Dead and Gone

by William Casey Moreton

I tried to picture it. I’d been in Terry’s apartment a million times. We had entertained dozens of clients there, and I’d spent holidays with Terry and his wife Carmen in their home. At the moment my memory was admittedly on the fritz, but I was able to recall enough to have plenty of warm remembrances.

  I formed a mental image of the master bath and tried to place Terry in the tub with his face beneath the surface of the water.

  “Could you see him very well?”

  “I walked right up to him, as close as you are to me right now, Mr. Cortland. He was already long gone by the time we got to him.”

  “Did you think he might be alive?”

  “Well, sure, but I didn’t know what to think. I was in shock.”

  The police had arrived at 5 a.m. So the 911 call would have been made shortly before. I was immediately curious about who might have made the call for help.

  “Have you talked to his neighbors?” I asked.

  He shook his head no. “Everyone was still asleep, and the police cleared me out. They didn’t want anybody hanging out gawking. They brought his body down about an hour ago.”

  “Who’s up there now?”

  He shrugged. “They come and go. The detectives working the case left for a while but I think they’re back now.”

  “Get yourself some coffee, Herb, and get some fresh air. You’re a good man and you were a good friend to Terry.”

  He struggled to produce a small smile. “Thank you, Mr. Cortland. I’m gonna miss him.”

  I gave him a fraternal pat on the shoulder and walked across the lobby to the elevators. It felt like I was walking in a haze. My thoughts were still clouded. Terry Burgess was dead. I remembered enough to know that he was my best friend. He had called my cell at 3 a.m., but I hadn’t answered. Had he been in trouble and needing my help? Few thoughts could have made me more sick at my stomach. I double-checked my iPhone for voice mail messages but there were none from Terry.

  Surely if there had been a serious problem he would have left a message asking for help, but he hadn’t. It didn’t make sense. What if he had left a voice mail message, but someone erased it while I was passed out in bed? Perhaps Veronica had erased it before she died, or the person who killed Veronica had, assuming of course that I hadn’t killed her. Ugh. Last night was still a black hole.

  The elevator opened and when I stepped out there was a cop standing outside the door to Terry’s apartment. He stood with his back to the door, arms folded over his chest. He looked Italian, with dark features and a square jaw, curly black hair peeking out from beneath his NYPD cap. The look on his face suggested that his sense of humor had been surgically removed at birth.

  Terry’s apartment was the second on the right from the elevator.

  The cop gave me a dismissive glance. “Something I can help you with, pal?” he asked in a tone that firmly suggested he had zero interest in helping me with anything.

  “My friend lives here. I was told that there was some kind of emergency involving him.”

  “What’s your name, pal?”

  “Nick Cortland.”

  “Do you live in the building?”

  “No. Terry Burgess is my friend and work associate. He didn’t come to work this morning so I came here to see if he was okay.”

  “Where do you work?”

  “I’m in advertising.”

  “You worked with the guy who lived here?”

  His use of the past tense was less than comforting.

  “Yes, he is my boss.”

  “Well, I hate to be the one to deliver bad news, Mr. Cortland, but the guy that lived here is deceased.”

  My eyes drifted to my shoes. Hearing it from the cop added an undeniable gravity to the reality that Terry was really gone. It suddenly felt like the wind had been knocked out of me.

  “Where is the body?”

  “The body has already been removed.”

  “Is there anyone here I can talk to?”

  “Detective Curry and Detective Ballard are inside.”

  The cop led me inside. The apartment was very familiar to me. There had been many a time when I had stumbled through that door with my friend, both of us drunk off our asses after an all-night bender. Terry had never been one to be very aware of his limits, especially when it came to booze and women, and I had often been tasked with the responsibility of making sure he got home safe and sound. It was a thankless job, to say the least.

  The apartment was a piece of multimillion dollar Manhattan real estate. His grandfather had owned the entire building at one point, but now just the one unit was all that remained in the family. Carmen was big into decorating. Well, she didn’t decorate, but she was big into paying other people to do it for her. She had always had a talent for spending Terry’s money. I followed the cop through the entry toward the kitchen. I was very familiar with the apartment, though today it was like seeing it all for the first time.

  The detectives were in the kitchen talking. They were surprisingly young. Both of them wore dark sport coats and dark pants. Both were right at six feet tall and looked athletic. One had close-cropped dark hair, and the other red hair worn longer and combed back with gel. They were standing on opposite ends of the kitchen from each other, pointing at the floor and looking very serious. They stopped whatever they were saying when we stepped into the room.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” the cop said, “but this guy was a friend of Terry Burgess.”

  I nodded. “Nick Cortland. I worked with him.”

  The detective with red hair was closest to me and stepped over to shake my hand. “Mr. Cortland, I’m Detective Ballard, and that’s Detective Curry,” he said, gesturing at his partner.

  These were the guys that had visited Louis Levine that morning. He had mentioned them by name.

  “I’m the Creative Director at Burgess, Levine, and Holt.”

  That certainly got their attention. They dismissed the cop and the two detectives crowded around me.

  “I guess you know we had an interesting conversation with Louis Levine at your agency this morning?” Ballard said.

  “He told me. Your visit certainly caused some excitement at the office. It’s not everyday we get a visit from the police. I was running late this morning, so I missed you. Louis mentioned that there might be a problem with Terry, and he wasn’t answering his phone, so I decided to come check on him.”

  Curry stood with his hip against a kitchen counter and folded his arms over his chest. “Terry Burgess was found dead this morning,” he said.

  The words stunned me even though I’d thought I was fully prepared for them. I was literally speechless for a moment.

  “Are you sure there hasn’t been a mistake?” I asked.

  “Officers responded to a 911 call early this morning, and Mr. Burgess was found drowned in the master bathroom. He was already deceased when the officers arrived on the scene,” Ballard said, pointing to an area at one end of a long kitchen island.

  “Who made the 911 call?”

  “We don’t know,” Curry answered, “but the call was placed from a landline inside this apartment. The caller was an adult male and reported seeing an intruder with a gun inside the apartment.”

  “Sounds obvious that Terry made the call and was then shot by the intruder,” I said.

  Curry pursed his lips and shook his head. “We don’t know yet who made the call but there was no blood and no bullet wound. The deceased was nude and had apparently, slipped and fallen, striking the back of his head against the edge of the bathtub. According to the medical examiner there was no evidence of him being physically assaulted. It appears that he simply broke his neck on impact.”

  As my mind cleared, the walls seemed to begin closing in around me. It wasn’t even 9 a.m., and already I had two unexplained deaths to deal with. It was nerve-wracking having this conversation with a couple of law enforcement professionals who were trained to detect guilt. I did my best to remain cool. I’ve always been good under pressure, but every
one has their limits, and this situation struck me as particularly delicate. Especially given that I was one of the last people to see Terry Burgess and Veronica Wagner alive. That was a coincidence that these young, bright detectives would be morons not take very seriously. So I was walking a tightrope, and I couldn’t afford to let them see me sweat.

  “When was the last time you talked to him?” Curry asked.

  “He called my cell phone at three o’clock this morning.”

  “That’s two hours before the call to 911. What did he say?”

  “I was asleep. I didn’t hear the call.”

  “Did he leave a voice mail?”

  “No, and that’s kind of unusual for him. Terry loved the sound of his own voice.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Dinner last night. It was business. We were entertaining some clients.”

  “Where did you eat?”

  I shrugged. “An Italian place in the Flatiron district.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about him at dinner?”

  “No. He was his usual windbag self. He had plenty to eat and drink and told plenty of bad jokes.”

  “What was your relationship like with him, Mr. Cortland?” Curry asked.

  “He was my best friend, but he was also my boss.”

  “That’s an interesting dynamic.”

  “Interesting is certainly one word for it.”

  “Did he seem in good health to you?”

  “He kept himself in decent shape, but he had some bad habits. That’s a problem for all of us in our line of work.”

  “What would you call a bad habit?”

  “Too much alcohol. Tons of stress. Poor diet. Lack of sleep, but apart from that, I’d argue he took okay care of himself. He had several gym memberships and liked to do laps at the pool twice a week.”

  “Were you aware of any health issues?”

  I shook my head. “None that he ever mentioned.”

  “Was it typical for him to call you at three in the morning?”

  “Not typical, but certainly not unusual. We are in a crazy business, and sometimes ideas occur at the most inconvenient of times, even in sleep, and we try to write them down or call to tell someone before we forget and the idea is lost forever. Doesn’t happen everyday, but it does happen.”

  “Do you think that was why he was calling you this morning? Because he had an idea he wanted to share?”

  “Maybe. We had an important dinner last night. Could be that he wanted to talk about how it went, or maybe he just couldn’t sleep and decided to wake me up and bug me. That wouldn’t shock me at all.”

  “But you didn’t hear your phone because you were asleep?”

  “Right.”

  “Does your phone usually wake you when someone calls at odd hours?”

  “Does yours?” I asked back.

  “Do you know his wife?”

  I nodded. “Carmen. She’s out of the country.”

  “Where did she go?” Curry asked.

  “Australia. She travels.”

  “Alone?”

  “They both prefer it that way.”

  “Marital problems?” Ballard asked.

  “Not if they spend enough time apart.”

  Neither detective seemed to appreciate the humor in my answer.

  “Let me rephrase,” Ballard said. “Did Mr. Burgess seem happy in his marriage?”

  “Happiness is kind of relative, isn’t it?” I answered, deflecting as best I could.

  The truth is that Terry had loved women. They were his addiction. Well, at least one of his addictions. Terry never did anything in a small way. He was an all-in kind of guy. I’d known him for ten years, and he was married for eight of those, so I’d had the good fortune of knowing both Single Terry and Married Terry, and let me tell you there was wasn’t much difference between the two. The gold band on his finger hadn’t slowed him down at all, but standing in his kitchen with two NYPD detectives, I decided to keep this information to myself for now.

  “Can you account for your whereabouts at five-thirty this morning?” Curry asked.

  “Asleep, in my bed, in my apartment.”

  They didn’t offer much in the way of push back.

  “Do you think there was an intruder?” I asked.

  “We will be conducting a full and thorough investigation, Mr. Cortland.” Curry again. “If Mr. Burgess appears to have died from suspicious causes, we should know very soon.”

  “Can we get your phone number and home address in case we have any further questions for you?” Ballard asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  I gave them my info and Ballard scribbled it onto a small pad he kept in his blazer. It was very clear they didn’t want me snooping around. I glanced past the kitchen to the hallway that led to the master bedroom and wondered why Terry had been out of bed at 5 a.m. to soak in the tub. On my way out I noted that the front door didn’t show any visible signs of forced entry.

  I hesitated a beat, studied the doorjamb. The wood looked perfectly intact and the paint appeared undisturbed.

  The Italian cop was still standing right outside.

  “Was this door locked when the body was discovered?” I asked him.

  “Don’t think so.”

  “You might want to mention that to Curry and Ballard. They probably already noted it, buts it’s still worth mentioning. Terry was always good about locking the door. Maybe he had opened it for someone, then forgot to lock it back.”

  He seemed either amused or annoyed by me.

  “I’ll make sure they know,” he said.

  I took the elevator down and gave Herb another pat on the back on my way out the door.

  “Take care of yourself, Mr. Cortland,” he said.

  “I’m going to try,” I answered.

  CHAPTER 10

  Senator Harrison Shelby of New York was in his office on Capitol Hill screaming at members of his staff and throwing things against the wall in a tirade. A week earlier he had announced his candidacy for president, and already his campaign was struggling. The press was relentless, dragging his voting record through the mud and calling into question his qualifications for dealing with foreign policy. He was rich because he had married into money, and that was an angle the press would always attack, declaring that Shelby couldn’t relate to the struggles of the middle class.

  Shelby had risen quickly through the ranks in Washington and had become the new star of the Republican party. He had movie star good looks, was rich, smart, charming, and was very much a skilled strategist. There had never been any doubt that he would eventually make a run for the White House.

  “I don’t give a rat’s ass what those idiots at the Post think they know, I know that I was against that bill. So call them back and tell them if they print that story I’ll sue them for slander!” he yelled into the telephone receiver.

  In less than an hour he would be on a plane to Los Angeles. The next nine months would be exhausting. His life would be put on hold, but that was fine with him. He wasn’t interested in family and rarely saw them anyway. The series of speeches he would give in California would hopefully turn the tide and give him some desperately needed momentum that would place him among the front runners on the Republican ticket. There was nothing he wasn’t willing to do to become President of the United States.

  Staffers scurried to and from his office, frightened but exhilarated to be in his presence. He had hand-picked the best of the best and he watched them run around like crazy people, exhausted from lack of sleep. His staff worked their cell phones, manipulating the political system one call at a time.

  Shelby slammed down his desk phone, then picked it up to dial another number. His thoughts trailed off in a dozen different directions at once. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a full night’s sleep or eaten a decent meal per day, but he didn’t care. Money and power were all he really desired, and he already had plenty of the former.

  He had a
multitude of the things on his mind, not the least of which was what was going on in New York City. He was waiting for an important phone call that he had yet to receive. He had expected to hear something by now and was growing anxious. He poured a shot of whiskey into his coffee and took a sip. He had planned his life and career in meticulous detail and had no intention of watching it go off the rails because of some tiny annoyance from his past.

  It was almost noon before the call came.

  Shelby flushed everyone from his office so that he could speak to the caller in private.

  “I’ve been waiting hours,” Shelby said. “What took so long?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” the voice on the line said. “Just be thankful that your problem has been taken care of.”

  “So you got the girl?”

  “Yes, she has been taken care of.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Trust me, you won’t have to worry about her anymore.”

  Shelby ended the call and stood at his desk, staring out his window at the Washington, D.C. skyline. It had cost him surprisingly little to eliminate such a potentially huge problem. Payment had been made clandestinely from an offshore account and the task had been completed as promised. Shelby was pleased.

  He poured another shot of whiskey into the coffee mug but hesitated before taking a sip. Instead, he decided to celebrate by taking a drink straight from the whiskey bottle. It burned all the way down. There was nothing left standing in his way.

  * * *

  With my memory returning, I realized there were plenty of memories I could have probably lived without, but there were others I was thankful to see return. Most importantly was the birth of my son. His mother and I divorced before he turned one, but they live in the city and I consider myself to be a very involved father. I hate being divorced and living apart from my son, but in our case it was the lesser of two evils. Our marriage was spontaneous, ill-advised, and brief. Connie and I have remained friends, and that has been good for Nate, I’d guess.

  At least a couple of times a week I go down to his school and eat lunch with him. That’s my favorite part of my life. Just sitting there with a sandwich or whatever, listening to my son talk about his day and his friends. He is a chatty kid and gets along with everybody. He has a big, toothy smile that is infectious, and his laugh brings joy into the world.