by Dete Meserve
I rubbed my shoulder. “The head news exec at ANC is recruiting me to come work for them. In New York.”
“New York.” His voice sounded hollow.
“He’s talking about expanding the kinds of stories I get to work on beyond breaking news.”
He looked away for a moment and I wondered what he was thinking. “This is what you’ve always wanted. Bigger stories. A wider audience.”
My voice came out like a whisper. “Yes.”
“I knew this moment would come eventually,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “I just never thought it would be this soon.”
“Me neither.”
“You can’t leave LA, Kate. It’s in your blood. It’s a part of who you are. Every time we go anywhere, you have a story about a report you filed from this street or from that neighborhood. You have an almost sixth sense of the stories this city has to tell and what LA viewers want to see.”
I looked at him, speechless even though I make my living talking. My heart was pounding high in my throat and blood rushed to my face. “Would you come to New York with me?” There, I said it.
His brown eyes met mine and he was silent for a long time. “I don’t know, Kate. I can’t walk into the New York City Fire Department and get a job. It takes years to get certified by the department there, and then more years to wait around hoping a job like the one I have opens up.”
The air came out of the room. “Years,” I said quietly.
He nodded. “And after all that there’s a good chance I wouldn’t be doing anything close to what I’m doing here, captaining a search and rescue team.”
“But if the same position was available in New York…”
“There aren’t many search and rescue teams in the country like the one I lead.” He swallowed. “I can’t see how I would move to New York, Kate.”
I had made a mistake agreeing to be on the ANC talk show. My pulse was doing a nervous jig as I sat in a chair with the Channel Eleven News set as a backdrop, waiting for the interview to begin. A camera was set up to beam my interview in real time via satellite to James Russell, and it would air live on ANC.
The makeup and hair stylist had done an outstanding job making me network-ready, and I’d chosen a lavender silk blouse and black skirt, a blend of smart and feminine that looked good in the harsh glare of the lights. I’d done hundreds of reports from the field, but it was a lot more intimidating going on a live national news show where someone else was asking me questions, instead of the other way around. Worse, after my father’s warning, I wasn’t exactly sure what to say about the heists and the wealthy victims.
To calm my nerves, Hannah had done some research on James, showing me photos of him as a young Peace Corps volunteer and a father of two kids, and some vacation photos she’d found on the Internet of his recent trip to Prince Edward Island. She had prepared the materials to make me more comfortable with being interviewed by the iconic journalist. But it wasn’t stage fright that was making me jumpy. It was fear. What would the payback be if I spoke my mind during this interview? Would the people behind the tabloid photo escalate their attempts to rein me in and put even more pressure on my father?
A few minutes later, I saw the show opening and James on the monitor in front of me. Once James addressed me, my job was to talk directly to the camera like I always did. The producer had said my segment would be early in the show and advised me that James often veered away from the planned interview questions, so “be ready for anything.”
James Russell had a haircut like a boy in high school, with long bangs swept to the side. They were blond with a warm russet tone, but since he was well into his sixties, that likely meant the beautiful color came from a bottle, not from nature. He sat in front of a wall of monitors, which projected a photograph of the White House at night. Soft diffused lights below the news desk gave him the effect of being much younger than he was. Until he started talking. Then he shouted at the camera in a stentorian tone, a rapid-fire delivery that was his trademark style but also seemed old-fashioned.
Then a “Billionaires Bilked” graphic flashed on the screen and James introduced the segment. “Millions of dollars stolen from billionaires in Southern California! Are we crying yet? Ha!”
He proceeded to outline the details of the heists, showing clips of the kinds of luxury goods that were stolen and some of the estates involved.
“Going now to Kate Bradley, a reporter who’s been covering the story for Channel Eleven in Los Angeles. Kate, in less than a week, these thieves have hauled away over fifteen million in luxury goods and cash. Why can’t police stop them?”
“This is a sophisticated, high-tech operation where the thieves leave behind no clues. They specifically target items that have high resale value and are easily carried out. Watches worth hundreds of thousands of dollars—each. Jewelry. Cash. Now they’ve graduated to exclusive cars that cost nearly a quarter of a million dollars each. But the people orchestrating these heists are careful, swift, and discerning. They get in, target the specific goods they want, and leave quickly, without a trace.”
“Which seems to be delighting a lot of people. The amount of attention these heists are getting is insane. Everyone is talking about them. The barista at the coffee shop around the corner. Even Washington notables. Why should people care if a bunch of billionaires get bilked for millions?” Then he went on a tirade about the investment banker who earned $275 million a year before he was convicted of securities fraud. He finally came back to me a few minutes later. “Kate, it seems to me that there’s a side effect to a story like this. People are now realizing how extravagantly some of the super rich live. Agree?”
I drew a deep breath. I knew my answer wasn’t going to please my father or his wealthy donors. “It’s very hard for viewers to imagine anyone owning, for example, dozens of watches that are worth twenty or thirty or one hundred thousand or more—each. And when they see the extravagance of these estates—indoor pools, ballrooms, tennis courts, spas that rival the world’s finest—they can’t help but be mesmerized. Especially here in Los Angeles, where less than twenty minutes from these estates, tens of thousands of families live below the poverty line.”
“This a war on the uber wealthy, the one percent of the one percent,” Russell said. “All of these estate owners are on the Forbes list of the top hundred richest Americans. Last year the three hundred wealthiest people in America were worth over three trillion—people, that’s trillion—dollars. And America’s mega rich are getting mega richer at an unprecedented rate. That’s why people are following this story so closely, right?”
“I think people are drawn in by all the extravagance and intrigued about how the thieves have pulled off these sophisticated heists. And yes, I think people are wondering how the estate owners have amassed such stratospheric wealth while millions are struggling to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.”
“Now this story has taken an ugly turn. They’ve set a fire to a Hollywood landmark and one of their own is in critical condition. What kind of criminals are we dealing with here?”
I swallowed hard because now he was asking me to give an opinion about the thieves when nothing—absolutely nothing—was known about them. “I don’t think we have all the facts about the heists yet, so it’s hard to know what kind of people are behind them. I spend a great deal of time covering murders and assaults, and there it’s easy to characterize the perpetrators as malevolent. But it’s not yet clear here. After covering the Good Sam story a few months ago—the story about the anonymous good Samaritan who left one hundred thousand dollars cash on doorsteps throughout LA—I’ve learned that things are often not what they seem.”
James didn’t seem to like that answer either. I suspected he hoped I’d paint a more threatening and sinister picture of the criminals.
The interview was over before I knew it. I assumed David and Bonnie would be satisfied because the Channel Eleven logo was in th
e shot during the entire segment. I suspected Andrew would call to recruit me. And I knew my father would let me know how disappointed he was with my comments about the wealthy victims.
But I never expected what happened next.
Chapter Nine
I struggled with my run around Lake Hollywood the next morning. By mile three, my calves were burning and I was finding it hard to push through the strain. I hadn’t run for nearly a week and was paying for it. That, and I was bone-tired from the news events of the last two weeks, and even my morning run wasn’t reviving my energy. I yawned, then switched my smartphone to an indie rock song, one with a faster cadence, and tried to find my rhythm again.
I ticked off another mile of trail and the calf pain was beginning to ease when my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number that flashed up, and usually didn’t answer unidentified calls, but I hoped it might be from Jake so I pressed Accept.
“We didn’t set the fire,” the man said quickly. “It was an accident.”
“Who is this?” I stopped in midstride.
“I’m the idiot they caught on camera.”
A jolt of adrenaline shot through me as I realized who I might be speaking to. But years in the journalism business taught me that often what seems to be true isn’t.
“How did you get my number?”
“Found it online. Not easy. But I know how.”
I tried to catch my breath, but my voice was squeezed in my throat. “How do I know you’re the real deal?”
There was a long pause on the line and I worried that he had hung up. “Because I’m going to tell you things no one else knows, not even police.”
I moved to the side of the running path to avoid being trampled by a pack of runners. “Why are you telling me? You could tell your story to just about any reporter or network in the country.”
His voice, thin and raspy, shook a little. “I saw your interview with James Russell. Online. You said something like, ‘Things are not always what they seem.’ Which is true, especially about this. You’re the only reporter I’ve seen who hasn’t rushed to judge us for what we’re doing. So, yeah, I thought you might give me a fair chance to tell my side of the story.”
“What is your side of the story?”
“I’m not a bad person. I don’t want police to continue to twist this and make it out like I am some kind of bad guy.”
“You broke into an estate, stole five million dollars’ worth of stuff, then set fire to the house, seriously injuring one of your comrades. That doesn’t exactly make you a hero.”
“I didn’t break in. The door was already open for me. I was told to open the safe with an angle grinder. I didn’t take anything. I had one job—open the safe and leave.”
“After you set the house on fire.”
“Like I said, it was an accident. The grinder threw off some sparks that hit the antique rug, and it caught fire. That’s what I want people to know. Our instructions were to do the job and get out, without harming anything or anyone.”
I wiped the sweat from my face. “Those were your actual instructions?”
“One hundred percent. What we were doing was important. He started every mission by saying he was ‘summoning the champions’ and telling us we were changing the world. And you can’t change the world if you’re destroying stuff.”
“Who said that?”
“The leader guy.”
“Who is the leader?”
“No idea. He spoke to us through an earpiece during the mission. We wore GoPro cameras so he could see where we were and tell us what to do. I only knew him by the name Locksley.”
“How many of you were in on this?”
“Maybe five or six. I don’t know exactly. None of us knew what anyone else was doing or anyone’s names. We wore masks so we wouldn’t see anyone’s face.”
“Still, you got caught. On camera.”
“Yeah, about that. He had a way to disable the security system and cameras, but I guess there was a nanny cam or something that wasn’t hooked into the system. I just happened to be the dumbass who walked by it without my ski mask on.”
“So if you didn’t know the leader, how did you get involved in these ‘missions’?”
I heard him draw in a long breath. “We talked, you know, online in games and stuff. We knew we could change the world with what we were doing. And sometimes you have to break the rules to do that.”
“How were you changing the world?”
I heard the sound of several male voices on his end of the line. “I gotta go,” he said quickly. “Tell your viewers we aren’t bad.” He hung up.
I tried dialing his number back but got a recorded error message, making me realize he had disguised his caller ID. He was probably using the app that Jake had talked about that disguises your phone number.
I stood on the running trail for a long moment, staring at the Hollywood sign tucked in the hills in front of me and trying to make sense of what I’d heard. My gut was telling me this wasn’t a fake confessor. This guy had facts that not even the police might know, and he had something else, a nervous quake in his voice that felt genuine.
But what struck me as odd was his agenda. He didn’t want people to think he was a “bad guy.” I don’t get to interview many criminals, because they’re usually long gone or being taken away by the time I get to a crime scene, but the ones I had met never seemed all that worried about their reputation. Yet this guy believed he was changing the world and had asked me twice to tell viewers that he wasn’t bad.
I met with David and Bonnie in the Fish Bowl to dissect the call. The last time I’d spoken to Bonnie, she was reprimanding me on the Good Sam story. She had been harsh with me then, speaking in clipped tones that made it clear she was in charge and my job was to follow her directives. But now as she sat in the brightly lit conference room, she was actually smiling at me. Okay, not smiling. Her lips were curved upward instead of pressed in a firm line like they usually were.
She was dressed as though she was about to be photographed for Harper’s Bazaar—a tailored black suit dress with trendy upturned collar and five-inch Christian Louboutins.
“The attorneys have cleared your report for air,” she said. Then she went on to explain that because we didn’t have any identifying information about the caller—what he looked like, his name, his whereabouts—we weren’t required to share what we knew with the police. She laid out a long explanation studded with legal terminology, then finished with, “Don’t be nervous, and if the police call you, direct them to me. I’ll determine if or how we’ll share information with them.”
I swallowed hard. The story had taken on a gravity beyond anything I’d experienced before. I’d never had the police chase after me for information. I had always been the pursuer, often successful—but frequently not—at getting the information I needed from the police. But instead of being nervous, as Bonnie suggested, I saw a potential meeting with the police as an opportunity to delve into Stephen’s theory about police officers’ involvement in the heists.
“Glad the attorneys are happy, but this makes for lousy TV,” David grumbled. He was pacing the floor with his hands in his pockets. “No visuals. There’s no recording of the call. We don’t even have the guy’s name.”
“True,” I said. “But we know how many people are involved, how they opened the safe, how the fire got started. That’s far more than the police know.”
“We’re missing the point of what he told us,” I said. “By giving his team members the instruction not to do any harm or damage, the leader deludes them into thinking they’re doing the right thing. The caller actually believes he didn’t commit a crime because he didn’t break in or take anything.”
Bonnie leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. “If you spread out the parts of a crime over several people, no one feels like they’re doing anything wrong. Clever.”
Bonnie made sure my report opened every
newscast for the rest of the day with the anchors giving the story a powerful lead-in. “Channel Eleven has exclusive, new information about the recent burglaries that have hauled away over fifteen million dollars in stolen items from estates throughout Southern California. One of the burglary suspects spoke with Channel Eleven reporter Kate Bradley and gave her exclusive insight into the heists.”
“According to an unnamed caller who claims he was the individual caught on camera at the Holmby Hills estate, a team of five or six is responsible for the high-stakes crimes,” I said. “The caller wasn’t able to identify other team members because they all wore masks and none of the team knew who the others were. He says the group was directed by a leader on a headset and given specific instructions not to damage anything or harm anyone. He claims the fire at the estate was an accident, caused by sparks falling on an antique rug. Meanwhile, motives behind the heists are unclear. Team members believe they are ‘changing the world.’ They are not, he says, ‘bad guys.’”
After filing my last report, I headed to Eric’s home, a sage-green California ranch house tucked deep in the shade of a rambling oak tree in the Hollywood Hills. I pulled in to his driveway and parked behind his midnight blue pickup. You don’t see many pickups in car-congested LA, which defines itself by its Lexuses, BMWs, and Mercedes. But there was something comforting about Eric’s pickup—sturdy, reliable, and strong.
“I’m making naked stew,” Eric called from the kitchen.
“Hmm, what are the ingredients?”
“What do you think they might be?”
I tossed my purse on the couch, curious to find out what he had in store. He stepped into the living room, wiping his hands on a towel. And fully clothed.
“Disappointed?” he said, with a twinkle in his eye. “What were you expecting?” He leaned in to kiss me. “It’s called ‘naked’ because it’s made with no spices. Makes up for it with two pints of Guinness.”