patch of bare dirt. The dirt was covered with shards of glass from the windows firefighters had to break.

  “Petie threw me out of a room as it blew. Saved my life. Then suddenly, I heard this loud crack. I looked back, and he started dropping through the floor behind me. I don’t know if I was in shock or what, but I thought he could scramble out by himself. I was choking, so I ran to a back window, smashed it open, and gulped for air. Then it hit me. He needed me to pull him out. I’d deserted him, crapped out, run away.”