“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.”
He stood silent, his broad back unmoving. When he spoke, he did not face Laura.
“That story, that we were about to come down on Jack Molloy? Like you said, it was lies. That point in time, we had nothing different than we ever had, nothing that would've stuck. The story was planted, and I was never sure why. I don't know how it got to Keegan. But I've always been pretty sure it came from us.”
“From you?”
“In those days, it wasn't like now. Guys were in Al Spano's pocket. And the Molloys'. Tom, Jack, Big Mike—they all had their own guys, bought and paid for. Nothing I could do about those guys, the bent ones, but I kept an eye on them. There was one guy. Ted O'Hagan. Bad temper, sticky fingers. A real piece of work. He's dead now, four, five years. DUI, into a tree in Jersey.”
Laura waited, watching Rosoff watch the water.
“O'Hagan,” said Rosoff. “Good cop name, right? From a cop family. A couple of things he said later made me figure it was him gave the story out. Funny thing was, I had him pegged as working for Tom Molloy. Must've changed sides when I wasn't looking. A mick working for Spano. Bet they paid him double.” Rosoff turned slowly; his eyes met hers. “I thought I knew. I thought I knew what was going on, and come to find out I don't know shit. How can you fight these bastards when you don't know shit?”
Laura didn't answer. Rosoff's gaze hardened again. “Yeah,” he said bitterly, sitting down. “Molloy. McCaffery. What the hell else do you want to know?”
Rosoff had softened briefly, but he was ice again. Laura had seen this before: it happened all over New York now. Strangers turned to each other for comfort, then caught themselves and turned away. A new etiquette had arisen to cover the situation, and Laura followed it, framing her next question, returning to the topic, not acknowledging what both she and Rosoff knew: that for a moment he hadn't been talking about O'Hagan or Spano or Molloy. That bent cops and gangsters were not the only bastards he didn't know how to fight.
MARIAN'S STORY
Chapter 13
An unfamiliar light woke Marian, a brightness sneaking under the bottom of a window shade to poke her in the eye. That wasn't very nice. Especially since she had a headache. Sunshine was lovely, she thought groggily, but why couldn't it stay outside until she was ready? Squinting, she tried to make out what it was she was looking at as she moved her gaze around the room. Without her glasses she couldn't be positive, but it seemed to her she didn't recognize any of it.
And slowly she realized something else: she wasn't alone. Her back was warm, someone else's up against it.
And her mouth was sticky and dry. And the headache.
Oh no, she thought wearily. What did I do?
What bar did I sweep into this time, what young man did I select, allow to buy me drinks? Flirt with and make promises to? What will I have to extricate myself from now? What tangles will there be to delicately slip out of, never detaching as gracefully as you'd want?
When will I learn?
She turned gently, not wanting him to awaken until she saw who it was, until she remembered, until she'd had a chance to think. She prided herself on one thing: she had never not remembered. In the morning, she always knew their names and whatever it was about them she had learned while their eyes were holding hers over cocktails or wine, while the comings and goings of a public place surrounded the two of them and their hands touched quite by accident as they toasted their luck in having met.
But she had to admit that the remembering sometimes took longer now than it had once.
So she gently lifted herself on her elbows to peer over the bare shoulder of the sleeping man beside her, to see who he was.
It was Tom.
Oh my God, it was Tom. How could this be, how could this have happened? The room spun, Marian's heart pounded wildly. What would she say to Jimmy, to Vicky? How could she have done this? What kind of a person was she?
Tom stirred, and Marian jerked away, almost horrified, not wanting to touch him. Then, as he continued to sleep, she peered at him, looked more closely. It was Tom, no question about it. But why did he look so strange? Why did he look so
Then memory, like a landslide. She had never not remembered.
There was nothing she needed to tell Jimmy. Jimmy was dead. And what had she ever told Jimmy, what had he told her, since that windy spring morning so long ago (spring, when things were supposed to grow and flourish and begin) when he had told her goodbye?
And Vicky? Tom and Vicky had split years ago. From childhood, Vicky had been the promised consort of the crown prince, and it was he whom she adored, he whom she married. When Tom abdicated, Vicky left him. What Tom did did not matter to Vicky anymore.
