by R. G. Belsky
“So there’s a chance I could get off after this hearing?” she said.
I shook my head. “It’s not likely. Pretrial hearings are generally pretty cut and dried. The judge goes along with the prosecution and orders a full trial. Unless there’s some overwhelming evidence that shows the defendant is innocent. You don’t have that yet.”
“What about the woman I saw on the night of the murders?” she asked.
I thought about the description she’d given of the second woman she said she’d seen going into William Franze’s house that night. Dark complexion. Dark hair. Maybe she was Italian like Lisa. Or maybe Puerto Rican.
“And the police have no leads on her?” I asked.
“I don’t think they’re looking too hard.”
“Why not?”
“Because they like me too much for the murders.”
Lisa shook her head sadly.
“Maybe she could exonerate me,” she said. “Maybe she saw the real killer. Maybe she knows what really happened that night. She could be a terrific witness for me at this hearing. But I have to find her first. And I don’t even know where to begin looking.”
I leaned over and kissed her.
Passionately.
“I do,” I said.
Part 4
Passionate Kisses
Chapter 35
There was no Connie Reyes or Connie James in the Bronx telephone book.
There were a lot of listings for people with the last name of James.
Even more for Reyes.
I started calling them all.
“Mr. Reyes?” I said to the man who answered the first number that I dialed.
The person on the other end said something in Spanish I couldn’t understand.
“Does a Connie Reyes live there?” I asked.
More Spanish.
“Have you ever heard of a Connie Reyes?”
I still couldn’t make sense out of his answer.
“Uh . . . se hable English?” I asked.
He hung up the phone.
“Gracias,” I said into the dead line.
This was going to be even tougher than I expected. A lot of the people I reached didn’t speak English. And I didn’t speak very much Spanish. I should have thought of that earlier.
I found a copyboy in the city room who spoke Spanish pretty well. I asked him to sit next to me while I made the phone calls. Whenever I found someone who only spoke Spanish, he did the translating for me. It didn’t help though. No one I talked to knew anything about a woman named Connie Reyes or Connie James.
So I went to El Domingo. It turned out to be a sort of combination social club/strip joint. The waitresses wore sexy outfits; there were scantily clad women dancing on a stage; and other women came around offering “lap dances”—which meant they’d sit on your lap and move around suggestively for a few minutes—at twenty-five dollars a pop. It seemed like one step away from prostitution. I figured there was prostitution going on behind the scenes too.
On the ride out there, I’d come up with what I thought was a pretty good line in case anyone was suspicious about why I was asking so many questions. I said I was with the Plymouth Rock Insurance Agency in Boston. Somebody had just died and left Connie Reyes/James a big inheritance. Now I was trying to track her down to give it to her. I figured if I found anyone that knew her, maybe they’d tell her the good news. Then she’d want to talk to me. But I still got nowhere, even though I spent a good deal of the Banner’s money talking to women in the place. I was starting to get discouraged.
I’d moved over to the bar, and was sitting there trying to figure out what to do next, when a bartender came over and refilled my drink.
“Your name’s Dougherty, huh?” he said with a heavy Spanish accent.
“That’s right. How . . . ?”
“The girls told me. They say you’ve been asking a lot of questions.”
“I’m looking for somebody.”
I gave him my whole rap about being an insurance investigator looking for a woman my company owned money to.
“A little bit out of your own neighborhood, aren’t you, Señor Dougherty?” the bartender asked.
He smiled when he said it.
“Gee, you mean this isn’t an Irish bar?” I said.
Then I wearily started to go through my questions again.
“Did you ever hear of this woman named Connie Reyes?” I asked. “Or she may use the name Connie James. She’s a . . .”
“Nope.”
There was something wrong.
“You answered that pretty quickly,” I said.
“That’s because I told the same thing to the other guy a couple of days ago.”
“The other guy?”
“Yeah. The big one with the flowered shirt. Doesn’t he work with you?”
“Oh, sure,” I said, thinking quickly.
“You guys ought to get your act together,” the waiter said.
“We sort of lost touch,” I told him. “Do you have any idea where he is now?”
“Sure. He gave me his card. Said I should contact him if I heard anything about the woman.”
The waiter reached into his pocket, pulled out the card, and handed it to me.
It was a printed business card.
Victor Granville
Private Investigator
200 Broadway, Suite 610
New York City
The building turned out to be a rundown walkup downtown, a few blocks away from City Hall. I walked inside, took the stairs up to the sixth floor, and found a grimy office door marked 610. I knocked on it, then quickly ducked out of sight around a corner at the end of the hall. A man opened the door. He was very big and wearing a flowered shirt. He looked around with a confused expression for a second, saw no one, and closed the door.
Now, at least, I knew what Victor Granville looked like.
I went downstairs, got in my car, and parked it in a spot close to the front door of the building. Then I waited. Stakeouts were one part of being a reporter that I always hated. You sat around for hours, sometimes for days, waiting for something to happen. Sometimes it never did. I always figured there must be a better way to get information like this for a story. Only I never figured it out.
Two hours later, Victor Granville came out of the building, walked to a car parked on the street, and got inside. Then he drove away. I started up my car and followed him. He drove out of Manhattan, over the Willis Avenue Bridge, and onto the Bruckner Expressway. I followed him for about ten minutes or so until he turned off at the exit for Orchard Beach, which is an ocean boardwalk and park in the Bronx. He parked his car in the lot, then walked down to the boardwalk. I watched from a distance as he stood there for a while looking out at the water. Then a woman walked up and began talking with him.
She looked young and very pretty, probably still in her twenties. They talked for maybe ten minutes or so. Then she walked away down the boardwalk. He went in the opposite direction, headed back toward me and his car. I looked at the woman one more time as she left, trying to decide what to do. I decided it was time to introduce myself to Granville.
“You’re Victor Granville, right?” I said when I stopped him on the boardwalk.
“Who are you?”
“My name’s Joe Dougherty. I’m a reporter with the New York Banner.”
He looked like he was going to have a heart attack.
“Let’s talk about Connie Reyes,” I said.
“Who sent you here?” I asked Granville.
“I can’t tell you that.”
We were walking alongside the ocean on the beach, comparing notes about the case. Or at least I was. He didn’t want to talk much. I had a hunch though who he might be working for. John Montero. Montero had a lot of money. Why wouldn’t he hire his own private investigator to try to find the witness who might be able clear his daughter of murder charges? It made a lot of sense.
“Was it John Montero?” I asked.
Gra
nville laughed.
“No way,” he said.
I was confused. “It’s got to be Montero. There’s only two people I can think of that would want to talk to this woman as a witness. Either Montero or the authorities. Someone like Greg Ackerman or . . .”
Granville gave me a look of surprise. I suddenly realized what I’d just said.
“You’re working for Ackerman?”
He nodded.
Jesus Christ!
“Why you? Why wouldn’t he just send one of the investigators from his own office?”
“I don’t know,” Granville said. “He came to see me himself at my office. I thought that was kind of strange too, but as long as he paid—I didn’t care. Anyway, he told me he’d gotten a tip that a witness to a big murder was hiding out here in the Bronx. He said he’d gotten some anonymous notes in the mail, and he needed to check them out. He hired me to come out here and try to find her. He said he wanted it all done quietly.”
“And you did find her?”
“Yes.”
The woman on the boardwalk.
“What did she say?”
“She said she was working for an escort agency. This guy Franze called up and asked for a girl to be sent over. So she went. She says she was in the bathroom when all the shooting started. She hid in there and saw the whole thing. She says it wasn’t Lisa Montero that did it. It was some guy. She doesn’t know who . . .”
“And you told all that to Ackerman?” I asked.
Granville nodded. “He asked me if she planned to come back to tell her story. I told him she said she wouldn’t. She was too scared. She didn’t want to get involved.”
“What did Ackerman say when you told him that?”
“He said I’d done a good job,” Granville said.
I stared out at the blue-green expanse of the ocean in front of me—and tried to make sense out of everything he had just told me. Greg Ackerman, the assistant district attorney in charge of the Franze murder case, knew the location of a key witness who could exonerate Lisa Montero. But he was keeping it a secret. Why? Well, it had to be for one of two reasons: First, he’d do anything in his zeal to hurt the Montero family, even send an innocent woman to prison, or second, he had something of his own to hide. Maybe it was even both.
“I want to talk to the Reyes woman,” I said.
“She won’t testify. I told you that.”
“She doesn’t have to.”
Granville was confused.
“Look, all I need to do is write a story about it,” I explained to him. “I won’t use her name or say where she is. I’ll just identify her as a confidential source. Do you think she’ll go for that?”
“Maybe.”
“Help me convince her.”
Granville shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I don’t want to get involved.”
“You’re already involved,” I said.
“You’ve got to promise to keep me out of it too—just like with Connie Reyes.”
“Okay.”
“Because if Ackerman finds out it came from me, I could lose my license.”
“All I care about is Connie Reyes saying that Lisa Montero didn’t murder anybody,” I said.
Chapter 36
“Andy, I think I’ve found the missing witness,” I told him when I got back to the office.
“You mean the woman Lisa Montero says she saw on the night of the murders?”
“Yes. I’ve just been in the Bronx with someone who has talked to her. He’s going to take me to see her. He’s setting up the meeting now.”
“What does she say?”
I looked down at the notes I’d made from my conversation with Granville.
“That she was at William Franze’s house. She was the second hooker that had been hired for the night. She was hiding in the bathroom during the shooting. She saw who killed Franze and the girl. And she says it wasn’t Lisa Montero.”
I told him how reluctant she was to testify. How I couldn’t put her name in the story. About making the deal to use her only as a confidential source.
I also told him how Greg Ackerman had this same information, but was trying to cover it up so it wouldn’t jeopardize his case against Lisa.
“Jesus,” Andy said, “this is really hot. Are you sure this woman is for real?”
“I think so. But I know one way to check for sure.”
“How?”
“There are two bathrooms in William Franze’s townhouse. One downstairs—and one upstairs next to the bedroom where he died. The upstairs toilet was broken on the day Franze died. Ackerman told me that. He said Franze had spent all day trying to reach a plumber. All I have to do is ask her which bathroom she was in while the shooting was going on. If she was in the bedroom, the obvious place for her to go was the upstairs bathroom. Except that one was broken. She couldn’t have used it. She would have had to go downstairs.”
“And if Connie Reyes gives you the right answer to that question, then we’ve got our story,” Andy said.
Andy had some news for me too.
“Richmond wants to talk to you,” he said.
“Old man Richmond? The publisher?”
“His son Jimmy.”
I remembered what Bonnie had told me about Richmond’s son taking over most of his duties.
“Why does he want to see me?” I asked.
“Jimmy likes to know his reporters.”
“But I . . .”
“We’ve been talking about bringing you back full time, Joe. Between you and me, I think if you pull this story off . . . well, it’s a cinch we’ll make you a big offer. That is, if you’re interested.”
I said I was interested.
“So go meet Jimmy,” Andy smiled. “You’ll like him. Everybody likes Jimmy.”
I really wanted to like Jimmy Richmond. Honest. Especially because he seemed to be trying so hard to be likeable. His whole office had a real homey feel to it. Pictures of him on the wall playing softball at a company picnic. Another of him on a sailboat with his family—a fresh-faced, wholesome-looking woman and three young children who smiled for the camera. There were a lot of trophies too—for bowling and tennis and golf tournaments. And I saw the diploma from the Columbia School of Journalism. The one Bonnie had told me about.
“Do you play golf, Joe?” Richmond asked, noticing me looking at one of the trophies.
“Not really, Mr. Richmond.”
“Call me Jimmy.”
He smiled at me.
I smiled back.
Friendly.
“Sure, Jimmy,” I said. “I used to play a long time ago. But I haven’t had a club in my hand in years.”
“You should take it up again. We could go out to my course together sometime. I play with Andy Kramer. Jack Rollins too. If you joined us, it would be a fun foursome.”
“I don’t think Jack Rollins wants to play golf with me,” I said.
“Oh, I know you and Jack had a bit of a tiff in Spence’s office the other day. But don’t worry about that. You keep doing Page One stories like you’ve been doing, and you can fight with anyone you want.”
He smiled again. I wasn’t sure exactly what to make of Jimmy Richmond. I’d met guys like him before. They seemed like your best friend at first, but then they turned into the Boss from Hell when you least expected it. I wondered if Jimmy Richmond was like that. I know he sure caught me off guard with his next question.
“Did you sleep with her?” Richmond asked.
“Who?”
“Lisa Montero.”
“I—I don’t understand . . .”
“Did you sleep with her?” he asked. He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Did you nail her? Did you do the dirty deed with her? Did you bang her like an outhouse door in a thunderstorm? Did you play hide the salami under the silken sheets in her penthouse? Am I making myself clear now, Joe?”
“Yes,” I said slowly, “very clear.”
“So? Did you?”
“No,” I told him, “I didn’t sleep with Lisa Montero.”
He stared at me for a second. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next. But all he did then was laugh. “Why not?” he told me. “I sure would have. She is one fine piece of woman.”
I thought about his wholesome-faced wife and their three smiling little children.
“I wanted to,” I said. “She’s very beautiful. I was extremely attracted to her. But it would be wrong. I’m a reporter working on a story. A reporter can’t get personally involved in the stories he’s doing,” I said, invoking the time-honored First Rule of Journalism in my effort to convince him. “There’s nothing more important to me right now than being a reporter again. I would never do anything to jeopardize that.”
Richmond nodded solemnly. “Did she tell you anything?” he asked.
“You mean about the murders?”
“About anything. Her business. Her father. Her personal life. I mean I read the stuff you wrote for the Banner. But I just wondered if you left anything out.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant, but I told him all about my conversations with her. The stuff on her personal life. Her relationship with her father. Her hopes to take over his business someday. Then he asked me some of the same questions about David Galvin. I went through my interviews with him at the prison hospital.
After that, we made some small talk about people at the paper. Eventually we got around to Andy Kramer and Jack Rollins again.
“I’ve only been in this job for less than a year,” he was saying. “I worked on Madison Avenue most of that time—ran my own advertising firm. But my father’s health hasn’t been so great, and the paper’s always been owned by the Richmond family. So I decided to come back and help see us through this transition period. As you know, Spencer is getting very near retirement. The choice of the next editor is very crucial. We’re very lucky though—I’m impressed by both Andy Kramer and Jack Rollins. They’re fine men, fine leaders, fine journalists. Of course, I haven’t been here long enough to get to know Jack as well as I know Andy. Andy and I go way back . . .”
