Flashover

by Suzanne Chazin

  “Dr. Singh,” said Georgia, feeling a small blip of hope rise inside of her, “was there any GHB residue on the cap?” Maybe Mac was telling the truth after all. Maybe the same person who drugged Rosen and Dana drugged Connie and Mac as well.

  “I am afraid not,” said Singh. “But it was an interesting coincidence. I thought I should ask you about it.”

  38

  As soon as Georgia hung up the phone, Randy Carter was at her desk. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve found Carl O’Rourke.”

  “Where?”

  “I’ll tell you when we’re in the car, okay?”

  It was raining hard again by the time Carter nosed the Caprice onto the northbound lane of the FDR Drive. The windows began to fog up, and Georgia wiped a rag across the glass.

  “So where is the mysterious Mr. O’Rourke?” she asked.

  Carter gave her a long, searching look. Rain pelted the car roof as if someone were pouring rice on it. “Cops arrested him this morning for parole violation. He’s got a rap sheet a mile long—burglary, grand larceny auto, drug possession. And yes—even arson.”

  Georgia cracked open her window in an attempt to defog the windshield. Water poured down along the inside of the glass. “What was the violation?”

  “Assault. He got in a bar fight at three A.M. this morning.” Carter cleared his throat. “He’s at Riker’s, Skeehan.”

  The wiper blades thumped like a racing heartbeat across the windshield.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Carter. “Y’all gonna want to see Mac while we’re out there.”

  Georgia scratched a tic-tac-toe board in the condensation on the passenger-side glass and tried to force Marenko from her thoughts. She’d been trying to do that all day, to no avail. She pictured his arrest this morning—cops thumping on the steel front door of his sixth-floor Hell’s Kitchen walkup. She saw Mac, bleary-eyed and bare chested, in ratty track shorts, opening the door, saw him spread-eagled on the ground, frisked, then handcuffed while the police reeled off the Miranda warning Marenko himself had recited a thousand times.

  Would he have cursed them? Fought them? No. Georgia had a sense he’d be almost docile—docile and scared, the fight gone, replaced by shame and fear as he was paraded past the cracked-open doors of nosy neighbors. She was glad he didn’t live with his children. He would have died rather than let them see him like that.

  There would be no bail for a charge of murdering a police officer. They would lock Marenko up at Riker’s until his trial. It was a place Mac, like most marshals, knew well. He’d likely gone there dozens of times to interview suspects and investigate cell mattress fires—a crime that could slap an additional five years on an inmate’s sentence. But those visits were wrapped in a shield of gold, not a bracelet of steel. This would be a whole different ball game.

  She knew where they’d put him: Tier 3C, the North Infirmary Command, the smallest of the men’s jails at Riker’s, but the one where he could be most closely monitored. It was protective custody—PC or “punk city”—to the inmates. As a white law-enforcement officer, he didn’t stand a chance anywhere else. The cons would give him a “buck fifty”—a knife wound across his face, requiring one hundred fifty stitches to close—just to prove they could. Marenko had been a bare-knuckle street fighter in his youth, and he was used to standing his ground. But Georgia suspected that even Mac’s well-honed street sense was no match for the brutality of a city prison.

  In Tier 3C, he’d be on his own—in a steel-mesh cage with just forty-eight feet to pace around in, a wafer-thin mattress on a steel bed frame, a steel toilet bowl attached to the wall and a big NO SMOKING sign at the door. Like most prisons these days, smoking was prohibited. He’d go stir-crazy within a matter of days.

  If he was guilty, he deserved far worse. If he was innocent…

  “Do you know why Dr. Singh called me this afternoon?” Georgia asked Carter.

  “Uh-huh. He found a cap from a bottle of that doohickey extract at Connie’s apartment.”

  “Doesn’t that make you wonder? Just a little?” asked Georgia.

  “If there was GHB in the cap, it would. But there wasn’t.” Carter’s voice was calm and reasonable. Georgia wanted to feel his certainty—or not feel it with equal ferocity. But try as she might, she found herself in a limbo between belief and disbelief.

  “Y’all want to see him, don’t you?” asked Carter finally.

  “No…I don’t know.” Georgia exhaled in disgust. “Besides, you don’t want…”

  “—Never mind what I want,” said Carter. “Seeing as I’m the only one at base who really does know all about your son, your mother, your sex life and your past, I might as well make the best of it, right?”

  There was only one port of entry to Riker’s Island, and that was over a two-lane, mile-long stretch of concrete and steel from Hazen Street in northwest Queens. Carter and Georgia both turned strangely quiet at the check-in point before the bridge. There, they unloaded their guns inside a box filled with sand to prevent an accidental discharge, then handed their weapons over to the guards. They were given a pass to Housing Area Six South, then allowed to cross the bridge. Above, a steady stream of jets roared their descent into LaGuardia Airport, oblivious to the fifteen thousand lost souls beneath their wings, yet so near that Georgia could see the pier of lights pointing pilots to Runway 13-31.

  Outside, the air was humid. A silvery coating of condensation kept building up on the front windshield. Carter kept the wipers on, but the intermittent beat of blades squeaking on glass made the atmosphere in the car feel tense and claustrophobic. Not that outside was any better. Beyond the twelve-foot fences topped with razor wire, ten jails—some brick, some concrete—were scattered about like children’s blocks over an acreage half the size of Central Park. Georgia could see the North Infirmary Command from the prison road. The windows were a brownish Plexiglas and the ground beneath was littered with colostomy bags that sick inmates threw out the windows to torment the guards. The air smelled of jet fuel and sewage—from the inmates or the South Bronx treatment plant across the water, Georgia wasn’t sure.

  Georgia always hated going to Riker’s—especially in August when the cell blocks sweltered with heat and hate. In her mind she could already hear the ceaseless noise and smell the stench of urine and sweat. She could already feel the desperate animal adrenaline that seemed to permeate every pore of cinder block. But this time was much worse. The trepidation she felt was nothing compared with what Marenko must be going through.

  She closed her eyes and pictured him in her pool the night before, his arms around her shoulders, the press of his lips and hands on her body. She couldn’t reconcile that man with the one who took Connie’s life. But someone took it. Georgia held no illusions about that. Connie had been gone nearly forty-eight hours now. If she could have struggled back, she would have by now. Georgia willed herself to keep her mind on interviewing Carl O’Rourke. If they were lucky, he might be the key to everything.

  Carter and Georgia were given a large cage for an interview room in Housing Area Six South. It contained a gray metal table and three metal chairs. Beyond the cage, there were white cinder-block walls, video monitors and heavy steel gates. There were no windows or ventilation ducts. Even with fans sputtering, it was easily ninety degrees in there. When a guard led Carl O’Rourke into the cage, Georgia and Carter both did double takes.

  “You’re Carl O’Rourke?” asked Georgia. “The firefighter Albert O’Rourke’s son?”

  The inmate nodded.

  “Man, you don’t look Irish,” Carter blurted out.

  It was true. Carl O’Rourke was a tall, gangly young man with greasy black hair, dark eyes and skin the color of pulled taffy. He looked like he’d once been quite handsome, though he was sickly now. His cheeks were hollow, and there was a yellow sheen to his eyes. Although he’d been picked up on a parole violation, he hadn’t been convicted yet, so he still wore street clothes—a faded, st
ained army green T-shirt and basketball shorts. Up and down his skinny arms were the scars of needle marks. O’Rourke was a junkie. He looked like he might be HIV positive, as well.

  Georgia motioned for the man to have a seat. Carl O’Rourke’s rap sheet showed that he’d been out of prison for four months after doing a three-year stretch at Greenhaven for arson and burglary. Georgia asked for his whereabouts over the course of the last week. Like most junkies, he was vague and given to a lot of shrugging. He lived off and on with a second cousin. He worked a week or two at a scrap yard. He seemed to be whiling away the days as if it were a vacation from some next stretch of time he’d eventually end up doing.

  “I ain’t done nothing,” he said with a slouch that suggested he didn’t care if they believed him or not.

  “That’s why you’re back here, I suppose,” said Georgia.

  “A man tries to rip me off. Sells me bad product—what am I supposed to do?”

  He was posturing—Georgia could see that. Carl O’Rourke had done enough time in prison to know how important it was to act tough. But his eyes—red and sickly as they were—gave him away. The eyes were boyish, maybe even a little tentative.

  “We’re not here about your assault charge, Carl,” Georgia said evenly. “That’s a police matter.”

  “What do you want?”

  Georgia leaned across the table. “Who is Robin Hood?”

  “Robin Hood?” O’Rourke said the words like he was sure he’d gotten them wrong. Then he frowned and shook his head.

  “You ever call yourself ‘Robin Hood’?” Georgia prodded.

  “Ain’t he the dude who robs from the rich and gives to the poor?”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “Believe me, lady, if I could rob from the rich, I sure wouldn’t be giving none of it away. I’d get myself in a good rehab program—that’s what I’d do. Get off this shit once and for all.”

  Georgia stared at the young man now—at his emaciated frame, the dirt under his nails and track marks down his arms. Robin Hood had been able to murder two doctors in fires designed to look accidental. He’d had access to C-four plastic explosives and knew how to use them. The man before her looked barely able to keep it together between fixes. Carl O’Rourke was no Robin Hood. But there was still a chance he knew Robin Hood’s identity.

  “You were convicted of arson four years ago,” said Georgia. “You want to tell us about it?”

  O’Rourke shrugged. “I was shooting up and my sterno flipped over and the building burned down. I didn’t do it for kicks or nothing.”

  “But you must know people who do, right?” asked Georgia.

  “In Greenhaven, maybe. But I don’t hang with torches, man. They’re too weird.”

  Georgia and Carter exchanged looks. O’Rourke was looking more and more like a two-bit junkie with nothing to offer them. Georgia tried a different tack.

  “Do you know someone named Joanne Zeligman?” she asked. O’Rourke’s name was, after all, scribbled inadvertently on Joanne’s birthday card. Georgia couldn’t overlook the obvious—that it was Joanne who knew O’Rourke.

  “She a lawyer or something? She got one of them names sounds like she might be a lawyer.”

  “No,” said Georgia. “She’s not a lawyer. How about the name Connie Ruiz? Does that ring any bells?”

  “Connie?” In an instant, the convict’s swagger had melted from his lean, dark features. His legs jiggled nervously. He drummed his fingers on the table.

  “How do you know Connie? Did she arrest you?” asked Georgia.

  “Arrest me?” O’Rourke bounced a glassy, agitated look from Georgia to Carter. “Are you kidding me, man? She wouldn’t arrest me.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “I ain’t seen her but once since I got out of Greenhaven—right after my parole officer called her up, trying to find a place for me to stay. She gave me some bread.” He shook his head. “She didn’t want me in her life. I can understand that, so I said, ‘okay’…” His voice trailed off. He looked up at them now, a shade of embarrassment across his features. “Is that what you’re looking for? ’Cause I’m starting to hurt here.” He rubbed his arms.

  “Mr. O’Rourke,” said Georgia, “what’s your relationship with Officer Ruiz?”

  “Our relationship?” His glassy yellow eyes looked at her incredulously. “Didn’t she tell you?”

  Carter and Georgia gave him a blank look.

  “Connie Ruiz—Mary Constance Ruiz—is my sister.”

  Georgia felt her legs go weak, felt the blood drain out of them, just like the time she’d drunk too many gin gimlets and felt perfectly sober—except she couldn’t stand up. She looked over at Carter, who seemed shaky himself and was visibly perspiring.

  “Connie is your sister?” asked Georgia.

  “I thought her name was Connie Ruiz,” Carter mumbled.

  “I guess it is—legally.” O’Rourke shrugged. “She was born Mary Constance O’Rourke, but my father sometimes called her Connie. She married this jerk named Ray Ruiz when she was, I dunno, about nineteen. He busted her up good, so she divorced him but kept his name. We always looked Puerto Rican like our mother anyway, so Ruiz worked better for her.”

  Carl O’Rourke put his skinny elbows on the table and picked at a scab on his left hand. The eyes were soft now—not the eyes of a convict at all. Georgia could almost see the boy Hanlon had described—the one who had offered up his Cracker Jacks toy to a younger child.

  “Is Connie in some kind of trouble?” he asked softly. He scratched his arms. “Is she hurt or something? Is that why you’re here?”

  “We were hoping you could give us some information,” said Georgia. The classic noncommittal cop response. They would tell O’Rourke nothing he didn’t already know.

  “I don’t know where she is, if that’s what you mean. I swear. I ain’t talked to her but once since my release.” He leaned forward across the table, the bluster gone. He suddenly looked very young and scared. “Is she dead?” he whispered.

  “Do you know anyone who would want her to be?” Georgia came back at him.

  O’Rourke put his head in his hands and stared at the table. “I don’t know anything about my sister’s life.”

  That makes two of us, thought Georgia. “What can you tell us about her?” she asked.

  O’Rourke looked up from his hands. Sweat darkened the neckline of his T-shirt and ran down it in a V. His limbs were in constant motion—hands drumming the table top, legs bobbing up and down, feet jiggling. Watching him suffer withdrawal was like observing a person with Tourette’s syndrome. His speech was rambling and disjointed, but in twenty minutes, Georgia learned more about her best friend’s life than in eight years of knowing her. She heard about the good stuff—how Connie had nursed her ailing father after he started to succumb to cancer. And she heard about the bad, too—how they had lived in a toolshed one summer rather than go into foster care, a fate that they both eventually had to submit to.

  “They raped her, you know,” he said softly.

  “Who raped her?”

  “Some boys in a group home she was staying in. She was sixteen. I was eleven. I couldn’t do nothing, but I always felt like I shoulda been able to.”

  He talked about his own memories, too, of drinking malt liquor on Brooklyn rooftops, of hot-wiring cars and of nights spent lusting after Tricia Flannagan.

  “You know Tricia?” asked Georgia.

  “When we were younger. Not now. Our dads worked together. She was older than me, younger than Connie. Nothing happened between us or anything.” He leveled a dark, sober gaze at Georgia now. “My sister’s dead, ain’t she?”

  “We don’t know that, Carl,” said Georgia. “That’s the truth.”

  He nodded, satisfied that that was all the answer he was going to get—all he believed he deserved. Then he wrapped his arms around his body tightly, and Georgia felt sorry for the young, scraggly man before her—for the hard way he a
nd Connie had lived.

  Connie had somehow managed to keep herself together while Carl had fallen apart. Mixed in with Georgia’s sorrow was an undeniable guilt. Connie, I’m sorry, thought Georgia. I didn’t know how badly you had suffered—how strong you’d had to be. You never let it show.

  “Did Connie stay in touch with Tricia?” Georgia asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Tricia always knew her as Mary O’Rourke, though. Connie Ruiz—that was her own invention. I guess she was trying to leave all this shit behind.”

  He shook his head. “She told me last time I talked to her that she’d look into getting me into a good rehab program. I thought maybe…if she could find me a good program…I’d have a shot at getting clean.”

  He glanced around the wire-mesh cage, then closed his eyes as if it had just dawned on him how completely his own life had fallen apart, and how unfulfilled his sister’s promises would remain.

  “You know, growing up, my sister always wanted to be a firefighter.” He smiled a sad, sweet smile, showing the boy beneath the broken-down body that would never be whole. “I did, too.”

  39

  Georgia and Carter didn’t speak until they’d heard the steel gates close behind them in Housing Area Six South. They were both stunned by O’Rourke’s revelations. Still, it didn’t get them any closer to Robin Hood.

  “Y’all still want to see Mac?” asked Carter. Georgia nodded. They both knew that such a visit would be tricky. Georgia and Carter couldn’t claim official business with Marenko, and Georgia couldn’t visit him as a civilian, either. It was almost five P.M.—visiting hours were over.

  Carter tried to sweet-talk a black woman guard on duty. She told him the best she could do was to put in the request after the guards finished the inmate count in forty-five minutes.

  “We’ll stay,” Carter told Georgia.

  “No, Randy. You take the car back to base and go home. We’re at a dead end. Chief Brennan hasn’t called me with any news on Robin Hood. I think we’ve done just about all we can do.”