Our hotel had been mortared and rocketed a few years before by some rebel group, but they were all dead now, and we only had to worry about the terrorists who blew up theCole and undoubtedly wanted to blow up the Sheraton Hotel, first chance they got.
Meanwhile, my beloved Kate was whooping it up in Dar es Salaam. I had another beer and got my imagination fired up, concocting stories about wild tribal horsemen attacking my Jeep on the way to Sana’a, being jumped by assassins in the casbah, and narrowly escaping the bite of a deadly cobra placed in my bed by Yemen intelligence men.
I mean, this could have happened. I thought about trying one of these stories out on the bartender, but he was busy, so I just asked him for my cell phone.
I dialed Dom Fanelli’s cell phone, and he answered.
I said, “I’m back.”
“Hey! I was worried about you. I followed the news every day from Kuwait.”
“I was in Yemen.”
“Really? Same shit. Right?”
“Probably. I’m at JFK. Can’t talk long in case they’re still on my case. Where are you?”
“In the office. But I can talk.”
“Good. How’s my apartment?”
“Great… I would have cleaned it if I knew… anyway, how was Yemen?”
“It’s a well-kept secret.”
“Yeah? How are the babes?”
“I gotta tell ya-this place was like Scandinavia with sunshine.”
“No shit? They have nude beaches?”
“They don’t even allow women to wear bathing suits on the beach.” Which was true.
“Mama mia! Maybe I should put my papers in for the ATTF.”
“Do it soon, before the word gets out.”
“Yeah. Right. You’re jerking me off.” He asked, “How’s Kate?”
“Coming home in a few days.”
“That’s great. Let’s have a night out.”
“I’ll try. I’m on admin leave for ten days, and I’m taking some vacation time, so Kate and I are going to Paris.”
“Terrific. You deserve it. What are you doing tonight?”
“You tell me.”
“Oh, right. Those names.”
“I need to get off this phone in a few minutes, Dom. Talk to me.”
“Okay. Forget Gonzalez Perez. Brock, Christopher, two possibles who fit, one in Daytona Beach, one in San Francisco. You want the particulars?”
“Shoot.”
He gave me the addresses and phone numbers, and I wrote them on a cocktail napkin.
He said, “Roxanne Scarangello. Got what I think is a positive. Ready to copy?”
“Ready.”
“Okay… where did I put that…?”
“On the bulletin board?”
“No… here it is. Okay, Scarangello, Roxanne, age twenty-seven, in her third year of a PhD program at University of Pennsylvania-that’s in Philly. Got a BA and an MA from the same place-bullshit, more shit, piled higher and deeper.”
“She start class?”
“Yeah. Well, she was registered. Should have started today, actually.”
“Current address?”
“Lives on Chestnut Street with a boyfriend named Sam Carlson. Mama’s not happy.” He gave me the address, apartment, and cell phone number. He added, “I did a standard credit check on her-those credit bastards have more background on people than the FBI-and I discovered she used to work summers at the Bayview Hotel in Westhampton Beach. That’s the babe, right?”
“Right.”
“I even got a photo from her college yearbook. Nice-looking. You want it?”
“Maybe. Anything else? Criminal? Civil?”
“No. Clean. But she’s got no visible means of support, except maybe the boyfriend, but he’s a student and his credit report sucks, too, and I did a background on her parents, who aren’t exactly rich.”
“Scholarship?”
“That’s it. Some kind of school scholarship, with a stipend. And knowing where you’re coming from, I checked further and found out that this is a U.S. government-supported scholarship, but maybe that’s just a coincidence.”
“Maybe. Nice work.”
“Piece of cake. Meet me for a beer. You owe me one.”
“I do, but I’m jet-lagged.”
“Bullshit. You’re going to Philly. Take a break, John. Meet me at the Judson Grill. Full of Hampton babes back after Labor Day. Hey, you might get a lead there.”
I smiled and said, “Dom, I’ve kept my dick in my pants for six weeks. Don’t tempt me.”
“Six weeks? How do you know it still works?”
“Go sanitize my apartment. I’ll be home late tonight, or early tomorrow. Ciao.”
“Ciao, baby. Welcome home. Think about what you’re doing-you don’t want to go back to Yemen.”
“Thanks.” I shut off my cell phone, then paid the bar tab and tipped the bartender a five for the electricity.
I walked into the terminal where a digital clock said it was 5:01P.M., and I reset my watch to earth time.
I actuallywas jet-lagged, and I’d been in the same clothes for over a day, and quite frankly I’d make a Yemeni camel jockey gag.
I should be going home, but I was going to Philadelphia.
I went to the Hertz counter and rented a mid-sized Ford Taurus, and within thirty minutes I was on the Shore Parkway, heading toward the Verrazano Bridge, the radio playing, and my cell phone plugged into the car outlet.
I called my home answering machine and retrieved a few dozen messages from people who seemed surprised or confused about us being out of the country. There were about six messages from Dom Fanelli, all saying, “Kate, John-you home yet? I thought I’d check your apartment for you. Okay, just checking.”
This is the guy who tellsme to be careful. Detective Fanelli was going to wind up on the wrong side of a domestic homicide case.
I shut off the cell phone, and left it charging. My beeper, in fact, had not worked in Yemen, but following Jack’s orders I’d left it on the whole time, and the battery was dead. But it was on.
I also recalled that Mr. Koenig had given me a direct order not to involve myself in TWA 800. I should have asked him to clarify that, which I’ll do next time I see him.
I drove over the Verrazano, across Staten Island, and across the Goethals Bridge, then onto I-95 in New Jersey, and headed south toward Philadelphia. I should be there in less than two hours.
Roxanne Scarangello.She may not know anything, but if Griffith and Nash spoke to her, then I needed to speak to her.
I was five years and two months behind the curve on this one, but it’s never too late to re-open a case.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
To a New Yorker, Philadelphia-about a hundred miles south of Midtown-is like the Statue of Liberty: historical, close, and totally avoidable.
Nonetheless, I’ve been to the City of Brotherly Love a few times for police conferences, and a few times to see a Phillies-Mets game, so I know the place. All things considered, to paraphrase W. C. Fields, I’d rather be in Yemen. Just kidding.
At about 7:30P.M., I pulled up to a five-story apartment building at 2201 Chestnut Street, not far from Rittenhouse Square.
I found a parking space on the street, got out of my rental car, and stretched. I called Roxanne Scarangello’s apartment, and a female answered, “Hello?”
“Roxanne Scarangello, please.”
“Speaking.”
“Ms. Scarangello, this is Detective John Corey with the FBI. I’d like to speak to you for a few minutes.”
There was a long silence, then she asked, “About what?”
“About TWA Flight 800, ma’am.”
“I’ve told you all I know about that, five years ago. You said you wouldn’t be calling me again.”
“Something new has surfaced. I’m outside your apartment. May I come up?”
“No. I’m… not dressed.”
“Why don’t you get dressed?”
“I… I’m actually late f
or dinner.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“I can walk.”
“I’ll walk with you.”
I heard what sounded like a deep sigh, then she said, “All right. I’ll be right down.”
I turned off my cell phone and waited in front of the apartment building, which seemed like a decent place on a nice tree-lined street, within walking distance of the University of Pennsylvania, an expensive Ivy League school.
It was nearly dark, and the night was clear. A soft breeze carried a hint of autumn.
You don’t appreciate these things until they’re gone, and if you’re lucky, you get to appreciate them again with new eyes and ears.
America.
It was some kind of delayed reaction, and I felt like kissing the ground and singing “God Bless America.”
A tall, attractive young woman with long dark hair, dressed in black jeans and a black sweater, came out of the apartment house.
I said, “Ms. Scarangello? I’m John Corey, FBI task force.” I held up my credentials and said, “Thank you for your time.”
She replied, “I’ve really told you all I know, which is almost nothing.”
That’s what you think, Roxanne. I said, “I’ll walk with you.”
She shrugged, and we began walking toward Rittenhouse Square. She said, “I’m meeting my boyfriend for dinner.”
“I, too, have a dinner date. So I won’t keep you.”
As we walked, I asked her some inconsequential questions about the university, her first day of classes, Philadelphia, and about her doctorate program, which she said was in English literature.
I yawned, and she asked me, “Am I boring you?”
“Not at all. I just got in from the Mideast. See my tan? Do you want to see my ticket?”
She laughed. “No. I believe you. What were you doing there?”
“Keeping the world safe for democracy.”
“You should start here.”
I remembered I was speaking to a college student and replied, “You’re absolutely right.”
She went into a rap about the last presidential election, and I nodded and made positive sounds.
We got to a restaurant called Alma de Cuba near Rittenhouse Square and entered. It was an upscale, trendoid kind of place, and I wondered how big that stipend was.
Ms. Scarangello suggested a drink while we waited for her boyfriend.
There was a cocktail lounge in the rear, decorated with plantation shutters and black-and-white photos of old Cuba projected onto the white walls. We found a table and ordered a carafe of white sangria for her and, to continue the theme, a Cuba libre for me.
I said to her, “Let me get right to the point. You were the cleaning person who went into Room 203 of the Bayview Hotel in Westhampton at about noon on July 18, 1996, the day after the TWA 800 crash. Is that right?”
“That’s right.”
“No other cleaning person or staff had been there before you. Correct?”
“As best I know. The guests hadn’t checked out, and they weren’t answering the phone or the knocks on the door. Also, there was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.”
That’s the first I’d heard about that. But it made sense if Don Juan and his lady wanted to put time and distance between themselves and the hotel. I said, “And you entered with your passkey?”
“Yes, that was the procedure after the elevenA.M. check-out time.”
The drinks came, I poured some sangria for her, and we clinked glasses.
I asked her, “Do you recall the names of the FBI people who first interviewed you?”
“Not after five years. They only used their first names.”
“Well, think hard.”
She replied, “I think one of them had like an Irish name.”
“Sean? Seamus? Giuseppe?”
She laughed. “That’s not Irish.”
I smiled. “Maybe Liam.”
“That’s it. The other was… can’t remember. Don’t you know?”
“Yeah. Probably Ted.”
“I think that’s it. Nice-looking guy.”
And an asshole.
She asked me, “Are you still looking for that couple? Is that what this is about?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why are they so important?”
“We’ll know when we find them.”
She informed me, “They probably weren’t married to each other. They don’t want to be found.”
“Well, but they need marriage counseling.”
She smiled. “Yeah. Right.”
I asked her, “Did the FBI show you a composite sketch of the man?”
“Yes. But I didn’t recognize him.”
“How about the woman he was with?”
“No. I never saw a sketch of her.”
I said to her, “Okay, so you walked into the room and what?”
“Well… I called out in case they were, like, in the bathroom, you know? But I could see they were gone. Nothing around. So I dragged my cart in, and I started by stripping the bed.”
“Okay, so the bed was slept in?”
“Well… probably not. It was just, like, the bed cover was at the foot of the bed, the blanket was gone, and probably they lay down on the top sheet, maybe to nap or watch TV, or… whatever. But it didn’t have that overnight slept-in look.” She laughed. “I got real good at the nuances of hotel room use.”
“I wasn’t an English major. What’s a nuance?”
She laughed again. “You’re funny.” She surprised me by lighting a cigarette. She said, “I only smoke when I drink. You want one?”
“Sure.” I took a cigarette, and she lit it for me. I used to smoke, so I didn’t choke on it.
I said, “So, the blanket was missing?”
“Yes. And I made a note to tell the head housekeeper.”
“Mrs. Morales.”
“Right. I wonder whatever happened to her.”
“Still there.”
“Great lady.”
“She is.” I asked, “Did you know Lucita? The cleaning lady?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“How about Christopher Brock, the desk clerk?”
“I knew him, but not well.”
“Did you speak to him after the FBI questioned you?”
“No, we were told not to speak to anyone. And they meantanyone.”
“How about the manager, Mr. Rosenthal? Did you speak to him?”
She replied, “He wanted to talk to me about it, but I said I couldn’t.”
“All right. And you left the hotel shortly after that day?”
She didn’t reply for a while, then said, “I did.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you know?”
“Nope.”
“Well… these FBI guys said it would be best if I left my job at the hotel. Because I might be tempted to talk to news people, and maybe I’d be harassed by the media feeding frenzy and all that. So I said I couldn’t afford to leave my job, and they said they’d make up my salary if I cooperated and left, and… kept quiet.”
“Pretty good deal.”
“It was. I mean, it’s peanuts to the Federal government. They pay farmers not to grow crops. Right?”
“Right. They pay me not to take care of the office plants.”
She smiled.
I asked, “What was it that the FBI didn’t want you talking about?”
“That’s just it. I didn’tknow anything. But there was like this big thing about this couple in Room 203 and them going to the beach and seeing the plane crash. It didn’t seem like a big deal, but they made a big deal out of it, and the news people got wind of something going on. Next thing I know, I’m retired and out of there.”
I nodded. The Feds come on like gangbusters, cause a shit storm, then try to wipe up the shit with money.
I asked her, “Did they help you with your scholarship?”
“Sort of. I think so. Don’t you know?”
�
�That’s not my department.”
Ms. Scarangello’s cell phone rang, and she answered it. I could tell she was talking to her boyfriend, and she said to him, “Yes, I’m here. But take your time. I’m in the bar, and I ran into one of my old profs. I’m fine. See you later.” She hung up and said to me, “That was Sam-my boyfriend. He’s at the apartment now.” She added, “I’m not supposed to ever mention TWA 800. Right?”
“Right.”
“So, see, wasn’t that good?”
“Excellent. Do I look like a professor?”
She laughed. “No. But you are when Sam gets here.”
Carafe two, Cuba libre two.
“So,” I said, “take me through everything you did and saw in that room, things you might have smelled or touched that seemed out of the ordinary, and even completely ordinary.”
“Oh, jeez… it’s been five years.”
“I know. But if you start talking, then it’ll start coming back.”
“I doubt it. But, okay… next I went into the bathroom because this is the least pleasant part of the job, and I wanted to get it over with. I started in the shower-”
“The shower had been used?”
“Yes, but not that morning. I could tell it had been used, maybe the night before. Soap and shower stall were dry, and so were the used towels. I remember telling one of the FBI guys that it was like the bathroom was hardly used. Just a quick shower and out.”
“Was there sand on the floor? In the bed?”
“There was beach sand in the bathroom. I told the FBI guy that.”
“Okay, so you went back in the bedroom.”
“Yes. I first emptied the wastebaskets, then the ashtrays-”
“They were smoking?”
“No… I don’t think so. But that’s what I usually do.”
“Try to separate this room on this day from the hundreds of other rooms you’ve cleaned.”
She laughed. “Sure. More like two thousand over three summers out there.”
“I know, but you were questioned for a long time about this one room. So you can remember what you said to the FBI guys. Right?”
She replied, “Actually, I wasn’t questioned that long. They just asked me what I did and saw in the room, then thanked me.”
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