S Rozan - Absent Friends

“Jesus, Marian.” Tom rubbed his mouth. He looked around, at the strangers, at the walls. His gaze traveled as though he were searching for the mirrors that were gone. He brought his eyes back to her. How blue they were. “Jesus, Marian. We were all there.”

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?”