by Joël Dicker
“He was a smooth talker, he could make a good surface impression. He would have sold snow to the Eskimos, but he wouldn’t have been able to deliver the goods, if you see what I mean. By the time of the mayoral election in 1990, the town of Orphea was not doing well financially, in fact things were looking dire. Gordon told people what they wanted to hear and he was elected. But very soon, people saw what a second-rate politician he was and didn’t think much of him.”
“Second-rate, maybe,” I said, “but Mayor Gordon did create the theater festival, and that’s had a major impact on the town.”
“It wasn’t Mayor Gordon who created the festival, Captain Rosenberg. It was his deputy, Alan Brown. Very soon after he was elected, Mayor Gordon realized he needed help in running Orphea. At the time, Alan Brown, who was raised locally, had just gained his law degree. He agreed to become deputy mayor, which was a significant first position for someone who’d only recently graduated. It didn’t take Brown long to show what an intelligent man he was. He did everything he could to relaunch the town’s economy. And he succeeded. The good years that followed the election of President Clinton helped a lot, but Brown had laid the groundwork with all his ideas. He boosted tourism enormously, then there were the Fourth of July celebrations, the annual fireworks display, help with setting up new businesses, the refurbishment of Main Street.”
“And he was promoted to mayor when Gordon died, is that right?” I said.
“Promoted, no, Captain. After Gordon’s murder, Alan Brown deputized as mayor for barely a month. There was going to be an election in September 1994 anyway, and Brown had already planned to stand. He was elected with a big majority.”
“Let’s get back to Mayor Gordon,” Derek said. “Did he have enemies?”
“He didn’t follow a clear political line, so he put everybody’s back up at one time or another.”
“Including Ted Tennenbaum?”
“Not really. Sure, they quarreled about a building Ted wanted to turn into a restaurant, but that was no reason to kill a man and his family.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. I never believed he could have done it for such a trivial reason!”
“Why didn’t you say anything at the time?”
“To whom? To the police? Can you see me going to the station and calling an investigation into question? I imagine there must have been solid evidence. I mean, the poor guy did die. Not that I cared much, to be honest. I wasn’t living in Orphea anymore. I followed the story from a distance. Anyway, to get back to what I was telling you. Alan Brown’s desire to rebuild the town was a blessing to the small businessmen: the refurbishment of the town hall, the refurbishment of restaurants, the construction of a municipal library and various other new buildings. At least that was the official version. Because under cover of stating that he wanted to get the townspeople back to work, behind the scenes Mayor Gordon was asking them to overprice their services in return for obtaining the contract.”
“Gordon was taking kickbacks?” Derek said.
“Oh, yes!”
“Why did nobody ever mention this when we were investigating?”
“What would you have wanted?” Bergdorf said. “For the contractors to own up? They were as guilty as the mayor. Why not confess to the Kennedy assassination while they were about it?”
“How did you find out?”
“The contracts were public. When the work was being done, you could look up the fees paid by the council to the various contractors. And the firms taking part in municipal construction projects also had to present their balance sheets to the council, which wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t go bust while the work was being carried out. At the beginning of 1994, I arranged to get hold of the balance sheets of the chosen companies and compared them with the sums officially paid out by the council. In most cases, the sum paid by the council was lower than the one on the contract.”
“How come nobody realized?” Derek said.
“I assumed there was one invoice for the council and one for accountants and the two sums did not correspond, but nobody, apart from me, thought to check.”
“And you said nothing?”
“Well, I prepared an article for the Chronicle and I went to see Mayor Gordon to ask him for an explanation. And you know what he told me?”
* * *
Orphea Town Hall, Mayor Gordon’s office
February 15, 1994
Mayor Gordon read the article that Bergdorf had brought him. Gordon seemed calm while Bergdorf was the nervous one. At last, the mayor put the article down, looked up at Bergdorf, and said in an almost comical tone:
“What you’ve shown me here is very serious, my dear Steven. So there’s corruption at the highest level in Orphea?”
“Yes, Mr Mayor.”
“This is going to create quite a stir. Of course, you have copies of the contracts and the balance sheets to prove all this?”
“Yes, Mr Mayor.”
“You’ve done a very thorough job. Congratulations. You know, my dear Steven, it’s a remarkable coincidence that you should come to see me. I was planning to talk to you about a great project. I’m sure you’re aware that in a few months’ time we’ll be celebrating the opening of our first theater festival?”
“Absolutely, Mr Mayor,” Bergdorf replied, none too sure where Gordon was going with this.
“Well, I’d like you to write a book about the festival. A little book in which you go behind the scenes and talk about the creation of the festival, all of it illustrated with photographs. It would appear just as the festival opens. It would make a souvenir to be treasured. The audiences will lap it up. By the way, Steven, what kind of fee would you ask for a job like that?”
“I . . . I don’t know, Mr Mayor. I’ve never done anything like it before.”
“In my opinion, it should be about $100,000.”
“You . . . you’d pay me $100,000 to write this book?”
“Yes, that strikes me as normal for a writer of your calibre. On the other hand, obviously, it wouldn’t be possible if an article were to appear in the Chronicle about the handling of the municipal accounts. Because then the accounts would be subject to scrutiny and people wouldn’t understand my paying you such a sum. You see what I mean . . .”
* * *
“And you wrote the book!” I said. The book that Betsy and I had found at Springfield’s. “You took the bribe.”
“Oh, no, Captain Rosenberg!” Bergdorf said. “No insults, please! I could hardly refuse an offer like that. How could I? It was an opportunity to make a little money. I could have bought myself a house with it. Unfortunately, I was never paid, because that idiot Gordon got himself murdered before I could get my hands on the money. To stop me turning against him once I had my $100,000, he told me he’d pay me after the book was published. Two days after Gordon died, I went to see Alan Brown, who was standing in as mayor. There was no written contract between Gordon and me, and I didn’t want our agreement to end on the scrapheap. I supposed Brown was in on it, but I soon realized he knew nothing. He was so stunned that he asked me to resign with immediate effect. If I didn’t, he would go to the police. He told me he wouldn’t tolerate a corrupt journalist on the Chronicle. I had no choice but to leave, and that’s how that cockroach Bird ended up as editor, even though he writes like an amateur!”
* * *
In Orphea, Charlotte Brown, the mayor’s wife, had somehow managed to tear her husband away from his office and take him out to lunch at Café Athena. He struck her as terribly tense and nervous. He barely slept, ate hardly anything, and his features were drawn. She had thought that a lunch in the sun on the terrace would do him a lot of good. The initiative was a success: Brown, having assured her that he didn’t have time for lunch, had finally let himself be persuaded. The break did seem to do him good. The respite was short-lived, though: his cell phone started vibrating on the table and when he saw the name of the person calling him, he looked worried. He moved away fr
om the table to answer.
Charlotte Brown could not catch the gist of the conversation, but she heard a few outbursts and saw extreme agitation in her husband’s gestures. She heard him suddenly say in an almost imploring voice, “Don’t do that, I’ll find a solution,” before hanging up and coming back, furious, just as a waiter was serving the desserts they had ordered.
“I have to go to the town hall,” Brown said.
“Already? At least eat your dessert. It can wait a quarter of an hour, can’t it?”
“I have a problem, Charlotte. That was the manager of the company that’s due to perform the main play in the festival. He says he’s heard about the strike and the actors are afraid for their safety. They’ve decided to withdraw. I don’t have a play. It’s a disaster.”
He left the restaurant, not noticing the woman sitting at a table with her back to him since the beginning of his lunch, who had heard the whole conversation. She waited for Charlotte Brown to also leave, then picked up her phone.
“Is that Michael Bird? This is Sylvia Tennenbaum. I have some information about the mayor that should interest you. Can you drop by Café Athena?”
* * *
When I had asked Bergdorf where he was on the night Stephanie Mailer had gone missing, he had assumed an offended air and replied, “I was at a private view, and you can check that, Captain.” Which we did, as soon as we got back to Betsy’s office in the police station.
The gallery that had organized the event confirmed that Mr Bergdorf had been there, but pointed out that the private view had ended at 7.00 p.m.
“Leaving Manhattan at seven, he could have been in Orphea by ten,” Betsy said.
“Do you think he could have killed Stephanie?” I said.
“Bergdorf is familiar with the editorial offices of the Chronicle. He would have known how to get in there to steal the computer. He also knew that Bird was the editor, which is why he sent him the text message from Stephanie’s cell phone. Plus, he might have been afraid that someone in Orphea would recognize him. That’s why he finally gave up on the idea of meeting with Stephanie at the Kodiak Grill and arranged to meet her on the beach. Remind me why we didn’t book him earlier?”
“Because this is all speculation, Betsy,” Derek said. “We don’t have anything to go on. A lawyer would pull it apart in minutes. We don’t really have anything against him. Even if he had been alone in his own home, it’d be impossible to prove it. And besides, his lousy alibi is an indication that he doesn’t know what time Stephanie was murdered.”
Derek was not wrong about that. Nevertheless I stuck a photograph of Bergdorf on the whiteboard.
“I still think Bergdorf was the person who commissioned Stephanie’s book,” Betsy said.
She took extracts from the text found in the computer, which we had stuck on the board, and said:
“When Stephanie asks the sponsor why he doesn’t write the book himself, he replies: ‘Me? Impossible! What would people say?’ So it must have been someone who would have no credibility as author of the book and entrusted it to someone else.”
I then read the following extract:
“Just before seven, I went out onto the street to get a breath of fresh air and saw a van drive by. Sometime afterward, reading the newspapers, I realized it was Tennenbaum’s vehicle. The problem is, it wasn’t him at the wheel. Well, Bergdorf did tell us he had doubts about Tennenbaum’s guilt. And he was in the Grand Theater that night.”
“We have to find out who was driving that van,” Betsy said.
“What I wonder,” Derek said, “is why Mayor Brown never told anyone that Mayor Gordon was corrupt. If we’d known at the time, it would have changed the course of the investigation. And if the money Gordon transferred to Montana came from the kickbacks he was getting from the contractors, then why the cash withdrawals made by Tennenbaum that he could never account for?”
There was a long silence. Seeing Derek and me at a loss, Betsy asked:
“How did Tennenbaum die?”
“He died while he was being arrested,” I said bleakly.
Derek changed the subject. “Let’s go get a bite to eat,” he said. “We never had lunch. I’m paying.”
* * *
Mayor Brown had come home unusually early. He needed peace and quiet to think through the various scenarios that would come into play if the festival were canceled. He paced up and down the living room, a concentrated look on his face. Charlotte, watching him from a distance, could sense how nervous he was. At last she went to him and tried to reason with him.
“Alan, darling,” she said, tenderly running her hand through his hair, “maybe this is a sign you should give up on the festival? It’s getting you in such a state . . .”
“How can you say that? You used to be an actress, you know what it means! I need your support.”
“But I think it may be fate. The festival’s been losing money for a long time.”
“The festival has to take place, Charlotte! The town depends on it.”
“But what are you going to do to replace the main play?”
He sighed. “I don’t know. I’m going to be a laughingstock.”
“It’ll work out, Alan, you’ll see.”
“How?”
She had no idea. She had only said it to cheer him up. She applied herself to finding a solution. “I . . . I’m going to reach out to my contacts in the theater!”
“Your contacts? Darling, that’s sweet of you, but you haven’t set foot on a stage in twenty years. You don’t have any contacts, not anymore.”
He put an arm around his wife and she leaned her head on his shoulder.
“It’s a disaster,” he said. “Nobody wants to come to the festival. Not the actors, not the media, not the critics. We sent out dozens of invitations and nobody replied. I even wrote to Meta Ostrovski.”
“Ostrovski of the New York Times?”
“Ex-New York Times. He works for the New York Literary Review now. It’s better than nothing. But I didn’t get an answer from him either. We’re less than three weeks from opening night and the festival’s on the verge of collapse. Maybe I should just set fire to the theater and—”
“Alan, don’t say such things!”
Just then, the doorbell rang.
“Maybe that’s him,” Charlotte joked.
“Are you expecting someone?” Alan said, in no mood for humor.
“No.”
He went to the door. It was Michael Bird.
“Hello, Michael.”
“Hello, Mr Mayor. Sorry to bother you at home, I’ve been trying desperately to call you on your cell phone, but it’s off.”
“I needed a little peace and quiet. What’s going on?”
“I wanted your comment on the rumor, Mr Mayor.”
“What rumor?”
“That you don’t have a main play for the theater festival.”
“Who told you that?”
“I’m a journalist.”
“Then you should know how worthless rumors are.”
“I quite agree with you, Mr Mayor. That’s why I took the trouble to call the company’s manager, who confirmed that the show has been canceled. He told me the cast don’t feel safe in Orphea anymore.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Brown said, keeping his composure. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t publish it.”
“Oh? Why not?”
“Because . . . you’d be making a fool of yourself!”
“I’d be making a fool of myself?”
“That’s right. I’ve already got around the problem of that first company pulling out.”
“Really? Why haven’t you announced it yet?”
“Because . . . because what I’m putting in its place is something really major,” Brown said without thinking. “Something unique! Something that’ll be such a sensation, the audience will come running. I want to make a proper announcement, not just dash off a press release that nobody will notice.”
“And when are y
ou going to make this crucial announcement?”
“This Friday. Yes, that’s right, this Friday, July 11, I’ll hold a press conference at the town hall, and believe me, what I announce then will be a surprise to everyone!”
“Well, thank you for that information, Mr Mayor, I’ll put it all in tomorrow’s issue,” Bird said, eager to see if the mayor was bluffing or not.
“Please do that,” Brown said in a tone he was trying hard to keep confident.
Bird nodded and made to go. But Brown couldn’t help adding:
“Don’t forget it’s the council that subsidizes your paper by not charging you rent, Michael.”
“What are you trying to say, Mr Mayor?”
“That you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
“Are you threatening me, Mr Mayor?”
“I’d never do that. I’m just giving you a piece of friendly advice.”
Bird nodded goodbye and left. Brown closed the door and clenched his fist in anger. He felt a hand on his shoulder: Charlotte. She had heard everything and now looked at him fearfully.
“A big announcement?” she said. “But what are you going to announce, darling?”
“I have no idea. I have two days for a miracle to happen. Otherwise I’ll be announcing my resignation.”
-5
The Darkest Night
WEDNESDAY, JULY 9 – THURSDAY, JULY 10, 2014
JESSE ROSENBERG
Wednesday, July 9, 2014, Los Angeles
Seventeen days to opening night
From the front page of the Orphea Chronicle, Wednesday, July 9, 2014:
MYSTERY PLAY FOR THE OPENING OF
THE THEATER FESTIVAL
In a change of program, the mayor will make an announcement on Friday about the play to be performed on opening night. He is promising a spectacular production that is expected to make this 21st festival one of the most memorable in its history.
I put down the newspaper as my plane landed in Los Angeles. It was Betsy who had given me her copy of the Chronicle when Derek and I had met with her in the morning to take stock of the situation.
“Here,” she had said, handing me the paper, “it’ll be something to read on the flight.”