by R. G. Belsky
Another was from Victoria Issacs. She wondered if I knew yet when the Houston article was going to run. In preparation for it she’d already told her children and a few close friends about her past as the legendary prostitute, but she wanted to know when everyone else would find out. I understood. Her entire life was going to change when the article came out. I felt a little bit guilty about that, even though it wasn’t really my fault. Both of us—Houston and me—just seemed to be caught up in a conflux of life-changing events that were somehow beyond our ability to control.
Tim Hammacher called too. He said Wylie wanted to know if I was ready to make a decision about coming to work for him. Hammacher said Wylie had been deluged by job applicants for his campaign team—and he would have to make some decisions very soon. He mentioned the train leaving the station analogy again and at the end of the message even made a sound like a train whistle blowing. Cute.
And then there was a message from Susan. Ah, Susan. The love of my life. Except when she said she wanted to love me, I said no thanks. I still wasn’t sure exactly why I had done that. She sounded kind of apologetic about it in the voicemail she left, without really apologizing for anything. Just thanked me for listening to her problems, admitted she’d had a bit too much to drink, and said we should probably talk again soon. I wondered idly if she was still living with Dale the estate lawyer or if he had moved out or they were sleeping in separate beds or whatever.
I drank some more beer and thought about who to call back first.
I didn’t really want to talk to Peggy Kerwin or Tim Hammacher. I didn’t mind talking to Victoria Issacs, but I really had no answers for her—the paper hadn’t made a final determination on when to go with the Houston disclosure. I wanted very much to talk to Susan, but I had no idea what to say to her at this point.
In the end, I shut off my phone and decided to deal with all of it later.
* * *
I walked back into the kitchen and thought about what to make for dinner.
I had a cookbook that Sherry DeConde had given me for my birthday before she left that had some great recipes in it. There was a chicken marsala that sounded good. A ham and eggs dish. Even a rack of lamb that was supposed to be easy to make.
The problem was that making any of these things would require me to go out to the store to buy the food. I would have to turn on several parts of the oven, including either the broiler or the oven. And then there were the dirty dishes to deal with when I was done. It all seemed like a lot of trouble for a meal.
I finished off the beer I had and grabbed another.
Beer, the dinner of champions.
Then I picked up my phone and called a nearby coffee shop for delivery—which comes complete with paper plates.
I watched TV while I ate. There was a Superman episode on one of the cable channels that I hadn’t seen in a while. It was about an eccentric scientist who builds a robot that gets kidnapped by bad guys to help them rob places. Superman, of course, saves the day—and saves the robot from a life of crime. I wanted to stand up and cheer.
I thought some more about all the decisions I had to make.
I decided that I would just let the Peggy Kerwin thing play out to its eventual conclusion. At some point, she would get tired of calling me and give up. She’d find someone else as boring as her, they’d have boring kids, and all of them would live boringly happy lives ever after without me.
Tomorrow I would find out from Marilyn and Stacy exactly when the stuff about me and Houston was going to run in the News and on air with Live from New York. Then I would tell Victoria Issacs I would offer to do anything I could to help support her through what I knew would be a difficult time for her. I figured I owed her at least that much.
I had a plan on how to deal with Wylie too. It was a pretty good plan, if I do say so myself. I’d come up with it somewhere between my second and third beers. I would tell Wylie that I really was seriously considering working for him. But I couldn’t make any decision or announcement until I finished with the Melissa Ross story, whatever way it came out in the end. That would give me some more time to play along and stay on the inside of the police investigation. Hell, there was no way I was ever going to be happy in any job in my life other than being a real reporter, but he didn’t have to know that. At least not yet.
The only thing I had no answer for was the Susan situation.
I thought about it while I watched Perry White, Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen putting out the Daily Planet and keeping Metropolis safe.
I loved Perry White. He was everything I always wanted in a newspaper editor. Angry, irascible, impatient—but the kind of guy who was always in charge and who you knew would make the right decisions in the end. I wished I had a Perry White making editorial decisions for me at the Daily News right now. Or even helping me out with my personal life too.
“Great Caesar’s Ghost!” Perry White screamed at one point on the screen. “You call yourself a reporter? What in the hell is the matter with you anyway? What exactly is your problem?”
“My problem is,” I yelled back at the TV, “that I’m in love with my ex-wife. She’s married to another guy. But she doesn’t love him anymore. I think she still loves me. But I’m really not sure what to do next.”
Perry didn’t answer, of course.
He was talking to Clark, Lois, and Jimmy—not me.
It also dawned on me that talking about my problems to characters on a TV show made nearly sixty years ago was probably not the most productive—or sane—way for me to deal with them.
John Hamilton, the actor who played Perry White, had died a few years after the show was on in the 1950s. George Reeves, the TV Superman and Clark Kent, died back then too, of either a suicide or a deadly love-triangle or gangland murder—depending on which Hollywood legend you believed. Hell, even Christopher Reeve, who played Superman in the later movies, was dead now.
I needed to talk about Susan and my other problems with someone who was a real person—not a TV character.
Someone who could ask me questions, respond to my answers, and give me some good advice on where to go with my life.
And, ideally, someone who was alive.
CHAPTER 14
SO where is Melissa Ross?” was the first question from Marilyn Staley at the morning news meeting.
“The police don’t know,” I said.
“Why is she killing these men she has no apparent connection with—and having sex with them first?” she asked.
“They don’t know that either.”
“And how does she do it? Issacs and Faris were both good-sized men. How did a woman like Melissa Ross overpower them so easily?”
“I guess we’ll have to wait until the police can ask Melissa Ross those questions to find out,” I said.
“Except the police can’t find Melissa Ross.”
I was a bit baffled by this too. It had all seemed so easy at the beginning. The cops knew who the killer was, they knew where she lived, and they knew where she worked. Plus, she was a stunning blonde woman—which made it hard for her to remain unnoticed. Since both victims’ wives had hired her to spy on their husbands, the cops had put out a public appeal for other Melissa Ross clients to come forward. They were also going through the files and videos and other evidence found in her office, to reach out to anyone who had been in contact with her recently. It seemed like only a matter of time until they tracked her down and arrested her.
But she had already killed once again. And was threatening to carry out the murders of more men as part of some sort of bizarre vendetta she seemed to have against men because of the way they had treated her.
“Maybe she uses a gun,” someone suggested. “That would explain how she controls her male victims.”
“Except she didn’t shoot them.”
“Ross might be a black belt in karate or something,” an editor suggested.
“Or maybe she waited until they were asleep,” someone else said, “then handcuffed them t
o the bed, like she did with her ex-husband.”
I had another thought. I pointed out the references in her phone call to the movie Basic Instinct.
“Do you remember that opening scene in Basic Instinct?” I said. “The one where Sharon Stone killed the guy in bed with an ice pick, stabbing him over and over again? She tied the man up to the bed in some kind of kinky sex play before she killed him. He was completely helpless. Had to take whatever she wanted to do with him. Sexually. Or, in that case, being stabbed by an ice pick. And he let her tie him up. He wanted her to do that. He was turned on by it.”
“Do you think maybe Issacs and Faris wanted to be tied up?” Marilyn asked.
“Why not? Melissa Ross says she wants to play some kinky games. She takes out handcuffs or rope. Says she’ll do all sorts of stuff to the guy while he’s tied up. He’s excited, he’ll do pretty much anything at this point to get into her pants. It wouldn’t have been hard for her to convince him how much fun they would have.”
“So she ties him up and has sex with him?”
“Yes.”
“Why not just kill him as soon as she’s gotten him tied up?”
“Maybe Ross wanted the sex too. Only on her terms. On top of him. With him powerless and her totally in control of everything. Maybe that excited her.”
“And when the sex was over?”
“The guy asked her to untie him. She refused. That’s when she started to go to work on him. He’s not so excited anymore. He’s just scared. Maybe at first he thought it was some kind of a joke she was pulling on him. Just more sexual teasing and game-playing. But this was no game. She was determined to kill these men after having sex with them.”
“Boy, talk about a guy’s dick getting him into trouble,” someone muttered.
* * *
Stacy wanted to talk about the mayoral race next.
“Wylie seems to like you for some reason, Malloy,” Stacy said.
“Why wouldn’t anyone like me?” I said.
“I have a list of reasons in my office . . . ,” Marilyn started to say.
“The point I think Stacy is trying to make,” I said, “is that I am in the perfect position to get us exclusive stuff from Wylie. About the mayoral race and about the murder investigation too.”
“Exactly,” Stacy said. “Now we need to leverage that unique relationship between you and the deputy mayor to maximize both readership and traffic results emanating from the window of opportunity. I propose you engage in another interactive session which combines an on-air presence with innovative social media techniques to further promote our brand in cyberspace.”
Honest to God, she really talked like that.
“Translation anyone?” I said, looking around the room.
“I think she wants you to do another interview with Wylie,” an editor said.
“So why didn’t you just say that?” I asked Stacy.
She didn’t seem offended by any of the banter though. I’m not even sure if Stacy knew people were making fun of her. Or if she cared. She just thought she was smarter than anyone else, and she didn’t need our approval, because she had all the answers. I made a mental note again to root for Marilyn Staley in the battle for power the two of them were waging at the Daily News.
Marilyn weighed in on Stacy’s plan.
“I need Gil to write a story for tomorrow’s paper on the latest in the murder investigation,” she said. “And I need him to keep on that story until it’s over and Melissa Ross is in police custody.”
“He can do that and the political stuff for me too,” Stacy said.
We also talked about when we’d go public about Victoria Issacs being Houston. I had mixed feelings about doing this watered-down version of the Houston story, but it was better than the alternative of telling the whole truth about the story.
“Is it too much to ask you to do all of this, Gil?” Marilyn wanted to know.
“Nah, I’m good,” I said. “And then I could get a paper route and deliver the News door to door with any free time I have left.”
* * *
At the end of the meeting, Marilyn brought up another thing about the murders of Walter Issacs and Rick Faris.
“We need a name for the killer,” she said.
“Her name is Melissa Ross,” Stacy said, not quite understanding what Marilyn was saying.
“No, I mean we need a nickname. All of the serial killers that have made big news always had a great nickname. That’s what we need for this woman. A nickname that sticks. A nickname that terrifies people. A nickname that works in headlines and on-air teases so that everyone will know who we’re talking about. You understand what I’m saying? Son of Sam. Zodiac. The Hillside Strangler. Only this one is a woman. A woman who’s killing men that she picks up and goes out with. So what’s her nickname?”
Everyone in the room thought about it for a minute.
“Femme Fatale?” I said.
“Too obvious.”
“The Lady Killer?” Stacy suggested.
“Confusing. It sounds like the lady is the one being killed, it’s not clear that she’s the killer.”
The other editors threw out a series of other possibilities, all quickly shot down by Marilyn.
She looked down at a picture of Melissa Ross on her desk. The one of her in the Hotel Madison elevator. Marilyn stared at it for a long time. Looking at everything about Melissa Ross. The blonde hair. The tattoo on her arm. The sexy body, the revealing clothes, the way she was all over Walter Issacs in the elevator. The same man she would cold-bloodedly murder shortly after this picture was taken.
“Blonde Ice,” Marilyn said suddenly.
“Huh?” someone said.
“Blonde Ice. It captures the whole blonde thing, the whole sexy woman thing—and the heartless way she eliminates people, in this case the men who fall for her charms and come on to her.”
I liked it. So did all the other editors in the room. Even Stacy nodded her grudging approval.
Marilyn was right. It was what this killer—what this story—needed. The perfect nickname. And now they had it.
Blonde Ice.
As all the other people in the room began filing out after the news meeting, I looked over at Marilyn and said:
“So where’d you come up with that name?”
“Actually, they used to call me that at one of the places where I worked before I came back to the News.”
I looked at Marilyn now. She did have blonde hair. And she could give off an icy, cold demeanor if she didn’t like you. No question about it, Marilyn Staley definitely could be a hard woman, a tough woman, a woman without mercy when she needed to be. Just like Melissa Ross.
“Yeah, I can see that,” I said.
I smiled at her.
“Except you never killed anybody,” I pointed out.
Marilyn looked over at Stacy Albright, who was going out the door, then back at me.
“Not yet,” she said.
CHAPTER 15
I HAD a feeling—call it a crazy hunch—that Tim Hammacher, Bob Wylie’s top man, didn’t like me as much as Wylie did. I sensed it from his body language, the inflection in his voice, the subtle hints that a skilled reporter like me picks up on. And then there was something he said to me too.
“I don’t like you, Malloy,” he told me as we sat in his office.
That was the thing that pretty much clinched it for me.
“I think this is a bad idea for Bob to bring you aboard our campaign team,” Hammacher said. “I’ve told him that, and I’ll tell him again. You have a smart mouth, you don’t work well with people, you have a spotty résumé filled with all sorts of red flags about your trustworthiness, and you pretty much act like a jerk all the time. Have I left anything out?”
“I don’t take criticism well.”
I didn’t like Hammacher very much either. He was one of those guys who seemed to live a charmed life and could do no wrong. There were diplomas in his office from Princeton and Harvard La
w School. Awards from the bar association, civic groups, and school associations for his outstanding work. Pictures of him with his wife, family, and everything else indicative of the perfect life. He golfed, he played tennis, he sailed. Tim Hammacher was just a damn swell kind of guy. I’d met a lot of people like Hammacher in my life. And I never liked any of them.
“The bottom line,” Hammacher said to me now, “is I expect anything you write about the deputy mayor to be a positive affirmation of the contributions he’s made to the city over the past few years. And what he can do in the future as mayor. I don’t want to see any negativity or snarky comments in what you do. Not if you have any hope at all of convincing him—and me—that you’re worthy of being a part of our team. Do we understand each other?”
He gave me a hard stare across his desk.
“Yikes!” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“That stare of yours has me quaking in fear.”
“Malloy . . .”
“Do you practice that in the mirror every morning before you come to work?”
“Now, listen . . .”
“No, you listen to me. First, I’m not looking for a job on your team. I’m on a team, the Daily News team. Wylie broached a possible offer to me for the future, and I was flattered. But I’m not going to be angling for a job with you at the same time I’m covering your campaign. That’s a no-no for a reporter. So we’re only talking in very general terms about this topic at the moment.
“Second, my job is not to write puff pieces about you or your boss. I’m a reporter, not a public relations agent. I will accumulate the facts, do my best to interpret them in a fair and impartial manner, and then write my stories about your campaign the way I think they should be written.
“Third, and probably most importantly, I don’t give a damn whether you like me or not. Let’s just say that winning your approval is very far down on my list of priorities.”
I gave him my own hard stare back. We both sat there staring at each other. It was childish, I know. But it made me feel better.
