Absent Friends

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 11

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Abraham Lincoln and the Pig

October 31, 2001

Four tables bodyguarded by two chairs each lounged on the sidewalk outside the Bird. Phil thought, Nice day to sit outside. Too bad Kevin probably wouldn't see it that way. He pushed through the door and sure enough spotted Kevin in the far corner booth, the one most shadowed.

The Bird, Phil saw, was his kind of saloon. Atmosphere-free. No concession at all to Halloween, not a ghost or goblin. Scratched tables, mismatched chairs, neon beer signs. Though the five-foot flag above the bar, he'd give odds that was new. A scattering of solitary drinkers drifted foggily through the afternoon, staring at nothing, lost in private reasons. On the walls, photos of Little League teams down the years. Phil wondered, as he made his way to the back, which of those smiling uniformed boys was Jimmy McCaffery, which was Eddie Spano, which was Jack Molloy. Which was Markie. Boys with their teammates, shoulder to shoulder, squinting and smiling into the bright future. Two dead at twenty-three, one dead last month. The one still living, a career criminal. Ah, youth.

“Your team photos here?” he asked as he slid into the booth opposite Kevin.

“What?” Kevin sat off-kilter, favoring his right leg. His crutches leaned in the corner.

“Didn't the Bird sponsor your Little League team?”

Kevin said, “What are you asking that for?” but he pointed across the room. “Those.”

Phil turned to look, saw Kevin as he'd been at nine, at ten, at twelve.

The boy he'd never disappointed.

“Uncle Phil—”

The waitress materialized, hovered beside them. Her bleached-blond presence felt like a reprieve. Phil wanted her to stay. But after she'd run down the list of beer on tap and in bottles, what was there to keep her there? He supposed he could ask about scotches, gins, five-star brandies, but he'd always despised opponents whose delaying tactics were that obvious, that desperate. You're not prepared, don't show up. He asked for a Guinness and watched her leave to get it. Kevin was already working on a bottle of Bud.

“Uncle Phil—” Kevin said again, but Phil raised his hand.

“Kev, listen.”

Kevin stopped, did as Phil said. All right, now you have to tell him something. In a minute. When the beer comes. No, now, before he starts again. “I don't know what's going on, okay?” The look Kevin gave him, it wasn't okay. “I don't know what happened to that reporter, if he killed himself or someone killed him. But—no, wait—but there are a couple things I never told you, or your mother. I'll tell you now if you want.”

Kevin nodded.

Jump, Phil told himself. The net will appear. Or it won't. Looking into Kevin's eyes, so like Sally's, he said, “I met with Jimmy McCaffery every couple of months for eighteen years. Sometimes in a bar like this, sometimes in my office. Once at one of your games. The Tornados, a play-off game. You tripled. Do you remember?”

Kevin looked blank, then he shrugged. “They were always good. The Tornados. We played them lots of times.”

Phil nodded. The waitress brought his Guinness, but she didn't stick around. Story of his life.

Kevin said, “Why'd you meet with Uncle Jimmy?”

A sip of beer. “He gave me money. Cash. I'd put it in a bank account, an escrow account in your mother's name, and write her a check every month.”

“From the State.”

“Well, obviously not. But yes, those checks.”

“Why?”

“Your father was dead. You were a baby. Your mother needed the money.”

“Goddamn it, Uncle Phil!” At Kevin's shout the waitress's head whipped around like a searchlight. The bartender's, too, in case something was blowing up he'd need to take care of. Phil raised an apologetic hand, shook his head. The bartender nodded: Okay, but watch yourselves. Screw you, Phil thought, that was more action than you've seen in here all week.

Kevin leaned forward. If this were a negotiating session, Phil would have pulled back and also leaned a little to one side. That way he'd control the distance between them and make it clear, too, that he was the one controlling it. But he didn't do any of that. There was too much distance already.

“I mean, why you and Uncle Jimmy?” Kevin lowered his voice, but now it wore a sharp and ragged edge. “I thought you didn't even like each other. Why the bullshit?”

Of course that's what he meant. “Jimmy said your mother wouldn't have taken the money from him. From anyone.”

“Bullshit,” Kevin repeated.

Kevin drank. Phil waited. Never offer information, never answer the question that wasn't asked. “Why did the paper say the money might have come from Eddie Spano?” Kevin demanded.

“It had to come from somewhere. They don't think it could have been Jimmy's. It's too much money.”

“Where did it come from?”

Answer half the question: “What Jimmy gave me, I don't know where it came from.”

“What the f*ck do you mean, you don't know?”

“I never asked him.”

“He just hands you thousands in cash every couple months for eighteen f*cking years, and you never ask where it comes from?”

“Kev, I work with criminals. There are a lot of things I'm better off not knowing.”

“Criminals?”

“I don't mean Jimmy!” Like hell you don't. “Generally, always, all I want to know is that I'm not involved in anything illegal. Beyond that, sometimes the less information I have, the better.”

“If you were thinking like that, you were thinking there was something bad to know.”

Phil said nothing, spiraling down.

“If you never asked him”—this sarcastically, a tone he'd never heard from Kevin before—“how could you know you weren't involved in anything illegal?”

“My job . . .” Phil drank, a stall while he tried to find a way to regain altitude. “Your father asked me to look after you and your mother while he was gone.”

“I still—”

“Your father was my responsibility, Kev.”

Kevin's answer was what he'd been taught, but with a new, unsure note. “You did everything you could. Mom always said.”

Okay, Kevin. It's been nice knowing you. “I let him—I encouraged him—to plead to something I was sure he didn't do.”

Phil watched that hit Kevin like arctic air. Then he said: “I don't think he shot Jack Molloy. I never did.”

“If my dad—then who do you think did?”

It wasn't really a question, just an automatic reaction. Like a blink to clear your eyes when you're not sure what you're seeing. Phil let it go, waited for the next one.

“No one else was there,” Kevin said. “Just them. Jack Molloy and my dad.”

“I think someone else was.”

Kevin stared, and drank, and stared, and said, “Uncle Jimmy? You think Uncle Jimmy was there? You think Jimmy did it?”

No answer from Phil.

“Oh, f*ck you, Uncle Phil! F*ck you, that's nuts!”

“It was his money.”

“Or someone else's. You just said.”

“Or someone else's. But it came through Jimmy. Why? If he didn't know something?”

“Something like what?”

“If he didn't do it, he knew who did.”

“My dad did it. By accident. Uncle Jimmy was my dad's best friend!”

“Everyone says that.”

“You don't believe it?”

“That's not what I mean.” No? Then why did you say it like that, that icy edge?

Phil waved to the waitress, who nodded and went behind the bar to the tap, didn't even approach. Thanks a lot, honey. “I didn't meet any of those people—your father, Jimmy, any of them—until after Markie was arrested. I was new in private practice, but everything I'd done since the day I left law school was criminal defense. I didn't know whose friend was whose around here, but I knew Markie was lying. I could smell it.”

“And you didn't do anything?”

“He wouldn't let me. He told me exactly what he'd told the police, and his story never changed. ‘Jack shot at me, I shot back, I was scared, I never thought I'd hit him.' In the end I was goddamn grateful to be offered the plea on the gun charge, because Markie was ready to go to trial.”

“Because he thought you'd get him off. Because he trusted you.”

That was a punch in the gut. “Kevin—” Thank God, the waitress and the new beers. She gave them one each, grabbed up the empties, and left. Come on, honey, don't you want to sit and chat?

“Kev, for God's sake. He kept insisting he'd done it. What the hell defense did I have? Insanity? I'm not a magician.” Oh, but that's wrong. Ask anyone on the other side. They'll tell you: Constantine's a sorcerer, a conjuror, a spell-caster. Rabbits from hats, pickpockets from jail, gangsters from prison and flash! into the Witness Protection Program because, presto change-o, Phil Constantine can turn drug dealers into cooperators and accused murderers into innocent men.

But only since Markie. Only since he'd started to see Markie Keegan's eyes looking out of every new client's face.

The waitress made a circuit of the room, bringing fresh drinks to men who hadn't called for them. It was likely that outside the sun was moving across the sky but in here the light didn't change and the silence didn't change and nothing changed except the way Kevin looked at Phil.

Phil turned from that look, focused on the names and dates and loves dug into the table.

“The front booth,” Kevin said quietly. Phil looked up. “My dad carved his initials and my mom's in a heart in the front booth. Did you ever tell my mom my dad was lying?”

“She didn't believe it, he wouldn't admit it. I stopped saying it.”

“Did you tell Uncle Jimmy?”

Guinness, thought Phil, used to taste better than this. “In the beginning. When I still thought if I could find the truth I could get Markie off. I tried, Kev. I tried to find the truth.” Why had he said that? What would Kevin care, what he'd tried, what he'd failed at?

“What did you say to him? Uncle Jimmy, in the beginning?”

“I told him I was sure Markie was lying. I asked him if he knew what really happened. Because everyone told me he was Markie's friend. I asked if Markie had said anything to him. I asked . . .”

“What?”

“I asked if he knew who Markie was trying to protect. He said no. He asked me how light a sentence I thought I could get Markie. I said I didn't think Markie was guilty and I wanted the truth. Jimmy said, What if what Markie's saying is the truth? Or it's not but he keeps saying it? What will happen to him?

“I said if we could sell the self-defense story, maybe we could get a plea deal, no charges in the death, only the gun. There was no way out of the gun. I said with no priors, upstanding citizen, wife and child, probably I could play the violin a little and get the minimum, sixteen months. A possibility of probation, no jail time, if he gave up the gun dealer.”

“But he didn't.”

“Because he didn't know who it was. Because he hadn't bought the gun.”

“He told you that?”

“No, dammit, Kevin, he didn't tell me that! He swore to me he'd bought it from some guy in some bar in Tottenville. He didn't remember the name of the guy, or the bar, or the street the bar was on, or how to get to the street the bar was on. I took the train out to Tottenville one Saturday and spent the whole goddamn day wandering around. You been to Tottenville?” Tottenville, twenty years ago a mini-Appalachia holding down the southern end of Staten Island, where rusting cars were lawn ornaments and chickens shared the yards with scruffy dogs.

“We don't go down there much.”

“From Pleasant Hills. You think in 'seventy-nine anyone did? After everyone Markie knew threw their cash together so he could make bail, I made him drive me back there. To look for the bar. A complete bust. I asked him why he'd been down there. He said, No real reason. He said he had no real reason for buying the gun or for carrying it that night. He said he didn't know why Jack was so pissed, he'd just been trying to help, to set Jack straight. He swore to me he and Jack were alone. He told me he wasn't protecting anybody. He told me bullshit, Kev. And it was all he'd tell me.”

Kevin said nothing, sat so still it was almost possible for Phil to believe he hadn't heard him.

“I could see what was going to happen,” Phil said quietly. “He was going to prison. He was going to do someone else's time—a lot of time, Kev—and there wasn't a goddamn thing I could do.” Phil remembered it, that airless feeling in his chest. No countermove. No fake, no palmed ace, no magic flowers bursting from an empty hand. “And then out of the blue I got a call from an ADA, offering a plea on the gun. Pretty much the deal I'd outlined to Jimmy, almost exactly that. We had nothing, and they were offering a plea. Do you understand what that means?”

Kevin shook his head.

Shit, thought Phil, of course he understands, no one could miss it.

But maybe not. Phil remembered a Panthers game, ten-year-old Kevin leaning on his coach, limping off from second, his ankle bloody (Phil gripping Sally's hand, shaking his head to keep her from the dugout). Kevin's face was white with pain, but he was dry-eyed. No tears, until he saw his coach and the other team's coach screaming at each other nose to nose, until he saw the fury in his teammates' eyes, until he understood he'd been spiked on purpose by the sliding runner. When he cried, it wasn't because of the hurt and the blood. It was bewilderment and surprise that someone would be so deliberately cruel.

So maybe he really didn't get it.

Or maybe he just wanted to make Phil say it.

“It meant a fix, Kev.”

Phil drained his Guinness. “Kev, look where I was. What I had. I didn't know this town, I didn't know where the fix was coming from. My client was a guy I liked, young, with a family. The plea deal was good. Especially if you believed he'd pulled the trigger. And I seemed to be the only one who didn't.

“Maybe I could've found the truth, if I'd kept digging. But I couldn't be sure that was the best thing for Markie. Whatever the truth was, Markie was my client, and he didn't want it out. Maybe he was right, in terms of whatever the hell was going on in Pleasant Hills, things I didn't understand.”

That was it. What else was he going to say? And where was the mistake? What should he have done differently? What had brought him to this dead room with Kevin silent across a scarred table? What had he done wrong?

Kevin looked at him and answered Phil's unasked question: “And you were in love with my mom.”