Blonde Ice

by R. G. Belsky

  “Why would someone do this to Walter?” she sobbed to me over the phone. “I just don’t understand. Why would anyone kill him? Why would anyone want him dead? Can you tell me who would want to do something like that?”

  I said I couldn’t.

  She clearly didn’t know either.

  Maybe Wohlers would have some answers.

  When I got to the hotel, I was the only reporter there. Wohlers had cut me a break by not alerting the rest of the press yet. So I got as many basic details as I could and called the story into the Daily News desk. There wasn’t much to say. But the headline PROMINENT LAWYER SLASHED TO DEATH IN POSH MIDTOWN HOTEL was sure to generate hits on the website as soon as it posted. Especially since it was a clear beat on every other news organization in town. I’d write a complete story for the paper too, of course, but that would come later. I just wanted to get something out there quick. Then hopefully I’d have more exclusive material for the print edition in the morning.

  “So stabbing was the cause of Issacs’s death?” I asked Wohlers.

  “Take your pick—stabbing, strangulation, or beaten to death.”

  “What is this—a multiple choice quiz?”

  “No, it looks like Issacs had all those things done to him. There were ligature marks on his wrists and ankles too that indicated he’d been tied up or restrained for some period of time. But it looks like the stab wounds were what finally killed him.”

  Wohlers told me that the hotel clerk at the front desk remembered Issacs checking in three nights earlier.

  That matched the timetable of when his wife said he disappeared.

  “He was with a woman. Blonde. Maybe about thirty. Very, very attractive. A stone-cold fox was the way the clerk put it. They booked the room for three nights. She called down later and specifically said they didn’t want any maid service. They wanted to be left alone for the entire stay. That’s why the body wasn’t discovered until this morning.”

  Blonde. About thirty. Very, very attractive. I thought about how that fit the description of Victoria Issacs. Could she have done it?

  No, I didn’t believe that.

  She had sounded in pretty bad shape over the phone. Crying. Sobbing. Screaming. Sure, the thought had occurred to me at first that she could have been the one who killed him. In a jealous rage after tracking him down to the hotel room where he was having an affair with another woman. But, after hearing her reaction on the phone, I discarded that possibility. No one could be that good an actress. Not even Houston.

  “Any identification on the woman?” I asked.

  “Issacs just signed in under his own name.”

  “Did you ask the hotel people if there was a security camera at the desk?”

  “Gee, now why didn’t I think of that? I guess I’ve just been flailing around here aimlessly until you showed up to give me some crimefighter tips, Malloy.”

  I ignored the sarcasm.

  “Yes and no on the security camera,” Wohlers said. “Yes, there is a security camera. No, it wasn’t working. They had some kind of malfunction with the system and the hotel hadn’t bothered to fix it yet.”

  “Terrific.”

  “There are cameras in the elevators. We’re trying to get some of that video now.”

  “So it sounds like he checked in with this woman, they had sex, and she killed him for some reason. Probably that first night. Then she slipped away, and no one discovered the body until the maid went into the room today. That makes sense, right?”

  “Except for one thing. The woman ordered room service the next morning. She called down from the room and asked for eggs over easy, bacon, toast, and a big pot of coffee. The order was for just one person, not two. Probably because Walter Issacs was already . . .”

  “Dead,” I said.

  “She kills him, then eats breakfast while the body is still in the room. Weird, huh?”

  “Any of the help see her?”

  “The waiter who brought the order up to her room. He said she came out when he knocked, took the meal, and then went back inside. He doesn’t remember much about her except that she was, well . . .”

  “A stone-cold blonde fox,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  * * *

  Wohlers wanted some answers from me. About Victoria Issacs. I had thought about how much I would tell him. In the end, I told him everything. I didn’t think I really had too much choice.

  “She was a prostitute,” I said.

  “And you were one of her customers?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What exactly then?”

  “I wrote about her for the paper. A long time ago. A series of articles I did on prostitution in New York. She was a high-priced hooker back then. She had a different name. It was Houston. She gave up the life, married this lawyer, had some kids—and it seemed like she’d turned her life around.”

  “Houston? Wait a minute, wasn’t that the one you got in all the trouble with? The woman who supposedly never existed?”

  “She turned out to be real.”

  “Did you ever write about that?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I had my reasons.”

  I told him about how she’d come to see me after all this time to ask for my help in tracking down her husband.

  “Why didn’t she just come directly to the police?”

  “She didn’t want to involve the police.”

  “Because she suspected her husband was having an affair . . .”

  “Well, that was one reason.”

  “And the other?”

  “She got a note at her house. An anonymous note. It said: ‘I know where your husband is, Houston.’ That’s why she came to see me. No one else knows that she once was Houston except for me and her—and now whoever it was that wrote that note. Which could be—very probably is—the same person who murdered her husband.”

  “Aw, jeez, Malloy,” Wohlers groaned. “What a nightmare. Do you have any idea how messy this case could get?”

  “Yeah, I do,” I said.

  * * *

  The security cameras on an elevator at the Hotel Madison had caught the blonde who checked in with Walter Issacs.

  In the hotel’s security center Wohlers and I watched the video of Issacs and the woman getting into one of the elevators. It had taken a bit of convincing to get Wohlers to allow me to be there with him, but he finally relented after I pointed out that I was the one who first tipped him off that Issacs was missing. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the woman on the screen. It wasn’t Victoria Issacs. You couldn’t see her face, but I could tell enough from what I could see that it had to be someone else.

  “That’s not his wife,” I said to Wohlers.

  “So who is she?”

  The video was in black-and-white, but you could still tell she was definitely a blonde and definitely very hot. A sexy body in tight jeans and a sleeveless top, tottering on high heels. She had a tattoo—it looked to be in the shape of a heart—on her left arm. On the elevator she stayed standing with her back to the camera.

  “Turn around, honey,” Wohlers muttered. “Smile nice and pretty into the camera for me.”

  But she didn’t. As the elevator went up to their floor, she kept her back to the camera as she plastered herself all over Issacs. Kissing him—running her hands through his hair and all over his body. Watching it, I couldn’t help but think about how turned on with sexual excitement Issacs must have been at that moment. No way he could have suspected what was about to happen.

  But why did it happen?

  Did this woman do all this stuff spontaneously in the elevator and then kill him because something went horribly wrong when they got to the room and had sex?

  Or was the whole thing planned? Did she deliberately lure him there and put on this whole act with the idea of murdering him from the very start?

  Or was there some other scenario that we or I hadn’t even considered?

&
nbsp; When the elevator doors opened, Issacs and the blonde woman got out and headed toward the room. She seemed to make a slight gesture, and then they were gone. There was no security camera in the hall. The screen went blank.

  “She never turned to face the camera,” Wohlers said. “You can’t see her face.”

  “Yeah, bad luck, isn’t it?” said the head of security for the hotel.

  “Bad luck,” Wohlers grunted.

  I could tell he’d seen something on the screen that bothered him.

  “Run it again,” he told the security chief.

  “Sure.”

  We watched it one more time and saw the same things. The elevator ride, with her all over him as they headed to the room. The blonde hair, the tight jeans, the sexy top, the tattoo on her arm. The woman and Issacs walking off arm in arm together after the doors opened. And the gesture she made at the end.

  “Can you freeze that at the end?” Wohlers asked. “Run it slow motion? Whatever you can do . . .”

  “No problem.”

  We watched it over a few times. I realized what Wohlers was looking at now. The gesture at the end. No question about it. As they got off the elevator, the woman took her right hand off of Issacs and seemed to make a movement with it behind her back. It looked deliberate.

  “Give me a close-up on that.”

  “On what?”

  “Her hand behind her back.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. That’s why I want to see it closer.”

  At first, it was still hard to make out. But zoomed-in, with the video stopped, I finally understood what the gesture was.

  Wohlers did too.

  “It’s her finger,” I said with amazement.

  “Right.”

  “Behind her back.”

  The security guy looked at the screen.

  “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Her middle finger,” Wohlers told him. “She’s got it extended.”

  “Why?” the security guy asked.

  “This woman knew exactly where the camera was,” Wohlers said. “That’s why she made sure not to turn her face toward it. But she wanted to let us know she did it deliberately. And so . . .”

  “She’s giving the finger to the camera,” I said.

  Wohlers nodded. “Basically, she just told us to fuck off.”

  CHAPTER 5

  I WROTE the story for the Web and next day’s paper. Adding new information along the way as I learned it from Wohlers. I was still way ahead of any other media outlet in town. They were just breaking the basic facts while the Daily News had the whole story.

  Well, not all of it. I included details about how horrific the crime scene was; how Walter Issacs was found with stab wounds and bruises all over his body; how he had apparently had sex with his killer before he died; and all about the taunting blonde on the elevator that could be seen with him on the security camera. That was all great stuff, and pretty much all of it was exclusive.

  I left out what I knew about the note addressed to “Houston.” And my own personal connection to the widow. For the sake of the investigation Wohlers wanted to keep quiet about the note, so I was okay on that front for now. But I knew I would have to deal with my bosses at the Daily News about it eventually. And that wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  No question about it, I had a big ethics problem. I’d told the paper years ago that I couldn’t find Houston, which was true at the time. They didn’t fire me; they took a great deal of criticism for that and my Houston story—yet still they gave me another chance. That I found Houston should have been a big story too, and a redemption of sorts for the paper and for me. But I kept the news to myself. I didn’t want to ruin her new life. I thought it was the right thing—the ethical thing—to do. But it was the wrong thing for me to have done as a reporter. A reporter is supposed to report the facts, not parcel them out as he sees fit. So I had somehow managed to do a good ethical thing and a bad ethical thing at the same time. This ethics business sure got tricky.

  I needed to make a preemptive strike. Go to Marilyn Staley, Stacy Albright, and the rest of my editors and tell them everything. It was going to come out sooner or later—probably sooner—so I could at least get ahead of it by making a clean breast of everything. There was no way to know what would happen afterward. Sure, I was riding pretty high at the paper these days. But a newspaper reporter can go from the penthouse (i.e., the front page) to the outhouse very quickly. I knew that better than anyone.

  For the moment, I fell back into the best security blanket I knew. Just being a reporter. I threw myself into the story and tried to put everything else—all the difficult decisions I had ahead of me—out of my mind.

  For now.

  * * *

  The next day I was at work still trying to figure out the best way to handle all of this when my desk phone rang. I recognized the number. It was someone I hadn’t heard from in a while.

  “Hi, Gil.” It was my ex-wife, Susan. “Congratulations, you seem to be doing great. A big star on TV. And back on Page One again. I’m really happy for you.”

  “Thanks,” I said, wondering what the call was all about. “What’s going on with you?”

  “Oh, the usual. Work, work, work—you know the drill.”

  “How’s your husband, the escargot lawyer?”

  “Estate lawyer.”

  “Whatever.”

  She laughed.

  “Wow, you must really want something from me, Susan.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You used to always get aggravated with me when I made a remark like that.”

  “I’d just like to talk with you, Gil.”

  “Talk how?”

  “Lunch. Drinks. Something like that.”

  “The last time we had lunch together you announced to me that you’d gotten married.”

  “I always felt badly about the way that happened.”

  “So what’s your ulterior motive this time?”

  “I have no ulterior motive.”

  “Everyone has an ulterior motive.”

  “Not me. I’d just like to see you again. It’s been too long.”

  That’s when I knew she had some kind of agenda. We made plans for drinks later in the week. What the hell else was I going to do? Besides, I was interested to see her too after all this time. Always good to be reminded of exactly what you missed out on in your life.

  Later that day, I got a postcard from Sherry DeConde in Rome. It was addressed to me at the Daily News, probably because I’d never given her my new address after I moved out of Chelsea. There was a picture of the Colosseum on the postcard. On the back she had written: “Sometimes these days I feel as old as this. You always made me feel young, Gil. I still think about you, hope you don’t ever forget me. Love, Sherry.”

  Jeez, what the hell was going on here? All the women from my past were suddenly coming back into my life. Susan. Sherry. And, of course, Houston. When the phone rang again, I kinda half expected to hear from Rosemarie Langford next, the girl I took to my high school senior prom, telling me how much she’d loved the corsage I gave her.

  Instead it was Wohlers. He said he was heading over later to do a full interview with Victoria Issacs about her husband’s murder. He said she had asked if I could be there too. It was highly irregular, he pointed out, but she insisted.

  “What’s the deal between the two of you anyway?” Wohlers asked.

  “I told you. We shared this secret about her being Houston. I guess it’s given us some kind of bond together.”

  “Are you schtupping her?”

  I sighed. “Lieutenant, I don’t think people say ‘schtupping’ anymore.”

  “Okay, but you still didn’t answer my question.”

  “No, I am not schtupping Victoria Issacs.”

  “Because she could be a suspect, you know.”

  “C’mon, even you don’t believe that. We saw the woman on the video and it’s not her.”
/>
  “No, we saw the woman on the video who went up to the room with him. They might have had sex up there. But then maybe it was Victoria Issacs who came by later to murder him in a jealous rage for cheating on her.”

  “Victoria Issacs did not kill her husband.”

  “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Wohlers said.

  CHAPTER 6

  THE news meeting that morning turned out to be quite a scene. Lots of arguments. Yelling. Screaming. Name-calling. And I gotta say the whole brouhaha was pretty much all because of me.

  “We need to put all the resources we can—starting with Gil, of course—on this murder story,” Marilyn Staley said.

  “Malloy can’t do that,” Stacy Albright said. “He’s the point man on our big Live from New York TV interview with Deputy Mayor Bob Wylie when he drops his first big hint that he’s running for mayor. Wylie specifically asked to do this with Malloy. This interview is all set. It can’t be changed.”

  “Stacy, we’re talking about a sexy front page murder story here,” Marilyn said impatiently.

  “And I’m talking about a helluva big exclusive on the mayoral race,” Stacy snapped back at her.

  “Sexy murder trumps mayoral race,” Marilyn told her.

  Tension between the two of them had been building for some time, ever since Marilyn got rehired as managing editor. Until now, they had managed to coexist in a temporary peace, with Marilyn concentrating on the day-to-day news coverage for the paper and Stacy spending her time building up the Web and social media presence for the paper.

  Now the two top female editors at the Daily News were battling it out. Over me.

  Not that I was a stranger to having two women fight over me. I mean that had happened plenty of times. Okay, maybe not in real life. But I sure had fantasized about it a lot. I decided to take the high road on this one though and act as peacemaker.