MANHATTAN FIREFIGHTER:
MARCH, 1992 - A STORY.
By Dan Mullins
"Tell Wanda I love her. Tell her I always have."
Pinned on the driver's side with a massive chest wound, he was nearly dead and soon would be. Another in a long line of anonymous battlefield casualties. A footnote to the tail end of the Dinkins era crack wars. Two kids in a stolen van being chased by the cops side swiped his 82 Civic and drove it into the concrete 10th street walkway over the East Side Drive. Spinning wildly the van came to rest along the service road guardrail. Instantly, both kids were out of the van and gone in a flash of hundred dollar sneakers into the nearby Baruch Houses. Business as usual on a Lower East Side Saturday night.
Engine 5 arrived within minutes of the crash. Amid the broken glass and spirals of steam my men went about stabilizing the accident scene. I climbed into the back seat and leaned over the guy's right shoulder. The arriving ambulances wailed in the background as the multicolored emergency lights played off the car interior like some surreal disco scene. The gurgle of air and blood coming from under his shirt sent a message that we both understood. He was finished.
He spoke his last words in a dream state, barely audible. "You'll do that, right?" You'll tell her? The spittle infused with blood creating a visible mist from his lips against the backdrop of flashing lights.
"Yeah pal, no problem." I said it but didn't really mean it....and then he was gone.
We stuck around for awhile and helped the cops cut him out. A free show for the brake riding ghouls craning their necks hoping to see some gore. Payback for being forced to slow their vehicles as they passed 10th street. Bobby Chow and the backup man washed down the antifreeze and shattered debris with a 1 3/4 hose. Shortly, the show was over and we headed home.
It's amazing what you can forget if you have seen enough carnage. Back at the firehouse on 14th street, I banged out the accident report in the office of Engine 5. It took all of 10 minutes to sum up the events ending in a lost life. Fill in the boxes. Keep the narrative simple. In my head I carried a template for such events. People died every day on the Lower East Side. Summing it all up is fairly easy if you do it often enough. File one copy. Send two off to the Chief.
Engine 5 is one of the oldest fire companies in New York. Located for over 125 years in the same building on the edge of a violent and dangerous area of Manhattan, Alphabet City. Sitting in that ancient second floor office you understood you were a part of history or at least I did. Nothing bad of note had happened in that area since 1881 without Engine 5 being there to bear witness.
By the time I got down stairs the guys were already back in the kitchen breaking the cook's balls while we awaited his next masterpiece. The Complete Package, that's what we called the chef, Tom Janosky. Possibly the ugliest guy on the job, he regularly assaulted us with one culinary atrocity after another. He was the cook by default. Not more than 3 guys in the whole company could cook an egg.
Engine 5 was known for putting out tough fires. Lots of them. The ability to take a major beating was the trademark and singed ears a badge of honor. If you're in it for the food, transfer to Staten Island. These guys were here for the work.
"Hey Tom .Can you toss one of those cutlets in my locker? My attorney might need it for the lawsuit."
"Tom, How come some of the rice kernels have antennas on them?"
"Tom, stop staring at the green beans. You're scaring the shit out of them."
On it went. Each remark met by a resounding "Drop dead" serving as a cymbal crash punctuation to the abuse. Tom liked attention in any form.
The new guy, what we call the "probie", was already cutting the bread. "How's the rig?" I asked.
"Fine. Were up Lt. The boosters full."
I liked the probie. Bobby Conlan was a third generation firefighter. You can pick those guys out the first day they walk in. They have already gotten the lecture from their old man. Keep your eyes open and your mouth shut. Do what you're told. Conlan was one of the better young guys to come along. He was doing his job but he wasn't kissing my ass doing it. Just biding his time till the day came when he could join in busting the chef's balls. For now slicing the bread would have to do.
He was here because he had a hook. In the busy companies no one got in otherwise. We put the new guy right up front the first night. We like to find out find out who's who quick. It took us all of four hours of Conlan"s first tour to get his number. We caught an Ave. B rip roarer, like in the movies, but worse. When the smoke finally lifted Conlan was on his hands and knees puking. Snot hanging from his nose. He looked like shit .but at least he was still there.
We sat around the kitchen shooting the breeze about the usual firehouse topics. Sex, sports, our stalled contract and how much Mayor Dinkins sucked. What had happened on the Drive never came up. Maybe the probie was shocked but not the rest of us. We had seen all manner of death on this job including some of our own relatives and best friends. Removing bodies or body parts is an acquired taste. A certain degree of detachment helps.
I never mentioned to the guys what had transpired inside the wrecked car. The less said the quicker I could forget my promise.
Janofsky"s dinner turned out as usual. Good for some laughs but that was about it. The remainder of the night blended one run into the next. A few false alarms. Some bar hopping babes from Queens locked out of their car. Another two or three methadonians in various states of distress. A tenement fire. A kitchen worker with a now useless left arm. The meat grinder he was cleaning saw to that. So it went.
We moved from one run to the next. Not like the cops. For the most part, disrespecting people of any stripe is frowned upon. The people in this neighborhood have enough trouble. They don't need more from us. Do your job. Have a few laughs at each others expense and finish the tour. But as the night rolled on I was unable to forget the guy pinned on the Drive. Unable to forget his request and the promise I had made in return.
He was a 45 year old guy named Dennis Morales from Rosedale Avenue in the Bronx. That's all I needed to know for my report. I would have forgotten even THAT if not for the final words we exchanged
Making promises or shading the truth wasn't new. We had all done it before. Saying everything will be ok when clearly, it would not. Telling a scorched about to die mother laying in an incinerated hallway that her baby was fine. Meanwhile, 20 feet away my guys rummaged through the rubble and Christmas presents in her apartment looking for the little body. Stuff like that. Why show up if you are going to make things worse?
The Morales request fell into that category. I wasn't about to deny his last request. On the other hand, I didn't ask for the job either. I figured it was best to just make believe it never happened.
My 24 hour tour ended at 9am and I headed home to Long Beach. I always take the main highways home when I finish up in the morning. I like the idea of driving home while the 9 to 5 crowd is heading the other way. It's a secret pleasure. A perk to take the edge off knowing what I know. That most New York City firefighters including myself will be long gone before the 5 day a week crowd reaches retirement. Snatched by respiratory disease, cancer or just plain bad luck.
I went about my business that day. Sleeping a bit. Reading the papers and schmoozing with my neighbors and a few of the beach regulars that populate the sand at the end of my block. All the while a vague agitation hovered over me.
Again and again that day I returned to the East Side Drive and the promise I had made. I never even got a chance to look the guy in the eye. He died with me leaning over the back seat. My head on his right shoulder. Both seeing the same thing. The imprint of his head on the shattered windshield embedded with flesh and a picture taped to the dash. A wedding shot. He and his wife flanked by what was clearly her sister and his brother. Like two sets of twins they posed in front of a catering hall stairway. He uttered his last words while reaching out to the picture.
Slowly, my agitation morphed into curiosity. Late that afternoon I called the 9th precinct detective squad.
I had a few pals working out of that station house. Their claim to fame was that NYPD Blue used the precinct for their exterior shots. In my mind the show didn't come close to portraying real police work on the Lower East Side. No one had EVER actually confessed to a murder in that building. The neighborhood predators might not know who was buried in Grants Tomb but they could sub at Harvard Law School if a professor called in sick. A confession? Let's get real.
In another life the detective squad supervisor, Harry Berman, and I had been rookie cops in the 40th precinct in the South Bronx. The next precinct over was the fabled 41st, Fort Apache. At that time they got all the press even though by then the arsonists and greedy landlords had turned almost all the buildings into empty lots. You could fire a cannon in any direction and not hit anything. Meanwhile back at the 40th we were at war. Our little joke was that our precinct was SO fucked up that it didn't even have a nickname.
Eventually reality caught up. By 1982, Fort Apache was about the only building left standing on the block. We gave it a new nickname. "Little House on the Prairie."
The next spring I got involved in a shootout outside the Bronx Criminal Courthouse. A young guy shot a court officer right in front of us. The cop I was with killed the kid on the spot. Believe me that kid needed killing, but I had had enough.
By the time I switched over to the FDNY Berman was already out of the bag, the uniform, working in plain clothes and heading up the ladder. Over the phone I asked him to give me the scoop on the guy in the car from the night before. We talked a bit and then hung up. He called me back right before his tour ended.
Morales worked for building maintenance at a place in the garment center and lived up in the Bronx. He was a Khe Sanh marine and played timbales in a neighborhood band on the side. The Medical Examiner on 30th street had just finished sewing him up.
The cops had made a notification and he was identified by his wife. He was a Bronx guy his whole 45 years on earth other than his bid in the service. By all accounts a good guy.
Shit. In a strange sort of way I hoping to hear he wasn't. I wanted a reason not to follow through on his last request. Speaking with his wife wasn't something I ever really intended to do. Instead of a way out all I got for my curiosity was further boxed in.
I'm a late night talk radio junkie. As I lay in bed that night, I tried to focus on the Alan Colmes talkfest. Joe the Women Hater, a sicko Colmes regular, and the equally twisted Hilly the Black Racist helped distract me as I drifted off.
Over the next two days I regretted contacting Berman. Regretted filling in the blanks. I'm just a working guy. That death scene wasn't something I wanted to relive. In my mind I gave at the office. That's enough.
Two days later I was back at Engine 5 finishing up what passes for a routine tour. I was standing in front of quarters watching the passing show when Berman pulls up with his driver. The yellow line on 14th street is the dividing line between the 9th and 13th precincts. Every cop from both precincts passes by at onetime or another during their tour .Berman was no exception.
A year earlier I had watched from my office window in the middle of the night as two 9th precinct cops answered a call for a passed out junkie with a needle in his arm. They looked both ways, dragged him across the yellow line, and deposited him on the other side of 14th street and left. A real paperwork saver. The persistent Good Samaritan called again only to have the 13th precinct guys show up and drag him back over to where he had started out. The guy woke up about 3 hours later and left, never knowing that he literally couldn't get arrested.
Bermans driver pulled over to the curb.
"Danny boy. That info help you out?" Said Berman
"Yeah. It did. Thanks. Some of the guys are gonna be over at Hanlons later. You should stop by for a pop." I replied.
Berman liked a drink and we had more than a few together over the years.
"Sure but only if you and your cheap "co-workers" put some serious money on the bar." He said.
"You know the story Dave. A cop thinks everything is fucking free and a fireman thinks everything costs 3 bucks."
"Bullshit." Said Dave. "The free ride is over. The job went non-profit ten years ago. "
We both laughed. It was true of course, even if almost every New Yorker without a badge thought otherwise.
Pulling away from the curb Berman leaned out the window and said "Oh yeah, we bagged the shithead who cut Morales off. The other kid is still on the loose. I talked to Morales" family. He's being waked up in the Bronx at the Ortiz Funeral Home."
The Ortiz? I knew that place. It used to be a supermarket. A fucking supermarket. That's how far New York had slid into the abyss. That's how fast the bodies were piling up. It took up half a city block. A funeral superstore for the mostly destitute residents of the Soundview area. I wondered if the owners even bothered to remove the old meat display cases. Maybe they just tossed the bodies in with a few flowers. Bang em"out.
Years earlier my first assignment in the FDNY was to a Bronx firehouse. One of the many laughs I had up there involved this very funeral home and a guy named Sad Sack Eddie Call. He was the source of constant humor, mostly for his bad luck and bizarre behavior.
The place went up in flames at two in the morning with Eddie and the troops responding. While the engine guys put water on the fire, Eddie and the some of the ladder guys searched the basement. Sad Sack Eddie announces via the radio that he has found a victim and is in the process of removal. Needless to say, it's a corpse. When the smoke clears Eddie has dragged it into the street, embalming tubes still attached. One of the wise guy witnesses to this embarrassment offers that the deceased must have been quite a thoughtful guy. He even inserted his own tubes before dropping dead. Obviously, this was a guy who didn't like to cause too much trouble.
For his part Eddie always maintained that instead of ridicule, he should have gotten a medal for his efforts
"So what if the poor guy was already dead. It's the thought that counts."
Eddie drowned swimming down the Jersey shore less than a year after he retired. What can you say?
My tour ended a few hours after speaking to Berman . By then I knew what I had to do There would be no avoiding going up to the Bronx. Morales was a working guy. A former Marine who got screwed. I would go up there and do the right thing. I would tell his wife he loved her.
The Captain relieved me and I brought him up to speed on what went on since his last tour. Later I took a shower and put on my fire department dress uniform, the Class A"s. I would be very official. Corny as it sounds it was going to be done right.
On my way up the Drive from 14th street I formulated in my mind what needed to be said and how I would handle the family. I had it pretty well down by the time I parked about a block from the funeral home. A light mist was falling intermingled with bigger drops that accumulated and fell from the Westchester Ave el tracks above me. From that distance I could see a small crowd outside. It was 8pm or so. I worked my way through as they looked on. They were the typical crowd you see at any working class wake. Ill fitting suits and dresses mixed in with a few natty dressers. A few guys with a half a load on.
My dress uniform and white cap drew little interest. Most simply stepped aside as I worked my way inside, except for one older guy. His distended stomach, rumbled brown suit along with a huge belt buckle and worn black boots said it all. An aging cowboy from the old country. This guy was on a Camels and Miller High Life diet.
'What's up Amigo." he said in a surprisingly pleasant voice. His breath a lather of smoke and beer. He had the look of a guy who had neither slept nor stopped crying for days. 'Is anything wrong here?" "No." I said. "I just wanted to pay my respects." "I was at the accident."
"Oh! You were there? You were there on the highway.".......with my nephew?" An overwhelming sadness swept across his face.
"My condolences sir, I am very sorry." I was caught a bit off guard by who he was and the obvious intensity of his loss.
I told him about the circumstances that night. That I was in the car. That I was here to speak with his wife. I told him there was something that his nephew asked me to relay before he passed.
"What" he asked.
"It's a good thing. Id like her to hear it from me first sir. "
Instinctively he seemed to understand and took my elbow. We walked together into the parlor area. Dennis" wife was sitting up front flanked by her mother, two young kids and her sister further down. I didn't see the brother. All looked wrecked. Like they had been in Dennis" car too. The enormity of it all began to descend on me. A good man gone. There would be no getting over this. Like most permanent injuries it was never going away. If they were lucky they would just get used to it.
Dennis looked good in the coffin. He almost looked real. A nice job. They had placed a rosary in his hands and two pictures behind his head. One from Vietnam and the other more familiar. The wedding photo from the dashboard.
After paying my respects I turned and spoke to his family. Briefly, one by one in the front row. I said what I always say. The old Irish way. "I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sorry for your loss. I'm sorry for your loss." All the way down the line.
I returned midway back and leaned into his wife. Swollen eyes and disheveled hair unable obscure her beauty.
" Can I speak to you in private please? I was there with Dennis and he asked me too speak to you."
My words were met by a look of astonishment. It was like Dennis himself had climbed out of the coffin. A look you would expect from Houdini if ever did hear from his mother at a sance. A voice from the dead.
"Oh my God." She said. Over and over. Like a Buddhist chant. Finally, I interrupted and asked that
we talk in the hallway.
I followed them out the side door and into the back of the hallway. Her mother and uncle holding her against her own weight.
At the hallways end, seemingly shot with adrenaline she revived, wheeled and grabbed my hand. .
"What did Dennis say?" What happened?" What did he say?"
I took a deep breath. The walk had gathered me. I knew what I wanted to say.
"I was with Dennis when he died. I was with him in the car. Just before he passed he asked that I tell you that he loved you."
"His exact words were "Tell Wanda I love her. Tell her I always have."
Her face froze. Like witnessing a plane hit a building. Then utter deflation. Like the Hindenburg without the fire. The words came out like the sound from a mile deep well. An echo.
"My name is Rosalie, My name is Rosalie.". and then nothing. Just soft sobs like you would hear drifting down a hospital corridor.
Rosalie's mother and uncle said nothing, just stared. Then a voice from behind. It was Rosalie's sister who had followed us out. I turned and looked.
"I'm Wanda." "My name is Wanda." she said and gazed downward...... Then we all did.
There was dead silence for a moment.
"I am sorry." I said. Those were the only words that would come.
After a few seconds I stepped around Wanda, the girl from the dashboard picture for whom Dennis was reaching. I walked the length of the hallway to the front door. I placed my cap on my head and stepped into the Bronx night
Walking faster now I headed back down Westchester Ave. The rain had picked up and beat a snare drum rhythm off my white vinyl cap. The water rolling off the bill. I drove back down to Manhattan like a drunk hoping not to get pulled over. Slow and deliberate.
That night I lay in the Engine 5 bunkroom as the Manhattan fire dispatch radio crackled and barked in the background. I wondered how my promise to Dennis had gone so wrong or even if it really had. Eventually, towards dawn, I slipped away. Rolling over to the sound of footsteps and the slam of the fire pole door. Another run for Engine 5.
Dan Mullins
Copyright. 2006
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