Free Firehouse by David Halberstam

as Mercado’s or Gary’s was part of the culture. Besides, Shea was uncommonly good looking and finding women was never a problem.
    It was not just that Shea had been to college (well, actually, a number of colleges, as he liked to point out: Stony Brook, Emerson, Suffolk, and St. Joseph’s in New York), and that he was good at computers—better with them than anyone else in the house. He was just different. Among his colleagues he was known as something of a flake—talented, smart as hell, amazingly hardworking—but somehow different . It was a description he would not necessarily have disagreed with. A few years earlier, before he had joined the department, unsure of what he wanted for his future, he had taken the exam for the police department, and he had done reasonably well. But there was a moment when he was hooked up to a lie detector machine and was asked questions about himself, and, in his own words, he had folded. One of the questions was whether he had ever stolen anything. He thought long and hard about the answer, scanning in his mind his whole autobiography, going all the way back to early school days, and he answered, “What about paper clips?” No, the interrogator said, somewhat annoyed, he meant stealing something of consequence—paper clips did not count. Well, Shea answered, I stole some magazines once. That, if anything, annoyed the interrogator even more, which in turn threw Shea off. By the end of the session, he managed to confuse both himself and the machine, and to irritate the cop who was doing the questioning. It convinced Shea that he was not cut out to be a cop, a verdict, he was sure, that the officer testing him agreed with.
    He was still quite new at the firehouse, still finding his way around, still trying to prove himself to the officers and the senior men. He had not yet figured out Captain Callahan. There was always that distance to the captain, which to the older men was merely a sign that the captain was being the captain, but to the newer men, especially someone like Shea, it seemed more personal. And there was the fact that Callahan had a somewhat weird sense of humor. He liked to test people, quizzing them with questions to which it was hard to get the right answers. “How much do you tip a bellboy?” the captain once asked Shea, who puzzled over the answer, for he had not tipped that many bellboys in his young life. Finally, he answered, “Five dollars.” Callahan shook his head, showing that the answer was wrong, and then he said, “Find out what it is, and let me know when you know.” That had left Shea even more puzzled.
    Shea grew up in Brooklyn and then on Long Island. When he had been allowed to choose his firehouse, he knew he wanted one in Manhattan, because he considered it the most sophisticated borough, and by working there, he was sure that he would become more sophisticated. When he called Captain Callahan, to tell him of his decision, the captain seemed surprised and asked him why. “Other houses are much busier,” Callahan pointed out. But Shea insisted he wanted this one—he was sure he would learn more about all aspects of life there.
    He joined the house on July 3, 2001, arriving very early in the morning that day, around 3:00 A.M. , determined to make a good impression. He was carrying with him all kinds of food, some things he had made, such as strawberries dipped in chocolate, and all the fixings for an egg-white omelette that he intended to make for his fellow firemen. No one who was awake seemed very interested in eating at that moment, but later, when they went on a run, Shea started cooking, and by the time they returned, around 6:00, they were all hungry, and the meal was a success.
    Shea and Bruce Gary were not exactly a natural fit, but Gary always spoke well of the young fireman, for Shea worked maniacally hard—harder than almost anyone other than Buddha Arce, who was widely