S. J. Rozan

by Absent Friends

“That's not what I mean.” No? Then why did you say it like that, that icy edge?

  Phil waved to the waitress, who nodded and went behind the bar to the tap, didn't even approach. Thanks a lot, honey. “I didn't meet any of those people—your father, Jimmy, any of them—until after Markie was arrested. I was new in private practice, but everything I'd done since the day I left law school was criminal defense. I didn't know whose friend was whose around here, but I knew Markie was lying. I could smell it.”

  “And you didn't do anything?”

  “He wouldn't let me. He told me exactly what he'd told the police, and his story never changed. ‘Jack shot at me, I shot back, I was scared, I never thought I'd hit him.' In the end I was goddamn grateful to be offered the plea on the gun charge, because Markie was ready to go to trial.”

  “Because he thought you'd get him off. Because he trusted you.”

  That was a punch in the gut. “Kevin—” Thank God, the waitress and the new beers. She gave them one each, grabbed up the empties, and left. Come on, honey, don't you want to sit and chat?

  “Kev, for God's sake. He kept insisting he'd done it. What the hell defense did I have? Insanity? I'm not a magician.” Oh, but that's wrong. Ask anyone on the other side. They'll tell you: Constantine's a sorcerer, a conjuror, a spell-caster. Rabbits from hats, pickpockets from jail, gangsters from prison and flash! into the Witness Protection Program because, presto change-o, Phil Constantine can turn drug dealers into cooperators and accused murderers into innocent men.

  But only since Markie. Only since he'd started to see Markie Keegan's eyes looking out of every new client's face.

  The waitress made a circuit of the room, bringing fresh drinks to men who hadn't called for them. It was likely that outside the sun was moving across the sky but in here the light didn't change and the silence didn't change and nothing changed except the way Kevin looked at Phil.

  Phil turned from that look, focused on the names and dates and loves dug into the table.

  “The front booth,” Kevin said quietly. Phil looked up. “My dad carved his initials and my mom's in a heart in the front booth. Did you ever tell my mom my dad was lying?”

  “She didn't believe it, he wouldn't admit it. I stopped saying it.”

  “Did you tell Uncle Jimmy?”

  Guinness, thought Phil, used to taste better than this. “In the beginning. When I still thought if I could find the truth I could get Markie off. I tried, Kev. I tried to find the truth.” Why had he said that? What would Kevin care, what he'd tried, what he'd failed at?

  “What did you say to him? Uncle Jimmy, in the beginning?”

  “I told him I was sure Markie was lying. I asked him if he knew what really happened. Because everyone told me he was Markie's friend. I asked if Markie had said anything to him. I asked . . .”

  “What?”

  “I asked if he knew who Markie was trying to protect. He said no. He asked me how light a sentence I thought I could get Markie. I said I didn't think Markie was guilty and I wanted the truth. Jimmy said, What if what Markie's saying is the truth? Or it's not but he keeps saying it? What will happen to him?

  “I said if we could sell the self-defense story, maybe we could get a plea deal, no charges in the death, only the gun. There was no way out of the gun. I said with no priors, upstanding citizen, wife and child, probably I could play the violin a little and get the minimum, sixteen months. A possibility of probation, no jail time, if he gave up the gun dealer.”

  “But he didn't.”

  “Because he didn't know who it was. Because he hadn't bought the gun.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No, dammit, Kevin, he didn't tell me that! He swore to me he'd bought it from some guy in some bar in Tottenville. He didn't remember the name of the guy, or the bar, or the street the bar was on, or how to get to the street the bar was on. I took the train out to Tottenville one Saturday and spent the whole goddamn day wandering around. You been to Tottenville?” Tottenville, twenty years ago a mini-Appalachia holding down the southern end of Staten Island, where rusting cars were lawn ornaments and chickens shared the yards with scruffy dogs.

  “We don't go down there much.”

  “From Pleasant Hills. You think in 'seventy-nine anyone did? After everyone Markie knew threw their cash together so he could make bail, I made him drive me back there. To look for the bar. A complete bust. I asked him why he'd been down there. He said, No real reason. He said he had no real reason for buying the gun or for carrying it that night. He said he didn't know why Jack was so pissed, he'd just been trying to help, to set Jack straight. He swore to me he and Jack were alone. He told me he wasn't protecting anybody. He told me bullshit, Kev. And it was all he'd tell me.”

  Kevin said nothing, sat so still it was almost possible for Phil to believe he hadn't heard him.

  “I could see what was going to happen,” Phil said quietly. “He was going to prison. He was going to do someone else's time—a lot of time, Kev—and there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do.” Phil remembered it, that airless feeling in his chest. No countermove. No fake, no palmed ace, no magic flowers bursting from an empty hand. “And then out of the blue I got a call from an ADA, offering a plea on the gun. Pretty much the deal I'd outlined to Jimmy, almost exactly that. We had nothing, and they were offering a plea. Do you understand what that means?”

  Kevin shook his head.

  Shit, thought Phil, of course he understands, no one could miss it.

  But maybe not. Phil remembered a Panthers game, ten-year-old Kevin leaning on his coach, limping off from second, his ankle bloody (Phil gripping Sally's hand, shaking his head to keep her from the dugout). Kevin's face was white with pain, but he was dry-eyed. No tears, until he saw his coach and the other team's coach screaming at each other nose to nose, until he saw the fury in his teammates' eyes, until he understood he'd been spiked on purpose by the sliding runner. When he cried, it wasn't because of the hurt and the blood. It was bewilderment and surprise that someone would be so deliberately cruel.

  So maybe he really didn't get it.

  Or maybe he just wanted to make Phil say it.

  “It meant a fix, Kev.”

  Phil drained his Guinness. “Kev, look where I was. What I had. I didn't know this town, I didn't know where the fix was coming from. My client was a guy I liked, young, with a family. The plea deal was good. Especially if you believed he'd pulled the trigger. And I seemed to be the only one who didn't.

  “Maybe I could've found the truth, if I'd kept digging. But I couldn't be sure that was the best thing for Markie. Whatever the truth was, Markie was my client, and he didn't want it out. Maybe he was right, in terms of whatever the hell was going on in Pleasant Hills, things I didn't understand.”

  That was it. What else was he going to say? And where was the mistake? What should he have done differently? What had brought him to this dead room with Kevin silent across a scarred table? What had he done wrong?

  Kevin looked at him and answered Phil's unasked question: “And you were in love with my mom.”

  MARIAN'S STORY

  Chapter 11

  The Water Dreams

  October 31, 2001

  Such strange things, words, Marian thought. They create poetry, and death sentences, and lies. They describe how it feels to make love, or to freeze to death. Without words people would remain as unconnected as rooted trees, unable to approach each other, yearning, but forever alone, on a vast plain.

  “Tom?”

  Marian stared at Tom in the unfamiliar room, noisier, she was sure, than when they'd arrived. Words were being chattered, shouted, whispered, and flung everywhere all around them, masking and disguising one another, and Marian understood none of them, least of all the ones Tom had just spoken.

  Tom slumped in his chair, as though trying to move away from Marian, away from his own past and the memories his words were summoning the way a magician's spell summons evil spirits. She was suddenly terrified h
e'd get up and leave, leave her, leave her alone here where nothing looked right and all the words had different meanings. In the comics Jimmy used to read—Bizarro World, that was where these things happened. Bizarro World, from Superman.

  “We were all there that night,” Tom said. “All four of us. It wasn't Markie and Jack having a few beers on the building site. It was Markie, Jimmy, Jack, and me.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “I know. Just listen.” A breath. “Jack was drunk. I—I guess we all were. Jack pulled out a gun and started waving it around. He was pissed as hell.”

  This needed to be clearer, it really did. “Why?”

  “Something Markie said. Jack and Markie'd been talking, a day or two back. That's what it seemed like, anyway. I don't really know, my brother wasn't making a lot of sense. He was pissed, and he kept saying Markie was full of shit and he was going to kill him.”

  “That's what Markie said happened.” Marian's voice sounded very faint to her.

  “We tried to talk Jack down,” Tom said. “Jimmy and me both. He was—he should have calmed down. You know. He usually did, or he went away steaming and came back when it was okay. But he was so drunk, Marian. And the gun. He fired off a shot, blew a hole in that fucking two-by-four.”

  Suddenly every word was sharp, each meaning unmistakable. Was it better this way?

  “I thought he'd stop then,” Tom said. “See how stupid it was, and stop. But he aimed at Markie and shot again.”

  Tom raised his beer and gazed at her, and this time Marian knew he was not seeing her, he was seeing a skeleton house, his brother, his friends.

  “Markie froze. He froze like he always did. What the hell did he think he was doing, Marian?”

  Marian didn't know whether Tom meant Jack, or Markie, and in any case she had no idea, none.

  “After the second shot Jimmy tackled Markie. Knocked him out of the way.” Tom gulped more beer. “Everything Jack was—everything we all were, Marian, everything, it was all there, you could see it all. Like this bright light was shining. Like we were naked. No, no, not naked. Like you could, like you could see right through us.”

  Tired to the bone from waiting, waiting so many years, Marian said it for him. “It was Jimmy, wasn't it?”

  Tom raised his eyes to her. “It . . .” He looked down again, shook his head. “I can't, Marian. And it doesn't matter.”

  “It was—”

  “Don't you see? What each of us was. What we always were. It was right there.”

  “Tom—”

  “Marian?” He was pleading for something. How could that be? Tom always had the answers, the smart ideas. Tom never needed anything. Tom was the one other people asked for things from. It was she who'd asked the question, the only question that had ever mattered, ever, the one question, because of that, she'd never asked.

  And now she had to hear Tom's answer.

  But Tom said, “Marian, I can't. And it doesn't matter.”

  PHIL'S STORY

  Chapter 12

  Turtles in the Pond

  October 31, 2001

  Kevin and Phil sat in the lifeless air of the Bird while Phil told Kevin the story of how he'd failed Markie. Kevin listened to all of Phil's reasons, then made his accusation: “And you were in love with my mom.”

  To be accused of love, Phil thought. If there ever was a circumstance where guilty was the same as innocent, this has got to be it.

  “Your mother and I, Kev—that came much later.”

  Phil found his body tensing, his muscles set, like in a game. Like this morning's game. Over and over he'd blocked Brian's shot, blocked it though Brian was bigger than he, stronger, but Phil had studied Brian as he studied them all. He had counters for every move. If one thing didn't work, he tried another. He'd learned to do that. His whole life, he'd worked at that.

  “I did everything I could for your dad, Kev. Your mother and I—”

  Kevin waved this off, whatever Phil had been going to say. “I've heard this since I was a kid. You guys didn't get together until a long time later. That doesn't mean it wasn't on your mind.”

  Phil looked around. God, for a breeze to blow through this bar! Just something to breathe. Or, hell, to blow the top off, sweep us all up, fling us someplace else, some other time. Ancient Egypt, Camelot, Timbuktu. September 10.

  It didn't happen, not a gust, not a zephyr. Phil didn't know what else to do, so he went on. “Markie wanted the plea, Kev. I got . . . I got the feeling he knew it was coming. But he said no, he didn't know, he just hoped. He just said, Great, I'll take it. It's fine.

  “Fine? Kev, it was better than fine. Sixteen months, he'd be out in five and change. Manslaughter, he'd been looking at years. Years away from you and Sally. I could see how that was killing him. I tried to use it to get him to tell me the truth, but he never changed his story.”

  “Couldn't that mean it was true?”

  “It could. Sure it could.” This wasn't the point he wanted to argue with Kevin right now. He didn't want to argue anything with Kevin. Right now or any other time. “Anyway, that should've been it for me. Case over, win or lose, I'm gone. But he asked me to look after you guys. So I told Sally she could call me if she needed anything. There's always paperwork, things to do. She wanted to take you up there on visiting day. I showed her how. Things like that.” Nothing from Kevin. Phil said the rest: “Then Markie died. Kev . . . ?”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” Phil had been about to say, Could we get out of here? Walk around, move, breathe some air, talk where there aren't any walls? But he'd forgotten about the crutches. “Nothing.”

  As though it was important for Kevin to hear the rest, he went on. “After that—after he died—I told your mom I'd hook her up with another lawyer. Everyone in Pleasant Hills was blaming me. I shouldn't have let him take the plea. I should've gotten him sent somewhere safer. I should've done something.

  “I understood. I was the outsider, they had to blame someone. I didn't want Sally caught up in that. But she told me it wasn't my fault, and she wanted me to stay helping her, if I didn't mind. Kev, that's all it was. For a long time.”

  That, and Sally's eyes, changing from emerald glass to storm-swept, distant sea.

  “So when Jimmy wanted to start giving you money—whoever's money it was—I was the logical guy to come to.”

  Finally, something from Kevin. A growl: “And you just took it? You thought Uncle Jimmy shot that guy and let my dad go to jail, and you just took his money?”

  “Shit, Kev! Should I have told him to go fuck himself? What did I have? A gut feeling something's rotten and it's Jimmy McCaffery? You see who he is today—that's who he always was! The stained-glass saint. Me? I was the loser Jew lawyer from the other side of the harbor.” Phil saw, or thought or hoped he saw, a cloud of uncertainty in Kevin's eyes. Move in on that, leverage it. “And I'll say this: I never saw him do anything that contradicted that. Everyone looked up to him. Including you.”

  “What the fuck—?”

  “He raised you, Kev! As much as I did. And he”—how to put it?—“he meant more to you. No, hear me out. I was fun, Kev, I was there, you could count on me, but Jimmy was the guy you wanted to be. Who the hell wouldn't? It would have broken your heart, and your mother's, if I could have proved what I knew.”

  “What you thought!”

  “Okay, thought.” Making my point, said Phil to himself, to Kevin, silently. “Even more reason to keep my mouth shut. Kev, I followed his career all these years. He saved a lot of lives. He was a hero. Except, if I was right, this one time. One time. And the money? Wherever it came from, he was using it to help people I loved.”

  Kevin flinched at the word. Phil wondered, Can this really be the first time I've said it to him?

  “So who the hell was I to screw that up?” He leaned toward Kevin. “For what? To prove how smart I was? What good would it have done?”

  “What about justice? You didn't care?”

&n
bsp; Phil opened his hands. Empty. “I think about that every day. About Markie and every client since. I don't know what it means.”

  “You don't know? For Christ's sake, Uncle Phil! You're a lawyer!”

  The universe of innocence in that outburst would have made Phil laugh with delight, if things were different. Instead, he leaned toward Kevin again and tried to explain.

  “The other side—the prosecution—they talk about justice all the time. Paying your debts. Justice for the victims. But I see guys like Markie. Guys with family, friends, guys who had something going. Then one fuckup, their lives are over. Who's the justice for, Kevin? What does it look like?”

  Kevin gave no answer. How could he? There was no answer.

  But he had another question.

  “Eddie Spano?”

  Phil nodded. “You mean, if the money was his?”

  “Because you can't be telling me Uncle Jimmy was . . . I don't know what the fuck, Spano's hit man or something? And we—and that was the payoff? You can't—”

  “No, no. But there was a turf thing, the Molloys and the Spanos. I think either Jimmy or your dad was a go-between.”

  “Spano was there, too? That night?”

  “No. I thought about that, but no. I don't think Jimmy or Markie would have protected him. I think something was going on, some arrangement Eddie Spano and Jack Molloy were working out, through somebody, Jimmy or Markie. And Molloy got drunk, started shooting, got shot, just like Markie said. But I don't think Markie shot him. I think it was Jimmy.”

  “Then why would Spano—”

  “Maybe that's where the gun came from, from Spano, and Jimmy had that on him. So Jimmy squeezed a little out of him every month. Not a lot, not so much Spano would rather do something else about it. Just enough to keep Jimmy quiet and help you guys out.”

  Through narrowed eyes Kevin watched him. Shit, Phil thought. He suddenly knew what his clients must feel when they saw the end coming, when they realized Phil's magic wasn't going to work.

  Slowly, Kevin said, “When I was thirteen, the money doubled. You said it was a cost-of-living thing, the state was adjusting it. What was that? Uncle Jimmy squeezing Spano harder? After ten years?”