Hello, 2009!

How much you want to bet that New Yorkers will see the New Year - or maybe Easter - before they see the results of the criminal probe into the deaths of two firefighters at the former Deutsche Bank building 15 months ago?

Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau said this week that a final report from his office won't be ready for several weeks.

Alas, Morgenthau's office tends to take an expansive view of the word "several."

In May, Morgenthau said he was pushing to wrap up the investigation in time for the first anniversary of the fatal August 2007 Ground Zero blaze, where firefighters Robert Beddia and Joseph Graffagnino suffocated thanks to a cut standpipe and blocked-off exit stairwells.

The anniversary came and went, and the DA's office then said it would be done within "a few months."

Sense a pattern?

Morgenthau claims the case is complex, which no doubt it is.

But that's what DA's are for - to untangle complex cases while delivering justice in an expeditious manner.

Again, it's been 15 months since a fire that not only killed two of New York's Bravest, but also gummed up Ground Zero reconstruction - and New Yorkers still have little clue who was responsible.

That's unacceptable.