Playing Dead

by R. G. Belsky

The next person I went to see was William Franze’s wife.

  “I guess they have an open marriage,” Lisa had said. Maybe. But I figured William Franze’s wife couldn’t have been too happy with the way he died in bed with a prostitute. Or the way he lived either.

  Deborah Franze’s house was in Saddle Brook, New Jersey, a rich suburb of Bergen County where Richard Nixon used to live. It was a big house. Not as big as Montero’s, but still damn big. There was a swimming pool, a tennis court, a garage full of fancy cars—and all the other status symbols that showed she was married to a man who had hit it big.

  The house was about a half mile from the road. There was a long, winding driveway that led past a duck pond and up to the front door. I drove up it, parked my car, and rang the bell. I told the maid who answered what I was there for. She said that Mrs. Franze was playing tennis—and then led me to the courts.

  I’d expected to find a bitter wife. Aging badly, maybe drinking a lot and definitely angry at her husband for the social embarrassment that the circumstances of his death had caused her. But I was wrong.

  Deborah Franze was probably about forty—but a very good forty. She had long, blond hair; a tanned, attractive face; and a body that looked like she took very good care of it. Whether it was all for real or the result of several trips to the plastic surgeon, I wasn’t sure. But the finished package definitely worked.

  She was wearing a tight white tennis outfit, and I could see the muscles ripple in her legs and arms when she swung the racquet. The person she was playing was in good shape too—a dark-haired, handsome young guy in his early twenties who played good enough to make me think he was probably her tennis instructor.

  “Deborah Franze?” I yelled out to her on the court.

  She didn’t stop playing.

  “What do you want?” she yelled over her shoulder.

  “I’m Joe Dougherty of the Banner. I’d like to talk to you.”

  She returned a serve.

  “I’m busy. Can it wait?”

  “It’s about your husband.”

  “Then it definitely can wait,” she laughed.

  Mrs. Franze told me to go into the living room and have a drink. She said she’d be there in a little while. When she did come in, she’d changed her clothes. She was wearing a summer dress now that was low cut in the front and had a slit up the side. She toweled her hair off, poured herself a drink, and sat down in a chair across from me. When she crossed her legs, I got a nice view. Then she took a big gulp of her drink and shook her hair dry. She was definitely a sexy woman.

  “You don’t seem too broken up over your husband’s murder,” I said.

  “Actually, I’m quite the merry widow.”

  “I take it you and he didn’t get along?”

  “I hated him. He detested me. I think that pretty much summed up our relationship.”

  “Why didn’t you get divorced?”

  “No reason to. He didn’t want to give me a big divorce settlement. And there were certain financial advantages for me in remaining Mrs. William Franze.”

  She looked around the beautiful home.

  “I’m not doing too badly,” she said.

  “And now you get all his money.”

  “Yeah, I do. A lucky break for me, huh?”

  “That gives you a real motive for killing him.”

  Deborah Franze laughed. “The world is filled with people who had a motive for killing my husband.”

  “I guess he wasn’t a very nice man, huh?”

  “Let me tell you about the kind of man Billy was. One time, early on in our marriage, I was pregnant. It was going to be a little girl. God, I really wanted that baby. But I lost it—something went wrong at the hospital during childbirth and they just weren’t able to save her. Afterward, my doctor told me I could never have any more children. I was devastated. Now the whole time this was going on, there was no sign of Billy. He didn’t visit me, call me, tell me where he was—absolutely nothing. I was all alone. I even had to take a taxicab home. When I got there, I found Billy naked in bed with a stewardess.” Deborah Franze finished off what was left of her drink and poured herself another. “That is the kind of man my husband was.”

  I wasn’t quite sure what to say to her. “What about as a businessman?” I finally asked.

  “Worse. Oh, he made a lot of money. But Billy never did it the old-fashioned way, he didn’t earn it. He conned people. He lied. He stole. Most of the time the people he stole from were as crooked as he was. But not always. I remember one time he met this old woman at a dinner party. Her husband had died six months earlier and left her with a comfortable inheritance for her old age—about five million. My husband talked this woman into letting him run the estate for her. He convinced her he could turn her five million into ten million. Well, he lost it all—at least that’s what he told her. But the truth was he’d invested it in some dummy corporations that were really just fronts for him. So the money eventually wound up in his pocket. The old woman lost her house too—and wound up dying in a nursing home.” Mrs. Franze sighed. “I think that was the one that convinced me I didn’t want to live with Bill anymore.”

  I realized they were the same kinds of stories I’d heard about John Montero.

  “Did your husband have many business dealings with John Montero?” I asked her.

  “A few.”

  “Do you remember anything about them?”

  She shrugged. “Not really.”

  “Montero didn’t like your husband much,” I said, remembering what Lisa had told me. “He didn’t want him dating Lisa either. He was very worried about that. He said your husband was a very disreputable, shady character. I guess from what you’ve told me he was right about that.”

  “That’s funny,” Mrs. Franze grunted.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I mean it’s sort of like the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?” she said.

  We talked for another half hour or so about William Franze. Everything she told me confirmed my image of the man. A rich, arrogant, despicable son of a bitch. No one deserves to be murdered, but if someone had to be a victim—well, it sounded like he would be high on the list of a lot of people who knew him.

  Especially his wife.

  “So where were you the night that your husband was murdered?” I asked her.

  She shook her head. “I have an alibi.”

  “That wasn’t exactly my question . . .”

  “I know what your question was, Joe. That’s my answer. I was here. All night. And I was with someone the entire time. A man.”

  I looked out the window. The good-looking guy she was playing tennis with was swimming laps in the pool now. “You mean him?” I asked her.

  “No, not Tony,” she said. “I just play games with Tony.”

  “And this guy you were with—he’s more than games?”

  “A girl’s gotta keep her options open,” she said.

  “Will you tell me who it was?”

  “No.”

  “The police are going to want to know.”

  “I’ve already told them.”

  “And they believe your story?”

  “I’m not the one they arrested, am I?”

  I wasn’t sure if Mrs. Franze was telling me everything she knew or not. But one thing was for sure, she wasn’t going to spill any secrets she did hold very easily. She was a smooth operator. Just like her husband. Probably even smoother. I mean here he was dead—and she’s left sitting in this big mansion with all his money.

  Was that just luck? Maybe.

  I needed an angle to crack her though. A way to get close to her. Some weakness in her character I could exploit to get the answers I was looking for. Did she have a weakness?

  Well, she liked men.

  And I was a man.

  Maybe that was the way to go.

  I glanced outside at the tennis courts again.

  “I play tennis,” I said casually.

  “Good fo
r you.”

  “If you need a partner sometimes . . .”

  “I’ve got a partner.”

  She nodded over toward the young tennis instructor swimming laps in the pool.

  “Well, then maybe we could have lunch one day soon. Just you and me. I’d love to . . .”

  Deborah Franze laughed and shook her head no.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she told me.

  “What?”

  “The seduction routine.”

  “I just . . .”

  “You can’t afford me, Joe,” she said.

  A few minutes later, Deborah Franze walked me out to my car. The tennis instructor was sunning himself by the pool now. I wondered what else he did besides give her tennis lessons. I decided I had nothing to lose so I asked her one last question.

  “Did you kill your husband, Mrs. Franze?” I asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “You had plenty of motive.”

  “Sure I did.”

  “And you’re glad he’s dead.”

  “Sure I am. But I didn’t have to kill him.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” she said with a big smile, “Lisa Montero did it for me.”

  Chapter 32

  “The facts of the matter are pretty clear,” I said. “There is a very long list of potential suspects who could very well have murdered William Franze besides Lisa Montero.”

  I was sitting in another news meeting in Andy’s office—along with Blackwood, Rollins, and the others—telling them everything I’d managed to find out.

  “Franze was not a very nice man,” I continued. “He cheated people, he lied to them, he stole from them. There’s a lot of people with empty pockets after business dealings with this jerk that must have had a grudge against him.

  “And then there’s his personal life. He’s got a wife who’s so happy he’s dead that she’s practically dancing on his grave. She gets everything by the way—the house, the estate, the cars, and all the money. There’s lot of girlfriends too. Most of them liked Franze even less than his wife. He went through women extremely quickly—and very badly. Basically, he treated them like all the other people in his life—he screwed them and then dumped them. He was not exactly a sensitive, caring nineties type of guy.

  “I don’t necessarily think it was any of them that did it. I believe Franze’s death is connected to all the other deaths on the list that Galvin wrote out. I think it’s someone who went to school with Galvin a decade ago, killed with him—and now has started up again.

  “I’m simply making the point that there’s a lot of people besides Lisa Montero that had a reason for wanting Franze dead.”

  Rollins said he still wasn’t convinced that anything I’d found out changed anything.

  “The DA says that Lisa Montero did it,” he pointed out.

  “I think the DA is wrong.”

  “Why?” Blackwood asked.

  “He’s got some sort of vendetta against the Montero family.”

  “Well, maybe he knows something we don’t. Lisa Montero went to school with Galvin. According to your theory, that makes her a suspect in all of the new killings. Right?”

  “Ackerman went to school at NYU at the same time. He could be a suspect too.”

  Rollins made a snorting sound. “Oh, that’s beautiful,” he said. “You think the prosecutor did it?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Listen, Dougherty,” he said, “no one wants to hear your theories. Our job is to report the news—not to make it.”

  “Oh really? Who told you that? One of your friends up at the Columbia School of Journalism? Well, newspapers do make news sometimes, Jack. It’s called crusading journalism. Sometimes they even give out a prize to the paper that does it the best. They call it the Pulitzer Prize. Did you ever hear of it?”

  “Don’t lecture me about journalism . . .”

  “Why? Am I going too fast for you?”

  Andy Kramer put his fingers in his mouth and whistled loudly. “Guys, guys,” he shouted. “Can we give this a rest, huh?”

  Jack Rollins glared at him. Technically, Rollins outranked him, and I don’t think he liked Andy talking to him like that. I thought there might be a power confrontation between the two of them right there.

  But then Spencer Blackwood stepped in.

  “Let’s concentrate right now on the business at hand,” Blackwood said. “There’s supposed to be a court hearing this week for Lisa Montero on the William Franze murder case. How are we planning on covering it? Is Dougherty going to be there?”

  “Yes,” said Andy.

  “No,” Jack Rollins answered at the same time.

  “Well, I guess that just about covers all the possibilities,” Blackwood smiled.

  “I’ve already assigned Issacs to do the story,” Rollins told him.

  “What about Joe?” Andy asked.

  “Rick Issacs is the best court reporter in the city.”

  “This isn’t just a court story, Jack,” Andy said. “It’s a personality story. Lisa Montero is the personality—and so is her father. And no one is closer to the Montero family right now than Joe.”

  Blackwood gave them both a “what’s the problem” shrug.

  “So Issacs handles the friggin’ courtroom story and Dougherty can do the sidebar personality stuff,” he said. “OK?”

  He looked at both of them and over at me.

  We all nodded.

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, I’m still worried about Dougherty,” Rollins said, glaring across the room at me. “I think he’s too close to this story. I think he’s too close to the Montero woman. We all remember what happened the last time he worked for us. I don’t want to see the Banner get embarrassed again.”

  “Has he done anything wrong yet?” Blackwood asked.

  Rollins shook his head no. “Not yet.”

  “Well, Jack, you’ve got to learn to trust your reporters,” Blackwood told him.

  After the meeting was over and everyone else had left, I showed Andy the first two notes I’d gotten in the mail.

  “If this isn’t a joke,” I said after he read them, “they could be from someone who knows something about this case.”

  “One of Galvin’s friends?” he asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “And now one of them has suddenly got himself a conscience, huh?”

  “Or else trying to save their own ass by pointing me in the direction of the other two.”

  Andy shook his head. “That doesn’t make any sense. If we found the other two, they’d likely give up the third member too. Our letter writer would just be cutting his own throat.”

  I shrugged. “It’s all guesswork, anyway.”

  He looked down at the second letter. “Do you know what El Domingo is?”

  I told him it was a club in the Bronx.

  “I haven’t been there,” I said. “I’m not sure if I should go until I know more. I’m not exactly going to blend into the crowd at a place like that.”

  “We could send a Hispanic reporter,” Andy suggested.

  “Except we don’t know what to tell him to look for.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Wait until our pen pal writes again,” I said.

  The next note, when it came, was very brief. It said simply:

  There is no more time

  for playing games,

  The woman you’re looking

  for is Connie James. . . .

  I checked with the Banner library first. There’d never heard of a Connie James. Then I called Captain Righetti at police headquarters.

  “You got anything on a woman named Connie James in your computer?” I asked him.

  “Let me check.”

  He put me on hold, then came back on the line a few minutes later.

  “Connie James is an alias. Her real name is Connie Reyes. She’s been busted six times for prostitution. Once for drugs. She sounds like a lovely girl. You thi
nking of dating her?”

  “Yeah. We met on ‘Love Connection.’ You got an address.”

  “Last known address was five-five-five Grand Concourse. The Bronx. It’s no good anymore though.”

  The Bronx. Interesting. And she was a prostitute. William Franze had told Lisa he was bringing over a second call girl just before he died. Maybe she was the missing witness. Maybe she was the woman Lisa saw that night. Maybe she was the key to the case.

  I had one other hunch that I decided to try.

  “You wouldn’t have any other address for her in the computer, would you?” I asked. “Like a mailing address. A post office drop. A place of work.”

  “Yeah,” Righetti said. “There’s something here called El Domingo. She worked at a club called El Domingo.”

  Chapter 33

  There was an Off-Track Betting parlor a few blocks away from my hotel. I’d passed by it maybe a dozen times since I’d been back in the city. But I never went in. Until now.

  As gambling establishments go, New York City Off-Track Betting parlors are pretty tame stuff. They rank somewhere just above lottery tickets and office football pools on the danger factor for a gambling addict. Most of the people who go to them are just small-time horse players. No problem there for me. No problem at all.

  But I was kidding myself, and I knew it.

  You see, I’d lied to Blackwood and Andy and Jack Rollins that day in the meeting at the Banner when I said I wasn’t gambling anymore. The truth is I’d slipped a few times along the way on my path to redemption. Nothing major. A friendly card game here and there. Some trips to the track—twice to Belmont, and once to Monmouth Park in New Jersey on a Saturday afternoon when I was living in Princeton and lied to Carolyn that I had a new client. Even a quick run down to Atlantic City for a little blackjack and slots one weekend when she was out of town. But everything was still fine. There was no big-time betting. No huge money losses. No sleepless nights. No loan sharks at my door threatening me to pay up or else.

  I could handle it, I told myself.

  I’d discovered it was possible for me to bet a little—have some fun gambling like everyone else—and not let the disease destroy my life. It was really an incredible discovery. I only wished I’d figured it out a few years ago. It would have saved me a lot of grief. Now I could gamble whenever I felt like it—only I’d do it in moderation.