by R. G. Belsky
“What happened to your friend?”
“Le Binh. Le Binh was more than just my friend. He was my wife’s brother. That’s how I met her. Through her brother, Binh. I’d hoped all three of us could go to America and be together. But he never made it to America. He died before the war was over.”
Gloria Bateman’s brother!
She’d said he died during the war, but wouldn’t give me any details.
I’d been listening to all this, taking a few notes as I did, but reluctant to break up his flow of words because he was telling me so much.
Now, though, I had to ask him more about his brother-in-law’s death.
“Was he killed by the Communists?”
“No, by the Americans.”
“Why?”
“They said he was working for the enemy.”
“Was he?”
“He was not working for anyone. All he cared about was his project. He was a scholar, not a soldier. There’s no way I could ever believe he was trying to blow up a U.S. facility. Yet they said he did. And they killed him.”
“Do you mean … ?”
“Hollister shot and killed him. He got a medal for it.”
“The man who was planting the explosive in the bunker was your partner and friend—and your wife’s brother?”
“He wasn’t killed because he was trying to plant an explosive. He was killed by Hollister to keep him quiet and to steal his ideas from him. The same way Hollister must have tried to kill me later in America. He didn’t succeed in that, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I met the same fate. So I walked away back in 1975 when he thought I was dead. I just let Hollister become rich and famous with the microchip. The idea we had come up with, but he had then stolen.”
There was no proof for any of this, of course.
No proof that Hollister had been guilty of going to any length—even murder—to get control of the idea that started his financial empire.
But, even without proof from Pham Van Quong, I believed him.
“I let Hollister take the idea for himself, which I imagine is what he planned to do all along—from the first moment he found out about it. He let us develop it, then he took credit—and all the profits—from it. But at least I was alive. And I knew I had to disappear if I wanted to stay alive in a strange country for me at the time like America.
“I’ve had a good life since then. I wound up starting several technology companies of my own. I didn’t get as rich as Hollister, but I’ve made good money with them. I’ve also used my computer skills to win big in the casinos down there. Did you know that you can almost make as much money in legalized gambling with the right technology as you can in the computer industry? I’ve used my computer skills to make millions. I’m married now to a wonderful woman; I have a wonderful family. Yep, I’ve done all right. I even almost forgot about everything that happened back in Vietnam and afterwards a half century ago. Until everything happening now. So, when I heard your broadcast last night, I decided it was time to come forward and tell my story.”
“And you never saw or talked to Hollister again in all those years?”
“Not until a few weeks ago.”
“A few weeks ago? What happened then?”
“He came to see me.”
“On the Gulf Shore?”
“That’s right. He just showed up at my door. I have no idea how he knew I was there or how he even found out I was alive. But there he was. Charles Hollister, in person.”
Of course.
Hollister had gone back to see a lot of other people from his past.
Why not the man whose idea had made him so rich?
“What did Hollister say to you after all this time?”
“He told me he was sorry. He told me he was sorry about everything. And then … he asked me to forgive him.”
CHAPTER 52
“CHARLES HOLLISTER WAS clearing the decks,” I said to Faron. “Going through all the excess baggage of his life. He went back to his ex-wives. To the mother of his current wife. And even to this man Pham who claims he was the one who invented the microchip that made Hollister rich—and that Hollister tried to kill him to keep that secret a half century ago. Why was Hollister doing this? What did he hope to accomplish? And, most importantly of all, what did he find out? If we can determine the answer to that, we might be able to figure out who killed him.”
“Was Hollister sick?” Faron asked. “Maybe he was dying and wanted to make amends for the bad things he’d done before he met his Maker or whatever. People do strange things when they know they’re dying.”
I shook my head no.
“No indication of it. From what I’ve been able to find out, he had some early signs of Parkinson’s disease. But nothing that would significantly affect him for some time. Other than a slightly elevated blood pressure and cholesterol level, Hollister was in pretty good physical health for a man his age.”
“What’s your best guess then, Clare?” Faron said, sipping from a can of SlimFast as he we talked.
I assumed that was his lunch.
Another day, another diet.
“I think maybe Charles Hollister suddenly got an attack of conscience.”
“He developed a conscience at seventy-plus years old?”
“Better late than never,” I said. “Or maybe he discovered something that started him looking through his own past like this.”
We were sitting in Faron’s office where I’d finished going through all the details of my conversation with the man who identified himself as Pham Van Quong.
“What do you make of this guy?” Faron asked me. “Do you think he’s for real? Do you believe everything he told you?”
“There’s no proof of any of it. Nothing that shows he invented the Hollister microchip or that he played any role in it whatever. Nothing to indicate Hollister even knew him in Vietnam. Nothing placing Hollister anywhere around the scene of that hit-and-run outside the UCLA campus. Nothing to even confirm that this person I met with is the same man who used to be called Pham Van Quong. But yes … I do believe him. Everything he told me checks out so far. He is a businessman in Mississippi, runs a group of technological companies there. The rest of the details of his life since 1975 were accurate too. And there seems to be no history of him in this country until 1975.”
“If all that is true, it means he could be a suspect in the Hollister murder. He certainly had a motive for wanting Hollister dead.”
“I think there’s something else going on here, Jack. I’m not sure what it is yet. But I believe it all revolves around Laurie Bateman. She’s the key to this whole story.”
“Are you planning on putting him on the air tonight?”
“Not yet. Like we said, there’s no real proof he’s who he says he is or that he’s telling the truth. I have to check him out—and his story—a lot more first. But he did say other intriguing stuff.”
I told Faron first how I’d asked Pham why he was in the subway station when Carmen Ortega, the Hollister maid, was hit by the subway train.
“He said he went there to meet the Ortega woman. He got a message that she wanted to talk to him. That she had information about Charles Hollister that could be extremely important to him.”
“So, someone else besides Hollister knew Pham was alive?”
“Apparently.”
“What kind of message was it?”
“A phone call. An anonymous phone call that gave him a time and place to be. It was the subway platform where Ortega was standing when she died. He said he’d just arrived on the platform when something—or somebody—pushed them both from behind into the path of the incoming train. He managed to keep his balance and stay on the platform. But she didn’t. He said he jumped down to try to help her, but then left before authorities could ask him any questions. He wanted to stay dead, especially after this new attempt on his life. Or at least he wanted to stay dead until he saw my report on the air last night. Now he thinks his best choice i
s to go public with everything.”
“That is weird,” Faron said.
“It gets weirder.”
Then I told him why Pham said he had originally come to New York City.
“He was supposed to meet with Hollister again. Hollister had said to him during that first meeting on the Gulf Shore that he wanted to do right by Pham, financially and otherwise. He promised they’d talk later in New York and work out all the details so Pham could get his fair share of what he deserved for helping to invent the original microchip that had made Hollister so rich. So Pham traveled to New York for this meeting. Hollister was supposed to come to Pham’s hotel to see him on the night before he was found dead. That was the plan they had worked out. But Hollister never showed up.”
“Maybe Hollister changed his mind about seeing the man,” Faron said.
“I don’t think so. He said Hollister called him earlier that night from the charity event he was at. He said he’d be at the hotel later. First, he had to go back to his apartment to deal with some business, Hollister said. He said he’d arrive at the hotel to see Pham around ten thirty. Except he never did.”
“And we have no idea why Charles Hollister cancelled out of that late-night meeting?” Faron asked.
“Pham never knew why.”
“I can’t think of any reason either,” Faron said.
I could.
“What if Charles Hollister was already dead at ten thirty?” I said.
CHAPTER 53
THE ONE HARD fact about the timeline of Charles Hollister’s death—the thing that provided everyone with the window of time within which he must have been killed—was that last phone call he made.
He left a message on his secretary’s phone at the Hollister headquarters. The time of that message was 6:38 a.m. on the morning that he was found murdered. Carmen Ortega, the maid, arrived and found him dead around 9:00 a.m. So we knew he must have been killed between 6:38 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. Yep, that much was a basic fact. Or was it?
I had a copy of that phone message from Hollister that we’d played on the air at Channel 10 after the murder, and I sat in my office listening to it now.
“I’m heading directly over to the Chronicle this morning to meet with that goddamned editor there as soon as he gets in,” he said to his secretary on the message. “He screwed up the front-page story today. I had to order them to rewrite the front-page headline. I want to deal with him right away this morning. I’ll see you after that.”
I played the message over and over again, trying to find a clue there—something that I and everyone else might have missed.
Maggie was there with me, and we both listened intently to the voice of Charles Hollister uttering his last words shortly before he would be murdered.
But who killed him?
Was it his wife, Laurie Bateman?
Any of the other potential suspects—a long list of them, including his own son—that I’d identified as people who had a reason to want Hollister dead?
Or was there someone else out there that no one had thought of yet?
The emergence of Pham Van Quong had made this story even more confusing for me than it had been before. If you believed his story—and, for whatever reason, I did believe his story—then Charles Hollister planned to meet him at the hotel the night before Hollister was found dead. Hollister even called to give a specific time he’d be there. At ten thirty p.m., after he’d finished meeting with someone else at his apartment. Except Hollister never showed up for the meeting with Pham Van Quong. Why not? And who was the person he met with on that last night of his life?
I picked up the phone and called Sam Markham, my ex-husband, at the Manhattan East Precinct.
“You said there was a security video of the entrance to Hollister’s building, Sam. And that Laurie Bateman and then the maid, Carmen Ortega, were the only ones on it from that morning. But what about the night before? Did you look at the security video for that?”
“No,” he said slowly.
“Why not?”
“Because we couldn’t find it.”
“The security video from the night before was missing?”
“I’m not sure it was missing. We just couldn’t find it.”
“Didn’t that make you suspicious?”
“Suspicious of what? We know Hollister was alive the night before because he made the phone call the next morning. So whatever was on that security video from the night before doesn’t really matter.”
“Right,” I said.
“Do you know something you’re not telling me, Clare?”
“Not really.”
“Because if you—”
“You’ll be the first person I tell, Sam. I promise.”
Maggie and I listened to the phone message one more time. It could have been the 10th time or the 100th time, I’d lost count. But when you’re desperate on a story, you cling to any possible angle. I was desperate. And the last message from Charles Hollister was the only thing I had at the moment.
It was Maggie who finally noticed something.
“Listen to Hollister’s voice,” she said.
“I am listening to it, Maggie. I’ve been listening to it over and over again. What’s your point?”
“It sounds different.”
“Different than what?”
“Different than other times I’ve heard him speak.”
She picked up her laptop, then clicked on a Hollister interview she found on YouTube. First one with TMZ. Then another when he appeared on the Today Show. Finally, one from a speech he’d made a few weeks earlier at an awards dinner. We listened to them all. Then we listened to the phone message to his secretary again. Maggie was right. Hollister did sound different on the phone message. Yes, the same voice. It was Hollister’s voice. But it sounded … well, artificial. “He sounds so impersonal here,” Maggie said. “It sounds almost … almost mechanical.”
“Mechanical,” I repeated.
We went back and played Hollister’s phone message one more time.
“I’m heading directly over to the Chronicle this morning to meet with that goddamned editor there as soon as he gets in. He screwed up the front-page story today. I had to order them to rewrite the front-page headline. I want to deal with him right away this morning. I’ll see you after that.”
I was listening differently to all his words now after what Maggie had said.
“Did you notice he called it the front-page headline?” I said.
“Yeah.”
“Not the wood or the splash.”
“Like they do at a newspaper,” Maggie said.
“Right. No one at a newspaper like the Chronicle calls it the front-page headline, it’s always the wood or the splash. I remember that well from my own days in newspapers. And people told me Hollister prided himself on learning all the newspaper terms and jargon. He fancied himself as becoming a media baron. I don’t think he would have called it the front-page headline.”
“So what does that mean?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure what it means either. But I think it means something.”
Maggie thought for a second.
“Clare, do you remember the Alphabet Kidnapping case?”
“Sure. That was a pretty famous one a few years back. The kidnappers sent notes by cutting letters out of newspaper headlines.”
I saw where she was going with this.
“What if someone did the same thing with a phone call?”
I nodded. “Someone who wanted to make it look like Hollister was alive at 6:38 a.m. with the message he left on his secretary’s phone. Someone who wanted to camouflage the timetable of the murder. Someone who wanted to make sure no one knew they were in Hollister’s apartment the night before—and maybe killed him.”
“But who?” Maggie asked. “Who could put together a phone tape of Hollister’s voice like that?”
“Someone who already had a lot of samples of Hollister’s voice,” I said.
CHAPTER 5
4
THERE WAS NO sign of Victor Endicott, the private investigator hired by both Hollister and Laurie Bateman at different times, when I went back to his office on Park Avenue South.
The glass front doors were locked. The secretary in the lobby was nowhere to be seen. And there was no indication of any other people or activity inside the suite of offices that had seemed so professional and busy when I was there the first time to see Endicott.
I thought about trying to break in myself to search the place for clues or evidence. There were a few problems with that idea though. First, it was illegal for me to break into an office. I could get myself and Channel 10 into big trouble. Second, I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for if I did get inside. Third, and this was the biggest problem of all, I had no idea how to break into a locked office.
I made a few calls instead. First, I called Sam and told him where I was and why—and that Endicott appeared to be gone. Then I called Nick Pollock, the Treasury agent who was investigating Hollister’s finances for fraud—I figured he’d want to be in on this. Then I called Maggie and told her to send a video crew over to get footage of whatever this all turned out to be.
And so, a short time later, I was standing inside Endicott’s abandoned offices with Sam, Pollock, and a lot of other police and crime forensic people all looking for answers about what happened to the private investigator.
It was quite a scene for me. Sexually speaking, as well as professionally. I mean, there was my ex-husband, who on various occasions had indicated that he would still like to have sex with me again—even though he was now married. And the Treasury agent I’d hoped to have a sexual relationship with until I discovered that he wasn’t interested in me … well, at least he wasn’t interested in that way. Damn, all I needed was to call Scott Manning, the FBI agent I’d had the affair with last year. Maybe throw in Wild Bill Carstairs from the DA’s office. Then it would be a real trip down memory lane for me and my romantic hits and misses.