Loverboy

by R. G. Belsky

  “Yeah. I’m still intrigued by this movie they’re making here about Loverboy.”

  “You figure that might have sparked the new killings?”

  “It sure seems like one hell of a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  I went through everything about my visit to the movie set. I told her about how Michael Anson wanted me to be in the film. And I related how I had pointed out to Anson that maybe even she could have committed the murders to get publicity for it.

  “That sounds pretty far-fetched,” Vicki told me.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “But you really think it’s possible?”

  “Anything’s possible.”

  “What about Thomas Ferraro?” Barlow asked.

  “What about him?” Vicki wanted to know.

  “Well, he was the head of the Loverboy task force twelve years ago. Now he’s the police commissioner, running the entire investigation.”

  “It’s an interesting connection,” I agreed.

  “He hasn’t had much to say about the case, has he?” Vicki said.

  “No.”

  “I wonder why.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “Maybe Police Commissioner Ferraro’s got something to hide,” she said.

  Hell, we all had something to hide.

  Thomas J. Ferraro.

  Me.

  Maybe even Vicki Crawford.

  Chapter 29

  I was sitting in the Blade cafeteria drinking coffee with Patrick Avery.

  Avery was the senior police reporter at the Blade. He had been covering crime in New York City for thirty-eight years, and he’d worked on every big story from Kitty Genovese to Son of Sam. He hung around police stations so much he looked, talked and acted just like a cop. Everyone at the paper called him “the Inspector.”

  Sometimes, when he was the first reporter at a crime scene, he managed to pass himself off as a detective by muttering to a young patrolman: “I’m Avery from downtown. Where’s the stiff?” Other times, on the phone, he got reluctant witnesses or victims to be quoted in his stories by saying: “This is Inspector Avery. I just need to ask you a few questions. . . .”

  When he’d started as a cub reporter for the Mirror in the 1950s, there were thirteen newspapers in New York City. After the Mirror folded in 1962, he went to the Journal American. That went down in 1965 and became the World Journal Tribune, which stopped publishing in 1967. Since then, he’d been with the Blade.

  He was a classic newspaperman, reminiscent of the old-time reporters of The Front Page era. The glory years of newspapers. Before TV, $2-million-a-year anchormen, ex-beauty queens doing the news, demographic surveys, sound bytes and sweeps weeks.

  I liked Patrick Avery a lot.

  “Did I ever tell you how I found out the Journal American was closing?” Avery asked. “I’m at my desk working on this murder in Murray Hill when my phone suddenly goes dead. I look down, and I see a guy from New York Bell on his hands and knees on the floor, unhooking the cord from the wall. So I start screaming at him. The telephone guy looks up at me and says: ‘Hey, buddy, this paper just folded. Didn’t anyone tell you?’”

  He leaned back in his seat and smiled. “And that’s how I found out I was out of a job.”

  I smiled too. I’d heard that story maybe a hundred times, but it always made me laugh.

  “So what’s happening, Lucy?” Avery asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I know my old newspaper stories are fascinating, but I figure you brought me down here and treated me to coffee for another reason. What are we here to talk about?”

  “Loverboy,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. I read your story. He’s back, huh?”

  “I don’t think so. I think this is a copycat killer.”

  “Either way, it’s a great story.”

  I nodded. “Tell me what you know about Tommy Ferraro.”

  I was intrigued by what Vicki had said about his low profile around this case.

  “Our esteemed police commissioner? Well, I’ll bet he never met a mirror he didn’t like. He does love those TV cameras.”

  “How about his political ambitions?”

  “He definitely wants to run for City Hall. The Mayor’s retiring next year, and Ferraro and Peter Garwood, the City Council president, are the two leading candidates to replace him.”

  I nodded. “Do you think Ferraro’s any good as a cop?”

  “I’ve seen better,” Avery said, “and I’ve seen worse. But he’s very good at the police public relations bullshit. And that’s what it’s all about these days. I wouldn’t underestimate him.”

  “For a guy who loves to see his face on the six o’clock news, he’s been awfully quiet about these new Loverboy killings.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that too.”

  “Why?”

  Avery shrugged. “He was the lead detective on the Loverboy task force. They never caught anybody. Maybe he thinks a botched investigation isn’t a very good image to project for a man who’s running for mayor. Or maybe . . .”

  “Maybe what?”

  “Maybe he’s got something bigger to hide.”

  That was the same thing Vicki had said.

  But what could Tommy Ferraro have to hide about Loverboy?

  “There are a few other people—not just Ferraro—who have a lot at stake in this story,” I said.

  “Like who?”

  “Michael Anson. The movie producer. I went to see her—she wanted me to be in her movie. I even suggested that she might have done the new killings to hype the movie. She said that was ridiculous.”

  “Well, that is pretty far-fetched, Lucy. But I hear Anson does need a hit.”

  “You mean, to stay on top in Hollywood?”

  “More than that. The word is Anson suffered a series of financial reverses on her recent movies. The woman’s got a real cash-flow problem. She’s tapped out. Bankruptcy City.”

  “So where is the money for this film coming from?”

  “She borrowed it.”

  “Where? From a bank?”

  Avery shook his head. “The banks wouldn’t help. She didn’t have any collateral. So she went to Vincent Gionfriddo.”

  “The mob guy?”

  “That’s right. Vincent Gionfriddo financed the whole picture. Gionfriddo doesn’t care about collateral. Of course, his rates are extremely high. And the penalty for not paying . . . well, let’s just say it’s a lot worse than bankruptcy.”

  “Jesus!”

  “Michael Anson’s gambling all she’s got—maybe even her life—on this movie raking in big money at the box office.”

  I’ll do anything to make it a hit, Anson had told me.

  Did that include murder?

  “And then there’s Vicki,” I said.

  “Our Vicki?”

  “Sure. I assume you’ve already heard about the impending breakup of her marriage. It could be a doozy of a divorce battle. And one of the things at stake will be control of the Blade. What could be better than a big story that would send circulation soaring under her editorship? Loverboy could do that. It succeeded before. So did Son of Sam. People buy newspapers to read about mass killers. And they keep buying them until the killers are caught. Or until they stop killing people.”

  “Are you suggesting Victoria Crawford is doing these new murders to hype circulation?”

  “Wouldn’t that be something?” I said. “I could solve the case, be a hero and put Vicki in jail all at the same time.”

  Avery laughed. “That’s your fantasy, Lucy.”

  “Well, it’s a nice fantasy,” I said.

  We were finished with our coffee. We stood up and began walking back toward the newsroom.

  “You know, I’ve always had a funny feeling about the Loverboy case,” Avery said. “Even back when you first covered it in 1984. It just seemed . . . unfinished.”

  “Of course. They never caught anybody.”

  “No, it was more tha
n that. There was something else going on there. Something I could never quite put my finger on.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “This is a big story, Lucy.”

  “I know that.”

  “I’ve got a hunch it’s gonna be even bigger than you realize.”

  Chapter 30

  The address for Joey Russo’s mother was a rundown six-story tenement in the West Forties. I walked up the stairs into a small, dimly lit vestibule. There was no doorman here. No closed-circuit-TV security system. No welcome mat saying “Our Happy Home.” Just a few battered mailboxes with names on them.

  One of them said: Mary Russo, Apt. 6B. Joey Russo’s mother. Next to the front door was a sign: buzz for admittance. I pressed the buzzer.

  “Who’s there?” someone said over the intercom.

  It sounded like an elderly woman’s voice.

  “Mrs. Russo?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is Lucy Shannon. I’m a reporter with the New York Blade.”

  There was a long pause.

  “A reporter? What does a newspaper reporter want to talk to me about?”

  “It’s about your son, Joey—”

  “I don’t have a son,” she said and broke the connection.

  I sighed and buzzed again. There was a long wait this time. I looked through the window of the door at the street outside. There was a bodega across the street with a sign that read se habla español and a big German shepherd asleep on the steps. In front of it was a green Buick with two men in Panama hats listening to loud music and tapping their hands to the beat on the sides of the car. Other than that, the block was quiet. Finally the speaker crackled again.

  “Please go away,” the old woman said.

  “I don’t want to harass you, Mrs. Russo,” I said. “But I do need to talk to you. So I am going to wait until you open the door to let me in. It’s very hot down here, and I’m not particularly wild about the neighborhood. I’d appreciate it if I didn’t have to stand here a long time. Okay?”

  There was another pause.

  Finally the buzzer sounded and the door opened.

  “Thank you,” I said into the intercom and walked upstairs to her apartment.

  The woman who answered the door was about seventy. She had unkempt white hair, walked with a cane and looked to be about fifty pounds overweight.

  She invited me inside.

  The living room was furnished with the kind of stuff you’d expect to find at the Salvation Army. Of course, I hadn’t exactly been expecting House Beautiful. On the wall was a large crucifix. Next to it was a picture of Jesus Christ hanging on the cross. On the coffee table was another picture of Jesus, this time at the Last Supper.

  We sat down on a couch that had seen better days.

  “So tell me,” Mrs. Russo said, “why are you coming to see me after all these years?”

  “I want to find Joey,” I said.

  She smiled. Not a friendly smile, but a sad one. “You want to find Joey? Well, I’m sorry. I can’t help you.”

  “Why not?”

  “No one’s heard from Joey for twelve years.”

  “I know that. But I thought that, since you are his mother, maybe he’d called or—”

  “Mother!” Her cane smashed down on the floor with such force that it rattled the picture of Jesus on the table. She carefully straightened it as if she had offended him personally.

  “Don’t call me his mother. Don’t remind me of that affliction the Almighty gave me to bear in this world. May the Devil take him, wherever he is.”

  “You don’t have any idea what might have happened to him?” I asked softly.

  “Who cares? Dead, probably. No loss. The boy was evil.”

  “How was he evil?”

  “He rejected the Lord. He did not accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his personal savior.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “Listen, a lot of people don’t do that, Mrs. Russo. That doesn’t necessarily mean . . .”

  “He had the Devil in him, that boy. Just like his father. I threw his father out. And I did the same with the boy after I found his filth in this house.”

  “Filth? What kind of filth?”

  “The pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “The women. Naked women. One day I even caught him doing stuff to himself while he looked at them.”

  “Doing what?”

  “Dirty things.”

  “You mean he was masturbating?”

  “Yes.” She nodded. Her face flushed a bright red. “I took a cane and beat him when I found him doing that perversion, but it did no good. The boy was just bad.”

  “How old was he when this happened, Mrs. Russo?”

  “Twenty-four,” she said. “He was twenty-four.”

  I looked down at the floor. I wasn’t sure what to say. I wanted to tell Mrs. Russo that there was nothing wrong about a young man of twenty-four looking at pictures of naked women. That there was nothing wrong about masturbating. That there was nothing wrong with sex. But I didn’t do any of those things. Because all I wanted to do was find out what Mrs. Russo knew about her son and get the hell out of there.

  “When’s the last time you saw Joey?” I asked.

  “I told you. Twelve years ago.”

  “Do you remember exactly what happened?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was sitting here when the doorbell rang. He answered it and there was a man there.”

  “What happened?”

  “He talked to this man for a few minutes, then said he was going out. When I asked him where, he wouldn’t say. He just said, ‘When the man says you gotta go, you gotta go.’ That was the last time I saw him.”

  “Do you have any idea who the man at the door was?” I asked.

  She shook her head.

  “I never saw him before. And I never saw him again.”

  “Could he have been a friend?”

  “My son had no friends.”

  “A co-worker?”

  “Joey didn’t work. He tried a few different things, but they didn’t work out . . .”

  Her voice trailed off and she shook her head sadly. As if anything her son ever did in this life could work out.

  “Do you think you’d recognize this man if you ever saw him again?” I asked.

  “I don’t know . . . it’s been such a long time.”

  “But you might?”

  “I suppose so.”

  I took a deep breath.

  “Mrs. Russo, I assume you know your son was a suspect in a series of killings of young women and their dates before his disappearance twelve years ago.”

  She nodded.

  “And that these killings have started again.”

  She looked over at the picture of Jesus. Like she was looking for some sort of divine guidance.

  “Yes, I’ve read about them.” She sighed.

  “Do you think Joey is capable of doing something like this? Do you think he could have done it twelve years ago? And do you think—if he is alive—he might still be doing it?”

  Mrs. Russo clasped her hands together and looked me straight in the eye.

  She didn’t need Jesus’s help anymore.

  “Yes,” she said, “I do. The boy has the Devil in him.”

  Chapter 31

  Albert Slocum was definitely dead.

  I made sure of that.

  I mean, I didn’t dig up his body or anything. But I went to see his old lawyer, a civil liberties crusader named Stuart Endicott. Endicott showed me the death certificate, an autopsy report and a small newspaper clipping about his client’s sad demise.

  “Albert killed himself,” Endicott said. “That is, he technically pulled the trigger. But it was society that put the gun in his hand.”

  I yawned loudly.

  “You don’t believe me?” he asked.

  “Sorry, but I’m a little busy, Mr. Endicott. I’m not into social revolution this week.”

  “I blame
the police. The education system. The government. They all failed Albert.”

  “Albert Slocum was a drug addict, a pervert and a sadist,” I said. “He raped six women and held one of them captive for ten days while he did sick stuff to her. That’s why the police had him listed as a suspect in the Loverboy murders.”

  “I’ll admit, Albert did have some problems,” Endicott said.

  “He was a creep. The only thing I want to know is if there’s any possibility he could have been Loverboy.”

  “Of course not. Everybody seems to think Loverboy is still doing the latest killings. My client is dead.”

  “Do you think he might have been capable of doing them if he were alive?”

  Endicott hesitated before answering that one. Just for a second. But it was enough for me to know what he was thinking.

  “No comment,” he said finally.

  I sighed. “Yeah, I think so too, Stuart.”

  David Gruber was serving a twenty-year sentence at Ossining, in upstate New York. The police arrested him with a five-year-old girl in his apartment. She’d been brutally beaten and sexually abused. They also found naked Polaroid pictures of other little girls who’d been abducted. Those cases were still pending.

  I went to visit him and told him what I wanted to know.

  “Are you Loverboy?” I asked.

  Gruber just laughed.

  “Of course not,” he said. “I certainly didn’t do these recent murders. I’ve been in here. Besides, I was in jail, too, when three of the original killings happened. You can check that out if you want.”

  He was right about that. I had already checked him out.

  “Anyway, that’s not my style.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not into women.”

  “Just little girls?”

  “Exactly. Women are loathsome creatures. Arrogant, demanding, nagging—always complaining about something.” He shuddered. “I put my mother in that category too, which gives the psychiatrists here a real field day. Now, little girls—they’re completely different. So pure, so innocent, so delightful. Especially when they’re afraid. Do you understand what I mean, Miss Shannon?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re sick, Gruber.”