Absent Friends

She did a breathing exercise to rid herself of the images, and of the twin burdens of anger and guilt. The guilt was for the pall she had cast on the easy joy of her friends' evening. Joy was not an abundant crop lately; where found, it needed to be carefully tended and sheltered from the withering chill of memory.

The anger was at Harry Randall, for killing himself.

Attempting to force the truth about Jimmy McCaffery out of the dark place they'd all, without a word to one another, buried it in; exposing what he'd uncovered, now of all times, to the searing glare of front-page headlines—that had been a terrible thing. Marian had tried to make Harry Randall see that it would be that way.

Her own danger had been secondary to her. The morass opening before her now, the tangle of trouble to herself, was not important. But her work was. And especially now. In these unsteady days, when no one was able to find a firm footing, she could offer a handhold, a refuge, a place to stand. She had tried every way she could think of to make Harry Randall understand how crucial it was, right now, for everyone only to help. She had tried to make him see that truth was not, always, the highest good.

Randall, though, was a reporter. And though she had failed, she did understand his need, in these times, to cling to what he had always believed in.

But when the consequences of what he'd done began to become clear, he should have acted like a man. He owed them all that.

In times like these, no one had the right to suicide.

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 1

The Man Who Sat by the Door

October 30, 2001

The thunderbolt of Harry Randall's death hit Phil Constantine at Grainger's Tavern. It was thrown from the TV over the bar by a glossy-haired anchorwoman in an insistent blue suit. The news blasted him with a powerful jolt, though no one watching would have seen that: just his eyes opening slightly, his jaw tightening as his focus narrowed and intensified.

In court Phil would sometimes cock his head, lean forward when a witness spoke—a prosecution witness, never his own—as though what he was hearing made no sense. As though he were trying to understand by moving closer to the source of his confusion. That gesture, though, was ruthlessly tactical. A lawyer who admitted to confusion was a fool. Real surprises, like being told by the evening news that that bastard reporter had jumped off the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, called for control.

Facing gravely into the camera, a trench-coated reporter spooled off as many facts of Harry Randall's life and death as he could jam into forty-five seconds. Behind him a weary-looking cop ripped down crime-scene tape. Two more linked tow chains to Randall's empty car. When the story was done, Phil asked Steve, behind the bar, to switch the channel, to try to catch it again.

“Something going on?” Steve glanced apprehensively up at the TV, tensing with someone's just-opened beer bottle in one hand.

“No, nothing new.” Phil spoke reassuringly—reassurance was one of the tones in his automatic repertoire—“just someone I know,” he added, to explain. Steve nodded but gave the TV another distrustful look as he reached for the remote, handed it to Phil.

Everyone was like this now. Every siren, every subway delay, every unexpected crowd as you rounded the corner, made your heart speed, your palms sweat. You walked along thinking of your day or your date or your dinner, and then you saw someone on the street run up to someone else and whisper, and before you could stop yourself you were thinking, That's it, something else happened. What this time? Sarin in the subway? Car bombs in the tunnels, dynamite on the bridge? Smallpox, assassination, poison in the water?

Everyone was like this, Phil as much as anyone. You just had to control yourself and go on anyway: it wasn't going away.

Phil flicked through channels. He found the Harry Randall story again, just ending, heard only what he'd just heard, learned nothing new. Either the other stations weren't running it, or, Harry Randall being one of their own, they'd led with it and he'd missed it already. Probably that. The death of a reporter, even a washed-up drunk like Harry Randall, was news to reporters. It would have been, even without the bullshit stories the Tribune had been running these past few weeks. Stories that started from the pure bright light of that fallen hero, Jimmy McCaffery, and spread in so many directions like a scorching flame. Stories with Randall's byline over them as though his name still meant something, stories meant to reignite a career long since cooled to ash.