Hack (8 page)

Why had Aubrey come here? There was the Times Square information center. Aubrey wouldn’t need tourist information. There was a Body Shop store. He might have bought some toiletry items but he didn’t have any purchases with him when he returned to the townhouse. There was a hotel. I asked a woman behind the desk if she knew who Aubrey was. She did know who he was but said he had not been there and thought I was nuts. By process of elimination, there was only one possible business left on the block.

I walked into the Times Square McDonald’s, which was filling up with lunchtime trade, and asked for the manager in my best command voice. I used my iPhone to call it up and showed him Aubrey’s photo in the
Mail.

“I just came from the murder scene. Did this guy come in here yesterday?”

“Wow. Yeah, looks like him.” The guy was young and skinny, with a buzz cut and an
AIRBORNE
tattoo on his arm. A name badge on his uniform shirt said
EMILIANO
.

“The guy was big as a house, ate like a hippo, man. Not easy to forget.”

He took me into a small back room with lockers, bathroom supplies and a computerized security camera system on a shelf, topped by a small flat screen that showed eight different camera views at once. He clicked on the previous day’s recordings and rewound them until he found a big white blur.

“Is that the guy?”

I watched Aubrey order a super-sized tray of a dozen Big Macs, fries and several giant chocolate shakes and then sit and methodically gobble it all down. It was impressive. A one-man eating contest. Then he went up and ordered a tray of apple pies and hot fudge sundaes and polished those off, too.

“Guy is something to watch, huh?” the manager said. “Thought the dude was going to eat the furniture.”

According to the time stamp on the footage, Aubrey, the big gourmet, was loving it at Mickey D’s from just after he left the townhouse until just before he rejoined his film crew at Bistro du Bois. Now I knew why he refused to tell the cops where he was. For him, the choice between a murder rap or an alibi that included a career-ending fast food pig-out might be a tough choice. I decided to come clean and told Emiliano who I was. Then I took a deep breath and really went for it. My mom always said if you don’t ask, you don’t get.

“Emiliano, this is very important. This footage may prove that this man is not a killer. Can I get a copy?”

“A DVD okay?”

“That would be great, thanks. Could I get two?”

“Sure.”

While he made the copies, I thought it out and decided to call Izzy’s cell phone.

“You again?” Izzy laughed in greeting.

“Congratulations,” I told him.

“For what?”

“For great police work that led you to the McDonald’s in Times Square and perhaps the prevention of a miscarriage of justice.”

“The fuck you talking about?”

I told him. Izzy sounded both annoyed and suspicious but I suspected that was his normal demeanor. He and Phil got through the traffic very quickly, which is what lights and sirens are for. After viewing Aubrey’s food-fest film, Izzy said something in a foreign language that sounded like German.

“
Es vaskst by mir in teller
,” he groaned.

Izzy confiscated the original hard drive—along with the entire machine, which Emiliano did not like. Phil softened the blow by giving him a receipt, and explained that there were so many different video surveillance and software systems that grabbing the entire works was the only way to guarantee they could play and copy the evidence.

“So, let me get this straight,” Izzy said to me. “You’ll let me take credit for screwing up my own homicide case and making myself look like an asshole. Gee, thanks, amigo.”

“I just get to put it in the paper first. Would you rather I took credit in the paper and didn’t tell you?” I asked.

“Okay. I admit that would be much worse,” Izzy agreed. “Thanks. The pooch may be screwed here but maybe I can un-screw it. But Forsythe could still have killed Leonardi before he left. This just tightens up his alibi timeframe. It could still work.”

“And he still ate Neil Parmesan,” Phil pointed out.

“True,” I said. “And he smacked him around. But I think maybe he didn’t kill Neil. I don’t think he had time to do all that cooking, for one thing.”

“Then who did?” Izzy demanded.

We all looked at each other for a while, clueless.

“Maybe whoever fed him Neil,” I suggested.

“You’d make a great defense lawyer,” Izzy said. “Nobody has proved anyone fed Leonardi to Forsythe without his knowledge.”

“But now
we’ll
have to eliminate that possibility,” Phil sighed. “Izzy, he’s right. And he did the right thing.”

“Okay,” Izzy said. “Sorry, Shepherd. Thanks, man.”

“You’re welcome.”

They had investigating to do and I had another exclusive to write. I turned to leave, then paused.

“Izzy, what did you say, when you saw the footage? Sounded like German.”

“Old Yiddish expression.
Es vaskst by mir in teller
,” Izzy repeated. “In English it would be ‘It’s growing on my plate.’ It means the more you eat, the more there is. Like this damn case.”

I went back to the
Mail
and gave them one of the DVDs so they could take stills for the morning paper and run the whole video on the paper’s website. I kept the second DVD for myself. For a change, Aubrey’s lawyer refused to comment. I wrote up my story about how Aubrey had lied about where he was because he did not want the world to know a haute cuisine critic had pigged-out on fast food. I did my best to write in the short, punchy
New York Mail
style, by imagining I was writing a Hallmark greeting card about murder. I made it clear that Aubrey had eaten human flesh and might still be the killer but the McDonald’s footage made it possible he was innocent of the murder. Apparently, at a newspaper, when you completed a big story, they didn’t congratulate or thank you. Your reward was they just stopped yelling at you to finish.

I grabbed a Dr. Pepper and a bag of pretzels from a vending machine in the lunchroom. It was after nine. I yawned. I tossed my empty soda can and plastic bag and headed home. I was too tired to walk or bicycle, so I decided to take another cab. I told the woman cabbie my memorized address in TriBeCa on Broome Street. She grunted, flipped the meter flag and sped off, punching my address into a GPS navigation unit.

“What does TriBeCa stand for?” I asked her.

“What?” she asked.

I repeated the question.

“You live there and you don’t know?”

“So you don’t know either?”

We both laughed.

The cab stopped in front of the wrong building, the first of three identical brick buildings on the right. My apartment was in the last one. Not wanting to lose my new friend by pointing out her mistake, I paid her and walked the fifty yards to my building. The outer door was unlocked. The inner door was supposed to be locked and opened only by key or buzzer from one of the apartments. It was closed but unlocked. So much for security. I pulled it closed behind me and, feeling lazy, took the small elevator up to the third floor. I got a glass and a cold bottle from the fridge. On the couch, I downed a full glass of icy arak, which was like getting hit over the head with a licorice stick.

How could Aubrey partake of his unholy entrée and still not be the killer? I had another blast of arak. The solution did not present itself. I had a third glass.

* * *

I was awakened at six the next morning by my doorbell ringing. It tinkled off-key like a bicycle bell, as someone pushed the mechanical doorbell button. I looked through the peephole, an ancient metal disc that swiveled over a two-inch hole in the metal door like a little porthole. It was a kid wearing a
NEW YORK MAIL
t-shirt, dropping off a copy of the paper. My story was page one, The Wood, again, but the copy bore no resemblance to what I’d handed in. A single word was emblazoned across the front page under a picture of Aubrey shoveling Big Macs into his face: “GLUTTON.” The subtitle read: “Killer Critic Chows Down On Fast Food Fare—The Video Aubrey Did Not Want You To See.”

There was also a timeline, a map of the locations involved and a profile of Aubrey’s big belly, containing a list of all the food he had wolfed down that day. There was also a story with Badger’s byline about Aubrey’s frantic phone calls to his victim, a possible attempt to set up an alibi. Badger attributed the transcripts of the voicemails to a law enforcement source, not to illegal phone hacking. I turned on the TV and flicked through the news channels. Several anchors were holding up the
Mail
with my byline on the front.

I called Bantock. He picked up on the first ring.

“Shep! Mate! Your video’s gone viral!”

“Look, I need a break. I’ll call in any follow-up, okay?”

“Sure, sure. Not too long, though.”

“I read The Wood. Why did you cut out the stuff about Aubrey possibly being innocent?”

Bantock laughed. “Come on, Shep. We’d never piss on our own yarn unless and until the cops drop the charges.”

I ate two blueberry Pop Tarts at room temperature and crawled back into bed. My low-key cocoon at the
Mail
had been shattered. Mary Catherine would flip. I was supposed to be quietly doing my job, not being the star of my own reality show.

Aubrey’s lawyer called my cell phone. How did he get my number? As he began to give me melodramatic quotes about his innocent client, I activated the recording app. He said he would ask the court to set his client free, or at least set reasonable bail, and promised I would be the first to know when it happened. When he’d hung up I typed up the transcript and emailed it to the office. I called Aubrey’s townhouse and introduced myself to the housekeeper, an elderly Hispanic-sounding woman who told me her name was Adela, and that she had walked and fed Skippy. I tried to reach Izzy but got his voicemail.

I went back to sleep again, until the City Desk called and told me to cover Neil Leonardi’s funeral the following morning at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I took a shower and got dressed. The door tinkled again at noon. I looked through the peephole and cursed out loud. Obviously
anyone
could get into my building. I wasn’t going to open it but I felt like a wimp so I swung the door wide to Ginny McElhone, who looked like a sexy Catholic school girl, in black stockings and a short green tartan skirt, clutching a copy of the
New York Mail
.

“Your office said you weren’t in, so I came over to tell you that you won,” she informed me.

I was wondering how she found out where I lived and if she had a gun. I was also wondering if Ginny’s dark, curly copper hair was natural. I smiled as I thought of a way to find out.

“Won what?” I asked.

“The
Press
fired me. They saw your story today and canned me.”

“Uh… Sorry. What the hell would they do that for?”

“I got beat three times in a row. Not supposed to happen.”

“That’s ridiculous. Don’t you have a union?” I asked.

“Of course not. Neither do you.”

“Right. Sorry. How are your brothers?”

“Very embarrassed. Sean has a big lump on his head and Mickey’s arm is in a cast. Did you really do that yourself?”

Her tone made it clear she didn’t think I could even beat
her
up.

“Why did you send them to kick my ass?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I get… carried away. My job is very important to me.”

“You’re kinda crazy, aren’t you?”

We gaped at each other and then she burst into tears. It was the last thing I expected. I wanted to close the door. She began sobbing, using the
Mail
as a handkerchief. It was very absorbent. Her eye makeup was smeared; she looked like a raccoon. She got control of herself and turned away, pawing at her eyes.

“Wait. Is my mascara running? I must look hideous.”

“Uhm, no. I mean yes. It’s all smeared. But you look great.”

“Can I use a mirror for a second?”

I hesitated but let her go into my bathroom. She shut the door but I left the front door open. I heard water running. Ten full minutes later, she emerged looking terrific, as if nothing had happened. Except one more button on her creamy blouse was open, revealing a lot of cleavage. I struggled not to look. She noticed and coyly buttoned up.

“Thanks,” she said in a brave voice, going up on tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek. “Sorry.”

But she veered and suddenly her tongue was in my mouth, the rest of her pressing against me. I felt electricity from her chest rubbing on mine but I knew it wasn’t static. She slid her manicured nails through my hair and pulled me closer, her other hand around my back, gently forcing our hips together. More electricity. I was cooked. I swung the front door shut with my free arm and put it to better use. She was making sweet whimpering noises in her throat, as we stumbled toward the bedroom. We fell in a tangle onto the unmade bed. Totally cooked.

Turns out Ginny’s hair color was natural. Trust me. So was the rest of her. We spent several hours singing the body electric, taking breaks to drink arak and nibble Pop Tarts.

When I heard the key in the lock, I pulled on a pair of shorts and ran to the door. Mary Catherine stopped in the doorway, a brass key in hand, and stared at me.

“Did I wake you?”

“Yes. No. I was just…”

“Who is it, Shepherd?” Ginny called from the bed. One of Mary Catherine’s eyebrows arched up. I wish I could do that. She actually blushed, her creamy cheeks going peach.

“Really?” Mary Catherine said, turning in the doorway and dropping her key on the small table there. “I didn’t know you had company. I’m sorry to interrupt.”

She turned to go but stopped.

“Shepherd, have you heard from Al?”

“No.”

“I heard they just got home.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“You should give Al a call.”

“Sure,” I said.

When I didn’t say anything more, she was gone. I let her go and returned to Ginny.

“Sorry,” Ginny said, with dubious sincerity. “Was that your girlfriend? I hope I haven’t caused you any problems.”