Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery (8 page)

Chapter Twenty

“I’m not liking this arrangement,” Freddie said as we crossed Fifty-seventh Street on our way uptown to Robbie Steele’s place. We were in the Jeep, it was Friday morning and traffic was light.

“What’s not to like? You get to hang around with me and have a little adventure at the same time,” I said.

“All I’m getting to do is wait in my car,” he said. “You get to go up and have some fun bothering Ron Marshal, and I wait in the car. And now—”

“Oh, I see what this is all about,” I said. “You want to meet the Yoga Babe.”

“Damn straight.”

“Then why didn’t you just come out and say it?”

“I just did.”

“No, you didn’t,” I said. “You got all grumpy and grouchy is what you did.”

“I want to meet Yoga Babe. How’s that?”

“Better, but the answer is still no.”

He slammed on the breaks midblock and yelled, “Out.”

“Look,” I said. “She’s a little nutty and kind of unhinged. And something tells me she was like that before Jack died. I really don’t think my showing up there with a guest, unannounced, is the best idea.”

“Then announce me.”

“Some other time.”

“Not liking this partnership,” he said, as we got going again. “Not liking this at all.”

“Besides, let’s say you come up with me. Who’s going to be watching to see if we’re being followed?”

“I see this SOB, I’m going to go for it,” he said. “Going right up to his ass and ask him what the hell he’s doing and who the hell he is. I don’t get some answers, maybe it gets ugly.”

I went inside and a minute later, after clearing the doorman and being announced, I was again knocking on the door to the Steele apartment on the tenth floor.

Robbie greeted me and a minute later we were at the table just outside the kitchen.

“What have you found?” she asked before I could speak.

I took out my reporter’s pad and opened to the page with notes from my interviews.

“I found everyone I spoke to has a strong opinion about you,” I said.

“I’m that type of woman,” she said. “Jack’s inner circle was threatened by me.”

“Their opinions weren’t all favorable,” I said.

“I’d expect nothing less from them. Care to tell me who you saw?”

“Dr. Alan Webber.”

“A sleaze. He actually hit on me once.”

“Marty Glover.”

“A buffoon who wouldn’t last a minute in a job other than the one Jack gave him as executive producer. Incompetent and inept.”

“Jerry Drake.”

“A talentless clown,” she said.

“And Ronald Marshall.”

“A nasty, nasty man. A piranha.”

“Was Jack going to dump him?”

“Who told you that?”

“Jerry mentioned he was considered a change awhile back,” I said.

“Jack thought about it from time to time. Thought maybe it was time for some fresh thinking about his career,” she said. “They all needed to be tossed as far as I was concerned.”

“I’m glad I only got to four of them,” I said.

“I don’t know if you realize it, but all of those men made a lot of money off of Jack,” she said. “They were all part of this little universe of parasites that benefited from his success, and generosity.”

“The Jack Steele gravy train,” I said.

“Do you think any of these four men are involved in Jack’s death?” she asked.

I took a few seconds, then answered with my best unequivocally maybe response.

“I don’t know. It’s really too early to say.”

“I thought you were checking all of this out,” she said.

“I have been.”

“And you haven’t found out much of anything,” she said.

“Didn’t give me a lot to work with.”

“I gave you everything,” she said. “I called you and handed you the biggest story you’ll ever see.”

“No, you handed me a hunch you had.”

“Have,” she said.

“Okay, a hunch you
have
.”

“I was hoping you’d be able to put it together by now,” she said.

“A lot of questions to ask,” I said.

She went quiet and looked at me and it was bit unnerving.

“I know you think I’m crazy,” she said, after a moment.

“No, I don’t.”

“I don’t give a damn what you, or any of the others, think,” she said. “If all these men think I’m crazy, I couldn’t care less. They all thought I was some evil bitch for falling in love with Jack, and for him falling in love with me.”

I said nothing for a moment, trying to gauge if it was safe to move on. Then I flipped to the next page of my notebook and looked at the three things I had wanted to ask about.

“Jerry Drake showed me e-mails Jack got when he started going after companies. Any chance you have copies of others? Even the ones from run-of-the-mill lunatics?”

“Yes. He called it his Wacko file. Most of them were shown to Chet Dixon, in Liberty’s security office, and some were shown to the police. But Jack kept copies around just in case. Nothing ever came of them.”

“It would help to take a look. See if there’s anything in there worth following up on.”

“I can give you those,” she said.

“I read the police report,” I said. “I’m going to need to talk to his driver, Manny Torres.”

“I can take care of that,” she said.

“What happened with Webber that night? Why’d Jack cancel?”

“He said he was exhausted,” she said.

“But you don’t buy it?”

“No. At the time I did, I mean, I had no reason to think otherwise. But I think he went out to meet someone,” she said.

“And still no guesses on who that would be?”

“No. That’s why you’re here,” she said.

“Right.”

She got up and asked if I wanted something to drink. I passed and she came back with a glass of iced tea and drank a bit.

“I also saw a copy of the suicide note.”

She put down her glass and didn’t say a word.

“It felt … generic,” I said.

She nodded. “It is,” she said.

“I can’t pretend to know what you would put in there, but this read like boilerplate language,” I said.

“I’m having the handwriting analyzed independently,” she said.

“I’m assuming you’ll let me know how that turns out.”

“As soon as I know, you’ll know,” she said.

I glanced at the last item on my list:
drinking
.

“Why was Jack seeing Dr. Webber in the first place?” I asked.

“I think you know,” she said.

“Webber is a substance-abuse specialist,” I said. “I know about Jack’s drinking. Is there another substance involved?”

She shook her head. “No. Not now at least. Way, way back, before we met, I knew he had a recreational drug problem.”

“Coke?” I asked.

She nodded. “But that was fifteen, probably twenty years ago.”

Steele was a well-known success story for his ability to keep his drinking mostly in check. But even now there were infrequent, but embarrassing, slips. The last one being back in December at the holidays. It involved an intoxicated Steele sucking face with a twenty-four-year-old Liberty News production assistant at the holiday party. The episode went from an office scandal to a video sensation when some fool posted the clip on YouTube.

“And the drinking hadn’t been a problem for a while, right?” I asked.

She looked straight at me and I could see the hurt in her eyes.

“If you’re asking if Jack had slipped since the night he made out with the little PA, the answer is no. And if you’re thinking the drinking maybe had something to do with his death, I doubt it very much,” she said.

“Why?”

She sat straight up and put a hand on her stomach and took a deep breath. “There is no way he would have done anything to miss being a father,” she said.

The problem with having decades of reporting experience is that sometimes your face is saying skeptical even when you don’t realize it.

“It’s fine if you don’t believe me,” she said.

“I didn’t say that I didn’t.”

“You didn’t have to.”

There was still a part of me that didn’t believe she was pregnant, and I knew at some point she was going to prove me wrong. She’d pull out a sonogram or something down the road and make me feel like a fool.

“I believe you enough to go around asking questions and getting people angry and jeopardizing my career,” I said.

“Have you told anyone about me being pregnant?” she asked.

“Liz Harrison.”

“And she would be?”

“My fabulous girlfriend.”

A small smile crossed her face and she looked entirely different.

“So, you’re single?”

“But very much attached.”

“And what does this Liz Harrison do?”

“Increases the level of beauty in the investment banking business.”

Another small smile.

“And you’re certain she hasn’t repeated it?”

“Yes.”

“Why’d you tell her?”

“I tell her everything. I bounce ideas off her, look for her input and opinion on things.”

“What was her opinion of me?”

“That you needed someone to help you piece this together.”

She nodded and relaxed.

“Sounds like a nice relationship,” she said.

“It is.”

Chapter Twenty-One

Freddie and I were sitting on one of the benches along the walkway in Union Square Park when he spotted him.

“That’s him right there,” he said, looking at a big guy with a tan complexion walking alongside a line of preschoolers on their way to one of the playgrounds.

The guy was dressed in a shirt with a splashy maroon pattern, kind of a dressy Hawaiian shirt look, and shorts. He was carrying on an animated conversation with one of the teachers, an attractive Hispanic woman.

The gal was trying to split her attention between Casanova and the kids. At the moment Casanova was winning.

“Guy knows everybody,” Freddie said.

“More people than you?”

“By far. Plus, the son of a bitch could talk a dog off a meat truck,” he said. “I’d bet you a paycheck he gets her number, except I ain’t getting paid.”

“That still bugging you?”

“Damn straight it is,” he said.

A minute later the big guy peeled off as the preschoolers toddled past screeching and laughing. He said something in Spanish to the woman, and she laughed and said something back in Spanish. It seemed like they had known each other for years.

A second later he walked to us. Freddie got up and they hugged, and then he introduced him. We shook hands, and Victor took a seat on the bench.

“You guys are cousins?” I asked.

Victor threw his head back and let loose a big laugh like there was some inside joke going on that I wasn’t a part of. “Hah,” he said, “we all cousins.”

“Vic is cousins with everybody, especially the ladies,” Freddie said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” Victor said.

Victor pulled a slip of paper out of his shirt pocket and handed it to Freddie. “Here’s your man,” he said.

“Charles T. Bulger,” Freddie said, looking at the paper then passing it to me.

I looked at it like there was some other secret information on it that Freddie had missed. There wasn’t.

“This is great, Vic,” I said. “But you got anything else? Like, who this guy is.”

“Pushy TV type,” Freddie said.

“Always take, take, take with those guys,” Vic said.

“So Charles Bulger is the guy following me?” I asked.

“You got it. Age fifty-three,” Victor said. “Was in the military out of high school. Regular army. Got out and promptly got himself arrested for assault in a bar fight—twice. Second time he served two years. He got out and got himself into the security game. Did the bodyguard thing for celebrities in L.A. for a while, then came home to Jersey and started his own security contracting firm.”

“Another American success story,” I said.

“And seventeen years later he’s driving a black Mercedes CL550,” Victor said. “That’s what’s been tailing you all over the place. Not everywhere, but a lot of places. Not sure how he’s picking and choosing,” Vic said.

“And you know all of this how?” I asked.

“Because I’m that good,” he said.

“Yes, I’ve gathered as much. But I mean, how do you know he’s been following me?”

“Because I’ve been following you.”

I looked at Freddie. “You authorize this?”

He nodded.

“And last night you and a very pretty young lady, brunette, went out for a cocktail over at a little place on Twenty-third, corner of Third Avenue,” Victor said.

“That would be Liz,” Freddie said, “although we’ve never been introduced.”

“What’d I have?” I asked.

“A draft of something, couldn’t see which one. Looked like an ale of some sort.”

“Wow,” I said.

“I asked Victor to watch you after seeing Fedora tailing you at Ron Marshall’s office,” Freddie said. “Victor specializes in surveillance.”

“Among other things,” Vic said.

“Of course,” I said. “And was this a favor?”

“Oh no, no,” Victor said.

“I didn’t think so,” I said.

“Gets expensive to keep yourself alive,” Freddie said.

“Speaking of money,” Victor said, “Bulger’s car, the Mercedes, you know how much that puppy runs?”

“Maybe ninety Gs?” I asked.

“Try more than one ten,” he said.

“Geez, how does that thing not get ripped off when he’s following TV Boy over here?” Freddie asked.

“TV Man,” I said. “I prefer TV Man.”

“Chucky has a copilot,” Victor said. “Couldn’t get a good look at him, though. Just some big dude.”

Freddie whistled and shook his head. “You got two dudes after you. Looks like you’re in some deep crap,” he said. “You on your own now.”

“What happened to my trusted partner?” I asked.

“I got enough people mad at me and wanting to kick my butt. Don’t need two more.”

From down the walkway the Hispanic preschool teacher was strutting back with a smile on her face. She made a beeline to Victor and slipped him a piece of paper, said something in Spanish, laughed with him, then turned and left.

Freddie watched her walk away. “No justice in the world, man. No justice.”

“She say to give that to your handsome white friend?” I asked.

“Hah,” Victor said. “You got bigger problems right now, pal.”

“Meaning?” I asked.

“Meaning Bulger and his sidekick. What’s that Mercedes he be driving tell you about him?” he asked.

“That he has nice taste in cars,” Freddie said.

“Or that he’s getting paid very well or there are some deep pockets supporting him,” I said.

“Bingo,” Victor said.

“Which is it?” I asked.

“You ever hear of Bergen Security Services?” Victor asked.

“Nope,” I said.

“No reason to, right? But Chuck Bulger owns it.”

“Okay,” I said.

“And guess who their main client is? And as far as I can tell, might be their
only
client,” he said.

“You got me,” I said.

“Gulfway Energy,” Vic said.

“Never heard of it,” I said.

“Not surprising. It’s a little subsidiary of IT&E,” he said. “That I know you heard of.”

“Yes, I have.”

“So, Bergen Security is following Sam,” Freddie said, “and being paid by Gulfway.”

“And Gulfway is part of IT&E,” I said.

“Meaning IT&E is paying someone to watch Sam,” Freddie said.

“Meaning Buck McConnell is paying Chuck Bulger to watch me,” I said.