by R. G. Belsky
She was with a group of six people, three men and two other women. I couldn’t tell if she was specifically paired up with one of the men. All of them were laughing and talking loudly—with each other and with people who stopped by their table. They seemed to be very friendly. Everyone was having a good time.
I finished my beer and walked over to her chair.
“Hello, Ms. Montero,” I said.
She turned around and stared at me blankly. “Do I know you?”
I saw her face up close for the first time. She was a real looker, all right. Not a Pamela Anderson–type glamour-girl beauty, but the real deal. Like Liz Taylor or Joan Collins when they were young. Early thirties, kind of petite, but muscular too—like she worked out. Maybe the best part of her was her hair, jet black and long—cascading down over her shoulders. Her eyes were big and dark, almost black like her hair; she had a nice face and a terrific body. She was wearing an expensive-looking designer dress that showed off all the crucial curves. There was something else too. There was something very familiar about her. I had this real feeling of déjà vu meeting Lisa Montero up close for the first time. Like I once knew her. Or someone a lot like her. I suddenly realized I was staring at her.
“I’m Joe Dougherty,” I said.
“Why does that name sound familiar?”
“I’ve been leaving you messages.”
“Oh, you’re the persistent reporter.”
“You didn’t answer any of them.”
She put her finger to her lips and made a shushing sound. “I’m not allowed to talk to anyone about it,” she said.
Now there’s a line you’re not supposed to cross at Elaine’s. That line is between the tourist section at the bar—and all the important people sitting where Lisa Montero was. I’d crossed that line. A burly waiter hurried over to the table.
“Is this man bothering you, Miss Montero?”
She seemed amused by the whole situation.
“I don’t know, Bobby,” she said. She turned toward me. “Are you bothering me, Joe?”
I took a deep breath. I didn’t have much time.
“I wrote a story for the Banner—maybe you read it—that links William Franze’s murder to a series of serial killings by a group of college students associated with the infamous Felix the Cat. If you’re really innocent, this might help you to prove it. That’s why I want to talk to you. If you help me, maybe I can help you.” I looked over at Bobby, who was flexing his muscles next to me. “It’s your move, Ms. Montero.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what was going to happen next. Bobby looked like he could pick me up and throw me out of the place without any problem. Someone might have already called the cops. Or maybe Lisa Montero would give me an interview.
She looked at me thoughtfully.
“What’s your sign, Joe?” she asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Your sign. You know . . .” She began to sing. “When you wish upon a star . . .”
“I-I don’t understand.”
“I’m a Capricorn.”
I nodded. Now I got it.
“Taurus,” I said.
“Neat.”
“Taurus is good?”
“Hey, Taurus and Capricorn are fan-fucking-tastic together!”
She smiled at the waiter. “Joe the Reporter here’s not bothering me, Bobby. Didn’t you hear what Joe the Reporter just said? Joe the Reporter is going to help me.”
Bobby looked disappointed, but nodded and shuffled back toward the kitchen.
I sat down. She introduced me to the other people at the table. I didn’t get all the names, but then they didn’t seem very interested in me either. I was okay with that. I didn’t need any new friends. Lisa Montero was the only person I wanted to talk to.
“So what do you want to know?” she asked.
“Did you kill William Franze?”
She looked startled, but only for a second. Then she got her composure back.
“You get right to the point, don’t you?”
“I’m a newspaperman. I always like to put the lead in the first paragraph.”
She looked me directly in the eye.
“No,” she said evenly. “I didn’t kill him.”
Thinking back on it now, I realize that was the exact moment I became convinced she was innocent. I believed her. Of course, I would have believed anything she told me right then. The truth is I was having a lot of trouble concentrating because I had developed a serious case of the hots for Lisa Montero. Not that I wasn’t used to being around beautiful women. But she was different. There was something incredibly sensual to me about the way she talked, the way she moved, the way she reached over and touched my arm or leg to make a point.
“What exactly was your relationship with Franze?” I asked her.
“He was a business associate of my father’s.”
“The cops say you went out to dinner with him on the night he was killed.”
“That’s right.”
“Did you have sex with him?”
“No.”
“But he wanted to?”
“He was drunk. He called up this escort agency and ordered a hooker to be sent over. He had this crazy idea about getting us both in bed together.”
“You said no?”
“Of course, I said no. That’s when he told me he was going to make another call asking for a second girl.”
I nodded. “Is that why people heard you arguing with him?”
“Billy could be very unreasonable when he was drinking.”
“So what did you do after you left?”
“I walked around for a while. Then I went back to try to talk to him again. But when I got there, I saw a girl going into his place.”
“And it wasn’t the girl they found dead with him? Whitney Martin?”
“No.”
“So it could have been the killer?”
“Yes.”
“Or a witness? Maybe the second hooker he called for?”
“I suppose so.”
“What did you do after you left his place?”
“I decided it would be a really embarrassing scene, so I went home.”
“Alone?”
She shrugged. “No alibi.”
We talked for a while longer about the case and also about the assistant district attorney, Greg Ackerman, who wanted to indict her for the murder. She said he had been harassing both her and her father. She gave me a lot of good quotes. Plenty of stuff to write a story.
I didn’t ask her whether she’d ever known Ackerman when they both went to NYU in the ’80s. And I didn’t ask her if she knew David Galvin. I didn’t want to push her too hard. I didn’t want to scare her away.
After a while, the other people at the table got ready to leave. Someone offered to take her home, but she told them no. She said I would.
Me, I just sat there and went with the flow. It seemed like the thing to do. I was only doing my job, of course. Sure, she was beautiful and sexy and definitely desirable. But all I cared about was the exclusive interview. No one else had gotten her to talk, and now I had. Joe Dougherty, the consummate professional. So why was I having fantasies right now about leaning over and kissing her?
A few minutes later, we walked out of Elaine’s together onto Second Avenue and hailed a cab.
“I did read your story, Joe,” she said as we rode across town to her place on Central Park West. “You’re right. If I help you, I think you can help me. Then you’ll find your gang of killers, and I’ll be innocent. A happy ending for everyone.”
She reached over and touched my hand.
“And kind of romantic too, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and me,” she smiled. “Think about it, Joe—dogged reporter keeps person from going to jail for a crime they didn’t commit. It’s like something out of one of those old newspaper movies.”
“Northside 777,” I said.
She laughed. “Exactly. A great movi
e. Jimmy Stewart clears a guy who’s been in prison for nine years for murder. Right?”
“That’s right.”
The taxi pulled up in front of her building.
“Do me one favor, huh?” she said as she got out. “Try to clear me for the Billy Franze murder before I have to spend nine years in prison.”
Then she reached into her purse and took out a piece of paper. She wrote something down and handed it to me.
“My home phone number,” she said. “Call me.”
I watched her walk away. She had a terrific walk. Across the sidewalk, up some steps, and to the front door of her building. Just before she got there, she turned around and smiled at me one more time.
A terrific smile too.
“Thanks, Joe,” she yelled out. “It was fun.”
Then she went inside.
I told the taxi driver to take me down to the Banner building. I had a story to write. A front-page story. I’d gotten an exclusive interview with Lisa Montero. No other reporter in town had been able to pull that off. Except me.
Only I wasn’t thinking about a front-page story right then.
I was still thinking about Lisa Montero.
Who might be a cold-blooded murderer who killed William Franze and the call girl with him.
Who might have killed a lot of other people with David Galvin a long time ago.
Who might even be responsible for the death of my wife and young son.
Or who might be innocent.
There was only one thing I was sure about.
I realized now who it was that Lisa Montero reminded me of.
Someone I used to know a long time ago.
Susan.
God, it was just like the first time I met Susan.
Chapter 19
They say there are defining moments in every person’s life.
Turning points. Milestones. Crucial crossroads. Times of decision that dramatically change us and shape us and put us on an irrevocable path in our lives from which there is no turning back. Robert Frost wrote about them in his famous poem, “The Road Not Taken.”
Me, I like Kevin Costner’s description in the movie Tin Cup even better.
He’s the one who called them defining moments.
When a defining moment comes your way, Costner’s character explains, you only have two choices.
You can either . . . a) define the moment, or b) the moment defines you.
They arrested Lisa Montero for the killings of William Franze and Whitney Martin not long after that first night I met her at Elaine’s.
I’d written a story for the Banner the next day under the headline:
I DIDN’T DO IT!
EXCLUSIVE: MONTERO’S DAUGHTER DENIES ALL TO BANNER IN TEARFUL FIRST INTERVIEW
Now I watched a videotape of Lisa on the six o’clock news, being led out of the police station in handcuffs and taken to court to be arraigned for murder. She looked frightened, confused—like a deer suddenly caught in the headlights.
Afterward, there was an interview with Greg Ackerman—the ADA who seemed to be taking such a personal interest in this case—about why he had arrested her.
He told reporters that Lisa Montero had killed both Franze and the Martin girl in a jealous rage. He said he had more than enough evidence to convict her. And he added that his office had found no connection between the Franze murders and any of the other names on David Galvin’s list—which he suspected was just a figment of a dying psychopath’s sick imagination. Linda Hiller’s death, he said, was probably the work of a copycat killer, who had been spurred to act by the actions of an irresponsible and sensationalistic press.
I’ve always had a lot of trouble with the hallowed tradition of the reporter as an impartial observer.
I know that’s the way it’s supposed to work. I’m supposed to be above it all. To be fair to both sides. To never let my personal feelings interfere with my work.
But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way.
When I find something that I believe is wrong, I’ll go to any lengths to try to make it right. Most of the time I can do that by following the rules. Sometimes I’ve had to bend the rules a bit. And—on a few occasions—I’ve done even more than that.
You see, the line between right and wrong can get a bit blurred on some stories.
The problem with crossing that line is you can’t just cross over it a little bit. Once you’re over the line, you’re in dangerous uncharted territory. You can lose your perspective. Lose your judgement. Lose sight of the noble goal that you set out to accomplish at the beginning.
Me, I’d crossed that dangerous line a few times in my newspaper career.
Now I was about to do it again. . . .
I’d made a decision.
My decision was that Lisa Montero was telling the truth. She did not kill William Franze or anybody else. She was innocent. She was being set up by somebody. And that same somebody must be the one responsible for all the other new killings on Galvin’s list too.
All I had to do was help Lisa Montero prove that she wasn’t guilty.
Then I’d find out who really killed William Franze and his call girl friend.
And that would lead me to the Great Pretenders.
I felt a surge of excitement as I thought about all this. The same kind of thrill and passionate intensity I used to get when I walked into the newsroom with an exclusive front-page story that had my byline on it. Or when the cards were falling right or the craps tables were hot—and I was winning big in Atlantic City or Las Vegas. I hadn’t felt that way in a long time. I missed it.
Of course, it was a longshot that I could pull this off.
But then I’ve always liked longshots.
So I decided to take the gamble.
My defining moment.
Part 3
You Bet Your Life
Chapter 20
Andy Kramer called a meeting in his office the morning after Lisa Montero’s arrest.
It was barely 9 a.m. when I walked in, still bleary-eyed with a cup of coffee in my hand from the deli downstairs, but there were already at least a dozen people sitting there. Some I remembered from my old days at the Banner, others I didn’t.
There was Jack Rollins, the managing editor I never got along with, and Bonnie Kerns and a few other reporters that had worked on the William Franze murder story in recent weeks. A lot of young assistant city editor and assistant managing editor types—both men and women—who eyed me curiously as I sat down, making me feel a bit uncomfortable. I guess they’d heard the stories.
And Spencer Blackwood.
Spencer Blackwood was the editor of the New York Banner. He had been a legendary newspaperman in his time, but he was close to seventy now—and due to retire very soon. The word was that Rollins and Kramer were the two top candidates vying to take over his job. Blackwood almost never came to news meetings or took part in the daily news coverage planning anymore. This was really a big deal.
“The reason we’re here,” Andy said, “is to talk about our plan of action in light of the recent developments.”
He quickly ran through everything that had happened during the last few hours. Lisa Montero’s indictment for murder. Her arrest by police at her Manhattan apartment. An arraignment overnight in Criminal Court, where she’d been sent to the Rikers Island Prison for Women.
Then he talked about the David Galvin story.
“We’ve been operating so far on the theory that these two cases—Lisa Montero and David Galvin—were linked, that one person or group of persons were responsible for all the crimes. That was Joe’s theory anyway. Now there’s some doubt about that. Lisa Montero’s arrest changes everything. This is going to be front-page news for a long time. So we need to decide who’s going to work on what.”
Everyone around the room nodded in agreement.
Except me.
“It’s my story,” I said.
Andy smiled. “You’re already doing the David Galvin story,
Joe,” he said. “Remember?”
“Yeah, and I’m doing Lisa Montero too.”
“You can’t do both.”
“Why not?”
“Because, like I just said, we’ve got two big stories going here, Joe—and you’re only one person.”
He looked around the room for support. Several of them murmured their agreement.
“It’s not two stories,” I reminded everyone. “It’s really only one. William Franze and the hooker that died with him—the people Lisa Montero is accused of killing—were on Galvin’s list. If Lisa Montero did them—and I don’t think she did—then she did the others too. If not, then the real killer is still out there. All of these murders are connected.”
“Greg Ackerman doesn’t think so,” one of the assistant managing editors pointed out.
“He’s wrong.”
I saw Rollins shaking his head in dismay. He looked very unhappy. Jack Rollins was going to be trouble. I should have known that from the minute I walked into the room.
One of the young woman assistant city editors said, “I think Ackerman may be right. The Franze killing was not like any of the others.”
“It was on Galvin’s list,” I said again.
“But the details were different.”
I knew what she meant.
“All the others were preceded by some sort of sick, elaborate fantasy,” she continued. “Even this last one, Linda Hiller—with the dressing up of the body in the wedding gown. But Franze and the girl from the escort service were murdered in bed while they were having sex. There was no fantasy there. Except maybe for them.”
“How do you know that?” I asked her.