S Rozan - Absent Friends

“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.”

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.”