Perfectly Good Crime

by Dete Meserve

  I wondered if David knew about ANC’s offer and was hoping to guilt me into turning it down by being nice. If that was his plan, it was working.

  “Chris Gallagher himself is doing it,” he said. Chris Gallagher was the popular anchor of The Morning Show, a fixture for so many years that viewers had watched him age from a cute guy in his twenties with a full head of curly hair to a handsome middle-ager with a graying buzz cut. “Hang on and I’ll put Teresa on.”

  I knew Teresa would do a quick rundown of the interview sequence. The timing was still likely to change, but we would go through the questions they were preparing and work out what time I needed to be in Channel Eleven’s studios for the live shot by satellite.

  But instead of doing the call in Eric’s front yard, I started walking back to my car. As Teresa detailed the questions, I got in the car and sank on wobbly legs into the driver’s seat. And as we sorted out the sequence, I started the car. The next thing I knew I was pulling away and heading down the street. I glanced at Eric’s house reflected in my rearview mirror, wondering where I was headed and where I belonged.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Can we ever know where we belong? As I sat under the hot TV lights at three o’clock that morning, waiting to begin my interview with Chris Gallagher by satellite, I wasn’t sure. Did I belong here at Channel Eleven or at ANC in New York? Did I belong with Eric or was that over? With Jake? With anyone?

  At least a half-dozen texts from Eric had flashed up on my phone that evening:

  “Call me.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “On duty for the next 24. But I really want to talk with you. Call me?”

  I took a full thirty minutes to text back: “I’ll call you in the morning.”

  I was still smarting about Carrie, baffled why he hadn’t told me about her—or apparently told her about me. My head spun at how quickly he’d moved on to someone else once I had a serious offer to move to New York.

  One thing I knew. There had been a relationship between them at some point. Past or present, I couldn’t be sure. But it didn’t take a reporter’s instincts to see that their shared history, especially her connection with Brian and sailing, was a powerful draw. And admittedly she seemed far less complicated than I was, what with all my baggage—news reporter, senator’s daughter, possibly moving to New York. Maybe uncomplicated was what Eric wanted.

  Where did I belong? Whatever the answer was, trying to find it was distracting me from the biggest story of my career. While I was worrying about moving to New York and what would happen with Eric, our Channel Two competitors had homed in on a sophisticated group of hackers in Russia who had ties to Southern California. Their theories about the group’s connections to the heists were strong enough to get police and FBI attention. What leads did Channel Eleven have? None.

  We had scored the exclusive interview with Robin Hood, so all expectations were on us—and on me—to figure out who he was. But despite repeated attempts at contacting Locksley through League of Legends, he had gone silent.

  The floor director gave me the signal that the interview was getting ready to start, so I sat up in my chair and tried to focus my attention on what Chris was saying as he introduced me. It was already into the breakfast hour on the East Coast, so the entire morning team there looked fresh and awake on their cheery set decked out with purple peonies for some reason they must have explained earlier in the show. It would take some work to match that tone from a mostly empty newsroom in the middle of the night in Los Angeles.

  “Kate, there are lots of theories about who Robin Hood is, but you’re the only one who’s actually talked with him. Any thoughts on who he is?” Chris asked.

  He had veered completely from the list of questions Teresa had given me. I hid my surprise. “He’s someone with great technical ability. I suspect he has considerable charisma, enough to convince others to follow him in his mission to change the world. And I think he’s someone who’s guided by strong values.”

  Chris laughed, the staged kind of laugh that morning show anchors have perfected. “He’s stealing. That’s not exactly value-driven behavior.”

  “He makes a point of apologizing for the injury to the housekeeper at Palazzo de Bella Vista. And not only apologizing but depositing a hundred thousand dollars in her bank account. He marshals his team by telling them they are ‘changing the world.’ He orchestrates events of giving to the poor in staggering proportions. Ten thousand food baskets to the poor every week. Over five hundred scholarships. And I’m sure there’s more to come.”

  “You sound as though you admire him.”

  I chose my words carefully. “I admire how he’s bringing attention and help to the working poor in America.”

  “But is stealing the right way to go about it?”

  I shook my head. “Whether he is good or bad, it doesn’t change the fundamental nature of what he has revealed. Two-thirds of Americans are living paycheck-to-paycheck, while a single income from just one of the top hundred wealthiest Americans could buy housing for every homeless person in the country.”

  “So are you saying he’s a hero?”

  “Here’s what we know. The majority of Americans have stagnant or worsening living standards, while those at the very top have seen the most significant gains. I think what Robin Hood is asking us to consider is whether this is compatible with values rooted in our nation’s history and the high value Americans have placed on equality of opportunity.”

  “Given that statement and that your father is Senator Hale Bradley, one might ask if you have plans to run for office?”

  That definitely wasn’t on the question list. “Not that I know of,” I said wryly, hoping I sounded sufficiently flattered and not cynical.

  “If you keep making statements like that, you might find yourself on the campaign trail soon. And you’ll have many people agreeing with you as we see minimum wage and tax reform bills going through Congress.”

  I shifted in my seat, uncomfortable with where this conversation was headed. Why did journalists always assume that the sons and daughters of politicians wanted to launch political careers?

  He must have sensed my uneasiness, because he changed the subject. “Do you think we’ll figure out who Robin Hood is? We know he’s got ties to Russia, which makes the likelihood of tracking him down that much more complicated. What do you think?”

  “There are a lot of people who want to find out who Robin Hood is. And we’re going to drive ourselves crazy trying to pin him down. He’s got enough technical sophistication to outsmart us all. But we’re going to keep trying.”

  He flashed the trademark smile that had made him an American favorite for decades. “Well, if anyone does find him, I hope it’s either you or me who gets the interview.” He leaned forward and set his index cards on the coffee table in front of him. “All right, thank you. Kate Bradley from Channel Eleven in Los Angeles, the station that scored the exclusive interview with the man we’re all calling Robin Hood. Next up, Gretchen takes a look at the record-breaking rain headed to the Midwest.”

  “Guided by strong values?” There was no mistaking the anger in my father’s voice. “A hero? What has come over you?”

  Sweat broke out on my upper lip. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been fearful of my father’s voice. I gripped my cell phone tightly. “First, I never called him a hero—”

  “You said you admired him. Wait until that appears in the headlines. ‘Senator’s Daughter Admires Robin Hood.’”

  “And this isn’t warfare against the super wealthy. It’s about helping the poor, the disabled, the homeless.”

  “It doesn’t look good. A senator’s daughter admiring someone who is stealing—”

  “Stealing from your would-be campaign donors. Your donor base. That’s what’s really causing the problem, right? If your donors weren’t upset, this wouldn’t even be an issue. You didn’t raise me to agree with you on everything. Y
ou always wanted me to be an ‘objective thinker.’ What’s changed?”

  There was a long silence on the phone. My dad had hung up.

  Who was Carrie Gilbert? While every news reporter I knew was scrambling to figure out who Robin Hood was, I was wondering about the woman who’d been with Eric the night before. I don’t think of myself as someone who’s overly insecure in relationships, but that certainly wasn’t holding true here. I felt palpable dread at what he might tell me about his feelings for Carrie.

  I googled her first. Carrie Gilbert isn’t an uncommon name, but I found her on LinkedIn. The profile was pretty meager—a listing of her current position as a wedding photographer in Pacific Heights, a neighborhood in San Francisco.

  I clicked on her Facebook page. Apparently she hadn’t made her page private, because I could see her entire timeline. She didn’t post often but there was a post of a poem about how she missed her mother. A few other posts were shares of funny videos or photo memes. Then I scrolled down to a photo of her with Eric in front of his fireplace. He was dressed in uniform and one of her tanned arms was around him as they beamed straight at the camera. The caption read: love the hayes family.

  I stared at the post in disbelief. Anger and disappointment lit my nerves. She hadn’t tagged Eric, probably because he wasn’t on Facebook much, but the post had already generated thirty-eight likes and seven comments, including, “Who’s that hottie with you?” from someone named Tamara and “You two look great together” from a woman who looked like her sister. A few were more somber reminders of Brian’s passing. “Miss Brian too. Love to the whole Hayes family.”

  But the shot to my heart was Carrie’s comment. “You can’t see it, but he’s got a superhero cape under that uniform.”

  My call to Eric went straight to voice mail.

  Rain was coming. We don’t get much of it in LA, so few Angelenos have developed a sense of when it’s on its way. But I’d grown up in San Francisco, where everyone seemed to be clairvoyant about impending rain. You could read it in the light shift of the wind, the earthy scent in the air. In Los Angeles, there’s a peculiar quality to the light before it rains, a yellow-blue tint that scatters the sunshine.

  The sky hung close as I drove to Bel Air that morning for the interview with Stephen Bening. Even after a full night of sleep I was still dog-tired and the shadowy skies reflected my mood. Worse, I hadn’t prepared for the interview. After hounding Stephen for it, I hadn’t even found time to write questions.

  The timing of his interview couldn’t have been worse for him and the other wealthy heist victims. Robin Hood’s interview was all anyone was talking about, and even if Stephen was engaging on camera, few people would see him as a victim.

  I reached his Bel Air estate a few minutes past ten o’clock, just as the rain began to fall in big fat drops. As I walked from the car, past a multicolored stone gatehouse capped by giant eagles and along a stone pathway that meandered past a koi pond to his covered front porch, the sun peeked out from the clouds and the rain transformed into an almost invisible mist, giving the estate a timeless, otherworldly feeling.

  A man dressed in a tailored black suit ushered me inside. “Mr. Bening will meet you in the study.” Our footsteps echoed as we crossed the grand foyer decorated with oak paneling and gilded balustrades, past a staircase with intricate wrought-iron railings, and into yet another foyer covered with an expansive, yet faded, Persian rug. Then, in a move he had clearly mastered from doing it many times before, the man flung open two enormous wooden doors into the study.

  The room looked more like a cathedral than a study. It was easily three thousand square feet, with soaring thirty-foot-high ceilings that were adorned by carved wooden beams. On one end of the room was a vaultlike recess with floor-to-ceiling windows and a hand-carved wooden chandelier. Rays of watery sunshine slanted through the windows, bathing the alcove in the kind of golden light you’d see in a Botticelli painting. I was caught in a dream. Surely such a place was of the imagination, not reality.

  Josh had already set up a camera and some lighting by two antique chairs in the middle of the room. The look on his face was of utter disbelief. “I shot a ton of B-roll because no one…no one’s ever going to believe this room.”

  There was so much to see and absorb, my eyes wouldn’t settle on anything for long. The hand-painted harpsichord, the antique fireplaces, the oil paintings in carved frames—even if I had stratospheric wealth, I could not have imagined the splendor of this room.

  “Thank you for coming out.” Stephen’s voice brought me back to the moment.

  He was dressed informally in a pair of blue jeans, a white shirt open at the collar, and a tailored navy sport coat. The beginnings of a wispy beard were creeping along his jawline, a look that was less billionaire and more tech guru. But it was his shoes that quietly professed his wealth—a $1,500 pair of Ferragamo semigloss leather sneakers in black with distressed off-white piping.

  “I hope this room works for the interview.”

  Did he have any idea what level of wealth this house was trumpeting? No one was going to feel sorry for Stephen—no matter how much Robin Hood had stolen from him—with this room as a backdrop.

  “We could set up somewhere else less…grand, if you like.”

  Josh shot me a panicked look. I knew he didn’t want to leave this setting, not only because he’d worked hard to set up the lighting but because neither of us ever got to do interviews in a place like this.

  Stephen glanced at his watch. “I’m tight on time, so if this works, let’s go with it.”

  I settled carefully in a hand-painted antique chair, realizing it probably cost more than my yearly salary. Stephen sat next to me and laid a laser-focused gaze on me.

  “A few ground rules,” he said. “You may not refer to me as a billionaire. Or one of America’s wealthiest one hundred. Understood?”

  I nodded. We don’t allow interview subjects to give ultimatums, but they’re hard to argue seconds before you start recording the interview and even harder to argue in an awe-inspiring setting like this. I’ve rejected interviewees’ conditions at crash sites and crime scenes, but I had to admit that this setting was giving him leverage that other interview subjects don’t have.

  “The estates of some of the wealthiest people in America have been targeted in a series of sophisticated, high-tech heists. The thieves—known as Robin Hood—have hauled away over twenty-one million dollars in cash, cars and other high-end goods and have used the proceeds to fund several high-profile events giving away scholarships, food and housing to the poor.” I said, opening the interview. “Stephen Bening, owner of Chateau de Soleil in Bel Air, is the first and only estate owner to talk with the media. Thank you for talking with me today, Stephen.”

  He nodded, lifting the corners of his mouth in a slight smile.

  “Stephen, why are you talking with us now?”

  “A lot has been said in the media about the wealth of the people targeted by the band of criminals known as Robin Hood. We didn’t steal to earn our wealth. We worked for it. We are tenacious problem solvers. We set goals, and none of them have been easy to achieve. But no matter how much someone has, stealing is wrong.”

  “Robin Hood says this is a victimless crime.”

  “How is this victimless? First off, our privacy was violated and the thieves could’ve accessed sensitive information. It appears that they didn’t make off with any data, but we are still confirming that. Second, my property was stolen. Yes, I can replace it with funds from insurance—although I haven’t—but the insurance companies are taking significant losses that will eventually be passed on to other clients in the form of higher rates. And let’s not forget the cost to taxpayers for all the police and FBI agents who are investigating the crimes. This is not a victimless crime.”

  “Does it make a difference that Robin Hood is doing good with what he stole from you and others?”

  His neck flushed red
. “Look, I give to charity. Most of us do. I don’t go around talking about it, but I recently gave ten million dollars to diabetes research at UCLA. How I choose to give money is my choice. I don’t need some someone who calls himself Robin Hood to decide for me.”

  A blond woman wearing a tan blazer and black pants strode into the room. She held a cell phone and nodded anxiously at Stephen.

  “Beth has a very important call waiting for me, so let’s end the interview here.” Stephen rose and extended his hand. “Thanks, Kate. Be sure to say hello to your father for me.”

  Russ Hartman didn’t like how much airtime my brief but exclusive interview with Stephen Bening was getting. Because of it, his story about the brushfire that had already burned seventeen hundred acres in Angeles National Forest was getting buried in our newscasts.

  Russ was making a mistake venting his discontent. David ran the assignment meeting like the captain of a battleship and didn’t tolerate disruptions, punishing outbursts with crummy assignments or withering lectures. But David was surprisingly silent as Russ railed about an interview with a billionaire beating out his exclusive footage of the out-of-control wildfire.

  I tried to defend the station’s decision. “This is the first time any of the billionaire victims has spoken to the media. We got the interview David asked us to get and one that every news outlet in the country has been vying to get for weeks.”

  “No offense, Kate, but the only reason you scored that interview is because your name is Kate Bradley.”

  That stung. Yes, I knew my father’s name opened doors for me. I should’ve been used to people being insensitive about it, but it still managed to surprise me. “My father didn’t arrange the interview. I did.”

  He nodded. “And the fact that Stephen Bening has contributed tens of thousands to your father’s campaigns over the years, or that you attended a fundraiser at his estate, has nothing to do with you getting that interview.”