Fireplay

by Suzanne Chazin

  “The name of the guy who assaulted him.”

  Georgia leaned over Reese’s chair until their bodies were almost touching and stared at the screen. “He’s not fish food,” Georgia muttered.

  “McLaughlin’s attacker? How do you figure?”

  “I know him. Well, I don’t actually know him. My partner, Randy Carter does, however. Paul Brophy is his ex-partner.”

  “Could be a different Paul Brophy,” said Reese.

  “No, look,” said Georgia. “On the arrest report, under ‘occupation,’ he wrote, ‘retired firefighter.’ And he’s the right age, too. Does the arrest sheet give any details of the attack?”

  “Let’s see,” said Reese. “Not much. It looks like a pretty unprovoked attack. McLaughlin stepped out of a restaurant on West Forty-fourth Street, and Brophy came at him and the bodyguard with a baseball bat. Looks like Brophy got the worse end of the deal. Two cracked ribs, a busted collarbone and a broken wrist. McLaughlin never got a scratch on him, and the bodyguard had only minor bruises. But even the witnesses to the complaint say Brophy came out of the blue and just started whacking away.”

  “I wonder if Randy knows. He must know.”

  Reese looked down. Georgia suddenly realized he was blushing. “I guess this means you won’t have time to have lunch with me today.”

  “Another day, I promise.” She touched him on the sleeve of his jacket. “Thanks, Nathan. You’re the best.”

  “That’s what all the New York women say.”

  14

  Randy Carter had just returned to Manhattan base when Georgia arrived. His hangdog expression told her where he’d been even before he uttered the words: Ladder Seventeen. Russo and Fuentes’ firehouse. She couldn’t be angry at him when she saw him looking so heartbroken.

  “They’ve still got all the names on the riding board for Thursday morning,” he told her. “Nobody’s got the stomach to erase it.”

  “They’re going to be hurting for a long time.”

  “I know that.” Carter sighed. “I just can’t go there anymore. I’ve done it so often these last few years, I feel all used up inside.”

  “That’s because you’re not Irish,” said Georgia. “The Irish have an infinite capacity for suffering. Who else would parade around every year in the middle of March when it’s absolutely guaranteed to be rainy and cold?”

  He gave a small chuckle. He knew she was trying to cheer him up. “So, what are you doing back at Manhattan base? Slumming?”

  “Taking you to lunch.”

  Carter stroked his mustache and regarded her through narrowed eyes. “What’s up?”

  “Come to lunch with me, and I’ll tell you.”

  They caught a cab over to their favorite bagel shop on West Fourteenth Street. It was sandwiched between a Third-World marketplace of discount stores and stalls that sold everything from I Love NY T-shirts to cheap suitcases. Georgia didn’t talk much on the way over and Carter didn’t push. It wasn’t until they got their bagels that she spoke.

  “There’s something I wanted to run by you. Mac says you know stuff about McLaughlin that you’re not sharing.”

  Carter looked surprised—even a little impressed. Georgia waited for him to elaborate, but he seemed to be weighing something in his mind. “Can you get off the case?” he asked her finally.

  “If I do, we’ll lose Freezer forever.”

  “We may anyway.”

  “Randy—” She searched for the right words. Carter’s ex-partner was always a delicate subject. “Did you know that Paul Brophy tried to assault Michael McLaughlin with a baseball bat two years ago?”

  Carter didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. Georgia could tell from his eyes that he knew. “Do you know why Broph attacked him?” she pressed.

  “Where did you hear this?”

  “Never mind where I heard it. Is it true?”

  Carter swirled his coffee without meeting her gaze. “Yeah. It’s true. He told me he was upset about the Rachel Cross case.”

  “But that case was ten years old by then,” said Georgia. “And Rachel had been dead for at least seven.”

  Carter shrugged. “Broph was a fire marshal when Rachel killed herself. An assault would’ve cost him his job. He was a civilian when he took a swing at Freezer. And the FDNY couldn’t do any more to him than I already had.” Carter winced as he spoke. Georgia knew why. Paul Brophy didn’t retire from the FDNY—he was fired. And Carter was the one who got him fired after Brophy accepted a bribe to label an arson fire as accidental. Carter did the right thing, to Georgia’s way of thinking. But it dogged him for the rest of his career. No one wanted a rat for a partner. Then again, no one wanted a woman, either. That’s how they ended up together.

  “Why didn’t Freezer kill him?” asked Georgia. “He’s killed men for less.”

  “Well, he beat him up pretty good. Besides, if Broph had died, it would’ve brought a lot of heat on McLaughlin. I guess he thought busting him up was good enough.”

  “So where is Paul Brophy these days?”

  Carter shook his head. “Don’t talk to him, Skeehan. That’s not a good idea.”

  “Why? I won’t tell him I’m your partner.”

  “That’s not why I’m telling you this.” He leaned back in his chair and wiped two long, bony sets of fingers down his tired face. The deli was packed with customers yelling out orders and employees slapping together sandwiches. It was hard to concentrate over the noise and commotion. Yet Georgia knew she had to. She sensed Carter was struggling to tell her something.

  “I found out something yesterday,” he said slowly, toying with a packet of sugar. “Something I should’ve figured out sooner. Girl,” he leaned forward. “You trust me, don’t you?”

  “Of course I trust you—even after you pulled that stunt yesterday going behind my back to Brennan.”

  “I did that for your own good. And this is for your own good, too,” he said. “I don’t want you to see Paul Brophy.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t tell you.”

  “So I’m just supposed to obey you—is that it?”

  “It’s for your own good.”

  “I’m not a rookie anymore, Randy. You can’t treat me like one.”

  “Two years as a marshal, eight in the FDNY, doesn’t qualify anyone as a veteran.”

  “I’m not saying it does,” said Georgia. “But you haven’t even apologized for going behind my back yesterday.”

  “If I’d discussed it with you, would you have backed off?”

  “No.”

  “So? You left me no option.”

  She frowned. “What’s gotten into you? Did you lose respect for me because I mouthed off in front of the Feds yesterday?”

  “That’s got nothing to do with this,” said Carter. “I know what I’m doing here, Skeehan. And I’m telling you to stay away from Broph.”

  Georgia rose from the table. “And I’m my own person, Randy. I’m not that rookie anymore. I know a lot more than you give me credit for. Maybe not everything. Certainly not as much as you. But a lot. So if you want me to follow your lead, you’ll have to give me a reason. Otherwise, get out of my way.”

  “He won’t talk to you, you know,” said Carter. “As soon as he knows who you are, he’ll slam the door.”

  “Because I’m your partner? He hates you that much?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he threw the sugar packet across the table in disgust. The past was something very much alive in Randy Carter. And judging from his reaction, Georgia guessed it was very much alive in Paul Brophy, too.

  15

  Nathan Reese found Paul Brophy’s address for Georgia through the Division of Motor Vehicles computers. He lived in College Point, a working-class neighborhood of row houses and small apartment buildings on a northern peninsula in Queens, just east of LaGuardia Airport. And Reese found out something else, too. Broph had a limousine driver’s license. That’s how he was earning his keep these days. The FDNY had str
ipped him of his pension.

  She changed into jeans and a leather jacket and retrieved her motorcycle from Manhattan base without heading up to the squad room on the fourth floor. She couldn’t face Randy right now. This was something she had to work out on her own, the way she always worked things out: straddled across the leather seat of her fire-engine red Harley Davidson. Thirteen hundred and forty cubic centimeters of twin-mounted evolution engine with a hand-painted rose on the gas tank. Plenty of torque. Plenty of chrome. One year old and no major encounters with asphalt—at least, not yet.

  She headed out of Manhattan, north on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, toward College Point. She didn’t call Paul Brophy in advance. She didn’t want to give him a chance to turn her down.

  Rush hour traffic was at a near standstill on the BQE, so Georgia snaked her bike down the lane marker between the cars. Her mother would have had a coronary watching her, but Georgia had gained confidence over the last year. And besides, she was freezing. The December wind bit right through her heavy jeans, stinging her like a swarm of fire ants. She tucked her legs close to the engine, luxuriating in that small bit of warmth. One of these days, when she had the money, she’d get an all-weather, insulated jumpsuit. The kind that would make her look so cool, it wouldn’t matter that the only place she ever rode besides work was to PTA meetings.

  She exchanged one highway for another until she was finally on the Whitestone Expressway, heading into College Point. Paul Brophy lived in a pale green aluminum-sided row house on a street of similar houses anchored on one end of the block by an auto parts store and on the other by a liquor distributor. The trees were all small and scrubby and the cars looked like they had some mileage on them.

  She walked up a concrete flight of stairs to a front door identical to the one on her mother’s house. Three small rectangular windows on a diagonal slant. The two houses were probably built during the same time period—early sixties, if she had to guess. She rang the buzzer.

  A bald, thickset man with an enormous reddish blond handlebar mustache opened the front door. He was wearing dark, dressy-looking pants and a white dress shirt, but the shirt was open to an undershirt beneath. He must have either just gotten off duty or he was just going on.

  “Mr. Brophy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Paul Brophy?”

  “Only Brophy here, sweetheart.”

  “I was wondering if I could talk to you a moment. I’m an investigator and I’d like to ask you some questions about Michael McLaughlin.”

  “An investigator?” He frowned. “What kind of investigator?”

  Georgia didn’t want to use her name, Carter’s name, or mention the FDNY unless she had to. Since she was here finding out information for an FBI case, she didn’t see anything wrong with keeping her fire department credentials a secret. She pulled out her newly issued U.S. Marshal I.D., complete with photo, then whipped it away before he could read her name or begin to make an association.

  He folded his hands across his belly and stared at her. He did not invite her in. “I gotta go to work in a minute. What do you want?”

  “Can you tell me anything about your relationship with Michael McLaughlin?”

  “Relationship? I don’t have one. I was a fire marshal and his name came up in some cases I was involved in.”

  “Rachel Cross, right?”

  “That was one of ’em.”

  “What were the others?”

  The muscles beneath his eyes twitched. He wasn’t buying her story. “Who are you?”

  “I told you, an investigator.”

  “What is it you’re investigating?”

  “Why did you assault Mr. McLaughlin outside a restaurant two years ago?”

  A spark of something registered across his face. The anger faded. He leaned closer. “Are you Georgia Skeehan?”

  “I am,” she admitted. “Look, Mr. Brophy, I know you and my partner, Randy Carter, aren’t exactly on the best of terms, but I’d really—”

  “Does Carter know you’re here?”

  “I didn’t get your address from him. He has nothing to do with—”

  “I don’t think I should be talking to you, Georgia. Not like this. It’s not a good idea.”

  “But why?”

  He shook his head without meeting her gaze. He seemed suddenly embarrassed. “I should’ve killed the bastard when I had the chance. I wish I’d had the guts. I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry?” Georgia asked.

  “Sorry I didn’t kill him. Sorry I didn’t come clean about everything sooner. At the time, we really thought it was an accident. Sully and me…we just figured it didn’t make sense to stir up shit we couldn’t do anything about.”

  “Sully? You mean…” She recalled the named tossed about by Bobby Kelly and Carter in the bar. “…Jamie Sullivan?”

  Brophy lifted his head and gave Georgia a sad-eyed look. “I’m really sorry, Georgia. That’s all I can say. I’ve got to go.” Then he closed the door.

  16

  Jamie Sullivan. It was the second time in two days Georgia had heard that name. She found his address on West Forty-eighth Street in a Manhattan phone book. She left a vague message on his answering machine explaining that she wanted to talk to him about an old case, along with her name and phone number. She waited for a return call as she went about her evening, helping Richie with his homework, fixing dinner and getting ready to drive to Joe Russo’s wake. She could feel the weight of something pressing on her, telling her not to allow herself to be swept any deeper into McLaughlin’s schemes than she already was. Maybe Sully felt the same thing. He never called back.

  She drove out to Belle Harbor, Queens, a spit of land bordering the Atlantic Ocean. She had been to so many firefighters’ wakes and funerals these past few years that the parlors and churches had all begun to look the same. And yet, for Georgia at least, the process never got any easier. She felt it when she looked at Joe Russo’s open casket. The life she had seen in that grimy handsome face Thursday morning was now gone. What was left was just a shell. His skin had a pale white gleam. His features were expressionless. His dark hair was slicked back. His hands were crossed over his chest, clutching a crucifix. In that placid imitation of a face, she saw the brief, fleeting vision of her own father when he was laid out. Her mother had kissed him good-bye. Georgia, then twelve, had refused to touch his cold, dead body. She stole one more glance at Joe Russo and something hard thudded in her chest. She wished she’d given her father that last good-bye.

  Georgia paid her respects to the family, then heard someone call her name. It was Seamus Hanlon. Doug’s father. He was a stout man with silver crew-cut hair, a broad, walrus face and a droopy mustache. There were always bags beneath his watery blue eyes, but this evening, they looked particularly pronounced as he tugged on the sleeves of his dark blue suit jacket.

  “I tell you,” said Seamus, giving her a hug, “you’re one face this body’s glad to see.”

  “Where’s Doug?” Georgia knew from Seamus that Doug lived with his in-laws, only fifteen minutes away in Rockaway Park.

  The brightness left him. He wiped a hand down his mustache. “He’s, uh…he’s got some breathing problems, Georgia. He’s going to try to come later. Right now, he’s lying down.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  Hanlon didn’t meet her gaze. “I’m not sure. Listen, I need to grab a cigarette outside. Can I talk to you a moment?”

  Georgia followed him out of the funeral home. A bitter wind gusted off the ocean. She wrapped her coat around her and stamped her feet to keep warm.

  “My mother and I tried to call you today,” Georgia told him. “Your line was always busy.”

  “I know,” said Hanlon, cupping his hands over the lighter for his cigarette. “The phone was ringing off the hook. But thank you anyway, lass. And your mother, too.”

  Hanlon squinted into the middle distance, past a row of double-parked cars and bare trees. “Dougie’s not sick. He
can’t bring himself to come to the wake.” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “He won’t talk to me. Won’t talk to anybody. He’s been lying on his bed, watching cartoons with Jenna, his daughter, since he got home.” Hanlon exhaled a long, slow cloud of smoke, as if the image of his son on that bed was like a punch to the gut. “Georgia, he won’t even look me in the face.”

  “He’s ashamed,” she said softly.

  “Of surviving?”

  “He feels he let Russo and Fuentes down. And you’re his father. You’re a fire captain with a fistful of medals. Seamus, he feels he let you down.”

  “Ach,” Hanlon threw up his hands in annoyance. Yet his eyes looked watery and confused. “Why should he feel he let me down? He’s my boy. I thank God he’s alive.”

  “And if that had been you down there? With Russo and Fuentes? What then?”

  He shrugged. “That’s different. I’ve got twenty-eight years on the job. I should know what I’m doing. But Dougie—he’s just a kid. My kid. I don’t care if he ran out of that building kicking and screaming. I don’t care.”

  “But he does,” said Georgia. “Have you called the counseling unit?”

  “He won’t talk to them. And I can’t say as I blame him there. I tried the counseling unit fifteen years ago when I was trying to get sober. The fellow I met with told me every firefighter he was treating for alcohol abuse. He might as well have put the names in the union newsletter. I don’t want those quacks seeing my kid. I want someone who understands what he’s going through.”

  Hanlon threw his cigarette down and stamped it out. He shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his back to the fierce ocean wind. “Georgia? I, uh…Before Jimmy Gallagher died he, uh…he told me about what happened to you when you were a firefighter.”

  Georgia closed her eyes. She didn’t answer.

  “I wouldn’t bring it up, lass. It’s none of my business—”

  “It isn’t,” said Georgia sharply. “And it wasn’t Jimmy’s, either.”

  “He didn’t tell me ’cause he thought you’d done anything wrong. He just…we were just…” Hanlon’s voice trailed off. He sighed. “Doug refuses to talk to anybody, Georgia. I figured maybe he’d talk to you.”