“One night, as Rosaleen and I were sitting in the car in Queens, trying to draw his fire, a man was shot in his car in Brooklyn right in front of his wife and daughter. Luckily, he recovered, but witnesses immediately identified the assailant as Three X. After that, only letters. At one point, the psycho announced seven of his fourteen victims had redeemed themselves but the rest must die.
“The watch continued night after night with false alarm after false alarm. The public demanded the cops get the killer. Cranks flooded the police with letters and phone calls claiming to be Three X or one of his agents. Pretty soon, fake letters were arriving in cities across the country. With no more killings, police and public interest slowly dropped off. Still, it was more than a year later when the last real letter came, saying only three more victims remained to be killed.”
Prager took a sip from whatever was in the brandy glass he held.
“Nothing more was ever heard. The Three X murders remain unsolved to this day.”
“I can’t believe I’ve never been told about that case.”
“People forget so fast. You know how quickly papers move on. One thing doesn’t change.”
“What’s that?”
“The hysteria.”
Chapter 10
Taylor straightened his tie for the third—or thirtieth—time as the elevator climbed to the DeVries apartment.
“You look fine,” said Samantha. She was wearing a simple black dress that looked better than fine. A string of pearls lay stark white on the pale skin of her upper chest. She’d borrowed them from an old schoolmate who’d married well—they’d grown up together in the Bronx.
“When he called, the butler actually ‘recommended’ a tie. Very nicely, but like he was inviting over the Beverly Hillbillies. I wear ties.”
“Maybe he saw you on one of those days where you’d taken it off and stuffed it in your jacket pocket.” She grinned and kissed him. “You know, like right after lunch.”
“A tie is like hands around my throat. How is this useful clothing?”
“Or perhaps you came wearing one of those knit, squared-off types you like so much. Not very Park Avenue.”
The elevator operator, who hadn’t said a word on Taylor’s previous visits either, stopped the machine and slid open the gate and the door. Elevator men who worked in office buildings and stores, you couldn’t get them to shut up. Different rules for Park Avenue, apparently.
At the door, they were greeted by the butler, now dressed in white tie and tails. He led them to the biggest room Taylor had passed through on previous visits. It was crowded, with people squeezed everywhere around pieces of furniture so ornate they looked like New Yorker cartoons of ornate furniture.
Carol Wheelwright approached them with a tray of champagne glasses. Recognition crossed her face and was chased away briefly by fear before her countenance returned to the mask of the servant.
“Champagne, or would you like something from the bar?”
Samantha took a flute. Taylor broke his Third Rule of Drinking and ordered a Manhattan. He couldn’t imagine standing in this crowd with a Rheingold, even in a glass.
Carol left to get his drink. She probably didn’t want to come back. She hadn’t called Taylor in the five days following their brief, cryptic conversation. How could he get to her? The middle of a giant dinner party was hardly the place to do an interview. Aside from last night’s wake for the Press, he’d spent much of the past two days watching Martha Gibson’s apartment building, then got so impatient he’d gone up to the floor to watch the door. Nothing. Nothing at all. He couldn’t keep up the stakeout. He had other leads to follow, and his regular duties at City News. He needed something solid. Carol had sounded like she might have just that.
Samantha sipped the champagne while giving the room the sort of slow, easy scan practiced by someone paid to watch other people. “That’s good champagne. Money, money, mo—”
“Taylor,” said Charlie DeVries. He’d come up right behind Samantha as she was speaking. He held a glass filled with rocks and something clear. With him was a taller, handsomer man. Blond hair parted at the side. Straight WASP nose. Real Park Avenue looks. “Dad invited his reporter friend. This is—”
“Samantha Callahan,” Taylor said.
Charlie introduced his friend as Bobby Livingston.
Samantha’s cream-white cheeks reddened. “I apologize. I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, please.” Charlie jingled his ice at both of them. “The biggest lie on the avenue is that people don’t talk about money. They do, all the time. The biggest joke? We don’t have nearly as much as people talk about. What do you do, Miss Callahan?”
“I’m a private investigator,” she said, in a demure tone. Charlie really had caught her off guard.
“Well, you’re both probably more intriguing than ninety percent of the other guests. You may scare some of them, though. Me, I’m interested.”
“Your father called and invited us on Thursday,” Taylor said. “He didn’t give a reason.”
A stunning young woman in a purple silk dress joined them. “Is Charlie saying all the wrong things? It’s his special way on social occasions.” Somewhere in her twenties, she wore her black hair cut short and had full lips painted with red lipstick and little other makeup. “I’m Audrey DeVries.” She extended her hand, and Taylor and Samantha introduced themselves. “He’s convinced himself sarcasm offers some dark insight into all our lives.”
“I was not being sarcastic. A reporter. A private eye. They’re a breath of fresh air at a stuffy do like this.” A wave of his free hand.
“You agree with Papa on the guest list? Now that is a breath of fresh air.”
Audrey was her own breath of fresh of air. She was so pretty, she glittered. Something like art, Taylor observed rather than felt. Samantha was his kind of gorgeous, and to this day, he was amazed she’d been interested in him. Was still interested. Audrey was for another kind of human being and another kind of world—this world, one in which he’d only be an observer for a brief time.
“I got my master’s in journalism at Columbia,” Audrey said.
“Excellent school.” Unlike most of the grad program’s alumni, she hadn’t stated it like a claim on the world. Audrey’s open, smiling face loosened him up enough—that and the Manhattan—to let him talk about the start of his own career, which he usually was too insecure about to bring up around the journalism-school grads invading newsrooms everywhere. “I came up the old-fashioned way—hired out of high school as a copy boy. Back when papers did that sort thing. Those days are over. A lot of those papers are over.”
“Oh my goodness, when we had seven daily newspapers in this city.”
“I was working then.”
“You know what’s also gone?” Charlie said. “The days when you could make money investing in newspapers. Papa won’t listen to me. He won’t even listen to Mother. He refuses to see how bad things are. He still thinks we’ve a seat on the board at the New York Sun.”
“Don’t exaggerate. He does not. There hasn’t been a New York Sun for decades. Papa’s exploring options.”
“By inviting that gross Australian?”
“Rupert Murdoch’s here?” Taylor said.
“No, one of his top executives. From his U.S. company, News America. Rupert couldn’t make it.” Charlie’s usual smirk turned downward into a false frown.
Audrey touched her glass to Taylor’s. “I work at the New Yorker. Fact checker. I really want to get on a newspaper.”
Taylor worried what Samantha might think of this glass tapping, so he squeezed her hand. “Good magazine.”
That sounded obvious. Or stupid. Or both. Don’t read it. Don’t know anyone who works there. Don’t know anyone who takes out the garbage there.
“Bad job for a DeVries,” Charlie said. “You should be carefully manipulating the suitors you’ve had since your coming out.”
“Ease off, Charlie,” said Bobby, who’d listened to the
conversation impassively. “These aren’t the ancient times you’re imagining. Even Park Avenue changes.”
Charlie laughed. “Every year that passes in the real world takes a decade on the avenue. We’re kind of like Brigadoon. We have a lot of catching up to do. Hippie, what’s a hippie? Though Audrey was ahead of us there. She did have her little phase.”
“I’m so glad you’ve met Bobby,” said Audrey, ignoring her brother. “We’ve all been friends forever. Our families have known each other a long, long time.”
“Even I know Livingston’s an old New York name,” said Taylor.
“Yes, well we’re a small twig at the end of a small branch of that family tree,” Bobby said.
Taylor’s tie seemed to tighten itself. His clothes started to itch. The talk of family trees and suitors fired up an acute sense of not belonging he’d held at bay. He took a good gulp of the Manhattan, the medicine for such discomfort.
“I work for the City News Bureau.”
“The local wire service?” Audrey said. “I read about it in Editor & Publisher. I go through the magazine every week, cover to cover. Looking for that newspaper job.”
An older woman with a resemblance to Audrey stepped between her and Charlie. She wore the sort of sequin dress Taylor had expected to see lots of at the party.
Audrey turned. “Ah, Mother, this is Taylor and Samantha.”
“Taylor’s a reporter,” said Charlie, with glee in his voice. Taylor got the feeling trouble-making was Charlie’s number one occupation. “Samantha’s a private eye.”
Samantha was probably having the same reaction. Enjoyment of the party fell off her face. She didn’t like being a punch line.
“Oh God,” Mrs. DeVries said to Taylor, “are you with that Australian?”
“No. I work for the City News Bureau.”
She shook her head sadly. “I have real friends I could have invited. Not that he cares. He must think he’s running the New York Press Club.” She took a big swallow from a highball class. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be insulting.”
“Well, at least you don’t mean to be,” Audrey said. She smiled, and Charlie coughed on his vodka or gin.
Mrs. DeVries didn’t think it was funny. “Why did my Edmond invite you?”
“He didn’t say. I’m looking into the death of Martha Gibson.”
“Wonderful. The dunderhead is going to have us talking about the murder of our Negro maid during dinner. Why bother even hosting?”
“Mother!”
Before Audrey could say more, the butler rang an actual gong for actual dinner.
Taylor found himself one person from DeVries at one end and sitting directly across from a man with an oval bald head. The man was wearing a gray suit with wide pinstripes that seemed to jump off the fabric. He was looking for something—on Taylor’s jacket, through him, somewhere in the room, somewhere else. His brown eyes kept searching.
At times during his career, Taylor had been stuck covering big dinners when a political reporter couldn’t go, but those rubber-chicken affairs were nothing like this. He’d never sat down to a meal with so many courses, half of them unidentifiable, all delicious.
DeVries sipped red wine, set his glass down and turned to the oval-headed man across from Taylor. “Carter, Taylor is in your business.”
“Oh, is that right? What do you own?” The stretched vowels of an Australian accent.
“A notebook. I’m a reporter.”
“Who for?”
“City News Bureau.”
“That’s that little newswire.”
“May be little, but we get what you miss.”
“We own a New York paper now. We don’t miss anything we don’t want to miss.”
“I’ve beaten the Post.”
“That was the old Post, mate.”
“New and old. Beat them both.”
DeVries laughed, warm and liquid, and tapped the table. “Love the competitive energy in newspapers. It’s different from any other industry.” Charlie was near enough across the table for Taylor to catch his eyes rolling hard to the right. “Taylor’s had some good ones. Back with the Messenger-Telegram too. You know we were investors in that paper?”
“Should have talked to us first,” said Carter. Those vowels kept stretching. They made a Brooklyn accent sound cultured. “You lost your shirt there.”
DeVries’ friendly smile, if anything, grew. It seemed no matter how hard people poked at him, he took it like it was a part of the friendship.
“Carter, I invited you here to meet some of the people in town—”
“Who run the town.”
“Run, in, whichever. You’re also getting to meet one of our journalists.”
“We already employ a quarter of the city’s journalists. Had to fire some deadbeats at the Post, of course. Don’t know what you Yanks are thinking when you train reporters.”
DeVries eyed Taylor, friendly, but also like a prize. “Tell him a couple of stories.”
Taylor didn’t want to, and at the same time, he did. He recounted the story of the drug gang murders during the Bicentennial a year ago. In March, he’d reported on a huge marijuana farm out on Long Island.
“Read that one the next day in the Post. I guess someone’s hearing about what’s on our wire even if you don’t subscribe.”
“Well then, if you’re that damn good, come see one of our editors.”
Carter turned his gaze on the woman next to him—those eyes that kept searching for things—leaving Taylor and dropping to settle on her cleavage.
The offer, a single simple sentence, hit him like a live charge. The possibility of a job with a newspaper, a New York City paper with a circulation of half a million. The Messenger-Telegram had been down around 350,000 when it died.
I’ll have to eat everything I’ve said about the Post’s fear-mongering—chasing fact into the land of fiction.
Before he could fully consider that dilemma, Carol Wheelwright finished pouring coffee and headed out of the long dining room. Taylor excused himself for the bathroom.
He caught Wheelwright before she could duck into the kitchen.
“We need to talk.”
“Are you trying to get me in trouble?”
“I’m trying to figure out why Martha was killed. Why gets me to a who.”
“I can’t help you.”
“What’s happened since Monday? Did someone get to you?”
“A cop came around. Didn’t talk to staff. Lucky we’re invisible. I don’t know what I’d do if he did. I’m scared. If Martha got killed for what she heard, I might get the same if someone thought I knew the same.”
“I’ll keep you totally out of it. Even if it means no story. I said I would. Someone’s got to do something for Martha.”
Wheelwright lowered her eyes. “I’ll call that number you gave me.”
“Uh-huh. That didn’t work. It’s been a week. No phone calls. What are your days off?”
“Tuesday and Sundays.”
“Meet me at the Odysseus Coffee Shop, Seventy-Fifth and Madison, at three on Tuesday.”
“I live in Harlem. I’m not coming downtown on my day off.”
“Carol!” It was a yell from the kitchen.
“Fine. Name the place.”
“One Thirty-Five West One Twenty-Eighth Street. Apartment Seven H. It’s off—”
“Lennox. I know. I’ll see you at three on Tuesday.”
Taylor returned to a cheese course and coffee. He listened now. Some politics, some gossip, some new play about which he was clueless. Martha Gibson didn’t come up. The .44-caliber killer didn’t either. The warm, comfortable insulation of the room. The way the guests seemed to feel separated from what the city could do to them. Taylor thought the opposite, like their money and old traditions and attitudes would draw the bad right to them and they’d never see it coming. His throat was dry. He’d been slow with the wine. He wanted to squirm. Or yell.
As a test, to give himself somethi
ng to do, he asked those around him what they thought of the murderer in the headlines.
“Just some nut who’s killed a couple of kids in the outer boroughs,” said a jowly man. “They’ll get him.”
“What do you expect if you sit in a car in the Bronx at two in the morning?” said a woman almost as fat in the face.
Carter perked up at the talk. “He’s a psycho, mate. We’re selling a lot of copies of the Post. We’re going to sell a whole lot more because of him.”
Taylor set down his coffee. “Mr. DeVries’ maid was murdered the same night as the last victim of this killer. No one’s doing anything about that tragedy.”
“Not every tragedy’s a story.”
Mrs. DeVries, anger obvious on her face, walked the length of the dining room, bent down, and spoke in her husband’s ear with a hissing noise like a pissed-off snake.
“My wife reminds me,” DeVries said, “cordials are being served in the living room.”
Mrs. DeVries turned slowly and smiled, though without enthusiasm, at Taylor and Carter, and only with her mouth. Her eyes held on to the anger, and her hands were balled into fists.
Chapter 11
The winter of 1976-1977, the second coldest on record, had finally let go of New York by mid-April. It was still the big city, and that meant the signs of spring were mostly human. Light jackets and sweaters. Faces less grim, under sunshine that actually warmed them. No more strange long strides to avoid the slush, which by the end had looked like a mix of dirt and poisoned ice cream.
Taylor walked to the Dublin Castle Pub on Eighth, which, with its neon-on-stainless-steel sign and blacked glass, looked about as much like Dublin Castle as New York looked like York. Jersey Stein had agreed to meet him there, pretty much out of pity.
Taylor hadn’t made headway on the Martha Gibson story in three weeks. Blame the job. Unfortunately, blame didn’t reduce his frustration. He had to turn three or four stories for the wire service most days; that was three or four more than the one he cared about. Most people thought reporters worked on one story at a time. Not unless you were Woodward or Bernstein. Any good reporter had five balls in the air. Any good reporter had one ball he cared about most—the story he wanted. Or needed.
Lights Out Summer Page 7
