S Rozan - Absent Friends

Rosoff was a scowling, balding man with huge hands. He didn't stand when she came in, just looked at his watch and growled, “Fifteen minutes.” The policewoman shut the door behind them.

“I appreciate-”

“Don't bother. The only reason I stayed, Jesselson says you're a fly-off-the-handle broad with a bug up your-a bee in your bonnet about the Jack Molloy shooting, from back in the goddamn Dark Ages.” Gee, thanks, Hugh, Laura thought. “He said you didn't get the straight shit, you'd make it up. You do that, the department might sue your rag, and your own personal ass, except we're a little busy right now. In case you haven't noticed, Miss”-he glanced at a pad in front of him-“Stone-Miss Stone, there's a war on at the moment, and we're in the front lines. No one gives a fart about what happened on Staten Island a thousand years ago. Now you have fourteen minutes.”

He sat back with another glance at his watch.

Laura sat without invitation. Around here a man with a wooden leg might not be invited to sit. She didn't take out a recorder; there'd be no point in even asking. She switched both of them on in her bag while she reached for her pad and pen, began speaking before she'd pulled those out, so Rosoff couldn't start again and chew up the rest of her time. “Just a few questions.” She caught the sharp icy edge in her voice. Laura Stone, a fly-off-the-handle broad. So crazy she'll print lies. Don't mess with me. “I understand when you were at the 124, you were the detective with the most knowledge about the Molloys and the Spanos.”

“Understand from where?”

“A retired sergeant named Angelo Zannoni.”

“Zannoni.” Rosoff snorted. “I remember that asshole. He and his partner-Miller-they thought they were Starsky and Hutch. Okay, so the locals were my hobby. So?”

“Two things. One: the manslaughter charges filed against Mark Keegan were dropped, and the plea deal was only on the gun charge. Why?”

“Not our choice. The DAs do that. We just haul 'em in. DAs charge 'em.”

“Based on evidence you supply.”

Rosoff shrugged, his combative eyes fixed on Laura's.

“All right,” said Laura, in a voice that really said: uh-huh, well, we'll come back to that. “Two: the thing that seems to have sparked the fight that night between Molloy and Keegan was a phony rumor that the cops were cracking down on Molloy's gang. Where did it come from?”

Rosoff stared at her. “Where did you get that?”

“Why?”

“It's crap.”

“It was about something else?”

“No idea.”

“I'm sorry, that's not true. The lawyer told me. Phillip Constantine.”

“That fuck?” Rosoff laughed, an unpleasant bark. “That may be the one good thing comes out of all this, if that piece-of-shit lawyer goes down.”

“Constantine told me,” said Laura, careful not to react to Rosoff's language, certain he expected her to, “because he said it would all come out anyway. So: it's true, right?”

Rosoff picked up a thin gold pen from his desk and tossed it down immediately. “Shit. Yeah, okay, it's true.”

“Where did the rumor come from?”

“No idea.”

“Come on. The cop who knew the most about these people? Didn't you wonder?”

“Sure I wondered. But I don't know.”

“Did Eddie Spano plant it?”

“Not likely. Keegan wouldn't've trusted anything he got from any butthole buddy of Spano's.”

“So where did he get it?”

“Why don't you ask that lawyer fuck?”

“He says he doesn't know.”

“You asked him?”

“How the hell else would I know what he said?” Laura snapped.

“You believe him?”

Laura thought she heard a note of uncertainty in Rosoff's growl. This was probably not a man who got snapped at very much.

“A defense attorney? As if.” She could hear Reporter-Laura cheering her on. “But whatever he does know, he's too slippery to tell me.” Laura let contempt for the slippery leak into her voice. She looked Rosoff straight in the eye, to say: As opposed to my admiration for the blunt and straightforward, for any man brave enough to let the chips fall where they may.

Rosoff met Laura's stare, then cocked his head, as though he'd learn something if he saw her from a new angle. She didn't move. The window behind him was filled with black water and black sky, the lights of boats and stars and the Verrazano Narrows Bridge. One of the cargo ships Laura had been watching from Angelo Zannoni's terrace was slipping into the distance, going to a new job in a new place. Laura wondered if it had finished the work it had come here to do, or if that job had been disrupted, ruined by the attacks, the collapse, the new world.

“Fuck,” Rosoff said. “You're gonna skewer this guy McCaffery no matter what, right?”

“I'm looking for the truth,” Laura declared. She rolled on before he could snarl out his thoughts on truth. “I think McCaffery had something to do with Jack Molloy's death and he's been paying off Mark Keegan's family ever since. I think the money's not his, and that means someone else was also involved, probably Spano. I think the investigation into all this is what led to the death of a reporter on my paper.”

“That guy who jumped off the bridge? That was suicide.”

“It was murder.”

Rosoff peered at her again and didn't speak. Hey, come on, Laura thought, you can't run out the clock like that, it's not fair.

Fair? Laura felt an icy wash slip over her skin as she heard Harry's voice, mocking and amused. After everything that's happened, Stone, you're still complaining when things aren't fair ?

Rosoff snapped his head around to look in the direction Laura was looking, toward the window. Water lay flat and moonlight sparkled, boats drifted, the bridge stood. He spun back. “What's the matter with you? You look like you saw a ghost.”

A plane, Laura realized he meant. A jet banking low. Or an explosion in the harbor, a new billowing black cloud.

“Just thinking,” she managed. “Just remembering something.”

Under his breath Rosoff muttered, “Shit.”

“About McCaffery?” Laura prompted, trying to behave like the hard-edged reporter she'd been a few seconds ago, though her face was hot and her heart was pounding. Harry, she thought, for pity's sake, I'm working! Leave me alone! No! No, wait, no, don't!

“Harry Randall,” Rosoff said. “What makes you think the guy didn't jump?”

However much of Rosoff's time Laura had left, it wasn't enough to explain that. She settled on “I knew him.”

Rosoff's right hand scratched at something on the thumbnail of the left one. “Any other time,” he said, and he seemed to be talking as much to himself as to Laura, “I'd be happy to help. To see one of those showboat Fire Department pretty boys get what's coming to him, it wouldn't bother me in the least. Now…” He kept his eyes on his huge hands.

“Now,” he went on, “maybe this is bigger than him. What happened back then doesn't matter. What happened to that reporter doesn't matter. People look at these guys, they went running into that hellhole, didn't come out, people need them to be better than the rest of us. Even if this one beat his wife, that one cheated on his taxes. They're dead now. Anything bad McCaffery did, he's not gonna do it again. He's not a guy now, he's a legend. What's wrong with that?”

“Because someone killed Harry,” Laura said. “Because the truth matters. Even now.”

“What you're telling me,” Rosoff said, “you're not gonna stop.”

“No, I'm not.”

“Shit.” He stood. Laura thought he was going to march to the door, yank it open, and toss her out, but all he did was turn to face the window. “Well,” he said, his back to her, “what the fuck do I know? Maybe you're right. Maybe the truth does matter. Right now, only thing that matters to me is we catch the motherfuckers who did this. Pound them into ashes. But maybe someday I'll feel different. Maybe something else will start mattering again.”