“Now?” Georgia asked, alarmed.
“Brennan convinced the judge it was an emergency, what with Finney on the loose. When Mac called Brennan for an update on the case, the chief asked him to start the search himself.”
“But Michaels has that place rigged to blow—”
“I know,” said Carter. “I just told Suarez and Chief Brennan. They called Mac’s brother’s place, but he’d already gone. Our frequency doesn’t work on Long Island. Dispatch is gonna keep trying to reach him, but nobody can say for sure if he’ll pick up.”
“But surely the police have Finney’s place under surveillance in case he shows up—”
“The patrol car had another emergency. They’re dispatching a backup, but it may come too late to stop Mac from going inside.”
Georgia rubbed the ache between her shoulders. A series of blunders and bad luck. That’s how stuff happens. It’s never just one thing. One thing, you can work around.
“How fast can we get to Finney’s place?”
Carter jingled his car keys. “We’ll find out.”
50
Marenko wasn’t answering his handie-talkie. Dispatch tried him. Suarez tried him and Georgia tried him. He had probably turned it off in Long Island where he wouldn’t have been able to get reception anyway. It was possible he had never turned it back on.
Carter floored the accelerator north on Riverside Drive. “Did you radio for an engine to meet us?” he asked.
“Engine Eighty-four’s closest to Finney’s place, but they’re out on another emergency,” she said. “Engine Sixty-seven’s coming. Forty-five truck has also been dispatched.” Georgia noted the street sign as it flashed by. They were already up to 137th Street themselves and Mac still wasn’t answering. It would be a toss-up who got to 158th Street first.
“Hope they drive better than you,” she said as Carter snaked through car lanes and squeezed past traffic at a red light. “I don’t even like the guy, and here I am about to get killed for him.”
“So you didn’t sleep with him?”
“I plead the Fifth.”
Carter smiled. “I won. I won.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Suarez said Mac’d never be able to talk you out of your pants. I bet him he was wrong.”
“Glad my private life is so enriching. How much you stand to win?”
“Twenty.”
“That’s all?”
“Hey, it wasn’t like we were betting on Mother Teresa…”
“I wouldn’t go for double or nothing. It’s not going to happen again.”
“Not if we don’t get up to Finney’s place fast, it ain’t.”
Carter took a sharp right and tore down 158th Street. Marenko’s seven-year-old silver Honda Accord, a portable red flashing light stuck to the roof, was double-parked in front of a graffiti-covered tenement. Smoke was seeping out a sixth-floor window.
“Jesus, Randy. We’re too late. Mac’s inside.” Georgia jumped out of the car. “I’m going in. Give me a radio.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Carter.
Georgia ran ahead into the building’s vestibule. She slapped indiscriminately at doorbells until someone finally buzzed her through the entrance.
Carter followed her down the shabby, dimly lit hallway. They pounded on doors yelling “Fire” in English and Spanish. Then they bounded up the stairs, repeating the procedure on each story. Locks disengaged and bleary-eyed faces popped out. It was, after all, one o’clock on a Monday morning. Few of the residents made any attempt to leave.
“Fire. Get out,” Georgia pleaded with them. Most moved slowly or not at all.
“Y’all get your butts on the street—now,” Carter, the former drill sergeant, roared. “C’mon.” He clapped his hands together. “Move, move, move.” His manner had the desired effect. People started heading for the stairs. Georgia grinned.
“I’ll bet you were a load of fun in the marines.”
“A real doozy.”
By the fifth floor, a light veil of smoke filtered through the hall. Carter was winded. His face was ashen as he leaned on his thighs, head down, straining for air. At the apartment below the fire, a large cardboard Easter bunny had been taped to the front door. Georgia roused a young heavyset Dominican woman and her three boys from the apartment and led them over to Carter. The littlest one, with two front teeth missing, was holding so tight to his mother’s fleshy waist that Georgia thought he was probably hurting her. He seemed deathly afraid, not of the fire, but of being separated. Perhaps, Georgia thought idly, a fire wasn’t the worst of the traumas he’d known.
“Randy, take them to the street.”
“What about you?” he wheezed.
“I’m gonna get Mac.”
He frowned. “Skeehan, you can’t. You haven’t got any gear. The place could explode.”
“I have to do this.”
“For Mac?”
“For me. Now go.” Brusquely, she pushed Carter and the family toward the stairs, then went back into the woman’s apartment. The kitchen window by the fire escape was painted shut. The sash cracked and gave way when Georgia threw herself against it. Finney’s window—directly above—appeared closed and locked. She’d have to break it open.
She searched the kitchen for something heavy. Under the sink she found a cast-iron skillet and swung it to test its weight. It would have to do.
The fire escape swayed as Georgia stepped onto it. Flecks of peeling paint floated to the pavement forty feet below like snow flurries. Engine 67 was just maneuvering into position below. The company would bring in a hose line, but rescues were generally handled by ladder companies. And Ladder 45 was probably another minute or two away—a lifetime, in terms of a fire. She had to get in. She swung the cast iron skillet at the window—
And it bounded off. Thermopane glass. Double-insulated. She could swing forever and never break it. The interior would be tight, well insulated—and deadly hot.
She put down the skillet and pushed at the window sash. It opened easily. Great going, Georgia said to herself. Next you’ll be chopping down doors instead of just trying the knobs.
A burst of heat hit her as the window opened. Smoke poured out, stinging her eyes and making her cough. She called to Marenko but got no answer. Gulping a lungful of air, she dropped into the room and sank onto her belly.
At floor level, the air was hot but manageable—about 100 degrees. But as Georgia lifted her hand, she felt a stinging sensation. It was probably 300 degrees Fahrenheit just inches above her head. If she stood, she would probably encounter temperatures of about 1,200 degrees. No one could survive that.
She had been able to see a little when she first dropped into the room. But a fine shroud of black smoke now choked off all light. If I leave this wall, I’ll never find my way back to the window. So she kept one foot on the wall and felt the floor in front of her.
“Mac,” she cried out, her voice raspy from smoke and fits of coughing. Adrenaline pumped through her veins like a broken water main. Her eyes stung as if shot with pepper spray, and a thick coating of oil clung to her skin like nicotine. Light-headed and dizzy, she was on the verge of collapse herself.
Suddenly, her fingers brushed against the stubble of a man’s face, the sinewy muscles of a shoulder. He was lying stomach-down on the floor—probably crawling to the window before he lost consciousness. She couldn’t see him, but she knew. She had felt his body before.
“Hold on, Mac.”
To drag him to safety, she had to crawl another three feet forward and grab his chest. But that meant taking her foot off the wall. It was her only trail out of this maze. If she couldn’t move him, if she couldn’t find the window again, they’d both die. For all she knew, he was dead already.
“Hang on, you bastard,” she choked out, clawing her way forward. Her head throbbed from the smoke. Her lips began to blister. She grabbed his unconscious body under the armpits and dragged him in the direction of what she t
hought was the window. Because she had to stay low to the floor herself, it was an arduously slow, painful task. Her foot touched a wall and she let go of Marenko with one hand to check above the rough, pockmarked plaster for the window.
But there was none. She had lost her bearings.
Her hands began to shake, her lungs to hyperventilate. She could feel herself about to black out. She had to choose a direction—more to the right or more to the left? She didn’t know, but something told her to move to her right. Her hand reached up weakly and encountered a burst of cooler air. The window! She got behind Marenko and began to shove him over the sill and onto the fire escape.
She didn’t have to push far.
“We got you,” a voice called out beyond the smoke, yanking Marenko from her arms. Then two strong arms in a turnout coat reached in and grabbed Georgia.
The fresh air on the fire escape was the sweetest sensation she had ever experienced. She gave in to it now, gasping in great lungfuls, letting herself be carried down the escape to an ambulance below.
“Anybody else in there?” a firefighter asked her. She couldn’t talk. Her throat felt rubbed with sandpaper. Fire department EMTs placed her on a stretcher and put a valve mask over her face. She kept trying to get up to find Marenko.
“He’s gonna be okay,” one of the EMTs said, easing her down. “You saved his life.”
The man’s words were punctuated by a thunderous roar. Georgia lifted her head in time to see the sixth floor’s Thermopane windows finally giving way as a fireball burst through them. Georgia watched in a daze as the battalion chief pulled his men back and ordered more trucks and ladders into position.
That could’ve been Mac. That could’ve been me.
She took the mask off her face and forced herself to her feet when the EMTs were busy filling out forms. Marenko was a few feet away, in another ambulance. She didn’t know if he’d still be unconscious. He had a valve mask on his face, but his eyes were open.
“Mac?”
He offered a small, crooked, parched-lip smile as he tried to sit up, then fell back against the stretcher.
She brushed a gentle hand through his soot-choked hair. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said, only half sure of her words. She knelt beside him and put her head on his chest.
He pulled the mask off his face.
“I was wrong,” he said hoarsely. “You’re a hell of a firefighter.”
She smiled. “Yeah, right. But if I were a man—”
“Then I wouldn’t do this,” he said, reaching up a soot-blackened hand and bringing her face toward his. Oblivious to the chaos and commotion around them, they touched lips.
An EMT intervened, clearing her throat. “You both need to go to the hospital,” she said.
“I’m fine,” Georgia insisted, waving the woman away.
“You’re not, Scout,” Marenko croaked out.
“Sure I am.” She climbed down from the ambulance and took two steps before the pavement began to spin. It rose up to greet her with all the softness of a baseball being lobbed at her head.
51
Georgia awoke to the cold steel of a hospital bed rail pressed against her skin and sheets as crisp and starchy as canvas. Voices echoed down a waxed-floor hallway. She sat up, wondering what time it was. The room spun, so she sank back down and forced herself to look at her hands and arms. The knuckles were bruised and reddened with first-degree burns. Her blue and white hospital gown was wrinkled and smelled of sour sweat and smoke. She ached everywhere—her arms, neck, shoulders. But the biggest ache by far was inside. She remembered with a piercing stab that Walter Frankel was really and truly dead.
The flashing lights and sirens in the night had given everything a cinematic, fantastical air. Adrenaline had muted the pain, dulled the fear and disorientation. But inside this hospital room, with its soothing light blue walls, monitors, and badly painted florals, the night came back to her in still-life snapshots of memory and sensation. Walter was gone. She’d had no chance to grieve before, but she felt heavy with the burden now.
A sudden, overwhelming urge to retch seized her. She raced to the bathroom, barely making it in time to empty her insides into the bowl. Then she crouched in a corner, without even the strength to stand, and started to sob.
That’s where the nurse found her. She was a short, chunky woman with a Filipino accent and a motherly air, and she helped Georgia back into bed, checking her blood pressure and temperature. She reinserted an IV into a vein.
“Where am I?” Georgia croaked.
“New York Hospital–Cornell Medical Center.”
“What day is it?”
“Monday. You were admitted around two this morning. It’s nine-thirty now. We tried to notify your family, but there was no answer at your home.”
Home! Georgia had nearly forgotten. Her mother and Richie often visited her aunt’s house when she worked a night tour. By now, they’d be on their way to the memorial service—with Gallagher. She should have said something to her mother last night. But what could she have said that would have made any sense?
“When you’re up to it,” said the nurse, “some fire marshals are here to see you.” Georgia noticed a shuffling in the hall now. Carter and Suarez peeked around the corner, looking as awkward and nervous as schoolboys killing time in the principal’s office. Carter was carrying a small bouquet of drooping red carnations. Suarez held two chocolate Easter bunnies wrapped in gold foil. One of them, Georgia noticed, had no head.
“Hey guys,” she said, feeling suddenly self-conscious in her hospital gown.
“We brought you some presents,” Carter said, placing the wilting flowers on a side table by the phone.
“Yeah,” said Suarez. “Mine’s the rabbit with the head. Cambareri’s still recuperating, but he wanted to send you something, too. Only he couldn’t contain himself.”
“Let me guess.” Georgia grinned. “Gene ate the head.”
“Says he didn’t have enough dinner last night.” Suarez laughed.
“Can’t be much wrong with him…how’s Mac?”
“He’s here at the hospital,” said Suarez. “Doing fine. Cussing up a storm. He’s got some second-degrees on his arms and back and they’re treating him for smoke inhalation, but he’ll be out in a day or two. The jerk even arm-twisted me into bringing him some clothes—like he’s going somewhere.”
That sounds like Mac, all right, thought Georgia with satisfaction. He must be doing okay. She asked for an update on the investigation.
“The bodies have been ID’d,” Carter told her. “That was Sloane Michaels in the Knick’s garage, but you were right about the body in the van. It wasn’t Finney. The vic was a street mutt, just released from Bellevue.”
“So Finney’s alive.”
Carter and Suarez exchanged nervous looks.
“What?” asked Georgia.
“The NYPD combed Michaels’s murder scene last night,” Carter explained. “They found this under the body.” He handed her a letter.
DEAR GEORGIA:
And a mighty Angel took up a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying thus, with violence shall that great city of Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.
—THE FOURTH ANGEL
“How about we get some police protection on your room?” Suarez offered.
“Yeah, okay.” Georgia sighed. “Not that it’ll make any difference. If Finney could give you the slip at Manhattan Detention, he can surely outwit some rookie assigned to protect me.” She stared out the window at the sliver of bright blue morning sky and cursed. “Why the letter? He’s free. We’ve got no leads on his bomb. He’s already won.”
Carter pulled out a black, vinyl-bound Bible from the inside pocket of his jacket and flexed it like a deck of cards, fluttering the gilt-edged pages in quick succession. “I swiped this from the chapel downstairs, to look up the scripture in his letter. It’s from Revelation again. Chapter eighteen, verse twenty-one. Other than that,
it’s sort of a dead end.”
“Dead end…great,” said Georgia. “What are we gonna say to the people who burn today? To their families? ‘We’re sorry, but we were too dumb to know what else to do’?”
“Now hold on, girl.” Carter frowned. “We’re still working this thing.”
“That’s right, Skeehan,” Suarez added. “Maybe we can’t stop the fire, but Finney won’t get far. We’ll catch him.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime?”
Carter tossed the Bible on her bed. “Pray.”
The minutes ticked by on the big black arms of the clock just outside Georgia’s door. It was nine-fifty-six. Idly, she thumbed the Bible Carter had swiped. She could see why Finney would love Revelation, with all its talk of fiery demons and damnation. She came across the first set of lines he’d sent the department back in December:
And the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.
Georgia squinted at the Roman numerals beside the passage, wishing for once she’d paid more attention in school to such things. XVI—sixteen. The selection was from chapter sixteen, verse eight. 16:8.
She turned over a corner of the page to mark her place, then leafed through more verses until she found his second quote:
And the voice which I heard from heaven spake unto me again, and said, go and take the little book which is open in the hand of the angel which standeth upon the sea and upon the earth.
chapter ten, verse eight
Her eyes blurred from the tiny print and repetitive lines. It took a while to locate the passage from his third letter:
The second woe is past; and behold, the third woe cometh quickly.
Chapter eleven, verse fourteen
He’d sent her that line about eyes being a flame of fire, too. Chapter nineteen, verse twelve:
His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns, and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself.
The Fourth Angel Page 28
