by R. G. Belsky
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe Franze and the girl weren’t having sex. Maybe they weren’t even undressed. Maybe the killer made them undress and forced them into bed in that position. Maybe that was the fantasy. Don’t forget—all we saw was the final result.”
The woman nodded. “I never thought about that,” she said.
“It’s just a theory,” I shrugged.
“A good theory though,” someone else said.
Rollins made a snorting sound now and rolled his eyes.
“You got a problem?” I asked him.
“Jesus, Dougherty,” he said disgustedly, “you don’t even work at the Banner anymore. I still can’t figure out why you’re here.” He shot a disapproving glance over at Andy. “Let’s get some real reporters on this before we blow both stories.”
Andy ignored him. I could sense the growing tension between them. They both wanted to make the other one look bad. So the more Rollins turned against me, the more Andy was going to be on my side in this argument. It’s funny how things work out sometimes. Me and Andy were becoming allies again. Office politics sure makes strange bedfellows.
“Look, Joe,” Andy said soothingly. “No one wants to steal your story away from you. We just want to put together a team of people to work on it. You’d be part of that team. An important part. But we’ve got a lot of people sitting around out there in that city room who can help. Good people.”
“Sitting around is right,” I said. “If they’re so good, how come I’m the only one that got an interview with Lisa Montero?”
“All I’m saying is . . .”
“It’s my story,” I said. “The whole thing. End of discussion.”
Rollins’s face darkened with rage. “I don’t have to sit here and listen to this crap,” he said, turning to Spencer Blackwood—who hadn’t said anything yet. “Let’s just pay this guy off for his time and be finished with him. We’ll put our own people on this. Then Dougherty can crawl back under whatever rock he turned over to get here.”
I guess Rollins was trying to make me mad. But I didn’t get mad. Instead I just laughed. That surprised him.
“How exactly are you going to do that, Jack?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you can’t do this story without me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m the only reporter in town that Lisa Montero talks to. And I’m also the only one that David Galvin confessed to before he died. You can fire me again if you want, but I’ll just take my story over to the Daily News or the Post or one of the TV stations. Then you can read all about it in the competition, while you and your high-powered team try to catch up with me. Like you said, Jack, I don’t even work at the Banner anymore. I have no loyalty to you guys. So here’s the deal. Either I do the story my way for you—or I walk out the door right now. It’s your move.”
No one said anything for a long time. Finally Spencer Blackwood spoke for the first time.
“Maybe we can compromise,” Blackwood said.
“How?” I asked.
“We’ll give you someone to work with. Another reporter to help out—unless you decide at some point you need more. You’ll call all the shots. You’ll tell the reporter what to do—and what not to do. In return, you work exclusively for the Banner on this until it’s over. Anything you find out belongs to us. Okay?”
Rollins started to argue, but Blackwood gave him a look that stopped him in his tracks.
“Who’s the reporter?” I wanted to know.
Blackwood looked over to Andy for help. Andy thought about it for a second.
“How about Bonnie?” he said.
I was surprised. I figured he’d go for someone older. One of his pals in the city room. Even though we were uneasy allies at the moment, I figured he’d want someone who could keep an eye on me—and then secretly report back to him on what I was doing.
That didn’t sound like Bonnie. According to Bonnie, she didn’t even get along with Andy Kramer.
“You like Bonnie, right?” he asked.
I looked over at Bonnie across the room. She hadn’t said anything yet during the discussion.
“Yeah, I like Bonnie,” I said.
“And you trust her?”
I smiled at her now. “Sure, I trust her.”
The truth is I didn’t really know Bonnie well enough to trust her. For all I knew even that stuff she’d told me about Andy and her not getting along could have been made up. Maybe he put her up to it just to see what I’d say about him. I didn’t really think that was true, but you never know.
On the other hand, I didn’t figure I was going to do any better than Bonnie.
So I said yes.
“Now, Joe, I want you to make a complete report to Andy each day on everything you’ve found out—whether you write a story or not,” Blackwood told me.
“What’s the point in that?” Rollins asked sarcastically. “He’ll just make it up. Like he did the last time when . . .”
Blackwood cut him off. “All right, Jack, I think we all know your feelings on this matter.”
The old editor looked across the room at me.
“That whole incident eight years ago was a very embarrassing and very expensive one for this paper. Nothing like that can ever happen again. I hope you realize that. If you do and things work out well on this story, well . . . who knows? Maybe you’ll even have a future again at the Banner. Stranger things have happened.”
I didn’t say anything.
“They tell me you’ve really cleaned up your life since the last time you were here, Joe.”
“I’m older,” I said. “I guess I’ve learned a few lessons along the way.”
“And you’re getting married?”
“Yes, in a few months.”
“What about your gambling?”
“I don’t do it anymore.”
“Ever?”
“I belong to Gamblers Anonymous. I paid off all my old debts. And I haven’t put a bet down on anything in nearly two years.”
Blackwood nodded. I was giving him all the right answers. Telling him what he wanted to hear. I had to in order to do this story for the Banner. And that was the only thing that mattered right now.
“We’re going to give you another chance, Joe,” he said. “But it’s your last chance. You won’t get another.”
He didn’t have to tell me that.
Chapter 21
“Here’s the way I figure it,” Bonnie said as she drove us through midtown traffic toward lower Manhattan.
She was going to drop me off at the district attorney’s office, where I’d set up an interview with Greg Ackerman.
“We split this up between us. You concentrate for the time being on the stuff about the Montero woman—while I look into the other killings on Galvin’s list. That way if it turns out somehow you’re wrong—and the two stories aren’t connected—we’re still covered on both bases. And if they are, then maybe one of us can find the link to prove it.”
“How come I’m on Lisa Montero and you’re doing the rest of it?” I asked. “Why not the other way around?”
“Because this way you can be a big hero to your girlfriend when you prove she’s innocent,” Bonnie said as she swerved suddenly to avoid a double-parked car.
“What do you mean—my girlfriend?”
“Jesus, Joe—I’m not stupid. I see that look on your face when you talk about her.”
“I’m engaged, Bonnie. I’m going to be married in a few months. Carolyn’s a terrific woman. I love her very much. I’m interested in Lisa Montero right now because it’s my job. Period. That’s all there is to it.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Bonnie said casually.
The truth is that Bonnie’s idea of how to work on the story was the way I thought we should do it too.
Bonnie honked her horn at a taxi letting off people in front of us, then turned the wheel sharply and sped past him. “Asshole,” she muttered. She dr
ove just like she talked—fast, frantic, and full of energy. I just hoped I survived the ride in one piece.
“Have you heard anything more about Arthur Dodson?” I asked her.
Dodson was the last name still alive on David Galvin’s list of the Great Pretenders’ victims.
“Somebody killed Linda Hiller,” I said. “Whether it’s one of Galvin’s old college pals or a copycat—either way, the next target has to be Arthur Dodson.”
“Yeah. My cop sources tell me—as soon as they find Dodson—they’ll probably move him to a special safe house with twenty-four-hour guards, sharpshooters outside, the works. The guy won’t be able to take a shit without some cop wiping his ass for him. No one wants to be embarrassed again.”
“Well, you can never be too careful,” I said.
“Technically, that’s not true.”
“Huh?”
“I mean people say that all the time. But it’s not true. The truth is that sometimes you can be too careful.”
“Bonnie, what are you talking about?”
“Okay, let’s take the president of the United States, for example. If you accept the premise that you can never be too careful, then that means no security precautions to protect the president are ever too extreme. So, if you take that concept to the utmost degree, your only concern then becomes the security itself. You lose sight of the big picture. Ergo, you devote all your time to increasing security instead of actually letting him preside over the country. Which is the purpose of all the security in the first place. Understand?”
I looked at her strangely.
“Just an idle thought passing through my mind,” she said.
The light at the intersection ahead of us turned red. Bonnie floored the accelerator and made it through just before a van almost clipped us coming in the other direction.
“Do you notice anything interesting about the new cases on Galvin’s list?” Bonnie asked. “The ones we didn’t know about until he left you the note?”
I thought about it. “Well, they’re different methods of death. Shooting. Stabbing. Strangulation. Felix the Cat shot all his victims. Also Felix the Cat’s original victims were all women. There’s men on this list too. That sure sounds like different people did the murders. Galvin said there were three other people besides him in the group. So maybe they each had their own style—and taste in victims. That makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe. Or maybe Galvin did them all himself—at least the ones that happened before he was caught—and then just tried to make them look different to throw the police off?”
“Why lie about it now? And I’ve read his confession from eleven years ago too. He was proud of his victims even back then. If he’d killed them, he would have bragged about it. No, the ones we didn’t know about at the time of his arrest were the work of other people. And he kept quiet about it for eleven years. Right up until the end.”
“I suppose,” she said.
I looked out the window. We were getting close to Foley Square, where the Manhattan courts and the DA’s office was located.
“There’s something else,” Bonnie said. “That business we talked about in the meeting about how most of the new killings look like they could be the result of that weird fantasy stuff Galvin and these creeps were into—the prom dress, dancer’s outfit, etc. And how William Franze and the hooker don’t seem to fit the pattern.”
She hesitated for a second before continuing.
“Well, there’s another one that doesn’t fit either, Joe. I didn’t want to bring it up during the meeting, but . . .”
I knew what she was talking about.
“My wife and son,” I said softly.
“Yes,” she answered. “Look, I’m sorry, Joe. But we have to talk about it sooner or later.”
“It’s okay. It’s just that I haven’t dealt with that part of it yet. Believe me, I know I’ll have to do it before this thing is over. And you’re right. Susan and Joe Jr. died in a boating accident. There was no fantasy involved there. No games. No Great Pretenders, as far as I can see. They don’t fit the pattern either.”
“How do you know that for sure?” Bonnie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe there was some kind of fantasy going on there too,” she said. “Think about what you said in the meeting about Franze and the Martin woman. About how no one can be certain what the killer did or didn’t do before they died. How maybe there really was a fantasy in the Franze murders—and we just don’t know what it was yet. Well, the same thing could be true about your family. From what I understand, they were alone out on the water when it happened. I mean we don’t really know what happened to them before they died, do we? The point I’m trying to make here is that we can’t be sure there was no fantasy in your wife and son’s deaths—or in the Franze murder either. I’m sorry to be so blunt about this, Joe but I really think it’s something we have to consider.”
She was right, of course.
I guess I was just too close to this one to see it as clearly as she did.
“I’m curious, Joe,” Bonnie said. “That story Rollins was needling you about today at the meeting. The one that got you fired. Did you really make it up?”
“Let’s just say I screwed up very badly.”
“And it was your fault.”
“My name was on the story.”
“And the stuff he said about your gambling?”
“I used to have a gambling problem.”
“And now?”
“I don’t anymore.”
“A lot of people gamble, Joe.”
“Not like me.”
“Was it really that bad?” she asked.
Chapter 22
On the day after I got fired from the Banner eight years ago, I went to Atlantic City.
I had a severance check for $23,000 from the paper in my pocket. It was the most money I ever had in my life at one time. I cashed the check, took the money in hundreds, and checked into the Bally’s Park Place Hotel on the boardwalk. It was the middle of the week on a cold day in early March, and the place wasn’t very busy. The woman at the front desk upgraded my room—at no extra cost—to a big one-bedroom suite, with a view overlooking the Atlantic. I took that as a good omen.
I started small. I played the slot machines for the first few hours. There was an incredible selection to choose from. They stretched from one end of the huge casino to the other—endless rows of flashing lights, casino sounds, and clanging coins. You could play straight slots, progressive slots, video poker, video blackjack—you name it. There were twenty-five-cent machines, fifty-cent machines, dollar machines—and then even more expensive ones that cost all the way up to a hundred dollars per spin. I played them all. By the end of four hours, I was up $2,600. I took that as a good omen too.
Next came blackjack. There’s a lot of systems you can use in a casino to try to beat the house in blackjack. But I didn’t try anything like that. I just played steadily—almost conservatively—for several hours. By the time I got up from the table, I had won another six thousand dollars. I knew I was really on a roll now.
The real big money for me came at the roulette and craps tables. I couldn’t do anything wrong there. Every roll of the dice, every spin of the wheel—I was a winner. After three days of this, I’d turned my $23,000 into $120,000. The way I figured it I was now turning a profit of about thirty thousand a day. Screw the Banner. I mean who needed a job anyway? This paid better than newspapers, it was more exciting, and the hours were a lot better too.
When I wasn’t in the casino, I hung out at the bar. Not that I had any problem with the booze. Gambling has always been my particular addiction, not alcoholism. I just kept a pleasant buzz on pretty much all the time I was there. The experts tell you not to do that, they say it dulls your judgement. But they tell you you can’t beat the casinos either. So what was I doing with all this money? I’d figured out how to beat the odds in record time. I felt like I’d discovered this huge s
ecret that no one else knew about except me. And Jesus, it was so much fun!
One night in the bar, I met a young blond woman named Connie who was a dealer at one of the blackjack tables. She remembered me from all my winnings—and I offered to buy her a drink to celebrate. She told me about her ex-husband, the three-year-old daughter she’d lost in a custody battle, and how she’d gone to college in Montclair with the idea of being a schoolteacher, but decided she could make a lot more money working the tables in Atlantic City than as a teacher. I told her about the Banner and all the developments in my life. Then we went up to my room and—with the lights of Atlantic City and the boardwalk flicking below us—we made love.
The next morning I woke up and decided I felt like playing poker.
They offer several variations of it in Atlantic City, but no straight poker. You have to go to Las Vegas to play straight poker. Connie said she’d been thinking of going to Las Vegas anyway, because the payoffs at the casinos there were a lot bigger for the dealers.
“Do you want to go with me?” I asked.
“When?”
“Today.”
“Why not?” she said.
When we got to Las Vegas, I concentrated most of my gambling on poker and betting sports. Nothing fancy at the poker table—just the old-fashioned draw and seven card stud games. At the sports book, I bet on college basketball, pro basketball, hockey, and even exhibition baseball. I’d always bet on sports back in New York—both informally and with bookies I knew from the Banner—but this was the real thing. You just walked in, plopped down your money, and watched the game on TV right there until it was time to collect your money.
It was all so easy.
And, of course, it couldn’t last.
By the end of my second week in Vegas, I’d lost everything I had won. I was down to the original $23,000 or so I’d gotten as severance pay from the Banner. I had a choice to make. I could take this money, lick my wounds, and take it back to New York City to live on while I tried to find another newspaper job. Or I could try to parlay it into big winnings and go home in style.
They were playing the semifinals of the NCAA college basketball tournament, and the big story that year was a small school that had come out of nowhere to upset a string of powerful teams. I’d bet on them each time. Even in my downward spiral, they’d continued to make me money. This was my lucky team. I had to back them. That afternoon, they were going to play the defending national champions, who were favored by eighteen points. I knew it would be closer than that. This was another omen.