Absent Friends

by S. J. Rozan

  “I know it. On Main Street?”

  “That reporter's dead, Uncle Phil. I need you to tell me what's going on.”

  “Kev? Kev, I don't know.”

  “The paper says someone killed him.”

  “I saw that.” And was just told it, by a girl not much older than you are, who's sure it's true and wonders if it was me.

  “Did they?”

  Do you mean, did I? “There's no evidence he didn't jump, Kevin.”

  “Evidence? Oh, fuck evidence! What the fuck does that mean, there's no evidence? You think you're talking to a jury, you can just throw words around and convince me?”

  “I'm not trying to convince you of anything.”

  Kevin's anger fell back, a quick blaze that flared itself to embers. “What's going on, Uncle Phil? What does it have to do with Uncle Jimmy?”

  And there you had it. The way it had always been: Uncle Phil and Uncle Jimmy. One weaving through the world the other came from, like the wind, everywhere in it, never part of it; the other a shining light so bright his glow had colored that world long after he'd left it. Now he was gone from all worlds, Jimmy McCaffery was, but his radiance was still blinding.

  “Kev . . .” At a loss for words. Phil Constantine? Amazing, incredible. Thou who dost not believe how much the world has changed, check this out. Finally, with colossal effort: “I'll meet you. I'll tell you what I know. But it's not much. Kev, how's your mother?”

  “Mom's . . . yeah, Mom's fine. When can you come?”

  Yeah. Mom's fine. “I'll take the next boat. Half-hour, forty-five minutes at the outside.”

  “Okay. The Bird. See you there.”

  The end. Click off. Rise, tell Sandra to cancel appointments. Tell Elizabeth you'll be in touch about Mrs. Johnson.

  Tell yourself, at least Kevin's calling.

  Phil rode the boat in his usual spot, outside, facing the Brooklyn waterfront and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. The day was calm, but not on the ferry. (On the ferry it never was.) Wind churned up by the boat's single-minded rush for the opposite shore slapped his jacket around him. He tugged off his tie (always wear a tie in the office, always look ready) and folded it into his pocket. Clouds slipped along the sky escaping east, out to sea, away from entangling treetops and tall buildings. Poetic but inaccurate: clouds only got snagged on trees on the peaks of high mountains, where the earth reared up to stab the sky. And among buildings, few were tall enough to touch them.

  The towers had been.

  Phil had never been a regular at Windows on the World. The food was good, the drinks were big, but the scene at the bar was relentlessly social. Investment bankers on the make. Talkative tourists standing locals a beer. Hand-holding, starry-eyed couples glancing over each other's shoulders to the door in case something better slouched in. But once or twice, walking home at night from Battery Park after letting the ferry go, he'd looked up to find the towers' tops lost in mist. Before he thought about it, he was stepping off the huge, silent elevator and ordering a scotch. He'd turn his back on the room, on the piano trio and the strangers anxious to become his friends. He'd stand, looking out the narrow, tall panes of glass at nothing. No: at almost nothing. Here and there, no matter how thick the clouds, a pale light reached him through depthless gray. He never could tell, once the clouds had dropped this low, where the lights were coming from.

  His visits to the bar had been rare. But often, in the middle of a workday, in the course of crisscrossing Lower Manhattan—especially if the day were clear, with a breeze clipping along, and he'd just come from seeing some client in a windowless holding cell, someone who would not be free for a long, long time—Phil had hopped the elevator in the south tower to the observation deck. He'd grip the rail and just stand in the wind and the sun. From a height that extravagant you could feel the endless miles not just left and right, front and back, but above and below, too. And every now and then, leaning on the rail 110 stories up, Phil would find himself swept back to his childhood, and he'd laugh. If he stared hard enough at the towers of Manhattan below, he could see, almost, Spider-Man swinging between them. And see himself as Spider-Man, the way he had as a kid, long-limbed and skinny and bringing justice to New Yorkers threatened with all kinds of evil. Yeah, Phil, he'd think, yeah, you need a break, guy. Take a vacation, get out of town. He'd given himself that order, but he'd never obeyed it. The deck at the top of the tower had always been enough.

  The boat docked. Phil went indoors, as you had to, to reach the ramp, to get back out. He took the train, quicker than a cab in the middle of the day. The car was half empty, but he didn't sit. Holding the rail, he watched out the windows. First rooftops, then the train cut, blank concrete walls racing by. This was a view of nothing, too, he thought. Different, but the same.

  BOYS' OWN BOOK

  Chapter 13

  Turtles in the Pond

  September 2, 1979

  It's Sunday, it's Labor Day weekend, summer's turning to fall. Jimmy and Marian show up at noon at Markie and Sally's place, the apartment they rent from the O'Neills, who live upstairs. Marian's got her arms around a paper bag: franks, buns, and sauerkraut. Jimmy's hefting a couple of six-packs. Marian goes inside with Sally, to talk about potato salad and nail polish and whatever girls talk about; Jimmy roots in the garage for the basketball, bangs layups into the hoop over the driveway while Markie fires up the grill. That hoop, all the O'Neill boys played there, their little sister, too, right with them. Danny, the youngest, he's the one Mr. and Mrs. O'Neill fixed up the downstairs apartment for; but Danny went off to Vietnam, and when he came back he didn't stay long. He's in Alaska now, working on the pipeline: says he wants to be as far away from the jungle as he can get, for the rest of his life.

  Smoke from the grill suddenly switches direction, trying to ambush Jimmy, but he's too smart, dribbles the ball up the driveway to get away. Markie jumps back, too, but not fast enough, coughs and wipes his eyes. Through the kitchen window, Jimmy and Markie hear the girls hooting with laughter about something.

  Must be a potato escaped, Jimmy says to Markie, while the cloud of smoke swoops like a flock of pigeons and soars over the next-door fence. Potato's probably running all over your house, man, tearing up the place.

  Yeah, probably, says Markie. Think we should go in and rescue the girls?

  Potato rescue, says Jimmy, I'm great at that.

  But they don't have to, because Marian and Sally come out the back door and down from the porch, Marian with two big bowls, Sally with Kevin. She puts Kevin in his crib on the grass, but the kid's too big for a crib and he knows it. He wails, so Jimmy goes and picks him up. Right away Kevin giggles, grabs for Jimmy's nose, looks in his baby hand to see if it's there.

  Markie, man, says Jimmy, this kid's so big and good-looking, if it wasn't saying something bad about Sally, I'd just know he wasn't yours.

  Because he's smart, too, says Markie, knows enough to take after her side of the family. He lays the franks on the grill, grins at Kevin in Jimmy's arms.

  They eat franks, cole slaw, potato salad, pop open beers, watch Kevin stomp around the tiny yard in that funny kid walk. You'd think he'd tire himself out, but he can't sit still. When he falls, his eyes get wide like he can't believe it, then he just laughs. Sally and Markie take turns jumping up and grabbing him back from crawling through the bushes, running up the driveway, chewing on sticks; he's just like Markie, Jimmy thinks, the kid'll try anything, never thinks ahead. Then laughs at himself: for Pete's sake, he's a baby, how's he gonna think ahead? Jimmy and Marian jump up after Kevin, too, because Kevin, it's like he's everyone's first kid.

  Marian doesn't say she got a promotion at work, so Jimmy does. Oh, Jimmy, it's no big deal, Marian protests, but Jimmy says, Come on, you've only been there two months, I mean, come on. Markie and Jimmy talk about cars: Sally tells them that Steve Fagan at the repair shop says Markie's got the best hands of any mechanic ever worked there. Jimmy tells funny stories about the firehouse. Sally says, The Chine
se restaurant fire, Jimmy, I heard you were a big hero in that one.

  Yeah, well, says Jimmy. I mean, the pressure was on. You save a Chinese restaurant from burning down, you know they send free egg rolls to the firehouse for the rest of your life?

  Everyone laughs, and no one asks anything else about the Chinese restaurant fire, what it was like in the greasy black smoke, how it felt to grab that guy with flames all over him, roll him over and over in that tablecloth, save his life. No one asks about the fire under Jimmy's skin. No one knows anything about it, to ask.

  Marian says to Sally, I'm glad your dad's better; Sally's dad's been sick on and off all summer. Everyone toasts Marian with beer cans because her middle sister, Eileen, just left to go to college. Not in New York like Marian; Eileen's going away, she got a scholarship to a fancy school in Boston. Oh, come on, you guys, I didn't do anything, says Marian, Eileen's just smarter than anyone.

  Yeah, you only brought them up, your sisters and Davey, says Markie.

  Well, Davey can take care of himself. But the girls, someone had to keep guys like you away from them. Marian says this and everyone laughs, but they all can see how proud Marian is.

  They finish the franks and start to play a little ball, the girls against the boys like back in grade school, but Kevin tries to play. Jimmy bends down and hands the ball off to him. The kid takes it in both arms and lifts it toward the hoop, hops up, and lets it go with a big grunt like he really expects it to fly up there. Sally starts cracking up, and then Markie does, too, and then they're all laughing too hard and they have to stop. Jimmy, sitting in a rickety lawn chair, sips a cold beer, swears he can feel the heat from the sun leaning on him like it weighed something, thinks he could just sit here like this forever.

  But he can't. The sun keeps moving, gets to where half the yard's shaded by the branches of the big oak tree old man O'Neill's father planted when he bought the place. Marian needs to drop in on her dad and her two sisters who still live at home, just to check up. And Kevin's getting cranky: he needs his nap, says Sally. She scoops him up, tells him to wave bye-bye to Uncle Jimmy. Marian goes in with her, carrying the bowls and plates they used. Jimmy hears the water running in the kitchen, thinks, Well, now's the time.

  Markie, man, he says, just him and Markie in the yard now, the shadow of the oak tree's trunk dark on the grass between them, Markie, you seen Jack around lately?

  Jack? Yeah, around, sure. How come? Markie looks away from Jimmy when he says this, quick and then back at the grass, like there's something he wants to see. But there's nothing there, and in that looking-away and looking-back Jimmy knows he's right.

  Tom and Big Mike, they know enough to keep away from Markie. Whatever Markie thinks he wants, it wouldn't work out, and Tom and Mike know it even if he doesn't. But Jack thinks differently. Like always, Jack will try something just to see what happens. If trouble comes, well, that'll be what happened. Markie's always had that in him, too, though more than once Jimmy's seen on Jack's face that the trouble, for Jack, sometimes that can be the good part. For Markie, it's not that. It's more he never sees the trouble coming.

  LAURA'S STORY

  Chapter 8

  Leaving the Cat

  October 31, 2001

  In the late afternoon Laura stood at the bow of the Staten Island ferry, heading back to Manhattan. She shut her eyes and breathed moisture and salt. It was a scent that from the first had smelled like home to her, though it was not. She had grown up in a state where all water was sweet. She had never known this scent until she came to New York at seventeen, a late-summer visit to serve as the border between childhood and the adult life she could not wait to live: she was on her way to college the following week.

  From that weekend until she found this scent again was, in her memory, yet another lifetime. It was Harry who, hearing her confess she had never been to an ocean beach, declared himself shocked and appalled and hauled her off the next morning on the Long Island Rail Road for a Jones Beach picnic. She had protested that it was December. December 1999, he'd said, and she could not afford to enter a new millennium with such deficits of experience as she was clearly suffering from.

  And from that day to this was, again, a lifetime. Gulls screeched and the ferry's engine growled. Laura opened her eyes. Manhattan grew steadily in the late autumn sunlight as though its towers were marching forward and Laura's boat were standing still. The arched sky ran from cobalt above the hulk of Brooklyn, through lighter blues, to the first hints of what would soon be strips of glowing salmon and gold behind the machinery of the New Jersey waterfront.

  Travel on the Staten Island ferry had been another of the experiences Harry had determined that she required, and they had crisscrossed Staten Island many times, Harry hailing cabs at the terminal and taking Laura on eccentric journeys: to a Tibetan museum in the island's eastern hills, riding stables in the south, a day of fishing under the bridge. These trips were all occasions of giddy laughter, of teasing and touching. (And once, on a sultry June day, of lovemaking on slippery black rocks, spreading their blanket in a hidden cove like teenagers. “What if the regulars want to use this place and we're already here?” Laura had fretted, pointing out beer cans and cigarette butts, proof of recent occupation. “It's a school day.” Harry smiled, pulling her toward him. “We have until two.”)

  But her most profound joy had always been found on the trip back, when she and Harry, tired and at peace in each other's company, would lean on the rail to watch Manhattan swell toward them. Silent, they would sip at their drinks (for her, the ferry's strong coffee; for Harry, of course, the gin from his pocket flask) and breathe this salt scent.

  Before this trip, Laura had only once been on the ferry without Harry, and that was earlier this same day, on her way to interviews in Pleasant Hills. She was not finished there, but she had enough for now, enough to file a story tonight in case Leo wanted something for tomorrow. She had not found the answer to who killed Harry. But all Leo had asked was that she show him there was a story.

  She could do that.

  She could have done that without going out to Staten Island at all.

  Marian Gallagher was hiding something; that had been obvious from the way the color had risen in her face, from her attempts to divert the course of Laura's questions. It was possible—likely even, because she had appeared to Laura as essentially a kind woman, warmhearted and hurt—that Marian Gallagher did not know anything directly about Harry's death. But that she knew something about McCaffery and the events of years ago, Laura did not doubt.

  And Phil Constantine? That interview had been more complicated. The crushing headache that had come on as she sat watching his glittering eyes and his grin had been even worse than the one Marian Gallagher had brought her. But Reporter-Laura had chosen well. She'd thrown at him trick after subtle trick; he'd seen through them all, as she'd thought he would, and it had made him cocky. He'd given her more than she'd had coming in. Whether it was more than he knew he was giving her, she wasn't sure, but she didn't care. He too was hiding something, and if she could show Leo there was something to hide, Leo would be happy.

  Usually on her way back to the office Laura would have her tape recorder pressed to her ear. She'd be making notes, trying out leads, referring to her spiral pad when muddied words came up on the tape. Review when fresh, one of Laura's many mottoes. (Not Harry. Harry liked to let things settle, to come back to them. Whatever surprises you when you hear it the second time, he told her, that's what's important.)

  But right now she couldn't move. Outbound, she'd turned her back on Manhattan. She couldn't afford to attend to what was behind her.

  She was paying for that now.

  It wasn't the bright glow from the recovery lights, just coming on now as daylight started to fade. Not the cranes, or the still-rising smoke. Not quite. As the shore moved toward her at a measured pace, Laura stared at the Manhattan skyline. She'd been to the site, to Ground Zero, how many times since it happened? And how many time
s in the years before, for interviews, to change subways, for a drink with a source at Windows on the World? Laura's theory, which she shared with Harry, was that the grandeur of the view from the 107th floor made people feel insignificant, and so more willing to talk.

  “To build themselves up so they can feel important again?” Harry wanted to know.

  “No, I don't think so,” she had answered. “More because, why not? You can see from up there how little really matters.”

  Laura knew the World Trade Center well, then, from the days when it had been a gleaming array of sharp-cornered buildings standing over a weave of train lines. And knew it well from the last seven weeks, since it had become Ground Zero, an alien, incomprehensible place with a horrifying new name. She had watched from behind the fence and sometimes, because she was a reporter, from inside it, as torches sliced through twisted steel and trucks carted it away, as masked firefighters threw wreckage aside to reveal yet more wreckage. And she'd been taking notes and climbing mounds of destruction once as all work stopped and steelworkers and firefighters stood in silent lines, saluted the flag-draped body carried past them, wiped tears away with filthy gloves, and returned to work.

  And Laura had seen the countless aerial photos, in her own paper as well as the others, starting from the day itself.

  But still.

  Still, as she stared at the looming skyline, the long low rays of sun and the piercing searchlights, she felt disoriented, and wrong, and stupid. And guilty, for being wrong.

  Everyone knew the towers had been on the tip of Manhattan. The island, New York City itself, culminated in them, grew and swelled and pushed them soaring into the air when the unstoppable energy of Manhattan had rolled south to the water and could go no farther.

  But that wasn't true. Of course it wasn't. As she stared at the place now, it was clear the lights and the cranes and the smoke were uptown from the end of the island, west of it, visible only between and above the crowd of buildings that occupied Manhattan's tip and always had. Her memory of leaning on the rail with Harry, sipping coffee and sailing from Staten Island straight toward the gateway of the towers was wrong, and if she thought back more carefully, if she meticulously unbraided meaning from fact, she knew that, and had always known it.