It was nearly nine P.M. before Georgia was able to wrap up her statement on the fire. She was relieved that the Brooklyn marshals bought her story about being in the building to look through some old records in Fire Prevention. What troubled them was the physical evidence.
They found no signs of a break-in, yet Georgia was certain she’d closed the door to the firehouse behind her. From the odor of the fuel and Georgia’s description of the relatively slow spread of flames, they knew the torch had used kerosene instead of gasoline to start the blaze. Kerosene, because of its lower volatility, is the choice accelerant of professional arsonists. Yet the fire itself had all the earmarks of an impulsive act of vandalism. The fuel was carelessly splashed, as if the torch just wanted a big fire and didn’t care what burned.
But most troubling of all to them was the fact that Georgia had insisted she’d called out her presence in the building and given the arsonist time to flee. If the torch had just been looking for an impulsive thrill, he would have thought twice about adding murder—especially the murder of a law-enforcement officer—to his rap sheet. To the Brooklyn marshals, the case was perplexing. To Georgia, only one explanation—an explanation she couldn’t give them—made chilling sense. The torch wasn’t trying to burn down the building; he was trying to burn down the woman inside.
The Brooklyn marshals let her shower at their base and drove her home. One of the men even loaned her a clean pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt so she wouldn’t frighten her mother and son when she walked in the door. It was a good thing he did, too. Richie and Margaret were waiting anxiously for her. Margaret looked exhausted. Richie, who normally disappeared into his room for long stretches, hovered protectively nearby. Georgia tried to shrug off the afternoon and evening with just a word or two about the investigation, but Margaret noticed her daughter pulling all the telephone cords out of the walls after she had changed into shorts and one of her own shirts.
“What are you doing, dear?”
“I just want to be home, Ma. Here. Safe. I don’t want the outside world intruding.”
Richie seemed to loosen up now that his mother was home. He began to regale her with the latest stunts from a Jackie Chan movie. Margaret fell asleep on the couch, then woke with a start and opted to go to bed. Georgia gave her a kiss on the cheek.
“Things will be better tomorrow, Ma,” Georgia told her, forcing a smile.
“I hope so, honey.” Margaret sighed. “I’ve been saying that ever since Jimmy…” Margaret’s voice trailed off. They both knew what she was going to say: Ever since Jimmy died. Margaret wasn’t ready to accord Jimmy Gallagher the light, breezy caress of memory that Georgia felt sure he’d have wanted. She missed him too much. It made Georgia think of that picture Seamus Hanlon had given her from the corkboard of Engine Two-seventy-eight.
“Ma? What happened to that picture I left for you? Of Jimmy and Seamus Hanlon on that fishing trip?”
Margaret shook her head. “I put it with Jimmy’s mass cards and medals. I can’t look at it, Georgia.”
Georgia put a hand on top of her mother’s. “I understand.”
After Margaret went to bed, Georgia made popcorn for Richie while he acted out a scene from the Jackie Chan flick, his body a long, lean set of sticks with a face still chubby enough to make Georgia want to nuzzle him in her arms.
“Okay, so then Jackie Chan does this.” Richie kicked his foot out sideways. “And then the bad guy does this.” He spun and moved his hands in short chops in front of his face. There seemed to be no dialogue in the movie, or at least none he wanted to convey. Georgia attempted a karate chop herself and ended up flipping the popcorn bowl in the air. The boy laughed. That small, childish giggle lifted her spirits for the first time in days.
They were scraping kernels off the floor when Richie caught her eye, a serious look on his face.
“Jimmy DeLuca saw a picture of Mac’s arrest on TV.”
The statement stopped Georgia cold. She put down the popcorn bowl and sat back on her heels, staring at Richie. Jimmy DeLuca was her son’s best friend. She didn’t want him having to explain something like this to other children.
“How did you feel when Jimmy told you?” Georgia asked, willing her voice to sound nonchalant. She went back to scooping popcorn kernels off the floor, but she watched him from the corner of her eye.
Another shrug. “Okay, I guess,” said the boy. He straightened up, then walked over to the kitchen counter and hoisted himself on top. Georgia hated it when he sat on the counters, but she decided against correcting him right now. “I told Jimmy that Mac was innocent—like in the movies. Jimmy thought it was kinda cool that I knew somebody who’d been arrested for murder. It was like knowing a rap star or something.” Richie curled his fingers and extended his forefingers and pinkies, then moved them like a rap singer’s stage gestures. “Yo, check it out.”
“Oh, terrific.” Georgia rolled her eyes. Come the fall, the entire PTA at Saint Aloysius will be whispering that Richie Skeehan’s mother is dating a murderer.
“I’m sorry you’re in the middle of this, honey,” said Georgia. “If anyone gives you a hard time about this, you tell me—okay?”
“Okay.” He hopped down off the counter. Georgia swept up the remainder of the popcorn and threw it in the garbage. “Can we play a board game?” he asked.
Georgia was about to tell him she was too tired and it was past his bedtime, but when she saw his hopeful face, she changed her mind. “Oh, all right. Which one?”
“Life.”
Richie loved the game of Life. Everybody got married. All the little pink and blue kid pegs had a matching set of pink and blue parents. Nobody died suddenly or thought about walking out on their kids or cheating on their lovers. Nobody got arrested for murder. And the worst trouble that could befall you was some uncle leaving you a skunk farm that you had to pay $10,000 to get rid of.
They played until just after ten-thirty—well past Richie’s bedtime, but Georgia sensed he needed this time with her right now. She was just about to send Richie up to bed when the doorbell rang. Georgia furrowed her brow. She wasn’t expecting anybody.
“Go upstairs,” she told him. She’d temporarily tossed her duty holster on top of the television in the living room. She got her gun from it now, telling herself that what happened at the old firehouse in Greenpoint hadn’t affected her. She was just being cautious—that’s all. It made perfect sense to answer your front door with a gun trained on it. Perfect sense.
She cracked open the front door. It was Mac. He was wearing a baseball cap pulled low across his face and mirrored sunglasses.
“Hey there, Stashoo. Nice disguise,” she teased, trying to recover from the wave of panic that had seized her just moments before. Her body temperature had risen at least ten degrees. Her face felt flushed. Sweat gathered under her armpits, across her brow and in between her breasts.
He stepped inside, pulled off his sunglasses and stared at the gun in her hand. “Who you planning to shoot?” he asked gruffly. “And what’s wrong with your phones? Christ, I heard about what happened in Greenpoint and I wanted to make sure you were okay. I couldn’t even get you on your cell phone.”
Georgia lifted her right hand and examined the gun still clutched tightly in its grip as if it had walked over by itself. She returned it to her duty holster and locked the door. All three locks—even the chain.
“Friendly tonight, aren’t you? What’s going on?” he asked. “And what the hell were you doing in that firehouse anyhow?”
“Trying to get something solid to tie Bridgewater to Robin Hood,” Georgia said in hushed tones. She knew Richie was listening.
“You okay?” he asked, holding her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes. There was a distance to his own bright blue wattage. Something was on his mind.
“Hi, Mac,” a little voice called from the top of the stairs.
Marenko turned and forced a smile to his lips, but the edgy glint never left his eyes. “Hey, Sport, how ya doing?” Richie came down the stairs. Marenko pulled off his baseball cap and swatted the boy playfully on the shoulder. Richie gaped at him with a mixture of curiosity and awe.
“My friend saw you on TV.”
Marenko’s face dropped. “Fu—.”
Georgia gave him a dirty look. He caught himself just in time. He threw his baseball cap and sunglasses on a table near the door and regained his composure. “…Sport, I’m uh…”
“—Honey, go upstairs,” Georgia interrupted. “I’ll be up in a moment to put you to bed.”
“Can Mac put me to bed?”
“What?” Georgia bounced a look from Richie to Marenko.
Marenko bit back a grin. Georgia could tell he was flattered. Instead of making Georgia happy, however, it filled her with a dull ache. Richie was bonded to a man who might not be in their lives much longer.
“Relax, Mom,” said Marenko, kissing her cheek as he sidled past her and up the stairs. “My good nights are G-rated.”
It was ten minutes before Marenko came back downstairs. In the interim, Georgia cringed at the loud, wet-sounding release of air from Richie’s “Captain Underpants” whoopee cushion. She listened to her son’s latest rap tape, and she heard Marenko talking to the boy about how the Mets were “kicking ass” this summer.
Georgia shook her head at Marenko as his footsteps thudded on the landing. The pictures on the walls seemed to shake when he walked past. She was glad her mother was a heavy sleeper.
“What?” he asked.
“Do you act this way around Michael and Beth, too?” His back straightened.
His kids were always a sore topic. “Act what way?”
“Like an overgrown delinquent.”
He made a face. “I just like to horse around, that’s all. Richie likes it. All boys do.”
He flopped down in a chair across from the television. Georgia noticed he didn’t sit next to her on the couch. He was keeping his distance tonight for some reason. “I wouldn’t have come over at all if you hadn’t turned off your cell phone and unplugged every friggin’ phone in this house,” he added.
“I was really worried about you.”
“I ruined your grandmother’s blouse.”
Marenko dismissed it with a wave of his hand. “She won’t care. She’s got twenty more just like it. The point is, you’re okay.” He ran a hand through his hair, matted down from the baseball cap. He gave her a dark, tentative look. Something was on his mind. “Did you, uh, speak to Chief Brennan tonight?”
“Yeah. And Ed Delaney. And this guy from the mayor’s office. They don’t want me investigating the Bridgewater fire or the Empire Pipeline anymore.” Georgia still had the CIDS card in her hip bag. She retrieved it and showed it to him. It smelled of smoke, like everything else in the bag, but it was still legible at least.
“Somebody knew what was in that warehouse nine months before the fire,” she explained. “The card could’ve been misfiled or someone could’ve chosen to deliberately hide that information…Did Andy call you with my request?”
“Yeah.” Marenko frowned at the card, then handed it back to Georgia. “Tristate’s out of business—went out of business right after the fire. But, man, what a sleazebag operation it was. The firm was responsible for illegally disposing of thousands of gallons of PCBs, benzene and toluene. Very, very toxic stuff. Since the nineteen seventies, benzene and toluene have been classified as known human carcinogens. It’s almost a guarantee that that’s what the men at Bridgewater were exposed to.”
“Yeah, but the DEP was trying to clean it up.”
“They were supposed to notify the EPA. They were supposed to get the soil tested and cleaned—not sneak the barrels out and hope nobody in the neighborhood found out they were living down the street from a major environmental disaster. That’s my old neighborhood, Scout. Practically my grandmother’s backyard. My family’s health and well-being were traded in a back-room deal because the city was afraid of ending up with another Love Canal on their hands.”
Georgia sank back onto the couch. “It’s a dead end, though, I guess, since Tristate’s out of business.”
“Yes and no,” said Marenko. “Tristate’s assets went into receivership and were bought out by a construction firm called Northway. They’re a big developer in the five boroughs. My friend at HIDTA tells me that Tristate probably only went belly-up to avoid liability after the fire. It’s possible the people who owned Tristate and the people behind Northway are one and the same.”
“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.”