Absent Friends

LAURA'S STORY

Chapter 11

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Tree, Falling

October 31, 2001

Laura stared out from Angelo Zannoni's balcony, following a ship whose lights were so bright she could see the colors of the containers piling its deck. Orange, yellow, blue. The ship slid under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and steamed west to offer its cargo to the huge waterfront cranes at the Port of Newark, right across the river from Lower Manhattan. You were supposed to worry about the cargo now, about what disastrous freight, what catastrophic future, could burst from newly arrived, colorful crates.

“Back then,” Laura asked Zannoni. “About someone else being with Keegan and Molloy. Did you say anything?”

Zannoni shook his head. “Only to Jeff. He thought the same as me, but except the ring tops, the backpedaling, we didn't have shit. For a while, we looked. We talked to the detective who knew this crap best, the Molloys and the Spanos, see if there was something going on. Checked the gun dealers around, to find where Keegan got the gun. Turned up nothing. Then Keegan took the plea, and that was the end of it.”

“You didn't talk to anyone else about it? Your commanding officer?”

“Make a hassle when there wasn't one? Why? Look. Even if someone else was there that night, even if the gun was this other guy's, Keegan still could be our shooter. His prints on the gun, his confession.”

“But you believe there was a third man. And you think it was James McCaffery.”

“All I can say, anyone was drinking with Jack Molloy in a deserted spot like that, it sure as hell wasn't some goombah.”

“But Keegan never admitted there was anyone else?”

“Keegan sat in jail a day or two. They charged him with possession of an unlicensed weapon.” Zannoni snorted. “The weapon? Molloy gets shot through the heart, Keegan admits to shooting him, the best they can do is the weapon? Tell me the fix wasn't in on that one.”

“You're saying McCaffery fixed it?”

“Fix like that,” Zannoni said, “you know why they do it?”

“Why it's fixed?” Laura wasn't sure what Zannoni was getting at. “To get the accused a lighter sentence.”

“Why the DA goes along. You know why?”

“Tell me.”

“So the guy keeps his mouth shut.”

“About what?”

Zannoni shook his head. “Never figured that out.”

“But you're telling me you believe McCaffery was the one who fixed it?”

Laura was sure Zannoni's tea must be cold by now, but he sipped at it, once, twice. “He's somebody now, a big hero, even before this”—waving his tea in the direction of Lower Manhattan, invisible through the trees— “but back then he was just a fireman. Twenty-three, twenty-four years old. No way he had the juice.”

“Who did?”

Somewhere on the street below, hidden by the treetops, a car horn honked. Birds tweeted, evening birds, and a seagull screamed; Laura couldn't see them. What she could see—the black water, the bridge, the ships—was silent.

“You know much about the history around here?” Zannoni made a circle with his tea.

“Of Pleasant Hills, you mean? No.”

“Area was settled by Irish. Farmers, mostly. Before the train, especially before the bridge, towns out here were more separate than now. A lot of Italians on Staten Island, but in Pleasant Hills, mostly Irish.

“Not to say there weren't Italians. Grew up here myself.” Zannoni shifted in his chair; Laura remained sideways on hers, facing him. “Not so easy, sometimes, being Italian in Pleasant Hills. To the Irish kids, all wops were Mafia, so they were hot shit if they beat the crap outta you. Fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Bad blood, micks and wops out here, and a lot more of them than us.”

“Sounds pretty rotten,” Laura said, to let Zannoni know she was on his side.

“Old history now. But one thing was true. Not so much Pleasant Hills, but Staten Island. Lot of Mafia out here. The Italians-are-like-everyone guys will tell you that's not true, but it is.

“Around here—Pleasant Hills—the Irish had their crook, but we had ours, too. Theirs was Big Mike Molloy. Jack Molloy's father? Ours was Aldo Spano. You heard of them?”

“I've heard of Molloy, only because of this. And Aldo Spano—he's Eddie Spano's father?”

Zannoni grunted. Laura took it for agreement.

“Molloy was the big fish. Pleasant Hills was pretty much Mike Molloy's. Spano nibbled around the edges. Spano put up with Molloy because he had a big organization and he'd've been hard to dislodge.”

“Why did Molloy put up with Spano?”

“The Irish, they operated independent, each organization. Molloy was big, but he was on his own. Italians, you're hooked up with someone, one of the families, or you're out of business. Al Spano's hookup was the Bonnanos. Spano wasn't a big enough deal for them to go out of their way, clear-cut a territory for him, but they would've jumped if Molloy made a direct move.”

“So it was a stalemate?”

“Worked pretty well. Each side had their rackets.”

Laura, feeling she was tiptoeing out onto thin ice, asked, “What did the police do?”

“About them?” Zannoni stared at her as though she'd asked what the police did about the weather. “Shit, those guys were a lot heavier hitters than we were. Now you got prosecutors, state and city, like Rudy before he was mayor, people like that, they'll take on these guys. But back then nobody did. All we could do was keep the noise down.”

The ice hadn't cracked, so Laura took another step. “You're telling me that's what you did in the Molloy case?”

Zannoni put down the mug. It was, Laura saw, finally empty. “You ever ask yourself where McCaffery got the kind of money he was passing on to Keegan's family, if it was him? Salary of a fireman just starting out, those days, no way. Hell, even today, no f*cking way.”

“It was someone else's money?”

“Sure as God made little apples.”

“Whose?”

“Like you said, you only heard of Big Mike Molloy because of this. The guy is history. His organization's history. You know he had two sons?”

“Jack and Thomas. I interviewed Thomas Molloy yesterday.”

“No kidding?” Zannoni raised his eyebrows. “You put that in today's paper?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't get the paper today. What'd he have to say?”

Laura spoke to what she guessed was the point. “I asked him about ties between his brother and the Spanos. He said there weren't any, as far as he knew, but Jack could have angered someone in the Spano organization.”

“What'd you think of him? Tom?”

“You mean, did I think he was legitimate? I got the impression he was.”

Zannoni nodded. “When I was at the 124, word was Tom was being groomed to take over Big Mike Molloy's organization. But what happened after Jack got killed, it seems like Tom got cold feet. Or maybe we were reading it wrong. Anyway, over the next couple years—long before Big Mike died—a lot of the Molloy rackets got sold off, shut down. And guess who ended up with whatever was left, added them to his own? Guess who's the only game in town now, in Pleasant Hills?”

“Spano?”

“Eddie Spano,” Zannoni agreed. “In the end, it's the Italians on top.”

Zannoni stared straight ahead, over the trees and roofs. An American flag snapped in the wind in the yard of a nearby house. Laura had learned in grade school that the flag was supposed to come down at night, but these days the flags weren't coming down.

“It sounds to me,” she ventured, “like this was something you were thinking about even back then. With the second ring top and everything. But—”

“Case was closed. Perp took the plea. Me and Jeff had other things to do. And,” he added, as though he knew she was going to keep pushing, “I didn't know about McCaffery then. Didn't have an idea who the other guy that night was. But I could see who could come out ahead. Without Jack, maybe the Molloy organization's in trouble. Maybe Al Spano ends up the big fish.” Zannoni pushed himself out of his chair and walked to the balcony rail. Staring out to sea, he said, “I'm older than those Molloys. Jack and Tom. Never took a punch from either of 'em. But, Jack—guys just like him gave me black eyes, bloody noses, threw my schoolbooks down the sewer, whole time I was growing up.

“So Molloy gets shot, and word comes down the next day: pick up Keegan. I look and I see: Jack Molloy's out of the way. Mark Keegan's taking the fall, I don't know who for. But is this so bad? Is it bad enough, I want to throw a monkey wrench in the works, my third guy theory? Maybe risk my chance of making sergeant? For what?

“And Jeff points out to me: Spano's guys I know. I talk their language. We need something, maybe it's easier if it's Spano's guys than Molloy's. And even,” Zannoni said with emphasis, as though he were stacking his reasons onto a pile, counting on the pile's height to justify its existence, “Big Mike Molloy, what he's seeing, a buddy of Jack's shot his kid. A f*ckup. Bad, but shit happens.”

People die, Laura thought. Vanish, never come back. Shit happens.

“If I'm right and Spano's involved and it comes out, hell, we got a war here. We can't handle it, everybody knows we can't. Like I said, back then, you didn't take those guys on. War, it's the civilians who pay.” He nodded, as though answering an unspoken question. “So that was that.”

Black sky, white stars, lit ships, glittering water. This far south on Staten Island, you couldn't see the tip of Manhattan, couldn't see the smoke rising.

“So why now?” Laura asked. “Why come forward now?”

Zannoni was silent. His hands lifted from the balcony rail, separated, came back together. “You see what those motherf*ckers did over there?” Now his hands gestured in the direction of the invisible smoke. “Killing Americans, that's all they wanted. Didn't matter, you were Italian, you were Irish. Didn't matter you were a cop or a fireman. Those SOBs decided you were dead, you were dead. Italian, Irish, Jewish, black, so f*cking what? That shit's gotta stop. Those motherf*ckers are out there blasting the hell out of Americans. Americans. And I'm sitting here on my f*cking balcony, I'm sitting on my butt, there's nothing I can do.

“Then your boy Jesselson calls.

“And I think, Maybe I can do this.

“I think, This shit's gotta stop.”