killing him. I tried to use it to get him to tell me the truth, but he never changed his story.”
“Couldn't that mean it was true?”
“It could. Sure it could.” This wasn't the point he wanted to argue with Kevin right now. He didn't want to argue anything with Kevin. Right now or any other time. “Anyway, that should've been it for me. Case over, win or lose, I'm gone. But he asked me to look after you guys. So I told Sally she could call me if she needed anything. There's always paperwork, things to do. She wanted to take you up there on visiting day. I showed her how. Things like that.” Nothing from Kevin. Phil said the rest: “Then Markie died. Kev . . . ?”
“What?”
“Nothing.” Phil had been about to say, Could we get out of here? Walk around, move, breathe some air, talk where there aren't any walls? But he'd forgotten about the crutches. “Nothing.”
As though it was important for Kevin to hear the rest, he went on. “After that—after he died—I told your mom I'd hook her up with another lawyer. Everyone in Pleasant Hills was blaming me. I shouldn't have let him take the plea. I should've gotten him sent somewhere safer. I should've done something.
“I understood. I was the outsider, they had to blame someone. I didn't want Sally caught up in that. But she told me it wasn't my fault, and she wanted me to stay helping her, if I didn't mind. Kev, that's all it was. For a long time.”
That, and Sally's eyes, changing from emerald glass to storm-swept, distant sea.
“So when Jimmy wanted to start giving you money—whoever's money it was—I was the logical guy to come to.”
Finally, something from Kevin. A growl: “And you just took it? You thought Uncle Jimmy shot that guy and let my dad go to jail, and you just took his money?”
“Shit, Kev! Should I have told him to go fuck himself? What did I have? A gut feeling something's rotten and it's Jimmy McCaffery? You see who he is today—that's who he always was! The stained-glass saint. Me? I was the loser Jew lawyer from the other side of the harbor.” Phil saw, or thought or hoped he saw, a cloud of uncertainty in Kevin's eyes. Move in on that, leverage it. “And I'll say this: I never saw him do anything that contradicted that. Everyone looked up to him. Including you.”
“What the fuck—?”
“He raised you, Kev! As much as I did. And he”—how to put it?—“he meant more to you. No, hear me out. I was fun, Kev, I was there, you could count on me, but Jimmy was the guy you wanted to be. Who the hell wouldn't? It would have broken your heart, and your mother's, if I could have proved what I knew.”
“What you thought!”
“Okay, thought.” Making my point, said Phil to himself, to Kevin, silently. “Even more reason to keep my mouth shut. Kev, I followed his career all these years. He saved a lot of lives. He was a hero. Except, if I was right, this one time. One time. And the money? Wherever it came from, he was using it to help people I loved.”
Kevin flinched at the word. Phil wondered, Can this really be the first time I've said it to him?
“So who the hell was I to screw that up?” He leaned toward Kevin. “For what? To prove how smart I was? What good would it have done?”
“What about justice? You didn't care?”
Phil opened his hands. Empty. “I think about that every day. About Markie and every client since. I don't know what it means.”
“You don't know? For Christ's sake, Uncle Phil! You're a lawyer!”
The universe of innocence in that outburst would have made Phil laugh with delight, if things were different. Instead, he leaned toward Kevin again and tried to explain.
“The other side—the prosecution—they talk about justice all the time. Paying your debts. Justice for the victims. But I see guys like Markie. Guys with family, friends, guys who had something going. Then one fuckup, their lives are over. Who's the justice for, Kevin? What does it look like?”
Kevin gave no answer. How could he? There was no answer.
But he had another question.
“Eddie Spano?”
Phil nodded. “You mean, if the money was his?”
“Because you can't be telling me Uncle Jimmy was . . . I don't know what the fuck, Spano's hit man or something? And we—and that was the payoff? You can't—”