“Sort of embarrassing to admit it, but when I called an escort service called Tiger’s. The woman who answered had the same kind of deep, well, sexy way of talking.”
Burkhardt’s lips thinned. Leslie frowned as if he couldn’t quite believe what McCarthy had just said. His face reddened. “McCarthy, you’re on thin ice here. These people are personal friends of mine. To imply …”
“No, Larry, wait,” Tressor said. She thrust her shoe out provocatively and balanced the weight of her leg on the spike of the heel. “I want to hear him out. It’s amusing. What are you trying to say, Mr. McCarthy?”
McCarthy shook his head in mock dismay. “The other day it was Gideon. Oh, well. It’s like this, Ms. Tressor. I called a phone number last week and talked to an extremely sexy woman. I traced the number to a suite two doors down from yours. Then I hear Caitlin, who has a voice so similar I lie awake at night thinking about it all.”
Burkhardt pushed himself off the pillar between McCarthy and Tressor. His chin trembled. He sputtered, “I find your insinuations insulting. If you continue to make them, I’ll take legal action. Diane Tressor is one of the most talented designers on the coast.”
Leslie pointed a finger. “I’m a witness.”
McCarthy showed his palms. “No one’s accusing anyone of anything. I just notice things. Voices that sound alike. Who talks to whom at functions like this.”
Leslie’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You want to know how I know these fine people? Sloan and I sit together on the board of a charity—the Lollipop Kids. We help bedridden children get out to zoos and parks.”
“We send them over the rainbow where skies are blue,” Burkhardt said sharply. “But I suppose that kind of thing doesn’t appeal to a reporter.”
Tressor edged into McCarthy’s space. She spoke in the tone of a gently scolding teacher. “You intrigued me the other day with that Flower Ltd. company so I asked my landlord about it. The suite hasn’t been rented in nearly a year, not since a company that cared for office plants moved out. There’s nothing inside, no desks, no telephones, nothing. I’m afraid you must have traced the wrong number.”
For a moment, McCarthy succumbed again to the intoxicating energy that floated around the interior decorator. Then he heard the sultry voice again.
“I didn’t trace a wrong number,” McCarthy said. “Make all the threats you want, but something stinks here and I’m going to find out what’s rotting. I hope you all have a pleasant evening.”
With that he strode off into the crowd. It was almost five and he should have been in the night cops office by now. It wasn’t until he was almost to the car when something Chief Leslie said came back to him.
“The Lollipop Kids!”
Spiked! …
“I DIDN’T ACCUSE ANYBODY of anything!” McCarthy protested. “I just pointed out the strange coincidence of the voices and the proximity of Flower Ltd. to Tressor’s offices.”
He was sitting in the editor-in-chief’s office the next morning along with Ed Tower, Neil Harpster, Bobbie Anne Pace, Claudette X, and Stanley Geld.
Connor Lawlor gritted his teeth. “Cuteness doesn’t become you, Gid. This is damn serious. I’ve been getting calls all morning.”
Tower held up a copy of this morning’s Beacon. “To make matters worse, The Beacon publishes a story saying Blanca and Patrick are serial killer suspects while we lead with an apology from their wives.”
“I included the stuff about the serial killer,” McCarthy said.
“But you buried it,” Neil Harpster said. He looked tired and haggard from lack of sleep, but was doing his best to appear leaderly. “That was the story.”
“That serial killer stuff is as full of holes today as it was yesterday. To my mind it didn’t even deserve to be in the paper. But I put it in because it came from Fisk.”
“You missed the lead,” Bobbie Anne Pace said coldly.
“Something’s going on with Fisk,” McCarthy insisted. “He’s not dealing straight with me, but I can’t figure out why. What the wives were saying makes a lot of sense. Prentice was there when they talked to me. We both believed them. Why doesn’t Fisk?”
“Now we’re ceding to LaFontaine as arbiter of truth,” Tower said, rolling his eyes.
“But, as you know, Ed, he gets remarkably accurate information,” McCarthy said.
Tower sputtered and flushed red. “Yes … he … does.”
McCarthy turned to Lawlor. “Connor, there’s too many questions left unanswered if Blanca and Patrick did kill Gentry.”
“Such as?” Lawlor said. Word was Swingo had circulation up twelve hundred, but he still seemed harried.
“What’s the real motive?” McCarthy said. “Sure she humiliated them, but she gave no hard evidence to the grand jury. Her word against theirs and it doesn’t seem to have accounted for much. There’s been no indictment.”
“Maybe she had evidence she never revealed,” Claudette X said.
“But we don’t know that,” McCarthy replied. “There’s a lot more leverage—and potential motive—in the kinds of clients she was servicing as part of Tiger’s Escort. Remember Rivers’s story awhile back? Gentry’s brother said she had a thing for leverage.”
Lawlor hesitated, then said, “Who’s to say she wasn’t blackmailing Patrick and Blanca?”
“I think she was. But there’s also the possibility she was blackmailing other people, more powerful people.”
“Like Sloan Burkhardt or Leslie?” Geld asked incredulously.
“Why not?” McCarthy bristled.
“We’ve maligned the police department already,” Tower said, regaining his composure. “Now you want us to smear the chief, a leading developer, and the developer’s girlfriend?”
“If I can prove it! Listen, there’s a lot about Burkhardt and Tressor that’s rancid. Prentice has found all sorts of things about them that don’t make sense.”
“People Don’t Make Sense,” Tower snickered. “I could have written that headline thirty years ago when the judge sent Connor to jail for refusing to name his sources.”
Lawlor puffed out his cheeks and blew. He rubbed his thumbs against his temples. “LaFontaine’s working on this, too?”
“No …” McCarthy began. “Well, sort of.”
Geld ran his fingers through his permed hair and made a moaning noise. “Connor, honestly, I had no idea they were off on a wild-goose chase …”
Lawlor held up his hand. “Get News in here.”
Claudette X left the room and came back with LaFontaine, who beamed upon entering the meeting. “A seat in the inner sanctum at last. Je suis arrivé.”
“Sit down and shut up,” Lawlor ordered. “I want everything you know about Gentry and cops and developers and interior decorators.”
LaFontaine cleared his throat conspiratorially, loving the center of attention. He told them how he’d been suspicious of the loan to Cote D’Azure because of Bobby Carlton’s death. He talked of the cover-ups involving the rape of UCLA, of the sealed record from seven years ago, and of the oblique structure of Blue Coast Partners. He told them that Tressor had no background in interior decorating, yet she had managed to land one of the largest local contracts in recent history.
Lawlor said. “But what’s he doing now? I don’t see the story.”
News shrank in his chair. “It’s a feeling. And it seems to go back and be somehow involved with his father. I mean, you knew Coughlin, didn’t you, Connor?”
“Who didn’t?” Tower said before the editor-in-chief could reply. “What’s the point?”
“Lots of people who know Sloan, even his former wife, say he isn’t like Coughlin. He doesn’t ride the line of what’s right and wrong. He routinely goes over it.”
Lawlor stared off into space. They all waited a moment.
“Connor?” Tower said finally.
The editor-in-chief started and reached down to rub at his bad knee. “Sorry. I’ve had a rough week. Yes, well … Coughlin. He pointed
me in the direction of a few things back during the Jennings days, but I didn’t know him well. You’re chasing ghosts here. Oddities, minor skeletons that don’t add up to a story.”
McCarthy said, “But three of these oddities, as you call them, seem to have a shape. One, Gentry may have had something to do with Tressor and so, maybe, Burkhardt, who has a history of hurting women.”
News piped in: “Then there’s this sealed record that I think has to do with the Lollipop Kids. And Chief Leslie belongs to the Lollipop Kids …”
Tower threw up his hands and roared, “What do you think the Lollipop Kids do?”
LaFontaine stammered, “Burkhardt’s ex-wife said they were an all-male group, sort of a dining club. She said he had parties at his house with the Lollipop Kids and maybe during one of them was when the sealed case happened.”
“What do you suspect?” Lawlor asked in a cutting tone.
“I don’t know, exactly,” News fumbled. “Something sexual, I suppose.”
“Like what?” asked Harpster brightly. Then he frowned. “I really don’t want to know. We’re not the National Enquirer.”
Lawlor chortled. “If these two were in charge, we would be.”
“Hey, just a minute,” McCarthy protested.
Lawlor’s face clouded. He pointed a finger at him. “No, you wait just a minute! You have again caused this paper embarrassment. And you missed the lead on a damn good story. You get so horny for a blockbuster—while on painkillers, I might add—that you peg this paper’s reputation on the fact you think you’ve heard a voice twice.”
Lawlor turned to LaFontaine. “And you! There are probably two hundred prominent people in this city who belong to the Lollipop Kids. Including Cardinal Mahoney, Mayor Portillo, half the corporate CEOs. Also Ed. Also me. Am I part of your theory?”
LaFontaine’s mouth drifted open. For once he was without a comeback.
McCarthy felt very small. “Connor, we never said …”
“Not another goddamned word!” Lawlor growled. “This escapade is over. The Post will no longer support it. And if I find out either of you are spending my time—my time!—on anything this frivolous and potentially damaging to my paper again without my direct supervision, you’ll be on the street. Clear?”
“Clear,” McCarthy said.
“Crystalline,” LaFontaine said.
Tower gave them his patented shark’s smile and opened the door to show them all out.
“I want a stronger look at the serial kill angle for tomorrow, 750 words for metro,” Claudette X said. She loomed over McCarthy’s desk with her arms crossed.
She turned to LaFontaine. “As for you, there’s a rubber chicken political thing downtown I want you to cover tonight.”
Both reporters nodded morosely. Then the executive assistant city editor said: “I think after you turn in these stories, a few days off are in order.”
“I just got back,” McCarthy said. “I’m not tired.”
“Moi, non plus,” News mumbled.
Claudette X sat on the edge of LaFontaine’s desk. She tossed her wrist at McCarthy. The dozen thin silver bracelets she wore jangled like high-pitched wind chimes.
“You and I have a date at the preliminary custody hearing day tomorrow afternoon, don’t we?”
McCarthy nodded.
“Then take the time to prepare. And recover. Two days.”
McCarthy didn’t answer.
“That’s an order.”
When he shook his head, she whispered, “Think of it this way: what you do with your own time is your business, not Connor’s or Ed’s.”
McCarthy glanced up at her. “You think we’re right, don’t you?”
“Not saying I do, not saying I don’t,” Claudette X replied. “All I know is that this place has been haywire lately. All sorts of pressures. General nastiness. Harpster’s losing his mind over this vandal that’s ravaging his garden. Pace is plotting with her flunky to control the world. Stan’s gone totally nuts. I think Connor’s too wrapped up in the war to see the possibilities. Ed, I can never figure him out.”
News said. “I guess what Lobotomy Lane doesn’t know about our own private investigation won’t hurt them.”
“Like the Zombie, I speak no evil … as long as it’s out of my newsroom,” Claudette X said. “Once you come back in here, you will abide by the law. Clear?”
“Crystalline!” LaFontaine cried as she walked away.
None of the three was aware that the Zombie had been listening in on their entire conversation. He had been eating a sandwich of wilted Bog Rein orchids, priceless fern, and mayonnaise on homemade cactus bread. Now he put the strange luncheon combo down. His eyes fired up the color of molten pig iron at the news he was reading between their lines. He watched Claudette X weave her way back through the desks, silently thanking her for the invaluable information.
Claudette X had her own problems to deal with. Ever since Geld had planted the seeds of power lust and paranoia along Lobotomy Lane, the bureaucracy of the paper had lurched more wildly than ever. Earlier this morning, Harpster had asked her to check Pace’s hands and forearms for scratches from the rosebushes sabotaged over the weekend. And she’d hung up on Margaret Savage when the columnist called seeking advice on how to research investment portfolios and personnel files.
The executive assistant city editor slumped into her chair in front of her computer terminal, acknowledging that she’d better see a shrink soon or risk a nervous breakdown. The nightmares were so bad over the weekend, she didn’t dare blink.
The overwhelming fatigue had stripped away her anger by Sunday afternoon. She and Stacey had watched a preseason football game, starring her ex-husband, who had six unassisted sacks. He was an adulterous shithead. No doubt about it. But during the game, seeing him guzzle Gatorade on the sidelines, she’d found herself missing him. It was the shits raising a daughter without a man. She was thirty-six, hadn’t had a date in ten months and was unlikely to in the near future. Women six-foot-four with biceps like small mountains weren’t the flame of the average male moth.
Ever since the divorce she’d managed to use work to keep these kinds of thoughts at bay. Of late, however, the balance inside The Post had heaved like a ship in gray waters. The constant splash on the deck had quenched the furious inferno she needed burning inside to feel right. In its place were emotions she’d rarely allowed herself before: pity, goodwill, loneliness and … dare she admit it? … fear?
Her right hand trembled. She grabbed it with her left to still it, looking around to see if any of the Stepford Editors had caught the tremor; the slightest show of weakness and that mutant cadre of Ivy Leaguers would come alive with pack fury and devour her. None of them noticed. On deadline they rapped away at their keyboards with the passion of certified public accountants in early April.
It took nearly ten minutes of concentrated effort to get the tremor to subside. Only then did she look up from the keyboard, her attention wandering over the city desk and coming to rest on Stanley Geld, whose arms snaked and sinewed through the air like a Hindu prince in an ecstatic sacrificial dance to Siva. She followed his gaze. A tsunami crashed over her gunnels. Neil Harpster was leaving the newsroom with his brown leather satchel in hand. Bobbie Anne Pace was fifty feet behind him in a black trench coat, a camera over her shoulder, a cassette recorder in her hand.
Claudette X fought back the bile that crept up her throat.
Ciao, Baby! …
AT THE SAME TIME, Kent Jackson was sitting in the Café de La Plage near the harborfront, his favorite luncheon spot. He squirmed in his chair, excited. He felt the cataclysmic rumblings of a big bang story about to break. He didn’t know what it was yet, but he knew where it was going to occur—somewhere in the dark, gassy inferno of the ongoing gubernatorial race.
He glared at the Sunday edition. Isabel Perez’s article on toxic waste dumping by Jim Barnes, the Republican candidate, was bannered across A-l. He told himself to calm down, let her have it,
this wasn’t what he felt boiling below the surface, this wasn’t what would land him his book contract and a new life free of debt. For a split second he wondered if the foreboding was a side effect of the antidepressants he’d been wolfing since learning Patti was pregnant. He looked at his lap. Could God have really dealt him a short hand in the reproductive poker game?
No way! He knew he had the juice in the same way he knew there was a big story, probably a Pulitzer, lurking out there, right now.
He’d been prowling city hall ever since McCarthy broke the murder contract. He was convinced that was only the tip of the story. He’d seen the evidence in the sudden silences and the forced greetings of Mayor Portillo’s aides, in their skintight smiles, and in the way they jingled change in their pockets when they spoke to him.
Arlene Troy was avoiding him. So was Chief Lawrence. He hadn’t had an interview with Mayor Portillo in nearly two weeks. They were shutting him out and he knew it. What they were hiding?
One of his prime sources, a paralegal assigned to the mayor’s office, had told him that there had been a late-night strategy session among the campaign’s top operatives in the wake of McCarthy’s story. She’d gotten a hurried glance at notes Leslie had taken and, among other things, seen a cryptic reference in the margin to a land deal outside Las Vegas.
He’d asked Troy if Portillo owned property in Nevada. The mayor’s press secretary was very, very good, controlled, jovial, cool; but she’d clenched her teeth ever so slightly before answering that, yes, he’d purchased property on Lake Mead for his retirement. Troy characterized it as a straightforward deal and he, not wanting to spook her, had let the answer stand.
Immediately afterward, however, he’d gone to the city clerk’s office and requested the financial disclosure documents Mayor Portillo and Chief T. Lawrence Leslie were required to file every year. The clerk informed him that unfortunately the files were in a rear room that had suffered a burst water pipe. It was under reconstruction. The files wouldn’t be available for a few days.
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