“Do you know who owns Northway?”
“The firm’s a limited partnership,” Marenko explained. “As I understand it, that means the limited partners hold all the assets, but they don’t have to disclose themselves if they don’t want to.” He pulled a slip of paper out of the back pocket of his khakis and handed it to her. “There’s an address and telephone number in Brooklyn on there. You can call Northway tomorrow and see if they’ll give you any more information.”
“You don’t want to call?” she asked him. “I’m going to be at work tomorrow, and there’s no telling how busy…” Georgia stopped in mid-sentence. Marenko was leaning forward in his chair, arms on his thighs, picking at a hangnail. He was blinking hard and avoiding her gaze.
“Mac? What’s wrong?”
“I’m gone, Scout,” he said hoarsely. “My brother Nick gave me the heads-up. The cops are closing in.”
“They found Connie?”
Marenko shook his head, but kept his gaze on the floor. “I don’t know what they’ve found, but I know it’s bad. I don’t think anyone can help me.”
Georgia went over to him now and sat on the arm of his chair, stroking the side of his face.
“Don’t say that,” she told him. “You’ll pull through. We’ll pull through together.”
He kept his eyes on the floor, but it looked as though it was taking all his effort not to break down. “Aw, Christ.” His voice cracked and he got to his feet. “I gotta get some air.”
He walked into the kitchen. A moment later, Georgia heard the back door slam. She didn’t follow right away. Mac Marenko defined himself by his ability to control his emotions and his circumstances. The kindest thing she could do for him right now was to let him find a way to reclaim it.
She allowed several minutes to pass before she went outside. He had kicked off his socks and shoes and was sitting on the rim of the above-ground swimming pool with his legs in the water. He hadn’t bothered to roll up his khakis. They were soaked to the knee.
It was a muggy night with the moon drifting in and out of sight like a beach ball caught in an undertow. The air had a thick, compressed quality, muffling the squawk of car alarms and the squeal of tires in the distance. Georgia hoisted herself up to the pool rim next to Marenko and stuck her bare legs in the water. They sat together in silence for several long minutes, watching swatches of patio light flicker and scatter on the surface of the pool.
He looked up at the lead-colored clouds skating across the sky. “I’m sorry, Scout,” he said softly, laying out the words as if each were made of stone. “What I wouldn’t give to do Tuesday night over…to do a lot of things over.”
“You’ll come out of this,” she told him. “You’ll see.”
“But I can’t remember. I keep trying to. I lie in bed and I can’t sleep, I’m trying so hard. And I can’t remember anything.” His voice cracked again. He closed his eyes and blew a long gust of breath from his mouth.
She reached out a hand, dampened from the pool, and pressed it over his. His eyes were glassy in the passing moonlight. His face was filled with a rawness she’d never seen before. It sent her pulse racing. She ran a hand through his tangle of shiny black hair and felt a burning in her loins as he brought his lips down on hers. His hands were wet from the pool and she felt the coolness of the water seep through her T-shirt when he snaked them down her back, then along the contours of her hips and in between her thighs. Her breath quickened and her nipples hardened in response.
And suddenly, the world spun. She felt the tumble, gave in to it completely. The water was cool, not cold, and the splash felt as refreshing as champagne bubbles on her lips. She laughed as she bobbed to the surface. Her T-shirt and bra had turned translucent.
Marenko let out a whoop as he pulled off his wet black polo shirt and threw it in the grass. Then he grabbed her and pressed her against his bare chest, kissing her face and growling playfully as he slid a hand beneath her shirt and unhooked her bra. She could feel his erection bulging beneath his wet khakis as he grinned boyishly and pushed his wet hair back from his face.
“You did that on purpose,” she said.
He winked at her. “Maybe I did.”
They made love on the sparse grass in the shadow of the pool, as reckless as two teenagers. Georgia left her wet T-shirt on in case they got caught. Marenko kept his soaked trousers around his knees. When he lowered himself on top of her, Georgia felt the beads of water and sweat slide between them and the slipperiness of it made her hunger for him even more. He pushed hard and urgently inside. This wasn’t Mac’s usual lovemaking, which was tender and gentle and unhurried. This was something else—something more instinctive and animal. And Georgia welcomed it if only because, for a moment, it pushed away the darkness for both of them.
When it was over, he rolled off of her and pulled up his soaked trousers. Even in the shadows of the pool, Georgia could see that the light beige fabric was covered with mud and grass stains. He reached for his black polo shirt and wrung it out. Usually, they lingered after making love. Then again, usually they didn’t do it in the backyard by the pool with her mother and Richie asleep upstairs.
She took one look at his soggy, mud-caked clothes and sat up. “You can’t go home on the subway like that.”
“I’ll be all right.” He shrugged, tossing the wet shirt over his shoulder. “It’ll dry off.” He checked his wristwatch. The brown leather strap had darkened almost to black from the water. “I can’t stay here like this, and you’ve got to go to work tomorrow.”
“I’ll put your clothes in the dryer.”
“Nah.” He pulled her to her feet. “It’s just water. The air’s warm.” He kissed her gently on the lips. “And I’m warm.” He winked at her. She ran her hands down the sides of his wet khakis. The cool, prickly sensation made her feel like making love to him all over again.
“Let me just slip into some dry clothes then,” said Georgia. “I’ll see you off.” She left him on the back patio smoking a cigarette while she went inside to change. She crept upstairs quietly and stripped down in the bathroom. She pulled off her soaked underpants and noticed it. Blood. Her period. Ten days late, but here nonetheless.
She should have been elated. But instead, she felt empty and let down. She didn’t want another child right now. And yet, with all the death and ugliness and uncertainty surrounding them and their future together, it had felt good to have this little spark of life to connect them. Now, that was gone and nothing else about their future seemed certain. She sank onto the tiles and started to cry.
“Scout?” The kitchen door slammed. She heard his footsteps lumbering up the stairs. “Hey,” said Marenko, picking her up off the bathroom floor and wiping her tears. He closed the bathroom door. He didn’t want Richie and Margaret to find them. “What’s the matter?”
She rested her head against his bare chest with its fine, dark dusting of hair. “My period,” she sobbed. “I got it.”
“You did? That’s great.” Marenko brought a hand under her chin and lifted her eyes up to his. He gave her a small, questioning smile. “Don’t you think it’s great? You couldn’t want a baby right now—I mean, with all that’s going on.c
“No.” Georgia sighed. “I guess not.” She rose and stepped into dry clothes while he leaned against the towel rack and watched her with hungry eyes. She shivered, feeling the cold dampness of her body—the aloneness of it—for the first time.
“I can’t believe you slept with Connie and didn’t tell me.”
Georgia had no idea why she blurted out the words then. Exhaustion, maybe. Or maybe disappointment. Marenko was clearly relieved that Georgia wasn’t pregnant. She couldn’t help seeing that as a form of rejection. It was something he’d never understand.
He wiped his face on one of the towels and caught her eye as she combed her hair in the bathroom mirror. “I told you, Scout. It was before I knew you. I knew it would cause trouble if I mentioned it. I was right about that one, wasn’t I?”
She turned from the mirror now to face him. “She was in love with you, you know. She was supposed to move in with you. You broke her heart.”
His jaw tightened. “She was gonna move in while her apartment was painted—for a couple of weeks—that’s all. And besides, how would you know how she felt? You never even knew we were together.”
“She never told me your name, Mac. She only told me you were a cop she’d met through work. But she told me the details. Don’t you think I’ve been putting it together?”
“So you’ve been putting it together—so? I’m supposed to walk around on eggshells because of it?”
“Why did you break up with her?”
His blue eyes stared back defiantly. “Why don’t you just ask about my divorce while you’re at it?”
“I’d like to.”
“Forget it, Scout. Whether it’s Connie or Patsy, what’s done is done. I don’t go around crying in my beer. That’s not my style.”
“This isn’t about ‘style,’ Mac. You’re facing a murder rap. I need to know.”
“Nothing I can tell you will help you find Connie. You don’t need to know; you want to know. And I don’t want to tell you—end of discussion.”
They stood staring at each other for a long moment. Then, gradually, it dawned on Georgia what was happening here: they were boxing at shadows because the real threats looming over them were too terrible to face. Marenko must have felt it, too. He pulled Georgia close and cradled her head in his hands.
“Scout, please,” he begged in a husky voice. There was fear in his eyes. “Let’s not argue like this. Whatever you know or don’t know—it may not matter pretty soon. This may be our last…”
“—Don’t.” Georgia put a finger to his lips. “You don’t have to say anything—okay, Mac? Just stay with me a little while longer.”
33
Manhattan base, the seat of all arson investigations in the borough, was housed above Ladder Twenty on Lafayette Street, just west of the Bowery in lower Manhattan. When Georgia arrived at her desk in the squad room on Thursday morning, she saw three marshals at the back window fighting over a pair of binoculars. She didn’t have to be told what they were looking at: the blonde. The woman’s bathroom faced the back windows of the firehouse, and she didn’t believe in curtains. Eddie Suarez never hesitated to point out that she was blond all over.
“Don’t you guys ever get tired of looking?” asked Georgia.
“It’s like shoes for you chicks,” said Suarez, a smoldering Newport Light hanging from his lips. “No matter how many pairs you got, you still want more.”
“I think I’d always want that pair,” muttered Sal Giordano. He was a heavyset bowlegged marshal who wore a hideous black toupee and neckties wide enough to park a boat beside. His belly was pressed against the window as he watched the woman slip a tight-fitting white cotton tank top over two voluptuous breasts.
“Boobs,” growled Don McClusky, the third marshal at the window. “Boobs are the downfall of Western society.” McClusky was in his late forties with the build of Buzz Lightyear, the swagger of John Wayne and the philosophical integrity of a pimply-faced reject from the Michigan Militia. “Those A-rabs with the red-checkered tablecloths on their heads—they’ve got one thing right,” said McClusky. “Cover a woman up. Keep a man’s mind on what’s important.”
“Yeah,” said Suarez. “That’s why the Middle East is such a calm and happy place.”
None of the marshals said a word to Georgia about Marenko. She was sure they talked about nothing else when she wasn’t around, but it was as if a wall went up when she walked into the room. A big part of it, she suspected, was simple awkwardness. The men she worked with were used to covering over their feelings with humor. Problem was, facing a murder rap just wasn’t funny. She started to sort through some odds and ends she needed to tie up on minor investigations while she waited for Carter to arrive. Her partner was never late. Her phone rang. She picked it up.
“Manhattan base. Fire Marshal Georgia Skeehan,” she answered.
“I’m outside, girl. Y’all need to come down right away.”
“Randy? What’s wrong?”
“We’ll talk in the car.”
Carter was perspiring heavily when Georgia found him parked in their usual squad car. Trucks rumbled along Lafayette Street, their diesel fumes lingering ghostlike in the stale summer air.
“I heard about last night,” he said as she got in. “Are you okay?” She nodded. “Things are crazy ’round here,” he said. “I think Connie was right about a bomb on the pipeline. This morning, I passed by Police Plaza and I saw bomb squad trucks near the entrance, all lined up like they were ready for some kind of maneuver.”
“Is that what you wanted to tell me?”
“No.” Carter nosed the dark blue sedan onto the FDR Drive and headed uptown. “It’s going to hit the news and the firehouse gossip lines any minute, so I figured we’d disappear for a little while, get some air.”
“What’s going to hit the news?”
He turned from the wheel and looked at her, his deep-set basset-hound eyes full of sorrow. “Skeehan, they found some stuff in a Dumpster in the basement of Marenko’s apartment building.”
“What stuff?”
“Connie’s bloody clothes. Marenko’s gun. Some neighbor in his building called up the Midtown North Precinct, hysterical. The cops checked it out. It’s definitely her blood and his gun.”
“Did they find Connie?”
“No.” He sighed, fiddling with the vents. The air-conditioning still wasn’t working properly. “But the Queens D.A. figures he’s got the murder weapon and all the circumstantial he needs to put together a case.” Carter stopped fiddling and stole a sideways glance at Georgia. “The PD arrested Marenko early this morning,” he said softly.
Georgia closed her eyes. She kneaded her hands in her lap to keep them from trembling. Her tongue suddenly felt big and fat, as if she had a thumb in her mouth. She couldn’t get it to work. The humid air felt as deprived of oxygen as a smoke-filled corridor. She had to take deep breaths to keep her lungs from choking.
“They’re sure?” she croaked hoarsely. “That Mac put the gun in that Dumpster?”
“Listen to me, girl. You must know yourself—you need a key to get into his building. That pretty much narrows the list of suspects.” It sure does, thought Georgia. Even I don’t have a key to Mac’s building. She stared out the window at the East River on her right. A promenade meandered above the shore, dotted with elegant wrought-iron street lamps. Dog-walkers and joggers strode along it beneath a pewter-colored sky.
“Where is he?”
“Riker’s Island,” said Carter. Georgia stifled a shudder as she pictured the gray behemoth jail colony in the middle of the East River.
Carter pulled off the highway and parked on a side street just west of the FDR Drive. But he didn’t get out of the car. Instead, he fished something out of his suit jacket and handed it to her. It was a copy of a phone bill.
“In case you’re thinking of visiting him, y’all might want to see this first. It’s a present from Detective Leahy. I told him I wanted to be the first to know if Marenko was going down—for your sake—so I could break it to you, as your partner.”
Georgia looked at the bill. It was a printout of every incoming and outgoing call on Connie’s phone lines Tuesday night—even her cell phone calls.
“These numbers”—Carter pointed to two calls made to her home line between seven and eight P.M.—“these were sales calls. One was a cable company and one was for a subscription to Newsday. Leahy checked out those numbers. They’re legit.”
Carter’s voice got very soft and southern. His bridge-jumping voice, reserved for only truly terrible situations. This certainly qualified. “Connie never got any threatening calls that night, Skeehan. Marenko lied.”
Georgia took a deep breath. “I feel like such a fool,” she said thickly.
“You’re not a foo
l,” he said gently, patting her hand. “C’mon, let’s get some air.”
They walked across a footpath to the promenade.
“I’m afraid to ask,” said Carter. “Any news on the pregnancy?”
“I got my period last night.”
“Thank the Lord for that.” His shoulders seemed to loosen.
Georgia kept staring at the phone records in disbelief. There were two outgoing calls, both made from Connie’s cell phone. One number she recognized instantly as Marenko’s. The other number was unfamiliar. Connie had dialed it about ten minutes before she’d phoned Mac.
“Whose phone number is this?” Georgia asked Carter.
“Leahy spoke to the woman. She’s an older lady,” said Carter. “She said she didn’t know anyone named Connie Ruiz. She didn’t remember the call. The woman ran some kind of day-care center, Leahy told me. Connie hasn’t got any kids. It must’ve been a wrong number.”
A day-care center. In the 718 area code.
“Was her name Flannagan? Denise Flannagan?” Georgia asked.
Carter frowned. “Yeah. That sounds right.”
Connie interviewed Denise Flannagan, thought Georgia. Connie wrote down the word Bridgewater—and then she disappeared. That fire. Everything kept coming back to that fire.
“Who’s Denise Flannagan?” asked Carter.
“She’s the widow of a fire captain in Brooklyn,” Georgia explained. “Her husband was the captain of Ladder One-twenty-one. He was at the Bridgewater fire—the same fire Connie had scribbled a mention of before she disappeared.”
“So?” said Carter. “That fire was mentioned in Louise Rosen’s files. Maybe Connie was checking out Rosen’s connection to the bomb threat. That’s got nothing to do with Marenko.”
“Except the bomb’s no rumor, Randy.” Georgia palmed her tired eyes. “Connie was right. It’s real.” She stared out at the promenade. It was ten A.M. Thursday. There were perhaps hundreds of people walking around this city who might have just twenty-six hours to live. Brennan and Delaney couldn’t seem to help her. Even Hanlon was running scared. Yet Georgia needed help—now more than ever.
Flashover Page 22
