by S. J. Rozan
Before that she would have to sit through the end-of-day meeting, of course. If a reporter was missing, morning or afternoon, Leo had better know why, and Laura had no reason good enough. No reason at all, except the pounding of her head at the thought of reporters and editors crowding the conference room. Some would watch her with curiosity they wouldn't bother to disguise: they were reporters, Harry's death was a story, and Laura was a part of it. Others would slide their eyes right past her. They would find fascination in their yellow pads and the caps of their pens if she spoke: she was a young woman, she'd lost her lover, and polite people don't pry. Which would be worse? Laura wasn't certain.
At five-thirty precisely, Leo lumbered toward the conference room looking neither left nor right. He did exactly this every morning and every afternoon; the first time Laura had seen him do it had been her first morning at the Tribune. Personnel had instructed her to be in by eight-thirty sharp, but she had arrived before eight, with the cardboard box she'd packed up in St. Paul. She was putting her drawers in order, transferring computer files and phone records, unpacking her Rolodex and her coffee cup, everything she'd brought, everything she had. At eight-thirty she looked up to see Leo pushing past her desk in his march through the newsroom. Every other reporter stood and followed, like a school of fish. Laura watched, uncertain (what is this? does it include me, should I go, too, should I wait to see?), until Harry Randall, the last to file through the conference room door, stuck his head back out and tapped his watch. Laura jumped up and headed in, grabbing a notebook and pen in case she needed to take something down, or to look as though she did.
That meeting, like all but the most extraordinary since—the morning meeting on September 12 for example—lasted exactly twenty minutes. Everyone briefed Leo (Leo had a strict definition of brief) on the stories they were working and their plans for the day. Everyone took quick suggestions from one another and growled orders from Leo. Everyone rose at ten to nine and went back to work.
The afternoon was the same, with twenty minutes truncated to fifteen. Now, when they assembled, fast reporters as usual filled the chairs and slower ones leaned on walls. Leo pointed, people began to talk, and Laura didn't listen.
In the past she always had. She'd concentrated hard. She'd wanted to know. What were the stories, what were the angles? Could she contribute? Become part of it? Think of a different way, a new way, a way so unexplored and promising as to bring Laura Stone's abilities to the attention of senior colleagues who might, next time, think to include her when the story was big? Today, though, she was busy. Busy not noticing people not noticing her, busy returning the stares of the starers. She felt Georgie's mournful, helpful gaze, but she didn't look at Georgie. She was busy not seeing the chair Harry was not sitting in, the wall against which he was not slouching.
But not so busy that she didn't respond when Leo called her name.
“Stone.”
“The Harry Randall homicide.” Instantly she answered. She'd practiced this in her head, over and over through the day, through the night as she lay awake on the pull-out couch in her unrecognized apartment. (What had she been thinking, buying this carpet? Didn't those curtains ever shut out the light? Did the refrigerator always hum and stop like that? It must be the noise, that must be why she couldn't sleep.) The Harry Randall homicide. She worked on this phrase with the precision and persistence she brought to all her writing. Words, she had always believed, made thoughts visible. Nothing was so gossamer or so incarnate, so transitory or so steadfast, that words could not reveal its secrets. Even the incomprehensible, even the unfathomable. Even this, Harry's death, could be made comprehensible by the right words.
“I was on Staten Island this afternoon,” she said, “to talk to a couple of people.”
“You have anything new?”
Leo wanted a piece. Laura's heart skipped. “I will by deadline, Leo.”
Raised eyebrows and traded looks told her how intensely the group was following this exchange. Within minutes of her leaving Leo's office yesterday, the substance of their meeting and its outcome had flash-flooded through the newsroom: Stone has a crackpot theory that Randall didn't jump. But Leo signed on; what the hell does that mean? He's probably just humoring her. Because, you know, of her and Harry. Leo? You must be crazy. Then Jesselson's piece ran this morning, and agnosticism replaced atheism: might be something there, I mean, Leo's got Jesselson on it, too, let's see what comes next.
Leo grunted, a sign he'd heard Laura and that was all for her. But before he could draw down on his next target, words from the other side of the room: “Laura? Write this down.” Hugh Jesselson, rumpled in gray slacks and wrinkled white shirt, propped up the far wall. “Angelo Zannoni. Sergeant, retired, 124.” Glancing at a three-by-five card in his hand, he pounded out a phone number. Laura scribbled it down, then looked at him inquiringly. “Arresting officer,” he said. “Mark Keegan, 1979. Expecting your call.”
Laura smiled. “Thanks, Hugh.”
Jesselson shrugged. “Thanks for yesterday.”
A snicker wiggled around the room. Laura flushed. Jesselson's mouth turned up at the corner, which didn't help.
It had been Laura's idea to run this morning's story on the investigation of Harry's death under Hugh Jesselson's byline. “We can make it look like the cops care. Maybe scare someone out of the woodwork. Let Hugh have it,” she'd argued to Leo. He sat lodged behind his desk, rendered as close to wordless as she'd ever seen him by the spectacle of a reporter offering a front-page byline to someone else.
Jesselson, summoned by sapphire, read her copy. “Doesn't sound like me,” he'd objected.
“Rewrite it,” ordered Leo.
So he had, and Hugh Jesselson, after eight years with the New York Post and six at the Tribune, had finally made the front.
Meeting concluded, reporters and editors went back to work. Laura dropped into her chair and dialed the number Jesselson had given her.
Four rings, then a growled “Hello.”
“Angelo Zannoni?”
“Who the hell is this?”
“Mr. Zannoni, I'm Laura Stone of the New York Tribune. Hugh Jesselson suggested I call you—”
“He suggest you call me at suppertime?”
Laura glanced up to the newsroom clock. The hour hadn't occurred to her, and in the face of the important work she was trying to accomplish, she was surprised to find time mattering to anyone.
“I'm sorry if—”
“Yeah, sure. You want to come out here?”
“Yes. Yes, if that would be—”
“1491 Fitzgerald, Pleasant Hills. Think you can find it?”
“Yes, I—”
“I'm here.”
Laura took the receiver from her ear, replaced it on its console. She might as well; Zannoni had already hung up.
MARIAN'S STORY
Chapter 10
Sutter's Mill
October 31, 2001
“It was Jimmy, wasn't it?”
For the second time since she'd entered Flanagan's, Marian felt conversations stopping and eyes turning their way. This time she was wrong, though, and she knew it immediately. The beat of the music continued, the talk and the laughter. No one had heard her words but Tom; no one's eyes burned, no one stared silently, but Tom.
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“It was Jimmy who killed Jack.” She'd never said this before, though she had somehow always known it, known it since Jimmy stumbled, wordless, through the first numb days, sweated and could not lie still beside her through the first sleepless nights. She had known it and never said it and now she was terrified that dragons and fire-spitting serpents would come screaming down from the sky, that the enclosing, sheltering walls would crash down and bury her in endless, crushing darkness.
“You're shivering.” Tom's hand was on hers. What would Vicky think? Marian wondered, absurdly. But Vicky and Tom weren't together anymore, hadn't been for years, so why would it matter? She'd jus
t slip her hand out, pretend she wanted to lift her wine to her lips (and drinking wine was not a bad idea right now, her glass was almost empty, where was the waitress so she could order another?); or she could turn her cold palm to Tom's warm, strong one and hold tight to him, and that was what she did.
“Marian . . .”
He said no more. She reached for her wineglass with her free hand. As she took an emptying sip, Tom signaled the waitress and another was on the way.
“Marian, why are you saying this?”
“Because it's true. I know it is.”
“Did Jimmy tell you that?”
“Jimmy's dead.”
She couldn't think why she'd said that. Tom knew. Everyone knew, everyone in New York, even people who had never known Jimmy, everyone knew he was dead. They had all mourned him as they had mourned all the heroes, until Harry Randall told them Jimmy was not a hero, and broke everyone's heart, and her heart all over again.
“Marian. Back then. What did Jimmy say?”
Tom was leaning toward her. Suddenly she was irritated with him. “Jimmy never said anything. You knew him. He'd never say anything.” She pulled her hand from Tom's. She found her new wine arriving, which was a good thing, because her mouth was dry and her face felt hot. The waitress took her other glass away. But she had emptied it anyhow, there was nothing there anymore, who cared? She reached for the new one and took a luxurious swallow, nothing to do with Marian Gallagher's sensible, moderate ways.
More beer had been delivered for Tom, too. He picked it up, drank, and put it down. Blue eyes steady, straight at her, the way he used to look at them, at each of them and all of them, ever since they were kids.
In Marian's experience (and her experience was vast: meetings were her medium, conversation her métier) most people, if regarding you in extended silence, were not seeing you at all. Their minds wrestled with whatever concerned them, their eyes did not focus, you were not really there to them. But not Tom. Whatever he was concentrating on, if he looked at you he saw you, he considered you and measured you and worked you into his plan. Across the table from Marian he sat now like that, as he had so many times in their childhood, Tom thinking something up, how to get out of something or get into something and the rest of them sitting quietly, waiting for it, waiting to be told their parts.
But the world had changed, and Flanagan's had changed. The noise of the crowd was setting Marian's nerves on edge, and she didn't want to sit and wait, not now. “Jimmy was there that night, wasn't he?” she asked Tom, thinking it might be easier for him to answer that, thinking maybe, maybe, he could tell her that wasn't true and then the other thing wouldn't be true, either.
“Jesus, Marian.” Tom rubbed his mouth. He looked around, at the strangers, at the walls. His gaze traveled as though he were searching for the mirrors that were gone. He brought his eyes back to her. How blue they were. “Jesus, Marian. We were all there.”
LAURA'S STORY
Chapter 10
The Old Masters
(Sailing Calmly On)
October 31, 2001
Earlier, on Staten Island, Laura had caught a cab. Now she found the cab stand deserted and dashed impatiently to the train. She jumped aboard as the bell rang, yanking her shoulder bag through doors determined to squash it.
Laura peered at the map, counted the stations to her destination, and swung onto a seat as the train lurched through a curve. Gazing around, she realized she knew these benches, this lighting, and these floors. The Staten Island train, it seemed, used the same cars as the subway, was in all respects identical (turnstiles and fare, ads and announcements).
But no: not identical. On Staten Island the tracks ran on elevated trestles or through open cuts, no tunnels. The rhythm of dark-while-moving, bright-when-stopped was replaced, first by a disorienting view of rooftops; then quickly and even more disconcertingly by the blank plane of endless concrete wall.
The same yet different. One more thing.
At the Pleasant Hills stop Laura climbed up out of the train and cut to a busy street of one- and two-story shops. Fitzgerald Drive was a hike from the train station, but she welcomed the walk. Already—and this was only her third trip—the ferry ride across the harbor was beginning to weary her. Harry's absence, the towers' absence, the smoke and dust lifting into the sky; the hush, and the pointing. Maybe when she went back tonight, Laura thought, she'd ride inside, on the lowest level, where she and Harry had never sat. She'd review her tapes or read over her notes or stare into space and not know anything until it was time to get off.
She stopped for coffee at a chrome-sided Main Street diner with cardboard black cats in the windows. Harry would have said it looked like it had been there since the Flood. (She could hear him say it, see the rueful smile adding that he recognized it from then.) She shook her head as a dog shakes off a rainstorm and concentrated on finding her way through Pleasant Hills. She was working.
Leaving the business strip, Laura made the required lefts and rights. At Fitzgerald Drive she crumpled her coffee cup into a trash can and followed the street's suburban curve to a three-story clutch of white-stuccoed condos. Third building, top floor, “Zannoni” on the bell, and apparently Zannoni on the balcony: a balding fleshy man, dressed in a white polo shirt and jeans, called down, “You Miss Stone?” and when, squinting past a streetlight, she told him she was, he disappeared inside and buzzed the door open.
He was waiting at the top of the stairs. His lined face and the slack skin of his arms told her he was over sixty, but he greeted her with a firm handshake. So many men shook a thin woman's hand gingerly, as though afraid to break her (though Laura had always detected a certain macho posturing in that, the message of “I could hurt you if I'm not careful” translating easily into “if you're not careful”). He led her through a white-walled, sparse living room and onto the stucco-wrapped balcony, where Laura found sling chairs on metal frames, a low plastic table, and an astonishing view.
She stared over shadowed rooftops and breeze-blown trees. Beyond, the lights of the Verrazano arched over the sparkling Narrows. On the far shore the buildings of Brooklyn crowded their waterfront, windows lit.
“Not bad, huh?” Zannoni stood beside her, looking over the vista with satisfied pride, as though he owned it. “Bought the place for the view. You want some tea?” He waved his hand in the table's direction.
Laura left with regret the sight of so much glittering dark water, such promised distances. She sat in a canvas chair and turned down the offer of tea.
“All I have,” Zannoni said, still standing, as though she might change her mind if she knew no other offer was forthcoming. “All I drink. I'm the only Italian in the world doesn't like coffee. You sure?”
When Laura said she was, Zannoni sat.
“I appreciate your seeing me,” she began. Based on the phone call, the sight of him on his balcony, and the handshake, she'd taken on a frank and direct demeanor with a faint undertone of gratitude that acknowledged Zannoni was in charge. The role she was playing was that of a straightforward reporter who did not play roles. “I'm sorry about interrupting your dinner—”
“No problem. Caught me by surprise, is all.”
“I know what you mean. I don't like surprises, either.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, sipped his tea, and said, “Your boy Jesselson says you're interested in the Mark Keegan thing, from back then.”
Laura gave up trying to find a position on the sling chair that made her feel professional, or at least adult. She swung herself sideways so she was facing Zannoni and fished her pad, her pens, her recorder, from her bag. “Is this all right?” she asked Zannoni, setting the recorder on the table.
He eyed it without love. “For now. Might ask you to turn it off, though.”
“Of course. Do you want to start with me asking questions, or do you just—”
“What's your interest?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your interest in Keegan. Jesselson hunted
me up, asked if I'd talk to you. Why?”
“I don't know if you've been following the stories in my paper—”
“Yeah.” Zannoni nodded. “You're the guys saying Jimmy McCaffery was laundering Eddie Spano's money through that lawyer, paying off Keegan's widow.”
Laura jumped right on it: “Is that what was happening?”
“What's your interest?” His eyes under thick brows held hers, not fiercely, not tight. An old cop, used to interrogations. A man who could sip tea on his balcony all day long asking the same question, while a stranger decided whether or not to answer him.
“The reporter on the original story,” Laura said. “The one who died. He was a friend of mine.”
“Good friend?”
“Yes.”
Zannoni stared into the distance. Probably, Laura thought as she blinked back tears, the view from where he sat had not suddenly started to shimmer and melt.
He said, “Jesselson says you think someone killed him.”
Laura answered, “That's true.”
“Any idea who?”
She shook her head. Zannoni, still watching the water, answered his own question. “Well, me either.”
“I didn't—”
“Just wanted to make sure, in case that's what you came for. I'm not going to guess. Speculate. Any of that bullshit. But back then.”
“That's why I came,” Laura said. “To hear about back then.”
At that Zannoni turned to her. Laura sat still and returned his look.
“I was a detective at the 124 then,” he said. “Later got transferred to the Bronx. Christ, what a schlep. Those days, right after the Knapp Commission—you heard of that?—they didn't have this community policing thing, like now. They wanted you to live outside your precinct. Keep down graft. Pile of crap. Cops running all around the goddamn city, damn waste of time. I retired eight years ago.”
Zannoni took a gulp of tea. A fresh breeze blew in from the Narrows, got trapped in the cul-de-sac of the balcony. It lifted a page from Laura's notebook; it brought with it the scent of the sea.