by R. G. Belsky
Except it didn’t work.
Seeing my daughter—and then meeting her—that first day as a grown-up woman had unleashed a lot of powerful emotions in me. Emotions I’d kept bottled up inside me for years. Ever since the day I gave her up for adoption in a hospital back when I was a college freshman.
God knows how, but I held it all together when I introduced myself to her as Clare Carlson, TV reporter—and gave her my cover story about being there as a curious journalist who was only looking for answers.
But, once I left and got back in my car, I began to cry.
I cried for Lucy.
I cried for myself.
And, I guess most of all, I cried because I so badly wanted to set things right with my daughter after all these years and all this pain—but I didn’t know how to do that.
Which is why I brought up the question of motherhood with my friend Janet.
What kind of a mother did Janet think I would make?
“No one knows what kind of a mother they will be,” she had told me. “No one is qualified to be a mother; no one knows how it’s going to turn out. Not at the beginning anyway. I certainly didn’t with Karen and Kim. You learn about yourself along the way in motherhood. It just happens. That’s what would happen to you if ever take that step. You’re a good person, Clare. You’d make a good mother in the end, no matter what you think. If that’s what you ever decide you want to do.”
Except I might never know the answer to that question for sure.
Because I was a prisoner of my own lies.
I lied back at the beginning when I covered the Lucy Devlin disappearance as a reporter without ever telling anyone about my real relationship with her.
I’d lied again a few years ago when I covered up the story of the politician’s role in what happened to Lucy in order in obtain information about where she was.
And I’m lying now when I tell my daughter that I’m interested in her as a journalist, nothing more than that.
That’s the trouble with lies.
The more you lie, the worse it gets.
Then one lie piles on top of another until one day you’re buried in all the damned lies!
“There is no trap so deadly as the trap that you set for yourself,” Raymond Chandler once wrote.
And that’s the truth.
CHAPTER 8
MARTY BARLOW WAS investigating eight buildings where he thought corruption was flourishing. I visited the same eight places and saw what appeared to be questionable and illegal activities going on in them. All eight companies were owned by a company called Big M Realty Corp. Obviously, I needed to track down information about Big M Realty.
But I had had no better luck at that than the people in the building with the broken elevator or any of the other tenants had had. There was no phone or email listing, no website, no information of any kind about Big M Realty. Their business operation seemed one directional: You send in your checks, and we don’t want to hear any more from you. Very effective way to do business, if you could pull that off.
But someone had to be running Big M Realty Corp.
They existed somewhere. I just had no idea how to find them.
I knew someone who might.
His name was Todd Schacter and he was a computer expert. Actually, Schacter was a computer hacking expert. Janet had once represented him in court and gotten him acquitted of charges of breaking into companies’ computer files for personal information about their top officers. I’d used him, too, a year ago when I was looking for my daughter, Lucy. What he did wasn’t exactly legal. Let’s face it, what Schacter did wasn’t legal at all. But it wasn’t like he was stealing money or anything from these people. Only information. I was willing to bend the rules to get what I needed.
I told him about Big M Realty Corp. and all the dead ends I’d run into.
“I can think of two ways right off to get what you’re looking for,” he said. “It should be easy.”
“What are they?”
“First, there has to be a link to whatever financial institution Big M Realty uses. These tenants sent checks to them, you say. The cancelled checks they get back from their bank will have the bank that cashed them for Big M. Then all I have to do is get the details about Big M out of that bank’s files.”
“How can you get into the bank’s files?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Schacter was right. I didn’t.
“What’s the other way?” I asked.
“A phone number. They must use some kind of phone. No business could operate without using a phone.”
“But I couldn’t find any indication of a phone number anywhere.”
“Maybe you’re looking in the wrong places,” he said.
Sure enough, the next morning he gave me a phone number that he said belonged to Big M Realty.
All right, that was easy.
Except it wasn’t.
When I called the number, I got a voice message that said: “You have reached Moreland Enterprises. This is an automated message. If you have a question, leave it here along with your contact information. Don’t waste our time with frivolous queries. If we feel it is necessary, we will contact you.” This was followed by a beep to leave a message. I hung up. I didn’t want to waste their time. Besides, I preferred they didn’t know I was calling them yet.
But at least I now knew they existed under the name of Moreland Enterprises.
When I googled Moreland Enterprises, I found out more. For one thing, it was spelled “More-Land.” Clever. The company had been in the news a few years ago when the district attorney announced an investigation of their real estate practices. Not Terri Hartwell. The district attorney before her. There was no indication that investigation ever went anywhere though.
Even more interesting was the owner of More-Land Enterprises—Victor Morelli. Which is where the “More” in “More-Land” must have come from. Victor Morelli, I knew quite a bit about. He’d been one of the top mob bosses in New York City in recent years. Supposedly, he had his hand in a lot of illegal operations, but he’d never been convicted of anything. He seemed to be a Teflon Don—no one in law enforcement could touch him—in the same way John Gotti had once been.
That sure explained some of the things I’d seen at the buildings where I’d gone. The gambling operations, pizza extortion rackets, sex businesses, etcetera. Was Wincott—and maybe Terri Hartwell, too—working with a mob boss like Victor Morelli? Had Marty found that out? Was that why Marty was killed?
Well, I couldn’t get any answers from Big M Realty Corp./ More-Land Enterprises because they apparently wouldn’t talk to anyone.
Or from Thomas Wincott, who was mad at me.
Or from Victor Morelli.
And Marty Barlow was dead, so he couldn’t talk to me anymore.
But there was one person who might be able to tell me something. One person I still hadn’t talked to yet. A person who had been a part of this story right from the beginning, even though I wasn’t exactly sure how.
Terri Hartwell.
“Good luck with that,” Dani Blaine said to me when I told her what I was trying to do.
I’d gone to Dani because she’d been a guest on Terri Hartwell’s radio show a few times when Hartwell was on the air, talking about New York City crime stories we’d covered on Channel 10. It was a high-profile way to promote our station and newscasters on a popular radio show. I figured I’d find out from Dani the best way to approach Terri Hartwell and then subtly segue from that into the status of Dani’s relationship with co-anchor Brett Wolff.
“She’s got this annoying guy named Chad Enright who works for her and won’t let anyone talk or see Terri without going through him,” Dani said. “He’s a total pain in the ass. Thinks he’s a big shot, thinks he’s really important, brags about how no one gets to Terri Hartwell without his approval. Jeez. Like I said, a pain in the ass. Watch out for him.”
She gave me Enright’s contact information.
“How’s everything going between you and Brett these days?” I asked her then.
“What do you mean how is it going?”
“I mean are you two … uh, well, pursuing a relationship outside the office?”
“In other words, you want to know if we’re still screwing?”
“Okay, are you and Brett still screwing?”
So much for the subtle segue.
“Yes and no.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“Brett and I are still together as a couple. But we’ve decided to step back from an intense personal relationship for now until he resolves some issues in his life, like the situation with his wife. Brett and I talked about this all, and we’re fine. This seemed like the mature, logical way to deal with this.”
She was right. It was the mature, logical approach. Unfortunately, it also was doomed to failure. I’d been through this kind of thing before in my own personal life and I knew it would all explode and get ugly again at some point in the future unless he actually divorced his wife.
But I couldn’t worry about that now.
“Exactly how big a pain in the ass is this Enright guy?” I asked her before she left my office.
“The worst.”
“I’ve met some pretty big pain in the asses in my life.”
“Not like this one.”
CHAPTER 9
JACK FARON WAS back from Los Angeles. There was a message waiting for me when I got to work the next morning. He wanted to see me in his office immediately.
“What do you think he wants to talk to me about?” I asked Maggie after I showed it to her.
“Gee, what do you think?”
“Well, there are several possibilities. 1) He wants to give me a pat on the back—and maybe even a big raise—for the great job I’ve been doing, 2) he’s going to promote me, or 3) he’s still mad about me going on the air with the Marty Barlow story while he was out of town. I’m betting its either 1 or 2.”
“Really?”
“I’m a glass-half-full kind of gal.”
“This isn’t going to be pretty, Clare. I’m glad I’m not in your shoes right now.”
She was probably right. I decided to put it off as long as possible. Before I went in to see Faron, I asked Maggie to run down for me all the top stories she was working on for the news meeting later that day. Then I called Terri Hartwell’s office and got an appointment to see the Chad Enright guy Dani had told me about. I also called the media consultant, Gary Weddle, and rescheduled our meeting that I’d blown off the other day. After that, I went downstairs and bought myself a big cup of coffee and a poppyseed bagel with cream cheese. I ate the bagel and drank the coffee at my desk. Finally, when I couldn’t think of any other way to delay the inevitable, I went to see Faron.
Trying to maintain my positive attitude, I greeted him with a big smile and a cheery, “Welcome back, Jack. How was your trip to LA?”
“How was my trip to LA? Well, let me try to answer that question for you. We didn’t get any of the new advertising accounts we wanted. It rained the whole time I was there. The airline lost my luggage on the trip home. And, worst of all, the woman I left in charge of the station here ignored my instructions and went out on the air with something that I didn’t want—and that is now causing me and the station all sorts of repercussions. That’s how my trip to LA went.”
“I have an explanation,” I told him when he was finished ranting at me.
“I certainly hope so.”
“I don’t believe Martin Barlow died in a random mugging. I found out some new information about Barlow and what he was doing before he was murdered. I think there’s a good story here.”
I went through everything I’d found out so far. About the connection between Marty’s son-in-law and Terri Hartwell. About the buildings that Marty seemed to be investigating. About how Marty had talked about murder—maybe lots of murders—being involved in this. And about the big guy that warned me off the story after I went to visit one of the places.
“But what is the story?” he asked after I finished. “There is no story. Just a series of individual pieces of information and events that might or might not be related. Murder, corruption, illegal payoffs, Terri Hartwell, this Thomas Wincott guy … you have no evidence, no hard proof of any kind to put on the air.”
“How about the guy who told me to stay away from the building—or else? Why would he not want me around unless he had something to hide?”
“Maybe he just didn’t like you.”
“How could anyone not like me?”
“Hard to believe, I know.”
He then talked about the meeting with the media consultant that I’d missed. He explained again how important it was for the station and our ratings and our ad sales to incorporate the consultant’s ideas in our planning going forward. He said the order to hire the consultant had come from Brendan Kaiser himself, the owner of Channel 10 and a lot of other media properties.
“This media consultant has an excellent reputation,” Faron said. “He’s one of the best in the business.”
“Well, you know what I always say about consultants,” I said. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. And those who can’t do either become consultants.”
I’ve never had much use for consultants of any kind, particularly media consultants. I don’t understand the logic of paying someone who doesn’t work at a TV station a lot of money to tell the people who do work at a TV station what they should be doing. And their ideas never seem to be any good.
Faron repeated to me again how important this meeting was for the station. He said that I needed to show up for the meeting this time. And he said I should keep an open mind and not display any kind of negative attitude to the consultant.
“Be nice, Clare.”
“I’m always nice.”
“Yeah, right …”
“Don’t worry, Jack, I’ll try to work with the guy.”
“Thank you.”
“No matter how big a jerk he is.”
Before I left Faron’s office, I asked him again about the Marty Barlow story.
“There is no Marty Barlow story.”
“I’m supposed to have an interview with Terri Hartwell’s top aide, a guy named Chad Enright. Hopefully, he’ll let me talk to her directly. I might find out something good.”
“Okay, go ahead with the Enright meeting. If you find out something good from him or Hartwell, we’ll put it on the air. In the meantime, forget about the damn Barlow story and concentrate on spending time with the media consultant.”
CHAPTER 10
CHAD ENRIGHT TURNED out to be everything I expected him to be, and more.
Enright was in his thirties, with blond hair and good looking in a pretty-boy kind of way. He was wearing a blue pinstriped suit, pink shirt, and blue tie with speckles of pink in it. Perfectly color-coordinated. His hair hung down a bit over his ears—not too short and not too long. Like he went to a stylist every week so it looked like he never needed a haircut. I figured him for the kind of guy who spent a lot of time checking himself out in the mirror before he left the house.
There was an array of pictures on his desk and more photos on the wall behind him. All of them were pictures of Chad Enright. With Terri Hartwell. Hanging out with other important political officials and celebrities. Behind the wheel of a fancy sports car. On a sailboat in the Hamptons. And, in more than a few of them, there was a pretty woman with him. The message he was sending seemed clear: “I’m Chad Enright, and you’re not!” I could see already why Dani had used “pain in the ass” to describe this guy.
And that was before he even started talking.
“We’re going to lay out the ground rules before we start,” Enright said to me when I sat down in his office. “You follow the ground rules, we’ll get along fine. If you don’t, you and I won’t get along. It’s important that you understand that from the start, Ms. Carlson. Okay?”
&
nbsp; I said okay.
“First, any access you have to Terri Hartwell goes through me. No one else. Not anyone else on the staff here. Not a public relations person. No friends of hers or any other connections you think you might have. Just me. I’m the gatekeeper. I’m the only way you get to talk to Terri Hartwell at any time. No exceptions. Everything—and I mean everything—goes through me. Okay?”
I said okay again.
“Next, you be straight with me, and I’ll be straight with you. That’s the kind of person I am. But you lie to me or mislead me or be less than forthcoming to me in any way—and I will cut off your access to me and Terri Hartwell in an instant. Terri is one of the hottest political names around at this moment. You can be a friend; or you can be an enemy. I’d prefer you be our friend. But that’s up to you. Okay?”
I just nodded this time. I was getting bored of saying okay.
“Now what is it we can do for you, Ms. Carlson?”
I took out a sheet of paper that I’d printed out with addresses of the eight buildings I’d found in Marty’s files and I had visited. I showed the list to Enright. I also showed him a picture of Victor Morelli and one of Thomas Wincott.
“Do you know of any connection Terri Hartwell might have with these buildings—or either of these men?” I asked.
“What is this?”
“You’re answering a question with a question, Mr. Enright.”
“How does any of this have anything to do with Terri?”
“You’re doing it again.”
I told him I’d been alerted by someone that the buildings’ owners were breaking laws and housing questionable enterprises, apparently under the protection of the Morelli crime family. How the same person who told me this was a relative of Thomas Wincott, another major real estate owner of buildings in the city. How I’d learned that Wincott was also a campaign contributor to Terri Hartwell.
