S Rozan - Absent Friends

And if that's what she gave him, Laura might get her interview.

And for sure, another headache.

October 31, 2001

Phil glanced up when the outer door opened. He heard Sandra's challenge and the cocksure reply. So. Saying no hadn't worked on Laura Stone any better than it ever had on Harry Randall. Tribune reporters, he knew them. But this was Phil's way: unless he needed the press for his own purposes, he always told them to get lost. The mediocre reporters bought it and went away. It saved time and energy and left Phil to deal only with people who had something on the ball.

He watched as Sandra sat back, dragged his book a quarter inch closer, asked the gate-crasher whether she had an appointment. Sandra didn't look at the book: she had his day memorized, his week, and his upcoming month. This was just the game it was her job to play. When the answering volley came, she'd give the icy smile, lay down the smash, and this short match would be over.

Laura Stone looked past Sandra into Phil's office, right into his eyes. “I'm on my way to Pleasant Hills to talk to some people there. I thought Mr. Constantine might want to see me first.” This with her eyes still on Phil's.

“Mr. Constantine doesn't see anyone without an appointment.”

“I have a deadline. If Mr. Constantine doesn't speak to me before I have to file, Tribune readers won't get his side of the story.”

Not bad, Phil thought. Looking only at the back of Sandra's head, he still could have described the knife blade of a smile with which she said, “I'm sorry.”

Laura Stone said, “First in, last out.”

Sandra was thrown. Oh, she disliked that. Phil heard her irritation: “Excuse me?”

“People remember the first thing they read. Even if it's wrong. After that, it's hard to correct. A retraction never has the impact of the original story.”

Below her cropped hair the back of Sandra's neck was red. She could keep this reporter at bay all day and late into the evening, Phil knew that. Especially if she got mad. But the hell with it. He was sure she had better things to do.

“It's all right, Sandra.” Phil rose, though he didn't come out from behind his desk. Let her in, sure; trek to the border to greet her, no. “Come on in, Ms. Stone. Thanks, Sandra.”

With Sandra's bellicose glare following her-and Elizabeth's stare also, less hair-trigger, more weights and measures-Laura Stone marched into Phil's office. She sat down and plunked her massive shoulder bag to the floor beside her. Flipping it open, she pulled out a pad, two pens, and a tape recorder. She did this so fast and so smoothly he had to figure the bag, despite its bulging, chaotic look, was the kind with dividers, holders, pockets, and tabs. Velcro and zippers and snaps. Everything in the right place, instantly accessible.

He used one like that himself.

Stone held up the recorder, lifted her eyebrows.

“No,” Phil said, sitting again.

Laura Stone dropped the machine back in the bag. Phil couldn't see whether it was running, but he assumed it was. He'd have told her to turn it off, but the second one, which she was almost sure to have, would be running, too. His choices were: he could search her, including patting her down to see if she was wired, or he could watch his mouth.

“I'm here to give you a chance to comment on the death of Harry Randall,” Stone began, colonizing a chair, ankle on knee, elbows out, taking up more room than he'd have thought such a thin woman could. She flipped open her pad, held her pen poised.

Phil grinned. How about that? Another woman offering him an opportunity to do something he didn't want to do. “I told you this morning I had nothing to say.”

“I didn't believe you.”

“Does telling people that work in your business?”

“Does blowing off reporters work in yours?”

“Ms. Stone, with all due respect, after the last couple of weeks, why the hell would I want to talk to the Tribune ?”

“To correct any misconceptions, I'd think.”

“Yeah, I bet that's what you'd think. But all right. About Harry Randall's death?” He glanced at the ceiling, frowned, nodded. “Harry Randall was a fixture in this town. A fine example of the old-fashioned muckraking reporter. They don't make them like that anymore. New York needs him now more than ever, it's a goddamn shame what happened to him, and he'll be missed.” He smiled, slid his chair back from his desk to give himself room to cross his long legs. Ankle on knee. “You can quote me.”

She wrote as he spoke, quick sure strokes, and he studied her as she wrote. In that wholesome midwestern way, the way that called up the bucolic farming life (early morning rising, direct and sweaty work, lit evening windows, neighbors bringing pies), Laura Stone was pretty. Straight brown hair brushing her shoulders, features small and neat, pale skin that would probably be smooth and clear once she got some sleep. Phil's forebears were rabbis and ragpickers, salesmen and stevedores. Not a farmer among them, back to the windswept horizon. Why, then, this-not just attraction, no, not only desire-this wistful nostalgia, this homesickness a woman like this had always been able to make him feel? Her bedroom: heightening heat and the crescendo of pounding hearts under quilts in the crystal winter night; but also the breeze through the window of her sunny kitchen on a spring morning. Her soft skin, her soft hair, the feel of them under his fingertips; but even more her quiet companionship by the fire on a blustery fall day. He longed for all that, at the same time-maybe for the same reason-as he knew he'd last maybe a week in that lonesome prairie farmhouse.

Someone who's homesick for somewhere they've never been, Phil thought. The definition of an American.

Laura Stone stopped writing and flipped her hair from her face. It fell back to exactly where it had been. “If I print that,” she said to him, “people will know you're lying.”

What the hell had they been talking about? Oh, right, his tribute to Harry Randall. “Everyone who reads your paper already thinks I'm lying,” he said.

“Then set them straight. Now's your chance.”

Hey, there's an idea. Just tell the truth. After all these years? Then what had been the point? Though, when you looked at this mess, what had been the goddamn point anyway? “No. Thanks.”

“You were Mark Keegan's attorney in 1979?”

“That's public record.”

“Keegan was accused and convicted of possessing an illegal handgun-the gun that killed Jack Molloy-but not of the killing itself. Why not?”

“That was the plea deal.”

“Your idea?”

“The opposition's.”

“The District Attorney's?” Her eyebrows went up as if she needed more light in those morning-colored eyes.

“Yes.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought if we went to trial on the manslaughter charge, we were screwed. I couldn't believe I was being offered the deal, but I jumped at it.”

“Why did they do it, do you think?”

“A bird in the hand.”

“Nothing else?”

“It didn't matter to me.”

“But you think there might have been something else?”

“There always is. An election's coming up. The accused looks like the ADA's cousin. They don't want to waste time and money on a first-timer who killed a gangster they're happy to have out of the way.”

“Or someone buys off someone in the DA's office.”

“It happens.”

“In this case?”

“Who the hell knows? If anyone was up to anything, it wasn't me. My client got a hell of a better deal than I thought he'd get, going in. That was all I cared about.”