by Joël Dicker
*
That evening, Betsy was due to have dinner with Lauren and Paul. They were back in Southampton for the week and had planned to meet her at Café Athena to make up for the disastrous previous dinner.
At home to change, Betsy suddenly remembered her conversation with Springfield concerning Bergdorf’s book about the theater festival. Springfield had told her that in the spring of 1994 he had decided to set aside a space in the bookstore to local authors. What if Hayward had put his play on sale there? Before leaving for supper, she dropped by Springfield’s house. She found him on the porch with a glass of whiskey, enjoying the mildness of the early evening.
“Yes, Betsy,” he said, “we did devote a room in the rear of the store to local authors. A gloomy little cubbyhole, which we turned into an annex called the ‘Local Writers’ Room’. It was an immediate success. More so than I could have imagined: tourists love local stories. Actually, that section still exists and it’s in the same place. But I’ve knocked down a wall since then, so it’s part of the main store. Why are you interested?”
“Just curious,” Betsy said. “I was wondering if you remember which writers gave you their books back then.”
Springfield was amused at the question. “There were so many! I think you overestimate my memory. But I remember there was an article about it in the Chronicle early in the summer of 1994. I must have a copy in the store, would you like me to get it for you? You may find some useful information in it.”
“No, Cody. Thank you, though. I’ll drop by the store tomorrow.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. Thanks.”
Betsy set off to join her friends. But when she got to Main Street, she decided to stop off at the Chronicle. Supper could easily take a short delay. She walked around the outside of the building and went in through the back door to the archive room. She sat down at the computer they were using. She typed in the keywords “Cody Springfield”, “bookstore”, and “local writers” and soon found an article from the end of June 1994.
IN THE ORPHEA BOOKSTORE,
WRITERS FROM THE HAMPTONS HONORED
For the past two weeks, the bookstore in Orphea has been bigger than before. There is now a room devoted to local writers. This initiative has been a great success, with many authors coming along to the store and leaving their works in the hope of becoming more widely read. The owner of the store, Cody Springfield, has even had to enforce a strict one-copy-per-writer policy in order to have enough space for everyone.
The article was illustrated with a photograph of Springfield, posing proudly in the doorway of that former cubbyhole, over the entrance to which was now a wooden plaque with the words local writers’ room. The interior of the room could be made out, with walls filled with shelves of books and bound scripts. Betsy zoomed in and peered at each title. Right there, in the middle of the image, was a bound booklet, its cover displaying in capital letters the words the darkest night by kirk hayward. Now she knew where Mayor Gordon had acquired the script of the play. It was from Springfield’s bookstore.
* * *
Ostrovski had just come back from a late stroll in the grounds. It was a mild night. Seeing the critic walk across the lobby of the hotel, one of the Lake Palace receptionists came over to him.
“Mr Ostrovski, there’s been a DO NOT DISTURB sign on your door for the last few days. I just wanted to make sure everything is alright.”
“It’s deliberate,” Ostrovski assured him. “I’m in the midst of a period of artistic creativity. I mustn’t be disturbed for any reason.”
“Of course, sir. Would you like us to bring you some bath towels? Do you need any cosmetic products?”
“Nothing at all, my friend. Thank you for your concern.”
Ostrovski went up to his room. He liked being an artist. He at last felt at home. It was as if he had grown his true skin. He switched the light on. He had papered one whole wall with articles about Stephanie’s dis-appearance. He studied them for a long time and pasted up some more. Then he sat down at the desk, which was covered in sheets of notes, and looked at the framed photograph of Meghan that he had propped up there. He kissed the glass and muttered aloud, “My darling.” He took up his pen and started to write.
At that very same moment, a Porsche sped past the sinister parking lot of Motel 17, headed for the ocean. At the wheel was Carolina, who had told her father she was going to the hotel gym but was now fleeing in her car. She did not know if she had knowingly lied, or if her legs had refused to obey her. She turned onto Ocean Road, then continued her pilgrimage until she reached the house that had belonged to her parents, The Garden of Eden. She looked at the doorbell on the gate. Where the words EDEN FAMILY had once stood, it now read SCALINI FAMILY. She got out and walked alongside the hedge, observing the premises through the foliage. She could see light. She finally found a way through. She climbed over the fence and through the hedge. Her hands and cheeks were scratched. There was nobody there. She walked stealthily across the lawn, as far as the swimming pool. She wept in silence.
From her bag, she took a plastic bottle in which she had mixed ketamine with vodka. She swallowed the liquid in one go, then sat on a sun recliner beside the pool. She listened to the gentle lapping of the water and closed her eyes. She thought about Tara Scalini.
CAROLINA EDEN
The first time I met Tara, in March 2004, I was nine years old. We had both ended up in the finals of the spelling competition in New York. We became immediate friends. That day, neither of us wanted to beat the other. It got to a point where we were drawn. One after the other, we deliberately gave the wrong answer in spelling the word the competition judge submitted to us. He kept saying to each of us, “If you spell the next word correctly, you win the competition!”
But it did not end. Finally, after an hour going around in circles, the judge declared us both winners, first equal.
That was the start of a wonderful friendship. We became inseparable. We were besotted with each other.
Tara’s father, Gerald Scalini, worked in an investment bank. The family lived in a huge apartment overlooking Central Park. Their lifestyle was amazing: a driver, a cook, a house in the Hamptons.
At that time, my father was not yet the boss of Channel 14 and we weren’t as rich as they were. We lived comfortably, but we were nowhere close to matching the Scalinis’ lifestyle. At the age of nine, I thought Gerald Scalini was very kind to us. He loved having us around to his apartment, he would send his driver to fetch me so I could come and play with Tara. In the summer, when we were in Orphea, he would invite us to lunch at their house in East Hampton.
But young as I was, it didn’t take me long to realize that, in inviting us, Tara’s father was not being so much generous as condescending. He wanted to impress.
He loved to invite us to his 6,000-square-foot duplex, so that he could then come to our place and say: “You’ve done a really nice job on your apartment.” He relished it when we came for lunch at his incredible property in East Hampton, after which he would come for a coffee in the modest house my parents rented in Orphea and say, “Nice little place you have here.”
I think my parents spent time with the Scalinis mainly to please me. Tara and I loved each other. We were much alike: very good pupils, particularly gifted in literature, we devoured books and we both dreamed of becoming writers. We spent our days concocting stories together, and writing them down, sometimes on paper, sometimes on the family computer.
Four years later, in the spring of 2008, Tara and I were nearly thirteen. My father’s career had taken a major leap forward. He had been promoted several times, was talked about in the specialist journals, and had finally been appointed head of Channel 14. Our life had changed rapidly. We, too, now lived in an apartment overlooking Central Park, my parents were having a holiday home built in Orphea, and, much to my delight, I had started at Hayfair, the prestigious school that Tara already attended.
I think Mr Scalini started to feel a
little threatened by my father. I don’t know what was said in the Scalinis’ kitchen, but I had the feeling Tara’s behavior toward me had changed.
For a long time, I had been telling Tara that I dreamed of having a laptop. I wanted a computer of my own, so that I could write my stories in the privacy of my own room. But my parents refused. They said there was a computer in the little sitting room—we now had a big and a little sitting room—which I could use as much as I liked.
“I’d rather write in my room.”
“The sitting room is fine,” my mother would reply, unwilling to compromise.
That spring, Tara was given a laptop. Exactly the model I wanted. I didn’t recall her ever mentioning that she wanted one. And now there she was, parading her new toy at school.
I made an effort not to pay any attention. Especially as there was something more important occupying my mind. The school was organizing a writing competition and I intended to enter something. So did Tara, and we worked together in the school library, she on her laptop, and I obliged to write in an exercise book, before having to transcribe it all in the evening onto the computer in the little sitting room.
Tara said her parents found her piece extraordinary. They had even asked one of their friends, apparently a well-known writer in New York, to read it and help her a little. When my piece was ready, I gave it to her to read before submitting it for the competition. She told me it “wasn’t bad”. From the tone she used, I had the impression I was hearing her father. And when her piece was finished, she refused to show it to me. “I wouldn’t like you to copy me,” she said.
At the beginning of June 2008, at a ceremony held in the auditorium of the school, the name of the winner was announced with great fanfare. Much to my surprise, I was awarded first prize.
A week later, Tara complained in class that her computer had been stolen. We all had individual lockers in the corridor, closed with pad-locks that could only be opened with a code. The school principal declared that the bags and lockers of every pupil in the class would be inspected. To my horror, when it was my turn to open my locker, in front of the principal and the deputy principal, I discovered Tara’s computer inside it.
It was an enormous scandal. I was summoned to the principal’s office with my parents. However much I swore that I had had nothing to do with it, the evidence was impossible to ignore. There was a second meeting with the Scalinis, who said they were horrified. Once again I protested and proclaimed my innocence, but I had to appear in front of the disciplinary board. I was excluded from school for a week.
The worst of it was that my friends turned their backs on me. They did not trust me anymore. They called me a thief. Tara, though, would tell anyone prepared to listen that she forgave me. If I had asked her she would have lent me her computer. I knew she was lying. Only one other person had the code to my locker: Tara.
I was very alone and very upset. But this episode, rather than weakening me, drove me to write more. Words became my refuge. I would often isolate myself in the school library to write.
For the Scalinis, things were about to change. In October 2008, the terrible financial crash directly affected Gerald Scalini. He lost a large part of his fortune.
JESSE ROSENBERG
Tuesday, July 22, 2014
Four days to opening night
That morning, when Derek and I joined Betsy in the archive room at the Chronicle, she was wearing a triumphant smile. I looked at her, amused, and held out the coffee I had brought her.
“You apparently have a lead,” I said.
Betsy showed us an article on Springfield’s bookstore, dated June 15, 1994.
“Look at the photograph. In the background, on the right, you can see a copy of ‘The Darkest Night’ on a shelf. So it’s quite possible that it was from the bookstore that Gordon got the script.”
“At the beginning of June,” Derek said, “Mayor Gordon tears up Hayward’s play. Then he goes and gets another copy from the bookstore. Why?”
“That I don’t know,” Betsy said. “On the other hand, I have found a connection between the play Hayward is rehearsing right now and Jeremiah Fold. Coming back from dinner last night, I dropped by the station and spent part of the night looking through the database. Jeremiah Fold had a son who was born just before his father died. I managed to find the name of the mother. It’s Virginia Parker.”
“And . . . ?” Derek said. “Should that name mean anything to us?”
“No, but I spoke with her. And she told me how Jeremiah died.”
“A traffic accident,” Derek said, not sure where Betsy was going with this. “We already know that much.”
“A motorcycle accident, to be precise,” Betsy said. “He smashed his motorcycle into a tree.”
“Let’s try to do things by the book. And let’s start by figuring out why the police in Ridgesport—when we got in touch with them—didn’t even have a file on the accident.”
“Because it’s the New York State Highway Patrol that deals with fatal accidents,” Betsy said.
“Then let’s contact the Highway Patrol right away and get a copy of the report.”
Betsy handed us a bundle of papers. “Already done, gentlemen. Here it is.”
The accident occurred on the night of July 15, 1994. The police report was succinct. Mr Fold lost control of his motorcycle. He was not wearing a helmet. Witnesses saw him leave Ridge’s Club at about midnight. He was found by a motorist at about 0700, unconscious but still alive. He died in the hospital. The file contained photographs of the motorcycle. All that remained of it was a heap of metal and scattered debris in a shallow trough by the tree. It was recorded that a copy of the report had been sent to Special Agent Grace of the A.T.F. at his request.
“It was thanks to Special Agent Grace,” Derek told Betsy, “that we made the connection with Tennenbaum, because he arrested the man who provided Tennenbaum with the murder weapon.”
“We need to get in touch with him,” I said. “He must have retired by now, he was all of fifty back then.”
“In the meantime, we should talk to Fold’s former partner, this Virginia Parker,” Derek said. “She may be able to tell us more.”
“She’s waiting for us at her place,” Betsy announced, clearly one step ahead of us. “Let’s go.”
Virginia Parker lived in a run-down little house at the entrance to Ridgesport. She was a woman of fifty, who must have been beautiful once.
“Jeremiah was a scumbag,” she told us when we had sat down in her living room. “The only good thing he ever made was his kid. Our son is a good boy. He works for a gardening company, and he’s well liked.”
“How did you meet Jeremiah?” I said.
Before replying, she lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. She had long, thin fingers that ended in blood-red nails. It was only when she had blown out a cloud of white smoke that she said:
“I was a singer at Ridge’s Club. It was a fashionable place back then, it’s pretty tacky today. Miss Parker. That was my stage name. I still sing there from time to time. Back then I was kind of a local star. I had all the men at my feet. Jeremiah was one of the owners. What a handsome guy! I liked his whole tough-guy shtick at first. He had a dangerous side that attracted me. It wasn’t until he’d knocked me up that I realized what he was really like.”
* * *
Ridgesport, June 1993, 6 p.m.
Laid low with nauseous spells all day, Virginia was lying on the couch when there was a knocking at the door of her house. She thought it was Jeremiah, worried about her condition. She had left a message at the club twenty minutes earlier to tell him she wasn’t in a fit state to sing that evening.
“Come in,” she called out. “The door’s open.”
The visitor came in. It wasn’t Jeremiah but Costico, his henchman. The size of a wardrobe, with hands like battering rams. She hated him as much as she feared him.
“What the hell are you doing here, Costico?” she said. “Jeremiah isn’t here.”
“I know that, he sent me. You have to come to the club.”
“I can’t, I’ve been throwing up all day.”
“Hurry up, Virginia. I didn’t ask you for a medical report.”
“Costico, look at me, I’m in no state to sing.”
“Get a move on, Virginia. The customers come to the club to hear you sing. Just because Jeremiah fucks you up the ass doesn’t mean you get any special favors.”
“As you can see from my belly,” Virginia retorted, “that’s not how he likes it.”
“Shut your mouth and get moving,” Costico said. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”
* * *
“And did you go?” Betsy asked.
“Of course. I didn’t have any choice. My pregnancy was hell. I was forced to sing at the club until just before I went into labor.”
“Did Jeremiah beat you?”
“No, it was worse than that. He was weird that way. He didn’t think of himself as a criminal, but as a ‘businessman’. He referred to Costico as his ‘associate’. The back room where he did his wheeling and dealing was the ‘office’. Jeremiah thought he was cleverer than anyone else. He’d say that if you want to keep one step ahead of the law, you mustn’t leave a trail. He never used account books, the only gun he owned he had a license for, and he never gave written orders. The money he squeezed out of people, the arms dealing and drug dealing, he took care of that through his ‘after-sales service’. That was his name for a group of guys he had at his mercy. He called them his ‘slaves’. They were mainly family men he had compromising evidence on that could ruin their lives: photographs with prostitutes in embarrassing positions, that kind of thing. In return for his silence, the slaves had to do him favors. He’d send them out to collect money from people he was putting the squeeze on, deliver drugs to dealers, collect his share. All this was done by these respectable guys that nobody would suspect. Jeremiah was never on the front line. His slaves would come to the club, as if they were customers, and leave an envelope with the barman, to be handed on to Jeremiah. There were never any direct interactions. The club was also used by Jeremiah as a way of laundering money. There, too, he played according to the rules: he’d put it all back into the club. Everything was covered up in the accounts, and, since the club was doing well, it was impossible to detect anything. Jeremiah paid a lot of tax. He was untouchable. He could show off as much as he liked: everything was declared to the I.R.S.