back his chair. Laura had an idea he'd been about to say something else, but Constantine's eyes had caught hers, and Spano saw that. “Fuck,” Spano said instead. “What? You two in this together? This some kind of shakedown? Get the fuck out of here. All of you. Out.”
“Ms. Stone, that means you,” Constantine said. “We'll leave soon, too, Eddie. But I passed your money to Sally Keegan for eighteen years. I was a good boy. I didn't ask questions. Jimmy McCaffery said it was his, I closed my eyes and covered my ears and passed it on.
“I'm likely to be disbarred, Eddie. I may even go to jail. I just want to know what it was all about. I want Kevin to know. Ms. Stone.” Now Constantine turned to Laura, and the details filled in, spreading from the center to the farthest edges as Constantine said to her, “Ms. Stone, get lost. Mr. Spano wants this off the record. So do I.”
Laura was not about to get lost. What reporter could leave a scene like this? But she was thinking furiously. It was obviously her presence that was making Spano deny he'd used Constantine to pass the money; what reason would he have to lie to Constantine, even if McCaffery had been their go-between, even if the two had never met? If she left, so they could have this out alone, could she hide somewhere, lurk under the windows, eavesdrop? Outside a trailer on concrete blocks in the mud of a building site? The men with the American flag decals on their hard hats would spot her, circle toward her, surround her like a pack of wolves.
No, she'd stay until Spano had her physically thrown out (and maybe he wouldn't; after all, think how that would look in the paper) and play them off against each other. She'd done that before. It wasn't so hard. Everyone wanted to come out looking good, everyone wanted his story to be the one that was believed.
That was Laura's plan. “If you—” She never got any further than that.
“Fuck that!” Keegan exploded. “Let her stay! Let her hear it, let everyone hear it!”
“Kev—”
“No, Uncle Phil.” Keegan's voice took on a different tone, a tone Laura knew. She'd heard it in the voices of people she'd interviewed in those first days after the towers fell, people coming to accept what they had been desperately fighting: that the “missing” posters, the hospital searches, the frantic digging at Ground Zero, could not help them. It was the voice of someone admitting the shattering truth that a loved one was gone, and in that voice Kevin Keegan said, “No, Uncle Phil.”
LAURA'S STORY
Chapter 15
“Kevin.” Constantine spoke quietly to the young man, as though the two were alone. As though they stood on some wind-blasted height where nothing grew and nothing lived and everything had been torn away but the truth.
Keegan shook his head. “Don't. Don't tell me more lies, Uncle Phil. No more. You lied all my life.”
“Not about what was important.” Like voices on the tapes Laura had heard of calls made from the upper floors of the towers, people who understood they were certainly doomed but were determined to maintain contact until the end, Constantine's voice was calm. “Not about what mattered.”
“To
The young man looked wildly around, as much, Laura thought, to break the spell of Constantine's eyes as anything else. He spotted her but moved on, too furious to care who she was or what she'd heard. Constantine's eyes watched the young man the way you'd stare after a priceless possession torn away in a hurricane.
Keegan fixed on Eddie Spano. “You,” he said hoarsely. “I want to know. My dad, Uncle Jimmy, what was it about?”
“I don't know what the hell—”
“Don't do that! Don't lie like him, no more bullshit! Who shot Jack Molloy? Was it Uncle Jimmy?”
“Kid, I—”
Constantine said, “Kevin—”
“Why did my dad go to jail? What was the money for?”
From Spano: “I got no fucking idea!”
From Constantine: “Kev—”
“Uncle Jimmy's papers,” Keegan hissed at Spano. “What he wrote. Is that what's in them?”
“Papers? What fucking papers?”
“You lying bastard!
“Get the fuck out of here! You're fucking crazy, all of you! Get out!”
Keegan, green eyes blazing, swung forward on his crutches with a speed that took Laura by surprise. He shoved Spano against the wall before anyone could move. The whole trailer rocked. “Tell me the truth!” The crutches clattered to the floor. Keegan squeezed Spano's throat. Spano clawed Keegan's face as Keegan shouted, “What did my father do? Why did he go to jail? Tell me the truth! Tell me! Tell me!”
Spano pushed and twisted; Constantine grabbed Keegan, tried to pull him away. “Kevin! Come on, Kev, come on!”
Keegan swung at Constantine. The blow was unbalanced and badly timed but had the unstoppable force of betrayal behind it. Constantine's head snapped back. Keegan, weight shifting to his bad leg, fell forward, seizing Spano again.
