Absent Friends

LAURA'S STORY

Chapter 16

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The Invisible Man
Steps Between You and the Mirror

November 2, 2001

Morning in the newsroom. Laura, as always, early; other reporters drifting in one by one, stopping by her desk to ask, How are you doing? Are you okay? All of them sympathetic, all of them kind. But some—the honest ones, Laura thought—not suppressing their ironic and envious smiles when they said, Hell of a way to get a story.

Five clocks in plain view, none of them moving. Just get through the meeting, Laura told herself. Just that.

Laura's desk phone ringing. No, she thought, no, whoever you are and whatever you want, I can't. Even as she thought that, she grabbed the receiver up.

“Laura Stone.”

“Owen McCardle.”

An unfamiliar voice, a familiar name. Laura cast about. “I'm sorry—”

“Friend of Jimmy McCaffery's.”

Yes. “Yes, I remember. You were at Engine 168. Harry interviewed you.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Mr. McCardle, after what just happened—”

“I want you to come here.”

“I—”

“It's goddamn important, Miss Stone.”

Anger slammed Laura as though McCardle's fist had pounded her through the electronic distance between them.

Laura closed her eyes. But that brought, not longed-for emptiness, but—again, once again—the sight of Kevin Keegan, swaying, clutching his bloodied chest. Staring not at Edward Spano, the man who'd shot him, but at Phil Constantine, motionless, frozen. Only his eyes reached for Keegan. Then Keegan fell.

I want to go home, Laura thought. Not to Harry's empty apartment, or her own, not to anyplace in this ruined city. Home.

“It's goddamn important.” McCardle's voice, each word separate, a boiling fury.

Too tired to argue, Laura said, “All right.” What choice was there? With the sinking feeling that she knew the answer, she asked, “Where is ‘here'?”



The ferry ride, one more time. Manhattan shrank as Laura stood on the back of the boat in the bright sun and watched. She didn't want to look forward, couldn't bear to see anything more coming toward her.

From the terminal she took a cab, leaning back against the seat. After yesterday, she was not ready to be seen in Pleasant Hills.

The cab drove past a school, a red-brick building she hadn't noticed before. The thought struck her: I could teach. English lit. Shakespeare, Yeats, Auden. The echoing halls of her midwestern high school came to her, the blaze of golden trees in autumn, the blue of the lake. Let Jesselson have the rest of this. Let him do the digging to prove Spano killed Harry. I'll leave. I'll get out now. There's still time.

The idea was comforting and also exciting. Yes. After this interview. Whatever McCardle had, she'd take it down, hand it to Jesselson, pack up, and fly home.

Would you mind, Harry? she asked. Now that I'm this close, now that it's this obvious? Do I have to stay, and watch, the way we all watched the towers burn and fall and keep burning? This time, can't I turn away?



The house where the cab left her was compact, well kept. A white fence edged the front yard. Against it, yellow and orange chrysanthemums burned. The doorbell sounded a three-note chime, and the door was opened instantly by a man who had surely been waiting, waiting. He said, “Laura Stone?” and moved aside to let her in as though the answer were not in doubt.

She replied, “Mr. McCardle?” though there was no question about that, either. He had a drooping gray mustache, the rough, uneven skin of a man who spends his time outdoors, and angry gray eyes.

Unnerved by those eyes, Laura stopped just inside the door and asked as he closed it, “What's this about?”

McCardle shut the door, strode into the living room, pointed to the sofa. He sat in an easy chair but didn't speak. How shall I handle this, what should I do? Laura wondered. She waited for instructions from Reporter-Laura, but none came. And at that—Reporter-Laura's silence, her absence—a slow tide of fear began to rise.

“Jimmy McCaffery gave me that ten years ago.” McCardle's hands remained on the arms of his chair, but his eyes moved to a thick, yellowed envelope on the table beside Laura. “He said, Owen, hold this for me. Don't have to do anything with it, just keep it. I said, What the hell's in it, kid? Your will, something like that? He said, It's the truth. I just think it should be someplace. What do you mean, the truth? I said. About what? I'm not sure, he said. But I know it's the truth.

“So I kept it. Pretty much forgot about it. Even when Jimmy died. A lot of guys gone that day, a lot to think about.” McCardle's rough hand brushed at something on his pants leg. “I've been down at the pit, every day. You find this guy's belt buckle, that guy's wedding ring. Guys you knew. You know what that's like?”

Inside the fence at Ground Zero, Laura had seen the firefighters stop and lift something, some small, crumpled thing, from the dust and rubble. She'd tried to imagine what that was like.

She shook her head.

McCardle fixed his fierce gray eyes on her again.

“Wasn't until your paper ran that story. Not the first ones, about Jimmy, or Kevin. That other one, about the money, where it came from. I read it and thought, This is crap, I knew Jimmy, when he was here, when he was Superman. And then, like he was in the room, I saw him handing me that, saying, Owen, keep this for me, it's the truth.

“So I dug it out. I read it. I called that reporter, Randall, I made him read it.

“Next thing I know, Randall takes a dive off the bridge. Shit. I put that thing back in the desk. No one needs anyone else dying, not now. But at least, I think, at least the lies about Jimmy'll stop.

“But they don't. You just don't let it go. More and more crap, worse and worse—”

McCardle's hands were gripping the arms of his chair so tightly they threatened to rip the fabric. The muscle along his jaw bulged, ropy and thick.

“And now Kevin. Goddammit. Goddammit! You did that, Miss Stone. You got Kevin killed.”

Mutely, Laura shook her head.

McCardle boiled up out of his chair. He loomed over Laura. She thought he was going to seize her, hit her, tear her in half. She did nothing to stop him.

“Read it,” he snarled, and slammed out of the room, out of the house, leaving her alone.