Absent Friends

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 9

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First In, Last Out

October 31, 2001

Phil glanced up when the outer door opened. He heard Sandra's challenge and the cocksure reply. So. Saying no hadn't worked on Laura Stone any better than it ever had on Harry Randall. Tribune reporters, he knew them. But this was Phil's way: unless he needed the press for his own purposes, he always told them to get lost. The mediocre reporters bought it and went away. It saved time and energy and left Phil to deal only with people who had something on the ball.

He watched as Sandra sat back, dragged his book a quarter inch closer, asked the gate-crasher whether she had an appointment. Sandra didn't look at the book: she had his day memorized, his week, and his upcoming month. This was just the game it was her job to play. When the answering volley came, she'd give the icy smile, lay down the smash, and this short match would be over.

Laura Stone looked past Sandra into Phil's office, right into his eyes. “I'm on my way to Pleasant Hills to talk to some people there. I thought Mr. Constantine might want to see me first.” This with her eyes still on Phil's.

“Mr. Constantine doesn't see anyone without an appointment.”

“I have a deadline. If Mr. Constantine doesn't speak to me before I have to file, Tribune readers won't get his side of the story.”

Not bad, Phil thought. Looking only at the back of Sandra's head, he still could have described the knife blade of a smile with which she said, “I'm sorry.”

Laura Stone said, “First in, last out.”

Sandra was thrown. Oh, she disliked that. Phil heard her irritation: “Excuse me?”

“People remember the first thing they read. Even if it's wrong. After that, it's hard to correct. A retraction never has the impact of the original story.”

Below her cropped hair the back of Sandra's neck was red. She could keep this reporter at bay all day and late into the evening, Phil knew that. Especially if she got mad. But the hell with it. He was sure she had better things to do.

“It's all right, Sandra.” Phil rose, though he didn't come out from behind his desk. Let her in, sure; trek to the border to greet her, no. “Come on in, Ms. Stone. Thanks, Sandra.”

With Sandra's bellicose glare following her—and Elizabeth's stare also, less hair-trigger, more weights and measures—Laura Stone marched into Phil's office. She sat down and plunked her massive shoulder bag to the floor beside her. Flipping it open, she pulled out a pad, two pens, and a tape recorder. She did this so fast and so smoothly he had to figure the bag, despite its bulging, chaotic look, was the kind with dividers, holders, pockets, and tabs. Velcro and zippers and snaps. Everything in the right place, instantly accessible.

He used one like that himself.

Stone held up the recorder, lifted her eyebrows.

“No,” Phil said, sitting again.

Laura Stone dropped the machine back in the bag. Phil couldn't see whether it was running, but he assumed it was. He'd have told her to turn it off, but the second one, which she was almost sure to have, would be running, too. His choices were: he could search her, including patting her down to see if she was wired, or he could watch his mouth.

“I'm here to give you a chance to comment on the death of Harry Randall,” Stone began, colonizing a chair, ankle on knee, elbows out, taking up more room than he'd have thought such a thin woman could. She flipped open her pad, held her pen poised.

Phil grinned. How about that? Another woman offering him an opportunity to do something he didn't want to do. “I told you this morning I had nothing to say.”

“I didn't believe you.”

“Does telling people that work in your business?”

“Does blowing off reporters work in yours?”

“Ms. Stone, with all due respect, after the last couple of weeks, why the hell would I want to talk to the Tribune?”

“To correct any misconceptions, I'd think.”

“Yeah, I bet that's what you'd think. But all right. About Harry Randall's death?” He glanced at the ceiling, frowned, nodded. “Harry Randall was a fixture in this town. A fine example of the old-fashioned muckraking reporter. They don't make them like that anymore. New York needs him now more than ever, it's a goddamn shame what happened to him, and he'll be missed.” He smiled, slid his chair back from his desk to give himself room to cross his long legs. Ankle on knee. “You can quote me.”

She wrote as he spoke, quick sure strokes, and he studied her as she wrote. In that wholesome midwestern way, the way that called up the bucolic farming life (early morning rising, direct and sweaty work, lit evening windows, neighbors bringing pies), Laura Stone was pretty. Straight brown hair brushing her shoulders, features small and neat, pale skin that would probably be smooth and clear once she got some sleep. Phil's forebears were rabbis and ragpickers, salesmen and stevedores. Not a farmer among them, back to the windswept horizon. Why, then, this—not just attraction, no, not only desire—this wistful nostalgia, this homesickness a woman like this had always been able to make him feel? Her bedroom: heightening heat and the crescendo of pounding hearts under quilts in the crystal winter night; but also the breeze through the window of her sunny kitchen on a spring morning. Her soft skin, her soft hair, the feel of them under his fingertips; but even more her quiet companionship by the fire on a blustery fall day. He longed for all that, at the same time—maybe for the same reason—as he knew he'd last maybe a week in that lonesome prairie farmhouse.

Someone who's homesick for somewhere they've never been, Phil thought. The definition of an American.

Laura Stone stopped writing and flipped her hair from her face. It fell back to exactly where it had been. “If I print that,” she said to him, “people will know you're lying.”

What the hell had they been talking about? Oh, right, his tribute to Harry Randall. “Everyone who reads your paper already thinks I'm lying,” he said.

“Then set them straight. Now's your chance.”

Hey, there's an idea. Just tell the truth. After all these years? Then what had been the point? Though, when you looked at this mess, what had been the goddamn point anyway? “No. Thanks.”

“You were Mark Keegan's attorney in 1979?”

“That's public record.”

“Keegan was accused and convicted of possessing an illegal handgun—the gun that killed Jack Molloy—but not of the killing itself. Why not?”

“That was the plea deal.”

“Your idea?”

“The opposition's.”

“The District Attorney's?” Her eyebrows went up as if she needed more light in those morning-colored eyes.

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought if we went to trial on the manslaughter charge, we were screwed. I couldn't believe I was being offered the deal, but I jumped at it.”

“Why did they do it, do you think?”

“A bird in the hand.”

“Nothing else?”

“It didn't matter to me.”

“But you think there might have been something else?”

“There always is. An election's coming up. The accused looks like the ADA's cousin. They don't want to waste time and money on a first-timer who killed a gangster they're happy to have out of the way.”

“Or someone buys off someone in the DA's office.”

“It happens.”

“In this case?”

“Who the hell knows? If anyone was up to anything, it wasn't me. My client got a hell of a better deal than I thought he'd get, going in. That was all I cared about.”

Laura Stone turned her head, as though looking around Phil's office, taking in the books, the pictures, and the mess. What was she, Elizabeth's age? No, a little older. The age he'd been when Markie Keegan was assigned to him. The fingertips of her left hand lifted to her temple, pressed. Headache? Or maybe he was supposed to think she had one, so he'd be gentle with her.

He waited to see.

Laura Stone brought her eyes back to him. “It didn't turn out so well for Mark Keegan, that deal.”

“You think that's the fault of the deal?”

She wrote and moved on. Plainly, what she thought wasn't a topic of this meeting. “What's your relationship with Mark Keegan's widow?”

“Private.”

“You and Sally Keegan have been intimate since you met, isn't that true?”

No, it's not true. Markie'd been in jail five months and dead sixteen before the foggy cold night on the Staten Island ferry when I first kissed Sally. “No comment.”

“What's your relationship with Edward Spano?”

Ah, Eddie. I knew we'd get to Eddie. “No comment.”

“Is it true you were taking money from Spano all these years and passing it on to Mark Keegan's family?”

Not directly. Not that I knew about. “No comment.”

“But you don't deny the money didn't come from New York State?”

“That's public record.”

“Where did it come from?”

Wish to hell I knew. “No comment.”

“You're acquainted with Marian Gallagher? Of More Art, New York? And the McCaffery Fund?”

“Yes.”

“Ms. Gallagher suggested that you, as the attorney handling the payments, would have to know the source of the funds.”

“Did she?”

“Would you care to comment on that?”

“No.”

“Is she wrong?”

“Usually.”

Laura Stone let go a sudden smile. “You don't like her?”

Shrug. “You met her.”

She reined the smile in, as though it had escaped by mistake, all business again. So, he thought, now we share a secret. Now we're buds. Good move, and well done. Probably usually works.

She said, “But you received the money from somewhere.”

“True.”

“Close to $350,000 over the years, that's a lot of money. Harry Randall thought it came from Edward Spano through McCaffery. Do you want to deny that?”

I'd love to. “No comment.”

“What was its purpose?”

“The money? To support Keegan's wife and child.”

“Who would want to do that?”

Anyone who knew them. “No comment.”

“Would Edward Spano have any reason to do it?”

“Not that I know about.”

“If Spano had paid Mark Keegan to kill Jack Molloy, would he have had a reason to support Keegan's family once Keegan died?”

If he had, you bet he would. “No comment.”

“Why did Jack Molloy threaten Mark Keegan?”

“He didn't just threaten Mark Keegan, Ms. Stone, he shot at him.”

“Why did Jack Molloy shoot at Mark Keegan?”

No change of tone. Phil had to grin. He'd have done it just that way himself. “He was drunk and from what I hear, he was crazy.”

“He'd been like that all his life, and he'd never shot at Keegan before.”

“How do you know?”

“Had he?”

Hope in her eyes, something new to uncover? Too bad. “No. Not according to Markie, no.”

“Then why?”

Not a secret. If he didn't say, she'd get it somewhere else, then come back at him again, confirm or deny. “Jack was a gangster. Markie had heard that Jack was the subject of a police operation and was about to get the ax. He told Jack about it.”

“That upset Molloy? I'd think he'd be grateful.”

“Jack checked it out. It wasn't true.”

“Checked it out how?”

“He called the Answer Man. How the hell do you think?”

Her eyebrows rose at his sharp tone. She shifted in her chair. If she hadn't been wearing slacks, he'd bet she'd have tugged her hem down.

“If it wasn't true the police were running an operation against Jack Molloy, why would Mark Keegan say they were?”

“That's what Jack wanted to know.”

“Did Keegan think it was true? That the police were cracking down on Jack Molloy?”

“He told me he did.”

“Where did he hear it?”

“He never said.”

“You were his lawyer, and he never told you?”

“Never.”

She gave him a conspiratorial look that said, Come on, we both know you're better than that, you can get all kinds of things out of people.

Hmm, Phil thought. That's a good one. I'll have to try it.

He didn't answer her, so after a moment she went on. “Maybe Keegan was working both sides.”

He'd been waiting for that. “Neither side.”

“What does that mean?”

“Markie hung around the fringes, but he wasn't in Jack Molloy's crew, and he wasn't on the NYPD payroll, either.”

“So he said?”

“So everyone said.”

“True?”

“As far as I know.”

“But it's what Molloy thought, wasn't it? That it was Keegan himself who was ratting him out to the police?”

“Might have been.”

“If it were true, it could be the reason for the plea deal. To keep Keegan from revealing his source.”

“Could be. As I said, I didn't think so. But I never knew.”

“They dropped the manslaughter charges.”

“It was a good deal.”

“It could be construed as the NYPD showing gratitude for services rendered.”

“It could. Or as overworked ADAs with no witnesses, a defendant with an infant son and no priors, and a victim no one would miss.” If there was any such thing. Jack Molloy had a brother, a father, and mother. Phil had seen her over the years, Peggy Molloy. One of the few people in Pleasant Hills with a smile for him, one of the people he'd least expect it from.

“Even if the story wasn't true,” Stone said, “couldn't it have been planted by the police?”

“What do you mean?” he asked, though he knew exactly what she meant.

“Maybe they couldn't make anything stick to Molloy, so they were trying to scare him, make him think they were out to get him. So he'd back off. Maybe even leave town, get to be someone else's problem.”

Well, whatever she was, she wasn't stupid. “Markie wouldn't say where he heard it. But I looked into it at the time. I couldn't find anything either way.”

“Or,” Laura Stone mused, “maybe it was something else entirely. Maybe somebody else wanted to scare Jack Molloy. Could the story have been planted on Keegan by Eddie Spano, do you suppose?”

“I asked Markie that flat out. He told me if I thought he was working for Spano, I could go to hell.”

“Any thoughts on it now?”

Now? Now, when they're pulling thousands of bodies in small pieces from smoking rubble around the corner? Now, when ash could mean anthrax, and loud sounds made you jump? Now, when Sally's not speaking to me and Kevin tells me F*ck off, Uncle Phil? Shit, lady. Now you could ask me if Eddie Spano was the Messiah, and I'd have to say it was possible. “I haven't thought about it.”

“What would you say if I told you Harry Randall didn't kill himself?”

“I'd say your paper already made it clear they don't think it was suicide.”

“There's evidence that points that way.”

“Not strong evidence.”

“Why do you say that?”

“If the police bought your theory, they'd be camping in my office.”

“Maybe they just haven't gotten around to you yet.”

“Around to me? I'd be the first.”

“You consider yourself a suspect in Harry Randall's murder?”

“I consider myself a successful criminal defense attorney. To some cops that makes me guilty of a lot worse things than murder.”

“Did you kill Harry Randall?”

He stared at her. “That's a hell of a technique. Does it work?”

“Sometimes.”

“I'm inclined to tell you to go to hell.”

“Go ahead, as long as you answer my question.”

“No.”

“No, you won't answer, or no, you didn't kill Harry Randall?”

“I didn't kill him. Is this what this is really about? The Tribune's looking for a few bad men?”

“Harry Randall was murdered because he knew something.”

“Harry Randall was a drunk who jumped off the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.”

She shook her hair back from her face again. Phil was startled to see her eyes moisten. She blinked twice, and that was gone. Maybe he'd imagined it. But her voice seemed to quiver just slightly as she repeated, “Harry Randall was killed because he knew something.” The quiver vanished, though, as she went on. “One of the things he knew was that the money you've been giving to Mark Keegan's family came from, or at least through, James McCaffery.”

No surprise there. But what else did Randall think he knew? And how do you know what he knew? Is this story a potential Pulitzer for you, or is it personal? And which is more dangerous? “No comment.”

“But you knew James McCaffery?”

“Yes.”

“And it's true the money-from-the-State fiction was his idea?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know he'd left papers behind?”

“Yes.”

The lifting of the brows again. But look: her eyes weren't the clear blue of the morning sky, as he'd thought, but the deeper, opaque blue of evening. Had he been wrong? Or did Laura Stone's eyes change, like Sally's, according to rules he would never understand?

“You know that?” Her voice took on a quick note, hope again. “Have you seen these papers?”

“No.” And because he could tell where she was going: “I only just found out.”

“Where from?”

Indirectly, from you, about an hour ago. “No comment.”

She gave him an appraising look. Well, let her figure it out.

“Do you know what's in them? McCaffery's papers?”

“No.”

“Any guesses?”

Yes. “No.”

“What if it's this whole thing—Keegan, Molloy, where the money came from?”

“Then we'll get McCaffery's thoughts on the matter.”

“Would that bother you?”

“Depends what he thought.”

“Are you telling my readers you have nothing to hide?”

“I'm not telling your readers anything. You can tell them whatever crap you want, just like Randall did.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Randall? I already told you.”

She shook her head, her soft hair swaying. “McCaffery.”

One missed beat, and then: “He was a hero.”

As though he hadn't answered, with no change of tone, just the way he himself would have done it, she repeated, “What did you think of him?”

I thought he was a lying, grandstanding, murderous hypocrite. “He was a hero.”