Absent Friends (36 page)

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.

M
ARIAN
'
S
S
TORY

Chapter 13

Abraham Lincoln and the Pig

November 1, 2001

An unfamiliar light woke Marian, a brightness sneaking under the bottom of a window shade to poke her in the eye. That wasn't very nice. Especially since she had a headache. Sunshine was lovely, she thought groggily, but why couldn't it stay outside until she was ready? Squinting, she tried to make out what it was she was looking at as she moved her gaze around the room. Without her glasses she couldn't be positive, but it seemed to her she didn't recognize any of it.

And slowly she realized something else: she wasn't alone. Her back was warm, someone else's up against it.

And her mouth was sticky and dry. And the headache.

Oh no, she thought wearily. What did I do?

What bar did I sweep into this time, what young man did I select, allow to buy me drinks? Flirt with and make promises to? What will I have to extricate myself from now? What tangles will there be to delicately slip out of, never detaching as gracefully as you'd want?

When will I learn?

She turned gently, not wanting him to awaken until she saw who it was, until she remembered, until she'd had a chance to think. She prided herself on one thing: she had never not remembered. In the morning, she always knew their names and whatever it was about them she had learned while their eyes were holding hers over cocktails or wine, while the comings and goings of a public place surrounded the two of them and their hands touched quite by accident as they toasted their luck in having met.

But she had to admit that the remembering sometimes took longer now than it had once.

So she gently lifted herself on her elbows to peer over the bare shoulder of the sleeping man beside her, to see who he was.

It was Tom.

Oh my God, it was Tom. How could this be, how could this have happened? The room spun, Marian's heart pounded wildly. What would she say to Jimmy, to Vicky? How could she have done this? What kind of a person was she?

Tom stirred, and Marian jerked away, almost horrified, not wanting to touch him. Then, as he continued to sleep, she peered at him, looked more closely. It was Tom, no question about it. But why did he look so strange? Why did he look so
old
?

Then memory, like a landslide. She had never not remembered.

There was nothing she needed to tell Jimmy. Jimmy was dead. And what had she ever told Jimmy, what had he told her, since that windy spring morning so long ago (spring, when things were supposed to grow and flourish and begin) when he had told her goodbye?

And Vicky? Tom and Vicky had split years ago. From childhood, Vicky had been the promised consort of the crown prince, and it was he whom she adored, he whom she married. When Tom abdicated, Vicky left him. What Tom did did not matter to Vicky anymore.

In her mind, Marian saw last night. She and Tom had had coffee. Good coffee, hers sweet and light, chasing the chill from her bones. And then Tom was going to take her home. But Marian, who had lived alone so long—Marian, who was always the first to feel confined, to see the wide endless highway of a new romance narrowing into a rutted road, who had always believed freedom meant more to her than love, because freedom was sure and love could not be counted on—Marian had not wanted to be alone last night.

Not after what she had heard from Tom. Not after the hissing formless fear that had followed them down the quiet streets.

And Tom, who could read minds, knew that.

Or maybe Tom had not wanted to be alone, either. Often that was true of the young men, the men who took Marian home, or came back home with her. They wanted no more than anyone wanted: a night or a week or a lifetime of shutting out the dark, pretending that love was truth. That love would last. That aloneness was not stretched around you like your own skin, and the cost of piercing it was not always, only, pain.

The sheets rustled as Tom lifted his arm, rubbed his hand over his face. He dropped his arm again, and she thought he was still asleep, but though his eyes were closed, his hand searched for and found hers. And then his eyes opened.

“Hey,” Tom said, smiling, his voice low and scratchy.

“Hey,” said Marian.

Tom pushed himself up on his elbows, kissed her, and fell back again. “It's okay,” he said.

“What is?”

“Whatever you were thinking wasn't okay.”

Marian stared at him for a moment, then settled down close. He opened his arm to her, curled it around her, his movements seamless with hers. If she could stay like this forever, wrapped in the warmth of Tom's arm, then maybe things really would be okay.

But she couldn't.

And they already weren't.

Tom brought Marian a glass of water and some aspirin, and then he went to take a shower. She drank all the water because a hangover was partly dehydration—oh, she had this down—and she stayed in bed, doing breathing exercises and meditating, trying not to think of last night, and the last weeks, and what had happened and what any of it meant. Tom emerged from the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist so she could have his bathrobe. She took a very hot shower, and by the time she came out, she felt better.

She could hear Tom downstairs moving around the kitchen as she dressed. She disliked getting back into yesterday's clothes; she always disliked that, which was one of the reasons she generally brought the young men home with her. Fresh clothes, and her own shampoo.

Her purse was downstairs, so she borrowed Tom's comb. He had no hair dryer, so after she got her hair essentially organized, it was on its own. The young men, she reflected, taking one last look in the mirror and heading for the stairs, the Manhattan young men, they all had hair dryers.

She smelled Tom's good coffee from the top of the stairs; by the time she reached the kitchen, he had poured her a cup, in the same black mug she had used last night. Or maybe this morning he was using that one, and she was using his.

“Scrambled eggs?” he asked. In a pan on the stove, butter made little spitting sounds as it started to melt.

“Let me make them.”

“No way. I'm trying to impress you.”

“You already have.”

He grinned. “I mean, in the kitchen.”

Marian felt herself flush from her breasts to her scalp. Tom politely turned away, still grinning.

Breakfast was orange juice, eggs, toast, and more coffee. She sipped her coffee and watched him bring the plates to the table, and as he sat, she finally faced the thought she had been turning from all morning.

Jimmy's papers, what he had left behind.

His legacy. Oh, if any of this were funny, that would be a laugh.

If the papers Jimmy had left told the true story of Jack's death—and what else, what subject was there?—then the legendary James McCaffery, the hero people needed so desperately to believe in in these terrible times, the legend that should have been Jimmy's legacy, would be destroyed. All the brave and selfless acts over the years, the risks, the rescues, would mean nothing. The man responsible for them would be revealed to be not who people thought he was, and it would change things, and one more thing people believed was solid and beautiful and good would turn into choking, crumbling rubble.

And drinking Tom's coffee, watching Tom, Marian thought: Not only Jimmy.

Tom Molloy had gone from bad to good, from dangerous taker to generous giver. He had left the path he was born to follow and gone another way. He had put his heart into it. Now, perhaps, Marian understood why. But the perilous truths Jimmy left behind could destroy Tom, too.

And the Fund. All the good the Fund could do,
she
could do, could be gone also.

It couldn't happen. It mustn't happen. Jimmy was already gone, and Markie, and Jack. And now, the good that was left, to be scorched into lifelessness and scattered like ash in a city choking on ashes?

No.

“Tom?”

“Hmm?”

“Jimmy—I think he told the story, Tom. He left some record of it. That reporter said so.”

Tom didn't seem surprised or upset. That heartened her; that was the old Tom. It was comforting, in the same way as her small fantasies—the cabin in the woods—comforted her.

“She said that to me, too,” Tom said. “Papers. Do you believe it?”

“What if he did? If he wrote it all down? If he wrote down the truth?”

Tom's blue eyes regarded her. “I'll deny it.”

Marian was confused. “You'll—?”

“I'm the only one left, Marian. I'll say he was writing a novel, these papers are just notes for it. Lots of firefighters write novels. I could even say I knew he was, that he told me about it.”

Doubtfully, Marian said, “Do you think that would work?”

Tom pushed back his chair, came and stood behind her, kneading her shoulders with powerful, sure hands.

“It was an accident,” he said softly. “That night, what happened to my brother, my God, Marian, it was a lifetime ago, and it was an
accident.
”

His fingers found the fear in her shoulders, the foreboding at the base of her skull, found them and broke them down and commanded them away.

“Jimmy was a hero,” he said. “Why can't people keep their heroes, when they need them?”

Heroes, Marian thought, surrendering to Tom's hands. Everyone had to have heroes.

From the
New York Tribune,
November 1, 2001

1979 SLAYING REEXAMINED
NEW EVIDENCE CASTS DOUBT
ON ORIGINAL STORY

Old Crime May Be Tied to Reporter's Death
Nature of Hero Firefighter's Involvement Still Uncertain

by Laura Stone

Captain James McCaffery of Ladder Co. 62 died a hero on September 11, like hundreds of other New York City firefighters. Unlike many of his fallen brothers, however, it appears that McCaffery may have gone to his death hiding decades-old secrets that are only now coming to light.

A recent article in the
New York Tribune
by Harry Randall, a three-time Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter, began to probe some of these secrets. Randall died on October 29 under circumstances now considered suspicious and possibly related to his investigation of incidents in McCaffery's past.

The questions surrounding McCaffery stem from the death of Jack Molloy, stepson of alleged crime figure Michael “Mike the Bear” Molloy. Jack Molloy died from a single gunshot in September 1979. Mark Keegan, a close friend of Capt. McCaffery's, was convicted of weapons possession but never charged with homicide. Keegan claimed he and Molloy were alone at the time of the shooting. He said Molloy was drunk and attacked him, and that he fired in self-defense. At the time no one who knew Keegan could explain why he was carrying a gun or where he had obtained it, nor did Keegan offer an explanation. The precise nature of the dispute between Molloy and Keegan that led Molloy to fire two shots was never clear to police or prosecutors. Keegan was himself slain in prison five months later.

New evidence uncovered by the
Tribune,
however, suggests that a third man may have been present. “It had to be him,” said a retired police officer with close ties to the case, referring to McCaffery and speaking on condition of anonymity. In addition to evidence the NYPD is unwilling to reveal, the anonymous source pointed to the money trail uncovered by the late Mr. Randall. Payments purportedly from the State of New York were made through Keegan's defense attorney, Phillip Constantine, to the Keegan family for eighteen years. The money did not, however, come from the State. Constantine refused to discuss the origin of the funds, but admits to meeting with McCaffery many times over the years. The NYPD source suggests that though the money may have come through McCaffery, it is unlikely to have been his.

The
Tribune
has also discovered the subject of the argument between Molloy and Keegan on the fatal night. According to Constantine, Keegan had previously informed Molloy that the police were on the verge of shutting down Molloy's criminal activities. Molloy, however, had his own informants in the NYPD and discovered that this story was untrue.

This was confirmed by NYPD Assistant Commissioner Charles Rosoff, a sergeant at the 124th Precinct at that time. Both Commissioner Rosoff and the anonymous police source speculate that the rumor of a crackdown may have originated with Edward Spano, an alleged organized crime figure on Staten Island with reputed ties to the Bonnano crime family.

Commissioner Rosoff, in an interview at One Police Plaza, said Keegan had been well liked and had a reputation for picking up information. “If you wanted to plant a story, he's the guy you'd plant it on,” the Commissioner said. Asked whether the story was planted by the NYPD, he denied it. He alleged that both the Molloy and Spano organizations had police officers on their payrolls. When asked to speculate on the source of the false story, both Commissioner Rosoff and the anonymous police source pointed to the dismantling of the Molloy organization soon after Jack Molloy's death and the subsequent growth of the alleged Spano criminal network.