S. J. Rozan

by Absent Friends

  Kevin's world had changed. Friends had died. He was disabled, though only, thank God, temporarily; he was in daily pain—yet he'd adapted. And when he was finally rid of the crutches, back on the Job, and once more the man he had been—different, but the same—he would adapt to that, too.

  Since September 11 Marian had been grateful to be middle-aged, glad at least that she'd had her youth, under some clouds and some looming shadows to be sure, but not like this. Her heart had ached for the young people who would have to live the rest of their lives with the knowledge of what had happened and what therefore, at any moment, could happen again. But watching Kevin now, Marian became less sure that she was fortunate in this. Perhaps the sheer forward momentum of youth, the impulsiveness and lack of subtlety (the subtlety that could be in people her age a cause of, and cover for, an unwillingness to choose and commit), would carry the young through into a world whose changes they would accept, adjust to, and even thrive within.

  “You should see him when he's clean.” Sally's voice startled Marian. She spun to find Sally in the kitchen doorway behind her.

  “What?”

  “Kevin. He's much more worth staring at after his shower. He's almost handsome if you can get him to shave.”

  Kevin dropped himself onto a chair and rolled his eyes.

  Marian said, “Was I staring?”

  Sally hugged her and murmured, “A little, but who could blame you?” She crossed to the kitchen table, kissed Kevin's cheek, took the crutches, and propped them in a corner. “What are you doing out here so early?” she asked Marian. “Did you stay with your dad last night? Want some coffee?” She brought out three yellow cups and saucers from the cabinet and put the coffeepot on the table.

  “Thanks, Mom,” Kevin said, pouring coffee, reaching for the sugar.

  “Could I have tea?” Marian asked.

  “Real tea? Or smelly flowers?”

  “Flowers, thanks. Kevin, darling, you can just unwrinkle your nose.”

  When he was four, Kevin had asked Marian why she always drank smelly flowers. He hadn't understood what was funny, but that she'd laughed was good enough for him. From then on, for years, he'd clapped his hand to his head in mock horror and announced, “Smelly flowers!” every time the chamomile tea box came off the shelf.

  “How do you feel?” Marian asked Kevin.

  He shrugged. “Pretty good, I guess.”

  She peered more closely. “You look like you're worried about something. Is your therapy going all right?”

  “The PT?” Kevin glanced down at his leg. “It's going fine.”

  “His physical therapist says he's improving faster than she expected. She says he's impressive. Fantastic, extraordinary, unbelievable—”

  “No, Mom, that was you. Mrs. Cummings said I sweat a lot.”

  “Same thing. Marian, did you have breakfast?”

  “Yes, thanks. Can I help you do something?” Marian made the offer quickly, before Sally could ask where she'd eaten. Marian's father liked to take her out to breakfast whenever she stayed over in Pleasant Hills.

  “No, I have it under control.” Into melted butter Sally broke three eggs. She popped bread into the toaster and sliced a grapefruit in half. The scents of domesticity, of the life Marian had not had, crowded the sunny air like phantoms.

  Sally asked, “Are you sure you don't want anything?”

  “No, the tea will be perfect, thanks.”

  Marian felt herself distracted. She tried to force herself to focus on her task, but before she could begin, Sally asked quietly, “Did you see the paper this morning?”

  Marian nodded.

  “What?” said Kevin. “What's in it?”

  Sally reached for the New York Tribune from the counter and handed it to her son. It was already folded to the story on the bottom of the front page, the story Tom had read aloud to Marian an hour earlier, Tom glancing up from time to time, Marian's hand lifting to cover her mouth as though to smother despair.

  Marian watched Sally cook, watched Kevin read. His face could hide anger no better than it could joy. When it came time to turn to the inside pages, he snapped the paper to a new fold. His skin flushed, his scowl deepened.

  Marian waited until she judged he was finished, though his eyes remained on the newspaper. She took a breath and said, “Listen, you guys. I came over to talk to you about something serious.”

  Now Kevin looked up. Sally, back at the stove, turned to regard Marian over her shoulder. The two concerned pairs of eyes so exactly alike, so dear to her. Marian thought, Can I take it back? Can I leave them out of this? Hasn't it been terrible enough for them? Why don't I just say, No, never mind, I'll handle it, you guys just go on doing what you're doing, it's enough.

  But of course she couldn't. It wasn't her choice. Earlier, watching Tom drink coffee, she had seemed to choose, but it wasn't her decision. The real choice was Jimmy's, made long ago. All Marian had done, all she'd been able to do, was to determine to take whatever action she must to limit the damage now.

  “What is it, honey?” Sally set Kevin's eggs in front of him. “Is everything all right?”

  Such an odd question, in these times. Is anything all right? would have been better, and even that Marian was not certain she could answer.

  “These newspaper stories,” she began. She would have said more, but Sally raised a hand to stop her.

  “There's no need to discuss them,” Sally said. Standing next to Kevin, she laid her hand on his shoulder. “I don't believe any of it.”

  “Sal—”

  “No, honey, really. It's okay. I don't believe Jimmy was there, and I certainly don't believe he shot Jack. That's so completely ridiculous. Someone could only say that who never knew him. That he let Markie go to prison? Jimmy? And,” she went on, as Marian's stomach twisted, “Jimmy would never have had anything to do with a man like Eddie. Any of the Spanos, anytime. It just isn't true.”

  “Sal,” Marian said gently. “Sal, the money—”

  Sally shook her head. “I know.”

  “You know what?”

  “I know about the money.” Sally spoke quietly, like someone admitting a wrongdoing.

  Confused, Marian asked, “You know?”

  Sally said slowly, “It was Phil's.” Kevin twisted in his chair to look at her. She met his gaze. “That's right, isn't it, Marian?”

  Kevin flushed and turned away. He looked at neither of them as with a fork he broke the yolks of the eggs.

  “Phil's?” Marian spoke uncertainly.

  Sally came around the table to slip into the chair next to Marian. She picked up a teaspoon and turned it over between finger and thumb. “He always wanted to give me money. I never let him. I never wanted him to think it was that.” She stopped the spoon in midtwirl as if catching herself in a bad habit she'd meant to break. She put it gently down. “Phil always wanted to take care of us. He wanted me to marry him.”

  Kevin lifted his eyes to her. “He asked you? When?” His voice was uneven.

  “Over and over. Honey, I'm sorry. I know you'd have liked that, to have a dad. But he wouldn't move here.”

  “Move here?”

  When Kevin asked that, Sally frowned, as if she'd heard something untrue, as if someone had said something she could not let pass. “No,” she said. “No, that's not fair. It wasn't . . . Phil said he'd buy us a house anywhere, in Manhattan, or Brooklyn Heights, or maybe up in Westchester. Just not here. I said, only here.”

  Marian had a feeling there was something she should do, say, right now, some step she should take, but how could you take steps on such treacherous, shifting soil? Kevin was watching his mother with his lips pressed tight.

  “When I said I'd only marry him if he moved here, he said it wouldn't be good for you, for me, if he did that. Because he'd been Markie's lawyer. Because he's Jewish. And it's true, those things would have made it hard. But it wasn't that.”

  “Then what was it?” Kevin asked.

  “It was—t
hat we had to live here—I said it because I knew he'd say no.”

  Kevin's forehead creased. “I don't get it.”

  “No, I don't suppose you do,” Sally said softly. She reached across the table to touch Kevin's cheek, as though her hands could tell him something words never could. “The way we lived, Kev, I don't know if you can understand this, but it's the only way we could have lived. I love Phil. I do. I gave him everything I could. But not everything I had. There was always Markie. Still. Always.

  “So I . . . it was like in a fairy tale. Do something impossible, and you win the princess's hand. But you know what happens in fairy tales. Only the right prince can do it. The monster kills the other ones when they try.

  “Phil knew that. He knew I made it impossible on purpose, and he knew he wasn't that prince. So he . . . you could say he agreed. To call it impossible. He agreed not to try. So that we could go on. So that we could have as much as we had.”

  The teakettle began to whistle. Marian started to rise, but Sally was there before her. She turned off the burner, poured steaming water into Marian's cup, and returned the kettle to the stove. When she sat again, she picked up her coffee and said, “I thought, all these years . . . it was somehow like Markie was still taking care of us. I was grateful for the money, of course I was. It meant I could stay home when you were little. But even more, it was something Markie was still giving us, every month, and that made it so precious. . . .

  “But it wasn't. Now it turns out it wasn't. Do you see?”

  Sally asked that of Kevin. He didn't answer. She turned to Marian. The question hung in the air.

  “Of course,” Marian whispered. This wasn't true. Marian did not know what she saw. She had stepped through a familiar gate into a landscape so alien, it might have been on a different world or from another time. She did not understand what she was seeing, but she knew what Sally had to hear. “Of course.”

  “I wish Phil hadn't done this,” Sally said. “I wish he'd been straight with me. All those years . . . But what the paper's saying about Jimmy? That just can't be true.”

  Marian wanted to leap up, to take Sally in her arms and protect her forever from evil, from disappointment and truth. But it was too late for that, far too late.

  She kept her seat. She looked from Sally to Kevin, wondering what the right thing was. To hold her tongue? Or to say what she had come to say?

  How could she, now?

  But how could she not?

  LAURA'S STORY

  Chapter 13

  Breathing Smoke

  November 1, 2001

  In the office, Laura typed up notes, checked her e-mail, made a list. She waited for the morning meeting to start so it could end so she could get to work. She was close, very close, she could feel it. And the story in this morning's edition, already tucked into briefcases and open on breakfast tables all over New York, should, if things went right, bring her much closer, work like a depth charge, blasting to the surface all the ugly bottom-feeders that scuttled through the dark.

  The newsroom was a deadline-driven place; clocks studded its walls, columns, desks. Laura glanced at them, at her own wristwatch, at the numbers in the corner of her computer screen. All were identical, and none had progressed more than a minute since the last time her eyes had made this sweep. That made it nine minutes until the meeting started, twenty-nine until it was over—no, now twenty-eight, hooray. When four more endless minutes had dissolved, she began to gather her things. That way she could take off as soon as Leo waved them all away. She had just picked up her cell phone from her desk when it started to ring.

  Well, if that don't beat all, she heard Harry drawl.

  Harry! Laura's heart drummed wildly. Oh, Harry, don't! I can't work, she explained earnestly, I can't stay focused if you keep doing this. Don't you want me to work? Don't you want me to find out the truth?

  I already know it, my little flounder, Harry said.

  But I don't. The world doesn't.

  Are you sure you want to? You and the world?

  Of course! Why wouldn't I?

  A lot of reasons.

  Reasons not to know the truth? You know I don't believe that.

  Well, then, said Harry (and Laura could have sworn she saw him shrug, though she couldn't see him at all), well, then, he said, answer that damn phone.

  Laura snapped her eyes to the phone in her hand. It was still ringing.

  Flip, press. “Laura Stone.”

  “You that reporter? The Tribune?” A familiar, impatient voice.

  “Yes, I am. Who—?”

  “Eddie Spano. What the hell is this crap in your paper?”

  Laura's heart, pounding from her encounter with the unruly ghost of Harry, stilled in expectation. “Mr. Spano. I'm glad you called.”

  “Sure you are. I read one more word of this crap, Miss Stone, you'll find out I have some damn nasty lawyers.”

  “Would you like a chance to tell your story?”

  “I don't have a story. None of this McCaffery shit has anything to do with me.”

  “I'd like to tell my readers that.”

  “What's stopping you?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “What about?”

  “I'd like your explanation—”

  “I have nothing to explain!”

  “Your theory, then. I'd like to talk about what's going on, from your perspective.”

  “From my—”

  “May I come talk to you?”

  “Shit,” Spano breathed. “Yeah. Yeah, you better come out here. Come out, and I'll set you straight.”

  He spat out an address. Then a thud, and silence: he'd slammed down his phone.

  Laura thumbed hers off.

  Harry? See? I'm getting close.

  She waited. Nothing. In the vast, empty silence, Leo plowed out of his office, leading the morning swarm toward the conference room.

  Midmorning, Laura standing at the ferry's front rail, watching the hills on Staten Island become larger and clearer. A beautiful day. Another beautiful day.

  Laura was headed out to one of Eddie Spano's construction sites, the address he'd given her. According to Jesselson, Spano was connected to more than a dozen Staten Island businesses, all of them dirty or, if clean, fronts for dirty ones. “Spano? Hands-on. A headquarters-in-the-saddle type,” Jesselson had told her.

  “This place,” Laura asked, “where he told me to come. Harry went there. What's it like?”

  “His project du jour. Luxury development. Chapel Pointe.”

  What chapel? Laura wondered. And when her cab left her at the gate in a chain-link fence around acres of mud in the center of Staten Island, as far from the water in every direction as you could get, she also wondered, What pointe?

  Laura had not met Eddie Spano. Her one conversation with him had been by phone. Harry, though, had been to Chapel Pointe and—just a week ago? in her last lifetime?—had described the place to her.

  “Very biblical,” Harry had said, raising his gin bottle high above his glass to make a dramatic waterfall. “‘Every valley shall be exalted and every hill made low.' Also every tree chopped down and every blade of grass bulldozed into eternity. Thus shall the dwellings of men be created. They may be luxurious, but I promise you, when our Mr. Spano's Townhomes at Chapel Pointe are finished, they will be ugly.” He took a drink. “And his coffee's bad.”

  “So's the Tribune's.”

  “The Tribune”—Harry had wagged his finger at her severely—“is not Italian. It has no cultural responsibility to serve drinkable coffee.”

  “You're in a good mood.” Laura had sidled over to him, kissed him, gin and all.

  He had kissed her back but then said, “To the contrary. I have work to do.”

  “Can't it wait?”

  “The man who loves you would be only too happy to let it wait. However, the man you love had better get back to work.”

  “They're the same man.”

  “No,” Harry said
softly. “I think not.”

  And Harry, glass in one hand, bottle in the other, had taken himself to his desk to work on his story, the work Laura had been so sure was the right thing for him to do.

  The construction trailers belligerently displayed World Trade Center posters, American flags, patriotic bumper stickers. God Bless America. United We Stand. These Colors Don't Run.

  Laura clomped across plywood sheets laid over the mud, followed by the appraising territorial stares of dirt-streaked men in hard hats.

  In Lower Manhattan men just like these were heroes now. They were given thumbs-up signs and bottles of water, flowers and applause as they rode in pickup trucks or wearily walked away from Ground Zero, after a day or a night—the work on the site was around the clock—spent burning through twisted steel columns and clawing with backhoes at chunks of concrete, moving the gigantic bulk of the rubble aside so the inch by inch search for the lost could go on.

  The Tribune had run stories, and would run more, about these men. The nobility of manual labor. The courage and dedication of the workers who climbed the tangled, smoking wreckage. The drained and driven men who slept on church pews and ate at the tent they called the Taj Mahal, who asked for extra shifts and objected, refused, when ordered to take a day off, ordered to go home. Rescue workers, they were still called, though there was no one to rescue anymore, there was no one to save.

  Laura stopped in the sunlight to study Chapel Pointe. She watched the rumbling earth movers, gazed at the wooden homes-to-be rising against the hard blue sky. She smelled sawdust and mud, heard the percussion of hammers, the whine of drills; and was caught off guard by an emotion she hardly dared look at straight-on. In front of her were things being built. Built. Not dismantled, bucket of dust by chunk of concrete, not untangled, uncompounded, lifted and removed, not disassembled but created. Yes, they were ugly. That didn't matter. What mattered was that the way they were was the way they were intended to be.