Absent Friends

LAURA'S STORY

Chapter 10

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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.

“Officers responded to a shots-fired, found Molloy,” Zannoni said. “Called in me and my partner, Jeff Miller. Jeff retired fifteen years ago. Condo in Tucson. Died there last year. The desert, Jesus.” He looked toward the water and shook his head. “Keegan showed up half an hour later. Said he did it, ran because he lost his head but came back to do the right thing. You know the story—Molloy and Keegan?”

“I know what the papers reported.”

Zannoni waited. Laura went on. “They were drinking in a house under construction. Jack Molloy got wild, waved a gun around, and Mark Keegan shot him by mistake.”

“Helluva mistake,” said Zannoni. “Right through the heart.”

Laura said, “Couldn't it still be an accident?”

Zannoni shrugged. “Close your eyes and squeeze, likely to hit something as something else. That's how the defense played it, anyway.”

“Phillip Constantine?”

“That was him, the lawyer. But he came later. Right then Keegan said it himself: I was scared, he shot twice, I just pointed and pulled the trigger. Never figured I'd hit him. I'm not real good with guns, he kept saying.”

“But you think there's something wrong with that?”

Zannoni turned back to Laura. “What the hell was he carrying it for?”

“People carry guns. Especially young punks that age.”

“Mark Keegan wasn't a punk. Grew up with Molloy, but nothing we had said he was connected. Far as I could see, he had no enemies. Everyone liked him. From what people said, even Molloy did, far as he liked anyone, crazy f*ck that he was. 'Scuse my language.”

“Don't worry about it.”

Zannoni didn't look worried. “Auto mechanic with a wife and kid. 'Seventy-nine, guns weren't as easy to get as now. Today, okay, everyone has one, same as sneakers, gotta look good. Back then, gangbangers all over the Bronx, yeah, but a mechanic out here, family man? Why'd he have a gun?”

“Do you have an answer?”

“Yeah. He didn't.”

“It wasn't Mark Keegan's gun?”

“Not his, and he wasn't carrying it.”

Lights flashed on the distant flank of a tanker. Carefully, Laura said, “The gun was someone else's? Someone else was there?”

“Always thought so.”

“Who?”

“Never knew.” Zannoni cupped his tea with both hands. “That investigation, it wasn't what you'd call thorough. They pulled me and Jeff off it the second Keegan took the plea. Not like we minded. Plenty of open cases on our books. Guy pleads, hell with it, that one's closed.”

“But you didn't like it?”

For a moment, she didn't think he'd answer. Then he said, “They came out there with a six-pack, Keegan said. We didn't find a single can. Keegan said he picked them up when he ran, in case of prints.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“I went back the next day. Before they pulled us, you know? I went back in the light. I found two plastic ring tops. In the dirt near the foundation. Like someone tossed them over the edge. Molloy's prints on one, nothing we could make out on the other. I asked Keegan, how many six-packs did you say? He said, Yeah, I don't remember, maybe two. Seemed like a weird thing to me, guy can't remember how many six-packs he cracked open. Especially, he picked up the cans.”

“He'd have to have been flustered. Couldn't one of those tops have been from another time?”

“Keegan said that, too. Backpedaling. Um, um, um, could be a couple of nights before, um, um, we go over there a lot. So maybe it's one, maybe it's two, maybe from last night, maybe last week. Great. Anyway, it was a pretty clean site. No other trash. Strange that a ring top would have stayed, from last week.”

“And you think . . . ?”

“Someone else was there. Three guys, two six-packs. And that's why the cans were gone. That's the prints they were worried about. We tested Molloy's blood-alcohol level. Keegan's, too. Molloy tested high, but not Keegan. Not two six-packs' worth. And me and Jeff, we asked ourselves this: These were grown men. What the hell are they doing drinking on a construction site, like they're kids, they have to sneak around? Every third building in Pleasant Hills was a bar, those days.”

“Did you ask Keegan?”

“He said they liked it out there, those half-built houses. Reminded them of this place they used to hang out when they were kids. Horsepucky.”

“What do you think was going on?”

“It was a private meet,” Zannoni said. “Keegan, Molloy, somebody else.”

“A setup?”

“More like a f*ckup. If it was a hit, they'd've been prepared. Everybody would've disappeared. Keegan wouldn't have had to take the fall. There wouldn't have been a fall.”

“But you think that's what happened? That's what Keegan did, take a fall?”

“Sure as hell.”

“But you don't know who for?”

“Like I say, I never did. Until I read that story in your paper. Hey, you cold? We could go inside.”

“No, I'm fine. It's just a little windy here.” That story. The investigation is continuing. Laura hated that story, hated it.

“When I read in your paper that Jimmy McCaffery was behind the money—you know that for a fact?”

Laura, who right at this moment knew nothing for a fact, nodded.

“All that money, all these years, in secret,” said Zannoni. “It had to be him. It had to be him.”