Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [32]
As they left Kub’s office, the house bells rang. Less than a minute later the apparatus bay doors slammed shut on a cloud of blue-gray diesel smoke, the building like a tomb, Engine 10, Ladder 1, Aid 5, and Battalion 1 all roaring down Second Avenue in a ragged parade of red lights and sirens. Finney couldn’t help wishing he were with them.
Taking the stairs two at a time, they went up one flight and punched in the lock box code on the door to the crews’ private quarters.
The TV in the great room was playing a local news show to no audience. In the enormous kitchen area, steam was coming off half a dozen abandoned plates of food set out on the long table. Dinner would be cold by the time they got back; they were accustomed to it. They’d line up and one by one put their plates in the microwave and try again. For a split second Finney found himself looking for Cordifis’s plate, but of course, Bill’s favorite Harley-Davidson commemorative platter had been returned to his widow along with his Mickey Mouse sheets, his Waterpik, his Bible, the pictures of his daughters, and the six hundred pennies they’d found in the bottom of his office drawer.
Alone in the room, G. A. Montgomery hunkered over a bowl of chili with a moon of margarine in it.
Montgomery had been a member of AA for ten years, could give his sobriety time in months and days. He liked to boast, only a little facetiously, that he would be chief of the department by now if he hadn’t become enamored with the taste of bourbon. As a drunk he’d been as cocksure as a man could be, and sobriety hadn’t changed that. People were intimidated by G. A., not just firefighters but other captains and chiefs. He was fifty-two years old, with a ruddy face and puffy tea bags of flesh under his eyes. His head was so large it scared small children. He had a shock of pale brown hair he clipped himself and combed straight back, though by mid-morning most of it stuck straight up. G. A. Montgomery put on a suit each morning, but by late afternoon the jacket was rumpled, discarded, or misplaced. This evening he wore a sweater vest over a dress shirt, his tie having lost its battle to hold a knot.
G. A. had been at the helm of the fire investigation unit for fourteen months, not long enough to know what he was doing, although that didn’t dissuade him from running it with an iron hand or from taking charge of certain pet investigations. He had taken the requisite courses, read the textbooks, gone through the state police training, traveled to Maryland to the National Fire Academy—and returned feeling he knew everything. But then, he’d known everything before he left. G. A. had always known everything. His rigid policies had caused at least one fire investigator to transfer back to an engine company. Since Cordifis’s death he had twice cautioned Finney to stop interfering in the investigation.
“Hey,” said Captain Montgomery, speaking around a mouthful of corn bread. “That was a rotten deal you were handed the other day. Charlie should have promoted you.” He stood and they shook hands. “So, what’s going on? You two look like you just caught the Sears deliveryman banging the old lady.”
Finney reiterated the theory he’d outlined for Kub downstairs.
G. A. pushed his bowl away and sat back, evaluating the two men in front of him. “I thought you said you were going to give up snooping around in all this Leary Way nonsense.”
“That’s not what I said. That’s what you said.”
G. A. stared hard at Finney, as if he could get him to relent by sheer force of will, then swiveled his eyes to Kub. “So where was the big fire last C-shift? What was the target?”
“It was a practice run,” said Finney.
“A practice run?”
“Yeah. It was just like the tie-ups three weeks before Leary Way. Somebody was getting ready, practicing. All of which points to another sizable event on the horizon. What clinched