Absent Friends

fears for his own safety.” Asked about the status of the work Harry Randall left unfinished, Stone answered, “Whatever Harry Randall was working on, the Tribune will follow it up. If his death is related to his work, the Tribune will find out.”

PHIL'S STORY

Chapter 4

The Bodies of the Birds

October 31, 2001

Phil read the Tribune's story on Harry Randall's death just as he'd read the others. Hugh Jesselson's byline was on it. Jesselson was a cop and crime reporter; Phil had run across him before, bound to in his line of work.

And Jesselson made this clear: the Tribune's take on Randall's death was different from everyone else's.

Jesselson's reporting was straight and dry, but the message was clear: The Tribune wasn't convinced. The Tribune wanted to know more. The Tribune couldn't see a reason for a man in Randall's position to take a swan dive through the clear October air.

What position was that? Phil studied the story, digging into his eggs. He discovered, because it was not there, something else. No police sources were quoted, no investigation cited. No matter whose byline was on the story, the NYPD was apparently not inclined to dig deeper into Randall's death.

But the Tribune was.

Laura Stone, another Tribune reporter—had Phil seen her name, maybe on the Bronx chemical spill story? Something like that, something that took digging, brains, and guts, he wasn't sure what, but he remembered being impressed—Laura Stone said her colleague Harry Randall had been working on something. Something big. He'd told her a certain amount about it. He'd expressed fears for his own safety.

Phil tore a piece of toast in half, chased crumbs of bacon around his plate. Expressed fears? The Harry Randall who'd sat in Phil's office, slouching in his chair as though even dynamite wouldn't dislodge him until he'd gotten his answers—and smiling as if to say the way he knew that was that dynamite had once or twice been tried—that Harry Randall had expressed fears?

No.

No, not even if he'd felt them. And Phil, remembering Randall's amused, acid-sharp eyes, his relaxed, drink- worn face, the drawling slow rhythm Phil had not been able to disrupt, did not think Randall had been a frightened man.

What, then? Not hard to figure out. “Whatever Harry Randall was working on, the Tribune will follow it up. If his death is related to his work, the Tribune will find out.”

Meaning: I'm here, if you want to stand up, show yourself, take another shot.

MARIAN'S STORY

Chapter 3

The Invisible Man

Steps Between You and the Mirror

October 31, 2001

As Marian stepped inside, the broad oak door swung shut, blockading the footsteps and fluorescent buzz of the cramped corridor, forbidding them entry into the wide quiet of the MANY Foundation's office.

Outside this well-oiled door—in the vinyl-tiled hallway, in the security-guarded lobby, on the crowded streets— frowning women and men scurried about on unconnected errands. Here within, where plant-draped partitions supported polished woodwork surfaces hovering over carpet the color of moss, all was purpose and peace. In a flight of fancy Marian had once likened herself and her staff to forest creatures, vibrant with industry, intent upon their daily tasks. “You do know,” Sam had asked, “that the daily task of half those cute little creatures is eating the other half?” Marian had smiled indulgently and hadn't replied.

That smile, that flight of fancy, had been before.

Pausing now just inside the door, Marian met a hollowness that, though unwelcome, she'd known too well these past weeks. She had not spoken about it, at first hoping it would pass, later ashamed to have it mean so much to her. What was her loss, compared to others so much more profound, so much more bewildering? But she tasted its empty, metallic tang each time she walked through this door. The soothing sense she had always had here of coming home, of having found her way back once again to the place where she belonged, had vanished after September 11, along with all else she thought she had known.

In the minutes and hours of the crisis itself Marian had remained calm. (Those hours so elusive, difficult for memory to grasp: some episodes compressed, some elongated. Events recollected as following others when in reality they must have come long before. Some recalled as though only recorded by a single sense: this, an odd sweet smell. That, a shout, and someone weeping. Sticky dust clinging to skin and hair. An abrupt midday darkness that rolled away to reveal a new, ash-covered world.) She had shepherded her staff down the staircase immediately after the second plane struck. (Their building was not yet being evacuated; its security office was “assessing the situation.” Marian, watching in horror as flaming bodies and massive chunks of steel twisted through the sky to crash to roofs and slice through walls of buildings around them, wondered exactly what there was to assess.)

She had directed her people to a rear exit and had stayed in the lobby after they all had dashed outside, to help others find that back way, too, visitors to the building, strangers, office workers who came here every day but in the crescendo of their panic were losing all orientation, all direction. Thus she was still inside when the roar, the sound none had ever heard before, the rumble and clamor that froze them all, began. And as the black cloud poured down