by R. G. Belsky
Now though the sensational murder of Walter Issacs at the Hotel Madison was something I needed to ask him about too.
I told Wylie and Hammacher that before we went on the air.
“Let’s do the murder stuff first,” Wylie said. “You ask me about that, and I’ll do my best to give you the status of the investigation. I’ll segue from there into a big picture view of crime in New York City—and the great strides we’ve made in combatting and controlling it in the past few years. After that, we go right into the politics of the mayoral race.”
I nodded. That seemed to work.
“Have you given any more thought to coming to work for me in the campaign and then at city hall after I win?” Wylie asked.
“I have.”
“And?”
“I’m still thinking about it.”
Hammacher snorted in disgust. “Well, I wouldn’t wait too long,” he said. “There’s a lot of people trying to get on our bandwagon right now. You don’t want to be left behind.”
“Or, to use another analogy,” I said, “the train is about to leave the station and I need to get aboard in a hurry?”
“Something like that. So where are you on this right now, Malloy?”
This guy was really starting to get on my nerves.
“I’m still standing in the station,” I told him.
* * *
Everything went well at the beginning.
On the Issacs murder, Wylie went through what he knew about the hunt for Melissa Ross in an efficient, no-nonsense style that made you feel confident he was completely on top of the case—and that Melissa Ross would soon be in custody.
He then talked about all the successes during his term as deputy mayor. Plunging crime rates. More convictions. Safer streets. Better community relations. Innovative law enforcement techniques using modern technology to fight crime. Finally came the money quote about his political plans: “I think I can do even more for this city as mayor. And so I am seriously considering a run for city hall.” It all sounded very impressive. Bob Wylie sure seemed like a winner. Maybe I should get aboard his campaign train. I wanted to be a winner too. I could use some winning in my life.
After that, we opened it up to questions from the viewers and people watching it on Livestream from their computers. Sort of like a town hall meeting, only twenty-first-century style. Some people called in their questions. Others would email, tweet, or text them in—and we’d post them online along with Wylie’s answers. It was awfully complicated for a traditional newspaper guy like me, but fortunately we had a lot of young kids who’d grown up with social media to take care of that stuff.
We had someone screen the calls and online stuff for us, asking viewers what they wanted to talk to Wylie about, etc. Toward the end of his interview, a woman called who said she wanted to ask a question about the Walter Issacs murder. The screen on my computer alerted me to the topic, and I said sure. The more we got Wylie to talk about the murder case, the better. It was definitely the big story at the moment, even bigger than the mayoral race.
But when the woman came on the line, she addressed her first question to me—not Wylie.
“Did you ever see the movie Basic Instinct, Gil? The one where Sharon Stone stabs to death the man she’s having sex with. I love that movie. It always gives me ideas. Exciting ideas. Sex and death. An unbeatable combination.”
“Who is this?” I said.
“Oh, you must know who it is. Didn’t you watch my performance on that security video from the Hotel Madison? Me and the late Walter Issacs? You were the one who broke that story. Your paper has been way ahead of everyone else in writing about me. I’ve very impressed. I’m becoming a big fan of yours.”
“Melissa Ross?”
“You can just call me Melissa. I’m famous now because of you. The whole city knows my name. You can make me even more famous too. We’ll both be famous, Gil, you and me together. I need someone to work with in the media. You’re the choice. I didn’t plan it that way—you just turned up on my radar by accident. But now I’ve decided you’re the right person for the job.”
I looked over at Wylie. He was stunned, but quickly pulled himself together.
“The best thing you can do right now is surrender,” Wylie told her. “Let’s set up a place to meet. You have my personal assurances that no one will harm you if you give yourself up peacefully.”
“Not yet. I still have more work to do. You know what they say: ‘A woman’s work is never done.’ ”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What work?”
“There will be an email arriving in your inbox momentarily explaining it. I just sent it to [email protected].”
Then Melissa Ross hung up.
Sure enough, a few seconds later, I heard a ping telling me I had a new email. I called it up on my screen. The subject line was: “TO THE MEN OF NEW YORK CITY.”
I read it with growing amazement and horror:
So this guy walks into a bar and announces he wants to tell a dumb blonde joke:
“I’m a blonde and I have a black belt in karate,” the woman bartender says to him. “The woman sitting next to you is a blonde with a black belt in karate too. And the woman on the other side of you is also a blonde with a black belt in karate. Now, do you still want to tell us your dumb blonde joke?”
“Nah,” the guy says. “Not if I have to explain it three times afterward.”
You know, a lot of people really do think blondes are dumb. Walter Issacs, the not-so-alive guy the police found at the Hotel Madison, did. He won’t make that mistake again. (Ha, ha!)
Bottom line here, folks: We all go through our lives with blinders on. Getting up every morning, going to work—each day the same as the next. Pretending that what we do really matters somehow or actually makes a difference in this big cosmic universe of ours.
And then one day everything changes.
I don’t want to get all melodramatic here and bore you with endless Dr. Phil-like psychobabble about self-discovery and self-empowerment and all that crap.
Not my style. Me, I’m about action. Action speaks louder than words. And sometimes you just have to act to make people sit up and take notice.
Another dumb blonde joke:
Q. Why did the blonde cross the road?
A. I don’t know, but neither did she.
Here’s one thing I do know. There’s going to be a lot more blood spilled here before this is over.
If you don’t believe me, go to the Yorkville Apartments on 84th and Second.
You’ll find him there.
Victim #2.
Part II
BASIC INSTINCTS
CHAPTER 12
THE new victim’s name was Rick Faris.
Faris was an advertising executive with a big Manhattan agency. He had a wife named Karen and three young children, who lived in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. Like Victoria Issacs, Faris’s wife had recently hired Melissa Ross as a private investigator to find out if he was cheating on her.
Faris was found in an apartment at the Upper East Side address in the email. He had told his wife he was staying in Manhattan for a late meeting with a client. But there was no client and there was no late meeting. It turned out the apartment was a secret love nest he kept in the city to bring back women he picked up in bars.
Witnesses said they’d seen him leaving a singles bar in the neighborhood with a very attractive blonde woman on the evening he died. The woman fit the description of Melissa Ross.
The details of his murder were similar to Walter Issacs’s death. He’d been stabbed, beaten, and strangled. Rope marks on his arms and legs indicated he had been restrained prior to his death. There was also evidence of semen. It appeared that Faris had had sex with the woman before she killed him, the same as Issacs.
The crime lab teams went over everything in the apartment, of course. But there was nothing there. No unknown fingerprints. No strands of blonde hair. No evidence of any kind. No
actual witnesses either. No one in the building or neighborhood had seen or heard anything unusual after Faris left the bar with the woman.
Everyone covered the new murder in a big way. BLONDE BEAUTY KILLS AGAIN was the Daily News headline. This was now more than just another sensational murder story. It was a sensational serial killer story. A sexy blonde woman who had cold-bloodedly murdered two prominent men—and now threatened to claim more men as victims. Plus, she was talking about it—taunting us—in the media, just like Son of Sam once did. There’d been other serial killers over the years, but most of them targeted women. This was a woman killing men. And having sex with them before they died. The story dominated the news cycle for every newspaper, TV station, and media website in town.
I managed to stay ahead of the pack with some big exclusives. First, of course, I was the one who had broken the story of the killer’s call and email to Live from New York. We broadcast it live, then got it up on the Web. Plus, I scored an interview with Rick Faris’s grieving wife. I’m not sure exactly how that happened. I suppose it had something to do with the fact that my name had become so linked with the story of the murders. I also knew the lawyer who was acting as a spokesman for the Faris family—he’d worked with Susan when she and I were married, and we’d gotten together socially with him a few times. I guess luck played a part in it too. I probably just made my request for an interview at the moment they decided it would be a good idea for Mrs. Faris to give one.
I never worry about why I get an exclusive though.
Only about the ones I miss.
* * *
I sat in the living room of Karen Faris’s house and talked to her about her dead husband. Or tried to talk to her anyway. For a while, I could barely get a coherent sentence out of her. She just kept crying every time I mentioned her husband’s name.
Finally, Karen Faris calmed down enough so that I could ask her a few questions.
“Tell me about Melissa Ross,” I said.
“She’s a private investigator. I was worried that my husband was being unfaithful. But I was afraid to know the truth. I was pretty confused. She told me it was better to know the truth than to live a lie. She told me she could help me. She told me she’d helped lots of other women when men had done them wrong.”
“And so you hired her to spy on your husband?”
She nodded and looked down at a picture of her husband that sat on an end table next to her in the living room. Rick Faris was a decent-looking guy, about forty, with gray-tinged hair and a big smile on his face in the picture. He looked like the kind of guy who smiled a lot. He had his arm around his wife in the picture and she was smiling too.
Karen Faris began to cry again.
“I understand how difficult this is for you, Mrs. Faris,” I said softly. “But I would like to ask you some more questions about your husband and about Melissa Ross. Is that all right with you?”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
She tried to wipe away some of her tears. I took out a Kleenex and handed it to her. I smiled at her as I did it. She smiled back. Ah, Malloy, the women just melt when you flash them that smile. Well, at least it seemed to work on the grieving widows. She dabbed at her eyes with the Kleenex and then blew her nose.
“How did you find out about Melissa Ross and what she did at her agency?” I asked.
“At my women’s group.”
She said she had started going to a women’s empowerment class for emotional support. They encouraged her to deal with her husband’s lies and find out once and for all the truth about his infidelities.
“So I hired Melissa. She began following Rick. From the moment he left the house until he came home again. Lunch hour, after work drinks, and . . . well, whatever else he was doing. She said that was the only way she could find out what my husband was really up to when he was away from me. The only way I’d know whether or not he was cheating.”
“And what did she find out?”
“She found out the truth.”
“That your husband was cheating?”
She started to answer, then stopped. Her eyes welled up with tears again.
I moved over and sat down next to her now. I put my arm around her to comfort her. She smiled at me again. I started to take my arm away, but she clung to it for support. Almost desperately hung on to me. I was starting to feel uncomfortable and just a little bit guilty at being that intimate with her.
“Was he cheating on you with another woman?” I asked gently.
“Other women,” she said. “There was more than one. He was seeing several different women.”
“What did you do after Melissa told you this?”
She looked down again at the picture of her husband on the table next to her.
“What did you do when you found out your husband was cheating?” I asked again. “Did you confront him with the evidence? Did you fight over his extracurricular activities? Did you threaten to divorce him?”
Karen Faris shook her head no. “She gave me pictures,” she said. “Pictures of him with other women. Pictures of them kissing. Pictures of them holding hands. Pictures of them doing things . . . things that left no doubt what Rick was doing when he wasn’t here at home with me. But I never showed the pictures to him, like Melissa said I should. I threw them away. The pictures. The wiretaps Melissa did. The tape recordings she made. I threw everything into the trash and burned it.”
I was confused.
“But you wanted the private investigator to find out all this for you. . . .”
“That was a mistake.”
She looked at the picture of her husband again.
“It was my fault, you know.”
“I don’t understand, Mrs. Faris.”
“I hadn’t been good enough for Rick. That’s why he started spending time with other women. They were giving him something I wasn’t. I was the problem, you see, not Rick. No, it wasn’t your fault, Rick—it was mine. I just wasn’t being a good enough wife to a wonderful man like you.”
She wasn’t really talking to me anymore, she was talking to her dead husband.
Apologizing to him for making him run around with other women to have sex with instead of her.
Unbelievable.
“I made up my mind to change,” she told me now. “Made up my mind to become the type of woman worthy of Rick again. I started working out every day at the gym to get my body back to where it was when Rick and I first met. On that last day—the day he died—I had worked out for nearly three hours at the health club. When the workout was over, I was so delighted to find out I weighed almost my old weight again. The weight I used to be when we got married. The weight I used to be when Rick found me attractive and didn’t need to look for sex somewhere else. I even bought some sexy lingerie. God, I hadn’t done that in years for him. I wanted to please my husband so much. I wanted to please him so much that he’d never be tempted to be with other women anymore. I wanted . . . I just want my husband back.”
She said she had even started making sure she cooked his favorite foods again. That’s what she was doing when she got the news he was dead.
“I was making him a beef stroganoff casserole. It was his favorite dinner. I spent all day working on it, making sure it was just right for Rick. I stirred up the filet mignon, seasoned it with Rick’s favorite spices and then put it into a frying pan so it could simmer on a low flame for a long time. It made the meat more tender that way. Then I started working on the pasta and—most important of all—the sauce, which I made by hand. I wanted everything to be perfect for Rick. It had been a long time since things had been perfect between us. But this was going to be a new start for us. I was going to make our marriage the way it used to be—full of love and affection and passion.”
The tears began to flow again. Karen Faris sobbed uncontrollably. She picked up the picture of her and her husband. Held it to her chest. Then kept calling out his name over and over again.
That was the way I left Karen Fa
ris.
Crying in the living room of her now empty house.
I felt a bit sorry she was in such bad emotional shape over her husband’s murder, I suppose.
But mostly I was excited because it was a great interview.
The headline on my story said: ANGUISHED WIDOW SOBS: “I JUST WANT MY HUSBAND BACK.” I included all the details she had told me, including the sexy negligee she bought and the lovingly prepared beef stroganoff dinner that he never got the opportunity to eat.
I also talked about her hiring Melissa Ross to spy on her husband’s philandering, quoted her on the things Ross had said—and pointed out that this was all the same pattern that Ross had followed with Walter Issacs and his wife. There was no question now that Melissa Ross was the killer. Now all the police had to do was catch her.
Until then, I was going to ride this story for everything I could.
Did I feel bad for poor Karen Faris?
Sure I did.
Just like I felt bad for Victoria Issacs.
But mostly I felt good over getting the exclusive interview.
Welcome to the murky moral world of a tabloid reporter.
CHAPTER 13
THERE was no one waiting for me when I got home to my apartment. Just like the night before. And the night before that. That was okay with me right now though. Hey, even Superman needed some downtime alone after a long day of crime fighting. This was like my own personal Fortress of Solitude.
I grabbed a beer out of the refrigerator and then checked the latest messages on my phone.
One was from Peggy Kerwin. She wanted to know when we could get together again. I hadn’t gotten up the courage to tell her I really didn’t want to see her anymore. So instead I just kept making up excuses about being busy. I was hoping she’d get the hint. She didn’t. Peggy was so sweet, so nice, so trusting—and unfortunately so boring. Damn. How in the hell was I going to get out of that one?
