by R. G. Belsky
Lehrman shook her head. “I’m not a suspect, Ms. Carlson. I’m not even a witness. I’m just somebody you want to question in the hopes of finding out some scrap of information to put on the air and sensationalize. Talking to you does not benefit me in any way, so don’t try those tricks on me. I’m a lawyer. A very good lawyer. Don’t forget for a second who you’re dealing with.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds. Emily Lehrman was a formidable looking person. In her fifties, I knew, but she looked younger. Short, brunette hair. Attractive in a way, even though she didn’t go out of her way to emphasize it.
“Oh, I know exactly who you are, Ms. Lehrman.”
“Have we met?”
“Sort of. A long time ago. When I was a newspaper reporter, I wrote a lot of stories about a bigtime drug dealer named Vincent Gallo. He ran an operation out of Brooklyn that catered to college kids. We spent six months doing an undercover probe and stakeout on him. Did a whole series that should have wound up putting Gallo in jail. He was arrested, but he got himself a good lawyer who got him acquitted. That lawyer was you, Ms. Lehrman.”
She shrugged. “I was just doing my job.”
“A few months later, a kid named Timmy Ehrhardt died from an overdose from a bad batch of heroin he got from Gallo. Ehrhardt was a straight A student at Brooklyn College. He’d been accepted to medical school. He wanted to be a doctor, he wanted to help people. Instead, he wound up dead in the morgue. He wasn’t a bad kid, he wasn’t a drug addict. He was just experimenting, trying things out in life the way we all did when we were young. Except he’ll never get a chance to get old. If Vincent Gallo had gone to jail, maybe Timmy Ehrhardt would be alive today.”
“And you blame me for this?”
“Let’s just say I don’t like lawyers like you, Ms. Lehrman.”
“And I don’t like journalists like you.”
“Good to know.”
“Goodbye, Ms. Carlson.”
“I really wish you’d at least consider doing the interview.”
“Goodbye.”
She glared at me with an icy-cold stare—the same kind of intimidating look she was known for in the courtroom—until I finally made my way out of her office.
Emily Lehrman was one scary lady.
Definitely didn’t seem like a very nice person.
But that didn’t make her a murderer either.
I didn’t even get to meet with Scott Manning, the NYPD homicide cop. When I tracked him down at his precinct and got him on the phone, he had only two words for my request to meet for an interview. “No way.”
I went through my spiel about how it was in his best interests to go public on air with this, but he wasn’t buying any of it. Just like Emily Lehrman. Maybe they were both just too smart to fall for it. Or maybe I wasn’t as smart as I thought I was. The bottom line was there was still a lot I didn’t know about either of them, as well as the other people on the list.
I looked at the list again.
Five names.
No apparent connection with each other or with the victim, Grace Mancuso.
At least according to what they were saying.
But someone must not be telling the truth.
I sure hoped it wasn’t Brendan Kaiser.
CHAPTER 16
SCOTT MANNING WORKED out of a police precinct on 67th Street. My ex-husband Sam had spent some time there too, and I knew there was a bar where cops regularly hung out in the neighborhood when their shifts were over. So I stopped in at the bar later that evening in the hopes I could find him.
Manning was sitting at a table by himself at the back of the place. The bartender pointed him out to me. He wasn’t what I expected. Good-looking, long curly brown hair—he looked more like a TV cop than a real one. I ordered a drink from the bartender, walked over to Manning’s table and sat down across from him.
“Clare Carlson, Channel 10 News,” I said. “We talked on the phone before.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I still want to interview you.”
“I’m not talking to you.”
“Actually, you are. We’re having a conversation now.”
“Go away.”
“I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“Like I told you before, I have nothing to say to you.”
“Yeah, but that was before you saw how cute and adorable I was.”
I gave him my best smile. Friendly. Flirtatious. Whatever it took.
“You certainly are tenacious,” he said, taking a big drink of what he had in his glass.
“Is that in my favor.”
“Not necessarily.”
“I’ve been called worse. What about the interview?”
He laughed now.
“You’d make a pretty good cop.”
“I make a pretty good reporter too.”
“I can see that.”
“So will you talk to me?”
“About what?”
“Grace Mancuso.”
“I know absolutely nothing about how my name got on that damn list. That’s the truth. You can believe me or not.”
“Okay, I believe you.”
“Good. Are we done here then?”
“We can still talk.”
“About what?”
“Whatever you want.”
We wound up spending quite a bit of time—and having more than a few drinks—together. I wasn’t exactly sure why I did it. Partly, I suppose, in the hope I’d somehow find out more about him that might help me on the story. But the other reason—and there was no denying it—is I kind of liked Scott Manning. Found him attractive too. It had been a long time since I’d spent time with a man who aroused those kinds of emotions in me.
At one point, I asked him about the departmental charges pending against him over the suspect that went out the window while he was in his and his partner’s custody. And about his partner dying of a heart attack after the controversy erupted.
I wasn’t sure if he’d talk to me about that either, but he did. He got very emotional talking about his dead partner, Tommy Bratton.
“We were like brothers, me and Tommy. We thought the same way on the street, reacted as if we were one. And, most of all, we trusted each other. I trusted Tommy Bratton with my life, and I knew Tommy felt the same way about me. The thing is, though, the Nazario case brought everything to a head for me. I was already questioning many of the basic decisions I’d based my whole life on. Tommy was my closest friend, the one person I thought I could trust. And then one day he wasn’t there anymore.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Lots of them. Starting with whether I should have ever been a police officer at all.”
“You didn’t always want to be a cop?”
“No, I just kind of fell into it when my real dream didn’t work out.”
“What was your real dream?”
“To be a rock star.”
I laughed, but soon found out he wasn’t kidding. He told me about coming to New York out of college as a guitar player, joining a band, and performing at clubs in the Village and Lower Manhattan.
“But then I met my wife, Susan, and we got married. I eventually decided I had to get a real job. A friend of mine was taking the police entrance exam and convinced me to go with him. I passed, got in the Police Academy, and the rest is history.”
“So you’re married?” I said, hoping I didn’t let the disappointment show too much.
“Yes and no,” he said
“That’s not a yes and no question. The answers are either A) yes or B) no.”
“Technically, Susan and I are still together. But I moved out after the Nazario business became so messy. There’s always been problems between us in the marriage, and all that’s happened to me has only exacerbated those problems. Plus, I’ve had a lot of problems dealing with my youngest son since it all began. He’s seventeen, and he used to idolize me and want to become a police officer too. But now he ha
tes me and thinks I’m some kind of a criminal because of the Nazario allegations. He won’t even talk to me anymore. I have two older kids who are on their own now, but they’re not exactly ecstatic with me either. I just decided to give myself a break from all the family issues for a while, at least until I make some decisions about my own life.”
He shook his head.
“For a guy who told you he didn’t want to talk, I’ve done a lot of talking, huh? And all about my own problems. Never even asked you anything about yourself. Guess I’ve had too much to drink. I’m sorry if I bored you. Listen, I need to get out of here. I have to get up early in the morning.”
“Me too.”
I stood up. I wasn’t sure what to do next.
“This was nice,” I said.
My God, that sounded stupid, I thought to myself. Why did I say that?
“Yes, it was.”
“I hope everything works out okay for you with the department.”
“And I hope you get your big story.”
He looked at me across the table, and I suddenly realized he felt as awkward as I did.
“Maybe we could do it again sometime,” he said.
“Maybe,” I told him.
CHAPTER 17
“LET ME GET this straight,” Janet said to me. “The guy is under departmental investigation by the NYPD. He’s suspected of killing a man by throwing him out of a window. He may also be involved somehow in the Grace Mancuso murder. And he’s married.”
“Yes.”
“But you still want to go out with him.”
“Well, he is awfully cute,” I said in my defense.
“Your screening process for men leaves a lot to be desired.”
We were sitting in Janet’s office, which was in a posh building on Madison Avenue with a view of the Empire State Building. Janet’s office was a lot nicer than my office. She had a nice apartment too. And she’d made her marriage and family life work too, which I’d never been able to do. All in all, Janet’s life was a lot better than mine. Although I’m sure there had to be some things in my life that were better than hers. I just couldn’t quite think of any at the moment.
I’d asked Janet if she could help me find out any more about Emily Lehrman from people she knew in the legal community. Now that I’d talked to Atwood and Manning—plus Kaiser, of course—Lehrman was the one name from the list that I still had a lot of questions about on this story.
“Just to be clear, I’ve never met Emily Lehrman myself,” Janet said to me now. “I don’t move in the same kind of world as her or deal with her kind of clients. Everything I’m telling you about her is secondhand. I have no independent confirmation on any of it.”
I made a twirling motion with my hand, telling her to hurry up and get on with it.
“Okay, Emily Lehrman. Fifty-three years old. Graduated from Fordham Law School at the top of her class. Worked as a public defender for a while and got very involved in community legal work—fighting greedy landlords and getting involved in all sorts of noble, selfless crusades like that. But at some point, she switched her priorities and began defending top mobsters and drug dealers and high-profile murder suspects. She’s very good at it. Very successful in her acquittal rate. And very rich as a result of that.”
“I already know all that, Janet,” I said impatiently.
“Did you know she had a drug problem?”
“Uh, no.”
“It’s not anything she’s ever gone public about. But a few people who’ve been around Lehrman in courtrooms and at depositions and stuff say it’s a pretty well-known assumption that the woman is addicted—or at least heavily dependent—on a variety of different drugs.”
“What kind of drugs?”
“Not heroin or cocaine or anything like that. More sedatives, prescription pain pills, sleeping pills, etcetera. The kinds of things people have when they have trouble functioning on a day-to-day basis—or even sleeping at night. Maybe she has a guilty conscience about all the disreputable people she’s represented.”
“I didn’t think lawyers had consciences,” I said.
Janet ignored me and kept talking.
“I think she was married once. A long time ago. Couldn’t find any records of it, but people tell me that the guy she was with disappeared from her life at some point. The word around was he took her for a lot of money on his way out the door. Apparently, it was a pretty ugly breakup. No one knows much more about the breakup or her personal life since then. She lives in a big apartment on Park Avenue by herself. Hardly goes out or socializes with anyone. She’s kind of a hermit outside the courtroom.”
We talked for a while more about Emily Lehrman and the other people on the list at the Grace Mancuso crime scene.
At some point, Janet asked me again about Todd Schacter.
“Did you ever do anything with that contact information I gave you?”
“No,” I lied, which was technically true.
I’d never heard back from Schacter.
“That’s good. I don’t think you should.”
“Probably a bad idea,” I agreed.
“Speaking of bad ideas, I don’t think you should go out with that cop Scott Manning either.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Nothing good can come of it, Clare.”
“Nothing good at all,” I said.
I stood up to leave.
“So when are you seeing Manning?” she called out after me just before I got to the door.
“Oh, we’re going to figure out a night soon to get together.”
“Make sure you give me all the blow-by-blow details.”
“I’ll get back to you on that.”
CHAPTER 18
I WAS STILL running the news meeting, which meant I got to make the final decision on what went on the air and how we played it on the evening newscasts.
Now I was pretty sure going into the meeting that I was going to lead with my own story. The interview with Bill Atwood, along with the additional information I’d gotten about Manning and Lehrman. The Atwood interview was a pretty good get, if I do say so myself. Everyone knew Atwood—he certainly was the most popular, recognizable name on the list, even more than Brendan Kaiser—and he’d been involved in scandals before. Whether he had any connection with Grace Mancuso’s murder or not, he was the kind of polarizing public personality that could put up good ratings numbers for us. I had run promos about my exclusive interview with him all that day.
But there were other stories happening too—and I listened to the rundown at the meeting.
“The only thing everybody is talking about is the weather,” said Wendy Jeffers, the Channel 10 meteorologist. Well, we called her the meteorologist now. It used to be the TV weather girl, but that’s politically incorrect. Weather woman didn’t work, it sounded like a variation of Wonder Woman. Then we sent her to a couple of night classes about the weather and—presto, she’s a meteorologist. “It’s only early May, but the temperature is well into the nineties today and heading even higher tomorrow. It’s really hot out there.”
“How hot is it?” I asked, doing my best classic Johnny Carson/David Letterman impression.
“Well, it’s so hot,” I said, answering my own question, “that the hookers down in Times Square are offering slurpies today.”
Everyone laughed. They always pretty much laughed at my jokes during the news meeting. I like to think that’s because they found me funny. Of course, I was the boss too. They probably felt compelled to laugh, funny or not. No problem, I’ll take laughs that way. It’s nice having the cards stacked in my favor with the audience when I’m doing comedy.
“I’m doing an interview with someone from the National Weather Service,” Jeffers said, “about why we might be having so much hot weather this early in the year.”
“Plus, we’ll do people on the street interviews,” Maggie said. “A representative from Con Edison talking about the danger of power outages from so many people keeping t
heir air conditioners on full blast. And an early preview of the state of local beaches for the long, hot summer ahead.”
I nodded. Weather stories kind of took care of themselves. It really didn’t matter that much what we did
Everyone else went through their list of stories. There was a big fire that destroyed a historic church in the Bronx. A tenant group was planning a massive protest at City Hall against rising rents. Streets were being shut down around the United Nations headquarters because of an impending summit of international leaders there. And an elderly woman on Staten Island won $25 million in the lottery by playing the numbers from the birthday of her cat.
“Didn’t we just do that story?” one editor asked.
“It was a dog last time.”
“Jesus, what’s next? A hamster wins the damn lottery?”
“If that happens, we’ll cover it too,” I said with a shrug.
I only had one tricky decision to make. It involved Paul Stafford. Stafford had been the anchor on the Channel 10 News for many years but got pushed out for the younger demographics that Brett and Dani brought to the newscast. He still appeared on air once in a while in a “senior contributor” role.
Not too long ago, Stafford’s wife had died. He asked if he could deliver a eulogy for her on the air. He called it: “My Wife—Why I Loved Her.” Sure, it was all pretty maudlin, but we figured we owed him that.
“Stafford wants to make another appearance to eulogize his dead wife,” Maggie said. “He said he wasn’t able to express all his feelings and tell the audience all the wonderful things she had accomplished in her life. He said he needs more time to talk about the years that they spent together.”
“Christ, how old was this woman?” someone grunted.
“We already gave him four minutes,” another one said.
“What are we gonna call it: “My Wife—Why I Loved Her, Part II?” another editor asked.
I shook my head no
“One wife, one eulogy,” I said. “That’s my new Channel 10 policy.”
After the news meeting was over, Maggie stayed behind to talk to me more about the Grace Mancuso story. She was already trying to figure out where we went for a follow-up the next night. That’s the thing about the news business. No matter how good a story you do, you still have to come up with something else for the next day and the day after that.
