by R. G. Belsky
“Then how did you find me?”
“I got your address from Janet, staked out your building, and then followed you here. Old-school methods.”
“Why didn’t you just knock on my door?”
“I thought it would be better to confront you in a public place, and besides …”
“You wanted to surprise me in a coffee shop the same way I surprised you. Payback, huh?”
“I thought it was a nice touch,” I admitted
He closed the laptop computer in front of him so I couldn’t see what he was working on. That was okay with me. I didn’t really care. I was only interested in one thing with this man.
“Now that you’ve found me, what do you want?” Schacter asked.
“Same thing as last time we talked.”
“I told you then that I’m not breaking into a U.S. Senator’s computer records. Too risky if I get caught. There’s nothing you can say or do that will get me to change my mind. I don’t want to take a chance on going to jail. And hacking into a federal government file like that—especially one belonging to a Senator—would very easily put me behind bars.”
“I have another idea.”
“Does it still involve Grayson?”
“No, this has nothing to do with him or his files.”
I’d come up with the idea in the midst of chasing all the Grace Mancuso stuff. I’d been assuming all along that the only way to find out information about Lucy was from Grayson’s files. But there was another possible way.
I took out a printout and handed it to Schacter. It was the original email someone had sent Anne Devlin—Lucy Devlin’s adoptive mother—last year claiming to have seen Lucy at the motorcycle conference in New Hampshire with Grayson. It had been signed “Concerned Citizen” and sent from a Hotmail account.
“Could you track down who sent this email?” I asked him now.
I didn’t tell him why. I didn’t tell him that I still held out the long shot hope that maybe Lucy herself had sent this original email. That she had somehow reached out from the past to alert us she was still alive. I didn’t tell Schacter that—if all this were true—he could lead me directly to Lucy this way.
“It would be very difficult,” he said. “Not much information here.”
“I know.”
“Most people couldn’t do this.”
“That’s why I came to the best.”
“And no government files are involved at all?”
“Right.”
He nodded. I was getting to him. I figured it was the appeal to his ego. Telling people they’re the best at what they do tends to make them like you and be on your side.
“How much would it cost?” I asked.
“I don’t care about money.”
“Everyone cares about money.”
“I know you might find this hard to believe, but I do what I do for the challenge of it. I love a good challenge. I’ve never hacked into any computer file to steal money or people’s identity or any of the other stuff you always hear about. I do it just to prove I can do it.”
“So will you do this for me?”
He looked down at the printout I’d given him. The email from CONCERNED CITIZEN that might have—just possibly—come from Lucy herself and could lead me back to her after all this time.
“Why not?” Schacter shrugged. “Like I said, I love a good challenge.”
CHAPTER 42
“IT’S THE NEWS at 6 with the Channel 10 News Team: Brett Wolff and Dani Blaine at the anchor desk, Steve Stratton with Sports, and Wendy Jeffers with your up-to-date weather forecast. If you want to know what’s happening—you want it fast and you want it accurate—Channel 10 has got you covered!”
“And now here’s Brett and Dani”:
BRETT: Good evening. The city’s schoolteachers are talking strike again, there’s been a tragic hit-and-run accident in the Bronx, the Yankees open a big four-game series with the Red Sox tonight, and there’s some nasty weather headed our way.
DANI: But first, we open with an exclusive look at one of the city’s most baffling murder cases in recent years, the death of Wall Street executive Grace Mancuso—who was found beaten to death in her Upper East Side apartment earlier this month. Our own news director—Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Clare Carlson—has the story.
ME: Who brutally murdered Grace Mancuso? Who left behind a note with five names on it next to her body? What do those five people named on the list—ranging from prominent people in New York to a homeless woman—have to do with the crime or the reason for it or any other possible link? Those are the questions that have baffled police—and all New Yorkers—since the Mancuso murder happened. We don’t have all the answers, but Channel 10 has uncovered new details, which we will now share with you in this in-depth report …
I’d gotten all three of them—Kaiser, Manning, and Lehrman—to sit down for on-air interviews. I tried to milk it for the most dramatic impact, saying it was the first in-depth interviews with the people whose names were on the Grace Mancuso list. And I said it seemed clear that these three people—as well as Bill Atwood and Dora Gayle—must have some connection to what happened, no matter how improbable that seemed. I talked about the Revson scandal too and how the angry investors and Revson employees had been victimized in different ways by Mancuso during the scandal.
I’d heavily promoted the whole thing during our daytime program, and I ran pictures of a sexy Grace Mancuso during the report too—so I figured the whole thing would get us some pretty good ratings.
Of course, the truth was it wasn’t really news at all. It was just an accumulation of facts and interviews wrapped up in a pretty nice on-air package. I hadn’t uncovered anything that substantially changed—or helped break open—the Grace Mancuso murder case or any of the rest of it. But it was all I had, so I went with it.
The actual on-air interviews with Kaiser, Lehrman, and Manning had been taped without me by Maggie and the other reporters, after I set it all up. Me, I still had to do my other news editor job. And the production team had to do a rush job on those interviews to get them ready for the newscast. So I didn’t know exactly what everyone had to say when I actually went on the air.
I watched it all now during the broadcast, just like our viewers were doing. It was pretty interesting stuff, I decided. Even if we weren’t breaking any new ground on the crime itself, the back stories of everyone on the list—told in their own interviews, at least for the surviving ones—gave the story real depth and drama.
Brendan Kaiser was the last of the three. It was kinda amazing to see this mega-rich mogul—mostly known in the past for his ruthless business dealings and acquisitions—coming across in the interview as a real person. Just like that day in his office with me, he talked about growing up in New York City during the turbulent 1980s. About all the fun and good times he had as a young man back then. About his brother, Charles, dying in the drowning accident. And the death of his father from a heart attack afterward. Then how he took over his father’s business and turned it into the media empire it was today.
But, most passionately of all, Kaiser talked about those long-ago memories of a carefree life when he was a young man in New York—before all the events that irrevocably changed his life.
“I still remember some of those summer nights. Hanging out in Washington Square Park. On Bleecker Street. Down in the East Village. There were so many great things to do, so much great music, so many great people to meet. I could lose myself in that world for a few hours—who I was and what my father wanted me to be. I could just be me. That was a long time ago, but I look back now and miss those days sometimes.
“The East Village was my favorite place. So many memories. Like the night the Mets came back from the dead with a miracle rally in the 10th inning to beat the Red Sox in Game 6 of the World Series. What a great night to be a New Yorker! A lot of people here still remember where they were when that 10th inning was happening, and I sure do too. I was in a place calle
d the Domino Club on St. Mark’s Place and they had the game on TV behind the bar. Well, when that Mets comeback happened, everyone in the place gathered around the screen to watch. And when Bill Buckner booted that ground ball from Mookie Wilson—and Ray Knight came home with the winning run—the place just exploded. I’ll never forget that …”
My God! I thought to myself.
I sat there staring at the image of Brendan Kaiser on the studio monitor in front of me—and playing over and over in my head what he’d just said.
A journalist doesn’t always know what he or she is going to find by digging deep into a story. Sometimes the answers are evident, but other times you’re never quite sure what you’re looking for until you find it. That’s what had happened here. I’d just begun digging in the hopes I might find out something.
Something that made sense of all this.
Game 6 of the 1986 World Series was it.
It was the one thing that linked two of the people on that list—Kaiser and Manning.
They’d both watched that historic game at a club in the East Village that night.
And, I was willing to bet, the rest of them did too.
This had to be the connection.
CHAPTER 43
I CALLED EMILY Lehrman at Silver Oaks, where she was still a patient.
“Do you remember what you were doing during Game 6 of the 1986 World Series?” I asked her. “Mets vs. Red Sox. The moment when Bill Buckner booted the ground ball from Mookie Wilson that let the Mets come back for a miracle victory and go on to win the World Series?”
“Why would you ask me something like that?”
“Do you know what you were doing that night, Ms. Lehrman?” I repeated.
I didn’t want to tell her any more yet; I wanted her to tell me.
“As a matter of fact, I do remember. It was a very memorable night. Terry—the guy I told you about—and I had gone out to some clubs in the East Village that night. The last one we stopped at had the game on TV. We watched the ending along with all the people there. There was a band playing and people were cheering and hugging each other. I remember someone taking a picture of a bunch of us at one point celebrating with people we didn’t even know. It was very exciting.”
“Was it at the Domino Club?”
“I don’t remember after all these years.”
“Okay, do you know if it might have been on St. Mark’s Place?”
“Yes, it was. That’s a very unique street in the Village, and I’d never been there before that night. And, now that I think about it, the Domino Club sounds right. That definitely could have been it. But what is this all about?”
I told her as much as I knew, then I called Scott Manning at the precinct and went through it all with him. He’d seen Kaiser on the newscast and already come to the same conclusion as I had.
“All three of you were in that same club in the East Village that night,” I said, as he confirmed it had been the Domino Club with him too. “We can’t know for sure about Bill Atwood and Dora Gayle because they’re dead, but I’m willing to bet they both were there too. That’s the connection between everyone on that list.”
“One night from more than thirty years ago? But why?”
“Something significant must have happened there that night.”
“Like what?”
“That’s what I’m asking you. You were there.”
“I have no idea what it could be.”
“We have to find out. Let’s assume all five of you were at the same place in 1986. Now those same five people turn up on a list found in Grace Mancuso’s apartment. We don’t know how or why, but the seeds of Grace Mancuso’s death must have been planted a long time ago. Down on St. Mark’s Place back on that night more than thirty years ago. That means what I need to do now is …”
“I’ll meet you down there,” Manning said.
“Huh?”
“You’re going to St. Mark’s Place to look for answers, right?”
“Yes.”
“I can help. I want to work with you on it. And I know a lot about investigating and asking questions. Just like you do. Plus, I still have my detective’s shield. That might help open some doors too.”
St. Mark’s Place was one part of the city that hadn’t changed that much over the years. It somehow remained frozen in time, at least to outward appearances. Much of it bore remnants of its heyday in the late sixties, where it became a gathering place for hippies and all the rest. Today, the block that stretches between Second and Third Avenues was still littered with tattoo parlors, T-shirt shops, and even a few old record stores. The kids who hung out there didn’t seem all that much different than they did in the past either. Their hair was shorter and their clothes different, but they were still rebels of their own generation.
The building that used to house the Domino Club—the place where they had all been that night—was a big white three-story structure, about midway down the block. It wasn’t the Domino Club now. That had closed years ago.
“Yes, this is the place,” Manning said as we stood in front of it.
“Wonder what happened to it since 1986?”
The building was empty except for paint cans, lumber, and construction equipment lying around. We found out from people in the neighborhood that it was a restaurant for a long time after the club closed, then a community recreation center and later a welfare center headquarters. Now it was about to be renovated into apartments.
“I remember the club,” one store owner who’d been on the block back then told us. “It was very noisy. Lot of music and drinking, some drugs too. Of course, that wasn’t unusual for St. Mark’s Place. I think the club shut down sometime in the early nineties.”
“Do you remember who the owner was?” I asked, looking for any kind of a lead to someone else who might have been there that night in 1986.
“Sure, Bob Geraci. I knew him pretty well. Nice guy. We kept in touch for a while after he left the city.”
I looked at Manning, and he looked back at me. Bob Geraci. All we had to do was find him. He could be the key to all this; he could have some answers. Or so we thought.
“Do you still know how to reach Geraci?”
“Oh, he’s dead.”
Damn!
“He died about ten years ago. No, maybe more like fifteen. He had lung cancer. Never smoked a day in his life either. Isn’t that ironic? Bob never smoked, he ate health food, he worked out—and he’s dead and buried.”
“Did he have any family?” Manning asked
“Well, his wife is still alive, I believe.”
“Any idea how we can find her?”
“They moved to a retirement community somewhere in North Carolina. As far as I know, she’s still there. I’ll see if I can find the number for you.”
The number still worked, and a short time later I was standing in front of the old club site with Manning and talking to Mrs. Geraci on my cell phone.
“An apartment house now, you say?” she said when I told her what happened to the building. “My, my, I wish we hadn’t sold it. It probably would be worth a lot more money now. But that was a long time ago.”
She talked for a while about the old days, but none of it was really relevant to what we were looking for. She didn’t remember anything about that night back in 1986 when the Mets won the classic game or the five names from the list or anything else that might help. This was turning into another dead end. Then I remembered something. Emily Lehrman said someone was taking pictures there that night. Sure, it was a long shot after all these years, but it was worth asking. A picture—if it somehow still existed—might be a key to all this.
“Do you remember anyone who took pictures at your husband’s club back then?”
“Marcus Dupree,” she said immediately. “It must have been Marcus. He was the one always taking pictures there. He was kind of strange, but nice. He photographed everything that happened in the club. Night after night, he was there. He had quite a port
folio of pictures back then. The bands. The people who showed up. The whole East Village scene in the eighties. That was such a wonderful time for Bob and me and the rest of us too.”
I let her go on for a while. She was just an old lady, probably lonely and happy to have anyone to talk to.
“Do you have any idea what happened to Marcus Dupree after the Domino Club closed?”
“Of course. Marcus ran a camera store.”
“Where?”
“On St. Mark’s Place. Just across the street from the old club.”
Standing there now talking to her on my cell phone, I looked around. Sure enough, across the street—right behind where Scott Manning was standing—there was a sign that said: “Dupree Photography.”
“Everyone always told Marcus he should move away from the neighborhood,” Mrs. Geraci was saying. “That it wasn’t the same as it used to be. But he said that was where he belonged. He loved St. Mark’s Place. He said to me it was a special place.”
Jeez, Dupree might be the key to this whole case. He could have the answers. All I had to do was get off the phone from this woman.
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Geraci. You’ve been a big, big help …”
“It’s a shame about poor Marcus. The way he went so young.”
“He’s dead?”
“Yes, he passed away a few years before my husband. We even went back to New York for the funeral.”
CHAPTER 44
AFTER I HUNG up, I told Manning what Mrs. Geraci had said. Then we walked across the street to the photo store. So why was the name of Dupree on the sign even though Dupree was long dead? It looked old and battered. Maybe the new owners thought it was too expensive to replace. Or people in the neighborhood knew the name so well it didn’t make sense to change it.
Manning pushed open the door and we went inside. There were pictures all over the walls, many of them years old. They showed New York City over several decades. There was a picture of the building of the World Trade Center in the early seventies. Then scenes from the big New York City blackout a few years later. But most of the pictures were from the eighties where it appeared Dupree had become the most consumed with chronicling the events of the city, especially in the East Village where he lived and worked.
