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“Okay, Paul,” Ethan said, trying to keep his voice from shaking. “I’ll play the good soldier and deliver you a blockbuster story.” He leaned back in his chair. “And on top of that, I’m gonna win another Emmy Award for this project and place it next to the one I’ve already won for your show.”
“You’re a conceited bastard, Ethan, and I’m tired of it,” Paul said, his voice cold and threatening. “But deep down I still think you can produce something I’ll be proud of, and that’s the only reason you’re still working for me. So make the most of it. Your ass is on the line.”
“Are we finished?” Ethan said.
“Not quite.” Paul shuffled a stack of papers on his desk. “I know you don’t like Peter Sampson, and I know he doesn’t like you. I had to spend a lot of time convincing him to let me assign you to this story. So make an appointment and go see him. He’s waiting to hear from you. Now I think we’re finished.”
He pointed to the door.
Ethan grabbed his briefcase and tucked his iPad under his arm, then slowly walked out, past Monica who’d listened to the conversation through the closed door and was now ready and willing to repeat each and every word in vivid detail to anybody who asked.
Making his way down the long red hallway, he never once looked at Paul’s smiling face peering out from the dozens of photos. Lang had rattled his confidence and rattled it good.
He had a lot to prove to his boss.
And a lot to prove to himself.
CHAPTER 4
“HEY DAD, YOU GONNA WATCH THE game with me?” Luke said, excitement on his face as Ethan walked into the living room and sat down on the couch next to Sarah. “The Yanks are ahead four to two in the eighth. Teixeira’s hit two home runs, and in one more inning, they’re gonna beat the Red Sox.” He pounded his fist into his baseball glove.
“Think their relief pitching will hold, little man? There’s no more Mariano Rivera,” Ethan said, grinning from ear to ear.
“You betcha. So far, the new guys have been great. If they bring in Andrew Miller, or what’s his name, Dad? Oh, yeah, Dellin Betances, the game’s in the bag.”
“Okay, Luke, the inning’s over,” Sarah said. “Time for bed. That’s our deal.”
“Come on, Mom, I’m not tired yet. Lemme watch ’til the end.”
“Luke, it’s already way past your bedtime. Listen to your mother. Tomorrow’s a camp day, and you have to get up early.”
“Not fair, Dad.”
“A deal’s a deal. Let’s go. I’ll tuck you in.”
Luke ran over to Sarah, who was reading a John Grisham novel, Sycamore Row, and gave her a hug and kiss. “Good night, Mom. I love you.”
“I love you, too. Now off to bed.”
Luke picked up his Yankee hat and ran out of the room, Holly right behind him, like two peas in a pod.
“I’ll be right back, hon. I wanna make sure he climbs into bed and turns off the lights.” Ethan slowly walked down to Luke’s bedroom and waited as his son brushed his teeth. He’d been closeted all afternoon in his study, memories of his meeting with Paul clouding his judgment as he started organizing a copy of the court docket David had dutifully shipped to his apartment. He’d already spent hours staring at the documents, smoking one cigarette after another, unable to concentrate on a story he loathed. Somehow he had to put aside his principles and apply the same skills he’d honed over the years to a subject he had no interest in pursuing. It was going to take all his strength, all his resolve, and it wasn’t going to be easy. After hours of soul searching, he’d decided to take a short break and spend time with his family.
“Come on, Luke, what’s taking so long?” he said, knowing he had to get back to work in the salt mines.
“Be there in a minute, Dad.” Luke flushed the toilet, then scooted across the room and hopped into bed, rearranging his stuffed animals before fluffing the pillows and climbing under the covers.
“Great game, huh, Luke?” Ethan said, smiling at his son.
“Yeah, Dad. Do you really think they’ll win?”
“It’s a sure thing, Lukie. They still have that old Yankee magic.”
Luke paused a split second. “But how will I know? I’m gonna be asleep when the game’s over.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll leave you a note on your bedside table. It’ll be there first thing in the morning when you wake up.”
“You won’t forget?”
“Cross my heart.” He kissed his little boy on the end of his nose and turned off the lights. “Good night, Luke. I love you.”
“Love you, too, Dad.”
Ethan sighed. His son was growing so fast, and he was missing so much. With feelings of melancholy, he made his way back to the living room. Sarah had turned off the game and was lying on her back, reading.
“Is the book any good?”
“It’s like all of Grisham’s novels,” she said. “Lots of character development at the beginning, intrigue in the middle, and then gangbusters at the end. I’ve got about fifty pages to go. It’s hard to put down.”
Ethan sat beside her, placing her feet in his lap. “How was your day, babe?”
“Busy. I’m working a new case—an insider trading scandal at one of the big brokerage houses on Wall Street.”
“Which one?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said, a mischievous grin on her face. “Can’t talk about it until the DA goes public. Then I’ll give you the inside scoop. Are you making any progress with the documents?” she said, putting Grisham down on her lap.
Ethan leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes. “Not much. I have no interest in this story. It seems like such a waste of time. There are so many other important projects I should be doing. But Paul doesn’t care about real stories, about real journalism anymore. All he cares about is the ratings.”
“How was Paul in the meeting this morning?” she said, studying the deep anguish on his face.
“Difficult,” Ethan said, reaching for a cigarette. “He’s assigned Peter Sampson to my project.”
There was a momentary pause as Sarah sat up on the couch. “Ethan, you and Sampson don’t work well together. He makes your life miserable. Is there any way you can change the assignment?”
“I tried, but Paul wouldn’t budge,” Ethan said, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke through his nose. “I’m just going to have to suck it up and make it work.”
“When are you meeting with him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe next week. Peter’s too busy to see me until then.”
“He’s always too busy to see you.”
“That’s the name of the game with him,” Ethan said, stubbing out his cigarette in an ashtray and reaching for another, then deciding to hold off and putting down the pack. “Sarah, did you find out anything about my story today? You said you’d do some sleuthing at the office for me, remember?”
“I didn’t come up with much. The district attorney’s working on the sentencing, and all the planning is taking place behind closed doors, so nobody knows what’s really going on—only that something big is about to happen.”
“That doesn’t help much,” he said, disappointed. “Anything else?”
“Not really. But I did bump into Nancy McGregor this afternoon.”
“She’s the lead prosecutor on the case. We’ve been trying to book an interview with her.”
“I know,” Sarah said, her eyes sparkling mischievously.
“How’d you find out?” Ethan said eagerly.
“Come on, Ethan, how do you think? She told me your office has been trying to reach her for days.”
“And what else did she say?”
“That she was looking forward to meeting you.”
“That’s a relief,” Ethan said, relaxing. “Think she’ll do an on-camera interview with Sampson? Paul’s desperate to make her part of the story.”
“I don’t know. You’re going to have to ask her that question yourself when you sit down with her.”
“Of course.”
“What did she wanna know?”
“The usual stuff. Are you honest? A good journalist? Will you do a balanced story? The same questions everybody asks.”
“And what did you tell her?”
“That you were a jerk,” she said with a devilish smile. “All kidding aside, Ethan, I told her you were the best producer in the business. A seasoned professional. Somebody she could trust.”
“My biggest fan,” he said, tickling her foot. “Is that it, babe? Is there anything else I should know about?”
“Just that she’s curious about what you’ll say in your story and what questions you’ll ask if she agrees to sit down for an interview. I told her I had no idea and that she could talk to you about that kind of stuff when she meets you.”
“Perfect,” he said, glancing at the clock sitting on the table. “Mindy’s coming over in a little while to help me wade through the court docket.”
“Mindy’s working with you on the story?”
“Yup,” he said, smiling. “That was my only victory this morning with Paul.”
“Well, that’s a big one,” she said. “You guys make a good team. Maybe she can find some way to help you get into the story. Just because it’s a murder doesn’t mean it isn’t important.” She picked up her book, then looked back at Ethan. “And please, Ethan, don’t drink too much tonight. I don’t want to smell scotch on your breath when you come to bed.”
“What do you mean?” Ethan said, growing defensive.
“I mean just that. I don’t want you drinking any more tonight. You’ve already had a few at that bar, McGlades. You stopped there on your way home. Didn’t you?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Come on, Ethan. You stop there on your way home almost every day. It’s pretty obvious, hon.”
“But I only had one or two.”
“Yeah, but you also had one or two in your study while you were working.”
“You’ve been counting my drinks?” he said, astonished.
“Of course, Ethan, I’m worried about you. You’ve been drinking way too much the past couple of months. You gotta get it under control. It’s becoming a problem.”
“I can handle it,” he said as the doorbell rang. “Please, don’t worry, babe. I’m okay, really.”
But he avoided Sarah’s eyes as he hurried out of the room—pushing the truth to the back of his mind.
• • • • •
Mindy was waiting patiently, toting a large shoulder bag, when he opened the front door. After giving her a quick hug, he led her through the apartment, Sarah looking up from her book and saying hello when they stopped at the living room. After spending a minute or two catching up—Ethan bouncing nervously from one foot to the next—he interrupted their conversation, blew Sarah a quick kiss, and led Mindy down to his study.
The room was an unholy disaster.
File folders were piled haphazardly on his desk, boxes randomly scattered about the floor, and loose documents covered every inch of counter space. “Jeez, Ethan, what a mess. Have you made any progress at all going through this stuff?” She randomly picked up a folder and started skimming through the contents.
“Not much,” he said as he flipped on his desk lamp and grabbed two bottles of water from the wet bar.
“Where do you want to start?” she said, dropping her shoulder bag on the floor and pulling out a yellow pad to take notes.
“Maybe with the police reports. I found them in the bottom of a box before I put Luke to bed. They’re buried somewhere on my desk.” He sat down and rummaged through a stack of paperwork. “Here they are. Who was the lead detective on the case? Do you remember, Mindy?” he said, placing a half dozen file folders on the floor to clear a space in front of him.
Mindy opened a page of research in a loose-leaf notebook and ran her finger down a list of possible interview subjects she’d put together before heading to Ethan’s apartment. “A guy named Edward Jenkins. Do you have his report?”
Ethan fanned through the documents. “Here it is. It’s dated March 24—the day after the murder.” He grabbed a yellow marker from the top drawer, began highlighting a passage on the second page, and then read it out loud:
The victim, Cynthia Jameson, was found lying face up on the sidewalk on the corner of Little West Twelfth and Washington Street in the Meatpacking District. She was approximately twenty feet from the entrance to the Standard Grill—a high-end steak house that caters to a wealthy clientele. Detectives are canvassing the area looking for eyewitnesses. So far we haven’t located anybody who saw the shooting. A high-caliber bullet appears to have entered her chest near her heart and exited through her upper back. There was blood on her coat and blouse and a large pool around her body. Her eyes were wide open, her tongue hanging out of her mouth, and deep scratches on her cheeks and neck. Lab techs at the crime scene believe she was awake and struggling to breathe as she bled out, and that death occurred several minutes after she was gunned down.
Ethan read the passage a second time, fixating on the grisly details, then scanned through a stack of newspaper stories. “The descriptions of the body match almost word for word to Jenkins’s police report,” he said, looking up at Mindy. “Do you remember reading anything about what she was doing in the Meatpacking District that night?”
“Just a little,” Mindy said, rifling through her shoulder bag for her copy of the New York Times Magazine article. “It says right here she was out partying with friends and was apparently minding her own business when she walked straight into the bullet.”
“Was she alone when she left the Standard Grill?” Ethan said.
“The police aren’t sure. Nobody seems to know if she was with somebody else who didn’t come forward after they found the body.”
“Don’t you think it’s strange the police never pinned that down? Might’ve shed some light on the chain of events leading up to the murder.”
“Maybe,” Mindy said, sipping her water. “But the jury didn’t have a problem not knowing. They convicted Feodor in less than an hour.”
Ethan nodded and jotted himself a note to find out exactly what Cynthia was doing just before she was shot, then continued thumbing through Jenkins’s police report, searching for any tidbits he might’ve missed. When he got to the bottom of the third page, he highlighted another passage. “Listen to this, Mindy. It describes where Jenkins found Feodor”:
The perpetrator was lying on his side about fifty feet from the entrance to the parking lot behind Fernelli’s Beef and Poultry. There was blood everywhere—splattered on a chain-link fence and flowing down the alley. When I first approached him I thought he was dead like the Mexican we found near the loading dock. His face was pasty, and he didn’t appear to be breathing. But when I leaned over and placed my finger on his neck, I felt a faint pulse and radioed for an ambulance. That’s when I noticed he was holding a Beretta 9mm handgun in his right hand. I bagged it and gave it to a CSI for testing and immediately began focusing on Feodor as my prime suspect.
“This seems strange, Mindy,” Ethan said, dropping Jenkins’s report on his desk. “Why did Jenkins finger Feodor at this stage of the investigation? Why’d he rule out everybody else involved in the shootout? There doesn’t seem to be enough evidence to move Feodor to the top of the list, does there?”
“It does seem strange now that you mention it,” Mindy said, picking up the document and rereading the passage. “What do the other cops say?”
Ethan grabbed the other police reports and cross-checked them against Jenkins’s. He was astonished to discover that each and every detective had come to the same conclusion—targeting Pavel Feodor as the killer—almost from the moment they found him in the parking lot. “I don’t know, Mindy, how could they all be so certain he did it
? Something seems off here.”
“Does seem premature,” she said, perplexed. “Do you want me to track down Jenkins, see if he’ll talk to us?”
Ethan lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring. “Yeah. Ask him if he’ll meet us in the Meatpacking District. I wanna take a look at the crime scene—see where he found Feodor and how far he was from Cynthia’s body. Maybe Jenkins can show us what he thinks happened that night.”
“I’ll reach out to him.”
“Good, and do it first thing in the morning.” He stubbed out his cigarette and yawned, stretching his arms way over his head. “Look, Mindy, it’s late. Let’s call it a night and pick up first thing tomorrow.” He walked over to the wet bar, grabbed a half-empty bottle of Black Label, and poured a finger of scotch. “Want one?” he said, holding out the bottle.
“I’ll take a pass,” she said, tilting her head questioningly. “It’s a bit late to start drinking, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. But I’m too wired to sleep.”
“Shouldn’t you lay off the booze tonight? I didn’t mention it this morning, but you were clearly hungover before you met with Paul.”
Ethan sipped his scotch. “Yeah, I was, but I’m a big boy, Mindy. I know what I’m doing.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder. “I know you don’t wanna hear this from me, but you drink too much, Ethan, and I don’t think you know it.” She hovered a moment, concern on her face, then turned and left.
Ethan stood frozen in place, staring at the empty room before draining his glass and wiping his mouth.
First Sarah.
Now Mindy.
Was his drinking that obvious?
Deep down in his gut he knew that it was.
Grabbing his iPhone, he checked the score of the Yankee game. They’d lost five to four—a trio of relief pitchers, including Betances and Miller, blowing the save in the bottom of the ninth. Where in God’s name was Mariano Rivera? He jotted down the score on a sheet of paper and left it on Luke’s bedside table. After straightening the covers and kissing his son, he walked back to his study and poured another scotch.