Below the Fold

by R. G. Belsky

  “What happened then?”

  “He finally asked me what happened between us. So I told him. I gave it to him straight. I said I was nineteen years old, and I thought I was in love with him. But the truth is I never really was. I think I just thought it was kind of cool to be with a rock musician at the time. It gave me a kind of stature, if you know what I mean. It was fun to tell people that. Of course, then I got pregnant with his friggin’ kid. That was no fun. But hey, that was forever ago. I didn’t understand why he was making such a big deal about it now.”

  “You had a kid with Dave?” Manning asked

  “Yeah, the asshole knocked me up.”

  “I knew Dave really well back then. He talked about you all the time. He never said you were pregnant.”

  “That’s because he didn’t know. I didn’t tell him until after he got back to Chicago after those months he spent in New York trying to start his music career.”

  “What happened then? Didn’t he want to be a father to the child? Wasn’t he in contact with your child over the years? He never had any children with his second wife, so he must have tried …”

  She shook her head. “There was no child.”

  “You lost the baby?”

  “No, I had the baby. A baby girl. I wanted to get an abortion, but my parents—I was still living with them at the time—wouldn’t let me. They believed in all that religious crap about sanctity of life or whatever. They made me go through the whole friggin’ pregnancy ordeal. I finally gave birth to the damn baby girl. I never saw her though. Gave her up for adoption as soon as she was born. I told Dave that after he got back from New York. He was gone for months—trying to get his big break in the music world, as he put it—so he never found out until he moved back to Chicago. He was very upset. Said I had no right to do that without telling him. I said that I was young and didn’t want to be tied down with a baby or a damn family. I told him if he really loved me, he’d just have to accept that. He eventually did. I could get that sap to do anything I wanted to do. Which I did, until I didn’t want him around anymore.”

  It sounded cold and callous, and I really wanted to hate Rebecca Steffani for what she’d done. But I realized how hypocritical that would be of me. Because I had done pretty much the same thing with my baby daughter as she had. Got rid of her quickly so she wouldn’t interfere in the life I wanted to live. Rebecca just made it sound a lot worse than I did when I’ve tried to rationalize my own actions over the years since then. But it was still the same. We’d both walked away from our daughters at birth.

  Believe me, the irony of that comparison with this cold, unfeeling woman was not lost on me.

  “When did you marry Zachary?” I asked.

  “When he came back from New York.”

  “Why did you marry him? You said you didn’t want to be tied down …”

  “I thought Dave was a pretty good catch back then for a husband.”

  “You mean because of the rock star persona appeal you mentioned?”

  “Nah, I’m talking about the money.”

  “What money?” Manning asked.

  “Dave came back from New York with a lot of money. Enough for us to buy a nice house. Travel around the world. Buy me all sorts of expensive jewelry and clothes. That was okay. For a while, anyway …”

  “Where did he get the money?”

  “He said he’d gotten it in New York.”

  “Dave didn’t have much money in New York.”

  “That’s all I know. I didn’t ask any questions. Anyway, that’s why I married the guy. He was loaded.”

  “So why didn’t the marriage work out?” I asked.

  “The jerk gave all the money away.”

  “Huh?”

  “The money. One day it was just all gone. He said he’d given it away, but he wouldn’t tell me why or where the money had gone. He said we’d be happier without it. Can you believe that? Then he told me about how he was going to become a friggin’ teacher or whatever. Well, there was no way I was going to stay with some loser who would wind up being a schoolteacher. I wanted a better life than that. And that’s what I got.”

  She looked at us defiantly. As if challenging us to make something of it. This was a woman who cared only about herself. Who went after whatever she wanted. Who seemed to have no conscience or sense of morality or right or wrong.

  I knew one other woman that had been described like that.

  And when you put those two facts together, everything suddenly made sense.

  “Did you ever find out what happened to your baby, Mrs. Steffani?”

  “Like I said, she was put up for adoption.”

  “Do you know where the family was?”

  “They told me the name once, but I forgot.”

  “Did they live in Pennsylvania?”

  “I think so.”

  “Was the family that adopted your daughter named Mancuso?”

  “Yeah, Mancuso. That sounds sort of right.”

  “Did you tell Dave when he came to see you recently that your daughter’s adopted name was Mancuso?”

  “I might have mentioned it. I was just trying to tell the creep whatever he wanted to hear so he’d leave. Why? Is this important or something?”

  I thought about Grace Mancuso’s battered body lying in that apartment.

  From the very beginning, I’d always believed this was a case of passion, by a killer who was angry about something more than just money.

  Like a lover.

  Or a jealous spouse.

  Or a heartbroken father.

  CHAPTER 54

  “SO WHERE is David Zachary now?” Brendan Kaiser asked.

  “I think he’s somewhere in New York City,” I said. “Assuming he’s the one who murdered Grace Mancuso and left that note—and we certainly have to assume he is at this point—he came back to New York, killed his own daughter, then tied you and the others into it with that note, for some reason, because of the picture. There’s no sign of him back in Chicago. It only makes sense that he’s still here on whatever twisted mission of redemption he’s determined to carry out. Which means, of course, he may not be finished. He could have something else he wants to do here before he dies.”

  I was back in Brendan Kaiser’s office again. Sitting there with the owner of the station and all those other media properties, along with Jack Faron, going over the details of the story just like I would in one of our daily news meetings. I wasn’t in charge here; Kaiser was running the show. But I was clearly the star. Not Kaiser. Not Faron. Not Maggie or Brett or Dani or any of the other people in the newsroom. I was the big star again on this story. I kinda liked that.

  “Before we go any further,” Faron said now, “we need to talk about what we do next with the story we have. Do we put it on the air tonight—or do we wait?”

  “We’ve got plenty of good stuff already,” Kaiser said. “The identification of Zachary as the likely suspect. And you’ve been able to confirm with Pennsylvania authorities and the Mancuso family that he was indeed Grace Mancuso’s biological father. That’s a big story right there. Even if we don’t have all the rest of the answers.”

  “On the other hand,” Faron pointed out, “we have all this information exclusively at the moment. Once we put it on the air, everyone will know what we know. We could just hold off for another night or two in hopes of finding Zachary—and being able to report the whole story. Now that would be a blockbuster ratings win. Which way do we go?”

  “I have an idea about that,” I said.

  I laid it all out for them. I would go on the air that night with what we had, all right. Zachary. The Mancuso connection. His illness and terminal prognosis, plus his apparent goal of going back over events in his life to somehow tie up loose ends—or clean the slate, as his wife said—before he died.

  But there was more.

  I also would make a public appeal on air for Zachary to turn himself in. Well, I wouldn’t do it. I’d bring Manning, his old friend fro
m when he lived in New York all those years ago, to make a personal appeal for him to surrender.

  Maybe we could smoke out Zachary that way.

  I told Kaiser and Faron I thought it was worth a try. Even if my idea didn’t work, I pointed out—and I guess this was the strongest part of my argument, the one that convinced Kaiser and Faron in the end—it would get us a huge amount of media attention and ratings.

  And so that night I led our Channel 10 newscast by reporting everything we knew so far to the viewers.

  The segment then ended with a personal appeal from Manning, who spoke to the camera for several minutes and ended with: “Joey—I’m calling you that again, just like I used to back when we had the band and the apartment in New York City—I’m your friend. I’ve always been your friend. You can trust me. I know you’re going through a very hard time right now, and I’m sorry about that. But this will only get worse for you unless you let me help you. Contact me immediately [a telephone number and an email address flashed onto the screen] and I’ll meet you anytime, anywhere you want. Just you and me, Joey. Like the old days …”

  I met up with Janet for a drink afterward at a bar near the TV station.

  “Where’s Scott Manning now?” she asked me.

  “He went home.”

  “To his wife?”

  “That’s usually the definition of home for a married man.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “How do you feel about that, Clare?” she repeated.

  “It sucks. Okay, is that what you want to hear from me? But I can’t do anything to change things. I just have to live with it.”

  We talked about the things I’d done with Manning over the past few days. About how he’d been working with me on the story. About his unhappiness at still being under investigation by the NYPD in the Nazario death.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea, Clare?” Janet asked when I was finished.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This guy seems to be involved in a lot of messy stuff. Not just the death of the guy who went out the window. He’s also clearly tied in somehow to these things happening with the Mancuso murder. He’s the one who was the friend of Zachary. He’s the one that the photograph of those five people on the list was supposed to be sent to. This all looks like it is revolving around him. How can you be sure he’s telling you everything? How can you be sure he’s not a big part of this? How can you be sure you can trust him, Clare?”

  Jeez, first Maggie and now Janet. Both of them were questioning my judgment in working on the story with Manning’s help. That pissed me off. What made it even worse was they were pretty much the two people whose judgment I trusted the most. That pissed me off even more.

  “My instincts tell me I can trust him,” I said.

  “Your instincts about men have been wrong plenty of times in the past.”

  “That was personal, this is professional.”

  “Is it?”

  “All right, maybe a bit of a combination of both. But I trust him. I really do. Sure, he might not be telling me everything. But I think he’s a good guy, And, in the end, he’s always going to do the right thing.”

  “I hope you’re right about that, Clare.”

  CHAPTER 55

  NOTHING HAPPENED FOR a few days after that.

  Which is the way it sometimes works with the arc of a big story. There’s a rush of breaking news, one new development after another—and then everything grinds to an agonizing stop.

  I’d been in the news business for a long time so I understood how this worked. But that didn’t make it any easier for me. I still had to come up with something new to put on the air every night about Grace Mancuso and Dave Zachary and all the rest. I’d ignited the audience’s interest with my big exclusive. Now they wanted more.

  We told the Dora Gayle story again, replayed the interviews with the surviving people on the list—even went back to get a jailhouse interview with Lisa Kalikow about her love for Mancuso and the temporary insanity she said drove her to murder Atwood. None of it was groundbreaking, but it still pulled in good ratings because of the interest in the case.

  Feeding the beast again—that’s what being a TV news executive’s job like mine was really about.

  But I was running out of ideas to keep this story going. I remembered back when I still worked at a newspaper, and Michael Jackson died. There was such interest in his tragic and unexpected death that our newsstand sales soared with the story. That meant we had to keep doing Page One follow-ups for days afterward. By the eleventh day of this, we had completely run out of ideas. That’s when someone suggested we go with a front-page headline that said: “Michael Jackson Still Dead.” I wasn’t quite there yet, but “Grace Mancuso Still Dead” was certainly a possibility if something didn’t happen soon.

  Sitting in my office thinking about all this now, I decided to call Manning. I wanted to ask him again if anyone had contacted him after his appearance. Or maybe I just wanted to talk to him. Everyone—Janet, Maggie, the other people at the station—all seemed confused by my interest in Manning. How much was personal and how much professional, they wanted to know. That was a good question. I was confused about my feelings for him too.

  “Have you gotten any response?” I asked when he came on the line.

  “Oh, lots of responses. I’ve gotten calls and emails from a bunch of people claiming to be Dave Zachary—but who know nothing about him except what we ran on the air. There’s also a few anonymous confessions to Grace Mancuso’s murder; one person who said they had evidence she was killed by the CIA; another who believed it was done by an alien from Venus in a UFO; a half-dozen people who wanted to know why I wasn’t in jail for the Manny Nazario death; some suggestions on changes I should make in my clothes and hairstyle before I went on TV again; and—oh, yes—there was even a marriage proposal along the way. It’s been fun.”

  “I guess my idea isn’t going to work.”

  “It was worth a try.”

  “Maybe Zachary’s already dead—that’s why he hasn’t responded.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “Cop instinct. I feel like he’s still out here waiting for something.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  We talked for a while about the case, going through all the possibilities for what seemed to me like the zillionth time. But I always did that when I was working on a story. Sometimes you eventually stumbled across something you’ve missed all the previous times. That’s what happened now.

  “Why would Zachary come to New York?” I asked.

  “To track down and, for some reason, murder his daughter, who turned out to be Grace Mancuso. That’s the obvious thing.”

  “But that was a while ago now. Assuming he’s still here, and we are assuming that, what’s here in New York for him?”

  Manning couldn’t think of any reason, but I did.

  “He came here in the eighties for the music. He wanted to be a rock star, just like you did. He would walk around the streets of the city where you lived back then and dream about being Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen, that’s what you told me. Now he’s going back over his life, trying to revisit all the places and people from that time on whatever redemption trip he’s on. So why wouldn’t he come back to the place where he lived when he still had all those dreams and was a young man with his whole life ahead of him?”

  “The old neighborhood we lived in?”

  “It makes sense. Goes along with the other stuff he’s done. And the picture with the five of you from back then whose names he put on that list. Where did you say you lived then?”

  “Sullivan Street, in the Village.”

  “I think we should go back there and check it out.”

  “We?”

  “I’m going with you.”

  “Clare, Zachary could be dangerous at this point.”

  “He’s your friend.”

 
“He used to be my friend. I don’t really know him anymore. There’s no telling what this Dave Zachary might do.”

  “I’m heading down to that address where you lived on Sullivan Street right now. You can come with me or not. Your choice.”

  “Okay, but I’m going to be ready in case there’s any trouble.”

  “Are you bringing your gun?”

  “I’ll be ready for him,” Manning said ominously.

  Manning’s old apartment building was still there, but it had been completely renovated. There was a sign in front from some real estate agency indicating that the rental for one-bedroom apartments started at $5,000 a month. Manning shook his head in dismay when he saw that, telling me how he and Zachary had paid under $600 for their two-bedroom apartment there back in 1986. Just another reminder of what New York City had once been and where it seemed to be headed now.

  Had Dave Zachary stood here and looked at his old building like this too?

  I was still betting he had.

  We began to make our way through the neighborhood to check out stores, apartment houses, hotels—showing the picture of Dave Zachary to everyone we could find and asking if they’d seen him.

  At a coffee shop a block away, we got the first positive hit. A waitress said a man who looked like Dave Zachary had been there a few days ago. He’d ordered a sandwich—a BLT, she thought—coffee, and a piece of pie. He paid in cash, walked out, and she hadn’t seen him again.

  There was another sighting at a bar a few blocks away. Someone fitting Zachary’s description had been there one night and drank a couple of beers. The bartender remembered because he caused a kind of a stir by playing a Ramones song on the jukebox twenty-one times in a row. A young guy in the house wanted to hear something else and complained. Manning and I looked at the jukebox. There were two Ramones songs on it. “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “I Wanna Be Sedated.” “He used to play both of those over and over in our apartment when we lived together,” Manning said.