Absent Friends (30 page)

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Chapter 10

The Old Masters
 (Sailing Calmly On)

October 31, 2001

Earlier, on Staten Island, Laura had caught a cab. Now she found the cab stand deserted and dashed impatiently to the train. She jumped aboard as the bell rang, yanking her shoulder bag through doors determined to squash it.

Laura peered at the map, counted the stations to her destination, and swung onto a seat as the train lurched through a curve. Gazing around, she realized she knew these benches, this lighting, and these floors. The Staten Island train, it seemed, used the same cars as the subway, was in all respects identical (turnstiles and fare, ads and announcements).

But no: not identical. On Staten Island the tracks ran on elevated trestles or through open cuts, no tunnels. The rhythm of dark-while-moving, bright-when-stopped was replaced, first by a disorienting view of rooftops; then quickly and even more disconcertingly by the blank plane of endless concrete wall.

The same yet different. One more thing.

At the Pleasant Hills stop Laura climbed up out of the train and cut to a busy street of one- and two-story shops. Fitzgerald Drive was a hike from the train station, but she welcomed the walk. Already—and this was only her third trip—the ferry ride across the harbor was beginning to weary her. Harry's absence, the towers' absence, the smoke and dust lifting into the sky; the hush, and the pointing. Maybe when she went back tonight, Laura thought, she'd ride inside, on the lowest level, where she and Harry had never sat. She'd review her tapes or read over her notes or stare into space and not know anything until it was time to get off.

She stopped for coffee at a chrome-sided Main Street diner with cardboard black cats in the windows. Harry would have said it looked like it had been there since the Flood. (She could hear him say it, see the rueful smile adding that he recognized it from then.) She shook her head as a dog shakes off a rainstorm and concentrated on finding her way through Pleasant Hills. She was working.

Leaving the business strip, Laura made the required lefts and rights. At Fitzgerald Drive she crumpled her coffee cup into a trash can and followed the street's suburban curve to a three-story clutch of white-stuccoed condos. Third building, top floor, “Zannoni” on the bell, and apparently Zannoni on the balcony: a balding fleshy man, dressed in a white polo shirt and jeans, called down, “You Miss Stone?” and when, squinting past a streetlight, she told him she was, he disappeared inside and buzzed the door open.

He was waiting at the top of the stairs. His lined face and the slack skin of his arms told her he was over sixty, but he greeted her with a firm handshake. So many men shook a thin woman's hand gingerly, as though afraid to break her (though Laura had always detected a certain macho posturing in that, the message of “I could hurt you if I'm not careful” translating easily into “if
you're
not careful”). He led her through a white-walled, sparse living room and onto the stucco-wrapped balcony, where Laura found sling chairs on metal frames, a low plastic table, and an astonishing view.

She stared over shadowed rooftops and breeze-blown trees. Beyond, the lights of the Verrazano arched over the sparkling Narrows. On the far shore the buildings of Brooklyn crowded their waterfront, windows lit.

“Not bad, huh?” Zannoni stood beside her, looking over the vista with satisfied pride, as though he owned it. “Bought the place for the view. You want some tea?” He waved his hand in the table's direction.

Laura left with regret the sight of so much glittering dark water, such promised distances. She sat in a canvas chair and turned down the offer of tea.

“All I have,” Zannoni said, still standing, as though she might change her mind if she knew no other offer was forthcoming. “All I drink. I'm the only Italian in the world doesn't like coffee. You sure?”

When Laura said she was, Zannoni sat.

“I appreciate your seeing me,” she began. Based on the phone call, the sight of him on his balcony, and the handshake, she'd taken on a frank and direct demeanor with a faint undertone of gratitude that acknowledged Zannoni was in charge. The role she was playing was that of a straightforward reporter who did not play roles. “I'm sorry about interrupting your dinner—”

“No problem. Caught me by surprise, is all.”

“I know what you mean. I don't like surprises, either.”

“Yeah.” He nodded, sipped his tea, and said, “Your boy Jesselson says you're interested in the Mark Keegan thing, from back then.”

Laura gave up trying to find a position on the sling chair that made her feel professional, or at least adult. She swung herself sideways so she was facing Zannoni and fished her pad, her pens, her recorder, from her bag. “Is this all right?” she asked Zannoni, setting the recorder on the table.

He eyed it without love. “For now. Might ask you to turn it off, though.”

“Of course. Do you want to start with me asking questions, or do you just—”

“What's your interest?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your interest in Keegan. Jesselson hunted me up, asked if I'd talk to you. Why?”

“I don't know if you've been following the stories in my paper—”

“Yeah.” Zannoni nodded. “You're the guys saying Jimmy McCaffery was laundering Eddie Spano's money through that lawyer, paying off Keegan's widow.”

Laura jumped right on it: “Is that what was happening?”

“What's your interest?” His eyes under thick brows held hers, not fiercely, not tight. An old cop, used to interrogations. A man who could sip tea on his balcony all day long asking the same question, while a stranger decided whether or not to answer him.

“The reporter on the original story,” Laura said. “The one who died. He was a friend of mine.”

“Good friend?”

“Yes.”

Zannoni stared into the distance. Probably, Laura thought as she blinked back tears, the view from where he sat had not suddenly started to shimmer and melt.

He said, “Jesselson says you think someone killed him.”

Laura answered, “That's true.”

“Any idea who?”

She shook her head. Zannoni, still watching the water, answered his own question. “Well, me either.”

“I didn't—”

“Just wanted to make sure, in case that's what you came for. I'm not going to guess. Speculate. Any of that bullshit. But back then.”

“That's why I came,” Laura said. “To hear about back then.”

At that Zannoni turned to her. Laura sat still and returned his look.

“I was a detective at the 124 then,” he said. “Later got transferred to the Bronx. Christ, what a schlep. Those days, right after the Knapp Commission—you heard of that?—they didn't have this community policing thing, like now. They wanted you to live outside your precinct. Keep down graft. Pile of crap. Cops running all around the goddamn city, damn waste of time. I retired eight years ago.”

Zannoni took a gulp of tea. A fresh breeze blew in from the Narrows, got trapped in the cul-de-sac of the balcony. It lifted a page from Laura's notebook; it brought with it the scent of the sea.

“Officers responded to a shots-fired, found Molloy,” Zannoni said. “Called in me and my partner, Jeff Miller. Jeff retired fifteen years ago. Condo in Tucson. Died there last year. The desert, Jesus.” He looked toward the water and shook his head. “Keegan showed up half an hour later. Said he did it, ran because he lost his head but came back to do the right thing. You know the story—Molloy and Keegan?”

“I know what the papers reported.”

Zannoni waited. Laura went on. “They were drinking in a house under construction. Jack Molloy got wild, waved a gun around, and Mark Keegan shot him by mistake.”

“Helluva mistake,” said Zannoni. “Right through the heart.”

Laura said, “Couldn't it still be an accident?”

Zannoni shrugged. “Close your eyes and squeeze, likely to hit something as something else. That's how the defense played it, anyway.”

“Phillip Constantine?”

“That was him, the lawyer. But he came later. Right then Keegan said it himself: I was scared, he shot twice, I just pointed and pulled the trigger. Never figured I'd hit him. I'm not real good with guns, he kept saying.”

“But you think there's something wrong with that?”

Zannoni turned back to Laura. “What the hell was he carrying it for?”

“People carry guns. Especially young punks that age.”

“Mark Keegan wasn't a punk. Grew up with Molloy, but nothing we had said he was connected. Far as I could see, he had no enemies. Everyone liked him. From what people said, even Molloy did, far as he liked anyone, crazy fuck that he was. 'Scuse my language.”

“Don't worry about it.”

Zannoni didn't look worried. “Auto mechanic with a wife and kid. 'Seventy-nine, guns weren't as easy to get as now. Today, okay, everyone has one, same as sneakers, gotta look good. Back then, gangbangers all over the Bronx, yeah, but a mechanic out here, family man? Why'd he have a gun?”

“Do you have an answer?”

“Yeah. He didn't.”

“It wasn't Mark Keegan's gun?”

“Not his, and he wasn't carrying it.”

Lights flashed on the distant flank of a tanker. Carefully, Laura said, “The gun was someone else's? Someone else was there?”

“Always thought so.”

“Who?”

“Never knew.” Zannoni cupped his tea with both hands. “That investigation, it wasn't what you'd call thorough. They pulled me and Jeff off it the second Keegan took the plea. Not like we minded. Plenty of open cases on our books. Guy pleads, hell with it, that one's closed.”

“But you didn't like it?”

For a moment, she didn't think he'd answer. Then he said, “They came out there with a six-pack, Keegan said. We didn't find a single can. Keegan said he picked them up when he ran, in case of prints.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“I went back the next day. Before they pulled us, you know? I went back in the light. I found two plastic ring tops. In the dirt near the foundation. Like someone tossed them over the edge. Molloy's prints on one, nothing we could make out on the other. I asked Keegan, how many six-packs did you say? He said, Yeah, I don't remember, maybe two. Seemed like a weird thing to me, guy can't remember how many six-packs he cracked open. Especially, he picked up the cans.”

“He'd have to have been flustered. Couldn't one of those tops have been from another time?”

“Keegan said that, too. Backpedaling. Um, um, um, could be a couple of nights before, um, um, we go over there a lot. So maybe it's one, maybe it's two, maybe from last night, maybe last week. Great. Anyway, it was a pretty clean site. No other trash. Strange that a ring top would have stayed, from last week.”

“And you think . . . ?”

“Someone else was there. Three guys, two six-packs. And that's why the cans were gone. That's the prints they were worried about. We tested Molloy's blood-alcohol level. Keegan's, too. Molloy tested high, but not Keegan. Not two six-packs' worth. And me and Jeff, we asked ourselves this: These were grown men. What the hell are they doing drinking on a construction site, like they're kids, they have to sneak around? Every third building in Pleasant Hills was a bar, those days.”

“Did you ask Keegan?”

“He said they liked it out there, those half-built houses. Reminded them of this place they used to hang out when they were kids. Horsepucky.”

“What do you think was going on?”

“It was a private meet,” Zannoni said. “Keegan, Molloy, somebody else.”

“A setup?”

“More like a fuckup. If it was a hit, they'd've been prepared. Everybody would've disappeared. Keegan wouldn't have had to take the fall. There wouldn't have been a fall.”

“But you think that's what happened? That's what Keegan did, take a fall?”

“Sure as hell.”

“But you don't know who for?”

“Like I say, I never did. Until I read that story in your paper. Hey, you cold? We could go inside.”

“No, I'm fine. It's just a little windy here.”
That story. The investigation is continuing.
Laura hated that story, hated it.

“When I read in your paper that Jimmy McCaffery was behind the money—you know that for a fact?”

Laura, who right at this moment knew nothing for a fact, nodded.

“All that money, all these years, in secret,” said Zannoni. “It had to be him. It had to be him.”

L
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Chapter 11

Tree, Falling

October 31, 2001

Laura stared out from Angelo Zannoni's balcony, following a ship whose lights were so bright she could see the colors of the containers piling its deck. Orange, yellow, blue. The ship slid under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and steamed west to offer its cargo to the huge waterfront cranes at the Port of Newark, right across the river from Lower Manhattan. You were supposed to worry about the cargo now, about what disastrous freight, what catastrophic future, could burst from newly arrived, colorful crates.

“Back then,” Laura asked Zannoni. “About someone else being with Keegan and Molloy. Did you say anything?”

Zannoni shook his head. “Only to Jeff. He thought the same as me, but except the ring tops, the backpedaling, we didn't have shit. For a while, we looked. We talked to the detective who knew this crap best, the Molloys and the Spanos, see if there was something going on. Checked the gun dealers around, to find where Keegan got the gun. Turned up nothing. Then Keegan took the plea, and that was the end of it.”

“You didn't talk to anyone else about it? Your commanding officer?”

“Make a hassle when there wasn't one? Why? Look. Even if someone else was there that night, even if the gun was this other guy's, Keegan still could be our shooter. His prints on the gun, his confession.”

“But you believe there was a third man. And you think it was James McCaffery.”

“All I can say, anyone was drinking with Jack Molloy in a deserted spot like that, it sure as hell wasn't some goombah.”

“But Keegan never admitted there was anyone else?”

“Keegan sat in jail a day or two. They charged him with possession of an unlicensed weapon.” Zannoni snorted. “The weapon? Molloy gets shot through the heart, Keegan admits to shooting him, the best they can do is the weapon? Tell me the fix wasn't in on that one.”

“You're saying McCaffery fixed it?”

“Fix like that,” Zannoni said, “you know why they do it?”

“Why it's fixed?” Laura wasn't sure what Zannoni was getting at. “To get the accused a lighter sentence.”

“Why the DA goes along. You know why?”

“Tell me.”

“So the guy keeps his mouth shut.”

“About what?”

Zannoni shook his head. “Never figured that out.”

“But you're telling me you believe McCaffery was the one who fixed it?”

Laura was sure Zannoni's tea must be cold by now, but he sipped at it, once, twice. “He's somebody now, a big hero, even before this”—waving his tea in the direction of Lower Manhattan, invisible through the trees— “but back then he was just a fireman. Twenty-three, twenty-four years old. No way he had the juice.”

“Who did?”

Somewhere on the street below, hidden by the treetops, a car horn honked. Birds tweeted, evening birds, and a seagull screamed; Laura couldn't see them. What she could see—the black water, the bridge, the ships—was silent.

“You know much about the history around here?” Zannoni made a circle with his tea.

“Of Pleasant Hills, you mean? No.”

“Area was settled by Irish. Farmers, mostly. Before the train, especially before the bridge, towns out here were more separate than now. A lot of Italians on Staten Island, but in Pleasant Hills, mostly Irish.

“Not to say there weren't Italians. Grew up here myself.” Zannoni shifted in his chair; Laura remained sideways on hers, facing him. “Not so easy, sometimes, being Italian in Pleasant Hills. To the Irish kids, all wops were Mafia, so they were hot shit if they beat the crap outta you. Fighting for truth, justice, and the American way. Bad blood, micks and wops out here, and a lot more of them than us.”

“Sounds pretty rotten,” Laura said, to let Zannoni know she was on his side.

“Old history now. But one thing was true. Not so much Pleasant Hills, but Staten Island. Lot of Mafia out here. The Italians-are-like-everyone guys will tell you that's not true, but it is.

“Around here—Pleasant Hills—the Irish had their crook, but we had ours, too. Theirs was Big Mike Molloy. Jack Molloy's father? Ours was Aldo Spano. You heard of them?”

“I've heard of Molloy, only because of this. And Aldo Spano—he's Eddie Spano's father?”

Zannoni grunted. Laura took it for agreement.

“Molloy was the big fish. Pleasant Hills was pretty much Mike Molloy's. Spano nibbled around the edges. Spano put up with Molloy because he had a big organization and he'd've been hard to dislodge.”

“Why did Molloy put up with Spano?”

“The Irish, they operated independent, each organization. Molloy was big, but he was on his own. Italians, you're hooked up with someone, one of the families, or you're out of business. Al Spano's hookup was the Bonnanos. Spano wasn't a big enough deal for them to go out of their way, clear-cut a territory for him, but they would've jumped if Molloy made a direct move.”

“So it was a stalemate?”

“Worked pretty well. Each side had their rackets.”

Laura, feeling she was tiptoeing out onto thin ice, asked, “What did the police do?”

“About them?” Zannoni stared at her as though she'd asked what the police did about the weather. “Shit, those guys were a lot heavier hitters than we were. Now you got prosecutors, state and city, like Rudy before he was mayor, people like that, they'll take on these guys. But back then nobody did. All we could do was keep the noise down.”

The ice hadn't cracked, so Laura took another step. “You're telling me that's what you did in the Molloy case?”

Zannoni put down the mug. It was, Laura saw, finally empty. “You ever ask yourself where McCaffery got the kind of money he was passing on to Keegan's family, if it was him? Salary of a fireman just starting out, those days, no way. Hell, even today, no fucking way.”

“It was someone else's money?”

“Sure as God made little apples.”

“Whose?”

“Like you said, you only heard of Big Mike Molloy because of this. The guy is history. His organization's history. You know he had two sons?”

“Jack and Thomas. I interviewed Thomas Molloy yesterday.”

“No kidding?” Zannoni raised his eyebrows. “You put that in today's paper?”

“Yes.”

“Didn't get the paper today. What'd he have to say?”

Laura spoke to what she guessed was the point. “I asked him about ties between his brother and the Spanos. He said there weren't any, as far as he knew, but Jack could have angered someone in the Spano organization.”

“What'd you think of him? Tom?”

“You mean, did I think he was legitimate? I got the impression he was.”

Zannoni nodded. “When I was at the 124, word was Tom was being groomed to take over Big Mike Molloy's organization. But what happened after Jack got killed, it seems like Tom got cold feet. Or maybe we were reading it wrong. Anyway, over the next couple years—long before Big Mike died—a lot of the Molloy rackets got sold off, shut down. And guess who ended up with whatever was left, added them to his own? Guess who's the only game in town now, in Pleasant Hills?”

“Spano?”

“Eddie Spano,” Zannoni agreed. “In the end, it's the Italians on top.”

Zannoni stared straight ahead, over the trees and roofs. An American flag snapped in the wind in the yard of a nearby house. Laura had learned in grade school that the flag was supposed to come down at night, but these days the flags weren't coming down.

“It sounds to me,” she ventured, “like this was something you were thinking about even back then. With the second ring top and everything. But—”

“Case was closed. Perp took the plea. Me and Jeff had other things to do. And,” he added, as though he knew she was going to keep pushing, “I didn't know about McCaffery then. Didn't have an idea who the other guy that night was. But I could see who could come out ahead. Without Jack, maybe the Molloy organization's in trouble. Maybe Al Spano ends up the big fish.” Zannoni pushed himself out of his chair and walked to the balcony rail. Staring out to sea, he said, “I'm older than those Molloys. Jack and Tom. Never took a punch from either of 'em. But, Jack—guys just like him gave me black eyes, bloody noses, threw my schoolbooks down the sewer, whole time I was growing up.

“So Molloy gets shot, and word comes down the next day: pick up Keegan. I look and I see: Jack Molloy's out of the way. Mark Keegan's taking the fall, I don't know who for. But is this so bad? Is it bad enough, I want to throw a monkey wrench in the works, my third guy theory? Maybe risk my chance of making sergeant? For what?

“And Jeff points out to me: Spano's guys I know. I talk their language. We need something, maybe it's easier if it's Spano's guys than Molloy's. And even,” Zannoni said with emphasis, as though he were stacking his reasons onto a pile, counting on the pile's height to justify its existence, “Big Mike Molloy, what he's seeing, a buddy of Jack's shot his kid. A fuckup. Bad, but shit happens.”

People die,
Laura thought.
Vanish, never come back. Shit happens.

“If I'm right and Spano's involved and it comes out, hell, we got a war here. We can't handle it, everybody knows we can't. Like I said, back then, you didn't take those guys on. War, it's the civilians who pay.” He nodded, as though answering an unspoken question. “So that was that.”

Black sky, white stars, lit ships, glittering water. This far south on Staten Island, you couldn't see the tip of Manhattan, couldn't see the smoke rising.

“So why now?” Laura asked. “Why come forward now?”

Zannoni was silent. His hands lifted from the balcony rail, separated, came back together. “You see what those motherfuckers did over there?” Now his hands gestured in the direction of the invisible smoke. “Killing Americans, that's all they wanted. Didn't matter, you were Italian, you were Irish. Didn't matter you were a cop or a fireman. Those SOBs decided you were dead, you were dead. Italian, Irish, Jewish, black, so fucking what? That shit's gotta stop. Those motherfuckers are out there blasting the hell out of Americans.
Americans.
And I'm sitting here on my fucking balcony, I'm sitting on my butt, there's nothing I can do.

“Then your boy Jesselson calls.

“And I think, Maybe I can do this.

“I think, This shit's gotta stop.”