“You’re in early.” Sheila Thomas didn’t enter a room—she exploded into it: juggling morning newspapers and her take-out bag of coffee and bagels, shoulder bag flapping at her back, curly hair bouncing, headset buzzing. “Uh-oh.” Sheila dropped all her things on the desk next to where Cassie was sitting. “You don’t even have to tell me. It’s written all over your face.”
“What is?” Cassie said, relieved to have Sheila there. She felt as though she’d spent the last two hours in another dimension, existing in an altogether different and terrifying reality. Sheila’s loud voice brought her back to the eighteenth floor.
“Your guy. You had a fight. Or he dumped you. Something. I recognize that look all too well.” She sat down, swiveled the chair around, and propped her black boots on the desktop as she lifted an oversized cup of coffee out of the brown paper bag.
“Sheila, did you know anything about a piece Miranda was working on right before the accident? Something sort of hush-hush? Off the books?”
“So, you don’t want to talk about it even? I was just kidding about my shoulder. Use it as a hankie if you like.”
“No, I mean it. About Miranda. Anything odd you can remember? A fight with McPherson? A blowup with a staffer?”
“Cassie, kiddo, honey pie. Miranda was always fighting with McPherson, nothing unusual there. And she blew up at staffers with the regularity of Old Faithful. I even heard her take on Magnus one night. Must have been about a week before … she died.”
“What was it about? How did you happen to overhear it?”
“I wasn’t snooping if that’s what you mean. We’d finished taping for the week. Magnus occasionally came down for the final session in the studios on the fifteenth floor. She had a full fucking dressing room down there: shower, sauna, walk-in closets. I think they’d often go out for dinner together afterward. I remember he had on a tux. Christ, he looks good in black tie.”
“I’m more interested in what he said than in what he was wearing.”
“It was Miranda who did the talking. She said he could damn well go on alone if he didn’t give her what she wanted. I assumed they were going out to one of their society dos.”
“And Magnus? What did he say?”
“Basically to keep her voice down. It was hard to hear him, but you could tell by his tone that he was trying to humor her. I think he even said something about being reasonable.”
“No idea what they were talking about?”
“Nope. But I could tell she had him going. He’s pretty circumspect about his language, but I remember him saying that someone had really fucked up. Not your usual silver-tongued Magnus by any means.”
“But nothing specific?”
“No. It got real quiet then. Awful quiet. About ten minutes later they emerged all glittery and dewy-eyed. She had on one of the full length evening dresses she kept down there. You can bet your ass that thing cost more than my annual salary.”
“Where’s all that stuff now? Where are her project notes and scripts? What happened to all her files?”
“How should I know?” Sheila replied as she peeled back the paper encasing her bagel. “Someone from personnel swept up in here. I assume McPherson has her old files. Pieces she was working on and so forth. What’s all this about anyway?”
“I need to see those files,” Cassie said.
“That’s too bad. McPherson has this weird thing about security on upcoming projects, you know? Like he doesn’t want 60 Minutes or 48 Hours to know what we’re up to. Stuff is in a safe, Cassie. Forget it.”
“You’re close to McPherson. You’re probably the only one around here he trusts.”
“Like I said. Forget it.”
“I can’t tell you how important this is,” Cassie began, sitting down on the edge of Sheila’s desk.
“Sure you can,” Sheila said, licking cream cheese off her fingers. “You can start by telling me what it’s all about. But for starters, let me clue you in on something. You say Miranda was working on some big deal story right before she died? I hate to tell you, but I doubt it. Miranda hadn’t generated an original idea for Breaking News the whole time I’ve been here. Sure, she had her name down as producer on three or four pieces a year, but it’s mostly stuff she usurped or inherited. She was too fucking worried about how she looked to give much of a thought to what we covered. That’s our job. The great unwashed, unloved slugs offscreen.”
“And you’re still so sick with envy you can’t see straight.”
“Bull. Like, I’m just trying to give you the score, Cassie. Sorry if it offends your delicate sensibilities. But your sister was a first-class, full-blown bitch.”
“I know.” Cassie stood up and walked over to the window. The morning rush was easing. Only one person got off the bus across the street. An elderly woman, well dressed in a linen suit. She walked slowly up Sixth, stopping to look in a store window. Retired, Cassie decided, with plenty of leisure time. She’d shop all morning, perhaps meet a friend for lunch or a matinee. Something Miranda would never do now. “That’s not a good enough reason to have her killed.”
Sheila stopped eating. She sat up. She took her boots off the desk. “You know what you’re saying?”
“Yes. I’m afraid I do. I don’t know who did it for sure. But I do know why. She had information that could destroy the lives of at least three powerful men. I wish it were coincidence. But it’s not. You see, she tried to get me to help her. She knew she was in danger. That contract bodyguard you told me about wasn’t going to do any good. These were men she knew. Well. Intimately.”
“What are you saying?” Sheila’s voice was a whisper. She glanced at the open door, got up, crossed the room, and quietly closed it. “Are you sure? How do you know?”
Cassie stared across the desk at Sheila. “I just do. Believe me, okay? It’s better for you not to hear the details.” Sheila was a friend. A fast friend. A pal. But would she really want to learn that Magnus was corrupt? Could she put her own feelings and loyalties behind her for the sake of a woman she’d despised? How much did the truth really matter, Cassie asked herself, when it came to the pull of the heart? She thought about Jason and realized that she didn’t know the answer herself yet. How could she possibly trust Sheila?
“What … do you need from McPherson?” Sheila asked.
“You’re going to help me?”
“Yes. But not because of Miranda. I’m sorry. But if what you say is true, we’re sitting on one hell of a hot story. And it sounds like it’s ours. Exclusively.”
“You could say that.” Cassie thought about the disk in her shoulder bag. She was going to have to find a very good place to hide it now.
The opportunity arose to get into the safe, as Sheila knew it would, two days later. The programming meeting was scheduled for three that afternoon, and McPherson would need to glance over his notes, memorize his proposed lineup, and have the file returned to the safe sometime before the meeting began. She waited until he was comfortably seated at his desk, eating his usual lunch of take-out sushi.
“When are you going to schedule our Bronx piece, Mac?” Sheila asked, poking her head around his office door. “Oh, sorry, didn’t know you were busy.”
“As if anyone around here ever cared,” McPherson replied glumly. “I don’t believe I’ve eaten lunch in peace since the Mets were in the World Series back in 1986. Loved that team. People spent their lunch hours reordering the lineup, so I was able to eat uninterruptedly for at least a week.”
“I said I was sorry,” Sheila pointed out as she leaned against the doorjamb. “I’ll come back when you’re done.”
“Well, you’re here now. Get me the programming file, will you?” McPherson held out the key to the safe. Everyone knew the safe was hidden behind the Matisse poster above his cracked leather sofa at the far end of the room.
The painting obscured McPherson’s vision just long enough for Sheila to find the file she needed and slip it insi
de the elastic band of her stretch pants. Her oversize cotton work shirt hid it from view. She dropped the program scheduling file on McPherson’s desk and walked casually to the door.
“Is it as good as the traffic violations thing?” McPherson asked, flipping open the file in front of him.
“It’s better. It’s tough. We’ll have a rough cut by Friday.”
“Okay, I’ll pencil in a tentative for the week after next, okay? And would you mind closing the door as you go out, honey?”
Later that night, long after the cleaning crew had gone, Cassie opened the slim manila file marked “M.D.—In progress.” It consisted of two yellow legal-sized pages filled with Miranda’s large, childish scrawl.
“Seems to be about a primary,” Sheila said, reading over Cassie’s shoulder. “The senatorial race, I think. See, there’s a note about Haas. Anthony Haas. He’s up for reelection next year.”
“What are his chances?” Cassie asked.
“A shoo-in, I’d say,” Sheila replied, yawning and stretching. “You find anything there? Looks to me like Miranda was planning on doing a piece on Haas. Big deal. He’s a buddy of Vance’s.”
“Yes, I know.” Cassie closed the file. “It seems he’s been a lot of things to a lot of people over the years.”
Twenty
“Senator Haas’s office.”
“Is he there?”
“Who’s calling, please?”
“It’s … personal.”
“This is his office, ma’am. The Senator has a very full schedule. Personal matters should be directed to his home.”
“I’m sure he’ll want to talk to me. I’m Miranda Darin’s sister.”
There was a moment of hesitation, then: “I’ll put you through to one of his aides. Hold please.”
“Geoffrey Mellon, how may I help you?”
“Yes, hello. I’m Cassie Hartley, Miranda Darin’s sister?”
“Right. How can I help?”
“I need to see the Senator.”
“This is his office, Ms., uh, Hartley, is it? Surely it would be better to try him at home.”
“No. I need to see him today. It’s … quite important. Tell him it’s urgent. Please? I’ll hold.”
She thought her voice would shake. Or that her nerve would melt. Instead she felt extraordinarily calm. Confident. She’d been awake most of the night going over the little she knew about Anthony Haas, and deciding it wasn’t enough. All the frayed threads of information she had led back to him. And if she was going to find out what happened to Miranda, she’d have to learn a lot more about Anthony Haas. What better way to start, she finally decided, than where Miranda had left off?
“We’ll squeeze you in at four-thirty, Ms. Hartley.” Geoffrey Mellon’s voice was terse with disapproval. “For fifteen minutes. This better be good.”
Senator Anthony Haas’s New York offices were in the Lincoln Building across from Grand Central Station on Forty-Second Street. The stately, ornate lobby with its elaborately gilded arched ceiling appealed to the Senator’s sense of ceremony. The excellent five-year lease for his ten-room suite that he’d recently negotiated with the managing agent appealed to a more grasping side of his character. Anthony Haas, born to impoverished German-Italian parents in the Bronx, had learned at a very early age the importance of pinching pennies. And even though he was now worth more than six million discreetly invested dollars, he still hungered after money. It was an insatiable, all-consuming desire, one that he knew he could only satisfy—the way some men ease the need for women or drugs—in the more shadowy corridors of human commerce.
Elected government officials, alas, earned very little when compared to businessmen, corporate lawyers, and even most doctors. How far could a $150,000 income stretch, after all, when there were so many trips to finance … parties to give? So, through the years Tony had learned the power of his political currency. While brokers traded stocks and bonds, and businessmen pushed products and technology, Anthony Haas dealt in influence. A government contract here, a successful plea bargain there … and it began to add up. There was also one highly sensitive connection, relating to the Italian part of his heritage, that gave Tony ready access to any cash he might require.
Initially, when Tony was still a struggling representative, his influence peddling gave him occasional pangs of guilt. He had set himself up as a defender of the downtrodden, an inspiring civil rights advocate whose rugged good looks propelled him into the front ranks of those who marched behind John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s liberal banner.
Sure, years ago he asked himself once or twice if what he was doing wasn’t somehow … corrupt. He even admitted that, seen from a certain perspective by uninformed people, it might look as though he was taking graft. But the truth was that’s just how things in government—in every level and type of government—were handled. He was a realist, that was all. A pragmatist. A man who got things done. If, in the doing, people felt obliged to compensate him somehow … what could he do? Refuse the two-week vacation in the Bahamas? Wouldn’t that be small-minded, even churlish of him? Of course it would.
The self-doubts, however, lingered. The wealthier he got … the more grasping he became. Vodka helped, blunting his appetite. He’d progressed with amazing speed from the martini cocktail before dinner to the bracing gulp from the toothbrush glass before breakfast. Nowadays he required almost hourly pit stops in the men’s room for a refresher from his sterling-silver hip flask. Not that it showed, really. He did his work. He got through the day. If his nights tended to blur, if he often forgot how he got home—or with whom he slept—well, he was a year or two beyond sixty. Not that he was past his prime by any means, but still he had come to see himself as an aging hero.
His personal staff had nearly doubled in the last ten years. He was now surrounded by bright young aides who crafted bill proposals in his name, arranged his schedule, dealt with his constituency, and interfaced with his fund-raising committees. These clear-eyed, athletic young men and women with their Paul Stuart suits and eighty-dollar haircuts briefed him each morning on how he should vote, when he should speak, what he should think. A part of him knew that he was only a mouthpiece now. An actor who spoke other people’s lines. He was still essential to the play, of course. Where would a senatorial staff be without their senator? But in some way he did not yet fully understand, the fire had gone out of his words, the light out of his eyes.
Election years were always difficult, but this year’s campaign felt particularly wearing. For one thing, his strongest opponent, a female special prosecutor with a tough crime-busting reputation and a hard-hitting personal style, was raising several ugly questions about the Senator’s fund-raising techniques. Though his aides told him not to worry, the Senator’s financial dealings were actually the one area of his life that his staff knew very little about. Haas still held very tightly to the purse strings, and for very good reason.
Senator Anthony Haas, waiting in his oak-paneled corner office for his next appointment and already worn out though it was just four-thirty, took the opportunity of being alone to swivel around in his custom-made black leather chair, squirm forward to fish out his hip flask, and then tilt his head back for a long deep gulp of vodka. He chugged it, nearly choked, and wiped his chin just as the door opened and one of his sleek-voiced aides announced: “Cassie Hartley.”
“Ah, yes.” The Senator swiveled back around as he stowed the flask in his pants pocket. “Ms. … Miranda! No, of course.” Haas rose to cover his confusion and held out his hand, saying: “Cassie, of course, we met at Miranda’s. We were all so sorry to hear of her death. Please … sit down. What can I do for you?”
“Well … it’s rather personal,” Cassie said, glancing sideways at Geoffrey Mellon whose smug, clean-shaven face she’d disliked on sight.
“You can go, Geoff.”
“Perhaps I should stay and take notes, Senator?” Geoffrey suggested with a smile. “To relieve you of any wor
ry about details. Remember the tax reform bill.” How long would the staff hold that blunder—a vote he’d cast incorrectly because he’d forgotten their instructions—over his head? They’d been able to salvage the bill, but not the fact that he’d appeared on cable television acting both bewildered and uninformed. Not the greatest look for an incumbent senator running for reelection, his staff relentlessly reminded him.
“Ah … yes. Good idea. Now, Cassie, what’s all this about? Geoff told me you said this was … urgent?”
“Yes, Senator, it is. But first, I just have to tell you that you’ve been a kind of folk hero of mine since I was a little girl. My parents were both deeply involved in the Civil Rights Movement in North Carolina where we lived. And you were always a guiding light … their inspiration.”
“That’s very nice, Ms. Hartley,” Geoffrey Mellon cut in, “but can we get to the urgent part? The Senator is very pressed for time this afternoon.”
“I see,” Cassie said, glancing from Haas to Geoff and noting that the Senator hadn’t objected to Geoff’s bullying tone. It became clear to her suddenly who was really in charge there. “Okay, I’ll get to the urgent part … but it does relate back to the high regard with which I hold the Senator—and all he stands for. I’m working for Magnus Media now. I’m a writer for Breaking News.”
“Oh, Christ, the media.” Geoff Mellon sighed. “You’ve got some nerve barging in here under personal pretenses, Ms. Hartley. Let’s cut this short, okay? You want to get a line into the Senator, go through channels, okay? Call Rita Kirbie, our press secretary. I’ll be happy to give you her number on your way out.” Geoff rose to go.
“I’m sorry if that’s your attitude, Senator,” Cassie replied, ignoring Geoff. “I believe that an in-depth, moment-by-moment piece on how you spend your time—and the taxpayers’ money—could only help in an election year. Considering the allegations that Ruthie Nester’s making about your fund-raising committee. And especially when you know that it’s being put together by a true admirer of yours.”
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