Below the Fold

by R. G. Belsky

  Or was he?

  He’d been placed on restricted duty after a controversial death involving him and his partner. A nineteen-year-old named Manny Nazario had been arrested as a suspect in a series of brutal attacks on women and the elderly. While he was in the holding cell on the second floor of the precinct, he somehow went out a window and was found unconscious on the street below.

  At first, it seemed as if he’d simply tried to escape and been unlucky when he hit the pavement, since his injuries seemed far beyond what would be expected from a two-story fall. He was taken to the hospital, where he was not expected to survive. But Nazario regained consciousness and insisted, according to family members at his bedside, that he was not trying to escape. He claimed that a cop had pushed him out the window.

  He also said the cop had beaten him up before that, which accounted for the severity of his injuries. He identified the cop as one of the detectives who’d arrested him. Sergeant Tommy Bratton—Manning’s partner. Then he lapsed back into a coma and died three days later. Bratton denied all the charges and his partner, Scott Manning, backed up his story.

  There was a lot of outrage by community leaders who said the department was covering up police brutality. Both Bratton and Manning were then taken off active duty until a further investigation was conducted. In the midst of all this furor, Bratton died of a heart attack. At his funeral, the eulogy was delivered by his partner, Manning, who praised him as “a good cop, my partner, my friend, my brother in blue.”

  There were no surprises with Dora Gayle.

  We pretty much knew all the information about her from the stuff we’d already reported on the murder. I was still struck by the fact, though, that she was the only person who seemed out of place on this list—the only one who wasn’t either rich or successful or prominent in their field.

  We went back to the park, the coffee shop and the other places she spent her time without learning anything new. I even sent a reporter and camera crew to the bank where she had died. They took some video of customers lined up there to use the ATM machines. That’s where she’d been found dead. Presumably she’d gone into the bank entrance to sleep where it was warm, and someone had followed her inside and murdered her for God knows what reason.

  The Channel 10 crew interviewed the bank manager, still looking for any kind of morsel of interest. His name was Jason Wincott.

  “We’ve always had a lot of transients who try to camp out there,” Wincott said. “The outer door is locked, of course. But they wait for someone to go in or out to the ATMs using their pass card, then just follow them inside and stay. That’s what must have happened the other night with this woman.”

  “I guess she must have wanted someplace warm to spend the night,” the reporter said.

  “Only thing is it wasn’t that cold. It was the first really nice early spring night of the year. Temperature never went below the sixties.”

  “Maybe she just thought it was safer being inside there than being out on the street by herself.”

  “I guess so. But it sure didn’t turn out to be safer for her. To be honest, I don’t know how most of them live like that for a single night on the street—much less making it their permanent home.”

  The most interesting part of the interview came when Wincott revealed that Dora Gayle actually had a savings account with the bank. My reporter got very excited about that—just like I did when I first heard the news. Maybe Dora Gayle wasn’t simply some poor bag lady after all. Maybe she had lots of money and secrets about her life she was hiding. Maybe the money in that account was what had gotten her murdered.

  But it turned out the bank account was a long dormant one from years earlier with only a few dollars in it. Probably from when she was on some kind of government assistance and still competent enough to open up a savings account. There had been no deposits or withdrawals from it in a very long time.

  Did she go to the bank that night in some forlorn hope that she could still withdraw money from that old account of hers to buy coffee or maybe a bottle from the liquor store?

  Or just to get off the streets outside for a little while because she thought it was safer there?

  Or for some other reason that we knew nothing about, that somehow got her included on that list?

  I already knew a lot about my boss, Brendan Kaiser, too. Or at least I thought I did. His father, Charles Kaiser, had been a successful newspaper publisher and—after he died—Brendan took over the business. But, when Maggie briefed me on his past, there were some real surprises. Especially from when he was younger.

  Growing up, Brendan Kaiser showed no indication at all of being the powerful figure he eventually became. The truth is he was kind of a screw-up. Expelled from a series of schools. Picked up by the police for drinking and smoking pot. For more than a year, he drifted from place to place. Los Angeles. San Francisco. France. Italy. Turkey. Japan. He told friends he wanted to experience life.

  Brendan’s older brother, Charles Jr., was being groomed to go into the family business and take over one day from his father. He had all the credentials. Graduated with honors from Harvard, a star athlete there, president of the student body.

  But then Charles Jr. tragically died in a drowning incident off Long Island.

  It was a devastating blow to his father. Charles Kaiser Sr. had invested all his hopes and dreams in his oldest son. People said he never really recovered. After Charles Jr.’s death, he tried to get Brendan to join him in the family business. Brendan refused. But that all changed later when Charles Kaiser suffered a massive heart attack and died. His sudden demise left his business empire in chaos. Kaiser had always run it himself, and there was no corporate or executive structure to fill the void of his absence. Only another Kaiser could do that. Brendan reluctantly took over control of his father’s business.

  He said he would only do it for a short time, but—as the years went by—it became clear Brendan was indeed his father’s son. The company grew in ways that even Charles Kaiser Sr. could never have envisioned while he was alive. Brendan Kaiser bought a half dozen television stations, which he turned into a new network. A year later, he bought a giant movie studio and became a force in Hollywood. There was also a book publishing company, a chain of magazines, a worldwide satellite empire, newspapers and local TV stations like Channel 10; plus, popular websites and many other valuable social media properties.

  But why was he on the killer’s list of so-called “friends”?

  Why were any of them?

  CHAPTER 9

  I SAVED GRACE Mancuso until last because—as the murder victim—she clearly had to be the key to this.

  “Grace Mancuso, thirty-three years old, lived alone,” Maggie said. “Worked as a stock analyst and broker for a company down on Wall Street called Revson Investments. One of those places that have been in the news recently. They got indicted for helping some big corporations loot people out of their stock options and 401(k) money while a bunch of big shots there made off with all of the money. She didn’t go to jail, but some of the people she worked with probably will. Turns out Mancuso walked away with a plea bargain after giving up other people in the company who took part in the rip-off. Many of the victims were senior citizens who lost their life savings over what happened at Revson. That’s plenty of suspects who might have wanted Mancuso to die a horrible death.”

  “Yeah, I figure the company’s disgruntled client records are going to make for one long list of suspects,” I said. “What about her personal life?”

  “She had an ex-boyfriend, a current boyfriend, and apparently a future boyfriend—some guy she told people she had her sights set on.”

  “Sounds like she was a busy lady.”

  “Yeah, no specific names of the lovers yet. Still checking on that.”

  “Next of kin?”

  “She’s from a little town in Pennsylvania. Came to the city after college and worked her way up on Wall Street. The parents are on their way now to claim the body. S
ay it’s the first time they’ve ever been here.”

  “Welcome to New York,” I said.

  Maggie then went through all the details we knew from the police about her murder.

  “Someone made an anonymous call to the police at 12:17 p.m. that day and said there was screaming and other suspicious noises coming from that apartment. The cops sent a patrol car to check it out and eventually found the body. Only problem is that the Medical Examiner’s office says Mancuso died at least twelve to eighteen hours earlier. That puts her time of death the night before.”

  “Which means the caller couldn’t have heard her screams then because she was long dead,” I said.

  “Yes, the police think it was the killer who called.”

  “Why wait so long? Why call at all? Why not just wait for someone to find her dead?”

  “Why leave the note, too?” Maggie shrugged. “The police have lots of questions, Clare. Not many answers yet.”

  She continued to read from her notes.

  “The victim was beaten to death. Badly beaten. She had multiple, massive contusions of the head and body. Struck repeatedly with the statue police found in her apartment—and probably the killer’s fists, as well. It was a real mess, and her face—which everyone described as being so beautiful—was almost unrecognizable. It looks like whoever did this was trying to make some kind of a statement.

  “The list was handwritten—scrawled in big letters with a pen—on standard white bond paper. There was more of a similar kind of paper found in Mancuso’s place, so it appears the killer just picked up a piece of the paper spontaneously and wrote the note and the list of names. In other words, that part of it was probably not pre-mediated. Probably the murder wasn’t pre-meditated either—the details make it look like more of an emotional outburst of violence than a methodical planned killing.

  “There’s still no obvious connection that’s turned up between any of the names on the list—either with each other or with Mancuso or with Revson, the company she worked for. The only common link between those five names on the list so far is that they’re all around the same age. And Dora Gayle sure doesn’t really seem to fit in with the others in any other way.

  “There were several sets of fingerprints found in the apartment. Including, of course, Mancuso’s own prints. Also, a possible partial set of fingerprints on the paper the list was written on. Again, it doesn’t appear that whoever did this plotted it out very much. Unfortunately, none of the prints in the place have turned up any match yet in the law enforcement files.”

  I nodded. I knew most of this already, but it was always good to lay out all the details of a story like this. Sometimes the individual pieces—the different threads of the narrative—came together in some sort of logical sequence. But not this time. None of it made any sense to the police or to me.

  “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Yes, the statue that was used to kill her,” Maggie said. “There’s something about that which doesn’t make sense either. Two things about it, actually, that don’t make sense. First, a piece of it is missing and can’t be found. Where is it? Why would the killer take that—and leave the rest of the statue? Second, everything else in Grace Mancuso’s apartment—furniture, clothes, artwork—was supposed to be expensive and classy, a sign of her affluent success on Wall Street. The woman sure seemed like she knew how to live well and spend money. The only thing out of place is the statue. It’s a cheap, garish-looking piece of wood that hardly cost anything. No way Grace Mancuso would have ever bought something like that or kept it in her apartment. Which means …”

  “The killer brought it there,” I said.

  When we were done with Grace Mancuso, Maggie and I looked back over at the five names on the list—Bill Atwood, Emily Lehrman, Scott Manning, Dora Gayle, and Brendan Kaiser. The five names that seemed to have no obvious connection to each other or to the dead Grace Mancuso. But somehow, they had to be a key to her murder.

  “Which one of these five will you go to see first?” Maggie asked me.

  “None of them,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Like the old saying goes, ‘follow the money.’”

  Maggie smiled.

  “Then you’re going first to—”

  “Revson Investments, the place where Grace Mancuso worked.”

  CHAPTER 10

  IF REVSON INVESTMENTS was in financial trouble because of the stock scandal, it was doing a nice job of hiding it. The offices took several top floors of a big building near Wall Street. Everything about the place oozed money. Rich leather furniture, plush carpets, expensive paintings on the walls. An attractive woman receptionist greeted visitors with a smile, and soft music played through the halls. Of course, you never knew about a place like this. The bank could be ready to foreclose and they’d still be smiling and assuring the clients everything was all right while the moving vans pulled up.

  The CEO of Revson Investments was a man named Vernon Albright. He met me and my video crew in his office, which had a window with a sweeping view of the Hudson River all the way over to New Jersey.

  I wasn’t sure at first if Albright would talk to me. Or be willing to go on air for an interview. But he had no hesitation about doing either. I got the feeling that Revson was doing its best to put a positive PR spin on all their troubles—and Albright seemed to be the front man for that. He was pretty good at it.

  “It was a terrible thing that happened to Grace,” Albright said once the interview began, looking at the camera with an expression that combined both gravitas and yet positive vibes for worried Revson investors out there. “We’re all still in a state of shock. It’s like losing a member of the family. People do die, but for someone to die like that … well, it’s just terrible.”

  I told Albright I agreed that Grace Mancuso’s death was a terrible thing.

  “The police are still trying to find out why someone wanted to kill her,” I said. “The most obvious connection is that it had something to do with her work at your company. This would be true in any case, of course. But the possible connections between what happened to her and her job seem even more relevant here because of your recent problems.”

  Albright nodded. He’d expected the question. And he was ready with an answer.

  “I see where you’re coming from,” he said. “So let me take you through this as simply as I can. Several months ago, I became aware of some … well, irregularities … in our business practices here. We were informed that federal investigators were looking into a number of questionable business dealings conducted by members of this firm. I, of course, immediately launched my own intensive investigation into the matter. It was eventually discovered that members of the company had taken millions of dollars from investors. There was a number of ways this was done. One involved giving the investors false information about their portfolios. The scenario went like this: The broker was encouraging people to keep investing in certain commodities in order to artificially keep the stock share price high, while he or she was systematically divesting themselves of their own investments in the stock. I call it dubious business practices.”

  “It’s also called fraud,” I pointed out.

  “Of course, it is,” Albright said. “We, of course, condemn any such practices and moved quickly to cooperate with federal and local investigators in the matter. We also encouraged everyone in the firm to be truthful and candid when they were questioned about their knowledge of the matter. Most of the people at Revson are honest and conscientious people. But there’s always a few bad apples.”

  “What about Grace Mancuso?”

  “What about her?”

  “Was she one of the bad apples?”

  “Ms. Mancuso’s guilt—or level of knowledge and involvement—was never officially determined during the investigation. She provided information against several of her co-workers that helped greatly in the prosecution. As a result, she was given immunity from any possible criminal charges.”


  “I imagine the people she gave up weren’t too happy about that.”

  “No, I suppose not.”

  “What about you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How did the company feel about her actions?”

  “As I said, we were pleased that she cooperated with the investigation.”

  “Pleased enough to let her keep working for you.”

  “For the time being.”

  “Meaning?”

  Albright cleared his throat nervously.

  “Could we stop the cameras and go off the record here, Ms. Carlson?”

  “Okay.”

  I told my video team to stop and asked them to wait for me outside Albright’s office.

  “May I speak frankly with you about Grace Mancuso?” he said to me once they were gone and I’d established we were off the record now.

  “I’d sure like that.”

  “We didn’t sever her relationship with the firm, because it would have sent a bad message to others who might cooperate with the prosecutors. We encouraged her to tell the truth and said there would be no repercussions from us. But, as I’m sure you can understand, it would be difficult for her to have any kind of a future here under the circumstances. So we worked out an arrangement where she would resign quietly in a few months.”

  “How did she feel about that?”

  “She really didn’t have any choice. As I said, it was an uncomfortable situation.”

  I stood up and walked over to the window behind Vernon Albright’s desk. From the offices of Revson Investments, you could see the streets of Manhattan below. But you couldn’t really see the people. You were so high up here that they looked like ants, running around down below.