Absent Friends (10 page)

What had she done, when she'd read that? Smiled, probably. Seen in her mind the gleam in Harry's eye, the predatory glint he got. (They all got it, people like Harry and Laura, and though others had long said gin had dulled Harry's eyes and the glint was no more, Laura knew that was wrong.) And—oh God, this came back to her now, how was it such small things remained?—she'd hoped, before he'd gone to see his source, the person who was offering him this treasure, that Harry had remembered to shave.

A thunderclap. No; Leo's voice. “McCaffery?”

The glint in Harry's eye, his note on her computer screen, both vanished, and Leo's office swam back into view. The thunder had been a question, so Laura answered it. “Yes.”

“You have these papers?”

“No.”

“You saw them?”

“No.”

“Randall had them?”

“I don't know.”

“What's in them?”

“I don't know. Hot stuff, Harry said.”

“How do you know about them?”

“He e-mailed.”

“Yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Where'd they come from? Where are they now?”

“I don't know. But I can find them, Leo. So you see—”

He waved a hand, as all gods do to silence mortals.

Leo sat unmoving as a boulder. Laura prayed for Leo's phone to stay silent, for all the reporters typing and talking and buzzing around the coffee machine to be satisfied with their sources and their assignments and not need anything, right now, from Leo.

The boulder finally stirred. “Three days,” a rocky voice rumbled from its depths. “Bring me something that says you're right. No extension, no maybe. Show me there's a story.”

Laura, ready with her next argument, a fresh assault of convincing words, tossed away those words and grabbed some new ones. “Thank you.” She stood quickly.

Leo had no more to say. Laura, afraid something would occur to him, turned and hurried away, resisting (as she was sure everyone always had to) the urge to back out of Leo's presence, bowing.

M
ARIAN
'
S
S
TORY

Chapter 2

Complicated Work

October 31, 2001

Pedestrians were no longer required to show identification at the Canal Street barricades. Police sentries still stood two to a block, but their job now was to prevent vehicles from entering, to answer questions from the public when they could (although what answers did anyone have?), and to keep an eye out (for what, no one knew). They generally ignored anyone who neither spoke to them nor appeared suspicious according to whatever private formula for suspicion each officer used. Still, Marian offered a smile to the young policeman standing by the blue sawhorse she passed. He nodded but did not smile back, his eyes old and wary in his impassive face. The gold numbers on his collar showed him to be from a precinct far from Lower Manhattan. Marian wondered whether he was glad to have been assigned here. Was he grateful to have a useful role to play? Or did he desperately want to be home, reporting at his usual time to his usual captain, patrolling streets he knew, on the lookout for crimes he could understand?

Through the late morning sun Marian carried coffee and the morning
Times.
She had never had much faith in the
Tribune,
even before, but she used to buy it every day. Sam, back when they were together, had put forward a theory.

“Too much meditation,” he declared, rising from the breakfast table to fetch the coffee press, “lowers your blood pressure. The
Tribune
raises it again.”

“You can't read just one paper,” Marian countered. “Even if it's the
Times.
Thank you,” as he poured coffee first for her, then for himself. “You need different perspectives. You're old enough to know that.”

“I thought I wasn't old enough to cross the street by myself.”

“If you look both ways.” Marian shook the paper out and turned the page. This was the way they dealt with the difference in their ages, making a joke of it between them. Marian believed in keeping issues in the open. Then nothing could be slowly turning bad, rotting where it couldn't be seen. “Anyway, you should try meditating. Maybe you wouldn't get so upset when you're running late to meetings.”

“My boss would fire me if I didn't get upset when I ran late.” On his way back to his chair Sam leaned over Marian, parted her hair, and nuzzled the back of her neck.

“Ummm,” said Marian; but she leaned forward, reached across the table as though she needed the milk pitcher, though her coffee was already pale. “Oh my God, listen to this!” she wailed, and she was off again, incensed at the
Tribune
for the same quality she admired: fiery muckraking.

Tribune
reporters tore into corrupt politicians, drug-dealing rock stars, millionaire athletes who beat their wives. They pounced with conviction and courage, and of those things, Marian approved. The problem was a lack of balance. Everyone had a story; every story had two sides. At least; at least that. But you never saw the other side of a story in the
Tribune.
Only the
Tribune
's passionate indignation, its outraged cries for justice.

Or whatever powerful emotion the
Tribune
was peddling at the moment.

Two weeks ago, when they'd run Harry Randall's tribute to Jimmy, Marian had been unable to read it. She sat at her desk, her office door shut, staring at the headline, trying to make her eyes move down the page. But every time she hit a name—Tom's, Father Connor's; Owen McCardle, she remembered him—it was another bone-jarring bump on a rocky road. In the end she gave up. And what would she learn, what would this story tell her? Everything in it was no doubt true, but the truth would not be in it.

Marian recognized the irony: the McCaffery Fund had by that time already hit over $100,000 and by anyone's accounting was likely to top out at over $2 million; people were being so generous in these terrible times. And the McCaffery Fund's administrator could not bring herself even to skim a newspaper story that was sure to spark a new round of donations, a newspaper story in which she herself was quoted. Everyone else in the office was talking about it, about the sorrow and the sense of loss it brought home to them. Marian hoped no one would notice her silence, or perhaps that they would take it for deep emotion and go no further.

She had walked through that day saying little and had a paralyzing headache by noon. Still, she told herself, these articles the
Tribune
was running, these tales of the lives of true heroes—and on that day, in that tower, Jimmy had been a true hero, she did not doubt that—brought such comfort to New Yorkers that Marian was inclined to believe that the story, like any powerful, consoling myth, had been, on the whole, a valuable thing.

Then came Randall's second article. When he'd called to ask for another interview, she'd felt a heart-skip of fear, as though a solid path she walked had without warning turned marshlike underfoot.

“Just a follow-up,” Randall had said. “The ‘Hero' stories make people feel better.”

But the
Tribune
had not run follow-ups to any of the other “Hero” stories. And precisely because Marian so desperately wanted people to feel better, she mistrusted Harry Randall's use of this as a reason. “Why this one?” she had asked. “Why Jimmy?”

“Because of the young guy” had been Randall's easy answer. “Kevin Keegan, that you pointed me to. The Fire Department torch passing from one generation of heroes to the next, that kind of thing.”

She had considered refusing the interview, pleading a lack of time, pleading a concern for Jimmy's privacy, for Kevin's and Sally's, too. But in the end, knowing he'd be calling Sally in any case, calling Kevin—calling Phil Constantine and hearing, well, who knew
what
half-truths and lawyer's lies—she'd allowed Randall to come again to her office, to drink her coffee and ask his questions. The questions he selected increased her unease. Asking about Jimmy, he asked about Kevin; and when, asking about Kevin, he asked about Markie, Marian felt a flutter of desperation. She tried, as ever, to tell only the truth. But she chose truths that led in directions she wanted Randall to go, away from paths she hoped he wouldn't even see, so overgrown were they, so choked, so long untraveled.

But she was not sure she had succeeded.

When that second article ran, she forced herself to read it. Finished, she brewed a cup of ginger tea (good for a queasy stomach) and stared out the window. Close to her, the dark stone buildings and the smooth glass ones stood as they always had; but in the gaps between them the view had changed. Now she could see the twisted steel, the giant, slow-motion cranes, and the great sprays of water arcing through the haze.

Then two days ago the
Tribune
had published Randall's third story. Marian, through mounting panic, had allowed herself to be interviewed for this article, also, hoping yet to persuade Randall that the hero Jimmy had been for the last twenty years was so much more important than anything that might have come before.

And this time she knew she had failed.

Quiet, well worded, asking seemingly reasonable questions about the circumstances of Jimmy McCaffery's life, Randall's third story had had the same effect on Marian as watching a naturalist turn over rocks on a hillside with endless patience until he came on the one concealing the nest of writhing snakes.

And now Marian was privately boycotting the
Tribune.

She knew it wouldn't matter to the paper, the seventy-five cents a day they could no longer count on from the newsstand by her office. It mattered, though, to the stand's owner, a cheerful Pakistani man trying to raise a family in New York. For three weeks after the towers fell, trucks couldn't cross the perimeter to make deliveries; the newsstands had nothing to sell. Even now, though the papers were getting through, business was down. The cheerful man's name was Muhammad; for some people, that was enough, and they were buying elsewhere. That made Marian furious, and she said as much to Muhammad, who merely shrugged. Still, in her heart she could understand. People, everywhere, wanted to do what was right, to do something that would help. They just didn't know what that was, the thing they should do.

And now that she wasn't buying the
Tribune,
now that being named Muhammad was bad for business, Marian asked for a Coke and a Kit Kat bar to go with her
Times.
Today, handing them to her, Muhammad had wished her a happy Halloween. It was Halloween? She hadn't remembered. The time in the year, she thought with bitterness, when we admit the existence of evil, in order to mock it. We hang silly skeletons and friendly ghosts and congratulate ourselves that we've vanquished demons, conquered wickedness, gone to the very gates of hell and laughed.

No, the
Tribune
wouldn't notice her boycott and would not care. But the principle was important to her. Marian did many things because of principle, not allowing the depressing truth of how little effect her gestures sometimes had to give her permission to forgo them.

As a child, sitting in the sweet-scented darkness of St. Ann's with her father and her three little sisters, holding her baby brother (the baby her mother had left behind for them to love when she went to Heaven), and listening as hard as she could to Father Connor telling them all to be good (though sometimes he said it in grown-up words), Marian had had a vision of what that would mean. What would happen if everyone tried to be good. All those small tries would be like pebbles. Everyone would bring one, a little stone, rough or smooth, and put it down. Some people would go and get another, and another, though some would not. Slowly, the pile would grow, and be a mound, and then a hill, and then a mountain, covered finally with green sheltering forests filled with birdsong.

B
OYS
'
O
WN
B
OOK

Chapter 5

The Man Who Sat by the Door

September 11, 1978: The Boys (Tom)

Tom's gone into his father's business, though it doesn't look that way. Tom's job is in construction, his uncle's company (the uncle's clean—at least, he has no sheet). Big arms, good hands, Tom can lay bricks straight and fast, but he's usually elsewhere. Tom's learning the business, the real one his father's in. Well spoken, Tom, and smart; he'll run things one day, they all see that, could even if he weren't who he is, the boss's son.

The boss, Tom's father: Big Mike Molloy. Mike the Bear.

Yes, they all can see Tom will be running things, though Tom's different from his old man, his ways are different. Tom thinks far ahead, Tom works things out before he starts. He could confuse you, the way he talks, he could sell ice to you if you were an Eskimo. And make you think it's your lucky day, he's doing you a favor, hauling that iceberg into your backyard.

Eleven years old: it's spring, and the kids want to go to the circus.

Not the small one, the Spivey Traveling Circus and Midway, that comes to Staten Island every summer with rides and a sideshow, sets up the tents and cotton candy machines in the field by Hylan Boulevard. Spivey's is great, and the kids always go. They have flashing lights and an elephant, they have sword-swallowers and the bearded lady. (The boys pretend they love her, make kissy noises; the girls roll their eyes, push the boys, say they're dumb. The girls are infinitely too grown up and worldly to care about something like this, just some freaky thing that happened to the poor lady, puh-leese. Though they steal glances back at her as they all walk away.)

But now the kids want to go to the big circus. Barnum and Bailey's. In the city, in three rings, in Madison Square Garden. They want to see a whole ring full of elephants, and tigers jumping through fiery hoops, they want to see the spotlights slicing through the dark and hear the ringmaster's booming voice.

For each it's different, this thing they all want.

Marian wants to see the animal parade, baby elephants holding their mother's tails, graceful dancers twirling on the backs of proud prancing horses. Sally wants to laugh while clowns squirt each other from bottomless seltzer bottles, see dozens of them scrambling out of one little tiny car. For Vicky, it's the strongman, the one who lifts two girls, four, six, in his huge arms, holds them all in the air for as long as they want.

Jimmy wants to see the trapeze artists, soaring, flying, holding nothing, their faith pinned on the patient men hanging high in the air waiting to catch them. Markie's heard there are jugglers, fire-eaters, sword-swallowers, magicians changing red silk to blue, pulling rabbits from hats. Jack can't wait for the frantic sweeping spotlights, the clawing cats, a man exploding out of a cannon. Tom wants to see the ringmaster snapping his whip without looking behind him, because the ringmaster always knows exactly what's happening at each spot at each moment: clowns, acrobats, flyers, and jugglers; tigers, horses, dogs riding on elephants.

But asking the grown-ups to take them to Manhattan is like asking for a trip to France.

The kids are in the woods by the nature preserve, sitting on logs in their secret spot. Marian clears dead leaves away from a yellow crocus trying to come up. Jack's squinting up into the trees, like he's trying to find where the birds are, to spot them where they're hiding. Jimmy's wondering what the difference is between the preserved woods and the part where they are, why some trees are inside and some are outside and who decides that, whether the trees are different and that's why, or they're the same but some are lucky.

Nobody says much, because Tom's thinking.

After a little while of birds cheeping and tree branches rustling, after a time of smelling the damp air and watching the winking gleams of light that reach all the way down from the treetops to tickle the puddles, Tom finally says, like he's not quite sure, like he's talking to himself,
Well . . .

The kids all look at him, and now Tom's smiling, lifting his head and showing them that slow smile that includes them all. Like he's saying, Yeah, okay, he's pretty sure he just had a smart idea, but he wouldn't have had it if everyone else weren't sitting there, too, if everyone hadn't wanted something that got him thinking. The kids feel like they always feel when Tom smiles this smile: Like Tom's been reading their minds. Like Tom can see what they want and from seeing it can find how to do it. And so Tom's smart idea is everybody's idea, really.

And they all have to be part of it, and they are, though none of them has to actually start anything or tell any lies. That's important. Marian won't ever tell any, even as much as she wants to help the kids out. And Jimmy, well, Jimmy just thinks the truth is easier. Jimmy doesn't talk much anyway, and when he does, he likes to keep it pretty plain. Lying's confusing, lying gets you all tripped over yourself sooner or later, because the truth, it'll burn through sometime, whatever you do. The kids all know that's how Jimmy thinks.

So Tom has to make a plan that doesn't need that, because if it needed that, it would never work. All they have to do, if any grown-ups ask—and probably they won't—is say, Yeah, they heard that, too. Tom says, winking at Marian, grinning at Jimmy: And that's true, you did hear it, because I'm telling it to you right now.

And the kids all be quiet, and they listen.

The next day, Sunday, after church, Tom and Jack are walking home with their dad, Big Mike. They turn the corner onto the block where the Spanos live. This is how the Molloys always go, and Tom, like it's just the house that made him think of it, tells his dad the Spano brothers, Eddie and Pete, the kids have to steer clear of them for a few days because they're really pissed off.

Why, Big Mike wants to know, what'd you do? And don't use that language in front of your mother.

Oh yeah, sorry, says Tom, even though his mom's walking ahead of them, talking with Vicky's mom, their heads leaning toward each other, Tom knows she didn't hear. Anyway, he says, they're not mad at us. Just, those guys, when they're mad, they'll pound on anything, you know? Especially, it's their dad they're pi—they're mad at, and you know Mr. Spano.

Oh, Big Mike knows Al Spano. He nods, rubs his jaw. Mrs. Molloy's gone ahead another few steps, she's listening to Vicky's mom real hard, so Big Mike grins down at Tom, winks, says, Guy's an asshole.

Tom grins back.

Serve him right, says Big Mike. Teach him a lesson if his kids took him on.

He'd cream them, says Jack.

Now, says Big Mike. Not someday.

Yeah, says Tom, but now's when they're mad. So I told everyone, watch out for Eddie and Pete, stay away.

Mike nods again. That's right, son, he says. You look out for your friends. The Spano boys, what's their beef?

The circus, says Tom.

What?

Mr. Spano, he said he'd take them to the circus. In Madison Square Garden. Now he won't.

Broke his promise?

Tom shrugs.

Bad business, breaking promises, says Big Mike.

What I hear, says Tom, Mr. Spano said Barnum and Bailey's, that's for spoiled rich kids and their snotty parents, all those folks in the city don't know what to do with their money. He said, All the way the hell into Manhattan? And seven dollars a ticket, a guy would have to be stupid to pay that so his kid could see an elephant take a crap. He said, Spivey's, that's the kind of show for people like us.

Spivey's? says Big Mike. That elephant they got at Spivey's, I thought he'd croak when they were here last summer. Wouldn't be surprised, that elephant don't come back with them this year. And that bearded lady? Ask me, she glues that thing on.

Well, I don't know about her, says Tom. But that sure is one sorry-ass elephant.

Tom and Jack and Big Mike share a laugh. But anyway, Tom says, that's what Eddie and Pete are so—Tom looks to make sure his mom is still out of range—so
p.o.'d
about. Because Mr. Spano, he says Spivey's was good enough for him when he was growing up, so it's good enough for any son of his.

Yeah? says Tom's father. That's what he says?

Two weeks later, the Saturday before Easter, the kids are bouncing up and down on Madison Square Garden's wooden seats. They're so juiced on cotton candy and the sawdust smell from the sideshow where they got to see the tigers up close in their cages, from the blaring music and the circling lights, they can hardly sit still. Mike the Bear, on one end of their row, says, Ah, settle down, you wild animals, but the kids can't. Mrs. Molloy, smiling on the other end, reaches over to stop Jack from tickling Vicky; to hand Markie a napkin so he can wipe purple cotton candy from the end of his nose; to calm them all down just enough so they're ready, really ready, when the lights go down and the music stops and the ringmaster booms, Ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages! and not looking behind him, snaps his whip.

It's true then, Tom's ways are different from the old ways. And times are changing. Not that Mike the Bear's not smart, no one would say that. But the new times, they call for another approach. A guy like Tom, he makes everyone look legit. That's what's needed now.

Tom's happy.