by R. G. Belsky
“You don’t seem to be in mortal danger,” Malloy said.
“I face death in the eye every day.”
“Did this guy really confess to all the killings?”
“Among other things.”
“Huh?”
“He also confessed to kidnapping Jimmy Hoffa, bombing the World Trade Center and helping Charles Manson kill Sharon Tate.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“No kidding. You think the authorities want to clear up any other unsolved crimes on the books? How about the Kennedy assassination? I don’t think he’s got an alibi for that.”
Malloy shook his head.
“Whenever a mass killer gets a lot of publicity, this kind of thing happens.”
“Yeah, the fruitcakes really come out of the woodwork.”
“What do you want to do with him?”
“Let’s call the cops.”
He made the call. While I waited for them to show up, I gave Elmer some coffee. He was very polite.
A short time later, two EMS cops came to get him. A young guy who looked like he didn’t need to shave yet and a woman with long blond hair she bundled up inside her hat. The older I get, the less cops look like cops.
They started to lead him away, but he suddenly began to protest violently. He said they were supposed to put handcuffs on him.
“Other people get handcuffs,” he said in a whiny voice. “Why can’t I?”
The two young cops looked at each other and shrugged. Then the blond-haired woman took a pair of handcuffs out of her belt and cuffed Elmer’s wrists behind his back. Then they took him away.
He looked happy.
It was definitely becoming crazy season in New York City.
A midsummer heat wave had settled in, and the near-one-hundred-degree temperatures—plus the daily headlines about a mass killer roaming the streets again—turned the town into a tinderbox ready to explode at the slightest provocation.
There were some like Elmer Lutz who wanted to take credit for the murders. But most wanted to put the blame on somebody else. It didn’t really matter on whom: ex-boyfriends; bosses who’d fired them; neighbors they didn’t like; loan sharks they owed money to. The police department’s files were soon bulging with reports from people who claimed they knew who Loverboy really was. None of them did. But the cops checked everyone out.
Meanwhile, all the people who weren’t claiming to be Loverboy—or trying to say someone else was—were worried about becoming the next victim. The same pattern as last time was happening all over again. New Yorkers stopped going out so much at night. Attendance at singles bars and dance clubs and movies dropped off dramatically. Gun sales were up. Women learned how to shoot at pistol ranges and took self-defense classes.
Things were getting pretty wacky at the Blade too.
In our effort to sell more papers, we were pulling out every tired crime cliché and gimmick to keep the story going. Psychics. Psychological profiles. Frontpage appeals for Loverboy to surrender. You name it, we shamelessly tried it.
The psychological profiles were pretty funny. We went to a bunch of so-called experts and asked them to speculate on what Loverboy was really like.
Some said he was a loner, had a domineering mother, hated women, and probably seemed quiet and withdrawn most of the time, but was prone to sudden outbursts of violence.
Others disagreed. They said the same thing Caruso had said in the article I’d done about Deborah Kaffee’s death.
Maybe Loverboy was a fine, upstanding citizen. Maybe he had a big job and a beautiful wife and family. Maybe he was handsome and charming and had a real way with the ladies.
“I think he probably picked some of these girls up,” one of the shrinks said about the victims. “Or they let him into their homes voluntarily. Loverboy doesn’t have to be a bogeyman. He could be anybody. We might be very surprised at his identity when we finally catch him.”
The truth was, nobody really knew the answer.
“Jesus, what a bunch of crap,” I told Barlow as I read through some of the medical mumbo jumbo. “I could have made this up myself.”
“Yeah, but you’re not an expert,” he said.
The psychics were weird too. A lot of would-be Jeane Dixons who went to the murder sites or touched a piece of one of the victim’s clothing and tried to conjure up a vision. Most of the visions were pretty much the same. Loverboy would eventually be caught, but there’d be more killings first. Brilliant, huh?
Finally, there was the oldest newspaper chestnut of all—the appeal to the killer to give himself up. It’s been done with every mass murderer. I wrote this one myself, just like I did the first time, back in 1984. It was in the form of an open letter. The headline in the Blade said: “Loverboy Reporter to Killer: Give Yourself Up to Me!” He didn’t.
But people were buying the Blade in record numbers.
Newsstand sales were zooming. Every paper in town was selling better because of the case, but none as well as the Blade. We were the leader. The brand name. The paper with the hotshot reporter to whom Loverboy actually sent his deadly messages.
Me.
It was turning me into a star all over again. Even bigger than the last time. Ricki Lake called me up and asked me to be on her show. People magazine sent a reporter over to do a profile piece. I made page 1 of USA Today one morning.
I was hot.
I was the woman of the hour.
Just the same as it was twelve years ago.
Like Yogi Berra once said, it was déjà vu all over again.
Chapter 35
The movie company had moved to Times Square.
They were doing a scene about the murder of a nineteen-year-old college student named Karen Whitcomb, who was shot outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal. She’d been on her way home to Tenafly, New Jersey, after working on a term paper at the New York Public Library on Forty-Second Street.
It was one of the early killings, before people knew about Loverboy. So at first everyone assumed she’d been a victim of random violence. There were pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers and quick-buck artists all over the neighborhood. It was easy to figure the Whitcomb girl had just crossed paths with someone like that. One newspaper even used her murder as part of an editorial campaign to push for a cleanup of Times Square.
But it really had nothing to do with Times Square. It was Loverboy. Loverboy never cared what kind of neighborhood it was. Hell, the police task force twelve years ago had spent hundreds of hours trying to figure out some sort of pattern to his attacks. They never succeeded. Maybe he didn’t have one. Maybe he just killed whenever the urge came over him.
Times Square has changed a lot since Karen Whitcomb’s murder.
A lot of the strip joints, X-rated movie theaters and porn bookstores are gone now. They’ve been replaced by office buildings and parks. It’s part of an urban renewal project that people call progress. I suppose it is. But I still remember how much I used to love the excitement and electricity of Times Square when I first came to New York. I don’t feel that excitement anymore. Of course, that probably has more to do with me than with Times Square.
Michael Anson was sitting in a director’s chair in one of the Port Authority offices. A makeshift movie set had been set up nearby in the terminal. Anson was talking with a young woman who looked vaguely familiar to me. I suddenly realized why. It was the actress who was going to play Karen Whitcomb—and she looked remarkably like the pictures I’d seen of the real Karen in old newspaper clips.
Anson saw me now and waved. She was wearing a T-shirt, jeans and cowboy boots today. I guess it was her Midnight Cowboy look for Times Square. I walked over to her.
The young actress had gone outside, back to the movie set for today’s scenes. Micki was there, though. Standing guard next to Anson. She was still scowling too. Miss Congeniality.
“Hi. I was glad to get your call,” Anson said. “I’ve been reading a lot about you lately.”
“Yeah, I’m front-pag
e news.”
“We both are,” she said and smiled.
“Isn’t life grand?” I asked.
I looked out the door at the actress she’d been talking to.
“That’s an amazing similarity,” I told Anson. “She looks just like the real Karen Whitcomb did.”
“Yeah, it’s eerie, isn’t it? I was lucky to find her.”
“Can she act?”
Anson laughed. “All she’s got to do is look scared and play dead.”
“So we’re not talking about an Oscar-winning performance here?”
“My pictures aren’t made to win Oscars, Lucy. They’re made because people want to see them.”
“And they generally stress realism more than anything else, don’t they?”
Anson smiled. “Yes, that’s my own brand of movie magic.”
I glanced at Micki again. She still hadn’t moved.
“Can you and I talk alone?” I asked Anson.
“You mean without Micki?”
“Yeah. I was hoping she might take her sunny personality outside for a few minutes.”
“Why?”
“I’ve got something to tell you.”
“About being in the movie?”
I shook my head.
“This is private. I don’t think you’re going to want anybody else to hear it.”
Anson nodded and gestured to Micki to leave. Micki didn’t like it. But Michael Anson was the boss, no question about that. Micki glared at me one more time. Then she headed for the door.
“So what’s so damned important?” Anson said after she was gone.
“Vincent Gionfriddo.”
She was surprised. I’d caught her off-balance. But she tried her best to recover.
“Who?”
I laughed. “That’s good. That’s very good.”
“Vincent Gionfriddo? The name does sound familiar. . . .”
“Let me refresh your memory. Gionfriddo is a mobster. A big-time underworld figure both here and in L.A. He deals in extortion, drugs, prostitution and loan-sharking. He maims and murders people who make him mad. And—oh, yes, one more little thing—you owe him a great deal of money.”
Anson didn’t say anything right away. She took out a cigarette and lit it. I looked to see if her hand was shaking. It wasn’t.
“You don’t know much about Hollywood, do you, Lucy?” she asked finally.
“No.”
“It’s a strange place. Sometimes directors make movies that bomb at the box office, but still earn tons of money from cable or foreign film rights or some complicated tax write-off. Other times a filmmaker does everything right and still takes a financial beating. When that happens, we have to look for a short-term infusion of cash. It’s just business.”
“So Vincent Gionfriddo gave you the money to make Loverboy?”
She nodded.
“And how are you going to pay him back?”
“From the profits.”
“What if there are no profits?”
“There will be. It’s going to be a hit.”
“And I’m helping to make it one. Me and Loverboy.”
“As a matter of fact, you are.”
She took a drag on her cigarette and laughed. “I can see where you’re going with this, Lucy. You still think that maybe I’m killing all these recent victims just to get publicity for my movie.”
“Are you?”
“No. But it is an intriguing idea.”
“It’s working too.”
“Yeah, maybe I should try it as a plot in my next film. Anyway, like I said before, I could say the same thing about you, Lucy. Maybe you’re killing people to help get your newspaper career back on track. That’s working too, isn’t it?”
I didn’t say anything.
“I checked you out for the movie,” Anson said. “Lucy Shannon, wunderkind reporter at twenty-four and washed up at thirty-six. Married and divorced three times, in and out of alcoholic rehab—it’s not a pretty picture. The only thing good that ever happened to you was Loverboy. So maybe you just decided to bring him back so people would remember you again.”
“I would never do anything like that.”
“Of course you wouldn’t. Neither would I. That’s my point.”
She ground out her cigarette on the bottom of her boot. She leaned close to me.
“Can I ask you a personal question, Lucy?”
I nodded.
“Do you ever get tired of men?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’ve been married three times. If a person eats steak every day and it’s not good for them, they switch to something else. Chicken. Fish. Or even become a vegetarian. Maybe you should change your diet.”
She smiled.
“I like you, Lucy. I like your energy. I even like your smart mouth.”
Jesus Christ, she was coming on to me. I wasn’t sure how to react. This had never happened to me before. I was in uncharted waters here.
“We’re not talking about vegetarianism, are we?” I asked her.
“No.”
I looked over at the door. “What about Micki?”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought she was your girlfriend.”
“Don’t worry about Micki. I can handle her.”
I stood up. I was getting very uncomfortable.
“I’ve got to be going,” I said.
“What about being in my movie?”
“I don’t think so.”
She shrugged. “Well, call me if you change your mind.”
“Sure.”
“Or just call me anyway, sometime.”
On my way out, I passed Micki. She was standing just outside the door. She glared at me even more unpleasantly than she had before—if that was possible. From inside the room I could hear Michael Anson pick up the phone and call someone. I could make out most of what she was saying.
I wondered if Micki had heard any of our conversation.
I hoped not.
Chapter 36
“Let’s do the greatest,” I said.
“The greatest now or of all time?” Janet wanted to know.
“Of all time.”
“Cool!”
We were sitting around a round table at Headlines, waiting for that evening’s edition of the Blade to come off the presses. Me, Janet, Barlow, Brian Tully, Karen Wolfe and Norm Malloy. There was a big pitcher of beer in the center of the table. Not for me, of course. I was drinking water. No problem.
Our table was right underneath what is known as the Wall of Fame. That’s a display of pictures at Headlines, featuring some of the legendary people who’d worked for the Blade over the years.
“The greatest obit writer ever on a newspaper in this town was Daniel Fullerton,” Malloy said as he looked at one of the pictures.
Malloy knew almost everything there was to know about the history of the New York Blade.
“An obit writer?” Wolfe asked.
“Not an obit writer. The obit writer. Fullerton turned obit writing into an art form. It was the only thing he did. You knew him, didn’t you, Walter?”
Barlow nodded. “He even looked like an undertaker. He was really pasty-faced, he talked very softly and he always wore black. The guy was truly strange.”
“Fullerton hated it whenever they took the death of someone famous away from his obit page and turned it into a front-page story,” Malloy said. “On the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, Fullerton came into the city room and saw everyone racing around, stripping wire copy and putting new leads on the assassination stories. So he walked over to the managing editor and said, ‘Does this mean you’ll be taking the Kennedy story for page one?’”
Everyone laughed.
“Toughest editor?” Janet asked.
“Eddie Slotnick,” Barlow replied.
We all shrugged. No one knew him.
“He used to be executive editor here a long time ago. Back when I was just a young reporter.”
“You a young reporter?” I said to Barlow. “God, that really is ancient history.”
“Was Slotnick any good?” Tully asked.
“Yeah, but he was a real ball buster. He used to write these brutal memos. One time a columnist’s wife died. The guy did a column titled ‘My Wife’ that was a long, personal memory of the woman. It really had no place in the newspaper.”
“Slotnick killed it?” Wolfe said.
“No, he let it run.”
Barlow took a sip of his beer as we all waited to hear what had happened next.
“Anyway, a couple of days go by and now it’s time for the guy to turn in his next column. This one’s titled ‘My Wife—Part Two.’ Slotnick kills this one. Then he sends the guy a memo. Know what it said?”
We all shook our heads.
“‘One wife, one column.’” Barlow smiled.
The table erupted in laughter.
“Who was the most colorful reporter?” I asked.
“Larry Morrison,” Malloy said. “The greatest rewrite man of all time.”
“Why?”
“Because he’d do anything to get a front-page story. Even though sometimes he went too far.”
“Such as?”
“Well, one time there was this big hostage drama and Morrison told the city editor he’d gotten an exclusive telephone interview with the gunman. The paper put it on page one: ‘They’ll Never Take Me Alive, Gunman Vows.’ The next night the guy gives up—and it turns out he’s a deaf mute. The city editor demands an explanation. Morrison says: ‘Gee, boss, he never told me that.’”
Everyone laughed again.
“Yeah, I think that’s going too far,” Tully said.
“Just a little bit,” Wolfe agreed.
“It’s a tough call sometimes,” Barlow mused. “How far do you push a story before you cross over that line? The one between aggressive reporting and doing something really unethical.”
I didn’t say anything. Suddenly I didn’t like where this conversation was headed.
“Give us an example of something really unethical,” Janet asked him.
“Janet Cooke.”
“Who’s Janet Cooke?” Wolfe asked.
