Absent Friends

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 12

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Turtles in the Pond

October 31, 2001

Kevin and Phil sat in the lifeless air of the Bird while Phil told Kevin the story of how he'd failed Markie. Kevin listened to all of Phil's reasons, then made his accusation: “And you were in love with my mom.”

To be accused of love, Phil thought. If there ever was a circumstance where guilty was the same as innocent, this has got to be it.

“Your mother and I, Kev—that came much later.”

Phil found his body tensing, his muscles set, like in a game. Like this morning's game. Over and over he'd blocked Brian's shot, blocked it though Brian was bigger than he, stronger, but Phil had studied Brian as he studied them all. He had counters for every move. If one thing didn't work, he tried another. He'd learned to do that. His whole life, he'd worked at that.

“I did everything I could for your dad, Kev. Your mother and I—”

Kevin waved this off, whatever Phil had been going to say. “I've heard this since I was a kid. You guys didn't get together until a long time later. That doesn't mean it wasn't on your mind.”

Phil looked around. God, for a breeze to blow through this bar! Just something to breathe. Or, hell, to blow the top off, sweep us all up, fling us someplace else, some other time. Ancient Egypt, Camelot, Timbuktu. September 10.

It didn't happen, not a gust, not a zephyr. Phil didn't know what else to do, so he went on. “Markie wanted the plea, Kev. I got . . . I got the feeling he knew it was coming. But he said no, he didn't know, he just hoped. He just said, Great, I'll take it. It's fine.

“Fine? Kev, it was better than fine. Sixteen months, he'd be out in five and change. Manslaughter, he'd been looking at years. Years away from you and Sally. I could see how that was killing him. I tried to use it to get him to tell me the truth, but he never changed his story.”

“Couldn't that mean it was true?”

“It could. Sure it could.” This wasn't the point he wanted to argue with Kevin right now. He didn't want to argue anything with Kevin. Right now or any other time. “Anyway, that should've been it for me. Case over, win or lose, I'm gone. But he asked me to look after you guys. So I told Sally she could call me if she needed anything. There's always paperwork, things to do. She wanted to take you up there on visiting day. I showed her how. Things like that.” Nothing from Kevin. Phil said the rest: “Then Markie died. Kev . . . ?”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Phil had been about to say, Could we get out of here? Walk around, move, breathe some air, talk where there aren't any walls? But he'd forgotten about the crutches. “Nothing.”

As though it was important for Kevin to hear the rest, he went on. “After that—after he died—I told your mom I'd hook her up with another lawyer. Everyone in Pleasant Hills was blaming me. I shouldn't have let him take the plea. I should've gotten him sent somewhere safer. I should've done something.

“I understood. I was the outsider, they had to blame someone. I didn't want Sally caught up in that. But she told me it wasn't my fault, and she wanted me to stay helping her, if I didn't mind. Kev, that's all it was. For a long time.”

That, and Sally's eyes, changing from emerald glass to storm-swept, distant sea.

“So when Jimmy wanted to start giving you money—whoever's money it was—I was the logical guy to come to.”

Finally, something from Kevin. A growl: “And you just took it? You thought Uncle Jimmy shot that guy and let my dad go to jail, and you just took his money?”

“Shit, Kev! Should I have told him to go f*ck himself? What did I have? A gut feeling something's rotten and it's Jimmy McCaffery? You see who he is today—that's who he always was! The stained-glass saint. Me? I was the loser Jew lawyer from the other side of the harbor.” Phil saw, or thought or hoped he saw, a cloud of uncertainty in Kevin's eyes. Move in on that, leverage it. “And I'll say this: I never saw him do anything that contradicted that. Everyone looked up to him. Including you.”

“What the f*ck—?”

“He raised you, Kev! As much as I did. And he”—how to put it?—“he meant more to you. No, hear me out. I was fun, Kev, I was there, you could count on me, but Jimmy was the guy you wanted to be. Who the hell wouldn't? It would have broken your heart, and your mother's, if I could have proved what I knew.”

“What you thought!”

“Okay, thought.” Making my point, said Phil to himself, to Kevin, silently. “Even more reason to keep my mouth shut. Kev, I followed his career all these years. He saved a lot of lives. He was a hero. Except, if I was right, this one time. One time. And the money? Wherever it came from, he was using it to help people I loved.”

Kevin flinched at the word. Phil wondered, Can this really be the first time I've said it to him?

“So who the hell was I to screw that up?” He leaned toward Kevin. “For what? To prove how smart I was? What good would it have done?”

“What about justice? You didn't care?”

Phil opened his hands. Empty. “I think about that every day. About Markie and every client since. I don't know what it means.”

“You don't know? For Christ's sake, Uncle Phil! You're a lawyer!”

The universe of innocence in that outburst would have made Phil laugh with delight, if things were different. Instead, he leaned toward Kevin again and tried to explain.

“The other side—the prosecution—they talk about justice all the time. Paying your debts. Justice for the victims. But I see guys like Markie. Guys with family, friends, guys who had something going. Then one f*ckup, their lives are over. Who's the justice for, Kevin? What does it look like?”

Kevin gave no answer. How could he? There was no answer.

But he had another question.

“Eddie Spano?”

Phil nodded. “You mean, if the money was his?”

“Because you can't be telling me Uncle Jimmy was . . . I don't know what the f*ck, Spano's hit man or something? And we—and that was the payoff? You can't—”

“No, no. But there was a turf thing, the Molloys and the Spanos. I think either Jimmy or your dad was a go-between.”

“Spano was there, too? That night?”

“No. I thought about that, but no. I don't think Jimmy or Markie would have protected him. I think something was going on, some arrangement Eddie Spano and Jack Molloy were working out, through somebody, Jimmy or Markie. And Molloy got drunk, started shooting, got shot, just like Markie said. But I don't think Markie shot him. I think it was Jimmy.”

“Then why would Spano—”

“Maybe that's where the gun came from, from Spano, and Jimmy had that on him. So Jimmy squeezed a little out of him every month. Not a lot, not so much Spano would rather do something else about it. Just enough to keep Jimmy quiet and help you guys out.”

Through narrowed eyes Kevin watched him. Shit, Phil thought. He suddenly knew what his clients must feel when they saw the end coming, when they realized Phil's magic wasn't going to work.

Slowly, Kevin said, “When I was thirteen, the money doubled. You said it was a cost-of-living thing, the state was adjusting it. What was that? Uncle Jimmy squeezing Spano harder? After ten years?”

Phil shook his head. One more. One more and it's over. “That was me.”

Kevin stared.

“Your mother wanted to send you to St. Ann's.”

“You paid for that?”

“I make money. What the hell was I going to do with it?”

“Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.” Kevin shook his head, looking as though he were standing on Mars staring at the scenery. “That was always a big deal to her. Your money. That she wasn't taking your f*cking money.”

“I know.”

“It was important. She always said. You and her, she said, that was a special thing. But what kept us going was her working, and Dad's money from the State. Her and Dad. It was important.”

“I know.”

“How much of this did you tell that reporter?” Kevin's voice was tight. If he wasn't hurt, he'd have started it already, Phil thought. Lurched across the table, grabbed my shirt, thrown me. I'm bigger, he's younger. How would it come out?

“None of it. It was none of his goddamn business. Everything he put in the paper was on the public record, just that no one ever looked for it before. As soon as he found it, I knew it was big trouble.”

“Why did someone kill him?”

“Maybe they didn't. Maybe he jumped. Kevin?”

“What?”

“If someone did kill him, it wasn't me.”

The silence began again, and stretched on and on, until Phil started to wonder if anyone, anything, in this room would ever move anymore.

Then Kevin slid to the end of the booth. He pushed to his feet and leaned for his crutches. He set them where he needed them and gripped them, Phil thought, tighter than he had to: his knuckles were white. Without another word or a look at Phil he swung away, through the room. As he shouldered the door, a flare of bright light filled the opening, as though something had exploded the very moment Kevin left.

Well, sure, thought Phil.

It had.