“Sperm and vaginal secretions in his pubic hair,” McCarthy said. “You didn’t think that was unusual for someone who was supposed to have had a heart attack on a tennis court?”
Trush, an almost-skeletal man in his late fifties, chain-smoked unfiltered Pall Malls. He tongued a smoke ring into the air. “I note it, did I not?” he said.
“But you didn’t include it in the conclusions.”
“No need. Carlton dies of heart attack brought on by heat from playing the tennis.”
“I have reason to believe Carlton died while having sex.”
“With who? Ball girl? Maybe linesbaby?” Trush guffawed at his joke.
When he saw McCarthy’s dark countenance he stopped. “Look, McCarthy, for all I know, he has sex before the tennis. He was found on court at night. Alone. I write that he has these secretions on him. As far as I am concerned he dies because he’s a fatty bank president who thinks he a nocturnal Andre Agassi. Case closed.”
Seeing he’d get no more out of Trush, McCarthy got a copy of the autopsy report and drove downtown to the courthouse. His nerves were raw. Sleep hadn’t come at all last night, after the way he’d lied to Shirley Barfield, after the late call he’d received from Judge Crawford’s husband concerning their arrangement.
Crawford’s message was clear-cut: “You’ve got a deal. List your property exclusively, no multiples, with a small realtor. I’ll be in touch.”
Karen Rivers had called shortly afterward. Part of him had wanted to go to her, to take refuge in her arms if only for a little while. Instead he’d been abrupt, told her he wasn’t feeling well and would call later in the week. He knew it had been a cold thing to do, but his focus had become so narrow that any romantic side trip was unacceptable.
He’d gone to the hallway outside the children’s rooms afterward and watched them sleep to give him the strength to finish what he’d begun. Now, as he headed to the clerk of the court’s office to find Carlton’s probate documents, he wondered if the lying and the posturing would ever become easy.
According to the documents, the late bank president had a net worth of $11.6 million, most of it in stock and real estate holdings. There was also an art collection, a coin collection, and an ample investment portfolio of mutual funds, bonds, and commodities.
McCarthy found the appendix that itemized the real estate investments. The first two pages were routine: an accounting of Carlton’s primary residence north of the city and vacation homes in Oregon and Montana as well as a condo at an Idaho ski resort and a partial share in a hotel in Cozumel. Given Carlton’s financial stature, nothing shocking.
Halfway down the third page he came across a listing that broke sweat on his wrists: a four-acre parcel on Lake Mead in Nevada. Page four turned the spigot: Carlton had three-quarters of a million sunk into a Texas partnership known as Suburbia, Ltd.
This story was taking on shitkicker dimensions.
The image of News hovered before him as he took the stairs two at a time back to street level. He got angrier and more respectful of LaFontaine’s reporting instincts with every jump; somehow that crazy bastard had gotten onto this. Somehow, if Perkins wasn’t lying, it had got him killed. McCarthy stopped on the sidewalk outside the courthouse amid the crowd of legal dogs and swine, the sued and suers, the scum and the victims.
A thought bloomed. He tried to deny the attraction, but couldn’t. It was the journalistic grail, the unspoken dream of all those who sit before computer terminals in grubby newsrooms. The annual April accolade. The singular laurel of heavyweight status. The dimensions of the story were there: corruption, murder, cover-up, exposure, murder to cover it up again. No doubt about it. McCarthy was working Pulitzer terrain.
A knot of papers choked his newsroom mailbox. He tugged the lot out and moved cautiously to his desk. He thought about the obvious sanitizing of LaFontaine’s files. If there was a leak inside The Post, he didn’t want to tip his hand by appearing in any way exuberant. That may have been what got News killed. He should avoid the newsroom completely. But he needed one more look at LaFontaine’s files and, depending on what the mail held, access to the paper’s computers.
McCarthy slipped by the Zombie, whose hands rested dead still on his keyboard. He eased into his chair unnoticed by the rest of the reporters and editors, many of whom were gathered about Isabel Perez.
McCarthy rifled through the mail. In the middle of the stack lay a thick yellowed report from the U.S. Justice Department. Date: May 1963. This had to be the report News had noted on the back of his Burkhardt file. How the hell had this gotten in his mailbox? He glanced up at the newsroom. Nothing unusual. He opened the report.
It detailed the findings of the federal probe into corruption surrounding the old Jennings administration, including a recommendation to indict the former mayor on charges of bribery, kickbacks and tax evasion. The report also noted the jailing of Lawlor, the editor’s refusal to name his sources, and his subsequent physical injuries. It noted that several inmates suggested that jail guards were part of the attack in which Lawlor’s leg had been broken. The incidents were described as examples of Jennings’s widespread abuse of power.
Deep inside the report he found a dog-eared page. On it, a list of people the Justice Department had brought before federal grand juries during the investigation. Fresh pencil underlined the names Coughlin Burkhardt, T. Lawrence Leslie, and Ricardo Portillo.
“What’s the point, News?” McCarthy muttered. “Trujillo told you they all went back that far.”
He thought about it some more, looked at the list again, not finding Carlton’s name as he’d wished, then closed the report, confused. He turned the document over and found a name and an address: Pablo Ramirez, 111 Carbine Dr.
Why had News been so interested in this guy? McCarthy tossed it off when no explanation offered itself, put the report in his briefcase for future reference, and returned his attention to the remaining stack of papers.
A three-page fax from Austin. He closed his eyes and said a silent prayer. He turned the cover sheet over and read. Countryside Ltd. and Cityscape Ltd. were partnerships organized two years ago “to engage in business, including, but not limited to the purchase and development of real estate ventures.” Each partnership had three shareholders, all unidentified. The listed general partner on all of them was M. L. Crisp, offices at 99 Hawthorn Way, Suite L., Houston, Texas.
McCarthy jiggled his knees under his desk. He knew that Chief Leslie was one of the partners in Countryside. And Mayor Portillo an investor in Cityscape. That left two other partners in each case to discover. Something else there tugged at his memory, but he couldn’t place it. He set the documents aside and pressed on.
The next Fax report was thicker. Blurry photocopies of the quit-claims, transfers, deeds, and liens surrounding acreage on Lake Mead. Both Leslie and Portillo had purchased their land—contiguous, according to the subdivision map the paralegal had smartly thought to include—in May three years ago. They each had mortgages from the same Nevada bank. The seller: Sandstorm Development Corporation, offices at 1190 Pierce Way, Suite 3B, Las Vegas.
Even without requesting the information, McCarthy’s instincts said that Carlton’s land on Lake Mead was also bought from Sandstorm and that his partnership in Suburbia, Ltd. was linked to one M.L. Crisp of Houston. But what did it mean?
McCarthy closed his eyes, breathed deep, and let his mind wander, free-associating possible links among the jumble of data that had assaulted him the last five months. Scared whores and slain whores and dead bankers and murdered reporters lay nude on the shoulder of a highway paved with public documents. Bouncing fast over the ragged potholes on the road, he kept glimpsing something in the blur of his peripheral vision. An address. A name. LaFontaine’s chart!
McCarthy had the bottom drawer of his desk open in a flash, tearing through the files he’d stowed two days before, back through the interviews, until he found it—News’ carefully constructed diagram of the dummy companies th
at made up Sloan Burkhardt’s Blue Coast Partners Inc. Max L. Crisp, address 1190 Pierce Way, Suite 3B, Las Vegas, was the agent and sole director of Flower, Stone, Tree, River, and Tressor, Inc.
“Holy shit!” he whispered to himself. “There’s the link. I’ve almost got it!”
There was no denying the interlocking nature of the various partnerships, land deals and corporations within the documents before him. The mayor and chief of police were financially involved with a real estate tycoon who’d just landed the biggest waterfront development deal in Southern California, a deal that had to be okayed by the mayor and the city council. For all McCarthy knew, Portillo and Leslie had interests in one of the corporate shells behind Blue Coast. Maybe those Texas shells owned the Nevada shells!
His instincts said Carlton had had a role in all this, too. It was possible the mayor and his police chief were involved in the cover-up of the banker’s death—at a sex party no less!—and the subsequent slaying of a blackmailing street whore. But why exactly?
Then his instincts took over. The campaign. Gentry was killed because of the governor’s campaign. He still didn’t know why, but he was certain it was true. He told himself to compose, to affect a wearied disinterest. He got up and ambled across the room to intercept Perez as she made for the door, credit card billfold held smartly in hand.
Perez spied him and said, “No need for congratulations, Gid. I’m kind of worn-out from the attention I’ve been getting.”
“Congratulations?”
“Can’t you smell it? The Wall Street Journal. I’ve been hired!”
News was right. The world was ending. He managed to say, “It couldn’t have happened to a more deserving person.”
She pecked him on the cheek. “Thank you, dear,” she said. “It will happen for you, too, someday. You’re a fine reporter. We’ll have to do lunch before I depart.”
“Do lunch? Uh, right. Say, would you mind if I ran something through that campaign database you were building a while back?”
Perez laughed brightly. “It’s incomplete, I never had time to finish putting in all the records, but you can do whatever you want. I don’t give a damn about any of it anymore.”
She mimicked a deep male voice: “Isabel Perez, you’ve just been hired by the Daily Diary of the American Dream. What are you going to do next?”
She paused for effect. “I’m going shopping!”
With that she giggled and skipped off toward the elevators.
McCarthy went to Perez’s desk and brought up the database on her screen. It was divided into several fields of reference, including contributor’s name, corporate affiliation, address, amount of contribution, candidate’s name, and whether the money was given during the primary or general phase of the election process.
He sorted by name asking for Robert S. Carlton III. Two hits. McCarthy broadened the fields and fingered the enter button. Carlton had given the maximum to Portillo in the primary and the general election for a total of $5,000. The date of the later contribution was March 24. Two days after he was found dead.
McCarthy predicted a pattern. He narrowed the field to date only and asked for all contributions received by Portillo on March 24. He struck enter and grinned wildly when a list of fourteen names, thirteen of them male, blipped onto the screen. He knew some of the men by reputation, all of them local political and financial big-swinging dicks. Eighth on the list, a man named Dickie Hatch, corporate affiliation: Transverse Medical Systems—Shirley Barfield’s Jacuzzi partner. Ninth on the list, Sloan Burkhardt. And right behind him, the only female, Diane Tressor.
It was a textbook example of “bundling.” The individual or organization sponsoring a fund-raiser acts as a middleman to the campaign, gathering all the checks, then bundling them together for delivery. Though the coordinator of the fund-raiser goes on record as giving only the limit, members of the campaign remember that the person was the gatherer of as much as twenty or one hundred times the limit. An effective loophole for gaining influence while remaining within the campaign finance laws.
Despite Carlton’s death at the perverse fund-raiser, Burkhardt had been unable to resist bundling the checks and delivering them to Mayor Portillo. McCarthy printed the screen, then quit out of the database and returned to his desk.
He sat very still for several minutes, organizing the various themes within the information he’d uncovered in the last twenty-four hours until the story moved logically in his mind.
Two o’clock now. He studied the pace inside the newsroom. He wanted to talk to Lawlor alone, to spring the story on him without interference from any subeditor. Especially, one suspicious subeditor. That meant deadline, when all attention would be diverted away from the largest Glasshole in the room.
Setting the Trap …
“GOT A MINUTE?” MCCARTHY asked.
Connor Lawlor twisted away from his computer terminal. His normal wind- and sun-polished complexion had turned sallow. He had raccoon eyes. He had lost weight.
“Not another disaster, I hope,” Lawlor said. “I can’t take another crisis for at least a month after that fiasco with Pace and Harpster yesterday.”
“Just the opposite,” McCarthy said.
The editor pointed over the reporter’s shoulder, taking in the newsroom with one sweeping motion.
“Goddamned business has gone birdie. Used to be you expected eccentrics, even supported them for the good of the paper. A corkscrew mind has a way of uncorking things people want to keep sealed away. Now reporters and editors got agendas, personal and professional. No one out there just loves to tell a good story. It’s like a bunch of certified public accountants, image consultants, public interest groups and corporate strategists got together and sent their spear-carriers into the newspaper business. Inside they decided to throw an orgy. Only they’re all impotent or frigid.”
He picked something off the end of his tongue and flicked it away. “Enough of the ravings of an embittered old man. What’s up?”
“May I close the door? I think there’s a leak inside.”
Lawlor made a dismissive gesture. “Of course, there’s a leak inside. This is a business of blabbermouths. Nothing that’s news can stay in here for long.”
“No, I mean a serious leak, concerning the biggest story I’ve ever been onto.”
The bushy gray eyebrows gathered together at the bridge of the editor’s nose. “Shut the door. Then out with it.”
McCarthy closed the door and took a seat. He started with the documents that described the interlocking corporate structure of Sloan Burkhardt’s Blue Coast Partners, all of them linked to Max L. Crisp of Las Vegas, Nevada.
Thunderheads formed on Lawlor’s face. “I told you to lay off Burkhardt.”
“Prentice and I worked on this after hours. I’ve got it cold.”
Lawlor rubbed at his eyebrow in annoyance, then signaled him to continue. McCarthy took the editor through LaFontaine’s discovery that Coughlin Burkhardt had Fernando Trujillo seal the prostitute beating case against Sloan Burkhardt with the help of Chief T. Lawrence Leslie.
That got the editor’s interest. Lawlor sat forward and drew a legal pad and pen toward him. “You’re sure Leslie was there?”
“Outside Trujillo’s office. The lawyer swears it.”
“On the record?”
“No. It’s a sealed case, remember? He can’t talk officially.”
“Okay. We’ll get around it. Where do Burkhardt and Leslie fit together?”
“And Ricardo Portillo. But I’m getting to that. Just hear me out.”
“The mayor?” Now Lawlor was all business. “Keep going.”
McCarthy pressed on, taking Lawlor through Dusk’s telling him that another hooker feared that Gentry had been killed for reasons other than finking on Patrick and Blanca, the phone call he received from LaFontaine just before he died as well as Brad Perkins’s assertion that he found News dying when he got to the condominium.
“You believe this guy Perkins?”<
br />
“He makes a good point,” McCarthy said. “The place was in a shambles—remember?—someone went through his files. Why would he do that if this was a crime of passion?”
“Money. Information. I can probably think of a dozen reasons.”
“Perkins swears he had enough money. And his life secrets are hardly news.”
A clerk came to the door, knocked, and poked his head in.
“Not now,” Lawlor growled without looking up.”
“Please, sir, there’s a question on …”
“I said, not now!” Lawlor roared. The kid scurried away.
Lawlor pointed a finger at McCarthy. “Continue.”
McCarthy gave the editor an account of the various people who’d told him that Gentry had boasted of screwing a John to death. Lawlor rolled his eyes, but McCarthy pressed on without giving him a chance to interrupt. He explained how he’d gone to the L.A. County Jail and how Shirley Barfield gave him the story of a heart attack at a sex party. He repeated Barfield’s description of Gentry’s glee at having taped an incriminating conversation.
Lawlor took his cane in hand at that point. It no longer had the dull finish McCarthy remembered. It appeared newly varnished. The editor stood up, leaned on the cane, and paced behind his desk. “She’s on the record?”
McCarthy thought of Barfield’s plea for protection, gritted his teeth, and nodded.
“But no names. She gave no names.”
“Just the guy Dickie. But I know who he is. Who they all are.”
Lawlor stopped and turned. “How?”
McCarthy allowed himself a grin. “Campaign finance records.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. It was a fund-raiser of some sort. They all wrote checks the same night last March. Burkhardt couldn’t resist bundling the checks and delivering them himself.”
Lawlor tossed his head like he’d been hit with a left hook. He leaned over the cane for support. “Then who’s the dead guy?”
Hard News Page 37