Duffy cringed when he thought of this year’s theme: “Louis Farrakhan Appreciation Day.” He was afraid to even think about what the guys would be cooking up.
He grabbed his turnout gear off the truck in the parking lot and told Lieutenant Greco he’d be around the corner, at the firehouse front desk. Then he walked into the damp night, shedding the commotion of the VFW hall like a down parka on a balmy day.
He wasn’t exactly sure why he felt relieved to have left the party. Part of it was embarrassment. He didn’t think he’d be comfortable with the strippers who were surely going to be part of the event. He never cared much for crude jokes, ethnic slurs, or slobbering drunkenness. But part of it was, quite simply, a sense of duty. He’d always wanted to be a firefighter, just like his dad and uncle. He pictured himself racing up tenement stairs in Harlem to rescue a trapped child, or dangling at the end of a rope in a crumbling Bed-Stuy housing project to lower some elderly person to safety. And even if all he did was sit at the firehouse front desk and flip channels, at least he wasn’t at some party with guys who’d rather chug a cold one than take a walk in the smoke.
Up ahead he could see the firehouse. Every light was on—the too-bright wattage that reminded him of hospital emergency rooms. The street itself was empty. In this family neighborhood, most people were inside before eight P.M. Soft lights glowed from bedroom windows and televisions flickered.
Duffy punched the code that opened the firehouse door, then gazed over at the three-story apartment house next to it. A strange light in the row frame’s basement caught his eye. It shimmered in an oddly asymmetrical way—bright in some parts yet shadowy in others, as if some sinewy thread of darkness were stitching it up piece by piece. Duffy stepped closer to examine it. Gauzy black tentacles floated in midair, like the appendages of some giant squid, soaking up the incredible whiteness of the light.
Smoke.
Fire.
The young firefighter fumbled with his department radio. “Ten-seventy-five,” he sputtered to the dispatcher, giving the code for a working fire, along with the address. He slipped into his turnout gear, but decided against fetching an airtank and mask next door at the firehouse. The fire was only in the basement. Better to get the people out. He had time.
He raced up the row frame’s front stoop and into the building. It had to be under a minute since he’d first spotted the blaze. Yet heat and black smoke were beginning to filter through the first-floor landing like dust motes on a shaft of sunlight. Duffy had never seen a fire move so fast. Even the smoke detectors had no time to react. Only now, one by one, did they start to buzz.
He banged on apartment doors. People crowded the halls. They all knew Sean Duffy. They wanted information. They wanted assurances. They wanted Sean to stop the smoke detectors from waking their children or to help them carry their most precious belongings to the curb. But already, the young firefighter could see that the smoke and heat were outrunning him, seeping up from air shafts and floorboards, teasing him into thinking he had more time than he did. He took a carton out of one mother’s hand, threw it back in the apartment, and shoved her and her children to the exit.
People don’t understand how fast fire travels, he thought. They never think it can happen to them. Duffy recalled a story his dad, Ted, had told him about an old man who made it safely out of a fire, then went back to retrieve his daughter’s graduation photo. The old guy was found an hour later, dead on his living room floor, photo in hand.
He bounded up the second-floor stairs now, past families coughing and gagging, black snot running from their noses. The panic, in just thirty seconds, had grown palpable, along with the thickening smoke. Duffy’s eyes stung. His lungs pleaded for air. A woman tugged on the sleeve of his turnout coat. It was Mrs. Corcoran, Molly’s mother, holding the girl’s little brother. But Molly wasn’t there.
“I can’t find my daughter,” she sobbed in a strong Irish accent as a wave of unexpectedly intense heat pushed toward them. A second later, the lights went out.
“Go. Stay close to the floor,” Duffy choked out, giving her a spare flashlight from his pocket. “I’ll get her.”
The Corcoran apartment was to the left of the stairs. Duffy crawled inside, feeling under beds and couches. Even on his belly, even with the window open and smoke billowing out, the temperature was probably hovering near 300 degrees. Lightbulbs burst. Bottles on countertops shattered. Plastic cups melted into a sticky ooze. The realization brought a stab of panic. Duffy looked up. Black smoke was banking down from the ceiling, collapsing visibility inch by inch. Soon there’d be no oxygen left in the room. He wished now he’d gone back for his airtank.
Then his boot brushed against an object that felt like a doll. He waved his flashlight beam across the floor and caught the glimmer of a soot-streaked braid. Molly. He grabbed the little girl’s limp body and held her to his chest. He didn’t even want to consider that she might be dead. He opened the window wider and kicked out the screen. They were twenty feet in the air. He could jump to the firehouse roof. But with Molly? He might crush her. Or drop her.
In the distance, he could hear the wail of sirens, but he couldn’t hang on. In the hallway, spiky flames shot eight feet in the air, barking and spitting like a pit bull on a chain. Black smoke poured over his shoulder. More objects exploded in staccato bursts from the heat, sending molten projectiles through the apartment. He could feel himself becoming disoriented, his body and mind giving in to the waves of orange rolling across the ceiling, like an ocean from hell. He had to do something right away.
Then he saw a heavyset man wobbling up to the building with a twelve-foot aluminum ladder. A neighbor, he presumed. There were several in the street now.
“Over here,” Duffy yelled, dangling the unconscious child out the window by her tender, twiglike arms.
The man hurriedly threw the ladder against the green asphalt shingles, climbed up and grabbed the child as well as he could, then carried her down. Duffy, disoriented, leaned over the window ledge and retched. He lifted a leg to climb out and make a stab at jumping to the firehouse roof.
The explosion came out of nowhere—so swift and fierce that the young firefighter had no time to react. It barreled out of the blackness, a locomotive of superheated gases, hurtling sinks and light fixtures that had been bolted to the walls. When Sean Duffy landed on the roof of the firehouse, he thought at first that he’d beaten it.
He shuddered, feeling cold and numb, like a sailor hit by a North Atlantic wave in February. The fierce explosion took his breath away, and try as he might, he couldn’t get it back. But as the sensation passed, a more terrible one kicked in. His lungs and legs throbbed with blistering agony. And across his back he felt…nothing. Like it wasn’t even there. He got to his knees, feeling as if he were sloshing about in a body encased in Saran Wrap.
When he looked down, he saw all that was left of his turnout pants: a film of puckered black fabric. His canvas gloves had melted to his hands. He studied his wrists. The skin beneath didn’t even look like his skin—all blotchy and black, streaked with an inhuman shade of pink. It looked like a slab of barbecued meat.
He tried to stand, but a searing jolt of pain tore at his legs. He crawled farther from the fire on the tar roof, which was now bubbling and sticky from the intense heat. His mind foggily tried to comprehend where he’d left Molly. His clothes felt three sizes too small, like he was some kind of cartoon character doubling in size every minute.
He didn’t recall the fire trucks arriving. He didn’t remember being carried to the pavement. He couldn’t even be sure whether the moan he heard was coming from his lips or someone else’s. All around him, people groaned, their clothes seared and in tatters, their blackened skin sliding off their bodies in long, pasty sheets. Blood and body fluids oozed across sidewalks filled with kids’ chalk drawings, as the injured babbled and rocked or lay silently, wide-eyed in shock. Many had no clothes or hair, or hair that was as prickly as razor wire. They looked like grote
sque store mannequins.
Duffy saw Lieutenant Greco hovering over him now, working on him with two other guys he knew. More sirens screeched in the distance. He was aware of a crowd forming at the perimeter, of several of them stepping forward in the lamplit darkness, rolling up their sleeves.
“Get Ted Duffy,” someone murmured.
“Get a priest,” said another.
A convulsive shaking began somewhere deep inside Sean Duffy’s body until it felt as if all four limbs were one large tuning fork. He vomited, curling into a fetal ball and closing his eyes at the sickly-sweet stench of what he guessed to be his own burned flesh.
“Molly,” he croaked. He wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t flow—probably burned up along with everything else.
“She’s gonna make it,” said Greco, easing him down on a stretcher.
“I forgot my airtank, Lieu. I messed up,” Duffy muttered through melted lips.
Tears came to Greco’s eyes. “You didn’t mess up, kid. Don’t worry about nothing. You did good. Real, real good.”
19
“So you think you’re pretty clever, don’t you?” Marenko asked Georgia as he gunned the motor south along the Saw Mill River Parkway. They were headed back from Ron Glassman’s house in Chappaqua.
“What are you talking about?”
“That stuff you made up about that chick.”
“I didn’t make it up.”
Marenko studied her face as if he’d never really seen it before—the full lips, the large hazel eyes, the curly reddish-brown hair that fell almost to her shoulders, the faint band of freckles that made her look perpetually twelve. Then he turned his eyes back to the road and shook his head. “It didn’t work anyway.”
Georgia couldn’t contain herself any longer. “Well, it just might have, if you hadn’t pounced all over him. Maybe you’re a hell of a firefighter when the flames are licking your rear end. Maybe you can bully some street mutt into a confession. But you don’t know zip about talking to people. Everything’s not black and white in this world. Not everybody’s a hero or a coward, a good guy or a bad guy.”
He shot her a long, searching look. “This isn’t about Glassman, is it?” he asked softly. “It’s about what I said earlier, about you and that firefighter, Ferraro.”
“It’s about everything.”
He turned on a sports radio station, filling the air with Brooklyn accents passionately debating baseball lineups like they were White House cabinet posts. Just before they reached the bridge to Manhattan, he pulled off the highway and into a diner parking lot.
“Where are you going?”
“I want to get a cup of coffee, use the can, make a few phone calls,” he explained. “You coming?”
“Why? It’s not like you’re going to tell me anything,” she shot back.
“Hey, it’s a two-way street, Scout. What you knew about that chick—”
“She’s not a chick, all right?” yelled Georgia.
Marenko threw up his hands. “Suit yourself.” He slammed the car door with more force than was necessary.
Georgia sat in the car, fuming. Marenko had taken her to Chappaqua to appease her—appease the chick, she could hear him saying—nothing more. It was only by chance that he’d happened to mention the bucket bottoms at that fire in East Tremont. Anything she wanted to learn about this case she was going to have to find out on her own.
But couldn’t I always? she realized with a jolt. Walter Frankel was handling all the forensics on the investigation. And he was just a phone call away. She had her cell phone with her. It was only seven P.M. Frankel might still be in his lab. He always worked late.
He picked up on the first ring. He seemed delighted to hear her voice.
“They’re freezing me out of this investigation,” she complained.
“That’s Brennan’s doing. Does Lynch know about this?”
“Oh, there’s a good idea—complain to the commissioner about my boss, the chief fire marshal. I’ve always wanted to spend my career checking smoke detectors.”
“But Georgia, you have to let the commissioner know what’s going on.”
“What is going on, Walter? You’re the only one who swears those letters from the Fourth Angel are legit. You told me all four fires were HTA. But Mac showed me a report from the ATF on that Red Hook fire. Did you get a copy of the results? There was diesel fuel on that sample of concrete—”
“Yep,” he said. “There sure was.”
“And at that Bronx fire? The marshals there found three plastic bucket bottoms in the wreckage—”
“Absolutely.”
“So how can those two fires be HTA?”
“Georgia, the diesel fuel was a postfire contamination. They used a power saw to cut the sample, and microscopic particles of diesel contaminated it.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because I know Dale Kessler, the ATF forensic chemist who did the sample. And what Mac didn’t tell you was that before Dale found the diesel fuel, he did a test called petrographic microscopy.”
“What’s that?”
“That measures the minimum temperature a piece of concrete would have to be exposed to for the documented changes to occur. You know what the minimum was that Kessler found? Twenty-eight hundred degrees Fahrenheit. That’s the minimum. So the diesel fuel stains happened after the fire.”
“What about the bucket bottoms? Don’t tell me they’re postfire as well.”
“No,” said Frankel. “The bottoms appear to be from plastic hardware-store containers. I think they may actually indicate the fire’s point of origin.”
“Hardware buckets? C’mon, Walter. Those things are made of recyclable plastic.”
“High-density polyethylene, to be exact.”
“They should melt at temperatures of—what—two hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit?”
“Two-fifty to two-seventy-five,” he agreed. “Then again, it seems entirely possible in a very hot, fast-moving fire that the coolest place—the most protected place—might be a covered surface directly below the point of origin. It’s the same principle that explains why the floor directly beneath a burning liquid often shows little or no damage.”
“Were the bucket bottoms found only in East Tremont?”
“I’m going through the records again now. But I believe one or two may also have been found at the warehouse in Washington Heights and at Red Hook, though no one put it together at the time.”
“What about Spring Street?”
“No. Nothing. You saw the site first. Did you find any?”
“No,” said Georgia. She looked up from her cell phone and saw Marenko heading to the car. “I gotta go, Walter. I’ll talk to you later.” She disconnected.
Marenko had a big smile on his face when he got into the car.
“What are you so happy about?”
“We hit paydirt, Scout.” Marenko slipped the car into drive and nosed back onto the Saw Mill River Parkway. “Suarez did a criminal background check on our buddy Glassman. Turned up an interesting little item. At eighteen, he was arrested for criminal mischief. Would you like to know what that criminal mischief was?”
“What?” asked Georgia unenthusiastically. They were crossing into Manhattan now.
“Setting a fire…in a trash can outside a girls’ dormitory at Cornell. The university kept it quiet. Glassman’s family got a good lawyer who pleaded the charge down to a misdemeanor and got him off with a year’s probation. But for my money, any guy who could do that at eighteen could definitely do Spring Street at forty-two.”
Georgia stared out the window and said nothing. To her right, the George Washington Bridge sparkled like a string of diamonds on a gaudy dowager. Through the car’s front windshield, Manhattan high-rises shimmered in the night sky.
“Hey,” said Marenko. “I thought you’d be pleased with this development. I’m sharing the case with you, Scout. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“You lied to
me,” she said softly. “About that lab report from the ATF. The results don’t rule out a connection between these fires. You knew that when you showed it to me. Maybe Ron Glassman is the Spring Street torch. But how can I trust anything you say when you never tell me the whole truth?”
Marenko didn’t answer. They cruised down the West Side Highway, an uncomfortable silence between them. “You still don’t get it, do you?” he asked finally.
“Get what?”
They were a few blocks west of the firehouse now, but instead of turning, he parked the car by a deserted, tumbledown pier overlooking the Hudson River.
“Why are we stopping?”
He killed the engine. “Let’s go for a walk. I want to talk to you.”
The pier was old and rotting. Soft, spongy boards sagged beneath their feet and turned-up nails jabbed into the soles of Georgia’s shoes. Marenko stuck his hands in his pockets, jingling change and keys as he stared out at the black swirling currents.
“Whoever set that fire on Spring Street—Glassman or Fred Fischer or somebody else—we’ll fry him, I promise. But you gotta leave those other fires alone. You could get hurt on this one.”
“Why?”
A car drove by, its high beams temporarily blinding them. In its wake, Georgia could see swift-moving shadows scurrying along the pier’s lower timbers. Rats.
“Mac, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on.”
He patted his shirt pockets, then remembered. “Jesus, I could use a cigarette.”
“Did you know about the missing building records? Those letters from the Fourth Angel?”
“I don’t have to know all that stuff to figure out what’s going on. Scout, listen to me.” He turned to her now, his blue eyes flashing in the moonlight. “The bureau’s got two hundred and twenty marshals in a city of eight and a half million people. We’ve got twenty-two thousand fire investigations a year, four thousand of them bona fide arson cases. Who’s got time to go rummaging around dangerous abandoned buildings, filing elaborate reports and contacting landowners? Especially if the owner is the city. Even if a marshal put the time in, the Buildings Department is so swamped, they’d never get around to demolishing the place. What happened in East Tremont and Red Hook could’ve happened to any of us.”
The Fourth Angel Page 11
