But no: not identical. On Staten Island the tracks ran on elevated trestles or through open cuts, no tunnels. The rhythm of dark-while-moving, bright-when-stopped was replaced, first by a disorienting view of rooftops; then quickly and even more disconcertingly by the blank plane of endless concrete wall.
The same yet different. One more thing.
At the Pleasant Hills stop Laura climbed up out of the train and cut to a busy street of one- and two-story shops. Fitzgerald Drive was a hike from the train station, but she welcomed the walk. Already—and this was only her third trip—the ferry ride across the harbor was beginning to weary her. Harry's absence, the towers' absence, the smoke and dust lifting into the sky; the hush, and the pointing. Maybe when she went back tonight, Laura thought, she'd ride inside, on the lowest level, where she and Harry had never sat. She'd review her tapes or read over her notes or stare into space and not know anything until it was time to get off.
She stopped for coffee at a chrome-sided Main Street diner with cardboard black cats in the windows. Harry would have said it looked like it had been there since the Flood. (She could hear him say it, see the rueful smile adding that he recognized it from then.) She shook her head as a dog shakes off a rainstorm and concentrated on finding her way through Pleasant Hills. She was working.
Leaving the business strip, Laura made the required lefts and rights. At Fitzgerald Drive she crumpled her coffee cup into a trash can and followed the street's suburban curve to a three-story clutch of white-stuccoed condos. Third building, top floor, “Zannoni” on the bell, and apparently Zannoni on the balcony: a balding fleshy man, dressed in a white polo shirt and jeans, called down, “You Miss Stone?” and when, squinting past a streetlight, she told him she was, he disappeared inside and buzzed the door open.
He was waiting at the top of the stairs. His lined face and the slack skin of his arms told her he was over sixty, but he greeted her with a firm handshake. So many men shook a thin woman's hand gingerly, as though afraid to break her (though Laura had always detected a certain macho posturing in that, the message of “I could hurt you if I'm not careful” translating easily into “if
She stared over shadowed rooftops and breeze-blown trees. Beyond, the lights of the Verrazano arched over the sparkling Narrows. On the far shore the buildings of Brooklyn crowded their waterfront, windows lit.
“Not bad, huh?” Zannoni stood beside her, looking over the vista with satisfied pride, as though he owned it. “Bought the place for the view. You want some tea?” He waved his hand in the table's direction.
Laura left with regret the sight of so much glittering dark water, such promised distances. She sat in a canvas chair and turned down the offer of tea.
“All I have,” Zannoni said, still standing, as though she might change her mind if she knew no other offer was forthcoming. “All I drink. I'm the only Italian in the world doesn't like coffee. You sure?”
When Laura said she was, Zannoni sat.
“I appreciate your seeing me,” she began. Based on the phone call, the sight of him on his balcony, and the handshake, she'd taken on a frank and direct demeanor with a faint undertone of gratitude that acknowledged Zannoni was in charge. The role she was playing was that of a straightforward reporter who did not play roles. “I'm sorry about interrupting your dinner—”
“No problem. Caught me by surprise, is all.”
“I know what you mean. I don't like surprises, either.”
“Yeah.” He nodded, sipped his tea, and said, “Your boy Jesselson says you're interested in the Mark Keegan thing, from back then.”
Laura gave up trying to find a position on the sling chair that made her feel professional, or at least adult. She swung herself sideways so she was facing Zannoni and fished her pad, her pens, her recorder, from her bag. “Is this all right?” she asked Zannoni, setting the recorder on the table.
He eyed it without love. “For now. Might ask you to turn it off, though.”
“Of course. Do you want to start with me asking questions, or do you just—”
“What's your interest?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your interest in Keegan. Jesselson hunted me up, asked if I'd talk to you. Why?”
“I don't know if you've been following the stories in my paper—”
“Yeah.” Zannoni nodded. “You're the guys saying Jimmy McCaffery was laundering Eddie Spano's money through that lawyer, paying off Keegan's widow.”
Laura jumped right on it: “Is that what was happening?”
“What's your interest?” His eyes under thick brows held hers, not fiercely, not tight. An old cop, used to interrogations. A man who could sip tea on his balcony all day long asking the same question, while a stranger decided whether or not to answer him.
