Yesterday's News

by R. G. Belsky

  Sandy Marston was a hard person to get a handle on. He’d lived at the group’s headquarters most of his life. Big Lou, on the other hand, had a family and roots. Louise Carbone, she had said her name was. “I got married, I had a kid—we had a house in Lodi, New Jersey,” she told me that day in my office. “But then I got in trouble, and they took my daughter away from me.” I somehow convinced one of the Warlock Warriors to give me the address of Big Lou’s husband in Lodi.

  Lodi is a hardscrabble, working-class community about fifteen miles from New York City. I drove over the George Washington Bridge, turned off onto Route 80, which took me to Lodi, and then followed Main Street to the address where Big Lou had once lived. It was a small but neat little house, with a well-groomed front yard and a pickup truck in the driveway. A group of young children were playing on the sidewalk next door. I tried to picture Big Lou here, living like a suburban mother. I couldn’t see it.

  Her husband wasn’t what I expected. I figured he’d be a Neanderthal type, but he turned out to be a smallish, soft-spoken, middle-aged man with glasses who looked like he could be a schoolteacher. He told me his name was Dave Weber—Louise had stopped using their last name a long time ago—and he operated a hardware store in Lodi. Weber listened calmly while I told him I was looking for his ex-wife.

  “What did she do now?” he asked.

  “I just have some questions about an interview we did. Have you seen her recently?”

  He nodded. “She was here. She roared up my driveway on that motorcycle of hers. Her and that boyfriend, Marston.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Money, what else?”

  “She asked you for money?”

  “They said they were going away. They said they needed to get their hands on some money. Louise had a savings account—well, that is we had a savings account when we were married. But the court froze it after her last trouble with the law. She can’t touch it. I can’t either. I have to go through paperwork just for a few dollars for living expenses. I told her this. They were upset, but there was nothing anybody could do. So they left.”

  “Did they say where they were going?”

  “No.”

  “And all they came for was the money?”

  “Well, Louise wanted to see Maureen.”

  I remembered Louise had told me about having a child.

  “Maureen’s her daughter?”

  “My daughter, really. Louise, she never took care of her. Maureen’s a grown-up teenager now—almost ready to graduate from high school—and I’m pretty much the only parent she’s ever had. Louise was always out partying somewhere or in jail or in some rehab. She had a lot of problems with alcohol and drugs. That’s why the authorities gave me full custody. Louise isn’t even supposed to see her. I told her and Marston that.”

  “What happened then?”

  “I thought there was going to be trouble. Marston’s a big guy, you know. I was all set to call the police. But then Louise just started to cry. I don’t ever remember her crying in all the time we were together.”

  “What was she crying about?”

  “She said she just wanted to say good-bye to Maureen. She said she was going away for a long time and she didn’t know when she’d be back. She wanted to hug Maureen before she left.”

  “Did you let her see Maureen?”

  “I tried, but it was no good.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maureen wouldn’t come out of the house. She wanted nothing to do with Louise. She’s got a lot of anger against her mother for leaving us the way she did. Anyway, when it became clear that Maureen wouldn’t see her, Louise got really upset. Marston put his arm around her, and then the two of them got on their motorcycles and drove off. That was the last I saw of them.”

  I thought about what he was telling me. Had the story about Lucy Devlin triggered some long-lost maternal urge in Big Lou that made her come here and try to see her own daughter again? It seemed like a reasonable assumption.

  “Do you have any idea at all where they might have gone after they left here?”

  “Well, you might try her mother’s house.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Wayne. About ten minutes down Route 80 from here.”

  “Why would she go there?” I asked, remembering how she told me her mother had disowned her.

  “Why does Louise do anything?”

  “Money?”

  Weber nodded. “She needed money,” he said. “I just assumed that after I said no, she’d try her mother.”

  * * *

  Big Lou’s mother lived in a section of Wayne called Packanack Lake. It was an actual lake, surrounded by houses. The Carbone house was on the north side of the lake. There was a small pier attached, with a rowboat and a sailboat. It all looked very bucolic and wholesome. How did Big Lou start off living in a place like this and wind up with a motorcycle gang?

  Irene Carbone—a gray-haired woman in her midsixties and almost as big as Big Lou—told me that her daughter and Sandy Marston had been there.

  “I was surprised,” she said. “I haven’t seen Louise in maybe five years. Ever since she had her last bout of trouble with the law. I told her then I was finished with her. She knew I meant it this time. So when she showed up, I knew she must be in real trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  “Then how do you know she’s in trouble?”

  “They were scared. You could see it in their eyes. They were afraid of something. Marston, he kept looking around … like he was afraid someone was following them. The two of them were running, no question about it. That’s why they needed the money.”

  “You gave them money?”

  “Whatever I had in the house. A few thousand dollars.”

  “Why? I thought you’d disowned them.”

  She shrugged. “Louise was so upset. Not just about needing the money. Apparently, she’d tried to see her daughter, but Maureen wouldn’t speak to her. That really shook her up. I felt sorry for her. I vowed I’d never help her again. But I’m still her mother and she’s my daughter. Just like with her and Maureen, the bond’s a tough one to break sometimes.”

  “Did they say where they were headed?”

  “Just that they were going out west.”

  “San Francisco? Los Angeles?”

  “Probably somewhere else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “At another point, they said they were headed south.”

  “Which one is right?”

  “I’m not sure they knew where they were headed. Or, if they did, they didn’t want to tell anyone. Not even me.”

  I thanked her for her time and said she’d been very helpful. It hadn’t been that helpful. I was at a dead end; I had no idea where to go next. But I figured she’d given me everything she could.

  “All I did was tell you the truth.” She shrugged. “Just like I did with the others.”

  A warning bell went off in my head. “What others?” I asked.

  “The two men who came here before you asking questions about Louise.”

  “Were they cops?”

  “Yes, but not from around here. They showed me identification from the US Justice Department.”

  “Feds,” I muttered.

  “I’ve had cops here looking for Louise a lot of times over the years. Local cops, state troopers, probations officers. But never anyone from the Justice Department. Why are they looking for Louise?”

  I didn’t know the answer to that question either.

  But I bet I knew who did.

  Elliott Grayson.

  CHAPTER 20

  ELLIOT GRAYSON KEPT popping up everywhere I looked. Some of it might be coincidence, but not all. And the timing with the Senate election bothered me. Why was all this happening now, just before the Democratic primary?

  I decided to use the Barbie Twins to try to get some answers about him. Cassie O’Neal and J
anelle Wright, Channel 10’s own pair of fluff girls. They were smart enough to find out any relevant information, even if they weren’t smart enough to know exactly the whole scope of the story. I wanted both of them to spend the next few days attempting to infiltrate the Grayson and Weller campaigns. I expected some reservations because neither of them cared much about politics. But I was ready for that.

  “I just wanted you to know that I’m assigning Cassie to the Teddy Weller campaign for the next few days,” I told Janelle Wright.

  “What does this have to do with me?” she asked.

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “Good.”

  “It wouldn’t be the right kind of assignment for you.”

  “I don’t do politics.”

  “Nor should you.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which is why I assigned Cassie to the story.”

  “Better her than me.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you heard it from me, not from her or anyone else. I didn’t want your feelings hurt. No reason for that. There’s plenty of other things we can find for you to do.”

  I was counting on her ego here. Janelle and Cassie looked alike, sounded alike, and even walked alike. They were virtually interchangeable in the world of TV news. But they didn’t see it like that. Each one thought she was the real deal, and the other was just a bimbo for window dressing at the station. Sure enough, Janelle was almost to the door when she turned around and came back to my desk.

  “Why should my feelings be hurt?” she asked.

  “Well, this could turn into a big story.”

  “Then why not give it to me?”

  “Like you said, you weren’t right for it.”

  “And Cassie is?”

  “She seemed very excited about it.”

  “Of course she is. She thinks she’s going to score with a big exclusive here.”

  “Yes, that is possible.”

  “I want to do the story, Clare.”

  “But I’ve already given it to Cassie.”

  “Tell her you made a mistake. Tell her you changed your mind. Tell her whatever you want. But I want this assignment.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  A short time later, I was doing the same routine with Cassie O’Neal.

  “Janelle is a no-talent bimbo,” she said.

  “I wouldn’t put it quite that way. But I do think you bring greater skills to the table than she does.”

  “Then why give her this Grayson campaign assignment?”

  “You mean you want to do it?”

  “You’re damn right I do!”

  “If you insist,” I said.

  * * *

  Maggie wanted to know why I was suddenly so interested in doing a behind-the-scenes investigation of a Senate race.

  And, more importantly, why I hadn’t told her about it first.

  “You heard about Cassie and Janelle, huh?” I said.

  “I am the assignment editor, Clare.”

  “And you’re upset that I didn’t let you do the assigning on this story?”

  “It would have been nice to know about it.”

  I nodded. Maggie was right, of course. I would have reacted the same way if I’d been in her position. But, just because I understood where she was coming from, that didn’t make it any easier to answer her question.

  “I just wanted to set it in motion in a hurry,” I said. “This is a big Senate race, a major political story. I wanted Channel 10 to begin taking the lead in covering serious political stories like this. Instead of a lot of the other stuff we’re putting on the air at the moment.”

  “Gee, I kinda remember someone telling me to stay away as much as possible from the serious political coverage. That our viewers really didn’t care about serious politics and it was a real ratings killer. I think the exact quote was, ‘Every time we put a political story on the air, people reach for their remote and change the channel.’”

  “Who told you that?”

  “You did.”

  “Oh.”

  “You want to tell me what’s going on here?”

  I sighed.

  “I don’t really care about the inside story from the election camps, like I told Cassie and Janelle,” I said.

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  “But I needed to play it like that so that there appeared to be a reason for assigning them to spend time with the two candidates’ camps.”

  “Is this still all about Lucy Devlin?” Maggie asked.

  “Sort of,” I said.

  I told her everything I knew. Well, pretty much everything. About Marston and Big Lou and the Justice Department showing up at her mother’s place and all the rest. I didn’t tell her about my encounter with Elliott Grayson at the bar when he kissed me on the cheek and told me he liked my legs. I was afraid those little details might somehow detract from the image of the serious journalist pursuing this story.

  “I wasn’t sure what else to do or where to go, Maggie. So, I decided to throw up a bit of a Hail Mary desperation play here in the hope that something just might come out of it. Sure, it’s a long shot. But it’s the only shot I had to make some sense out of all this. I’ve checked out everything else.”

  “Not everything.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Sandy Marston.”

  I stared at her.

  “You know a lot about Elliott Grayson,” Maggie said. “You know a lot about Louise Carbone—including meeting her ex-husband and her mother. But how much do we really know about Sandy Marston?”

  CHAPTER 21

  IT’S AN OLD adage in the news business: “Check everything out.”

  That’s a basic rule for any journalist. A very simple rule. Never take anything for granted. Never believe anyone without corroboration. Never assume anything. It was a damn good rule, and most of the time I tried my best to follow that journalistic rule. But every once in a while, I got sloppy.

  Sandy Marston had told me he was in prison during the period when Lucy Devlin disappeared and a little girl who may or may not have been Lucy was seen at the motorcycle convention in Mountainboro, New Hampshire.

  But was that really true?

  I looked up the number for the New York State Department of Corrections and called it. After navigating through a maze of bureaucratic misdirection, I was finally put through to a supervisor named Gloria Del Rio, who said she would look up information on Marston for me.

  I asked her about his bust for stabbing the guy that he told me about. Then I waited while she went through his file. She found what I was looking for. Sandy Marston had received a one- to three-year sentence for it. He’d spent eight months in jail before being released on parole. His release came in January of the year Lucy Devlin disappeared. She’d gone missing in April. That meant Marston had lied. He was out at the time of that and also for the motorcycle convention a few days later in New Hampshire.

  “Are you one hundred percent sure about that release date?” I asked.

  “Absolutely.”

  “No chance he could have been held in jail for another few months?”

  “Nope. I have his parole report here, too. He began reporting to his parole officer on January 10. Showed up every week like clockwork for a while. I guess he didn’t want to go back to jail.”

  “Did he get in any trouble with the law again after that?”

  “Yes, he got arrested again in September of that year.”

  “So, he was free for maybe nine months?”

  “That’s right.”

  Sometimes it’s a good idea to just keep asking questions. Even if you’re not sure what you’re asking them for. That’s what happened here.

  “What did he get arrested for in September?” I asked, even though I really had no reason to think it mattered.

  “Attempted child molestation,” Gloria Del Rio said.

  “Child molestation,” I said slowly.

  “Y
eah, from what I can see here, he was busted for trying to pick up a little girl off the street.”

  “When did this supposedly happen?”

  “In April.”

  She gave me the date. It was a few days before Lucy Devlin disappeared.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “A twelve-year-old girl was on her way to school on the West Side, not far from the Warlock Warriors headquarters. Marston pulled up alongside her on his cycle. He tried to talk to her. She kept walking, and he kept harassing her. Then he tried to drag her onto the cycle with him. A passerby saw the struggle, she started screaming, and the girl ran away. Marston took off. The girl’s mother didn’t want to report it because she was afraid of more trauma for her daughter. But then, some six months later, she got an attack of conscience for some reason and went to the police. The girl picked Marston out of a book of police mug shots, and the cops arrested him later.”

  “Any chance you could give me the name of the girl or her mother?” I asked.

  “C’mon, you know better than that. It’s a sex crime file.”

  “Confidentiality, huh?”

  “It’s not even in the report. I wish I could help.”

  “You have, Gloria,” I said. “Believe me, you have.”

  Just days before Lucy disappeared, Sandy Marston had tried to abduct a little girl off a street near the Warlock Warriors headquarters. It didn’t require a long stretch of imagination to theorize that Marston—after being thwarted trying for the first girl—did it again a few days later. This time with Lucy Devlin.

  It all made a certain kind of sense.

  And now Marston was on the run.

  Big Lou, too.

  I asked Del Rio to check out Louise Carbone. Her record was pretty much like everyone had said. In and out of jail a few times. Lost custody of her daughter to her husband because of substance abuse and her criminal record. She was free, too, during the Lucy disappearance and the Mountainboro convention. But she’d already told me about being there, so that didn’t really matter.