Shooting for the Stars

by R. G. Belsky

  “Three relationship crises like that is a very traumatic series of events to go through,” Landis said when I finished.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “How are you handling the shock of your wife’s remarriage?”

  “I’m fine with it.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re right, I’m not.”

  “Sometimes things change and we just have to move on with our lives.”

  “That’s what Susan said too.”

  “We’ve talked about your marriage in the past. You seem to have built that up as a magical time—a Camelot or a utopia—where everything was perfect. But you and I know that wasn’t true. There were always problems in your marriage, and you told me that a number of times. And your wife didn’t just walk away from the marriage without warning or provocation. It was the culmination of a series of crises—including some infidelity on your part—that you made no effort to deal with at the time.”

  I sighed. This damn woman knew me too well.

  “Look, I know the marriage wasn’t perfect,” I said. “I know a lot of that was my fault too. But I always assumed—I mean I never really doubted until now—that one day Susan and I would get back together again. In the end, despite everything bad that had happened between us, she would come back to me. That was my dream. So much for that dream, huh?”

  “It might be beneficial for you to seek out a new relationship at this point,” Landis said. “To move on the same way she has moved on.”

  “I’m feeling a little pessimistic about me and the dating scene these days.”

  “Based on what happened between you and the DeConde woman?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Perhaps if you went back and gave her another chance . . .”

  “Sherry DeConde is dead to me,” I said.

  She asked me about working on the Laura Marlowe story. What my reaction had been when I discovered that Laura had killed herself, not been murdered by anyone. I told Landis the truth. I was shocked, just like everyone else. But I also felt an almost overwhelming sense of grief and loss for the poor woman.

  “Why was she so important to you?” Landis asked.

  “I’m not sure. I mean she’s been dead for thirty years, but she just felt so real to me. The more I found out about Laura Marlowe, the more fascinated I became with her. I felt her pain, I felt her desperation, I felt her loneliness. She was America’s sweetheart, and she was supposed to be living this fairy-tale life. Except her life was more like a Greek tragedy. But she still clung to the hope that she could somehow find the fairy tale. That’s why she tried everything from Sign of the Z to Jackie Sinclair’s X-rated movies to the affair with Thomas Rizzo. And then, when she realized the fairy tale was never going to come true, she killed herself. All of it—her entire life, then her death—was so sad.”

  “It sounds like you relate to her on some level—that you’ve experienced some of those same types of feeling that she did.”

  “Well, I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “But you dream about a fairy-tale outcome—for your marriage, for your entire life—that you’re terrified will never happen for you.”

  “I think we all dream about that,” I said. “But that’s all it is. Just a fairy tale. For me. For Laura Marlowe. For everyone. Fairy tales don’t come true.”

  It was toward the end of the session when Landis finally brought up my long absence from the sessions with her. She asked if I planned to make another appointment soon.

  “Well, that depends,” I said.

  “Depends on what?”

  “Do you think you can cure me, doc?”

  “I think we can continue to make progress with the issues in your life.”

  “C’mon, that’s psych-speak.”

  “I can’t guarantee a cure for all your problems.”

  “I’d really like to get cured.”

  “Let’s just be satisfied with making progress at the moment.”

  “Do you guys ever actually cure anybody?”

  She smiled.

  “Okay, so am I making progress?”

  “Do you remember when you first came to me? I told you that one of the biggest problems you had was that you measured yourself as a person by your success as a newspaper reporter. When you were on Page One, you felt good about yourself. When your reporting career wasn’t doing well, you were unhappy with your entire life. As I recall, you even stopped seeing me at one point back then when you were riding high on Page One. Told me you didn’t need me anymore. And yet here you are back in my office again. Even though you’re all over the front page and a big media star right now. Despite all that success and adulation, you sought me out for some answers. You didn’t bury your problems in the persona of star reporter Gil Malloy. You made a real attempt to deal with them, to confront them, as Gil Malloy the real person. Do you understand what that means?”

  I thought about it for a second.

  “That we’re making progress?” I asked.

  “We’re making progress,” Landis said.

  Chapter 51

  IT was nearly a week after the Rizzo shooting, and I’d written a number of front page articles. About Laura’s suicide. About how Abbie was really Laura and Rizzo’s daughter. About how Tommy Rizzo Jr. killed Abbie when he found out she was going to talk about that on her TV show. About the astrological links between the four other celebrity killings from the 1980s that police now believed had all been carried out by the Sign of the Z cult.

  And, of course, I wrote about witnessing the death of Tommy Rizzo Jr. in the same alley where Laura had died thirty years earlier. This was the biggest story of my life. Hell, it was a whole series of the biggest stories I’d ever done. One Gil Malloy exclusive after another. It was like I hit the trifecta of journalism.

  Stacy had a few questions and concerns about the way it all played out.

  She complained I didn’t keep her in the loop all the time while I was working on the story, which was true.

  She complained the Rizzo killing didn’t turn out to be a Daily News exclusive because all the media had showed up at the scene along with the police, which was inevitable.

  And she even complained that there weren’t enough good multimedia elements to go along with my story, which was ridiculous.

  “Gee,” I told her, “if I’d known you needed more video, I could have just taken out my iPhone and shot some footage of Rizzo pointing the gun at me. Sorry about that, Stacy. But, in my defense, I would like to point out that I was a little bit busy at the time worrying about HOW TO SAVE MY LIFE!”

  Nevertheless, she was more than happy to share in my success and, of course, make sure she got some of the credit.

  On the day after it all broke on Page One of the Daily News, Stacy gathered the staff into the middle of the newsroom.

  “We’ve been working on this Laura Marlowe and Abbie Kincaid story for weeks,” Stacy said to everyone with one arm around me and the other holding up a copy of Page One. “We never gave up. We never quit. We exhibited the kind of doggedness and dedication that this newspaper is famous for. We got the story that no one else could ever get. We got the story that everyone else wanted.”

  Informal counts later showed that Stacy used the word “we” at least eighteen times during the speech.

  When it was over, I just smiled and whispered something in her ear.

  “What did you say anyway?” someone asked me afterward.

  “I told Stacy I could have never done it without her,” I said.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the fallout continued from all the revelations that had come out.

  Thomas Rizzo died a few days after his son. There was a battle going on for control of the mob between Rizzo’s forces and some other family from Queens. No one w
as sure how it was going to turn out, but there would be a lot of blood spilled before it was settled. I hoped it worked out okay for James Kilgore. I tend to get sentimental about people who’ve saved my life.

  Beverly and Holloway were in negotiations for a new TV movie about Laura’s life and death. As I’d predicted, the revelations about her suicide didn’t hurt the image—they’d put her back in the public spotlight more than ever before. The executive producer of the new movie was going to be Gary Lang, the producer of Abbie’s TV show. Beautiful, I thought to myself. He and Holloway and Beverly deserve each other. Beverly was also trying to cut herself in for a piece of Rizzo’s estate. Since Tommy Jr. died, there were no other clear-cut heirs. Beverly argued that some of it should go to her because she was the grandmother of Rizzo’s daughter—which, of course, had turned out to be Abbie. It was an interesting legal point that some experts predicted would take years for the courts to settle. I figured Beverly would figure out a way to win. She always did.

  Bill Remesch was released from prison after it became clear Tommy Rizzo had killed Abbie. He didn’t go right back to Wisconsin though. He hung around New York for a while, appearing on TV and radio talk shows—talking about Abbie and Laura Marlowe and his connection to the case. It was his fifteen minutes of fame, and he was enjoying every minute of it. He told me it was great publicity for his auto repair business back in Milwaukee. Hell, he might have a chain of them throughout the Midwest by the time he was finished.

  Even Jackie Sinclair got in on the act. She said she was writing a book about her life in Hollywood—including the time with Laura Marlowe and running the escort agency. She promised to name names and expose secrets. She said it would blow the lid off of Hollywood.

  I shook my head.

  Everybody was still making money off of Laura Marlowe, just the way they did when she was alive.

  On another front, authorities had been able to determine with a pretty high degree of certainty that the long-forgotten Sign of the Z cult was indeed responsible for four celebrity deaths—Deborah Ditmar, Stephanie Lee, Susan Fairmont, and Cheryl Carson.

  Going back over all four cold cases with a fresh look, police and other law enforcement officials discovered more astrological references linked to each of the killings. Plus, Bobby Mesa had apparently bragged to another inmate before his death that Sign of the Z left their calling card at a series of celebrity murders—and compared it to the way Charles Manson and his followers killed Sharon Tate. This, along with Holloway’s account of what Mesa told him, pretty much closed the book on these cases.

  There was some concern that there might other celebrity deaths out there too attributable to Sign of the Z—but a search of open case files turned up no similarities. From what Mesa had told Holloway, he planned to commit more murders—but fortunately was taken into custody before he could continue his bizarre killing spree to honor the memory of Russell Zorn.

  It was amazing that all of this—the discovery of the celebrity serial killings, the truth about Laura’s death, Abbie Kincaid’s murder, all the things about Thomas Rizzo and the death of his son—resulted from Abbie trying to do a story about what really happened to Laura Marlowe. The woman who turned out to be Abbie’s biological mother. That had set a lot of things in motion, as buried secrets from the past came to the surface and more people wound up dead. It was a helluva story, and I was glad I’d been able to finish it for Abbie.

  Yep, after all this time, Laura Marlowe was big news again.

  * * *

  I heard from a lot of people. Old friends. Other reporters. TV, magazines, websites. There were plenty of TV appearances, both local and national. The best was Abbie’s old show, The Prime Time Files. I got to go on that and do the story Abbie would have broken if she’d lived. It even gave me a chance to hang out again with my old pal Lang—who was very nice to me this time. He actually asked me about moving over to network television as an on-air reporter. It made me remember that day Abbie told me she thought I should try TV. Funny how things worked out. But I doubt that I will ever do that. I don’t ever want to stop being a newspaper reporter. There’s just something pure and noble and unique about the newspaper business for me. God help me, I still love it.

  “Can I have your autograph?” Jeff Aronson asked after I hung up from another in a long series of complimentary phone calls.

  “This is all pretty amazing, isn’t it?” I said.

  “I’ve never seen anyone have as many ups and downs in their career as you. I remember back when you were on the verge of getting fired by this paper. Now you’re getting interviewed by People magazine and television crews.”

  “I am pretty much the biggest media star in town right now!” I said.

  “And modest too,” he smiled.

  “Yes, modesty is one of my best qualities, of which I have many.”

  * * *

  I tried to answer pretty much everyone who reached out to me in the aftermath of the story.

  Except one.

  Sherry DeConde.

  After my article wrapping up the Laura Marlowe death appeared, she left me a message on my voicemail.

  The message said: “Yes, I knew about Laura’s suicide. I knew about Rizzo. I knew about everything that happened. I know you probably hate me. I know you probably never want to talk to me again. But I want to talk to you. I want to try and explain. I just want to see you again. I miss you, Gil.”

  She said she was back at work now. Back in the West Village townhouse. She left numbers for both places, but I didn’t call her.

  A few days later, I got an email from Sherry that said: “I warned you at the beginning not to get involved with me. I never wanted to hurt you. When we did start seeing each other, I thought maybe I could somehow put my past behind me. But I know now that can never happen. You wanted the truth from me. I couldn’t give you that. I’m sorry. I know saying that can never undo the damage that I’ve done, but I am truly sorry for everything.”

  I ignored that too. I had trusted Sherry DeConde. And she lied to me. So the hell with her. There were plenty of other women out there for me.

  Like Sherry had said, she was too old for me anyway.

  Chapter 52

  I’VE thought a lot about the way everything came together at the end. How the truth about Laura Marlowe’s life, her death, and all those long-buried secrets about the people around her came bubbling to the surface. Was it just chance? Coincidence? A conflux of random events that set all of these things into motion at the same time?

  I’m not so sure it wasn’t more than that.

  I guess a part of me will always believe there was some kind of karma at work here. That this was always meant to be. That there was a reason for everything. And that fate somehow—like a current moving relentlessly through the eddies of time—had inexorably brought Abbie and Thomas Rizzo and Tommy Jr. and everything else together at the end. I just happened to be there to see it all happen.

  The bottom line, though, was the story was finally over now.

  I’d solved the mystery of how Laura Marlowe really died. I’d found Abbie’s murderer. I’d solved a series of other celebrity cold case killings along the way. I’d accomplished everything I set out to do—and more.

  And so, after another ego-inflating day of having people tell me how wonderful and how great a journalist I was, I put everything away in my desk and took the subway home. Back to the empty apartment I’d left that morning. Which was the part of my life that wasn’t so wonderful and so great.

  Still no wife, no kids, no dog waiting for me when I walked in. But that was okay. I was just fine by myself. I had plenty to keep me occupied through the night.

  You see, I was working on a new—and still highly secret—theory of mine. I called it the “two Lois Lanes” theory. Phyllis Coates played Lois in the original black-and-white Superman TV series. Then, when it went to color, she mysteriously b
ecame someone in the credits called Noel Neill. Only both Lois Lanes looked, walked, and talked almost exactly alike. I feared something sinister was afoot. I hadn’t worked out all the details yet but I suspected aliens from outer space and some kind of body transference might be involved.

  I was not quite ready to reveal the details of this to the world yet, but I wondered if it was time to share it with someone else. On a need-to-know basis, of course. But who?

  I could call Susan, of course, like I always did when I wanted someone to talk to. Except she was married now. And I wasn’t sure how her new husband might feel about her getting calls from her ex-husband. Even for something as important as this.

  I considered and rejected a series of other possible people to call until I came back to the one person I’d been thinking about the entire time: Sherry DeConde.

  But I couldn’t call Sherry because I was mad at her. I was done with her. She had lied to me about Rizzo.

  I went into the kitchen, took a beer out of the refrigerator, and walked with it into the living room. I tried to think of any possible innocent reasons Sherry might have had for not telling me the truth about her involvement with Rizzo.

  I came up with these possible scenarios:

  1. She actually worked for another Thomas Rizzo. It was all a mistake, and this Rizzo was a bank president or a lawyer or someone else that had nothing to do with organized crime.

  2. It simply slipped her mind that she had ever worked for and gotten money from Thomas Rizzo. She just forgot to tell me; it wasn’t deliberate.

  3.ĄShe did tell me about Rizzo at some point. But I didn’t hear her. I was so intent on jumping her bones that my sexual desires had dulled my reporting instincts—and I missed it.

  None of these, of course, seemed very plausible.

  But maybe I could give Sherry the benefit of the doubt on this.