by R. G. Belsky
“Second, he committed suicide. He decided to end it all because the pressure just got to be too much for him. He’s on some wacko’s death list—God knows why—he’s scared, and he just can’t deal with it anymore. So he drives up here, gets out of his car, and does a swan dive down into the water.
“Or option number three—he’s not dead at all. He leaves the car, the wallet, and makes an anonymous call to police about a man going off the bridge. Maybe he thought it would be better if people thought he was dead. Maybe he thought it would help buy him some time to get far away.”
Bonnie walked over to us. She’d gotten to the scene before I had. The way she drove, it was no surprise. I told Righetti what Bonnie had found out about Dodson and Hiller both going to school at NYU at the same time as Galvin.
“There’s got to be a connection,” I told him. “Some reason, some kind of grudge—some motive.”
“Christ, that was eleven years ago,” Righetti said. “Who carries a grudge for eleven years?”
“Hiller and Dodson both were on Galvin’s hit list,” I pointed out. “Hiller and Dodson both went to NYU at the same time he did. One’s dead already and the other one may be. That’s more than a coincidence, captain.”
Righetti looked over at Dodson’s empty car sitting on the bridge in front of us.
“Did Mrs. Dodson or the rest of his family have any idea at all why he was on that list?” I asked him. “Or why he disappeared?”
Righetti shook his head no. “They seemed just as mystified as the rest of us.”
“What about when you talked to them, Bonnie?”
“Same thing,” she said. “They told me he seemed fine that last morning when he went off to work. Then Dodson’s wife heard about his name turning up on Galvin’s list. She tried to call him at work, but the people there said he’d never showed up. No one’s seen him since. His co-workers. Family. It’s like he disappeared off the face of the earth until this morning.”
Yeah, Righetti was right.
It had to be scenario Number Three.
This didn’t seem like a Great Pretender murder—there was no fantasy, no imagination, nothing that seemed even remotely to link it to any of the other killings.
And I didn’t buy the suicide scenario either. Why would Dodson kill himself? A man who’s afraid of dying doesn’t solve the problem by doing it to himself. That just didn’t make sense.
No, Arthur Dodson was running.
I was pretty sure of that.
But that, of course, still left one big question.
Who was he running from?
A new contingent of cars arrived on the bridge. Greg Ackerman got out of one of them. He looked first over at the cops who were going through Dodson’s BMW, then saw Righetti, me, and Bonnie. He started walking toward us.
“Uh-oh,” Bonnie said.
“Be nice,” Righetti told me.
“I don’t like him.”
“No one does.”
Ackerman was standing in front of us now.
“Well, you can’t blame this one on Lisa Montero,” I said brightly. “She’s in jail.”
“It’s a copycat,” he said grimly. “A Felix the Cat copycat. That’s what we’re dealing with here.”
“I don’t think so,” I told him. “I think Galvin was telling the truth. He did have accomplices. Everything on that list he gave me has checked out. William Franze, Hiller, and Dodson—it’s all connected to when he was at NYU. Now we just have to figure out how.”
Ackerman ignored me and started to walk toward Dodson’s car.
“By the way, how come you never told me you went to NYU with David Galvin?” I yelled out after him.
That stopped him in his tracks.
“You were a student at New York University eleven years ago, weren’t you?” I said.
“Yeah,” Ackerman said. He came back to a few feet from where I was standing. “So what?”
“So not only was the late Felix the Cat—David Galvin—there at the same time, but so was Lisa Montero. The woman you’re so eager to blame for all of this. I find that a very interesting coincidence. Did you know either of them when you were students, Greg?”
I thought Ackerman would get mad at the question, but he didn’t. He just laughed.
“Jesus, Dougherty, you really are something. Yes, I guess we all were on campus at the same time. No, I never knew either of them. Just like I never knew thousands of other people that went to NYU with me at the same time. It’s a very big campus. I can see where you’re going with this one though. You figure that maybe me and Lisa Montero were really secret members of this mysterious Great Pretenders group that Galvin filled your head with before he died. What a great story that would be for you, huh? But why stop there, Dougherty? Why not just arrest everybody who ever went to school at the same time as Galvin—and put them in jail too?” He shook his head. “Is this what you call being a reporter? My God, you are really reaching on this one.”
He was right. I had nothing.
“Anyway, there is one thing I am very sure of—and that’s who killed William Franze.”
“Lisa Montero?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“Oh really? Well do you know what I think, Dougherty? I think maybe you’ve got a personal interest in Ms. Montero. I figure maybe the reason you’re not making much sense is because you’re thinking with your dick instead of your brain. Hey, I understand that—Lisa Montero’s a very attractive woman. She’s rich. Smart. A real knockout. On a scale of one to ten, she’s probably a fifteen. There’s one little problem with her though. You gotta watch her temper. That’s the trouble with dating a murderer. Breaking up is so hard to do. Just ask Billy Franze.”
I kept my story about Dodson’s disappearance pretty straight. Just the facts—along with the possibilities Righetti had laid out. I didn’t speculate. I didn’t editorialize. I only wrote what I knew. Andy gave me the thumbs-up sign after he read it. Another front-page story. This one carried a double byline though. Me and Bonnie. That was okay.
It wasn’t until after I was finished—and Bonnie and I were about ready to leave the office—that I noticed the letter on my desk.
It was just like the first note. The same plain white envelope. The same postmark from the Bronx. The same block lettering used to write all the words on the page. And the message was in crude verse—like Felix the Cat used to use.
This one said:
Dear Joe Dougherty:
Roses are red violets are blue
I’d look at El Domingo
If I were a betting man—like you!
There’s too many bodies, too many clues
But don’t let them get you all confused
There’s something no one else sees
They can’t see the forest for the trees
Billy Franze, he’s the key
Go to El Domingo, and you’ll see
There’s someone there
who knows it all
If she won’t talk,
the rich girl takes the fall!
Chapter 28
Lisa Montero was freed on $1 million bail.
The bail decision generated a lot of controversy. Victims’ rights groups assailed it as a license to commit murder. Editorial writers compared Lisa to hundreds of other accused murderers forced to wait in jail for their trial as the wheels of justice turned slowly. Opponents of John Montero talked about influence peddling and favoritism and an abuse of power.
But, in the end, Lisa was a free woman again—at least for the time being.
I guess some judge really did owe her father a big-time favor.
On the morning Lisa got out of jail, she called me from Rikers Island. She asked if I was going to be there. Of course, I said. This was going to be a giant media event. When she walked out of that prison, there’d be reporters all over and flashbulbs popping and video cameras recording the whole event for the six o’clock news.
Lisa seemed nervous about that. She told me that her father didn’t even want to come because of all the reporters and publicity. She said she wanted someone with her she could trust to get through the whole ordeal. She asked me if I would take her home.
Now if I did that, I was definitely crossing the line between being a reporter and a participant in this story. But that was okay.
I think.
I mean I was getting the inside beat on the biggest story in town. All the other reporters would be on the outside, looking in at me. Any good reporter would have done the same thing. That’s what I told myself anyway.
Her father sent a limo that was waiting for her outside the prison.
Lisa and I managed to run through the gauntlet of press—I saw Bonnie standing there giving me a funny look from the crowd—and got into the back seat. Then we roared across the bridge and into Manhattan. After a few minutes, I looked around. We’d managed to lose everyone.
“God, I hate the press,” Lisa said.
“I’m the press,” I reminded her.
“You’re different,” she smiled. “You’re special.”
Special.
“Do you want to go home?” I asked her.
“Not right away.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere.”
“That’s a big place.”
“I don’t want to be alone,” she said.
“I’m here,” I reminded her.
“I need a drink,” she said.
She said she wanted to go someplace quiet, someplace out of the way where she wouldn’t be recognized. I told her about a bar I’d been to a few times down in Union Square, not far from my hotel. It wasn’t a celebrity hangout. Just a little place with good beer, dark booths to sit in, and a big old jukebox that played a lot of old ’50s stuff like the Everly Brothers and Jimmy Clanton and Roy Orbison. She told me that sounded perfect.
I called my story in from a pay phone at the bar, giving a rewriteman all the details of her release from prison.
Afterward, Andy Kramer came on the phone. He was very excited when I told him I was still with her.
“I think I can get even more access to her,” I told him.
“What kind of access are we talking about here?” he wanted to know.
“Enough to do something really in-depth. Some long interviews. Maybe even a diary about her emotions. The Banner could start it now and run it through the trial. I might also be able to get an interview with her father. Big John Montero. He never talks to the press. But I’m going to ask her if she can get him to talk to me.”
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
“Are you doing this broad, Joe?” Andy asked finally.
“No,” I sighed, “I’m not doing her.”
“You know,” he said slowly, “I’m on your side here. You don’t have to prove anything to me. I’m not Jack Rollins. I never blamed you for what happened to Walter Billings. I always figured you got a raw deal.”
I wasn’t sure that was exactly true, but I decided to let it pass.
“That’s not what this is all about,” I told him.
“Sure it is,” he said.
Of course, we both knew he was right.
“She’s just another story, Joe,” he said.
“I know that.”
“Let me tell you about my all-time favorite newspaper movie,” I told Lisa. “It’s Deadline U.S.A. with Humphrey Bogart. Bogart is the managing editor of a paper that’s just about to go out of business. On its last day ever, a young guy—who just graduated from journalism school—comes into the paper looking for his first job as a reporter. Bogart looks around the dying newsroom and says to him, ‘Kid, I’ll tell you something about this business. It may not be the world’s oldest profession, but it’s the best.’”
She smiled. “You make working at a newspaper sound like such a noble calling,” she said.
“It is.”
“How long have you been at the Banner?”
“Uh—only since this story started. I’m not actually a fulltime reporter anymore.”
“I don’t understand . . .”
“Well, it’s kind of complicated.”
“But you used to work there, right?”
“A long time ago.”
“What happened?”
“I got fired.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Sometimes we reporters aren’t always so noble,” I said.
We sat there drinking in that little bar for a long time. She told me about everything that had happened to her in prison. She seemed really shaken up by the whole experience, like a scared little girl talking about a nightmare she’d just woken up from.
“Who do you think murdered Billy Franze?” I asked her.
“I don’t have the slightest idea,” she said. “All I know is that I didn’t do it.”
“That’s good. But someone killed him. Someone who wanted him dead. Someone who had a motive for murder besides you.”
She shrugged. “I didn’t care if Billy lived or died.”
“So who did?”
She thought about it. “A lot of people probably wanted him dead. Both in his business and personal lives. Billy cut a lot of corners, lied a lot, and burned a lot of people—he was really pushing the envelope. He definitely was not one of the good guys.”
“Tell me about his business dealings,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know a lot about that. My father does. They worked together on some deals, although I know they didn’t like each other very much. My father didn’t want me to go out with him. Maybe that’s why I did, I don’t know. Maybe he knew a lot of stuff about Billy he never told me.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“My father?”
“Yeah, everyone keeps telling me about him. I hear a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. I’d like to find out for myself what kind of person he really is.”
“My father doesn’t talk to the press anymore.”
“Yeah, but I’m special,” I said. “Remember?”
She laughed.
“Will you ask him, Lisa?”
“I’ll try.”
I thought about some of the other stuff I’d heard about Billy Franze.
“What about Franze’s women?” I said.
“Well, he never exactly provided me with a list of all the other women he was seeing. But there were quite a few. He thought of himself as quite a ladies’ man. I guess you can tell that from the way he died. It would take quite a while to go through all Billy’s women. It’s a very long list, but I’ll bet a lot of them would have plenty of motive for killing him. Of course, that’s not even counting his wife.”
His wife. Of course. Billy Franze was married. I’d forgotten all about that.
“How did Franze’s wife feel about all the other women in his life?” I asked Lisa.
“Well,” she smiled, “I guess they had an open marriage.”
I decided to ask her about something else that had been on my mind.
“How about the woman you saw going into Franze’s townhouse the night of the murder?” I said. “The one that you think might have seen what really happened?”
“What about her?”
“Tell me what she looked like.”
Lisa shrugged. “She was very pretty. She had dark features. Dark black hair . . .”
“Like you,” I said.
“I guess so. Why?”
I ignored the question.
“Could she have been Hispanic?” I asked.
“Maybe.”
“Have you ever heard of a place called El Domingo?”
“No,” she said. “What’s that?”
“El Domingo is a club in the Bronx. It’s in a Puerto Rican neighborhood.”
I’d looked it up in the phone book after getting the second anonymous note.
Lisa looked confused. “Have you been there?”
“No,” I said, “not yet.�
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At some point in the conversation I told Lisa about me and Carolyn. I’m still not sure why I did that. I guess I just thought it was important that she know. Suddenly her whole mood changed. She looked annoyed.
She was getting a bit drunk now anyway. Fine, I didn’t care. She was entitled to tie one on. I figure I would have too after spending time in jail. Maybe I’d had too much to drink too. We’d been drinking ever since we left Rikers Island.
“So is that where you’re headed after me?” she asked. “Back to New Jersey?”
“Eventually.”
“My goodness, the old wifey really keeps you on a short leash, doesn’t she?” she said.
“She’s not my wife, she’s my fiancée.”
“Whatever.”
She took a big gulp of her drink and threw her hair back. Yep, she was definitely annoyed.
“So what do you do in New Jersey, Joe?” she asked.
She pronounced New Jersey with a rural accent like she was talking to one of the Beverly Hillbillies.
“I mean, do you slop the hogs?” she said. “Milk the cows? Plow the fields?”
I looked down at the beer in front of me.
“And then at night you gather around the table in the kitchen for some good vittles, I’ll bet. On Saturday nights, you go square dancing. Or maybe just stay home and listen to the Grand Ole Opry or some farm prices on the radio. Assuming you have a radio. Do they have electricity in New Jersey yet?”
“Are you finished?” I asked.
She smiled across the table at me. “Sorry to be so bitchy, Joe. But you just don’t seem like a New Jersey kind of guy to me. You definitely strike me as a New York City kind of guy. How the hell did you wind up in New Jersey anyway?”
“I wanted to see the country,” I said.
“Or maybe someone else decided that for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“My guess is that it’s all part of that story you told me before about why you got fired from the Banner. Are you sure you don’t want to tell me about that?”