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gone and now the summer was unofficially finished, vacations were used up, children were going back to school. Over the weekend the big event had been an alarm from a box a block from the firehouse, which turned out to have been caused by some kind of mechanical error in the box. The weather was brilliant, and the city seemed unusually empty and quiet, with many people still away at their summer homes, trying to squeeze out a little more vacation. A primary election was being held, in which New Yorkers were to choose the candidates for a new mayor, among other officials, but it had stirred little excitement, and the turnout was expected to be very low.
    Among the 40/35 men were a number of golfers—how good they were was a subject of constant debate at the firehouse kitchen table. Several of them—Greg Petrik, Mike Kotula, Anthony Rucco, Ray Pfeifer, and Joe Mackey—were still away on a golfing weekend in Ocean City, Maryland. Two other firemen, Michael Boyle and David Arce (Arce was known generally by his nickname, Buddha), who worked out of Engine 33 on Great Jones Street in Manhattan, had originally been scheduled to go along on the trip. The two had both recently rotated through 40/35, and they remained de facto members of the house and still played on the 40/35 softball team. But at the last minute Boyle decided not to go, because he was active in politics and wanted to spend the primary day campaigning in Queens for his cousin Matt Farrell, who was running for city council. Arce had offered to help him out. Rucco was quite disappointed Boyle and Buddha were not coming; the way he saw it, politics was getting in the way of really important things, like golf.
    Most people thought Arce was called Buddha because he was so quiet, but in truth he had gotten the nickname in childhood, when he played cards and carried around a Buddha bank in which to stow his poker winnings. On every deal of the cards, Arce would rub the belly of the Buddha bank for luck. He had grown up a few doors away from Boyle in Westbury, Long Island, and had been virtually drafted into the Boyle clan and thus into the world of firemen, since the Boyles were a legendary firefighting family. The paterfamilias, Jimmy Boyle, had served as a much-loved head of the firefighters’ union.
    Buddha and Boyle remained inseparable best friends in adulthood, and Buddha followed Boyle by a year on rotations through three houses—Engine 33, then Ladder 35, and then Engine 226. As Boyle departed each house, he would tell the men there to take care of his buddy, and Buddha took care of Boyle too. After Boyle had gotten a bit too boisterous once at a firehouse golf outing, it was Buddha who had lobbied for nearly a year to get him permission to go on the next one. In the eyes of most of the men at 40/35, Buddha was nothing less than a brilliant fireman, and Mike Boyle was also someone special, the scion of an important firefighting family, active in department politics, a young man who might one day himself head the Uniformed Firefighters Association. Plus, Boyle was engaged to marry Rosemary Kenny, the daughter of fireman Mark Kenny, who had recently retired from Engine 40.
    That Saturday both Boyle and Buddha had participated in the Marty Celic Running Festival, a four-mile race on Staten Island honoring a firefighter who had died battling an arson fire in lower Manhattan in 1977. They were representing their own firehouse, Engine 33, which had been looking for its fourth Celic victory in a row. Boyle was a good marathon runner and was hoping to break three hours in the upcoming New York Marathon in November, while Buddha was better at shorter distances. While they were at the race, Anthony Rucco was shopping for golf clothes for the Maryland trip. Suddenly his cell phone beeped. It was Boyle on the other end of the line, screaming so loudly that at first Rucco had trouble understanding him. “Anthony! Four-peat! Four-peat! We did it again!”