Cover Story

by Gerry Boyle

  “No kidding,” Ramirez said.

  “And you’ve been looking for me?”

  “You might say that. I mean, don’t get a swelled head, but you’re kind of important to this case we’re working on.”

  “So you don’t know where I am?”

  “What is this? Some kind of game?”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

  “So where are you? In case we need to reach you.”

  “I’m in New York,” I said. “I’m not leaving. I’ll call you.”

  “McMorrow, you’re gonna get some people—”

  I hung up. Then I walked to the window and looked across at the dark windows, where someone was looking back across at me. I pressed against the wall.

  The DA’s investigator had found me but the homicide cops hadn’t. But why?

  I mulled it over as I stared.

  The DA’s office employed its own investigators, apart from the police. Police brought cases to the DA for prosecution, but it was the DA’s investigators who did pretrial snooping, investigated witnesses, political rivals, anyone else the district attorney needed checked out.

  In my time, the DA’s office investigators had been ex-cops, private investigators, even ex-military. They were civilians employed at the whim of the district attorney. Cops thought of them as a loose bunch, bound not by any obligation to enforce the law, but by an obligation to their employer.

  The Boxer was employed by the DA, Baldwin. Baldwin was employed by Fiore. Fiore was dead, so higher up the chain, that left—

  Who?

  I bought newspapers in Brooklyn Heights at a cafe/newsstand where the man behind the counter looked at my sunglasses and Statue of Liberty hat and said, “You making a delivery?”

  I said no and bought the newspapers, one of each, and read them in the front seat of Christina’s “four-wheel-drive thing,” a new black Range Rover. The lot attendant had picked me up, backing into the shadows of the garage bay. Christina introduced me only as her friend Jack. She’d left off the McMorrow, which now was strewn across the seat.

  It wasn’t in the lead headlines, all screaming banners, but in sidebars that began like the story in the Times, which ran in a single column starting above the fold. D. Robert got the byline.

  The man who spent much of Saturday night with accused assassin Patrick “Butch” Casey said Sunday that in the hours before the slaying, the former New York City homicide detective gave no indication that he planned to murder Mayor John Fiore.

  But Jack McMorrow, a former New York Times reporter now living in Maine, said Casey had harbored a grudge against Fiore since, as Manhattan district attorney, he had released a man accused of killing the detective’s wife, Leslie Moore, in a 1988 carjacking.

  “Of course he was bitter,” McMorrow told the New York Times today. “He blamed Fiore for releasing the man arrested for killing his wife.”

  But McMorrow, 40, who has known Casey since they both were children growing up in Manhattan, said the ex-detective gave no indication that he expected to encounter Fiore at the Algonquin Saturday night.

  “He said he was going to meet someone. He said he’d be talking to me in a couple of days,” McMorrow said. “There was no sign of anything really out of the ordinary. He was working on a long-term project and we made plans to discuss it later.”

  McMorrow declined to say what the project involved.

  Sitting at the curb in the car, I frowned and read, hurtling through the story. It recounted my evening with Butch, his wife’s murder, the controversy over the alleged coaching of the key witness. The Times had talked to the waitress at the Bull and Thistle, who said Butch had been in before but had never caused any trouble. She said Butch seemed glad to see me, and that at one point we “leaned close together and talked sort of quietly.”

  The implication was left hanging.

  There was a reference to the single stab wound. To Butch’s long career in homicide, with a quote from an unnamed police source who said homicide detectives are versed in methods of killing, and Casey had been a particularly astute student of the criminal mind.

  Big deal, I thought.

  I read on. And gasped.

  Authorities have said that Fiore was killed by a single stab wound from a long, narrow blade that penetrated his torso under the left arm and punctured his heart. This method of killing is taught to US military commandos, including the elite Navy Seals and specialized reconnaissance units in the US Army and Marines.

  McMorrow left the Times after a dispute with management over coverage of the Leslie Moore murder. He moved to Waldo County, Maine, a sparsely settled region that extends inland from the Midcoast near Belfast.

  In the small town of Prosperity, Maine, residents said McMorrow’s closest friend is Clair Varney, a highly decorated retired Marine with extensive combat duty in the Vietnam War.

  Varney was a member of an elite “Force Recon” Marine Corps unit, according to military sources. The sources said Varney’s unit and others like it typically were dropped far behind enemy lines, where they observed enemy troop movements, often remaining concealed just yards from jungle trails. Marines who served in these units were taught to kill with knives, garrotes, and other silent weapons that would not reveal their presence to the enemy.

  According to one resident of Prosperity, McMorrow and Varney are neighbors, close friends, and share an interest in firearms. They often are partners in small logging operations in rural Waldo County.

  Contacted at his home in Prosperity Sunday, Varney said he had no comment.

  “Well, screw you, D. Robert,” I said. “You son of a bitch.”

  It was all true, or close enough. The seam of innuendo was carefully stitched, precisely written.

  As the motor idled and the air-conditioning roared, I picked up the car phone. Dialed the Times newsroom, waited while somebody summoned Ellen.

  “What’s this?” I said.

  “What’s what, Jack?”

  “My friend’s military record? Silent weapons? Clair Varney doesn’t know Butch Casey. I’ve never talked to Clair about how to kill people. Clair’s got absolutely nothing to do with this. Zip. Nothing.”

  “Jack,” Ellen said. “Put yourself in our place.”

  “I have. This is a hatchet job.”

  “It isn’t. We have a hugely important story. We have a man accused of killing the mayor of New York City. We have another man who knew him, perhaps better than anyone else, at least anyone else we can find, and was with him up to an hour before the murder.”

  “I hadn’t seen Butch in years. Talk to cops if you want to know him.”

  “Cops haven’t seen him either. We tried.”

  “So you latch on to me.”

  “You were there. You were with him that night. You have knowledge that could shed light on this terrible thing.”

  “But Clair?”

  “Clair helps to define you for the reader.”

  “Oh, give me a break, Ellen. A guy who fought in a war thirty years ago?”

  “He wasn’t just a soldier. He has unusual skills.”

  “What?”

  “Skills that were needed to commit this murder. How many people know how to stab someone in the heart, first try?”

  “In New York? Probably more than you think.”

  “I don’t think so. I think you’ve lost perspective on this, Jack. I’m sorry, but you’re a big part of this story. And we haven’t even gotten into the issue of your coverage of Casey’s case, his wife’s death. Yet.”

  “Yet?”

  “Jack, I’m sorry. But my first responsibility is to the readers. And our job is to provide them with as complete a picture of this event as possible.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So we’re going to do a story on the Fiore-Casey connection. His wife’s murder. And a sidebar on your disagreement with the Times.”

  “When?”

  “Jack, the News is already working on it. We can’t remain silent on this jus
t because we were a party to it.”

  I considered it. Butch’s run-in with DA Fiore was a big piece of this story. I was part of that piece.

  “Will you talk to us?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “And there will be more,” Ellen said.

  There was something hesitant in her voice.

  “On what?”

  “A full-blown profile of Butch Casey. We’ve got four reporters working it today.”

  “Yeah?”

  “And a story about you.”

  “What?”

  “The long and meandering path that led childhood friends to this terrible parting.”

  The motor idled. The air blew cool. I closed my eyes for a moment. I felt stripped. Naked. Exposed.

  “Well, Jack. Will you talk to us?”

  I waited. Shook my head.

  “Who else are you talking to? My first-grade teacher?”

  “No. But former colleagues here. The ranking editors back then. Tom Wellington, about your work for the Globe. Anybody we can get in your town up there. Your—”

  Ellen paused.

  “We’ll try Christina. And your longtime companion in Maine. Roxanne.”

  “Oh, come on. She doesn’t know Butch. She doesn’t even know much about me from back then.”

  “She knows you now.”

  “Ellen, you’re reaching.”

  “I don’t think so. This story is so big, you can’t possibly reach too far.”

  “Leave Roxanne out of it.”

  “The Boston bureau already has people on their way to Portland. Jack, please. Try to look at this as a journalist.”

  “But she has her own life. She doesn’t need this. Why can’t you just leave her alone?”

  There was silence on the other end of the phone.

  “All right,” I said. “You want a story. I’ll give you a story.”

  I slammed the phone down. Shoved the newspapers aside. Picked up the envelope and shook out the pages.

  Carmine Street. A couple of blocks from Houston, off Bleecker.

  I put the Rover in gear and drove.

  18

  The house was a three-story brownstone. There was a tree in front surrounded by a cast-iron grating, like an arboreal holding cell. The door of the brownstone had been red but it was faded toward pink. The railing on the front steps and the gratings on the ground-floor windows had been painted black but were peeling. The place was respectable in a worn sort of way, like an old Burberry raincoat, a twenty-year-old Brooks Brothers suit.

  I made one slow pass, then double-parked, took off the hat and glasses, and walked up the steps. The brass knocker was tarnished. I rapped with it three times. Waited. Rapped again.

  Tilbury could be teaching, I thought, one of those professors who die in the classroom. He could be visiting his wife, one of those dutiful husbands who show up at the nursing home every day at the same time, like clockwork. Or he could be—

  Hiding.

  People in New York don’t open their doors to strangers. A man whose wife has been brutally mugged would be leerier than most. I turned and went back to the Rover, got Tilbury’s phone number from directory assistance. I dialed. It rang. I waited. It rang some more.

  And then it stopped.

  A voice whispered, “Hello.”

  “Mr. Tilbury?” I said.

  “Who’s this?”

  Still a whisper.

  “I’m a reporter,” I said. “My name is McMorrow. I’m—”

  I slurred my name. Now I hesitated.

  “I’m looking into a possible story involving City Hall. And the late mayor. And I was hoping to speak with you.”

  “About what?”

  “About your wife, Mr. Tilbury. About the attack on her and the way it was handled by authorities.”

  He didn’t answer. I thought I’d lost him.

  “How’d you get my name?” he said more sharply.

  “From records at the police department. Your inquiries are public documents.”

  “Well, that’s all over with. And I can’t talk right now. There was someone at the door. This is the time they do their burglaries, you know. Middle of the day.”

  “No, that was me, sir. I was at your door. I knocked, but I thought you might not hear me. I’m in my car, outside.”

  “I don’t—”

  I didn’t let him finish.

  “I’ll be right there,” I said, and I started walking and watching the house. On the second floor, a curtain moved. I smiled and waved, went up the steps and waited. I heard the sound of many locks unbolting. And then the door opened slowly, releasing a waft of cool, stale air.

  Tilbury was tall, even with a stoop, his hair white and wild, his eyes a startling deep blue. He was wearing rumpled khakis, a wrinkled pink Oxford-cloth shirt, and brown loafers. His uniform probably hadn’t changed since prep school. His clothes hadn’t been ironed since his wife had been mugged. He carried with him the unmistakable odor of an old man.

  “I’m very sorry about Mrs. Tilbury,” I said. “And I hope I’m not disturbing you.”

  He looked at me uneasily, so I smiled and held out my hand.

  “It’s Mr. Murrow?” Tilbury said.

  “I won’t take too much of your time.”

  “No, that’s all right. I’m retired.”

  “You taught?”

  “At NYU. Mathematics.”

  “I went to NYU. English literature.”

  “You look familiar. Ever take mathematics?”

  I shook my head.

  “What class?”

  “Eighty.”

  “Oh, yes,” Tilbury said, as though the year were a good wine and he remembered it well.

  We stood there. I smiled again, peeked through the door. I could see a vase of dusty dried flowers, above the vase, a photograph on the wall in the hallway. It was black and white. A woman.

  “Is that Mrs. Tilbury?” I asked, and when he turned, I stepped past him. He had no choice but to follow.

  I stared at the photograph. The woman was in the foreground, hawk-nosed and intense. In the background were bare, eroded hills.

  “A dig?” I said, leaning closer.

  “Yes. East Africa. Hominids.”

  “She did a lot of fieldwork?”

  “Yes. In the early years,” Tilbury said, and then he shook off the doddering dust. “Now what is it, exactly, that I can do for you?”

  I turned toward him. The door still was open. He didn’t ask me to sit or invite me deeper into the musty tomb of a house.

  “I saw your inquiries about the investigation of the attack,” I said.

  “Yes, well—”

  “And I know you had serious concerns about the investigation. You even hired your own private investigator to locate the suspect, after he’d jumped bail.”

  Tilbury looked at me, his eyes narrowing. “So what is it that you want?”

  “There were several cases during that time period that were similar. They all involved alleged prosecutorial—how can I put this?—sloppiness. Suspects who made bail and skipped. Suspects who were given sentences that, on the face of it, seem way too light.”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You went to considerable lengths to stay with your wife’s case, Mr. Tilbury. You located, what was his name?”

  “Lester John,” Tilbury said slowly, as if pronouncing the name of the devil in church.

  I slid a notebook out of my back pocket. Like a stalking cat, I kept my eyes on his as I opened it and started to write.

  “And two weeks ago, you asked that police pick him up and—”

  “They did.”

  “They arrested him?”

  “Yes. He was taken into custody. By detectives.”

  “Really. So all your work paid off.”

  He looked at me oddly.

  “My wife still is in a nursing home. She’s in what they call a permanent vegetative state.”

  “I’m very sorry.”
r />   He nodded, once.

  “So are you awaiting Mr. John’s trial?”

  “No.”

  I was surprised.

  “I understand he pleaded guilty,” Tilbury said.

  “Really. Did he get a deal?”

  “I’m told he admitted to the attack.”

  “When is his sentencing?”

  “Well, first he has to go to another state and stand trial. He was wanted for something else, a homicide, I believe. In the South. Alabama or Mississippi.”

  “So he’s going to stand trial there?”

  “I think he’s going to admit that, too. They said he was tired of hiding.”

  Beats an Alabama prison, I thought.

  “Was this in the paper?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know. I get the Times, but they don’t always cover that sort of thing. You said you were with the Times?”

  I considered the question and its tense.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Well, then I’ll look for your story, sir.”

  It was a dismissal, or the beginning of one.

  “But Mr. Tilbury, I think there’s a bigger story here. You had to find the suspect yourself, before he was arrested. Others who were victims around the same time had similar experiences. Can you tell me who you dealt with at the police department?”

  “No. I don’t want to open it all up again. It’s over, as much as it can be. This animal is behind bars. He will no longer prey on the innocent and helpless.”

  Tilbury stopped talking, then said: “Is that good enough for you?”

  “Well, I’d like to talk to you about Mrs. Tilbury, about what you’ve gone through over the last ten years. Hiring the investigator. Maybe talk to him about how he located this John fellow, how you feel finally having this behind—”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I paused, my notebook in front of me.

  “In fact, I don’t want to even be in your story.”

  “But—”

  He put his hand on my shoulder and started to guide me toward the still-open door. I balked, stood my ground.

  “I really think there’s more to this, Mr. Tilbury, and I can understand why—”

  “No, you can’t,” he said. “It’s been ten years of hell. Like a dead person who still breathes. It costs a fortune, and I was nearly out of money when—”