S Rozan - Absent Friends

He stared at her. “That's a hell of a technique. Does it work?”

“Sometimes.”

“I'm inclined to tell you to go to hell.”

“Go ahead, as long as you answer my question.”

“No.”

“No, you won't answer, or no, you didn't kill Harry Randall?”

“I didn't kill him. Is this what this is really about? The Tribune 's looking for a few bad men?”

“Harry Randall was murdered because he knew something.”

“Harry Randall was a drunk who jumped off the Verrazano Narrows Bridge.”

She shook her hair back from her face again. Phil was startled to see her eyes moisten. She blinked twice, and that was gone. Maybe he'd imagined it. But her voice seemed to quiver just slightly as she repeated, “Harry Randall was killed because he knew something.” The quiver vanished, though, as she went on. “One of the things he knew was that the money you've been giving to Mark Keegan's family came from, or at least through, James McCaffery.”

No surprise there. But what else did Randall think he knew? And how do you know what he knew? Is this story a potential Pulitzer for you, or is it personal? And which is more dangerous? “No comment.”

“But you knew James McCaffery?”

“Yes.”

“And it's true the money-from-the-State fiction was his idea?”

“Yes.”

“Did you know he'd left papers behind?”

“Yes.”

The lifting of the brows again. But look: her eyes weren't the clear blue of the morning sky, as he'd thought, but the deeper, opaque blue of evening. Had he been wrong? Or did Laura Stone's eyes change, like Sally's, according to rules he would never understand?

“You know that?” Her voice took on a quick note, hope again. “Have you seen these papers?”

“No.” And because he could tell where she was going: “I only just found out.”

“Where from?”

Indirectly, from you, about an hour ago. “No comment.”

She gave him an appraising look. Well, let her figure it out.

“Do you know what's in them? McCaffery's papers?”

“No.”

“Any guesses?”

Yes. “No.”

“What if it's this whole thing-Keegan, Molloy, where the money came from?”

“Then we'll get McCaffery's thoughts on the matter.”

“Would that bother you?”

“Depends what he thought.”

“Are you telling my readers you have nothing to hide?”

“I'm not telling your readers anything. You can tell them whatever crap you want, just like Randall did.”

“What did you think of him?”

“Randall? I already told you.”

She shook her head, her soft hair swaying. “McCaffery.”

One missed beat, and then: “He was a hero.”

As though he hadn't answered, with no change of tone, just the way he himself would have done it, she repeated, “What did you think of him?”

I thought he was a lying, grandstanding, murderous hypocrite. “He was a hero.”

September 1, 1979

By the time Jimmy gets home, Marian's there already. She has her own place, shares it with two other girls, because how would that look, if she just moved right in with him? And on the new job she stays late a lot, and Jimmy's working straight tours, so it's not that often they get to spend the night together. Jimmy sees her through the window as he's coming down the stairs from the sidewalk, stops a minute just to look at her.

She's reading, bare legs crossed Indian-style on the big leather chair. Her back's to Jimmy. The light from the lamp is soft on the side of her face, makes little swells and shadows on her T-shirt. As he watches, her black hair-short, sharp, simpler than the other girls wear theirs-sweeps across her cheek. She lifts a hand to tuck it away again: she doesn't like to be distracted, she always says, when she's reading. So many different colors of black in Marian's hair: this has always amazed Jimmy, and amazes him now.

Marian looks up, sees him through the window, smiles. He realizes he's grinning like a kid, wonders how long he's been doing that.

They kiss at the door, before they speak. The night's gotten cool, but Jimmy only realizes this when his hand's touching Marian. He's aware-he's always been aware-of the solidity under the creaminess of her flesh: Marian plays volleyball with her girlfriends, she rides her bike everywhere, in high school she was on the girls' softball team, she was captain. All that just makes her skin's silky softness better for Jimmy, like it was somehow honest, somehow earned.

Jimmy's other hand can't resist touching Marian's midnight hair.

Marian's lips play with Jimmy's, but she does not embrace him: she snakes her arms around him, slips her hands into the back pockets of his jeans, moves him toward her that way.

Oh God, thinks Jimmy.

After, they lie in the darkness for a while, just together. This is not a deep, heavy darkness, like the smoke at the center of a fire, all directions the same and the blasting air itself almost solid, itself your enemy; not like your dreams, where your eyes are open, wide open, but you can't see anything and you try to shout, scream, tell someone but you make no sound. This is just the apartment in the basement of where the Cooleys live, the apartment that's Jimmy's now. It doesn't get dark that way here.

Beyond the swaying, half-closed curtains, the soft glow from the Cooleys' porch light is backed up by lights from other porches and yards, by lit windows in the neighbors' places, and by streetlights that rise over the rooftops. The place is quiet, but the silence never gets so huge you could wander around lost in it. It's bordered, hemmed in, by a dog's bark, someone's laugh, the left-to-right flare of a car radio in the street out front.

So, Superman, Marian says to Jimmy, and her voice close to his ear sounds to him the same way her skin feels, satin with metal under it, though he doesn't think it's iron under her voice like under her skin, he thinks it's silver, maybe gold. She asks him, How many people did you save today?

'Bout a hundred, says Jimmy.

Marian gives him a poke in the ribs. You weren't even on duty today.

That's how I saved them. Stayed out of their way.

Marian laughs, nibbles on his ear.

How about you, he says, you save anyone?

Nope, slow day. She rearranges the sheet they're under, smooths it. I tutored that little Jeanine, worked on her reading, but that kid, she doesn't even need me, Jimmy. She'll do great, no matter what.

Jimmy grunts. Wasn't for you, she'd end up like her old lady. Any chance that kid has, it's because you made a project out of her.

Well, she's a good kid. She can't help it if her whole family is bums.

I know, Jimmy says. It's not that. It's more like, on one side is you, on the other side is her whole family and her whole life. Jimmy's hands, palms up, balance above the sheet like scales; one rises, one falls.

Yes, I know. Marian nods. But you can't tell. One little pebble might do the trick. You can't tell unless you put it there.

The tip of Marian's finger barely touches the palm of Jimmy's up hand. She draws little delicate circles. Then she presses, pushing down.

Jimmy's hand resists. What if it doesn't? he asks. Do the trick?

Marian keeps pushing, Jimmy resisting. She smiles. Her other hand grabs at Jimmy's down hand, lifts it high in the air. Then it'll do some other trick, she says. In surprise, Jimmy laughs. Marian laughs with him. He wraps his hands around hers, wraps himself around her.

Jimmy knows Marian's right. Little Jeanine, Marian can't just give up on her. But if Jimmy told the truth, it would be this: Marian's kind of saving, he's not really sure about it, if it ever works, if it's even right.