by R. G. Belsky
Praise for R. G. Belsky
The Kennedy Connection
“Engrossing thriller . . . a terrific story.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Deserves to be short-listed for the year-end best of lists.”
—BookReporter
“Fascinating character study . . . a roller coaster ride that veers back to 1963 and forward to the present.”
—The Huffington Post
“Unexpectedly clever twists.”
—Library Journal
“Must-read . . . a great tabloid yarn.”
—New York Post
“Had me from the opening line.”
—Star-Ledger
“I loved The Kennedy Connection!”
—Jan Burke
“Gil Malloy for President!”
—Donald Bain
“This is a very clever murder mystery . . . could not put it down.”
—Men Reading Books
“Intriguing . . . will appeal to those who just can’t leave the grassy knoll alone.”
—Booklist
“Shrewd doses of competition, conspiracy, and corruption fuel this intriguing media thriller.”
—Julie Kramer, national bestselling author of Delivering Death
“Who better to tell the story of a newsman in disgrace—than a man from the New York tabloids, where disgrace was a badge of honor. Belsky has the newsman’s gift. He tells his story well.”
—Jimmy Breslin
“If you love your mysteries with historical references and a modern twist, you are gonna love this page-turner!”
—Bless Their Hearts book blog
“In Gil Malloy, Belsky has created a character who you’ll want to spend time with.”
—Matthew Klein, author of No Way Back
“Great read.”
—Bill Reynolds, Providence Journal
“The Kennedy Connection begs to be finished from the first page to the last. Be prepared to stay at home all day with this book in hand!”
—Briana Goodchild, reviewer, Killer Nashville
Shooting for the Stars
“I read it in two sittings.”
—Sandra Brown, New York Times bestselling author
“Smart, juicy . . . highly satisfying.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Belsky is a tantalizing, devilish, mesmerizing writer.”
—Killer Nashville
“What shines brightest here is Belsky’s talent for keeping the pace steady and fast so that every round of inquiries produces more satisfyingly tawdry revelations.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“This wisecracking but suprisingly sensitive and self-aware crime solver will appeal to fans of Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole novels and Harlan Coben’s early Myron Bolitar mysteries.”
—Booklist
“Completely entertaining. And he nails the voice of his wonderfully authentic reporter Gil Malloy. Loved it.”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan, Agatha award–winning author of Truth Be Told
“Great story. . . . A highly readable book.”
—Men Reading Books
“A fast-paced, fun read with twists around every corner.”
—Julia Dahl, author of Invisible City
“Belsky has created yet another entertaining Gil Malloy thriller. . . . Malloy’s personality makes it comical, shrewd, and engaging, a truly enjoyable read.”
—Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore
“This book is journalism at its best. . . . There is not a dull moment throughout this book as it is laden with mystery and suspense.”
—Night Owl Reviews
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“The female of the species is more deadly than the male.”
—Rudyard Kipling
“She’s so cold, she’s so cold . . . I’m so hot for her, and she’s so cold.”
—The Rolling Stones
PART ONE
LIVE FROM NEW YORK
CHAPTER 1
THE best thing about being a newspaper reporter is working on a big story. A big story is what it’s all about in the news business. It gets your adrenaline flowing. It makes you remember why you wanted to be a reporter in the first place. It makes you forget about all the problems in your life. A big story always makes everything better.
I did not have a big story.
Gil Malloy, the hotshot reporter, did not have anything to report.
It was 9 a.m., and I was sitting in the newsroom with my feet up on my desk, sipping black coffee and pondering this dilemma—along with trying to remember exactly why I had ordered that last tequila the night before—when the phone rang.
“There’s someone here to see you, Malloy,” said Zeena, the receptionist outside the New York Daily News offices.
“Who is it?”
“A woman.”
“What’s her name?”
“She didn’t say.”
“What does she want?”
“She says she has a news story.”
“What kind of a news story?”
“She didn’t tell me.”
Zeena was a practitioner of the minimalist school of receptionists. She never gave you anything more than she had to. Getting information from her was like interrogating a prisoner at Gitmo.
“Have her talk to one of the other reporters,” I said.
“She asked for you.”
“I don’t do walk-in news tipsters.”
“Why not?”
“I’m a TV star now, remember?”
“Okay.”
“Anything else?”
“Stacy was looking for you before you came in.”
Stacy Albright was the city editor of the Daily News.
“Any idea what she wanted?”
“No.”
“Where is she now?”
“Beats me.”
“Good job, Zeena,” I said.
After I hung up, I checked my voicemail just in case the Pulitzer people had called, Hillary Clinton wanted to do an exclusive sit-down interview, or Bob Woodward was looking for any reporting tips from me. There was a series of messages. All of them from the same person. Peggy Kerwin.
I listened to them one after another. The basic highlights were that she really wanted to see me again, she thought we hit it off as a great team, and—if you read between the lines of what she was saying—she hoped to be the mother of my babies.
Now I remembered why I’d had that last tequila.
To try to forget about Peggy Kerwin.
Peggy Kerwin was the worst kind of date. Nice woman, decent looking, good job. But she was completely boring. She talked about working at some big accounting firm, about her family, about her life and dreams and world peace and a zillion other things during the entire damn evening. By after-dinner drinks, she’d made my Top 10 list of all-time worst dates. Hence, that final tequila.
Marilyn Staley, the Daily News managing editor, walked over to my desk. Marilyn was in her fifties, had a husband and two kids in Westchester, and was my city editor at the News for many years. Then she got fired when the paper went through a big youth movement—stressing a digital-first strategy, enhanced social media presence, and total demographic makeover—that they decided she was too old to be a part of. They told her she didn’t understand what the new media newspapers needed to embrace in order to survive. But eventually they realized that they needed someone like Marilyn to . . . well, run the news
. So they hired her back and promoted her to managing editor. Go figure. As editors go, she was all right. Of course, the bar isn’t set very high when it comes to newspaper editors.
“What are you doing, Gil?” she asked.
“Being introspective.”
“You look hungover.”
“Yeah, well there’s that too.”
“Rough night?”
“I had the date from hell.”
“You’re getting too old for this.”
“But I still have my boyish charm, right?”
I sipped on some more of the black coffee. It helped.
“Any idea what Stacy wants to talk to me about?”
“Bob Wylie.”
“Ah, yes. Our nationally renowned crime fighter and potential future mayor.”
“I think he wants to drop a big trial balloon about his candidacy for mayor through the News. Do it with you on the air as part of Live from New York. Stacy thinks that would be a terrific opportunity to promote us as a new media/print crossover. We put it on the air, we live tweet it, we post podcasts on the website, and eventually, of course, we put it in the paper.”
Life used to be so much simpler for me.
I was a newspaper reporter, which is all I’d ever wanted to be. I rose from cub reporter to star writer to columnist at the Daily News like a skyrocket. I thought it would always be like that for me. But then things went horribly wrong—some of which were my fault and some that weren’t. I almost got fired from the paper, then did get fired at another point—but wound up breaking a couple of front page stories that got the Daily News national attention. Now I was a star again. Just not in the same way as before.
Somewhere along the line the paper decided to take advantage of all the notoriety I’d gotten by using me as a publicity vehicle. I wound up doing a lot of webcasts, social media live chats with the readers, and making appearances on TV and radio and everywhere on the Internet to promote the paper’s biggest stories.
Then, a few months ago, Stacy came up with the idea to partner with a local TV news station to promote our big stories on air. It is called Live From New York. We talk about the news the paper is covering and give viewers an inside look at the Daily News people who are covering it. At the same time, the telecast is livestreamed on both of our websites. Guess who Stacy picked to be a big part of it? That’s right: yours truly.
Now I was on TV regularly talking about the big news stories—even more than I was actually reporting them. It was heady stuff, I must admit. People recognized me on the street, there was more money, it was kinda neat being a broadcast celebrity. But I missed being a real reporter.
Marilyn Staley sat down now in front of my desk.
I asked her if she wanted to hear all the details about my date the night before.
She said she’d just as soon not.
“Hey, is that a touch of gray you’re getting there?” she said to me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Your hair. I see a speckle or two of gray.”
“Probably just the light in here makes it look like that.”
“Sure, I guess that’s it,” Marilyn agreed.
I looked out the window next to my desk. Spring had finally come to New York City. We’d had a helluva winter—four months of relentless snow, ice, and cold that seemed like it would go on forever. Now I could see the sun shining brightly, people walking on the sidewalk outside in their shirtsleeves. It was as if Mother Nature had finally said, “Enough already.”
I loved spring. My favorite season of the year. A time for new beginnings, a fresh start, another chance to make right all the things in your life that had gone wrong in the year before. Spring always cheered me up and made me feel young again and optimistic about the future.
“Damn, that’s going to bum me out all day,” I said.
“What?”
“Your comment about me getting gray hairs.”
“Getting gray hair isn’t the worst thing in the world, Gil.”
“Not the best either.”
“How old are you?”
“I just turned thirty-eight.”
“Well, people do start turning gray at that age. And somehow they still manage to go on with their lives.”
“You mean like George Clooney?”
“Interesting comparison.”
“An apt one too.”
“You’re telling me you think you look like George Clooney?”
“On his good days.”
Marilyn sighed and stood up. She had a higher threshold for my personality than most people did at the News, but I think I’d just about reached it with her. She started to walk away toward her office, then stopped and turned around.
“By the way, there’s a woman waiting outside to see you,” she said.
“So I heard.”
“She apparently wants to talk to you about a story.”
“Yeah, people keep telling me that.”
“Do you know what the story is?”
“No, Zeena didn’t feel compelled to ask her that question.”
“The woman’s name is Victoria Issacs.”
I stared at Marilyn.
“Do you know her?” she asked.
Yeah, I knew her, all right.
Not really as Victoria Issacs though.
I remembered her by another name.
Houston.
CHAPTER 2
I’D only met Victoria Issacs once before. But she’d played such a big part in my life that I felt as if I’d known her forever. Not as Victoria Issacs, the person she was now. But as Houston, the person she used to be.
Houston was a famous New York City prostitute. She got her name from Houston Street in downtown Manhattan, where she’d first worked before moving up to expensively priced escort services with high rollers all around town. She’d become a legend in the world of hookers.
Which is why I made her the focus of a series I did for the Daily News about prostitution in New York City. I quoted her at length in the articles, talking about her life on the streets and in hotel rooms and the kinky stuff men paid her to do.
The only problem was I never actually talked to Houston. Instead, I’d strung the quotes together secondhand from people who said they knew her, and then made it sound like they came directly to me from Houston. Which is a journalistic no-no. The truth eventually came out, and I almost lost my job. A lot of people even questioned whether Houston ever existed. I believed she did, but I had no proof. To this day, what I did on that story is my biggest mistake in journalism. It will haunt me until the day I die.
Much later, I was finally able to track down Houston. She was living as Mrs. Victoria Issacs now. Her husband, Walter, was a prominent corporate attorney; she had two beautiful children and a townhouse on Sutton Place. She’d discovered art and spent much of her time painting. No one—not her husband, her family, her friends—knew about her past life. I could have written a story about it all, which, by proving Houston really did exist, might have helped clear up the stain on my reputation from the controversial series. But I didn’t. Instead, I walked away and let Victoria Issacs keep living her new life.
I figured that was the last time I would ever see her.
But now here she was sitting in front of me again.
“How are you, Mr. Malloy?” she said to me.
“I’m just fine, Mrs. Issacs. And you can call me Gil.”
“Please call me Vicki.”
“Well, Vicki,” I said, “now that we’re both on a first name basis . . .”
“You’re wondering why I’m here?”
“The thought had crossed my mind.”
“I guess I’m probably just about the last person in the world you’d expect to walk into your newsroom.”
“You’d sure be on my short list.”
She looked good. Damn good. She had to be well into her thirties now, but she was still drop-dead gorgeous. Long blonde hair, wearing a fashionably short skirt, a silver chain
-link belt, a low-cut pale blue sweater, and expensive-looking boots. She crossed her legs while she talked, and I couldn’t help but notice they were mighty fine-looking too. I could see why men had paid her hundreds of dollars—sometimes thousands—for an hour or two of her companionship.
We were sitting in an empty office at the Daily News. There were plenty of empty offices at the paper these days due to all the layoffs in recent months. All newspapers were struggling to stay alive, and belt-tightening was a big part of that. I’d suggested we move out of the newsroom because I didn’t want anyone there overhearing our conversation. I figured she felt that way too.
Except she hadn’t really said anything yet. Oh, she’d talked about her kids, community work, and paintings that she was doing, even about watching me on TV—but nothing about why she was there.
I listened quietly to all of it, sneaking a peek once or twice at her legs as she crossed and uncrossed them. I deduced that she was wearing old-fashioned silk stockings, that her calf muscles were in terrific condition, and that the skirt she was wearing might even have been shorter than I had first suspected. Hey, I’m an investigative reporter. You can never accumulate too much information.
“Mr. Malloy, there’s something I have to tell you,” she said.
“Gil,” I reminded her.
“Gil, this is very difficult for me to talk about. But I didn’t know where else to turn. The last time we met—the only time—you agreed to keep my past a secret. I was impressed with your honesty, your kindness, your sensitivity to how devastating it would be if the people in my life now ever found out about Houston. I . . . well, I need someone with that kind of sensitivity now.”
“I can do sensitive,” I said.
“I just have to be absolutely certain before I tell you what I’m about to say that you’ll handle all of this very discreetly.”
“I can do discreet.”
She sighed.
“I’m still not sure how to even begin. . . .”
Victoria Issacs suddenly burst into tears.
“My husband is gone,” she said.
“Gone how?”
“He hasn’t come home in two days.”
“Have you reported this to the police?”