by R. G. Belsky
Besides, maybe I could pump him for information about the case.
“Are you sure you don’t want anything stronger?” Caruso asked.
“This is fine.”
He had a beer. I was drinking coffee.
“Maybe a martini? Or some wine? You look like you need to loosen up a little bit.”
“I don’t need booze to loosen me up,” I snapped.
I didn’t want it to come out like that. But it had. Caruso looked startled.
“Sorry,” I said.
“No problem.”
I drank some of my coffee.
“Do you drink a lot?” I asked him.
“Sure. I like to go out and raise hell just like everyone else.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I mean really drink. Not just once in a while when you go out with people. But all day and all night. I’m talking about the kind of drinking where, from the minute you get up until you go to bed, you think about nothing else. The kind where there are mornings you don’t remember what happened to you the night before. Your hands are trembling, your whole body aches and you feel like you want to die. Have you ever drunk like that?”
“No,” he said slowly, “I guess not.”
“Well, I have.”
“You’re an alcoholic?”
“That’s right.”
“For how long?”
I shrugged.
“Probably for a lot longer than I realized. Maybe I already was one when I was going to parties in high school. I don’t know. Anyway, it kept getting worse as I got older. I tried not to let it affect my job, but it got harder and harder. Finally, it was impossible. The paper sent me to a clinic to dry out. It didn’t take the first time. Or the second. I’m hoping the third time is the charm. I’ve been sober for six months.”
He nodded. I could tell he wasn’t sure what to say. There really wasn’t anything. Terrific, Shannon. You sure are a fun date.
“Is the drinking what screwed up your marriages?” Caruso finally asked.
“It didn’t help.”
“Do you know why you drank so much?”
It was a question I’d asked myself plenty of times.
I had a lot of theories. Some from stuff I’d read about the subject of alcoholism. Some I’d picked up from counselors and other drinkers at AA or during one of my stays in rehab. And some had come to me during bursts of inspiration while I was drunk.
But the only thing I really knew for sure about drinking was that I absolutely loved it.
I don’t really have too many vices. I don’t do drugs. I never smoked cigarettes. I like animals and little children, I don’t rob banks and I’ve even been known to help a little old lady or two across the street in my time. Basically, I’m a pretty good person. Except for the drinking.
I took my first real drink when I was a junior in high school. It was a martini. I can still remember every detail about that moment, even after all these years. Where I was. Who I was with. The song that was playing on the radio. Most of all, the taste of the gin in my mouth and the warm glow it sent through my body and the way all my troubles seemed to slip away after just a few sips.
My real problems didn’t start until after I came to New York City. I was drinking a lot in those days, but then something happened to make it worse. A lot worse. That was when I finally realized I had a problem. Of course, it took me twelve more years to finally come to grips with it.
“There’s no answer for why I drink,” I told Mitch Caruso.
“Okay. But if you had to pick one thing . . .”
“Well, I went through a very tough relationship.”
“Which husband?”
“It wasn’t even one of the men I married.”
“Who?”
“He’s dead now.”
“And you were in love with this guy?”
I shook my head. “No. We were always a bad mix.”
“Then why . . . ?”
“It’s very complicated,” I said.
I think he sensed I didn’t want to talk about it.
The waiter brought our food. Mitch had chicken, and I had a pasta dish. While we ate, we talked about the case.
“The public has an incredible fascination with serial killers,” he said. “Son of Sam here. Zodiac in San Francisco. The Hillside Slayer in Los Angeles. Until they’re caught, nobody talks about anything else.”
“Zodiac was never caught,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“A few years ago, I read about another case like this one. Someone was sending letters again and claiming to be the serial killer. You know who it turned out to be? One of the cops in charge of investigating the case ten years earlier. He’d become so obsessed with it, he went right over the edge.”
Caruso smiled. “Maybe that’s what’s happening here.”
“Do you know who the cop was in charge of the original Loverboy investigation?” I asked.
“Thomas Ferraro.”
“That’s right—the police commissioner. The one who looks like he’s headed for City Hall next.”
“I don’t think he’s writing the letters.”
“It would be an unorthodox way to run for mayor.”
“Maybe someone else . . .”
“Ferraro’s partner back then was a detective named Jack Reagan.”
“You think . . . ?”
“Reagan’s dead.”
“How do you know that?”
“Believe me, I know everything there is to know about Jack Reagan.”
Caruso nodded. Then it hit him.
“Is he the one who . . . ?”
“Yeah. Jack and I had a thing together.”
“And then he died.”
“I have that effect on men. They either divorce me or die. I’m like the Black Widow of dating.”
Caruso’s beeper went off. He excused himself to go to a pay phone.
I watched him walk away, wondering why I’d told him all that stuff about me.
I mean, I barely knew Mitch Caruso.
And yet I’d already opened up to him more than most men I’ve ever been with in my life—even some of my ex-husbands.
Was that because I just needed to release a lot of the things I’d kept bottled up inside me for so long?
Or was there something special about Mitch Caruso?
That’s it, I decided. He is special. He’s different than most of the men I meet. He listens to me. He seems genuinely interested in what I have to say. He’s strong, he’s smart, he’s funny. . . .
Someone I might finally fall in love with.
I could love someone. I really could. I mean, it’s not like I’m totally unfamiliar with the term “love.” I love a sunny day. I love a great story. I love old Humphrey Bogart and W.C. Fields movies. I love to drink. So why can’t I feel the same way about a man? Someone to share my life with. Someone like Mitch Caruso.
I shook my head. This was crazy.
All you’re doing is having a simple dinner here, Shannon. Don’t blow this out of proportion. Maybe you already scared him off with all your talk about drinking. The guy wants to have a good time. He doesn’t want to listen to your sob stories.
Caruso came back to the table a few minutes later. He looked very serious.
“There’s been another murder,” he said.
“Where?”
“Queens. An airline stewardess. A neighbor found her after she got back from a flight.”
“Is there a letter?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I already knew what he was going to say next.
“It’s addressed to you.”
We rode out there together in his car.
“Why do the letters come to you?” Caruso asked as we made our way across Manhattan.
“I was never sure.”
“It’s definitely beginning to look like it’s the same person as before.”
“I still don’t think so.”
“What about the letters?”<
br />
“He’s a copycat. He’s copying Loverboy. Loverboy wrote notes to me about the murders. So does he.”
Caruso thought about it.
“It doesn’t make sense,” he said. “There’s got to be something more to it than that.”
“Like what?”
“I wish I knew.”
We drove down to Thirty-Fourth Street and took the Midtown Tunnel to Queens.
“How did it all start?” Caruso asked.
The roads were still jammed with evening traffic. It was going to be a long ride. We had to talk about something.
So I told him about me and Loverboy. . . .
Part 3
My Back Pages
Chapter 18
I knew the story was going to be really big as soon as I heard about it.
It was a Saturday—generally the slowest day at a newspaper—and I was at the police shack on the four-to-midnight shift. Most of the other reporters there had already gone home for the night. But not me. I was on the phone, making the rounds of precincts and cop sources, trying to find something to put in the paper. In those days I thought a big story was the answer to everything. I was very young and naive.
“So this woman found stabbed to death in a playground in the South Bronx,” I said to the cop on the other end, “she wasn’t related to the Kennedys or anything, was she?”
I wrote down his answer in my notebook. Hooker. Drug addict. A rap sheet from here to Philadelphia.
“She was a real debutante, huh?” I said.
I dialed another number and went through the same routine.
“Okay, Sarge,” I said, “this stiff in the abandoned building in Harlem with the numbers slips in his pocket. Was he a noted brain surgeon or what?”
You had to check them all out, even the ones in the crummiest neighborhoods, just in case a woman killed in a brawl at a social club turned out to be Demi Moore or somebody.
It was part of the routine.
“Damn, nobody good’s dying today,” I complained to the duty cop who answered the phone at the East Twenty-First Street Precinct.
“I might have something,” he said. “It’s just happening now.”
“What?”
“Report of a double homicide in Gramercy Park.”
“Good address.”
“There’s two bodies on the street on the north side of the park, across from the Gramercy Park Hotel. A white female, early twenties, and a white male, a little older.”
“Uh-huh.”
“There’s something else too.”
“What?”
“I hear there’s an incredible amount of interest in this one.”
“Interest from who?”
“The brass.”
I thought about that. It was unusual. Sure, Gramercy Park was a nice neighborhood and this probably was a high-profile homicide. But it takes a lot to get the big shots downtown interested in anything on a Saturday night. A warning bell went off in my head.
Big story.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “They’re not telling me.”
There were police barricades blocking the street around Gramercy Park when I got there. A lot of people from the neighborhood stood behind them, trying to find out what was going on. I flashed my press card at a cop and started to duck under one of the barricades. The cop stopped me.
“Nobody goes past this line,” he said.
“I’m a reporter.”
“Doesn’t matter. Those are my orders.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of freedom of the press?”
He had a bored expression on his face. “Take it up with the Supreme Court.”
I didn’t have time to argue, so I just nodded and backed off. Then I found a spot down the block, sneaked under the barricade there and made my way toward where two bodies lay on the street, covered by sheets.
There were two homicide detectives running things. One of them looked like a cop—he had a short haircut and wore a white shirt, suit and tie. His partner was a lot different. He was in his late thirties, with longish blond hair, blue eyes and a florid, heavy drinker’s kind of face. I thought he looked really interesting.
They were talking to another man. I suddenly recognized who he was. A deputy police commissioner I’d met a few times named Wayne Cole. What was going on here anyway?
I moved closer and picked up snatches of their conversation.
“You think it’s him?” Cole asked the cop with short hair.
“It sure looks like it. Same MO. Same kind of victims. Probably the same gun too, although we’ll have to wait for the ballistics tests to be sure of that.”
“But you’re sure already, aren’t you?”
“I’ve been after this guy for six years, Wayne. I know him. I can feel him. It’s him, all right.”
“So what happened?”
“The dead guy’s named Joseph Borelli. He works on Wall Street. Has a wife and a new baby and a nice four-bedroom house up in Westchester somewhere. The girl’s named Susan Lansdale.”
“And she’s not his wife?”
“Nope. She was an aspiring actress and a waitress at a place near here called Gotham City. The two of them apparently met there earlier tonight.”
“Where were they headed?”
“Maybe to her place. Maybe to a hotel room for a night of whoopee.” He looked up at the Gramercy Park Hotel across the street and shrugged. “It doesn’t really matter now.”
“And you figure our boy followed them from the club?”
“That’s the way he generally does it.”
“Where’s the witness?”
The cop pointed to a nervous-looking guy a few feet away. He was wearing a jogging outfit and carrying a Walkman.
“He heard the shots, came around the corner of the park and saw a shadowy figure running away. Then he heard an engine start and a car roar off down the street.”
“But no real description of the gunman or the car?”
“That’s right.”
“Just like all the witnesses.”
“We gotta get a break sometime.”
I still wasn’t sure exactly what they were talking about. I moved closer to try to hear them better. That was when I got caught.
“Hey. Who’s she?” the short-haired cop yelled.
Cole made me right away. “She’s a newspaper reporter.”
“Jesus!”
He turned toward his partner. “Get her the hell out of here, Jack!”
The blond-haired detective nodded, grabbed me by the arm and began leading me back toward the crowd outside the barricade.
“Let go of my arm,” I said.
“Just walk quietly with me,” he whispered.
“What are you gonna do—shoot me?”
“Only if you resist.”
He smiled. A great smile. We were back at the barricade now.
“My name’s Jack Reagan,” he said.
“I’m Lucy Shannon of the Blade.”
We shook hands.
“Who’s your partner?” I asked.
“Lieutenant Tommy Ferraro.”
“I don’t think Lieutenant Ferraro likes me very much.”
“That’s okay. He doesn’t like me either.”
He smiled again. I’ve always been a sucker for a great smile.
“How old are you, Lucy?” he asked.
“Twenty-four.”
“Damn, they keep making reporters younger all the time.”
I looked back over at Ferraro. He was still in conversation with Cole. They both looked very serious.
“What’s going on here anyway?”
“I’m not supposed to tell you.”
“I know it’s something important.”
“You’re sure as hell right about that.”
“Look, I’ve only worked at the Blade for a little while. I need to prove to them I can handle a really big story. This could be it. I’d protect you as a source. Belie
ve me, they’d never know it came from you.”
Reagan looked across the park at a bar a block or two away.
“See that place called Pete’s Tavern?” he said.
“Yeah.”
“Go wait for me there.”
“How long will you be?”
“As long as it takes for me and Ferraro to wrap things up.”
“How do I know you’ll really show?”
Reagan shrugged. “What have you got to lose?”
He was right. I had nothing to lose. I called in the facts I knew to the Blade office, but it wasn’t much: a double homicide in a good neighborhood that the police seemed very interested in. Until I found out more, it was a pretty short story. So I waited.
Reagan showed up an hour and a half later. He slipped onto the bar stool beside me, ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey from the bartender and swallowed the whiskey down in one gulp. He ordered another one.
“So, Lucy”—he smiled—“what’s a nice girl like you doing in a crummy business like newspapers?”
Chapter 19
I had arrived in New York City for the first time on a bright December morning.
I was only twenty-two years old then and had driven all night to get there from Ohio, where I’d been working on a small weekly newspaper in Lorain County. At one point the Ohio Turnpike passed within sight of the newspaper’s office. There was a sign that said: new york city—518 miles. I used to look out the window at that sign and dream about going there.
I had a best friend named Carrie, who wanted to be an actress. She was working as a secretary for a firm in Cleveland that made automobile crankshafts, and performing at night with a little repertory company in Shaker Square. One day the two of us rode to the top floor of the Terminal Tower in Public Square, which is the tallest building in Cleveland. We could see the entire city from there—Lake Erie to the north, factories and smokestacks in the west, rolling suburban homes as far as the eye could see.
“Do you want to stay here?” Carrie asked.
“You mean the Terminal Tower?”
“No, Cleveland.”