Vertical Burn - Earl Emerson [53]
Finney couldn’t believe that under the guise of a brotherly admonition, Balitnikoff was publicly chastising him for both Leary Way and Riverside Drive.
“Maybe we’ll think about our partners next time?” Balitnikoff said, to no one in particular.
Finney looked around the group and said, “If I hadn’t done it, that woman would be dead.”
A few people shuffled their feet under their chairs. More than one pair of eyes fell on Diana Moore, who was sitting on both hands looking at the carpet. Finney remembered the scene Balitnikoff had made at Cordifis’s funeral, shouting in the foyer of the church until G. A. Montgomery escorted him outside. Finney never found out what it was about.
The psychiatrist dropped his pen, and from across the room Finney heard the soft sound on the carpet. He wondered if Balitnikoff had been chosen randomly as a facilitator at the debriefing. Generally the department chose from a pool of trained officers or firefighters not directly involved with the incident. While Balitnikoff’s unit, Engine 10, had not been on the call, Ladder 1, housed in Station 10 with Engine 10, had. Finney would have thought that was enough to disqualify him.
Three years earlier, when Marion Balitnikoff transferred to Engine 10, he brought with him a thousand and one stories as well as a reputation for being strong as a bull on the fire ground. In firefighting, unlike many other arenas in life, aggressiveness was preferred over most other modes of action. Reactive was bad; passive was not acceptable. Quick, prompt, informed initiative was what the department wanted—and Balitnikoff had always been aggressive.
Finney’s first real firefighting experience with Balitnikoff had been at an apartment-house fire. In a vacant room on the second floor they’d found a hole in the floor; the hazard had been marked off but nobody could see the warnings in the smoke. When Finney found a firefighter sunk up to his chest in the hole, about to fall more than two stories to the lobby, he threw his body across the man’s arms, gripping his backpack, anchoring him. Now only the weight and friction of Finney’s body prevented them both from sliding in. Finney hollered for help, and several pairs of hands pulled them out. The other man said nothing before, during, or after the incident, and he quickly disappeared into the smoke.
Later, Finney realized it had been Lieutenant Balitnikoff. “That was something, huh? That hole,” Finney said to him afterward. “I thought we were going to lose you.”
“You got the wrong guy.” Balitnikoff turned and walked away.
The episode stumped Finney until he realized it had to do with machismo. Firefighters saved other people. A firefighter who needed saving himself was a rung down from the firefighter who’d saved him. That logic was a holdover from the days when neighboring engine companies raced at breakneck speeds so they could brag about being the first to put water on a fire in somebody else’s district, from the days when only “weak sisters” strapped on air masks. Today, people wore masks and worked in teams. Today, safety was paramount, and today, crews worked together instead of against each other.
These days it was a job, not a way to measure your dick.
27. GET OUT THE TAPE MEASURE
The one thing Diana appreciated about stress debriefings was hearing about an incident from the perspective of each individual involved, viewing an identical scene from a Rashomon-like multiplicity of angles.
During the debriefing Finney seemed calm enough, but he was always unflappable. After his laugh, which erupted at the most unexpected times, it was what she liked best about him.
She recalled seeing him at a fire just off Denny Way, where a huge chunk of material sailed off a roof and landed squarely between Finney and a high-strung lieutenant named Gold who routinely took two or three months off every year to let his gastrointestinal ulcers calm down. Looking up and seeing a pair of rookies