by R. G. Belsky
“Don’t you get it?” I snapped at her. “It’s over. My career as a reporter is over. No one will ever hire me again. I’m finished in journalism. So don’t sit there and tell me about how this is all going to work out for the best and it’s going to make me a stronger person and I’m going to look back on this one day and laugh. It’s over for me.”
Landis sat there silently after I finished my outburst, waiting, I guess, to see if I was going to say anything more.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“No need to apologize.”
“I’m just confused.”
“Understandable.”
“And scared, I guess.”
I’d returned to Dr. Landis after my last day at the Daily News. At first after my firing, I had just sat alone in my apartment and tried to deal with my growing desperation on my own. I never got dressed. Hardly slept or ate. Didn’t leave the apartment at all. The TV was always on, but I was barely aware of what was on the screen.
I just kept going over and over in my head all the events of the past several weeks, trying to figure out how things had gone so badly for me again. The panic attacks were back too in a big way. I knew I had to do something. I knew I needed help. And so, like a swimmer desperately battling the current to stay afloat, I grasped for the only lifeline I could find. Dr. Landis.
The Daily News wasn’t paying for the sessions anymore, of course. But she said that was okay. I could pay her once I got back on my feet. Or we’d work out some sort of other financial arrangement when I was in better shape.
I realized now I’d been way off the mark when I thought of her as a cold, unfeeling professional who didn’t care about her patients as real people. Out of all the people in my life, she seemed to be the only one right now who actually cared about me and was concerned enough to help me try to pull my life together. And so I opened up to her about everything in these sessions once I left the Daily News.
“Do you know when I think you were the closest to putting it all together?” Landis said to me at one point. “It’s when you first came to me and talked about that case you were trying to solve for your dead friend, the Bronx kid who got shot fifteen years ago on the street.”
“Victor Reyes,” I said.
“The way you talked about it at the time, about how it was important for you to do this one story right, even if it was just a poor guy no one else cared about . . . well, it was very noble. It seemed like it was crucial at the time for you to do that story. Crucial for you to demonstrate that you really did have integrity as a reporter, and this story would prove that. To the world. And, maybe most important, it would prove it to yourself. It seemed very important to the integrity you always talk about as a reporter.”
I thought about Victor Reyes. About his mother in that little Bronx apartment grieving for her son. About Roberto Santiago’s plea to me for help and my promise to his widow that day at her house. About how important it had seemed then to do the right thing by that story.
Of course, in the end, I’d let them all down.
That’s what Gil Malloy does.
Lets down the people who believe in him.
“If you think about it,” Landis said now, “it’s kind of a shame that the Kennedy story came along when it did. If you hadn’t gotten pulled away from the Reyes story, maybe things would have turned out a lot differently for you. The timing couldn’t have been worse. If you hadn’t been told about the person writing the Kennedy book by the agent, if you hadn’t put that together with the Kennedy half-dollars, if that letter had gone to some other reporter instead of you . . . well, it was just the perfect storm for you that everything happened the way it did to put you in this position.”
And that’s when it hit me.
Just like that.
Sitting there in that office with Dr. Barbara Landis.
Until then, I’d simply accepted everything that happened to me as being an accident. Just assumed it was a random juxtaposition of events that I found out about the Kennedy book at the same time as the murders and the Kennedy half-dollars and all the rest of it while I was in the middle of working on the Victor Reyes shooting story.
“What did you say?” I blurted out.
“I simply said that it turned out to be an unfortunate coincidence, the timing of that lunch with the agent just before all these other things happened that convinced you to get involved in the Kennedy business and change directions from the Victor Reyes story to that one. . . .”
Jesus!
Why hadn’t I thought of that before?
The Lee Mathis book about being Lee Harvey Oswald’s son. The three New York City killings with the Kennedy half-dollars. The Kennedy letter to me. And the Victor Reyes story. There was no reason for any of those things to be connected to the others. There shouldn’t have been. But there was. There had to be. It was the only way everything made sense.
“Thank you, Doctor,” I said. “You’ve been more help to me than you can ever imagine.”
I stood up now.
“Wait a minute, our session isn’t over.”
But I wasn’t listening anymore.
“Where are you going?” she shouted out at me.
I headed for the door.
“Back to work,” I told her.
Chapter 40
FOR MY ENTIRE journalistic career, I had heard about, been lectured about, and been warned about the dangers of accepting events at face value as simply fate or happenstance or—the most dreaded word of all—coincidence.
“There are no coincidences,” that old newspaperman had taught me. “Go after the facts if you want to find out the truth.”
I had followed that advice for most of my career. But now, at the most critical time of my journalistic life, I had ignored that lesson and written off my lunch with Nikki Reynolds where she told me about Lee Harvey Oswald Jr. and set everything else in motion as simply a “coincidence.”
But what if it wasn’t a coincidence?
What if there was something else going on?
What if there were some facts about that lunch with Nikki Reynolds that I was missing?
Nikki still didn’t return any of my calls.
I tried her office repeatedly, but everything went to voice mail. I knew she was there because someone in the office told me she was at her desk. But for whatever reason she didn’t seem to want to talk to me anymore. I finally decided the best thing to do was just confront her. Stake out Nikki Reynolds until I found her. Sooner or later, she’d have to talk to me. I contemplated staking her out at her office, but that was on the seventeenth floor of a large building with several entrances. I figured I’d have a better shot at her apartment house. I knew where that was from the time she’d invited me back there for a night of romance a long time ago. Of course, she could have moved since then. But I decided to give it a try.
I confronted her the next morning on the sidewalk in front of her apartment building as she came out the door. She looked surprised—and definitely not happy—to see me.
“What are you doing here?” she snapped.
“I wanted to talk to you about the intriguing series of events that occurred since the last time I saw you.”
“I don’t have time for this now.”
“Why did you call me out of the blue to tell me about Lee Harvey Oswald Jr. and his book? There’s something going on here, and you’re right in the middle of it, Nikki. I think you know the answers I want. Or at least you know some of the answers.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do. That’s why you won’t return any of my calls.”
“No one returns your calls anymore,” she said with a small smile.
“That’s true. But you weren’t returning my calls this time even before other people stopped doing it. Ever since that lunch we had and
then people started dying and I got a letter linking the victims to the Kennedy assassination and I wrote about your author and his Oswald book.”
“He’s not my author anymore.”
“Yes, why is that?”
“I didn’t feel I was the right agent for him.”
“Right agent for him? Jesus, Nikki, you took him on when he seemed like just another kook. You represent anyone who can make money for you. You used to always say that there was no such thing as bad publicity in the book-publishing business. Then, when all the publicity came out, you suddenly drop him. That’s not like you at all.”
She started to say something, but stopped. She looked around nervously on the sidewalk in front of her building. Despite her bravado, she looked scared. I’d never seen Nikki Reynolds scared of anything.
“What are you afraid of?” I asked.
“I’m not afraid.”
“You look like you’re afraid.”
“Look,” she said, “just let this drop. Walk away from it. That’s what I’m doing. You might not have anything more to lose, but I sure do. So that’s what I’m doing right now. Just walking away.”
Instead of leaving her building, she turned around and headed back through the lobby toward the elevator. On the way, she said something to a doorman standing in the middle of the lobby. I started to go after her, but the doorman stopped me.
He was a big, burly guy of about forty. He looked like he might have been an athlete once, but he’d put on some pounds since then. He still looked pretty formidable, though. I remembered him from when I’d been here with Nikki before, back in the time when I was welcomed into her apartment and into her bed. I think we talked about the Knicks for a while that day while I waited for her.
He took my arm now and began walking me toward the front door and out onto the street.
“You’ll have to leave, son,” he said, sounding almost apologetic about it—but still firm.
“I need to talk to her some more,” I said.
“The lady doesn’t want to talk to you.”
When we got to the door, he held it open for me politely—but also made sure to block the entrance so I had no way to get back inside.
“For chrissakes,” I said. “I’ve been here before. I’ve talked to you before. I’ve been up in her apartment. I spent the night here. I slept with the damn woman.”
“I don’t know nothing about that,” he said with a smile that said he knew everything about it. “But she just said that if you come back here again, she wants me to call the police and have you arrested.”
“Why would she do something like that?”
“Maybe she’s fickle,” the doorman shrugged. “I don’t know, lover boy, but I think this romance is over.”
Since Nikki wouldn’t talk to me, I needed to look for information about her from somewhere else. I went online and Googled her name. At first, I just got a lot of hits about her work as an agent and the books and the authors she represented. None of it seemed to have much significance for me.
Then I Googled Nikki Reynolds along with Lee Harvey Oswald. I got a number of hits about the JFK book including, of course, my own article. Next I tried her name along with Lee Mathis. Same results. I just kept entering more names into the search box next to Nikki Reynolds to see what happened. Shawn Kennedy, Harold Daniels, and Marjorie Balzano. Kevin Gallagher, the bartender who confessed to the first Kennedy killing. Tyrone Greene, the guy arrested in connection with the Marjorie Balzano murder. Franklin Jackson, the person he claimed actually killed Balzano. Anthony Davis, the kid busted for trying to use the Balzano woman’s stolen ATM card. Police Commissioner Ray Piersall, who was now trying to blame me for the way the JFK story had torpedoed his own career.
None of it led me anywhere. So maybe I was going at this from the wrong direction. Nikki’s connection with the Kennedy book—and the events that transpired from my article about it—was already known. What I couldn’t figure out was what possible connection there might be between her and Victor Reyes.
So I started Googling Nikki Reynolds along with the people I knew from that case. Her name with Victor Reyes turned up nothing. Neither did Camille Reyes or Roberto Santiago or even Santiago’s wife. No connections whatsoever with any of them. I kept entering more names. Bobby Ortiz, the prime suspect. Gary Nowak, the first cop to arrive on the scene. Finally, I got to Jimmy Garcetti and Brad Lawton, the two detectives who investigated the Reyes shooting.
And that’s when I found something.
A connection.
The connection I’d been looking for.
It was right there in front of me.
Hell, it practically jumped right off the computer screen at me.
There was an item on a website called the New York Social Directory with a picture of Nikki Reynolds and Brad Lawton arm in arm at a fund-raising dinner for the Museum of Modern Art that had been held in Central Park. There was an item from Page Six of the New York Post about how “high-profile literary agent Nikki Reynolds had been seen around town with high-profile Deputy Police Commissioner Brad Lawton, who was rumored to be in the running to maybe be the next police commissioner. Wow, talk about a power couple!” the Post gushed.
As I stared at the picture of the two of them smiling and arm in arm, I felt the adrenaline building in me. I felt the excitement of a big story again. Just the way I always did when I was on the trail of a big Daily News exclusive. I didn’t work for a newspaper anymore. I wasn’t even a reporter now. But all my reporting instincts were still there. I was still operating like a reporter.
I’d gone to see Brad Lawton to do what I thought was just a routine interview for a story about a fifteen-year-old murder case he’d been involved in as a young police officer. Shortly after that, Nikki Reynolds calls me up and drops a much bigger story in my lap, which sends me off in a completely different direction from the old murder case. And now it turns out that Nikki Reynolds and Brad Lawton have been sharing pillow talk.
Nikki Reynolds and Brad Lawton.
Together.
Damn.
PART FOUR
The
Kennedy
Connection
Chapter 41
I HAD TAKEN ALL my notes and records and newspaper clippings from my files at the Daily News before I walked out of there for the last time. Every story I had ever worked on. Including the Kennedy and the Victor Reyes stories. When I got home, I took out the folders I’d accumulated on both stories and spread them out in front of me.
I started with the Kennedy stuff.
I wrote down all of the events that had happened over the past several weeks, along with the dates in chronological order, on the JFK story.
My lunch with Nikki Reynolds. The first murder in Union Square Park. The connection to the second murder with the discovery of the Kennedy half-dollars. The letter that came to me warning of new murders and talking about the connection to the JFK assassination anniversary date. My visit with Lee Mathis, the man who called himself Lee Harvey Oswald Jr. The trip to Dallas, the third murder, and all the rest of it.
Then I wrote down the dates of the Victor Reyes story I was working on until the day I had my lunch with Nikki Reynolds, when she told me about the Kennedy book.
When I was finished, I read through it all from top to bottom:
MAY 16—Victor Reyes dies. Detective Roberto Santiago asks me at the hospital to write about the story.
MAY 30—Santiago is killed in a traffic accident.
JUNE 20—I interview Reyes’s mother and promise her I will get some answers about what happened to her son.
JUNE 21—I visit Santiago’s widow and go through the material on Reyes in his files.
JUNE 23—I interview Jimmy Garcetti, one of the two cops who investigated the Reyes shooting 15 years ago.
JUNE 24—I interview Brad Lawton, G
arcetti’s partner at the time on the case and now a deputy police commissioner in the department.
JUNE 27—Nikki Reynolds invites me to lunch.
JUNE 30—Shawn Kennedy is murdered.
JULY 1—Harold Daniels is found dead on the Bowery.
JULY 2—I receive the anonymous letter tying the deaths to the JFK assassination.
Looking at it all in front of me like that now, it seemed so obvious that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it all when it was happening. The timing. The damn timing. That lunch with Nikki Reynolds—and the subsequent events it set in motion—had been what stopped me from pursuing the Victor Reyes story.
Next I went through all the material I had on the Reyes case. Much of it was the stuff I’d taken from Santiago’s house when I visited his wife on Staten Island. Plus notes from the interview with Reyes’s mother and the other interviews and research I did before I abandoned the story. A couple of newspaper clippings were there too. One was a short metro brief that the Daily News had run at the time of the Reyes shooting, about a young male being shot and wounded outside his apartment house on a night of violent crime around the city. Another was an obituary in the Daily News at the time of Reyes’s death a few months ago. It was a paid obituary item, and I realized Mrs. Reyes must have gotten together enough money to buy it in memory of her son.
There was also a clipping I’d saved about the traffic accident that had killed Roberto Santiago. I shook my head sadly as I read it again and thought about Santiago, our time together at Ground Zero, and the strange conflux of events that had gotten us to where we were today. Him dead and me with no career. We’d survived 9/11, but fate has its own agenda for all of us, I guess.
After I had gone through Santiago’s files, I reread the original police report from fifteen years ago on the Reyes shooting. I was looking for something—anything—I might have missed that would give me a clue to what really happened on that hot long-ago summer night in the Bronx.
