Absent Friends

“Maybe Spano invented the story to scare Molloy out of town, got it to Keegan through a cop so Keegan would think it was the real deal,” Commissioner Rosoff said. Then Spano might have offered Jack Molloy a deal to take over Molloy's operations. This offer might have been made through an intermediary, possibly McCaffery.

Commissioner Rosoff went on to suggest this further scenario: after Keegan's death, McCaffery may have pressed Spano into making payments to Keegan's young family—the mysterious payments “from the State”—as the price of his own silence regarding Spano's involvement. When asked whether the information McCaffery could have revealed was enough to prompt Spano to agree to blackmail, the Commissioner said, “Think about this: what if Keegan wasn't the shooter? What if it was McCaffery? If he was there that night to negotiate for Spano, that could get Spano sent up. Keegan takes the fall because he's promised a fix and a payoff. When Keegan dies, McCaffery tells Spano the money better keep coming. If I was Spano, I'd pay.”

The Tribune has also discovered that McCaffery left behind a set of papers, which the late Mr. Randall is believed to have seen shortly before his death, and that are believed to concern the Molloy shooting. Marian Gallagher, McCaffery's ex-fiancée and currently the director of the More Art, New York! Foundation and the newly established McCaffery Memorial Fund, claims to be skeptical about the papers' existence. Constantine, Mark Keegan's attorney and a close friend of Keegan's widow, admits they may exist but claims he has not seen them. There is reason to believe Randall would have exposed the contents of McCaffery's papers, had he lived.

The investigation is continuing.

MARIAN'S STORY

Chapter 14

Leaving the Cat

November 1, 2001

Marian took the long way past the park because she liked to look at it. The sunlight glowed and the breeze was fresh, whisking tan and yellow leaves along the sidewalk. Someone—whoever lived now in the Faherty house—had planted a Japanese maple, and it blazed red as a fire.

She'd called the office and told Elena she'd be in by lunchtime. When she'd left his house, Tom had offered to drive her. But the day was so beautiful, why not walk? And there was more to it, and Tom knew that and did not insist. Marian was on her way to see Sally and Kevin, and the more was this: she did not want to have to explain to Sally why she was with Tom so early in the morning. Not, she reminded herself firmly, that there was anything wrong with what she and Tom had done. They were adults, neither of them promised to anyone else, neither of them being unfaithful by accepting the comforts of the other's arms.

But it did seem . . . upside down, somehow. No more so than the rest of the world now, and no one was hurt, and no one would mind. And Sally would never ask. With a quiet smile she would wait for Marian to tell her what the sight of Marian getting out of Tom's car already had. She would wait, but she would expect to be told, and she would deserve that, because that was who Sally and Marian were to each other.

Marian had only ever had one secret she had not told Sally; she doubted if Sally had any she had not shared. And Marian's secret had always been less a secret than a trembling fear, less a monster than a grasping shadow. Until last night. Until Tom's words had released the hissing serpent truth. Marian dreaded being alone with that serpent, that secret, that truth; she always had. Her horror of its hot breath on her neck had driven her into Tom's arms, as into the arms of all the young men over all the years. This was what Marian knew. This was the one thing she had always kept from Sally.

And on this bright morning, on her way to Sally's, Marian walked.

It was Kevin who answered the door, leaning on his crutches. His unshaven face was sprinkled with the beginnings of a beard that would grow in as red as his hair, if he let it. His T-shirt and boxer shorts were sleep-rumpled. From knee to ankle his right leg was bandaged, and still that was an improvement: the bandage in the beginning had enclosed his thigh also, but skin had not been grafted there, and that burn had soon healed. The shiny scar there matched the one on his right wrist, also unbandaged now.

Kevin's surprised smile appeared half a beat late, but it was the same sunshine beam he'd been giving her since, she swore, the day he was born.