by A. C. Fuller
Davey opened his mouth. Warren hardened his gaze, allowed his his eyes to fill with rage. “Now.” He said it softly but definitively. He didn’t want to have to hurt him.
Davey reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone. “No hard feelings. Gimme a minute.”
Cole spotted Warren from the back seat as he emerged from an alley.
“Got it,” he said.
She smiled. “The drugs or the number?”
Warren flashed his phone at her as he slammed the door and the car took off in the direction of his apartment. It displayed a number with a New York City area code.
“Who was that guy?” Cole asked. “I mean, obviously a dealer, but, why the hell is he getting wasted in a bar filled with cops?”
“Because he’s got the best weed in Manhattan and even cops smoke weed from time to time. He drinks for free, keeps the owner and bartenders supplied, sells to cops. Weed only, unless you’re me.”
Cole nodded. “He also has phone numbers?”
“He knows a guy who knows a guy.”
Cole entered the number in her phone. “How’d you get him to help you?”
“Crooks are always afraid they’re gonna get caught. Always. He sold me coke for a few months. He could have gotten me in a lot of trouble, and I could have gotten him in a lot of trouble. He just owed me a favor.”
Cole gave him a side-eyed look.
“Slammed him up against a dumpster. Happy?” He pointed at her phone. ”Gonna quiz me all night, or call her?”
Cole started the call, but it went straight to voicemail. “Hello, Mrs. Price. This is Jane Cole of The New York Sun, please call me back as soon as you can. I know you must be receiving inquiries from every reporter in the city right now, but you’ll want to speak with me when you find out what I know, what The Sun knows. I won’t say too much on voicemail because I respect your privacy. Let’s just say it involves a popular television dance competition and an evening you shared with a dance troupe from Japan.”
She ended the call.
Warren stared at her, wide-eyed. “What the hell?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“Oh yes, I do.”
The car pulled up in front of Warren’s apartment. “You want to come up?” Warren asked as they got out. “I need to hear about the dance troupe.”
Cole considered for a moment. “If I come up, I’ll probably try to sleep with you. And that’s a bad idea for more reasons than I can count. I’m gonna go home.”
Warren stepped back. “I’m still married and trying to work it out with my wife.”
“I know. That was one of the reasons it would be a bad idea.”
“You’re damn strange. You know that, right?”
“I used to be less...strange.”
“Think Price will call back tonight?”
“I figured she’d be screening her calls, but Margaret Price is a media whore if ever there was one. She’ll call.”
“You’re really not gonna tell me about the dance troupe?”
They moved under the awning of a deli next to Warren’s apartment as the rain started. “You’ve seen her on Page Six, right?”
“I have. She likes younger men.”
“And Japanese hip-hop dancers.”
“So?”
“Basically she paid for a whole troupe of Japanese dancers to come audition for one of those reality dance shows. Bought their flights, costumes, put them up in her townhouse, the works. Then, well, dot dot dot.”
“Dot dot dot? All of them?”
“I wasn’t in the room, but one of them gave the story to The Sun and, at least most of them.”
He grimaced. “You’ll let me know if you’re able to set up a meeting?”
She leaned in and hugged him, her hands tiny against his arms. “I will.” She stepped to the curb to look for a taxi, then turned back. “Sorry about what I said. I wouldn’t have tried to sleep with you. I don’t know why I said that. Next week would have been my twentieth anniversary with Matt. My therapist says I need to move on, but, well, let’s just say it’s not working. Anyway, I wasn’t always this strange.”
21
Cole jogged across her apartment, towel wrapped around her wet hair, looking for her ringing phone. She and Matt had purchased the two-bedroom before his death, anticipating that they’d soon need the extra room for a baby. It felt too large without him.
She found her phone on a table next to the droopy, dehydrated Monkey Puzzle tree. “Mrs. Price, thanks for calling me back.”
“With whom did you speak? Shenzo? Damian? Not Uni! I’ll murder those little bastards.”
“None of them, but I’ll be sure to check them out for future interviews.”
“Damn you. I thought The Sun was a respectable paper.” Her tone was haughty, but also loose, like she’d been drinking and was trying to hold it together.
“Look, Mrs. Price, sit with me and my colleague tomorrow morning on the Raj Ambani thing and I’ll make sure our gossip guy forgets what he heard about you.”
There was a long silence. “You likely already know I was out of town when that monster climbed on my roof and murdered Raj. I supported him, you know. Knew him personally. I hosted a fundraiser trying to convince him to run for governor. Gave a million dollars of my husband’s money to his little animal project. Anyway, you must know I was out of town.” She paused. “You’re looking to do a sidebar, right? Beautiful Upper East Side socialite copes with her twenty million dollar townhouse being used to murder a great American? Something like that?”
Cole shoved dirty clothes off the couch and settled into it. “Something like that.”
“I could call Max Herr right now.” Her tone was harsh again. “There’s no way he’d let you run a disgusting rumor about my personal life.”
“He already knows, Mrs. Price. And no, he wouldn’t run it. He already squashed this one. But our gossip guy could trade it to The Post or The Daily News. They would run it.” She paused to let the threat hang in the air. “I can make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“Fine, fine. I have half a mind to let it run, might be good for my Instagram following. You know, People magazine says I’m the most-followed woman over sixty. Kids today don’t care who you love, but…” she let out a long sigh… “my mother is ninety-one years old and still reads The Post. Might stop her heart to learn about Uni or Shenzo. My father fought in the Pacific theater in World War Two, after all. Be here tomorrow at eight.”
She agreed, then hung up and texted Warren.
Cole: Be at the back entrance on the alley side of the townhouse at 8:05 tomorrow morning.
Warren: Why the back entrance?
Cole: I need you there, but there’ll be reporters out front. When I break this story, I want you nowhere near it.
Warren: Got it.
She opened her email and read the one from her boss first.
Jane,
You avoiding my calls? 24 hours without a story, without a call, without a message? What the hell?
Max
She typed a quick reply, assuring him she was close to something big and that she’d be in the office tomorrow. There was no way he’d approve of the tactic she’d used to get Margaret Price to talk. Every paper in New York City traded stories for other stories, traded stories for access. In this case, the gossip reporter had heard about Price’s proclivities from a disgruntled lover and never even considered publishing it. But threatening to reveal sensitive personal information when, in truth, she never would have, was a gray area she didn’t enjoy spending time in.
She walked to the kitchen and poured herself a full measure of tequila in a Seattle Seahawks coffee mug. Her husband’s. Returning to the sofa, she scanned the rest of her emails, stopping on a reply from the anonymous emailer who’d contacted her earlier in the day.
Dear Monkey Tree,
The salutation made her heart skip a beat. No one called her that but Matty. And he never called her that in public. Breath cau
ght in her throat, she read on.
Dear Monkey Tree,
I understand journalists rarely reveal their sources, but allow me to make my case. Your husband, Sergeant. Matthew Bright, died on February 2, 2016 in a firefight in Andar district, Ghazni province, Afghanistan. The details you received were sketchy.
I know something you don’t: Matty’s body never made it home because it contained evidence of how he was killed. It wasn’t in a firefight. The men who killed him were never brought to justice. Deep down you’ve known this and it’s bugged you for nearly three years. Am I right?
I KNOW what happened, and I will tell you. All you need to do, Monkey Tree, is tell me the name of your source.
I can meet tonight.
Anonymous
The emailer knew her husband’s nickname for her and he’d referred to her husband as “Matty.” Could it be someone from his unit? Had someone read their emails or texts? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t fight the wave of grief that overcame her.
She shot the tequila, then let the mug and the phone fall from her hands onto the pile of dirty clothes. Her chest tightened and she rolled onto the floor, then bashed the cushions of her sofa as hard as she could. Once, twice, a third time. Grabbing the cushions, she hurled them across the room, one into the kitchen, the other two at the door to the bedroom.
She flopped onto her back in the middle of the living room, staring at the ceiling, panting. Her eyes went soft, a blurry field of white that brought the static to her brain. Outside, the rain pelted the windows. She was empty except for a single thought: Will this ever end?
The emailer was right. There’d been no body to bury. Just a sudden break in communication from Matt on a Monday followed by twenty-four hours of panic and the arrival of a chaplain and a casualty assistance officer on Tuesday.
In her grief, she’d read the self-help books and the blogs. She’d even seen a therapist once a month for the last three years, as often as she could afford. Following the therapist’s advice, she’d prioritized her physical health. At forty, she was still in good shape. No one would mistake her for an elite athlete like Warren, but she walked a three-mile loop through Central Park most days and kept the drinking under control. Most of the time. No more than a couple nights a week, and never too much to work the next day.
Her body felt pretty good, but her mind and spirit were a mess. She’d followed the steps prescribed by the therapist. Taken time off, given herself space to grieve, accepted the support of loved ones—mostly through calls with Matt’s mother in Seattle. She was the only one of their four parents still living, and the only person who could relate to the pain of losing Matt. The only one who’d loved him as much as she did. The only one who hadn’t resorted to clichés—“he’s in a better place” or “at least he died serving the country he loved.” They’d been angry together, they’d cried together. Through weekly calls, they’d mourned together. But that alone wasn’t enough to heal, and the weekly calls had turned to bi-weekly calls, then to monthly calls.
She hadn’t spoken with Matt’s mother in six months.
She’d read that overwhelming grief can creep up anytime after the loss of a loved one. Purposelessness, emptiness, the feeling that you no longer exist, or wish you didn’t. For her, these feelings came with anger. To function, she’d learned to go numb. To embrace the static.
For three years she’d lived between anger and despair. The sudden outbursts of grief were proof that she had no idea what was happening inside her, and never had. Proof that the things she’d known she loved about her husband hadn’t even scratched the surface. That an entire hidden relationship had formed between them, a web of intricate ties made of routines and smells and unspoken needs and expectations. A relationship that had lived underneath the everyday.
She only became aware of it by its absence, knowing it was gone forever. What people didn’t understand was that, despite being an independent woman, a strong woman, when Matt died, a piece of her stopped existing. A piece she hadn’t been aware of. A piece she couldn’t replace with positive thinking or a new version of herself.
The death gratuity—the $100,000 the military sent her when Matt died—had helped. She’d spent $80,000 to refinance the two-bedroom apartment his sergeant’s salary had helped pay for. It allowed her to stay put on her measly salary, and she’d tucked $20,000 in an emergency fund. She needed the savings in case she got sick, or got fired. She’d told herself it was the prudent, responsible thing to do. But that was bullshit.
For three years, she’d been expecting a calamity, and the money allowed her to drift toward it.
Against her better judgment, she replied to the email.
Convince me you know something I don’t, and I’ll name the source. Meet me at the Starlight Diner in an hour.
Jane Cole
22
The rain came down in sheets, pummeling her wide umbrella as she turned the corner onto Columbus Avenue. Lights from festively-decorated storefront windows illuminated patches of sidewalk, but the streets were empty save for an occasional taxi splashing by.
Meeting random emailers was sometimes part of her job, and she always did so in crowded restaurants and bars, arriving first to control where the conversation took place. Tonight she had fifteen minutes to spare and planned to take a seat at the bar of her favorite diner, where she’d feel safe. Chances were, the emailer was a lonely guy who knew journalists were often the only people who would listen. But somehow he’d learned things about her and her husband. The Marine Corps had been tight-lipped about the firefight Matt died in, and part of her believed that finding out the details would put her mind, and her heart, at ease.
Half a block from the diner, a shadow stirred under an awning. She turned toward it just as a hand emerged from the darkness and grabbed her arm. She tried to pull away but was spun around, her wrist twisted painfully behind her back.
“Do not turn around, Mrs. Cole. And do not scream.” The man’s voice was gravelly and he smelled of wet dog.
Something sharp pierced her shirt and stung the small of her back as she was pushed forward, then into an alley. He pushed her into the wall face-first, her cheek flush against the wet brick.
“Who was the source?”
Before she could think, she heard her voice. “I won’t tell you.”
“Probably one of those Jew lawyers who own the Upper East Side? Name him.”
She said nothing.
“You will tell me.” He pushed the knife a little deeper. Cole pressed her belly into the cold stone of the building, but there was no further to go. “Who!” he barked, coughing spittle onto her neck.
Revealing her source wasn’t an option. “If you knew anything about me, you’d know that I’m half dead inside.” Her words surprised her as they came out of her mouth. “To be honest, I don’t much care what happens to me. What you do to me. A few things still matter, and not revealing a source is one of them.”
The pressure of the knife lessened slightly. There was a long silence.
“Well, I…tell me this then. Did he see anything?”
Cole considered for a moment. He seemed to have moved on from his first demand quickly. In her mind, it clicked. This was the shooter. The man who’d killed Raj Ambani. In the video, he’d appeared to be old, and this man, while strong, had the voice of an old man. He didn’t necessarily want to kill her source, he only wanted to know if he’d seen anything else, anything she hadn’t printed in her story. Anything that could incriminate him.
“You read my story?” she asked, face still flush against the wall.
“I read all the stories.”
“And you want to know if he told me any details I didn’t print?”
“Yes.” He pressed his forearm into the back of her neck, grinding her face against the rough brick. “Now.”
“Nothing,” she said out of the side of her mouth. “He doesn’t know anything other than what I printed.”
“How do you know?”
<
br /> Her instinct to stay alive had kicked in. “It’s my job to know. If he heard the gunshot, there’s no way he also saw something. I know the window he was standing at and he couldn’t have seen anything. Plus, he wanted to please me. That’s how I know he told me everything.”
The man was quiet for what felt like minutes. Cole stayed still.
“Fine,” he growled at last. “In my pocket I have a gun.” He tugged her back slightly, fumbled in his pocket, then held a pistol in front of her face. “See! You are going to walk out of this alley without turning around. If you turn around, I’ll shoot you. Understand?”
Cole nodded.
He let her go. “Walk!”
She took a slow step, bracing internally. Part of her wanted to turn around, to demand to know how he’d learned about her nickname and what he knew about her husband. But he’d shoot if she turned. Her life would end in the rainy alley.
She took another step, then another, and another, speeding up as she moved. A dozen paces and she was out of the alley.
She sprinted toward the corner, stopping outside under the bright light of the Starlight Diner sign. She pulled off her jacket, then slowly rotated it, studying each sleeve, then the front, and finally the back. The silver light flickered off the shiny blue fabric. On the bottom hem, below the small hole left by the knife, she saw it. A single hair, stuck to the slippery fabric. She pulled it off, then stuck it to a business card from her wallet.
Next, she called Joey Mazzalano.
23
Tuesday
Cole ran a finger over the patch of rough skin on her cheek, re-living the sensation of being pressed into the wet brick wall. Baggy-eyed and still shaken, she swung her feet onto the seat of the taxi and opened YouTube. She had fifteen minutes to cram for her interview with Margaret Price.
She’d met with Mazzalano for twenty minutes the previous night and, for the first time ever, he hadn’t hit on her. Mentioning that she had DNA evidence from Ambani’s killer was enough to make him focus his energy above the waist. She’d considered calling 911, but going straight to The Italian Stallion was a sure way to avoid hours of repetitious interviews that lead to nothing. Plus, she’d promised to pay her debt, and now she had. Mazzalano had promised to lean on everyone he knew to get the DNA lab to run the sample quickly, but it would still take a couple weeks. They made a deal: he could use the information however he wanted, as long as he gave her the scoop.