He took a big breath like he was already running out of patience. “It’s frequently hard for the spouse to accept this,” he said.
“Funny, that’s what the cops said, too.”
“There’ll be a point when she does,” he said.
“Well, right now, she doesn’t. She thinks he went out to meet someone that night and was killed.”
“And she has asked you to …”
“She asked me to ask around. My background is in investigative reporting. I got a bunch of local news Emmys from years ago to prove it.”
“Congratulations.” Webber put the sheet of paper back in the folder and closed it. “Well, I don’t see what help I can be.”
“According to the police report, you and his driver were among the last people to speak to him. Aside from his wife, that is.”
“And are you going to go misrepresent yourself to the driver as well?”
“Yes. I may say I need a ride somewhere when I really don’t.”
“Mr. North, I really don’t have the time, nor the patience, to indulge you in your little investigation. You obviously know I spoke to Jack that evening.”
“But what I don’t know is what you two spoke about.”
“I already told the detectives who showed up here unannounced,” he said. He squirmed like the thought of someone dropping in was the worst thing that could possibly happen. I realized the good doctor was one of those neat and orderly guys; everything had to be just so.
“Mrs. Steele told me Jack called you to cancel your session. Did he say why?”
“Mr. North …”
“Did you two normally meet at night? How unusual was that? Did he cancel a lot?”
“Mr. North,” he said again. This time his tone was harsher. “In an effort to keep your little intrusion here short, I’ll tell you exactly what I told the police, if that will help.”
“I’m sure it will.”
“Good. Jack and I met at least twice, sometimes three times a week. Most of the time it was after his show had ended. The vast majority of the time it was at my apartment. We lived only a few blocks apart. He called that night just before ten and said he was tired and not feeling well and canceled.”
I nodded, taking it all in.
“There. Now you can go,” he said.
“That was it? I’m tired and not coming over?”
“Yes. Even if there were something else, I wouldn’t tell you. Doctor-patient privilege, maybe you’ve heard of it?”
“Hate how that gets in the way.”
He made a move for his phone. “I’ll have Grace show you out.”
“You surprised Jack killed himself?”
“Mr. North, really.”
“You were his shrink.”
He put the phone back down. “I am not a shrink. We provide a full range of services, specializing in substance-abuse treatments. This is not about someone coming in to get on the couch.”
“Well, whatever it is, it obviously didn’t work if you believe Jack went out and jumped in the river.”
Webber gritted his teeth, and for a second I thought he might smash his desk with a fist.
“Mr. North, I work to heal people. To restore their vitality and sense of self as they battle various forms of substance abuse. Not everyone responds to our treatments in the same way.”
“I worked with Jack,” I said, “always heard he was battling the bottle, but it didn’t seem too bad lately. Something happen that we all didn’t know about?”
“I am not going to get into the specifics of—”
“Come on, Doc,” I said. “This whole thing isn’t exactly an advertisement for your expensive services. I mean, your treating Jack isn’t going to make your testimonial brochure after this.”
Webber picked up his pen and began to turn it back and forth, end over end. “I really don’t know why you’re poking around in this.”
“I need to poke somewhere; it’s what I do for a living. Plus, Robbie Steele asked me to poke around.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Roberta Steele and reality don’t always see eye to eye.”
“Who does?”
He got up and moved from behind his desk. “I told you what I told the police. You can go now.”
He crossed the office and went to the door; I followed right behind him and stood too close for either one of us.
“Here’s something I found odd,” I said.
He stiffened and raised his chin.
“The police report described you as Jack’s therapist slash business associate. That’s probably how Robbie described you to the cops.”
“That is a private matter.”
“Business been good?”
He opened the door. “Good-bye, Mr. North.”
“Maybe things have been tough. Maybe you were tapping Jack for a few dollars? Maybe Jack was going to be a celebrity endorser or something? Am I close here on any of this?”
“No. Good-bye.”
“Maybe there was some business deal that didn’t work out.”
“Jack had a lot of business interests. Last I checked, his agent and his executive producer handled them.”
I had taken a step toward the open door, satisfied I had given him a hard enough time when I stopped. “What? Who handles them?”
“His agent.”
“And? Who was the other one?”
“His executive producer. Marty—”
“Glover?”
“Yes. Maybe you can go waste their time.”
Chapter Eleven
I found Marty Glover standing in Jack Steele’s office.
He was behind Steele’s desk, which is what I was assuming was buried under the mountains of books, papers, and files surrounding Glover.
“Waiting for the hazmat guys to come in and clean up the place?” I asked.
Marty jumped, startled by me.
“Hey, Sam,” he said, like that was all he could manage at the moment.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yeah, just sad. You know?” he said.
“I do.”
I looked around at the office, which was cluttered with knee-high stacks of books and papers. There were windows that looked out onto Fiftieth Street, but most were blocked with piles of crap on the windowsills.
“You would never have known the man was such a …”
“Slob?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Jack preferred pack rat to slob,” he said.
Glover was short but packed a lot of weight on his frame. He was dressed in khakis and a light blue dress shirt that strained to do its job of covering his wide belly. What was left of his thinning hair was going from black to gray. Around his neck was a lanyard holding his Liberty ID card, which was tucked in the breast pocket of the shirt.
“You know the amazing thing?” he asked. “Jack really did know where every piece of paper was in this mountain of crap. The man had an incredible memory.”
He tapped the top of the desk, which looked like a landfill, with all the piles of folders and papers.
“I’d put his nightly research folder on a pile here, and he never once had to ask where it was,” he said.
I picked up a book off the desk. It was a hardcover. The Retaking of America. “Oh, boy,” I said.
Glover shook his head. “Jack never read any of this shit. He got more books than Amazon, but he barely cracked them. The author would come on, and he’d make it sound like he read them but he never had.”
“And the guest was usually too intimidated to call him on it.”
“Bingo,” he said. “You knew one his little tricks.”
“Maybe I could host the show.”
He stared at me, not quite sure what to say.
“It’s a joke,” I said.
“Oh, okay. It’s just that I got every freaking talk-radio-show host in the country bothering me for a tryout.”
“They’re all going to be the next Jack Steele. The next big superstar,” I
said.
“They all suck,” he said. “It’s a lot of work, and Jack made it look easy.” He sighed and shook his head. “This goofball doing tonight’s show? Hotshot talk-radio guy from Miami. Has the usual bag of tricks: anti-gay, anti-government, anti-everything rants. But you know what? He sucks on TV. He doesn’t know that—he thinks he’s hot shit.”
“How’d he get in the door?”
“Cal is under all kinds of pressure to find someone who can at least hold the ratings steady until he discovers the next big star,” I said. “Jack’s been gone less than a week, and there’s already squawking from some advertisers.”
“You lose a guy like Jack, and all of sudden your network doesn’t look so strong,” I said.
“Exactly,” he said. He pushed some of the papers and books back from the corner of the desk and sat on the cleared space. It was like he needed to take weight off his feet. “What are you working on?” he asked.
“Special assignment.”
“Anything good?” he said.
“You know Robbie Steele at all?”
“Just from when she would call and scream at me because Jack wasn’t answering his cell phone.”
“She doesn’t think Jack killed himself.”
His eyes squinted, and he shook his head like he had trouble processing what I just said. “Huh?”
“She refuses to believe Jack killed himself.”
“Oh, brother,” he said. “She’s a piece of work.”
“She called me after I went on that morning to tell me I was wrong.”
“Helloooo, the note,” he said.
“Yes, that presents a problem, a hole in her theory. Although she doesn’t really have a theory.”
“Thank God,” he said.
“She just has … well, she has a feeling Jack didn’t kill himself.”
“Well, if Jack didn’t kill himself,” he said, “that would leave an accident as cause of death. Or …”
“Or something worse.”
His shoulders slumped like an invisible weight had fallen on him. “Oh my God. Does she actually …”
“Yes, she does.”
“So where do you come in?” he asked.
“She asked me to investigate.”
“Investigate?”
“Yes, you know, ask questions and all.”
“She paying you?”
I shrugged. “Who knows?” I said.
“Maybe you’ll get to make out with her,” he said.
“Depends on what I find.”
“This is fucking priceless,” he said.
“I think she’s probably trying to make sense of why Jack did what he did,” I said. “You know, get some answers and bring some closure. That sort of thing.”
“Whatever,” he said.
“You got any theories for me, about what happened?”
“Is this part of your official investigation?”
“Yes.”
He shrugged and his big, round shoulders rose. “I don’t know. I’m not a shrink, but I think maybe it got to be too much for him.”
“The weight of being Jack Steele?”
“Yeah, you got to remember, Jack and I were doing a radio show in Hartford when Cal found us,” he said. “He was trying to stay sober. I was coming out of some financial difficulties, as they say. And then, boom, fourteen years later, here we are. He’s the biggest cable personality in the country, and we got the number one show.”
“But not exactly loved by everyone.”
“He said some nights it felt like everybody hated him,” he said.
“That’s got to get to you after a while.”
“Depends on if you care about it,” he said.
“Did he?”
“Sometimes. I mean, you can only read so many nasty stories about yourself before it affects you,” he said. “But you know what, Sam? Those people didn’t know him like I did. Let me tell you something. A few years ago my mother was very sick. I mean, real sick. Found out she had a heart condition. Jack knows my dad is gone, so what’s he do? He makes sure she sees the best specialists in the city, gets the best treatments.”
“Damn big of him,” I said.
“And that’s not all. She needs surgery, right? Frigging insurance barely covers the bill for the room. Jack has me send him the bills, and he takes care of them. He took care of everything.”
“The benevolent Jack Steele.”
“The man did some nice things. Things people didn’t know about. Things he didn’t want people to know about.”
“How was he the last few weeks? Any signs that maybe he was unraveling?”
“He seemed to be unraveling most every night.”
“So nothing unusual?”
“He was getting nuts about the numbers.”
“Lose twenty percent of your audience in six months, and I’d get nuts, too,” I said.
“What about that new strategy, the ‘attack the fat cats of Corporate America’; that pay off at all?”
“Hah. What a load of bullshit.”
“I’ll take that as a no.”
“You know who it paid off for?” he asked. “It paid off for the consultant Cal brought in who came up with that half-assed idea.”
Once the ratings of Steele Yourself began to slide, Daniels had pushed for the consultants to come in and make it all better. They rarely did.
“It’s always the executive producer’s fault when the numbers drop, you ever notice that, Sam?” Marty asked. “It’s never the anchor’s fault. Always the EP.”
“That’s why you get the big bucks.”
“Not as big as that asshole Jerry Drake. He comes in and has Jack go after Corporate America, and the numbers get even worse. And you know who’s left to clean up his mess?”
“Marty Glover,” I said.
“No kidding,” he said.
He got up off the corner of the desk but did so slowly, like he was hesitant to put too much weight on his feet.
“Maybe you go talk to him,” he said.
“Jerry Drake, right?”
“Yeah, you know what he calls his little know-nothing operation?”
“Can’t say I do.”
“The Show Doctor,” he said.
“Catchy.”
“Yeah, like he can fix things.”
“Maybe we can sue for malpractice.”
“That guy caused me a shit load of trouble and worry, Sam.”
“He still working with us?”
“No, thank God. Jack got pissed at him and told him to get lost. Told Drake he didn’t care what agreement he had with Daniels, it was his show and he called the shots.”
“Can’t imagine the Show Doc was happy with that.”
“With any luck, maybe it put him out of business.”
Chapter Twelve
Liz and I ran on the sidewalk up University Place heading toward Union Square. It was early Saturday morning, and the city was quiet. Some people went out for a Saturday-morning jog. Liz went for a Saturday-morning run. At this point, I would have preferred the jog.
“Sprint to the corner,” she said as we crossed Twelfth Street. “Loser buys coffee.”
“Hope you brought money.”
My lead was slim and, I knew, short-lived, and within a few steps she had pulled even with me. I caught a glimpse of her long legs chewing up sidewalk as she pulled ahead. I gave it one last shot and pulled close to even.
“Got ya,” I said.
“Not quite.”
She took off again and reached the corner a foot ahead of me. We slowed, and she walked with her hands on her hips and seemed like she could do it all again. Sweat trickled down her tan cheeks, but she barely seemed winded.
“Did I win?” I asked.
“Of course. You always win.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“You were a bit closer this week,” she said.
“It’s the little victories that matter.”
We walked up to Fourteenth S
treet, and I tried to slow my breathing as we waited for a truck to rumble past.
“You know I let you win,” I said as we crossed into Union Square.
“Of course you did,” she said, and reached over and slapped my butt. “That’ll teach you to mess with a younger woman.”
We crossed Park Avenue South at Seventeenth Street and walked over to Irving Place, then turned north toward Gramercy Park. We stopped in front of Gramercy Grounds and Liz stretched out her hand and snapped her fingers.
“Fork over the buckeroos.”
“Going to hold me to it, huh?”
“A challenge is a challenge.”
I gave her a ten and took a seat at one of the little tables out front and waited. It was hot and humid, and sweat dripped from my forehead. A few minutes later she was back with the coffees. I noticed her staring as I took a sip.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“You already have,” she said.
“Why the look? Do I have a pimple I don’t know about or something?”
“You look perplexed.”
“I am.”
“The Widow Steele?”
“Yup.”
“You still don’t know what to make of her?”
“Still don’t know what to make of this whole thing. Been four days and I feel like I have nothing,” I said.
“Not sure if it’s nothing,” she said.
“I lied my way in to see Jack’s therapist and pissed him off, and I’m sure I came across as a nut in the process.”
“He’s a shrink; he’s used to nuts.”
“Then I told Marty about her little theory, and he looked at me like I’m insane.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, if that helps,” she said, smiling a megawatt smile that showed off the dimple on her left cheek.
“And let’s not forget I told Cal Daniels, one of the most powerful TV execs in the business, that I was okay with taking my mug off TV for a few days to chase this. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m nuts.”
A young woman in shorts and a T-shirt walked past with her shades on and headed for the door of the coffee shop. I waited until she was inside before continuing.
“But you want to know the crazy thing?” I asked.
“Who doesn’t?”
“My gut tells me there’s something here. I don’t know what it is,” I said, looking around to make sure no one was nearby, “but I think she may be right.”
Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery Page 5