Hard News

by Mark T Sullivan

  Second, the ego display. Here the interviewee revels in the information and wants to share it with the world. These are often the most tiresome, yet helpful interviews.

  Next came the leveraged spill. In such situations, the person being interviewed is frightened of other information about them or their loved ones coming out, so they pour out part of what they know to protect the real skeletons.

  The last, and the one the merry widow fit most neatly into, was what McCarthy called the henhouse motivation. Most people will speak openly about people in classes lower than themselves as well as those of much higher economic and social standing, yet they will rarely speak freely about their peers. To do so would compromise the lies they tell themselves. At the heart of it, then, Fetterbaum talked because she believed being an alcoholic retiree was more acceptable than being a dead street whore.

  “Probably right,” McCarthy said to himself. He got out of the car and made sure to see that his new cardboard sign was still stuck to the rear window. It said, “No Radio, No Ashtray, No Nothing.”

  “Can I help you, sir?” called a gaunt man in jeans, boots, denim work shirt, and battered straw cowboy hat. He carried a saddle. For a moment McCarthy thought he might be the young cowboy Fetterbaum had seen at Gentry’s. At second glance this man was older, wizened by years in the sun.

  “I hope so. My name’s Gideon McCarthy. I work for The Post. I’m trying to get some information on a woman who boarded a horse here, Mr. …?”

  The man closed one eye halfway. “Kemper. Clint Kemper. And I don’t give information out about my boarders. Figure people got a right to privacy.”

  “She’s dead,” McCarthy said solemnly. “I don’t think she’d mind.”

  Kemper shot him a wicked glare. “Now that I know who you’re talking about, I mind.”

  He hoisted the saddle back onto his shoulder. He headed toward a red-and-white barn. McCarthy took off after him. “I’m just here to find out about the horse.”

  Kemper spit. He jerked his head toward the far corral. “The mare over there, the white Arabian. Good conformation, not a bad disposition for a thoroughbred. What else you need to know? Her feed mix? Exercise schedule?”

  McCarthy glanced over at the horse. A sleek animal with wide nostrils and black pepper marks about its neck and ears. “Anybody been in to claim her?”

  “Nope and no one’s going to,” Kemper said. He continued into the barn, entered a tack room, and hung the saddle on a peg.

  “Why’s that?”

  “What are you really after?”

  “Okay, I’ll come clean. I’m trying to figure out who killed her.”

  “I thought that was the police did that.”

  “They been out here?”

  “No.”

  “Okay, then. Why won’t someone come for the horse?”

  “Didn’t say they wouldn’t come for it,” the cowboy snapped. “Said no one’s going to get it. I figure it’s ours now for what she did.”

  Kemper took several halters from a box on the workbench and began oiling them. This wasn’t a leveraged interview after all. Pain was involved.

  “She hurt your son, didn’t she?”

  Kemper opened his mouth, then slammed it shut. He pushed the halters away. “Know about it all, don’t you? Just here to torture us. You reporters are all dark angels.”

  “I’m not here to hurt your family,” McCarthy said. “I’m just here to listen.”

  Kemper took off his hat to reveal a shock of salt and slate hair, mostly salt. He stuck his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and said evenly, “I don’t want this in the papers. You screw me on this, I’ll make sure you never walk again. Deal?”

  Better to understand than not to understand, even if he couldn’t print it yet. “Deal,” McCarthy said.

  Kemper got out another toothpick from the pocket of his shirt, played with it a moment, then said, “That bitch, Carol Alice, she shows up here about a year ago, looking for a place to board this mare she’s going to buy off a breeder out in the East County. Only she don’t want just to board, she wants to learn to ride, too.”

  “She’s buying an Arabian and she doesn’t know how to ride?”

  “Tried to convince her we could sell her one of our quarter horses for a fifth the price. She says if I don’t want to help her out with the Arabian, she’ll go somewhere’s else.

  “I says, young lady, it’s your money. So I send my son, Billy, out with the trailer to get the horse ’bout a week later. They get back, Billy’s taken a shine to her. She had that smell about her. Boys nineteen can’t think around that smell.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She’d come couple times a week, always in the morning. Billy’s teaching her to ride,” Kemper said. “One thing led to another. Billy starts disappearing after classes.”

  “He’s going to her place.”

  “Whatever. Billy, he wouldn’t talk to me or his mom about it. And to tell the truth, it was none of our business. I like to think I’m a Christian, but hell, I remember what it was like to get some for the first time.”

  Kemper wrenched a leather thong violently about his fingers. “ ’Cept one day, I go through some old boxes out back looking for a bit.”

  He stopped and hung his head.

  McCarthy always hated this part, forcing, cajoling, doing whatever it took to get what he needed. But he had to put aside his sympathies. He needed a break on this story.

  “What did you find, Mr. Kemper?”

  “I find this tape, a videotape, wrapped in one of Billy’s T-shirts. I take it in the house and pop it in. There’s my Billy with that bitch and … a … a black gal. They’re on the video. All of them … together like.”

  McCarthy’s mind sprinted back to Regina Fetterbaum’s description of Gentry’s frantic rummage through her entertainment center. Why would she be so concerned about a tape of her, Billy Kemper, and a black woman?

  “Mr. Kemper, did the video seem … professional?”

  Kemper raised his head. “How the Christ do I know? Never seen that crap before. Can you imagine what seeing that would have done to my wife?”

  “She doesn’t know?”

  “Intend to keep it that way, too.”

  “I’m sorry I have to dwell on this,” McCarthy pressed. “Did it seem like the camera was still or was it shot from different angles?”

  The leather thong dug into Kemper’s flesh. “You’re asking, was there a cameraman? No, it was still.”

  “Where’s the video now?”

  Kemper’s eyes became the bores of a shotgun. “Burned it.”

  “Billy?”

  “Gone. Five months now. I confronted them both with it next time she came in. She looks at me like I was a prude or something. Says it was a memento. I about backhanded her. Billy starts defending her, says it was his idea, not hers. And what right did I have going through his things? I told him to get the Christ out of here. Go screw his whore for the cameras.”

  Kemper scuffed the wooden floor of the barn with his boot.

  “When did all this happen, Mr. Kemper?”

  “Mid-March. Billy’s living in town with some friends. Word I got is she dumped him ’bout a month after the blowout. She called in June, told my wife she was sending someone to get the horse. But no one ever came. I figure to sell it for damages.”

  “You know the address where I can find your son?”

  Kemper didn’t say anything for a moment, then mumbled, “You keep him out of it, okay? He’s my only child.”

  “As best I can, sir.”

  Kemper gave him an address and a telephone number.

  “I appreciate it, Mr. Kemper.”

  Kemper rubbed at his chin. “Do me a favor, huh?”

  “If I can.”

  “You see Billy, you tell him his mother’s been asking after him.”

  McCarthy nodded and left the barn. Leveraged pain. Always the most uncomfortable interview to conduct, always one of the most product
ive.

  He got in the car, letting the excitement break through the sympathy he’d felt for Kemper. Even though the camera hadn’t moved, there was still the possibility the video was professionally shot. If so, and if the video mattered, the scope of people who could be involved in her death suddenly expanded. If it was an amateur film, shot as a memento, then she was just kinkier than he thought. What about the break-in and her other tapes?

  He looked at his watch. He had to be in the judge’s chambers in an hour, and then on to the night cops office.

  No time to track down Billy Kemper today. But it had to be done soon. Even though he couldn’t quote Kemper, he could write the story of the break-in and Regina Fetterbaum’s feeling they were after a tape. The second that hit the paper, Karen Rivers would be right behind him. Despite her assurances otherwise, the merry widow might talk.

  Going solo on this story was his best chance to help clear his name. But as he started the car, he conceded that even Lazarus had needed help in resurrection.

  Lies and Other Allegations of Fact …

  “THINK OF FAMILY COURT as a miniature Beirut,” Jeanette Fry said. “And yourself a Hezbollah fanatic. We want to go in, wreak havoc, get the kids, and get out.”

  “Who are you, Carlos the Jackal?” McCarthy asked.

  “Feminist version, no veil,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried up the courthouse steps. An amateur bodybuilder, Fry took fluid, linear strides.

  McCarthy huffed, trying to keep up with her. “We got a judge? Like I said, I don’t have many friends in this place.”

  “As a single male you couldn’t have anticipated being here,” Fry said. “But those articles you wrote about family court a couple of years ago don’t help much. We got Evelyn Crawford.”

  McCarthy stifled a groan. “She threw a bunch of files at me and chased me down the hall after the stories appeared.”

  “I’ve found that throwing marbles behind you often trips up your pursuer, gives you time to get away,” Fry said. She held the door for him.

  “Mr. McCarthy, what an unpleasant surprise to see you here,” Crawford said. “And forget about petitioning for a recusal, Ms. Fry. I’m probably the person with the least bias toward him in this courthouse.”

  Crawford, a bony woman in her early sixties, tapped a gold pen against her palm. Charley Owens and his attorney, Matthew Brady, smirked.

  Dust still covered McCarthy’s black, rubber-soled walking shoes. Hay flecked his sleeves. Owens sported polished Nicomo boots, an expensive two-piece blue suit, white shirt, a turquoise-and-silver bolo tie. He was so tanned that with his dark hair he could have passed for Native American. McCarthy’s neck tightened. A headache coming on.

  “I’ve read the briefs,” Crawford said.

  “We object categorically to Mr. McCarthy’s allegations,” Brady announced. His mustache was waxed. He spoke out of the right side of his mouth. “They are unsubstantiated, totally without merit, and would frankly constitute character assassination should they be allowed to enter the public files.”

  Crawford looked over the top of a pair of reading glasses. “Never mistreated your son, Mr. Owens?”

  “If anything, I tried to prevent my wife from mistreating him,” he replied earnestly.

  McCarthy couldn’t believe it. “That’s a lie!”

  Brady’s response was slick and pointed. “Mr. McCarthy, if anyone here has a history of bending the truth to suit his purposes, it’s you. I read all about it in the newspaper.”

  McCarthy glared at him. “You oily …”

  Crawford interrupted, “Ms. Fry, please restrain your client.”

  Fry’s powerful right hand tugged McCarthy back into his seat. She whispered, “You go crazy, you’ll get more than files thrown at you. You’ll lose those kids.”

  “Go on, Mr. Owens,” Crawford ordered.

  “It was a tense time in our lives,” Owens said. “I am a dealer in Southwestern and Central American textiles. I did make an unconsidered move in the Navajo rug market which put at considerable risk a business in which I held an interest.”

  “In fact, you indebted the partnership a million dollars,” interrupted Fry.

  Owens tensed. “Slightly less than that, Counselor. But the allegation that in some drug-crazed frenzy brought on by the losses I abused my son, well, it’s just ludicrous. Just the sort of thing Tina would invent.”

  “It’s no invention,” McCarthy snapped.

  “McCarthy, if you can’t let him finish, I’ll have to ask you to wait outside,” Crawford said. “Proceed, Mr. Owens.”

  Owens opened his hands. “Look, I admit I used cocaine a few times back then. Everyone did. But there was only one person in the family who had a problem. Tina. She came from an underprivileged background. I had money. And when it looked like we might lose it, she flipped.

  “I’d find her up at all hours snorting the stuff,” Owens continued. “There were times I’d come home and Carlos was locked in his bedroom with a bag of popcorn. He was three years old. Miriam was crying in her crib, wet.”

  Fry broke in, “Judge, in fact, just the opposite occurred. When Tina Rodriguez became pregnant with Miriam she entered a drug rehab center. She was clean from then on. Mr. Owens, however, continued to use cocaine on a regular basis.

  “Carlos suffered from ear infections as a toddler,” Fry went on. “The boy cried at all hours of the night. At the same time, Mr. Owens’s business partners tried to force him out because he wasn’t making good on a financial loss. His drug abuse deepened. Mr. Owens lost control one night. The boy’s arm was broken in two places.”

  “Absolutely false,” Brady cried. “Carlos took a fall from his crib. Mr. Owens considered suing the crib company because the safety bar was faulty.”

  “Mr. Owens,” the judge began, “how do you explain the boy’s three trips to different hospitals with severe bruises and injuries in the course of six months?”

  “I explain it by a having a wife who was an unfit mother,” Owens bristled. “While I was out trying to recoup my losses, Tina was doping it up, ignoring Carlos. The injuries were the result of neglect.”

  Crawford sorted through the file on her desk. “No subsequent reports on any possible abuse from other agencies. Social services? Police?”

  “Unfortunately no, Your Honor,” Fry admitted.

  “Because it never happened,” Brady added.

  Crawford said, “There is a notation here that Tina Rodriguez entered a treatment center again briefly after her separation from Mr. Owens.”

  “For one week and of her own volition,” Fry emphasized. “She was so shaken by her last months with Mr. Owens that she needed a psychological boost to avoid slipping back into addiction. Once outside, she took the children to live with her aunt. She finished her degree in journalism and went to work for The Post.”

  Crawford drew off her glasses and chewed on one of the stems.

  McCarthy closed his eyes and thought of Tina. Lawlor hired her soon after her graduation. She was smart and wrote beautifully. That first year at The Post she produced a series of stories about Pete Montgomery, a Grateful Dead head turned guru who changed his legal name to Sahandi. Sahandi claimed he channeled the spirit of a fifteenth century wisewoman named Sophia.

  Sophia’s message to the faithful was direct, wholesome, and traditional: the family was the healer of all troubles. Society crumbled as the nuclear family disintegrated. Nothing new, really, but Sahandi delivered it all in a tour de force stage show complete with lighting effects and bootleg Grateful Dead recordings. The seminars, books, and videotapes had made the counterculturist channeling the conservative spirit a multimillionaire.

  All of it began to fall apart when Tina got a tip that Sahandi had fathered several illegitimate children around the country during his frequent trips to Grateful Dead concerts and was refusing to support them.

  McCarthy was assigned to help Tina dig the story out. During the travel and the long nights going door to door to
track down the guru’s far-flung progeny, he found himself drawn by her intelligence, beauty, and strength. It was purely professional until he rescued her from a Sahandi zealot attack during a Dead concert in Colorado.

  She trembled in his arms and haltingly told him about the abuse she and her children had suffered at the hands of Charley Owens. Over the next few weeks they drifted into the warm breathlessness of infatuation. For McCarthy, Tina’s love and the love of Carlos and Miriam was a coming home to a place he’d forgotten.

  Crawford said to Owens, “You didn’t contest the custody of the children during the divorce?”

  “I was scared, in danger of losing a business I’d spent years building,” Owens said. “And frankly I was tired of Tina and everything about her. I felt I could only fight for one thing. I chose the business.”

  “Losing the boy and the baby girl didn’t concern you?”

  Owens swallowed. “There hasn’t been an hour when I don’t think of my kids. I got bad legal advice, Judge. Once Tina went into rehab and came out clean, my attorney in New Mexico told me I didn’t have a chance. Paternal rights in New Mexico remain thin at best. It took me five years to pay back my ex-partners. I’m making a go of it on my own. I want them with me.”

  McCarthy couldn’t take it anymore. “You didn’t call about them when Tina died.”

  Owens looked straight at him. “I knew they were with Estelle. I even checked up on you, Gideon. I knew they were safe. My appearance at that time, given the level of acrimony between me and Tina, would have been hypocritical, perhaps destructive.”

  The measured, sincere response temporarily unbalanced McCarthy. Could Tina have been lying all that time? Then he saw her contorted face in the wreck as she made him promise to be a good father. That kind of anguish flourishes only in truth.

  “I don’t know what your angle is,” McCarthy said. “But I know you’re lying.”

  “They’re my children,” Owens replied. “They deserve to have a father.”

  “I’m their father,” McCarthy said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  The judge signaled both men to be silent. She fiddled with the chain hanging from her spectacles, then cleared her throat. “The allegations about Mr. Owens’s conduct are troubling. The problem is we get them secondhand. From a reporter who manages to dig up remarkably accurate information, but still, secondhand and with no substantiation.”