Good Sam

by Dete Meserve

“Why?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “When I covered the O. J. Simpson story, something like thirty people came forward and claimed they did it. A distraction is all it is. Let’s get someone who can help develop a psychological portrait of who Good Sam is.”

  That wouldn’t turn out to be an easy task. If Good Sam were a criminal, I would call upon any number of FBI profilers we regularly interviewed to help develop a psychological description. But finding an FBI profiler to work on Good Sam proved to be almost as hard as finding Good Sam himself. Serial killers, child abductors, arsonists, and bombers they understood. None of them had ever encountered a guy giving away more than half a million dollars. A couple of them, however, did give me some advice.

  Dr. Ryan Merrill tried to convince me that Good Sam was potentially dangerous. He warned about “icon intimidation,” where we automatically assume certain people are harmless because of their behavior.

  “The person who appears to be charming and generous,” he said, “could very well turn out to be committing heinous crimes.”

  I admit I often have a skeptical point of view regarding people’s motives—it’s a hazard of covering breaking news—but even I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that Good Sam might be a dangerous criminal.

  Merrill must have sensed my skepticism. “You can’t rely on your instincts or intuition, Kate,” he said ominously. “They’re unreliable in situations like this. Look at it this way. This Good Sam of yours generally leaves no written communication. He wants to leave you in the dark because he knows your imagination will fill in the blanks. You’ll create an icon in your mind that likens him to Santa Claus or a fairy godmother or whatever other archetypes of benevolent, generous beings suit you. But that’s not who he is.”

  A chill coursed through my body as I hung up with Ryan Merrill, and the gloomy feeling that hung in the air was so palpable that I left the interview bay and headed straight to the parking lot. Merrill had twenty-eight years with the FBI and had helped capture some of the country’s most notorious killers, robbers, and kidnappers. Were those the skills we needed to find Good Sam?

  Still, fear sells. And positioning Good Sam as a potential criminal definitely could create a sensation and cause a spike in the ratings. After letting the sun warm my body, however, I knew I couldn’t go through with it. Maybe I was stupidly relying on instinct, but I knew Good Sam wasn’t a criminal.

  Then what kind of person was Good Sam?

  Luckily I found Marcus Bradley III from the FBI Academy's Behavioral Science Unit. I interviewed him on Skype from his office in Quantico, Virginia. Marcus looked nothing like the handsome FBI profilers they show on TV dramas. With a ragged scholarly beard, crooked teeth, and beady eyes behind smudged black-rimmed glasses, he clearly spent his time thinking about violent criminals, not his appearance. And he had a completely different take on Good Sam.

  “To understand the artist, you must first look at the artwork,” he said. “What is he doing? Giving away money. Which tells me he values money a great deal. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if money were his obsession. And don’t think he gives secretly in order to be anonymous. The size of the gifts and their ongoing frequency says he wants the attention and is enjoying the media spotlight.”

  At least someone agrees with me on this point, I thought. “Do you think he wants the attention for some personal gain?” I asked.

  Marcus shook his head. “Hard to say. But consider the rush that comes with flipping the television channels and seeing your actions trumpeted, turning on the radio and finding your deeds the focus of so many people’s attention. I think he gets tremendous satisfaction from the praise he’s getting.”

  “Why have so many people come forward falsely claiming to be Good Sam?”

  He adjusted his tie, but it was still oddly askew. “Think about what Good Sam represents,” Marcus said. “He’s a mysterious person doing extraordinary good. A lot of attention has been paid to him in the media, and all of it is extremely positive. How often do the news media point their cameras at someone doing good in the world?”

  Every TV and radio station in Los Angeles was slammed with phone calls, e-mails, and old-fashioned letters about Good Sam. I thumbed through our latest stack, stunned by the scope of the requests.

  “We have less than twelve hours until we lose our home.”

  “Veteran needs spinal cord surgery.”

  “My teeth are falling out!”

  “I would like to see my mother before she dies.”

  “Need help buying food for family of seven.”

  Shop owners throughout the city even got in the act, posting greetings to Good Sam in their windows. good sam: please stop in for mahi-mahi—on the house! a sign in a trendy Hollywood bistro read. good sam welcomed here flashed an electronic sign on a men’s clothing store in Santa Monica. The bulletin in front of a church in Granada Hills announced the week’s sermon: any one of us could be the good samaritan.

  I’d never seen so much attention paid to a local story that wasn’t about celebrities, catastrophes, murders, or a combination of all three. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy all the attention that came with covering such a high-profile story, because I did. I liked the special treatment I got from the news photographers and the respect other reporters gave me. And since my reports were airing on all six newscasts throughout the day, I was getting a lot of airtime.

  Meanwhile Alex and a small group of associate producers and interns weren’t getting much sleep as they worked around the clock trying to dig up information on Good Sam. After the noon cast, I found Alex leaning back in his chair, surrounded by four half-empty mugs of coffee.

  “You guys pull an all-nighter?” I asked.

  No answer.

  That’s when I realized he was asleep. When I was an intern, sleep was the most prized commodity as our excitement about working in a real newsroom energized us to work late into the night and rise early in the morning. I tried to slip away and let him take a power nap, but I ended up tripping over a stack of papers and knocking over his overflowing trash can.

  He bolted upright. “I’ve got a lead,” he said. With bleary eyes, he grabbed one of the notebooks on his desk and riffled through the pages. “We’ve done background checks on the people who received money from Good Sam, looking for anything that might connect them all to each other. Nothing. They attended different colleges or trade schools. They don’t go to the same church or synagogues or even shop in the same grocery stores. They’re not in similar professions or from the same hometowns. They’re different nationalities. It’s almost random.”

  “I thought you said you had a lead,” I said, slumping in the chair next to him.

  “I said almost random. We did a search of the property records, and something interesting came up. It might be a coincidence, but all of them bought their homes from the same seller, Residential Realty Trust, Inc.”

  “A real estate broker?”

  “Not a broker exactly. Residential Realty buys properties, fixes them up, then turns around and sells them.”

  I thought about this for a moment. “Why would Residential Realty want to give away five hundred thousand dollars?”

  Alex chewed on his pencil. “Maybe this is a promotional stunt.”

  I had to laugh. “Welcome to the dark side. That’s what I’ve been saying all along.”

  “The thing is, you might actually be right.” He set down his notebook. “A little over six months ago, Residential Realty was about to go public with a stock offering that would’ve made the owners instant millionaires many times over. But they canceled those plans at the last minute—or at least postponed them. One of our sources believes they’re in the final stages of taking the company public again. If they are, five hundred thousand dollars would be a small price to pay for the kind of national publicity and attention they’re getting.”

  “So they give the money anonymously, and once the story takes off and becomes a sensation, they swoop in
and identify themselves as the generous benefactors.”

  “You couldn’t buy that kind of positive PR for millions of dollars,” he added.

  I stood. “Who do I call at Residential Realty Trust?”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.” He ripped a sheet of paper from his notebook and handed it to me. “A guy named Eric Hayes is one of the owners.”

  “What else do we know about Eric?”

  Alex typed a few keystrokes on the computer. “Weird. Looks like he also moonlights as a firefighter. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and he moonlights for Residential Realty. The company bio says Mr. Hayes is also a captain in the Los Angeles County Fire Department.”

  I scanned the bio. “Eric Hayes, captain of the Urban Search and Rescue Team, stationed at Fire Station Eight.”

  I drew a deep breath. Fire Station Eight.

  Chapter Four

  Eric Hayes wasn’t on duty at Fire Station Eight, so we looked him up on one of the Internet search engines and then drove to his home, a dark green midcentury house tucked deep in the shade of a rambling oak tree in the Hollywood Hills. This area of the Hills is named The Oaks, not because there are actually very many oak trees but because the streets were named after every kind of oak tree imaginable: Green Oaks, Park Oaks, Wild Oaks, Holly Oaks—you get the idea. The house was well-kept, yet relatively unassuming. If he was a land baron, he sure hid it well.

  Josh readied the camera in the van while I headed to the front door. I glanced once more at the sequence of questions I was planning to ask, slipped the paper in the pocket of my black blazer, then lifted a weathered brass knocker in the shape of a sailboat and knocked.

  The door opened, and the first thing I noticed wasn’t his face but his legs. Tanned, muscular legs. Legs in shorts even though it was a cold January morning. He wore a navy sweatshirt, and its snug fit didn’t hide the athletic body underneath. Most guys with bodies like his usually balanced themselves out by being average in the looks department. But this guy defied the odds. He was ruggedly handsome with thick, sandy brown hair and full lips. I looked up into light brown eyes shaded by impossibly long eyelashes, and although I make my living talking, I was momentarily speechless.

  It took me a few seconds to remember what to do. “I’m Kate Bradley, Channel Eleven News.” I extended my hand.

  A brief smile crossed his lips. “I know. Eric Hayes.”

  As he shook my hand, a shock seared through my nervous system. Then I did something I hadn’t done since fourth grade when Tommy Watson told the whole class he liked me.

  I blushed.

  It started as a flicker at the base of my neck and then rushed to my cheeks, so my face felt like I had a third-degree sunburn. I completely forgot what I was going to say next. Everything about him distracted me—from the way he was looking at me to the way he leaned against the doorjamb—shutting off the thinking parts of my brain.

  “Which story are you chasing this afternoon?” he asked. “The mosquito-borne virus that’s plaguing the Westside or the diaper-wearing chimpanzee that’s stopping traffic on Venice Boulevard?”

  I smiled. “Guilty of covering those stories in the past.”

  “Aren’t you the one who usually covers breaking news?”

  I nodded. “Shootings, sinkholes swallowing homes, mudslides, train collisions—”

  “Fires, murders,” he said, finishing the list for me. “Viewers like those stories?”

  “Fear sells,” I said.

  His lips were definitely smiling at me now. “Maybe good does too. It’s just harder to find.”

  I met his gaze for a moment, and my pulse jumped, annoying me.

  “As you probably already noticed,” he said, “it’s all quiet on this street, so what brings you here?”

  “I’m here about Good Sam.”

  “Good who?”

  “I guess you haven’t been following the news the past twenty-four hours.”

  He shook his head. “I’ve been on duty until about an hour ago.”

  “Over the last few days, five people have found bags containing a hundred thousand dollars in cash on their front porches. We’re trying to figure out who this Good Sam is and what his motive is.”

  “You think someone who’s giving away that kind of money has got a motive?”

  There was a gentleness in Eric’s eyes that surprised me. Surely, in his line of work, he’d seen enough bad things that the idea of a truly Good Samaritan seemed as far-fetched as it did to me.

  “Not a motive exactly. A reason for giving away so much money to so many.”

  He shifted his weight to the other foot. “How can I help?”

  The words tumbled out of my mouth like I was a cub reporter on her first assignment. “Are you Good Sam?”

  “No, but I’d sure like to know why you came all the way here to ask me if I was.”

  I glanced down at my notes, trying hard not to look at him. “All the canvas bags that contained the money were stamped with the number eight. You’re stationed in the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s station number eight.”

  “So are about thirty other firefighters.”

  I was bombing. Miserably. I hadn’t done an interview this poorly since working on my high school newspaper. I exhaled and tried to focus and find my lead.

  “All the people who received money from Good Sam bought their homes from Residential Realty Trust, a company you own. We understand the company is about to go public.”

  Eric shook his head. “I don’t own Residential Realty Trust. My brother did.”

  “Did?”

  He shifted his weight to the other leg. “It’s a little complicated. Come inside for a minute, and I’ll explain.”

  Inside, his living room was furnished with dark wood furniture that looked sturdy and reliable, like it could withstand anything. Framed oil paintings of sailing ships at sea flanked a cobblestone fireplace, giving the room a warm, comfortable feeling.

  “Excuse me a minute. Let me get something that will help clear things up for you,” he said, and left the room.

  I glanced at the photographs on the mantle. The first captured two young boys in swim shorts hanging in midair as they jumped into a lake. The other was a photograph of Eric and another man standing on the deck of a sailboat under the golden glow of billowed sail.

  “You like sailing?” Eric asked.

  As I turned around, I nearly ran straight into him. I lingered there for the briefest of moments, just inches from him, close enough that if I were truly brazen, I could have leaned forward and kissed him.

  I didn’t, of course—because in that instant, we both jumped back as though we’d touched a hot stove. Until then I didn’t believe in attraction at first sight, but there was definitely an immediate, almost magnetic pull developing between us.

  “I’ve never been sailing,” I said. “Is that your sailboat?”

  “Used to be.”

  I touched the photograph. “Your brother?”

  “Yes.”

  I studied his brother’s face. He was a little shorter than Eric, with a leaner, less athletic build. But judging from the curves of their mouths and their angular jaws, there was no doubt they were brothers.

  “Younger or older?” I asked.

  “Younger, by fourteen months.”

  “He’s the one who owns Residential Realty Trust?”

  The smile faded from his face. “He did. But he passed away six months ago.”

  “I’m sorry,” I murmured. A brief silence passed between us, and neither of us seemed to know how to fill it.

  “After he died,” Eric continued, “the ownership passed to me and some others, but we sold it last month to a realtor named Paul Henning.”

  “Is it true that the company plans to go public?”

  He shook his head. “Doubt it. My brother had planned to take it public, but he passed away before it could happen. Paul doesn’t have quite the same ambition my brother did. Few people do. Here’s Paul’s
card.”

  His fingertips brushed against mine as he handed me the card. I would have liked to have lingered there a moment longer, but there was a swift knock at the front door and Josh walked in, interrupting the moment. “Brad at the assignment desk just called,” he said. “They want a live shot in ten minutes.”

  I wasn’t ready to leave. I had the sinking feeling that once I stepped out of that living room, I’d never see Eric Hayes again.

  “Good luck with your story,” Eric said.

  It was his eyes, I decided, as I headed to the door. It was his eyes, the color of smooth cognac, that were causing all the trouble.

  Chapter Five

  By the time I got to the station the next morning, the Good Sam story was all over the network morning newscasts, on talk radio, and in stories across the Internet. Even NPR did a piece about it.

  I was baffled at the attention Good Sam was getting. The level of reporting was akin to the coverage of a major natural disaster or a mass shooting, except no one was in danger, at risk, or at large.

  I spent so much time poring over all the stories, Facebook posts and e-mails, that I lost track of time and had missed the first ten minutes of the assignment meeting. As I rushed to the Fish Bowl, Alex stopped me.

  “There’s a psychic in the lobby. She wants to talk to you about Good Sam.”

  “A psychic?” I said. “Really? That’s what this story has come to?”

  “She asked to talk with you, Kate, and only you.”

  “If I miss any more of the meeting, David is sure to assign me to cover some snooze-beat. Send her on her way,” I said. “But wait—she won’t be disappointed, because she’s a psychic, so she already saw this coming.”

  He frowned. “The problem is…she’s Bonnie’s psychic.”

  I lowered my voice to a half whisper. “Bonnie does not have a psychic.”

  Bonnie Ungar had joined the station as senior VP of news two months before, with a mandate to bring our ratings from a disappointing fourth place to first. Her take-no-prisoners management style had already cost four news staffers their jobs, and more changes were rumored to be on the way. I wasn’t keen to be on her radarscope.