Revenge of the Cootie Girls (23 page)

Granny was still asleep. One of the cops wheeled her away. Bellevue was just around the corner—she'd be taken there and checked out, to make sure she was, more or less, okay. I felt a bit bad for her, really I did, putting her in jeopardy the way I had. But, hey, if it's a choice between her or me, I choose me.

19

“S
ALLY IS IN BAD SHAPE
,” Claire said. “One of the feds and I are going to take her to the hospital.”

Tamayo went with one car of feds, Kathy and I went with another, while a police van carted away the cuffed Perrugia sisters and the ANN crew took the tape back to the network.

In the car, I hugged Kathy so hard she said, “Robin, you're hurting me.”

“I'm just so glad you're alive. I am so sorry you got sucked into this.”

“I thought it was a joke at first,” she said. “Until they pulled the gun on me.”

As I suspected, Kathy had been lured up to Julie's safe house on Park Avenue, aka Help for Kids, by Johnny, who told her that he worked for the organization and that I'd already called and was on my way. Though Kathy was made a bit suspicious by his “nervous” demeanor, she went because she figured a friend of mine was involved in it.

“Yeah, that's what I figured too,” I told her.

When she got there, he gave her a soft drink and asked her a lot of questions about this murder mystery, and it became clear to her that he didn't know about it. He wanted to know if she knew where Julie was, because Julie was supposed to meet him there and he'd been waiting all day for her. Just as Kathy was about to bolt, someone came in. She heard a woman's voice, and Johnny shoved Kathy into the closet. There was arguing in the other room, and Kathy pulled the phone in, “quiet as a mouse,” and called the only number of mine she knew by heart, my work number, so I wouldn't worry if she didn't show up at the giant coffee cup.

Wouldn't worry. Jesus H.

“Robin, they were arguing about this Julie, and how this guy, Johnny, had taken off, abandoned her, his wife, and someone had drained all the family accounts or something. He tried to calm her down, and she asked where the wine was. When she went to get it, he whispered something to me, but I couldn't make out what he was saying.

“Then the wife came back, and they drank wine and talked in calmer tones, and suddenly there was a thump. Johnny was on the floor right outside the closet! I looked out a crack in the closet, and saw one of his big eyes staring back at me. That's when the wife found me and took me away at gunpoint.”

She was trying to sound brave, but tears were streaming down her face.

“You done good, Kathy. You're a trooper. I'm sorry.…”

“Now that it's over,” she said, wiping her eyes, “and we're safe, it seems kind of … exciting, you know?”

“Yeah, I know. With that attitude, you'll probably make a great reporter one day.”

“You think?” she said.

“Yeah. God, I am so glad I don't have to call your mom and tell her I lost you,” I said.

She smiled a little.

I was exhausted and felt strangely deflated. I know I should have been happy it was over and we were all alive, but I just felt depressed and disillusioned and tired. As we drove downtown to Federal Plaza, I looked up at all the big beautiful buildings around me and, it was funny, it all looked so strange to me.

We gave our statements. Special Agent Jeff Walter told me that Julie had worked her way up from being Johnny's mistress and bagman to money-laundering, advancing to run a complicated money-laundering system, using byzantine money transfers and currency exchanges, and funneling money through a series of offshore accounts. Given Julie's demonstrated skills in leading people astray, I could see why she was such a good money-launderer.

Among other crimes, there was major income-tax evasion involved. The government wanted to jail Johnny for a long time, and they wanted to get their hands on that money. Julie was the key to all of it. Only she knew the money trails. This was how she kept herself alive within the family.

With Johnny going to jail for a year, Julie would have to report to Johnny's wife, and Johnny's wife would just as soon kill Julie as look at her. But first Johnny's wife needed to learn where Julie and Johnny had stashed all the cash.

It looked like Julie had arranged to run off with Johnny, only she left him in the lurch, took off with all the money. Before she vanished, she sent the FedExes out, grabbed Granny at the convalescent hospital, and dumped her in the Hotel Vincent. She'd left clues so the Perrugia sisters would find Johnny at Help for Kids, and so Mary MacCosham would find me, and she'd told the feds to contact me. I was the pawn, the wild goose. But a wild goose with an insurance policy—Granny. And while we were running all over Manhattan, Julie had, as far as we all knew, taken off for points unknown.

“She's got the whole family in jail now, she's got the money, and you've got a story. Pretty clever woman,” Special Agent Jeff Walter said.

He was pretty cute, this Special Agent Jeff Walter, Tibetan-brother cute. Very upright, clean-cut. Looked like Dudley Do-Right, the kind of guy you just want to get real dirty with, the kind of guy you want to corrupt a little. That's a great aphrodisiac, a man who will compromise his morals to sleep with you.

But no, it ain't gonna happen, I thought. The timing wasn't right, and I didn't expect it ever would be. But maybe, somewhere in a parallel universe …

“Where do you think she's gone?” he asked.

“You know, if I had any idea, I'm not sure I could tell you. Would that be breaking the law?”

“Only under oath.”

“Well, I don't think she'd tell me,” I said.

After we were all released, Tamayo asked, “Do you have any other pissed-off ex-friends lurking in the wings?”

“God, I hope not,” I said. “I'm really sorry about this, goils. Really sorry.”

I apologized all the way back to ANN, where we worked until 5
A.M.
putting together the story for Claire to voice-over.

Tamayo seemed thrilled by it all, and that was rubbing off on Kathy. “It was exciting, now that it's over and everything,” Tamayo said.

“You know what Carrie Fisher says, good anecdote, bad reality,” I said.

The phone rang. It was someone from the assignment desk, saying there were a lot of calls from other news organizations who wanted to talk to us.

“This could be great publicity for my career,” Tamayo said. “Robin, can we call a press conference?”

“Go ahead. But I'll pass, I think. Just read off the statement I gave to the assignment desk.”

“I should call my agent too. Start negotiating the film rights,” Tamayo said.

Tamayo and Kathy went to the outer office and started making phone calls. And why not? Might as well make lemonade out of these lemons.

Tamayo, what a dame. It wasn't hard to see Tamayo as a playground pariah. She just grooved to her own rhythms, and if people objected, they were in need of an “anal stickectomy,” in her words. Case closed.

Claire walked in.

We hugged and she said, “I left the report in playback, Robin. Did you call the hospital?”

“Yeah. Sally's in really bad shape. But the doctors think she'll be okay after they pump her stomach. Good thing I told them about the PMS medication she was taking on top of everything else. It turns out the PMS pills react badly with street roofies.”

“Let's send her some flowers for her recovery. Poor Sal,” Claire said.

“We're calling a press conference,” Tamayo called out. “Want to take part?”

“No,” Claire said. “I'm not interested. But you guys have fun.” She turned to me. “It is fucking dangerous being your friend. But, you know, that was great, Robin. We tracked a story together, you and me, just like the old days.”

“The old days.”

“We broke the Perrugia family. You and me, and Tamayo, and Kathy and … Julie Goomey. I saw it so clearly, after the feds came, a flash in my mind. This is what your life is about, that flash said. Not being a congressman's wife, not being an anchorwoman, but being in the field, tracking a story. God, it was exhilarating, Rob. Fuck a duck.”

“Did I mention that you're swearing a lot these days?”

“Bad companions,” she said, turning the volume up on the monitor in my office to hear her story about us and the Perrugia sisters.

I walked into the outer office. I just felt so strange. I looked at myself in the glass wall of a darkened office. Staring back at me was a tall, gangly girl with pale skin and frizzy red hair. It was a ghost, a cootie-girl ghost, floating in the dark glass like a character in a nightmare. That wasn't what I looked like. Where was the Rita Hayworth face that always stared back at me?

I started wondering how many other people had been murdered around me without my even being aware of it. Maybe, if I had been, I could have provided some clue. I was under a curse, just like the cab driver who couldn't escape bad traffic and was losing his penis. In addition to the curse of cooties, delivered upon my head by Mary MacCosham, people I was somehow connected to got murdered and I was menaced by wig-wearing women.

I wondered about people who died in “accidents” too. Like the guy who lived in a shack down by the railroad tracks who killed his wife while he was cleaning his gun. And all those people who died in gun-cleaning accidents in my hometown the year the iron-skillet factory closed. I remember thinking at the time that those poor people were just really stupid—I mean, why didn't they take the bullets out of their guns before they cleaned them? Duh.

But now I see.

It seemed to me that nothing was what I thought it was.

Claire came out. “You okay, Robin?”

“I don't know. Everything is upside down. And I feel responsible for everything that happened.”

“You're not.”

“I know this wouldn't have happened if I hadn't ratted Julie out to Lance, who ratted her out to Doug after she cheated on him in Minneapolis. She got mixed up with hoodlums, in trouble with the feds, and was going through midlife stuff, thinking how she could have been happy with Doug Gribetz if it wasn't for Robin Hudson.”

“Come on, the girl has some serious psychological problems.”

“She had a hard life.”

“Who didn't? I had cooties too, you know?”

“
You
had cooties?”

“Well, duh. My father is black, my mother is white and Native American, it was the deep South, I was bussed, people burned a cross on our lawn once. But I survived.”

“You come from a good, strong family,” I said. “Julie didn't.”

“So you were in love with the same boy and you pulled a nasty on her. All's fair in love and war, especially at that age. Although at least in war they have the Geneva Conventions.”

“I wanted to get even with her because … I was jealous,” I said. “I kinda liked the guy in Minneapolis Julie made out with. I mean, she had the best guy of all back home, Doug, and I felt it was unfair of her to move in on a guy I could have maybe had a shot with. But, first and foremost, I did it because I was in such puppy love with Doug, because I was jealous of her being Doug's girlfriend, and because of that joke she played on me, the letter in the locker. What if he was the guy who would have made her happy? And I fucked it up for her, my best friend. Not only that, but I knew what I was doing. I knew it was wrong.”

“First of all,” Claire said, “this is not a good reason to pull this kind of dangerous shit on you. What a lot of fucking nerve she has. There is no excuse. Second, are you absolutely positive that your bestest friend, Julie, wrote that letter that was stuck in your locker?”

Hmmm.

“She took the rap for it. Why would she do that if … No, it's not possible. Doug Gribetz knew me during my worst cootie years, and I hadn't become semipopular yet. He wouldn't have written me a love letter.”

“Robin, call him,” Claire said. “Or else I will.”

She did too. She called directory assistance in Minneapolis, where Doug Gribetz lived. Then she dialed his number and handed me the phone.

“I'm going to go peek in on Tamayo and Kathy. Just come down when you're through, okay?” Claire said.

The phone rang seven times before a sleepy female voice answered.

“Hello?” she said.

“Is Doug there?” I asked, feeling shitty a few hundred different ways.

“May I ask who is calling?” she said, kindly.

“Robin Hudson,” I said. My heart was beating inside me in time to Yma Sumac.

“Just a moment.”

There was some mumbling in the background, and then I heard another voice I hadn't heard in years. Even after all these years, that voice made me melt.

“Robin,” Doug said. “It's, uh, nice to hear from you. Why are you calling?”

He didn't say “at this hour.” He didn't have to.

“This is an odd request, Doug. I am so sorry to disturb you.” I could hear a baby crying in the background.

“It's okay. What is it?”

“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “I need to know if you wrote me a letter in tenth grade and stuck it in my locker. I know this is bizarre.…”

“I understand … I guess,” he said. There was a beat. “Yeah, I wrote you a letter. I thought you knew. It seems to me … Yeah, your friend Julie came up to me and told me that you'd read the letter and sent her to tell me that you weren't interested. So I assumed …”

“My friend Julie.”

“Yeah. It was a long time ago, Robin. What does it matter now?”

Normally, that would be a very good question. “It's a long story, Doug.”

I heard a little girl's voice say, “Daddy? The phone woke me up.”

“Just a second, honey, Daddy will tuck you back in,” he said.

“Well, thanks, Doug,” I said. “Really sorry to bother you. Really, really sorry.”