Shooting for the Stars

by R. G. Belsky

  More importantly, there was a picture of me next to my byline. I got the real star treatment for this one.

  I was back on the front page. I was a real reporter again. Not just a public relations stunt to take advantage of my name and big-story background. Not working on multi-platform projects for Stacy like the one she’d had me do on The Prime Time Files. Not worrying about going viral on the Internet, doing webcasts, or establishing my social media presence.

  This was all about a story. A real, old-fashioned story. My story. Which is really all I’ve ever cared about in this business. The stories.

  Chapter 21

  I WAS sitting with my feet up on my desk, drinking black coffee, and waiting for the Pulitzer people to call when Tommy Rizzo Jr. showed up at the Daily News.

  I almost didn’t recognize him at first. I’d only seen him in person that one time at Abbie’s TV studio. It all happened so quickly that it didn’t make much of an impression. He didn’t seem angry this time. He was wearing a brightly colored pullover golf shirt, khaki slacks, and open-toed sandals. He was a young guy, maybe thirty at the most, with a friendly smile and nice eyes. He didn’t look like the son of the Godfather. He looked . . . well, he looked sort of normal.

  He put the Sunday Daily News down on my desk in front of me and pointed to my article.

  “I’m Tommy Rizzo.”

  “I know.”

  “We need to talk about this,” he said.

  “Sure.”

  He looked around the crowded newsroom. Some people had already noticed him there and begun to stare.

  “Not in here.”

  “Where?”

  “Let’s take a walk.”

  We rode the elevator down to the street. It was nearly lunchtime, and the sidewalks were crowded with people. I remembered reading somewhere how Thomas Rizzo Sr. held meetings all the time on the sidewalk because he was afraid of offices being bugged. Maybe his son had the same worry.

  I also thought about how I might be taking a bit of a chance by leaving the office with this guy. In addition to seeming upset up about the article, he had been in love with Abbie Kincaid. I wondered if he knew about me and Abbie. I mean I’d gone out with her after she dumped him. I sure hoped Thomas Rizzo Jr. wasn’t the jealous type.

  He seemed nice enough on the surface, but that’s what they said about his father too. Thomas Rizzo was supposed to be the kind of person who gave a pat on the back and a friendly smile just before he put an ice pick in your head. If his kid put an ice pick in my head, I wouldn’t be able to finish the Laura Marlowe story. On the bright side though, I wouldn’t ever have to listen to Stacy again. I always like to maintain an optimistic outlook.

  “You wrote about my father in your story,” he said as we walked through the crowds. “Why did you have to do that?”

  “Because he turned out to be part of the story.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “Is that what he sent you to tell me?”

  “I’m not here as an emissary of my father.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I’m concerned about where all of this is heading. My father became very upset when he read your article—especially the part linking him with Laura Marlowe.”

  “Upset? How upset? Upset like he wants to have me thrown in the East River with a pair of cement overshoes?”

  Rizzo smiled weakly, like a guy who’s had to deal with those kinds of jokes all his life.

  “As I told you, my father doesn’t even know I’m here. He’d be very upset with me if he found out. My father and me, we don’t get along too well.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I guess I’m sort of a disappointment to him.”

  I remembered the guy in the car who worked for Thomas Rizzo telling me the same thing. “Children can be a great disappointment,” he said to me that day. “But Mr. Rizzo still loves his son very much.” According to Abbie though, Tommy Rizzo Jr. had graduated with honors from Harvard Business School. Aronson said he had started his own real estate company. So what was the problem? I asked Rizzo that question.

  “Let’s just say my father and I have different priorities in life,” he shrugged. “I have a real estate business on the Lower East Side near Tompkins Square. It’s not the best neighborhood and I don’t get rich there. But there is a great deal of satisfaction for me in helping poor people get affordable housing. Making money isn’t important to me. I want to help people. I buy buildings that nobody else wants, renovate them, and make them available to tenants at a rate they can pay. I’m helping make this city a better place to live. That’s what’s really important to me. My father doesn’t understand that.”

  “He wanted you to grow up and be a chip off the old Mafia block just like him?”

  “My father’s way doesn’t work anymore. The world is changing. I think even he realizes that now. But it’s been a long struggle. You see, my father always wanted me to follow in his footsteps. Instead, I have my own ambitions and dreams. My father doesn’t always agree with them. That happens a lot between fathers and sons, I suppose. But it’s worse when your father is Thomas Rizzo.”

  “Growing up as his son must have been very difficult.”

  “Let me tell you a story about my father,” Tommy Rizzo said. “A story he likes to tell himself. When he was twelve years old, someone robbed his house. My father’s family was very poor, but his mother had some jewelry that had been handed down from our ancestors over the years—dating back to when the Rizzos were still in Italy. She was home alone and the jewelry was very sentimental to her, and she was heartsick over it. One day, the man who stole it tried to sell it in the neighborhood. He didn’t know who my father was, but my father recognized the jewelry right away. The guy was wearing a watch that had been in my father’s family for years on his left wrist. A few days later, the man turned up stabbed to death on top of a vacant building. His left hand—the hand that the watch had been on—was cut off. No one ever talked about exactly what happened, but everyone in the neighborhood knew my father had carried out his own justice. It was all about family honor, he told me once. And being a real man who stood up for your family. Honor, family, being a real man—those things have always been very, very important to my father.”

  “And he doesn’t think that working in real estate is particularly honorable or manly?”

  “My father and I have very different ideas about what being a real man is all about.”

  He talked about the real estate business. How he had restored landmark buildings on the Lower East Side, saved people from eviction, and built a lot of affordable housing in neighborhoods that needed it. It all sounded very impressive. Of course, it could all be a big front like one of his father’s businesses. Tommy Rizzo might be ripping off the contractors, ripping off the tenants, and maybe even burying bodies at construction sites. But he seemed sincere. It all seemed very important to him.

  The truth was he seemed like a nice guy. I liked him. I could see why Abbie had liked him.

  “What happened between you and Abbie?” I asked.

  “We went out for a while. It didn’t work out. But there was never anything really serious between us. I realize that now. I’m very sorry about what happened to her. She was a good person.”

  “She told me that you wanted to keep seeing her.”

  “Abbie and I weren’t really right for each other.”

  “But she was the one who broke up with you, right?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Didn’t that make you mad?”

  “At first.”

  “And later?”

  “I got over it.”

  “Just out of curiosity, where were you the night Abbie was killed?”

  “I didn’t kill Abbie, Mr. Malloy. I told that to the police. I’m pretty sure they believed me too, because
they haven’t come back since then. I think they’re looking at her ex-husband as the most likely suspect in the murder.”

  Eventually we got back to Laura Marlowe.

  “My father is a very strong man,” Rizzo told me, “but he becomes very emotional about the subject of Laura Marlowe. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I can guess. My father met her when she was a struggling young actress. He was married to my mother at the time, and I believe he always took the bond of marriage very seriously. He never played around. Except maybe this time. I believe he fell in love with Laura, and he helped her to become a star and then she died. It was only a fleeting time in my father’s life, but he’s never forgotten about it. She’s a very special memory to him. He wants her to rest in peace. That’s why I’d like you to stop writing about my father and her.”

  “Maybe your father was afraid thirty years ago that someone would find out about the affair with Laura Marlowe,” I said. “Maybe he was afraid she would go public or tell his wife or post it on the mob bulletin board for all his friends to see. Maybe he had to shut her up. Maybe he had her killed, then set it up to make it look like a patsy—this guy Janson—did it. That’s why he—and you—don’t want me looking into it any deeper. It kind of all makes sense when you think about it.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why?”

  “My father never would have killed Laura Marlowe.”

  “Because he’s such a sweetheart who wouldn’t hurt a fly?”

  “No, he’s no angel. I don’t kid myself about that.”

  “So why won’t you at least consider the possibility that he might have been responsible for her death and now wants to keep that hidden?”

  “Because he loved her.”

  Of course he did.

  Everyone loved Laura Marlowe.

  Except the person who killed her.

  PART THREE

  SHOOTING FOR THE STARS

  Chapter 22

  THERE was another angle I needed to pursue. Before she died, Abbie had indicated to me she’d found some sort of connection between Laura Marlowe’s murder and several other killings. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about at the time, and I still didn’t know. But if there really was any link between Laura and those other deaths, then I needed to be looking at them too.

  Abbie had shown me pictures of four other women that first day in her office when she asked me questions about serial killer cases. I didn’t recognize any of them at the time except Cheryl Carson. But Abbie might have left behind more information about them in her office. I decided to check it out at The Prime Time Files studios.

  There was no bodyguard to meet me this time. Just Gary Lang. He didn’t seem any happier with me than he did that first day we met in his office.

  “Everything’s such a mess here now,” he said, shaking his head. “We don’t know whether the show’s going to be canceled or they’re going to try to make it work with a new host. It’s all being decided over the next few days. I still can’t believe it. Everything was going so great. The show was a big hit. Me and Abbie were on our way. Now she’s gone, and I’m screwed.”

  “Yeah, it was awfully inconsiderate of Abbie to get herself murdered.”

  “It sure was,” he said, either ignoring or completely missing the sarcasm.

  “Abbie was working on the Laura Marlowe story when she died,” I said. “But she seemed to think it might be connected to a series of other killings of women over the years. She showed me their pictures. One of them was Cheryl Carson, the country singer that died of a drug overdose a while back. Can you tell me any more about this?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She never told you any of this?”

  “No.”

  “What did Abbie tell you she had found out for the next show on the Laura Marlowe story?”

  “Just that it was some sort of big secret she’d been working on for a while. She kept saying it was going to be something really great, but that’s all. She said I’d find out more when she was ready to go on the air with it. And that I—and everyone else—was going to be really shocked by the next Laura Marlowe exclusive.”

  “Did she leave any video or notes or anything about it?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Doesn’t that seem unusual for her not to tell you anything about a big story she was working on for the next show?”

  “Sure, but I was used to it. Abbie had been acting strangely for a while before that. She was stressed out, kept going on crying jags—and was very secretive about what she was doing. She was also drinking heavily at times, and I’m pretty sure she was abusing a few drugs. Prescription and otherwise. I just figured that all the threats she was getting from some crazy stalker or whatever had really gotten to her. She was kind of a mess.”

  I thought about the way Abbie was that last night she showed up at my apartment. I couldn’t disagree with Lang that something was bothering her.

  “Would you mind if I looked around her office myself?”

  “Whatever,” he shrugged.

  I got the feeling he just wanted to get rid of me, and that he figured this was the easiest way to do it. He walked me down the hall to the office where I’d met with Abbie that first day I’d been here.

  “Who do you think killed Abbie?” I asked, just for something to say.

  “My money’s on Tommy Rizzo,” Lang said. “I didn’t like Abbie getting involved with him. The Rizzos are scary people.”

  “What about Abbie’s ex-husband, Bill Remesch?” I asked. “Did you ever meet him?”

  “The one from Wisconsin. Yeah, he showed up here. He was really mad at her because of what she did on TV about their marriage. He kept saying she’d ruined his life. He thought he was a tough guy. Some kind of ex–football player. But he wasn’t so tough. Vincent took care of him, and I never saw him again.”

  “Vincent? The big guy with the ponytail?”

  “Yeah, Vincent D’Nolfo used to work here.”

  “Used to?”

  “His job was to protect Abbie.”

  “And now she’s dead.”

  “Like I said, there’s no job for him anymore.”

  * * *

  There was no new video on Laura Marlowe that I could find in Abbie’s office. There also were no messages written in invisible ink on the wall, no secret compartments filled with clues in Abbie’s desk, and no signed confessions from Laura Marlowe’s real killer. I spent about thirty minutes poking around drawers and file cabinets before I found something. It was a file filled with newspaper clippings, computer printouts, and notes—in what looked like Abbie’s handwriting—on yellow lined legal paper.

  I went through the newspaper clips and printouts first. They were about a series of deaths. Five different people. The names were:

  Cheryl Carson

  Stephanie Lee

  Susan Fairmont

  Deborah Ditmar

  Laura Marlowe

  * * *

  I read about all four deaths besides Laura Marlowe, writing stuff down in my notebook and trying to figure out what it all meant.

  The story about Cheryl Carson was pretty much the way I remembered it. She’d been an up-and-coming country singer who’d just broken through with her first Top Ten hit when she died of a heroin overdose in a Seattle hotel room while on tour with her band back in the late ’80s. She’d had an ongoing drug problem, she’d suffered a few close calls with overdoses in the past, and the medical examiner’s report said it appeared she simply injected too much of an especially powerful batch of heroin bought earlier that day.

  Stephanie Lee was a young TV news anchor in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who’d disappeared one night after doing her 11 p.m. news show in 1988. Police found her car, keys, and purse in the parking lot of the station the next day. They said the
re appeared to be signs of a struggle and shell casings were found nearby. Several days later, her body turned up in a cage at the local zoo. She had been shot to death, then her body was mutilated by animals in the cage. No motive was ever found for the grisly murder and no one was ever arrested.

  Susan Fairmont, an emerging new political media star, was a controversial young TV host in Denver who had made a big name for herself in just a few years of work. An outspoken liberal, she made a lot of enemies with her nightly broadcasts, during which she was a tireless advocate for abortion, school busing, legalizing of drugs, and unlimited welfare for the poor. She was shot to death in front of her home one morning in 1989 after a particularly acrimonious on-air debate with an anti-abortion leader the night before. The anti-abortionist was questioned, but never charged. The case was still unsolved.

  Perhaps the most intriguing victim was Deborah Ditmar, a young actress found murdered in 1982—three years before Laura died. The two killings bore some remarkable similarities. Deborah Ditmar had done commercials, small stage plays, and finally scored her biggest role with a recurring part as a sexy next-door neighbor on a TV sitcom. At some point, she began receiving disturbing letters from a fan. They started out talking about how much he loved her, but then became progressively more violent and possessive. One day she opened the front door of her house in Los Angeles, and he was standing there. Then he shot her to death and fled. He was never found.

  Five names of dead women. All of them famous to a certain degree. Laura Marlowe and Cheryl Carson were major celebrities. The other three were considered up-and-coming stars.

  I paged through the notes that accompanied the newspaper clippings. Much of it appeared to be stuff Abbie had written down as she read through them. The names of the five women. The details of their deaths. She’d also put down questions beside the names such as job description? and time frame of murder? At one point, she had written it’s all about the stars. Sometimes she’d even drawn arrows between different aspects of the murders that seemed similar. Abbie had been doing the same thing I was doing. She was looking for a link between the five celebrity deaths.