She had told herself she was up here to bring down the Christmas decorations. But instead, she brought down only one box about the size of a microwave, its corners dog-eared and dusty. It was the one marked George Skeehan—newspaper articles. The words, written in black Magic Marker, had begun to fade. It weighed very little and that saddened her right away. The only time her father had made the paper was when he died—the biggest loss in her life was a sound bite of news for little more than a day.
She had never been able to look at those clippings. A part of her wanted to, to make him come alive again. But another part felt that those brittle, yellowing sheets would only serve as a reminder of how much time had passed without him. If there was one trait Georgia had inherited from her mother, it was a discomfort at looking at the past. And yet, those files Marenko had brought her had called into question the most basic assumption of her childhood. Her father’s death had been viewed by family and friends as an act of God—horrible, perhaps, but something natural and unalterable. Like a freak storm or a terrible illness. She had learned to accept her father’s loss in those terms. George Skeehan had chosen the life of a firefighter. He had chosen to go into buildings to rescue people, knowing that some of the men who do that don’t come out. It was the essence of the job—what separated the doers from the dreamers. She could accept that her father had gotten unlucky.
She could not accept that he’d been murdered. She could never accept that his murderer had gone free.
Georgia carted the box into the living room. The tape that secured it had yellowed from nineteen years of neglect. When Georgia cut through it, it crinkled like the wrapper on a hard candy. This box of newspapers wasn’t her mother’s doing. Margaret had been too distraught when Georgia’s father died to think about newspaper clippings. This was the work of Aunt Dotty, her mother’s older sister.
Aunt Dotty was very meticulous. She’d not only saved the clips. She’d saved entire newspapers. Seeing her father’s death relegated to a couple of columns of type in the city section of the newspapers made Georgia realize how very little note anyone seemed to take of the death of a thirty-nine-year-old firefighter in an Astoria, Queens, convenience store. The papers instead were filled with headlines about President Reagan’s summit with Russian leader Yuri Andropov and announcements that Democratic senator Walter Mondale had chosen Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in the upcoming presidential election. Ads played on the popularity of the Rubik’s cube.
Everything seemed hopelessly dated. There were no ads for cell phones or Palm Pilots or personal computers. Crime had a quaint, local quality to it. Bad guys were people in one’s own backyard—not terrorists from halfway around the world. And the worst New Yorkers had to fear was getting mugged on a graffiti-choked subway.
Her father’s death got different coverage in all the local papers. In the Daily News and the New York Post, it was front-page news, though the text was buried inside. In the New York Times, it was a metro story. In Newsday, it was referenced on the front page, but covered deep inside the paper. Georgia read every clipping her aunt Dotty had assembled—from the day of the fire through the two months until the investigation was complete.
When she tried to think back to that time, it was like being a child in the backseat of her parents’ old Pontiac, cruising the Long Island Expressway. Some things were too far away to see clearly or passed by too quickly to take note of—the details of her father’s death, the funeral, the myriad of paperwork and insurance forms that her mother had to grapple with. And yet she herself was standing still, acutely aware of the small cocoon encasing her. Those images were still sharp in her mind: the downpour on the day they buried her father, the key chain he’d given her that she’d temporarily lost down a storm drain, his deathly white skin at the wake—and most of all, the darkness of her bedroom at night without him there to tuck her in. A part of her never recovered. She grew up, but deep inside she was still that little girl waiting for her daddy to tuck her in.
She stared at the black-and-white photographs of the fire-damaged convenience store in Astoria. It was an aluminum-sided corner building on a street of two-and three-story brick-front stores. Georgia could see an elevated subway line in the background. Although the fire had started in the basement, it had quickly taken the entire wood-frame structure. The windows—even on the second floor—were knocked out and the roof had partially collapsed. A sign above the front door still hung on its hinges, though it was charred on one corner. Rysovsky’s Deli, it read. The newspapers said little about the family. They were Russian immigrants. That much Georgia knew. The father’s name was given as Max; the mother’s as Lara. There was a line about “fire department officials” still trying to determine the cause of the eight A.M. blaze, but nothing more. About the only mention she could find regarding the cause of the fire was a one-column piece two months after the fire in the Daily News. It said what she already knew: that the fire was attributed to the couple’s six-year-old son playing with matches. The child wasn’t charged, and because of his age, his name wasn’t given.
If I can track down the Rysovskys, maybe I can find out what really happened, thought Georgia. The Post and News articles gave an exact address of the store, though Georgia was sure the family no longer owned it. She opened up a phone book, but found no listing in Queens for Rysovsky. There were three in Brooklyn, but none of them was for a Max or M. Rysovsky.
Richie found her in the living room, poring over the articles.
“What are you doing, Mom?”
Georgia shuffled the clippings and began to put them back in the box. She didn’t want her mother to see them. Even after all this time, Georgia knew it would upset her. “Oh, just getting stuff down to decorate the tree.”
Richie yawned. “That doesn’t look like the tree.”
“I’ve just started. You want to help me this afternoon?”
“I’m going to Jimmy’s house after school.” Jimmy DeLuca was Richie’s best friend.
“Well, tomorrow then, after school.”
The boy shrugged. “If it takes more than an hour to put up, I’m not helping.” Richie loved to pretend the process bored him, but Georgia knew he would have been crushed if she didn’t make the effort.
“Fair enough. Now, get dressed. I’ll make breakfast.”
36
Georgia hid the box of her father’s newspaper clippings until after Richie left for school and her mother for work. Then she went back to the attic, returned the box and fetched the artificial tree and Christmas decorations. Most of the decorations were her mother’s. There were lots of kitschy-looking angels and bears in turnout coats and dalmatians beside fire hydrants. Georgia supposed the dalmatians and hydrants were supposed to be shorthand for firefighters, but all they made her think of was a dog with a bladder problem. Ironically, Georgia had never seen a firehouse tree yet with a firefighter ornament on it. Not unless you counted the time that Eddie Suarez and Sal Giordano decorated the squad tree in air filter masks and garlands of bright yellow Fire Line: Do Not Cross tape.
Tony Fuentes’s funeral was at noon in the Bronx, but Georgia left much earlier than she needed to. She had another destination in mind first.
She drove west along Broadway, then north along Thirty-first Street under the wide, dark trestles of the elevated N subway track. Even on this bright winter morning, the street beneath was shadowy and the wind blew fast-food wrappers and old newspapers across her path. To the north, Georgia could see the brick storefronts and hooded awnings of restaurants and stores with Greek names. In the summer, Astoria bustled with Manhattanites in search of good, cheap restaurants that served up Middle Eastern and Spanish food. But this time of year, the four-and five-story brick apartment buildings that shadowed the boulevards had a ghostly feel that was broken only by the occasional rumble of a train overhead. Georgia stared up at their fake peaked rooflines, small windows and heavy lintels. The buildings had that frumpy, sedate look of pre-World War II housing. She imagined
the neighborhood looking pretty much the same when her father arrived here on that autumn morning nineteen years ago.
Georgia stared at the address she had scribbled off the newspapers. Rysovsky’s Deli once stood at the corner of Thirty-second Street and Newtown Avenue, a block from the elevated tracks. The aluminum-sided frame house was gone. In fact, the entire row of stores looked as if they’d been replaced by one continuous two-story commercial building—a taxpayer, firefighters call them, because of their cheap construction. From the signs above the stores, Georgia noted a dry cleaner, a pharmacy, a Greek pastry shop and a Spanish grocery. The pastry shop now stood on the corner where Rysovsky’s had been, its plate-glass windows filled with cakes and pans of flaky baklava.
Georgia looked in the window. People were lined up by the counter, placing orders. But even with his back turned to her, it was impossible not to recognize the tall, lean black man jotting some notes as he spoke to a plump Greek woman on the other side of the counter. Georgia waited for Carter as he exited the store, a small white box of bakery goods in one hand, a notepad in the other.
“Skeehan,” he said stiffly, then froze. He seemed unable to say more.
Georgia eyed his clothes. He was wearing a black wool coat over a black suit, a white shirt and a black and burgundy silk tie. His shoes were polished to a military shine. She was sure he was decked out for Fuentes’s funeral. But Astoria, Queens, was not exactly on his way from his home in Brooklyn to the funeral in the Bronx.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “You suddenly get a jones for some phyllo dough and chopped walnuts?”
He sighed. “You know what I’m doing, ’cause you were just about to do it, too. I’m checking out where the Rysovskys have gone.”
“And?”
“I’ve asked everyone on this block. All anyone knows is that they sold out and moved west after the fire. Nobody’s even sure where they settled.”
Georgia regarded him coldly. “You knew McLaughlin might have murdered my father. And you didn’t tell me. Even now, you’re carrying on your own little investigation behind my back.” She began to walk to her car. Carter followed, the little white box in his big hand looking as ridiculous as a woman’s handbag.
“I didn’t know, girl. I don’t know now.”
She turned to face him. “This is my father you’re talking about, Randy. I have a right to know what happened to him. If you still have Brophy and Sullivan’s incident report on that fire, then you should let me see it. I’m your partner. Your equal. And you owe it to me to treat me like one.”
Carter shook his head. “You’re not my partner on this one, Skeehan. You’re the daughter of a dead firefighter. You want me to pretend you can look at this stuff with a clinical eye? You can’t. Heck, I didn’t even know your dad and I can’t.
“Shouldn’t I be the one to make that choice?”
“You want to see that report? You want to look at the radio transmissions? Is that going to bring him back? Is that going to bring you peace?”
“I don’t know what it will bring me.”
“I’ll tell you what it’ll bring you: pain. You remember seeing Fuentes and Russo in that basement? I told you they took off their masks and inhaled the fire ’cause they figured they’d die quicker.”
“I remember,” said Georgia.
“Your father was one tough sonofagun, Georgia. He didn’t make that choice. He hung on, gasping for air, trying to dig his way out of that cellar until the bitter end. Twenty minutes, girl. Twenty agonizing, horrible, choking minutes. Broph and Sully didn’t pull any punches in their report. George Skeehan fought for his life. And he died anyway. And nothing in their report or my interviews gets me one bit closer to figuring out whether Freezer set that fire. I wanted to come to you when I had something definite I could offer you. Something that would put Freezer away. I don’t have that. To tell you all this and not give you satisfaction—that seemed cruel.”
Georgia felt rooted to the pavement, her arms leaden at her side.
“I know you’re angry with me for keeping this stuff from you, girl. But I did it to spare you, not because I don’t respect you.”
“You think he did it, don’t you?” she asked him softly.
“I’ll tell you what I know. And I’ll tell you what I think,” said Carter. “Then you tell me what you want me to do.”
They sat in Randy’s immaculately clean, blue two-tone Cadillac Seville, parked around the corner from the Greek pastry shop. Georgia spied the incident report on her father’s fire on Carter’s backseat. He didn’t protest when she asked to read it. He had warned her that the report would not be easy to stomach. She tried to remain detached and professional as she read the yellowed typewritten pages, splotched with Wite-Out. She tried to pretend that the dead firefighter wasn’t her father. Because he was just a firefighter, he carried only a handy talkie—so none of his words were recorded. But the chief’s words, bloodless and calm as they were, were on record with dispatch, and they were duly transcribed. Georgia looked at the interval and saw instantly that Carter was right. For at least twenty minutes, George Skeehan struggled to free himself from a fire-choked cellar that had become blocked with debris. He hadn’t given up easily. And he died slowly while firefighters frantically tried to dig their way in.
Georgia had always assumed the end had been fast—that a chunk of ceiling had fallen on her dad and killed him. That’s what she’d always been told. And maybe the ceiling did fall on him. But clearly, there had been a long and frightening interval before that. He had fought bravely, but it pained her to think of the man she loved in such a hopeless situation. Georgia blinked back tears and focused on the visor above the passenger seat to keep them from falling down her face.
“It’s okay,” said Carter softly. “No shame in crying, girl. Lord knows, you’ve seen me cry.”
Georgia wiped her eyes and shook her head. “I’m okay,” she said hoarsely.
Carter waited until she’d finished the report before he spoke again. “I didn’t know any of this until Roberta Kelly called me Thursday afternoon—after we went over there—and told me about an argument her brother Cullen had once had with Jamie Sullivan at the bar. Sully started getting all melancholy one night about the fires that made him the saddest. Bobby said he mentioned your dad’s fire. I think it was one of the reasons he went back to firefighting. He didn’t feel like he was experienced enough to have been the lead investigator in such an important case. Anyway, Cullen was there—very drunk, according to Bobby—and he started telling Sully that maybe if he’d done his job better, he could’ve caught the guy responsible for that fire. Bobby said that was all she knew about the argument.”
“Did they get in a fistfight?” asked Georgia.
“Sully supposedly took Cullen outside and sort of threw him to the sidewalk. Cullen was a little weasel—that probably would’ve been enough to get him to go home and sleep things off. Bobby said Cullen never mentioned it again. Then, two years ago, when Cullen got into trouble, he said he had information about a fire that Freezer set and never got caught on. It occurred to Bobby that maybe it was the same one, but Cullen never said, so she didn’t either. And then you came in, and she figured, since you’re my partner, she should tell me.”
“Then you don’t know for sure if McLaughlin set my father’s fire.”
“No. I don’t think anybody even suspected it wasn’t an accident until two years ago, when Cullen talked to the D.A. to cut a deal. Mac tried to get the transcripts of those meetings, but no one can find them. They found all that stuff on Broph and nothing on Cullen Thomas.”
“Any word on Broph?”
“Nothing, but I’m still looking.” Carter let out a long, defeated sigh. “My gut tells me that Freezer killed your father, girl. The Westies worked all over the white neighborhoods of the city in the collection rackets. I think he was trying to scare the Rysovskys into paying him protection money and things went bad—same as they did at Café Treize. But
just like there, I think he might get off the hook.”
“I want to kill him,” said Georgia.
“So do I.”
“No, I mean really,” said Georgia. “Somebody’s got to stop him.”
Carter leaned closer to her and wrapped his big hands around hers. Her fingers were cold. His were warm. “Listen to me, girl. Freezer wins ’cause he’s patient. Now you’ve got to be patient, too. Something’s going to turn up eventually. You’ll see.”
Georgia bit her lip. “What do I do in the meantime? Just live with this?”
“I guess you’re gonna have to.” Carter looked at the clock on his dashboard. “You headed to Fuentes’s funeral? I can give you a ride.”
“I can’t. I’m double-parked,” Georgia lied. She didn’t feel like company right now. “I’ll meet you there.”
37
Georgia never knew Tony Fuentes, but walking through the crowds gathered at the steps of the huge granite Roman Catholic church, she caught snatches of conversations from men who did. Tony was a city kid, born and raised in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx, the child of Puerto Rican parents. He learned stickball as soon as he could walk, cooked a mean roast pork with tostones—fried green banana chips—and considered a day in the country to be a trip to the Bronx Zoo. Georgia thought about Doug Hanlon’s stories of Tony bestowing a toilet plunger on a braggart. He had a firefighter’s sensibilities. He would’ve probably been embarrassed by the outpouring of affection from all these “rednecks who can’t parallel park,” as Doug said he called them. And yet they were all here for him—so many, in fact, that the Latino neighborhood looked decidedly Anglo today. A sea of dark blue stretched out in every direction from beneath the pale, oatmeal-colored stone statue of Saint Cecilia. Each man looked as stony-faced as the saint. Each man looked worn out.
Georgia squinted into the wind to see if she could locate Carter, but she couldn’t. He had somehow managed to disappear into this crowd of mostly white faces. Inside the packed church, family and close friends assembled, along with the Bronx Borough president, the mayor and a string of ever-revolving fire department brass. Beyond the profusion of blue, Georgia noted a smattering of reporters and satellite dishes. The press was here, though not in the numbers she would have expected. A firefighter’s funeral was no longer the rare tragedy it had once been.
Fireplay Page 21
