Absent Friends

“So Molloy gets shot, and word comes down the next day: pick up Keegan. I look and I see: Jack Molloy's out of the way. Mark Keegan's taking the fall, I don't know who for. But is this so bad? Is it bad enough, I want to throw a monkey wrench in the works, my third guy theory? Maybe risk my chance of making sergeant? For what?

“And Jeff points out to me: Spano's guys I know. I talk their language. We need something, maybe it's easier if it's Spano's guys than Molloy's. And even,” Zannoni said with emphasis, as though he were stacking his reasons onto a pile, counting on the pile's height to justify its existence, “Big Mike Molloy, what he's seeing, a buddy of Jack's shot his kid. A fuckup. Bad, but shit happens.”

People die, Laura thought. Vanish, never come back. Shit happens.

“If I'm right and Spano's involved and it comes out, hell, we got a war here. We can't handle it, everybody knows we can't. Like I said, back then, you didn't take those guys on. War, it's the civilians who pay.” He nodded, as though answering an unspoken question. “So that was that.”

Black sky, white stars, lit ships, glittering water. This far south on Staten Island, you couldn't see the tip of Manhattan, couldn't see the smoke rising.

“So why now?” Laura asked. “Why come forward now?”

Zannoni was silent. His hands lifted from the balcony rail, separated, came back together. “You see what those motherfuckers did over there?” Now his hands gestured in the direction of the invisible smoke. “Killing Americans, that's all they wanted. Didn't matter, you were Italian, you were Irish. Didn't matter you were a cop or a fireman. Those SOBs decided you were dead, you were dead. Italian, Irish, Jewish, black, so fucking what? That shit's gotta stop. Those motherfuckers are out there blasting the hell out of Americans. Americans. And I'm sitting here on my fucking balcony, I'm sitting on my butt, there's nothing I can do.

“Then your boy Jesselson calls.

“And I think, Maybe I can do this.

“I think, This shit's gotta stop.”

BOYS' OWN BOOK

Chapter 14

Leaving the Cat

September 2, 1979

Jimmy's sitting in the backyard with Markie. The sun's warm on his back, and everything's so quiet he can hear the Addonisios' radio from three houses away. The Addonisios are old, and they sit on their porch and listen to the opera every Sunday in the summer. A lot of the other guys rag on it, they say those wops, they like lady singers who sound like cats with their tails in the door. Jimmy doesn't mind the opera. Vinny down at the firehouse, he puts it on sometimes when they get back from a run. Jimmy likes to hear it then, it sounds kind of the way he feels, all those voices, loud and soft, alone and together. But he doesn't know anything about opera.

Jimmy looks at Markie, wonders why Sally and Kevin and his job at the garage aren't enough for Markie. He thinks about himself, the sizzling that starts deep inside him when the bell's ringing and the guys are all yanking on turnout coats, swinging onto the truck. Is this what Markie feels when he's with Jack?

Ten years old: early Sunday morning, the kids over where the new subdivision is going up, no one knows what subdivision means (someone says it sounds like math, everyone groans), but they all love the outlines of the houses drawn in wood against the sky like skeletons. They like to play here. You can jump down from a porch, or maybe it's a dining room, onto a huge pile of sand; you can hide in the dark, damp space underneath the kitchen, not big enough even for Markie to stand up in, but full of dirt and puddles so when the other army comes to find you, you can ambush them with mudballs. A big yellow machine with a claw in front is standing on top of the hill like a dinosaur. Jack knows what it's called: it's a front loader, you jerks, he says. And he says something else: he says he knows how to drive it.

Tom looks at the thing a minute, then shakes his head, says, Forget it, man. He says, I want to see if I can climb that chimney over there, and he heads that way. Jack looks in that direction, too, maybe he's thinking about going with Tom, but Markie says, Really, Jack? Can you really drive it? And Jack looks back at the dinosaur, and says, Fuckin' A, because you know, Markie, man, I saw it, I saw where the asshole who left it there Friday, I saw where he left the keys.