Absent Friends

Kevin looked blank, then he shrugged. “They were always good. The Tornados. We played them lots of times.”

Phil nodded. The waitress brought his Guinness, but she didn't stick around. Story of his life.

Kevin said, “Why'd you meet with Uncle Jimmy?”

A sip of beer. “He gave me money. Cash. I'd put it in a bank account, an escrow account in your mother's name, and write her a check every month.”

“From the State.”

“Well, obviously not. But yes, those checks.”

“Why?”

“Your father was dead. You were a baby. Your mother needed the money.”

“Goddamn it, Uncle Phil!” At Kevin's shout the waitress's head whipped around like a searchlight. The bartender's, too, in case something was blowing up he'd need to take care of. Phil raised an apologetic hand, shook his head. The bartender nodded: Okay, but watch yourselves. Screw you, Phil thought, that was more action than you've seen in here all week.

Kevin leaned forward. If this were a negotiating session, Phil would have pulled back and also leaned a little to one side. That way he'd control the distance between them and make it clear, too, that he was the one controlling it. But he didn't do any of that. There was too much distance already.

“I mean, why you and Uncle Jimmy?” Kevin lowered his voice, but now it wore a sharp and ragged edge. “I thought you didn't even like each other. Why the bullshit?”

Of course that's what he meant. “Jimmy said your mother wouldn't have taken the money from him. From anyone.”

“Bullshit,” Kevin repeated.

Kevin drank. Phil waited. Never offer information, never answer the question that wasn't asked. “Why did the paper say the money might have come from Eddie Spano?” Kevin demanded.

“It had to come from somewhere. They don't think it could have been Jimmy's. It's too much money.”

“Where did it come from?”

Answer half the question: “What Jimmy gave me, I don't know where it came from.”

“What the fuck do you mean, you don't know?”

“I never asked him.”

“He just hands you thousands in cash every couple months for eighteen fucking years, and you never ask where it comes from?”

“Kev, I work with criminals. There are a lot of things I'm better off not knowing.”

“Criminals?”

“I don't mean Jimmy!” Like hell you don't. “Generally, always, all I want to know is that I'm not involved in anything illegal. Beyond that, sometimes the less information I have, the better.”

“If you were thinking like that, you were thinking there was something bad to know.”

Phil said nothing, spiraling down.

“If you never asked him”—this sarcastically, a tone he'd never heard from Kevin before—“how could you know you weren't involved in anything illegal?”

“My job . . .” Phil drank, a stall while he tried to find a way to regain altitude. “Your father asked me to look after you and your mother while he was gone.”

“I still—”

“Your father was my responsibility, Kev.”

Kevin's answer was what he'd been taught, but with a new, unsure note. “You did everything you could. Mom always said.”

Okay, Kevin. It's been nice knowing you. “I let him—I encouraged him—to plead to something I was sure he didn't do.”

Phil watched that hit Kevin like arctic air. Then he said: “I don't think he shot Jack Molloy. I never did.”

“If my dad—then who do you think did?”

It wasn't really a question, just an automatic reaction. Like a blink to clear your eyes when you're not sure what you're seeing. Phil let it go, waited for the next one.

“No one else was there,” Kevin said. “Just them. Jack Molloy and my dad.”

“I think someone else was.”

Kevin stared, and drank, and stared, and said, “Uncle Jimmy? You think Uncle Jimmy was there? You think Jimmy did it?”

No answer from Phil.

“Oh, fuck you, Uncle Phil! Fuck you, that's nuts!”

“It was his money.”

“Or someone else's. You just said.”

“Or someone else's. But it came through Jimmy. Why? If he didn't know something?”

“Something like what?”

“If he didn't do it, he knew who did.”

“My dad did it. By accident. Uncle Jimmy was my dad's best friend!”

“Everyone says that.”

“You don't believe it?”

“That's not what I mean.” No? Then why did you say it like that, that icy edge?

Phil waved to the waitress, who nodded and went behind the bar to the tap, didn't even approach. Thanks a lot, honey. “I didn't meet any of those people—your father, Jimmy, any of them—until after Markie was arrested. I was new in private practice, but everything I'd done since the day I left law school was criminal defense. I didn't know whose friend was whose around here, but I knew Markie was lying. I could smell it.”

“And you didn't do anything?”

“He wouldn't let me. He told me exactly what he'd told the police, and his story never changed. ‘Jack shot at me, I shot back, I was scared, I never thought I'd hit him.' In the end I was goddamn grateful to be offered the plea on the gun charge, because Markie was ready to go to trial.”

“Because he thought you'd get him off. Because he trusted you.”