Kill The Story

by John Luciew

  I shook my head. “I’ll never forgive myself if I hurt her.”

  “From what I hear, you did okay. Better than most under the circumstances.”

  “Wait a minute?” I looked up at the tall detective. “What do you mean, from what you heard?”

  “The nine-one-one call.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, it was your photographer who tipped off the cops.”

  “With his cell phone,” I said, remembering the small instrument with the green glow in Wally Greenfield’s hand.

  “He called nine-one-one and left the line open,” Langhorne continued. “Led us right to you. The one thing I can’t figure is, here you had a room full of reporters. Bright people, smart. All of them probably had cell phones. So how come your photographer’s the only one who dialed in?”

  The detective shook his head, uncomprehending. But I knew why. I knew exactly why.

  “No one else called because it’s a better story if it plays out,” I said. “If Stanhope gets his revenge and makes me blow my head off in front of a room full of reporters, it’s a story for the ages. Why call the cops and fuck it all up? The reporters in that room were seeing headlines, book deals and prime-time specials. That’s why nobody called.”

  “Or maybe they were just scared shitless,” Langhorne put in.

  Just then, a hand whipped aside the curtain, shattering our privacy. At first, I thought it was a doctor. Then I looked into familiar eyes. Familiar, but not comforting.

  “Why are you here?” I asked Buzz Swanson. But I already knew. A coroner only showed up at a hospital when someone died a violent, unnatural death. He was here to claim a body. Cassie Jordan’s body.

  “Business,” Buzz replied.

  “What business?”

  “The good kind. I’m here for Stanhope. I just got the call. He’s DOA.”

  “Stanhope?” I said. “Not Cassie?”

  “Of course not Cassie.” Buzz answered as if I were an idiot. “She’s up in surgery now. It’ll be a few hours, but you can wait upstairs. I’ll stop by after I punch Stanhope’s ticket. Whoever nailed him just saved the county a ton of money on the trial.”

  “Trials, plural,” Langhorne corrected. “Would’ve been proceedings in D.C., Baltimore, Buffalo and Harrisburg, not to mention the federal charges. Would’ve been a real clusterfuck, all right. A lawyer’s wet dream.”

  “Is she’s going to be all right?” I asked.

  “Collapsed lung’s no picnic,” Buzz said. “Go on up to the waiting room. I’ll stop by later with a flask. Looks like you could use a belt or two.”

  “Yeah, stop by,” I said. “But forget the booze. I don’t need it. Not now. Not today.”

  “I’ll bring it for myself then.”

  Chapter 59

  I was there when Cassie Jordan awoke. I had lied and told the nurse I was her uncle. Langhorne’s badge vouched for me. Besides, Cassie’s parents still hadn’t made it in from a tiny town in a remote northwestern part of the state. I was the closest thing to family she had right then.

  Cassie blinked a few times and tried to focus on me. Her face was full of confusion. I wondered if she’d remember any of it.

  “What’re you doing here?” she whispered in a voice made extremely hoarse by all the tubes that had been forced down her throat. But her lung had been re-inflated and she no longer needed the breathing tubes, just an oxygen line running under her nose.

  “You’re in the hospital, Cassie.”

  “I know. Why are you here?”

  “To be with you.”

  She closed her eyes, as if it wasn’t what she wanted to hear. When she finally opened them again, she forced more words from her sore throat.

  “What about the story?” she said. “Did you file the story?”

  I shook my head, then whispered, “no.”

  She shut her eyes again, this time in disappointment. “What kind of reporter are you?”

  “Least I didn’t get shot.”

  Cassie tried to laugh, but it came out as a cough. She squeezed shut her eyes in obvious pain.

  * * *

  Later, when I went home, the answering machine was filled with messages. Most were from reporters and TV producers looking for interviews. I deleted each of these messages after just a couple of words. Then I came upon a message from my mother. TV coverage of the standoff had made it all the way to Florida. Maggie had seen video and sounded shaken. I dialed her condo. A woman answered, but it was not my mother.

  “Jessi?” I asked.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes.”

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Got a scratch or two, but I’ll live. Sorry I screwed up the holiday. I just wanted you and Lexi to be safe. I wanted my family to be safe.”

  “I know.”

  “I didn’t want to bring you two here with all this going on.”

  “You don’t have to explain,” my daughter said. “You did the right thing. Lexi got to see you on TV though.”

  “She did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She shouldn’t be watching that,” I said, knowing that TV news footage wasn’t the proper way to meet one’s grandfather. “It’s too violent.”

  “We didn’t let her watch all of it, just some. We told her that was her grandfather. She thinks you’re cool.”

  “What do you think, Jessi?”

  “I think I want to know you better,” she said. “I want to get to know my father. I want to hear your stories. I want to know what you’ve been writing about all your life.”

  “It’s really not that interesting.”

  “Don’t give me that,” she said. “I saw you in action today. We just gotta talk. Get to know each other. I don’t think we ever really knew each other.”

  “I’d like that,” I said. “I’d like it a lot.”

  “Gram wants to say something.” There was rustling as Jessi passed the phone to Maggie.

  “Francis? Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine, Mother. I’m just sorry I screwed up Christmas.”

  “Don’t worry about that. You were just doing what’s best for us. Everyone in the condo building’s talking about you. How brave you were. They all want to meet you, especially the widow ladies. Some of them are rich. Really rich.”

  “That’s nice,” I lied.

  “You’ll have to come down here so I can show you off. You’ll be the talk of the entire building. Everyone’ll want to hear your story.”

  “Maggie, when I come down there, I just want to spend time with you and the girls.”

  “Oh, you will. We’ll do that, don’t worry. But we’ll have to make the rounds. I have to keep up appearances, especially now that my son’s a hero.”

  “Mother--”

  “Here, Lexi wants to say hi.”

  Maggie pulled the phone away and instructed my granddaughter to say hello to a man she had never met. A man she’d only seen on TV. A man they were calling her grandfather.

  “Oh, she’s so cute, Francis,” Maggie gushed. “Wait till you see her. She’ll just eat up your heart. Here she is. Bye, son. I love you.”

  “Merry Christmas,” I said, but Maggie was gone before I uttered the words.

  “Hello?” The little girl’s voice was shy and unsure. “Grampee”

  “Hi, Lexi.”

  “Hi,” she said. “Is there really snow where you live?”

  “Yes there is. Lots of it. Too much.”

  “We were ‘post to come there so we could see it. So we could have a Snow Kissmas.”

  “You mean a White Christmas.”

  “Yeah, a White Kissmas.”

  “I’m sorry things didn’t work out this time. But I promise that you’ll get to see the snow, long as I get to see you.”

  “You can see me. But is it true that snow melts? That it doesn’t last?”

  “It lasts for a while, then goes away. But it always comes back. You can count on it.”

  “Okay,”
she said.

  “Okay then.”

  “Bye,” she said, then abruptly hung up the phone.

  “Bye,” I said to the dead receiver in my empty house.

  Somehow, despite everything that had happened, it felt more like Christmas after that. My family was hundreds of miles away. My daughter and granddaughter were merely disembodied voices carried over miles of phone line. I couldn't put real faces to them. Not yet. Just vague, hazy outlines of what they should look like. But somehow, someway, it was a start.

  I replaced the receiver and walked over to my crooked Christmas tree and plugged it in. A multitude of lights began shining and blinking.

  I bent down to pick up a fallen ornament and replaced it with care. Then I stepped back for a look.

  “Not bad,” I said. “Not bad at all.”

  It was a few hours before Christmas Eve.

  Chapter 60

  Less than a week later, Cassie was going home. Her parents had come and gone, mostly at her urging. And she was still too weak, sore and fragile for the drive all the way back to Manhattan. The Times had offered to put her up in a hotel in Harrisburg, but that seemed too sterile. Her rich boyfriend, who had yet to leave New York to visit Cassie, offered to charter a jet to whisk her back to the city, but that seemed far too extravagant. And secretly, I think she wanted him to come to her, not the other way around.

  So it was agreed that she’d stay at my place for a couple of days. Both Langhorne and Buzz arrived at the hospital for moving day -- Langhorne to provide security because the media pack was still sniffing around, and Buzz to make snide remarks about the sleeping arrangements.

  “Haven’t you put this poor woman through enough, Tellis?” Buzz cracked. “Are you really gonna subject her to your cooking and cleaning.”

  “We’ll get take-out,” I said.

  Cassie wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Ever the reporter, she was more interested in pumping Langhorne for the latest information about the case. “So how long was Stanhope planning this, do you think?” she asked.

  “Years,” the detective replied. “He moved with his mother out to Arizona when he was a boy. She kept all the old articles about his father’s case in the basement. But with that kid, it became an obsession.”

  “Why’d he change his name?” Cassie asked.

  “Actually, he didn’t. His father did,” the detective said. “The old man set up a secret off-shore bank account under the name Clay Stanton Shaw. He used his son’s new name and his son’s real Social Security number to do it. Everything was legal, but no one knew it at the time, not even the wife. Technically, the kid had two identities. It was how Stanhope hid the bribe money. That’s why no one ever found it. He stashed all the records of the name change and the bank account someplace only his wife would find after his suicide. Somewhere in Arizona, probably. The wife gives it a year or so for things to settle down in Harrisburg. Then she moves the family out to Arizona, and she gradually transitions her son into his new identity. She tells people she changed her son’s name for his own good -- so the kid doesn’t have his father’s suicide following him around for the rest of his life. But really, it was for the money. Now they can tap the bank account and get their hands on the cash Stanhope died protecting. It was the old man’s way of taking care of his family.”

  “The guy was a thievin’ prick who took the easy way out,” Buzz said. “And there you were, Telly, beatin’ yourself up all these years thinking you put the screws to an innocent schmuck. Here it was him all along, playing us for suckers. Got one over on us from the grave, he did. That’s no easy trick.”

  “Yeah, but if the son knew his dad was guilty, why’d he spend the rest of his life seeking revenge?” Cassie asked.

  “Because he hated the media,” I said. “We did that ourselves. We made him hate us. Think about it. What was he, eight years old? Seeing that mob of press at his door every night, always shouting at his father. Seeing the old man jittery and nervous all the time, strung out, his nerves like piano wires every night when he comes home. At every press conference, the media screaming at his father. Throughout the whole trial, the same thing. The capper was the suicide, with all the press there to record everything. Imagine a kid watching that. Watching it over and over, and reading every word ever written about his old man. Reading it again and again. It’d be enough to hold a pretty big grudge.”

  “You’re not blaming the media for all this, are you?” Cassie was incredulous. “You sound like one of those right-wing know-nothings.”

  “Course not,” I sarcastically said. “The press could never do anything wrong.”

  Cassie smirked in reply.

  “I’m just glad it’s over,” I continued. “And I’m thankful it wasn’t my bullet that ended up in you or the Stanhope kid.”

  “No,” Buzz pointed out. “Your bullet wound up in one of those high-priced paintings they got hanging all over the Wednesday Club. Tore a nice, big hole in it, too. I’da loved to see the insurance claim on that one. By the way, Tellis, you ever give any thought to becoming an art critic?”

  We all laughed at that. Then there was a knock at the half-open hospital room door. We looked to see Wally Greenfield in the doorway. The photographer was holding a stack of magazines.

  “I just got the new Newsweek,” he announced. “They didn’t use my picture on the cover, but they ran my interview.”

  Wally distributed copies of the magazine to each of us. I was horrified to see the cover shot of me holding a gun to my head. The headline asked, “Is The Media A Legitimate Target? Or Are We Shooting The Messenger?”

  “I don’t think they got your good side there, Telly,” Buzz cracked.

  “My stuff’s on the inside,” Wally directed.

  I rustled through the glossy pages the best I could with my bandaged right hand. Finally, I stumbled upon the photo of me trying to assist a dying Wayne Dykstra. The photo was part of a long story on the media murders. A sidebar featured a picture of Wally in all his multi-colored glory. The caption read, “Why was this local photographer the only journalist to call for help in the middle of a crisis? Did the rest of the passive press hope for tragedy because it would have made for bigger headlines?”

  “You tell ‘em Travis,” Langhorne cheered, nudging the photographer and using Wally’s movie nickname. “You were the only one with some common sense in that whole goddamn crowd.”

  Wally shrugged. “Yeah, well, it probably cost me the cover. I was dialing nine-one-one when I should’ve been shooting. But it was worth it, I guess.”

  “You guess?” Buzz shot back. “You hear that, Telly? He guesses.”

  “I’m joking,” Wally insisted. “Geez, you government types are way too uptight.”

  I laughed along with the rest of them. But I wondered if there wasn’t a part of Wally Greenfield who regretted his choice.

  After all, what journalist wouldn’t lament missing the cover of Newsweek magazine?

  Chapter 61

  It was early on New Year’s Eve. Maggie was still in Florida. I was promising to fly down as soon as my hand healed and I finished physical therapy.

  Meanwhile, it was just Cassie and me at my place. We were all set to dig into a feast of take-out Chinese when the recently repaired doorbell rang.

  We’d still been getting the occasional snooping reporter, along with frequent calls for interviews. Cassie was debating several offers for major sit-downs with the likes of Katie Couric and Barbara Walters, and she was trying to persuade me to join her. So far, I was resisting. Cassie was still a little weak from her injuries and still ingesting a cocktail of antibiotics and pain pills. So she couldn’t be as insistent as she usually was. But it was only a matter of time.

  I dropped my chopsticks and pushed up from the table. I didn’t think it was the media, not on New Year’s Eve. But I should have left the bell disconnected, anyway.

  Cassie’s eyes followed me. “Just let it go, Telly.” Then the doorbell rang again, followed by a firm
knock.

  “I’m not gonna put up with this all night,” I said. “Just let me just see who it is and get rid of them. Then we can have a nice, quiet night, like we planned.”

  I opened the door to find a pleasant-looking older gentlemen in dark clothes and a chauffeur’s cap. He politely dipped his head.

  “Pardon me, sir,” he said. “I’ve been sent by Mr. Walker to escort Ms. Jordan back to Manhattan. Is she here?”

  My heart sank. It had been so pleasant having Cassie around these last few days. Mostly, she slept. But when she was awake, we’d talk or play Scrabble or order take-out food. In the past, we had bonded over alcohol and news stories. These days, Cassie couldn’t have a drop on account of all of her medications. I had been trying to cut back, as well. I told Cassie that I didn’t like drinking in front of her. But really, I was doing it for myself.

  As for the news business, both of us were on the shelf for a while. Cassie’s injuries were obvious. It turned out that my hand injury was a little more serious than a scratch. Somehow, I’d managed to damage some nerves, affecting my ability to type or even hold a pen. A reporter who couldn’t take notes wasn’t much use. Even if I forced myself to use a tape recorder, I was never the best typist. Going one-handed would turn even the shortest stories into epic chores. Luckily, Bill Sharps and, especially, Angus Merrin, were very sympathetic. They told me to take a couple of weeks off, then see how I felt. They gave me the time right after handing me a raise -- $80 a week. Not bad. Even Maggie would approve -- if I ever decided to tell her. After all, money she didn’t know about was money she couldn’t spend. All in all, it had been a happy time. Now it was coming to an end.

  “You’re here to take Cassie back?” I said to the chauffeur. “Tonight? New Year’s Eve?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But she’s not even packed.”

  “I’ve been instructed to assist with that. I’ve been instructed to assist Ms. Jordan with whatever she needs. Mr. Walker would very much like to see her. He’d have come himself, save for an extraordinarily hectic schedule.”