Absent Friends

LAURA'S STORY

Chapter 12

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The Water Dreams

October 31, 2001

Angelo Zannoni, leaning on his balcony rail, turned to Laura. “You want some tea?”

Mentally she shook herself. She'd been, she realized, mesmerized by the lights sparkling on the water, by the clear air. Boats came and went, stars stood still. From this balcony everything seemed so ordered, so predictable. The universe unfolding. As long as you couldn't see over the treetops to the tip of Manhattan.

Or hear the echoing silence of Harry's apartment.

“No. No, thank you. I don't want to take up any more of your time.” She bent for her tape recorder, dropped her notebook into her bag.

“You see a lot of things waiting for me to do?” Zannoni didn't pause for her to answer but pulled open the sliding glass and waited for her to pass into the nearly bare living room. Laura glanced into the kitchen as he walked her to the door. Vacant countertops, no pots or pans or canisters. A kettle on the stove. A single white dish towel folded over the oven door handle. She found herself wishing for a quick peek into the bedroom. She had a mental picture of scarlet draperies, bowls of rose petals, lush nudes reclining in massive gold-framed oil paintings.

And she could hear Harry's delighted laugh at the absurdity of her vision.

And was thrilled at the sound.

Luckily, Reporter-Laura was still paying attention to work. At the door, about to shake Zannoni's hand and say thanks and goodbye, something occurred to her. “Can I ask you one more thing? You said you talked to the detective who knew the Molloys and the Spanos best. Who was that?”

Zannoni shook his head, as though refusing an answer; but he stopped, said, “Oh, what the hell,” and said, “Charlie Rosoff. Jewish, see?”

Laura didn't see.

“Not Irish, not Italian. It wasn't like the goombahs or the micks trusted Rosoff. But at least they all knew Charlie didn't belong to the other guys.”

“Can I find him?”

A brief look, then, “He's brass now. At Police Plaza.”



Laura whipped out her cell phone as soon as she left Fitzgerald Drive behind. The newsroom number was on her speed dial, but she had to punch in the letters of Jesselson's name because she didn't know his extension. Oh, Hugh, she pleaded, be working late. Half a ring, then, “Jesselson.”

Thank God. “Hugh, it's Laura.”

“Hey.” It seemed to her that was a pleased “Hey,” but immediately on its heels was “What's up?”

“A cop named Charlie Rosoff?”

“Assistant Commissioner. Operations.”

“Hard to see?”

“Normally, doesn't have to be. Relies on his personality. Real people repellent.”

“What do you mean ‘normally'?”

“Not normal down there, now.”

“Will I have trouble getting to him?”

“Maybe.”

“Can you help?” She was doing it, too, Laura realized: talking as though each word came with a price tag.

“Right now?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe. How come?”

“Your man Zannoni gave me his name. Rosoff was in the Staten Island precinct in 'seventy-nine when the Molloy shooting happened.”

“I'll call. Your number?”

She gave Jesselson her cell phone number. The phone rang again before she'd reached Main Street.

“He's pissed, but he'll see you.”

“Why's he pissed?”

“About to go home. And no love between cops and firefighters, but nobody likes what we're saying about McCaffery.”

“Why's he seeing me?”

“Told him you're wacko. Said you'd print lies if he didn't.”



One Police Plaza was a glass-and-red-brick slab near City Hall, a building that tried to impress by height inside and out, by complicated interior brickwork that she supposed was art, by echoing hard surfaces and a totally unintelligible circulation system that she supposed was security. She showed her ID and had her bag inspected at three different desks, went through two metal detectors, and was led from the ninth-floor elevator to a door with “Assistant Commissioner Charles Rosoff” gold-leafed on it, by a stony-faced policewoman who looked as if she'd just as soon shoot Laura as take her a step farther.

Rosoff was a scowling, balding man with huge hands. He didn't stand when she came in, just looked at his watch and growled, “Fifteen minutes.” The policewoman shut the door behind them.

“I appreciate—”

“Don't bother. The only reason I stayed, Jesselson says you're a fly-off-the-handle broad with a bug up your—a bee in your bonnet about the Jack Molloy shooting, from back in the goddamn Dark Ages.” Gee, thanks, Hugh, Laura thought. “He said you didn't get the straight shit, you'd make it up. You do that, the department might sue your rag, and your own personal ass, except we're a little busy right now. In case you haven't noticed, Miss”—he glanced at a pad in front of him—“Stone—Miss Stone, there's a war on at the moment, and we're in the front lines. No one gives a fart about what happened on Staten Island a thousand years ago. Now you have fourteen minutes.”

He sat back with another glance at his watch.

Laura sat without invitation. Around here a man with a wooden leg might not be invited to sit. She didn't take out a recorder; there'd be no point in even asking. She switched both of them on in her bag while she reached for her pad and pen, began speaking before she'd pulled those out, so Rosoff couldn't start again and chew up the rest of her time. “Just a few questions.” She caught the sharp icy edge in her voice. Laura Stone, a fly-off-the-handle broad. So crazy she'll print lies. Don't mess with me. “I understand when you were at the 124, you were the detective with the most knowledge about the Molloys and the Spanos.”

“Understand from where?”

“A retired sergeant named Angelo Zannoni.”

“Zannoni.” Rosoff snorted. “I remember that a*shole. He and his partner—Miller—they thought they were Starsky and Hutch. Okay, so the locals were my hobby. So?”

“Two things. One: the manslaughter charges filed against Mark Keegan were dropped, and the plea deal was only on the gun charge. Why?”

“Not our choice. The DAs do that. We just haul 'em in. DAs charge 'em.”

“Based on evidence you supply.”

Rosoff shrugged, his combative eyes fixed on Laura's.

“All right,” said Laura, in a voice that really said: uh-huh, well, we'll come back to that. “Two: the thing that seems to have sparked the fight that night between Molloy and Keegan was a phony rumor that the cops were cracking down on Molloy's gang. Where did it come from?”

Rosoff stared at her. “Where did you get that?”

“Why?”

“It's crap.”

“It was about something else?”

“No idea.”

“I'm sorry, that's not true. The lawyer told me. Phillip Constantine.”

“That f*ck?” Rosoff laughed, an unpleasant bark. “That may be the one good thing comes out of all this, if that piece-of-shit lawyer goes down.”

“Constantine told me,” said Laura, careful not to react to Rosoff's language, certain he expected her to, “because he said it would all come out anyway. So: it's true, right?”

Rosoff picked up a thin gold pen from his desk and tossed it down immediately. “Shit. Yeah, okay, it's true.”

“Where did the rumor come from?”

“No idea.”

“Come on. The cop who knew the most about these people? Didn't you wonder?”

“Sure I wondered. But I don't know.”

“Did Eddie Spano plant it?”

“Not likely. Keegan wouldn't've trusted anything he got from any butthole buddy of Spano's.”

“So where did he get it?”

“Why don't you ask that lawyer f*ck?”

“He says he doesn't know.”

“You asked him?”

“How the hell else would I know what he said?” Laura snapped.

“You believe him?”

Laura thought she heard a note of uncertainty in Rosoff's growl. This was probably not a man who got snapped at very much.

“A defense attorney? As if.” She could hear Reporter-Laura cheering her on. “But whatever he does know, he's too slippery to tell me.” Laura let contempt for the slippery leak into her voice. She looked Rosoff straight in the eye, to say: As opposed to my admiration for the blunt and straightforward, for any man brave enough to let the chips fall where they may.

Rosoff met Laura's stare, then cocked his head, as though he'd learn something if he saw her from a new angle. She didn't move. The window behind him was filled with black water and black sky, the lights of boats and stars and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. One of the cargo ships Laura had been watching from Angelo Zannoni's terrace was slipping into the distance, going to a new job in a new place. Laura wondered if it had finished the work it had come here to do, or if that job had been disrupted, ruined by the attacks, the collapse, the new world.

“F*ck,” Rosoff said. “You're gonna skewer this guy McCaffery no matter what, right?”

“I'm looking for the truth,” Laura declared. She rolled on before he could snarl out his thoughts on truth. “I think McCaffery had something to do with Jack Molloy's death and he's been paying off Mark Keegan's family ever since. I think the money's not his, and that means someone else was also involved, probably Spano. I think the investigation into all this is what led to the death of a reporter on my paper.”

“That guy who jumped off the bridge? That was suicide.”

“It was murder.”

Rosoff peered at her again and didn't speak. Hey, come on, Laura thought, you can't run out the clock like that, it's not fair.

Fair? Laura felt an icy wash slip over her skin as she heard Harry's voice, mocking and amused. After everything that's happened, Stone, you're still complaining when things aren't fair?

Rosoff snapped his head around to look in the direction Laura was looking, toward the window. Water lay flat and moonlight sparkled, boats drifted, the bridge stood. He spun back. “What's the matter with you? You look like you saw a ghost.”

A plane, Laura realized he meant. A jet banking low. Or an explosion in the harbor, a new billowing black cloud.

“Just thinking,” she managed. “Just remembering something.”

Under his breath Rosoff muttered, “Shit.”

“About McCaffery?” Laura prompted, trying to behave like the hard-edged reporter she'd been a few seconds ago, though her face was hot and her heart was pounding. Harry, she thought, for pity's sake, I'm working! Leave me alone! No! No, wait, no, don't!

“Harry Randall,” Rosoff said. “What makes you think the guy didn't jump?”

However much of Rosoff's time Laura had left, it wasn't enough to explain that. She settled on “I knew him.”

Rosoff's right hand scratched at something on the thumbnail of the left one. “Any other time,” he said, and he seemed to be talking as much to himself as to Laura, “I'd be happy to help. To see one of those showboat Fire Department pretty boys get what's coming to him, it wouldn't bother me in the least. Now . . .” He kept his eyes on his huge hands.

“Now,” he went on, “maybe this is bigger than him. What happened back then doesn't matter. What happened to that reporter doesn't matter. People look at these guys, they went running into that hellhole, didn't come out, people need them to be better than the rest of us. Even if this one beat his wife, that one cheated on his taxes. They're dead now. Anything bad McCaffery did, he's not gonna do it again. He's not a guy now, he's a legend. What's wrong with that?”

“Because someone killed Harry,” Laura said. “Because the truth matters. Even now.”

“What you're telling me,” Rosoff said, “you're not gonna stop.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Shit.” He stood. Laura thought he was going to march to the door, yank it open, and toss her out, but all he did was turn to face the window. “Well,” he said, his back to her, “what the f*ck do I know? Maybe you're right. Maybe the truth does matter. Right now, only thing that matters to me is we catch the motherf*ckers who did this. Pound them into ashes. But maybe someday I'll feel different. Maybe something else will start mattering again.”

He stood silent, his broad back unmoving. When he spoke, he did not face Laura.

“That story, that we were about to come down on Jack Molloy? Like you said, it was lies. That point in time, we had nothing different than we ever had, nothing that would've stuck. The story was planted, and I was never sure why. I don't know how it got to Keegan. But I've always been pretty sure it came from us.”

“From you?”

“In those days, it wasn't like now. Guys were in Al Spano's pocket. And the Molloys'. Tom, Jack, Big Mike—they all had their own guys, bought and paid for. Nothing I could do about those guys, the bent ones, but I kept an eye on them. There was one guy. Ted O'Hagan. Bad temper, sticky fingers. A real piece of work. He's dead now, four, five years. DUI, into a tree in Jersey.”

Laura waited, watching Rosoff watch the water.

“O'Hagan,” said Rosoff. “Good cop name, right? From a cop family. A couple of things he said later made me figure it was him gave the story out. Funny thing was, I had him pegged as working for Tom Molloy. Must've changed sides when I wasn't looking. A mick working for Spano. Bet they paid him double.” Rosoff turned slowly; his eyes met hers. “I thought I knew. I thought I knew what was going on, and come to find out I don't know shit. How can you fight these bastards when you don't know shit?”

Laura didn't answer. Rosoff's gaze hardened again. “Yeah,” he said bitterly, sitting down. “Molloy. McCaffery. What the hell else do you want to know?”

Rosoff had softened briefly, but he was ice again. Laura had seen this before: it happened all over New York now. Strangers turned to each other for comfort, then caught themselves and turned away. A new etiquette had arisen to cover the situation, and Laura followed it, framing her next question, returning to the topic, not acknowledging what both she and Rosoff knew: that for a moment he hadn't been talking about O'Hagan or Spano or Molloy. That bent cops and gangsters were not the only bastards he didn't know how to fight.