by R. G. Belsky
Which would leave me with a lot of explaining to do with my bosses at the News about why I knew the identity of Houston and had never told anyone or done a story about it.
The way I saw it I had three choices: (1) walk in to Marilyn and Stacy right now and confess everything, (2) just go home tonight, savor all the acclaim over my big scoop, and then worry about the rest of it in the morning, or (3) keep hoping that no one ever found out about Houston, the note mentioning her name, or my involvement in any of it.
I was too tired to do (1), and—even in my most delusional state—I realized that (3) was just wishful thinking. So I opted for (2). Procrastination is a specialty of mine. Whatever the problem, I’m very good at putting it off for as long as possible.
I decided I’d deal with it tomorrow.
Tomorrow would be time enough to come clean.
Tomorrow would be fine.
Tomorrow would be . . . well, interesting.
CHAPTER 9
HERE’S what we know about Melissa Ross so far,” I said to Marilyn and Stacy the next morning. “She’s thirty-one years old. Divorced. Lives in Kew Gardens, Queens. Has a small private investigations office on Queens Boulevard. Ex-actress, ex-model, ex-cop too. She was on the police force for a while.”
“How long was she a cop?” Marilyn asked.
“Only lasted a couple of years before she got fired. She kicked her commanding officer in the balls. Sent him to the hospital. Poor guy had to go on disability and retire from the force.”
“Why did she do it?”
“She said he came on to her. Tried to grope her.”
“Did he?”
“Apparently.”
“So maybe the creep had it coming,” Marilyn smiled.
“Still seems like a bit of an overreaction,” I pointed out.
We were sitting in Marilyn’s office, which gave her a bit of an advantage at the moment in the power game she was playing with Stacy at the paper. It was a big, nicely furnished office filled with memorabilia from her long years at the paper—awards, pictures, trophies. The subtle message to Stacy was: “I’m still the managing editor and you’re the city editor, which means you work for me.” On the other hand, the Daily News website—Stacy’s pride and joy—had set a single-night record for traffic the previous evening with my story about the hunt for blonde killer Melissa Ross.
“There was other stuff too with Melissa Ross,” I told them. “A bunch of civil complaints, even though she was only on the force a few years. Suspects claiming that she used physical force on them. A couple of them went to the hospital. One guy sued. But most of the others dropped the charges. It was too embarrassing for them to admit that they’d been beaten up by a woman.”
“Sounds like she’s got something against men,” Marilyn said.
“Hard to believe, huh? But I guess not all men are as sensitive, politically correct in the workplace, and all-around adorable as me.”
Marilyn rolled her eyes.
“Her husband was a cop too. The marriage didn’t last long,” I said.
“What happened there?” Stacy asked.
“She caught him cheating on her.”
“Did she kick him in the balls too?”
“What she did was waited until he was asleep one night, then handcuffed him to the bed. Hands and feet both, spread-eagled there when he woke up. She gagged him, kept him like that for days. Beat the crap out of him. Kept threatening to castrate him with a butcher knife. Finally, when she was out of the apartment, he managed to get the gag free and call for help. A neighbor heard and called the cops. They found him like that.”
“Did he press charges against her?” Stacy asked.
“No, he started to—but then changed his story to say it was just some kind of sex game that got out of hand. I mean what cop would want to testify publicly in court about how his wife did that to him? He’d be a laughingstock. So they never prosecuted her. He divorced her right afterward. Hell, I imagine he was happy just to be rid of her.”
“Beat him up? Threatened to stab him?” Marilyn muttered, looking down at a picture of Melissa Ross on the front page of the paper. “Sounds like what she did to Issacs. This is a scary woman.”
“Anyway, before becoming a cop, she got some modeling and acting gigs because of her great looks. She did a few commercials and fashion magazine photo layouts, even appeared in a recurring role on a TV soap opera for a while. But she never hit it big. Then she joined the force, and stayed until she had that blowup with her commanding officer.
“After that, she set herself up in this private investigation business. Specifically in helping women find out if their husbands were cheating. Some of it involves typical PI stuff—following a cheating husband, getting pictures of him with a lover, tracking down receipts from hotels, etc.
“But she has another ploy too. The ‘honey trap.’ That’s what they call it. She meets a guy somewhere, comes on to him—and sees if he goes for it. Pretty hard for any man to turn down a come-on from a woman who looks like her. If he bites, she goes back to the wife and tells her that her husband was willing to be unfaithful. But she never actually sleeps with the guy. Just sets up a bedroom date to show the wife she can’t trust him.”
“So why did she sleep with Issacs this time?”
“Maybe she fell in love with him.”
“Then why kill him?”
I shrugged.
“Christ, I don’t know . . . maybe she’s fickle.”
“Any other family besides the ex-husband?” someone asked.
“She has a mother on Long Island,” I said. “I got her on the phone. But the mother told me she hasn’t been in contact with Melissa for years. They had some kind of falling out.”
“Okay, Melissa Ross hates men, hates the way men treat her and other women—and sets up this business to get back at them,” Marilyn said. “Only this time she gets more than just simple revenge by revealing his infidelities to the woman. She gets the ultimate revenge. She has sex with him, then she kills him. So now we just wait until the police find and arrest her to get all the answers on why she did it.”
“That should be easy,” Stacy said. “I mean we know who she is, where she lives and works. And a woman who looks like that should be easy to find.”
* * *
“I have something else I wanted to discuss about the Melissa Ross story,” I said when that was finished. “There’s a Houston angle.”
“Houston?” Marilyn said. “Your Houston?”
I nodded.
“What does Houston have to do with Melissa Ross and the Walter Issacs murder?”
“Mrs. Issacs is really Houston,” I said.
I told her the story about how the legendary New York City hooker named Houston had found what she thought was true love, gotten married, became the mother of two daughters—and thought she had put the life of Houston behind her for good. I also told her how someone—presumably Melissa Ross—had sent her a letter addressed to Houston about her missing husband. Ergo, Melissa Ross—the person who killed Walter Issacs—knew that she was also killing Houston’s husband. Maybe that’s even why he was killed. Because of her past as Houston, not anything happening now.
“My God, that’s unbelievable stuff!” Stacy said.
“How long have you known about this?” Marilyn asked, zeroing right in on the question I hadn’t answered yet.
I had thought long and hard about how to handle this. I figured I could either tell her nothing, everything, or something in between. I opted for the last choice.
“I didn’t know until now,” I said. “Victoria Issacs knew who I was, of course. That’s why she came to me when she was looking for someone to help find her missing husband. I guess I was the only reporter she could think of in her desperation. When I talked to her later—after her husband’s death—she told me about getting the note from someone who knew about her husband and about her own past as Houston. I don’t understand what the connection is, but I wanted you two
to know about this first.”
I looked at both of them. Stacy was buying everything. Marilyn seemed a bit more skeptical. But all she said was: “Can we print all this Houston stuff?”
“Why not?” I said.
CHAPTER 10
I MET my ex-wife, Susan, for drinks at a posh bar on East 21st Street.
The bar was in the same Gramercy Park neighborhood where we’d lived together when we were married. We hung out in that bar a lot in those days. Back then it was a funky, kind of down-and-dirty New York City place. The drinks were cheap, the noise was loud, and the bar was jammed with everyone from construction workers to struggling writers and out-of-work actors.
Now it had been renovated into one of those chic, trendy spots you read about in New York magazine. Soft jazz playing, expensive paintings on the walls, tasseled velvet chairs instead of bar stools. I hadn’t been there in a long time. But Susan picked the place to meet, not me—so I just went with the flow.
Susan was already there when I showed up. She looked good. Not that it was a surprise. Susan always looked good. But this night she looked especially good. She was wearing a sleeveless black dress and gray suede boots, and her hair was longer than I remembered it being the last time I saw her, hanging down over her bare shoulders. I wondered if she looked like that when she was in court. Might cause a few mistrials.
“Well, you certainly made it back onto the front page in a big way,” she said.
“I do have a nose for news. But you’ll be happy to know I’m still the same modest, unassuming, humble journalistic superstar I always was—and I’ll even give you an autograph before we leave.”
“Seriously, how do you find all these big stories?”
“Sometimes they find me, Susan.”
We were sitting in velvet chairs at one of the small tables. A bartender wearing a white shirt and pleated vest gave us a menu with a dazzling selection of specialty drinks to choose from. Susan ordered a sweet vermouth martini. I ordered a beer. The bartender looked at me disapprovingly.
“I like beer,” I said to him. “Is that a problem?”
“No problem at all,” he replied, but not like he really meant it.
Susan was particularly curious when I told her about the Houston story I was going to do. She had gone through the Houston scandal with me—watched it destroy my career back then and seen our marriage disintegrate along with it. I repeated the stuff I’d said to Marilyn and Stacy about Houston being Mrs. Victoria Issacs. I didn’t tell her the rest about Houston though. Just the public version I was hoping to stick with as long as I could.
“How—and why—does Houston fit into all of this?” she asked when I was done.
“I don’t know.”
“Jeez, it’s almost like this Houston business somehow keeps following you—and now has come full circle for you.”
The waiter came with our drinks. He placed the vermouth martini in front of Susan and smiled broadly at her. Then he plopped down a beer along with a glass. No smile for me. I thought about drinking the beer straight out of the bottle to annoy him even more. But I decided that might seem petty and poured some into the glass.
“So how are things with you?” I asked Susan.
“Good.”
“Your job at the DA’s office?”
“Good.”
“Your new apartment?”
“Good.”
“And your marriage to Dave or Dan or Dale or whatever his name is—the amazing estate lawyer?”
She started to answer, then paused and took a big sip of her martini.
“Not so good,” Susan said.
* * *
Now suddenly it all made sense. The invitation for drinks. How good she looked. Even the decision to meet here at one of our old favorite spots. After all the times I’d needed her in the past, she finally had come to me for help.
“I think I made a big mistake by marrying him,” she said.
“Why?”
“I don’t know if I can talk about it with you.”
“You can’t invite me out for drinks, announce to me that you think your marriage was a mistake, and then not give me any details.”
My beer was almost gone. But I didn’t want to go through the big deal it would take with the waiter to get another one right now. I just wanted her to keep talking. As it turned out though, she summoned the waiter over and ordered another round.
“Does he hit you or physically abuse you in any way?” I asked, starting off with the obvious.
“No.”
“Does he have a drinking problem, a drug problem, or any kind of substance abuse issues?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Does he have kinky sex hang-ups that make you uncomfortable and . . . ?”
She smiled and shook her head no. “Actually, I’m probably kinkier than he is. No, the bedroom stuff is okay. Not great, but okay. That’s not the issue. None of that is. The problem is . . . well, this is going to sound stupid . . . I miss the laughs.”
“Laughs?”
“You always could make me laugh. Even when you and I were going through hard times—and there were a lot of them back then when we were married—there were moments when we still laughed together. There are no laughs in my life right now.”
She took a big gulp of her new martini.
“I really miss the laughs, Gil.”
* * *
We sat and talked and drank for a long time. The bartender brought us several more rounds of drinks. By the end, I think I’d started to win him over. He still plopped the beers down on the table in front of me, but he wasn’t scowling anymore. I even got him to bring me a bowl of peanuts.
Susan basically laid out the story of a marriage in trouble. She hadn’t known him that well when she got married and probably rushed into it too fast, she said. I mean she and I had gotten married before we knew each other that long too, but our troubles were for different reasons. Most of them my fault. This time though she had just suddenly realized he wasn’t the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with.
By the time we left, she was pretty drunk. I walked her out onto Lexington Avenue in front of the bar to get a cab. She pressed against me and put her head on my chest as we waited.
“I could go home with you tonight,” she said, looking up at me.
“For the night? You and me?”
“Yes, that would be the sleeping arrangement.”
I wasn’t sure what to do. For a long time after our marriage ended, I’d hoped for, fantasized about—and pleaded with her—to let me have sex with her again. But she always wanted to move on with her life. And now here she was offering herself up to me, no questions asked.
“I can’t tonight—I have someone there,” I lied.
“A girlfriend?”
“A woman.”
“Is it serious?”
“Not at all. She was just there last night and stayed around today. She’ll be gone in the morning. We could talk about this some other time.”
“So I’ll take a rain check,” she said.
Then she kissed me. This wasn’t a peck on the cheek. Or even a goodbye kiss on the lips. This was a passionate, openmouthed assault that left me breathing heavily and seriously reconsidering the wisdom of my phony story about the imaginary woman who was staying in my apartment.
“By the way,” Susan said as she got into the cab I hailed for her, “I know you were lying about having another woman there tonight.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’m a lawyer. I can read people.”
“I just didn’t think it was a good idea right now.”
“Don’t forget the rain check,” she said and got into the cab.
On my own way back home, I thought about everything that had happened between us that night. About the way she opened up to me about her unhappiness and marriage. About how damn great she looked. And—most of all—about my impulsive decision to turn down her advances.
It really
made no sense when you thought about it. I’d spent most of my time over the past few years figuring out ways to get her into bed with me again. And now—when the big moment happens—I say no. I didn’t feel guilty or worried about her husband’s feelings or anything noble like that. To be honest, I don’t have a lot of lofty rules or principles when it comes to having sex. I’ve always operated on a pretty simple principle, which is:
If it feels good, do it.
Sleeping with Susan sure would have felt damn good.
So why didn’t I do it?
CHAPTER 11
BOB Wylie came to the Daily News office to make his Live from New York appearance the next day. He brought Tim Hammacher with him, the top aide he’d mentioned before. Wylie introduced us. I told Hammacher I’d heard a lot of good things about him. He did not say he’d heard good things about me. He made it clear instead that he didn’t think Wylie’s appearance was a good idea.
“I don’t want you taking any cheap shots against us,” he said.
“Why would I take cheap shots?”
“Because you’re a tabloid reporter.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“And tabloid reporters take cheap shots at people.”
“I promise to abstain just for today.”
“Good. Then you and I will get along just fine.”
Hammacher was about my age, with short reddish hair and wearing a three-piece suit. He kept checking his phone for text messages while he was talking to me. And this guy was the best on Wylie’s team? Jeez, no wonder he needed me.
The original idea had been to focus the interview on Wylie exploring a run for mayor in the upcoming election. Not that it was a big secret or anything; there’d been lots of speculation and hints from his camp about a mayoral candidacy. But this would be the first time he addressed it directly, and that was big news.
