“But you think there's something wrong with that?”
Zannoni turned back to Laura. “What the hell was he carrying it for?”
“People carry guns. Especially young punks that age.”
“Mark Keegan wasn't a punk. Grew up with Molloy, but nothing we had said he was connected. Far as I could see, he had no enemies. Everyone liked him. From what people said, even Molloy did, far as he liked anyone, crazy fuck that he was. 'Scuse my language.”
“Don't worry about it.”
Zannoni didn't look worried. “Auto mechanic with a wife and kid. 'Seventy-nine, guns weren't as easy to get as now. Today, okay, everyone has one, same as sneakers, gotta look good. Back then, gangbangers all over the Bronx, yeah, but a mechanic out here, family man? Why'd he have a gun?”
“Do you have an answer?”
“Yeah. He didn't.”
“It wasn't Mark Keegan's gun?”
“Not his, and he wasn't carrying it.”
Lights flashed on the distant flank of a tanker. Carefully, Laura said, “The gun was someone else's? Someone else was there?”
“Always thought so.”
“Who?”
“Never knew.” Zannoni cupped his tea with both hands. “That investigation, it wasn't what you'd call thorough. They pulled me and Jeff off it the second Keegan took the plea. Not like we minded. Plenty of open cases on our books. Guy pleads, hell with it, that one's closed.”
“But you didn't like it?”
For a moment, she didn't think he'd answer. Then he said, “They came out there with a six-pack, Keegan said. We didn't find a single can. Keegan said he picked them up when he ran, in case of prints.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“I went back the next day. Before they pulled us, you know? I went back in the light. I found two plastic ring tops. In the dirt near the foundation. Like someone tossed them over the edge. Molloy's prints on one, nothing we could make out on the other. I asked Keegan, how many six-packs did you say? He said, Yeah, I don't remember, maybe two. Seemed like a weird thing to me, guy can't remember how many six-packs he cracked open. Especially, he picked up the cans.”
“He'd have to have been flustered. Couldn't one of those tops have been from another time?”
“Keegan said that, too. Backpedaling. Um, um, um, could be a couple of nights before, um, um, we go over there a lot. So maybe it's one, maybe it's two, maybe from last night, maybe last week. Great. Anyway, it was a pretty clean site. No other trash. Strange that a ring top would have stayed, from last week.”
“And you think . . . ?”
“Someone else was there. Three guys, two six-packs. And that's why the cans were gone. That's the prints they were worried about. We tested Molloy's blood-alcohol level. Keegan's, too. Molloy tested high, but not Keegan. Not two six-packs' worth. And me and Jeff, we asked ourselves this: These were grown men. What the hell are they doing drinking on a construction site, like they're kids, they have to sneak around? Every third building in Pleasant Hills was a bar, those days.”
“Did you ask Keegan?”
“He said they liked it out there, those half-built houses. Reminded them of this place they used to hang out when they were kids. Horsepucky.”
“What do you think was going on?”
“It was a private meet,” Zannoni said. “Keegan, Molloy, somebody else.”
“A setup?”
“More like a fuckup. If it was a hit, they'd've been prepared. Everybody would've disappeared. Keegan wouldn't have had to take the fall. There wouldn't have been a fall.”
“But you think that's what happened? That's what Keegan did, take a fall?”
“Sure as hell.”
“But you don't know who for?”
“Like I say, I never did. Until I read that story in your paper. Hey, you cold? We could go inside.”
“No, I'm fine. It's just a little windy here.”
“When I read in your paper that Jimmy McCaffery was behind the money—you know that for a fact?”
Laura, who right at this moment knew nothing for a fact, nodded.
“All that money, all these years, in secret,” said Zannoni. “It had to be him. It had to be him.”
LAURA'S STORY
Chapter 11
