Shooting for the Stars (5 page)

Chapter
7

I
WAS
living in a new apartment on the West Side of Manhattan. In Chelsea, not far from the Hudson River. I'd moved there from the Upper East Side after I read an article in the
New York Times
real estate section about all the hip, cool, trendy people moving to Chelsea. I wanted to be hip, cool, and trendy too.

When I was married, my wife, Susan, and I lived on East 18th Street, near Gramercy Park. After she moved out, I stayed there for a while, but the memories were too much for me to handle. I moved to a pre-war building in the East 90s. It was okay. But it was really old and falling apart, and I got serenaded to sleep at night by the sound of cars down on Third Avenue.

My new place was a two bedroom in a brand-new high-rise with a view of the Hudson. Well, that's what the ad for it had said anyway. And it was true, I suppose. If you looked out a far window in one of the bedrooms, stood on a chair, and craned your neck in just the right way, you could catch a glimpse of the water.

It was definitely an upgrade for me though. I had a doorman. I had a concierge. I even had a health club and swimming pool in the building. Plus, I was on the thirty-sixth floor, which meant the sounds of the street were no longer a problem. It cost a lot more for me in rent. But I was determined to change my life for the better. This apartment . . . well, it was a start.

I pushed open the door now and went in.

“Hi, honey, I'm home,” I said.

There was no answer, of course. No loving wife waiting for me after a hard day at work with a martini and a pair of slippers. No kids running into my arms. Not even a dog or a cat to lick my face. It had taken me a while to get used to living alone after my breakup with Susan. But I had almost come to grips with it now. Almost.

The truth is that when I'd taken the apartment my goal was to one day win Susan back, get her to move back in and marry me again. Well, that's still my long-term goal. The short-term goal is just to get her to take my phone calls and speak to me again. Baby steps. You have to crawl before you can walk.

You see, there'd been an unfortunate incident between us recently.

I was feeling lonely late one night and I called Susan. I told her how much I missed her. How much I needed her. And how much I loved her. I believe I proposed to her over the phone that night. In fact, I proposed to her several times during that ill-fated conversation, as I recall.

Then, from somewhere in the background, I heard the sound of a man's voice.

“Susan, honey, are you coming back to bed?” the male voice said.

“I'll be right there,” she told him.

She came back on the line to me.

“Who is he?” I asked.

“That's none of your business, Gil.”

“Sure it is.”

“I don't quiz you about the women in your life, Gil.”

“I don't have any women in my life except you.”

“Look, you have no right to . . .”

“I'm your husband, goddammit.”

“Ex-husband.”

“You and I both know we're going to wind up together again. It's just a matter of time until that happens.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

“Because it's true.”

“I gotta go . . .”

“I love you, Susan,” I blurted out.

She didn't say anything.

“The appropriate response is to say, ‘I love you too,' ” I told her.

“Let's not do this anymore, Gil.”

“Just tell me you love me. I want to hear it. I don't care if that asshole you're with hears it too.”

Things went rapidly downhill from there. After she refused to give me the “I love you” return, I erupted into a tirade of jealous and righteous anger over what I described as her betrayal of me. I said a number of things during that conversation that I wished later I could take back. I had done that in the past when I was afraid I was losing her to someone else, and I had promised myself I would never let it happen again. But the thought of her being in bed with that other man made me so crazy that I just couldn't control myself.

“Please don't call here again,” she said when I was finished.

Then she hung up.

Since then, she had remained incommunicado to me no matter how many times I reached out to try to repair the damage I'd done.

I walked into the kitchen, took a bottle of beer from the refrigerator, and brought it back to the living room. I picked up the remote and clicked on the TV. There was a
Gilligan's Island
marathon on one of the cable channels. Gilligan and the Skipper and the Professor were trying to build a ship out of coconuts or something to get off the island. As you can tell, it was a pretty sophisticated plot, so I did my best to concentrate and keep up with it.

Which was good because it stopped me from thinking about all
the things I didn't want to think about. Like my ex-wife. My career. My future and my life in general. When I think too much about this stuff I get tense and agitated and feel like the walls of my apartment are closing in on me.

This anxiety had caused me to have a series of what they called “panic attacks.” I got shortness of breath, I felt dizzy and became disoriented—I even passed out once in the middle of the newsroom. I've got medicine for it. I've had counseling too. And I tell people I don't have the panic attacks anymore.

But the truth is I do. Not a lot, but they still happen from time to time. Mostly when I'm alone in my apartment, like now.

The health problems had started for me the first time I'd screwed up at the
News
with the fictional Houston interview. All the fallout and disgrace over the revelation about what I'd done led to the onset of the panic attacks. The anxiety and the attacks and these moments of nearly paralyzing panic continued off and on after that, usually in conjunction with the ups and downs of my career at the paper.

I used to see a woman shrink who told me the problem was I measured my worth as Gil Malloy the reporter—not the person. When I was breaking big exclusives on Page One, I was good with myself. But when I wasn't doing big stories, I couldn't handle the down periods of my career. “You use your job, you use being a reporter, as a defense mechanism,” the shrink said. “No matter how noble you try to make it—and it is a noble profession—being a reporter allows you to shut out emotion and avoid dealing with what's really inside you. Hence, the panic attacks.”

She said the solution was I had to learn to live my life each day without clinging to my reporter persona to shield me from the real issues and emotions I needed to confront. “You have to build a life that's about something more than just being an ace reporter,” the shrink told me. “Being a reporter can't be your entire life.”

It was good advice, I guess.

But pretty hard for me to follow that advice the way I was feeling right now.

I mean I was working on a story—the Laura Marlowe murder—that wasn't even my story.

I had a twenty-six-year-old boss who cared more about page views and demographics than she did about journalism.

And my wife—okay, my ex-wife—was screwing some friggin' other guy.

Just thinking about all of this was almost enough to push me into another panic attack. But after a few deep breaths and an almost Zenlike effort to remain calm, I was okay again.

I took a swig of beer and tried to put all of these thoughts out of my mind. I focused my attention back on
Gilligan's Island
. No matter how many times I watched these episodes, I always think that maybe this is the one where they'll figure out how to get off the island. They never do, of course. They finally do get rescued in one of the sequel TV movies made years later, but by then I had pretty much lost interest. I hummed the theme song of the show to myself now. A three-hour tour. Three-hour tour.

By the time the episode was over, my beer bottle was empty. I had a couple of options. I could walk into the kitchen, get myself another beer, and keep watching Gilligan while I either fell asleep or simply passed out.

Or I could get out of this lonely apartment for a while.

I looked at the time. Just past ten o'clock. The first edition of the
Daily News
would be hitting the newsstands with my story. I could always read it online, of course. But I still loved the feel of holding an actual newspaper in my hands. I walked over to the window. Even from the thirty-sixth floor, I could tell it was a nice night out there. One of these comfortable early summer evenings in New York City before the heat and humidity settled in for July and August. I decided to go out and buy a copy of the paper.

On my way out through the lobby of my building, the doorman gave me a friendly greeting.

“How are you, Mr. Malloy?” he said.

“I met a TV star today,” I told him.

“Good for you.”

“Abbie Kincaid.”

There was a blank look on his face.

“She has a news program called
The Prime Time Files
. It's a newsmagazine kind of thing. Sort of like Barbara Walters or Diane Sawyer. Take my word for it, Abbie Kincaid is a big star.”

“I'm sure she is.”

“A big, big star.”

“Good for you,” he said again as he held the door open for me to go out.

Yep, this was my new life.

High-rise apartment.

High floor.

High rent.

Same old high anxiety.

Chapter
8

I
WATCHED
Abbie Kincaid's show at a place called Headliners. Stacy Albright wanted me to write a follow-up article on whatever Abbie said about Laura Marlowe. She'd invited several of the editors and reporters to watch with her. I was one of them.

For those of us in the newspaper world in New York City, Headliners bar is legendary. There's an old-style printing press in the front. Blowups of famous Page Ones from the city's newspapers—most of them no longer around—hung from behind the bar. There was also something called a
Gallery of Page One Heroes
on another wall, pictures of reporters who had broken memorable stories over the years. One of them was me for a big exclusive I'd done. There was a plaque above the picture, which said:
Gil Malloy, Reporter of the Year
. I was smiling in the picture, standing between Marilyn Staley, who was the
Daily News
city editor then, and Rick Hodges, the managing editor. Hodges died of a heart attack a few years later, and Staley was fired more recently to make room for Stacy Albright. It all seemed like a million years ago now.

When I got to the bar, Stacy and the others were sitting around a table underneath a big wide-screen TV. I pulled up a chair at the end of the table, as far away from Stacy as I could get. Jeff Aronson, a reporter who covered the federal courts for the
News
, was next to me. He was drinking a bourbon on the rocks.

Jeff and I had started out at the paper together as copyboys. My rise had been more rapid, but then so had my flameouts. Aronson, on the other hand, had been a steady contributor for the
Daily News
the whole time. Never a big star, but highly thought of as a federal court reporter.

I'd drunk with Jeff before, and I knew his routine. Always drank bourbon on the rocks. He'd have two of them—no more, no less. Then he'd catch a train to the suburbs in New Rochelle, where he'd go home to his nice house with his nice wife and his four nice little children. He was one of those people who seemed to have it all. He even went to church and visited hospitals on Sunday. Of course, you never really knew for sure about a person. A guy like Jeff Aronson could have bodies of teenaged girls buried in his basement, I suppose. But as far as I could tell, he seemed to be a good reporter, a good husband, and a good father. He had his life in order, everything under control. I never understood how people could deal with all that kind of responsibility. Me, I had trouble just getting to work on time. Maybe it was some sort of a character flaw in me.

“How many stupid things has she said so far?” I asked Aronson.

“Who?”

“Stacy.”

He laughed.

“Her record is twelve in one hour,” I said. “That was the day she said Joe DiMaggio played for the Brooklyn Dodgers and she couldn't remember if there were four or five Beatles.”

“She's young.”

“Youth is no excuse for ignorance.”

“Weren't you ever young?”

“No,” I said, “I was born at the age of thirty-seven and immediately became a cynical, embittered newspaper reporter.”

The Laura Marlowe story was the first segment of
The Prime
Time Files
. It started with a montage of pictures showing the movie star at the height of her career. Winning an Oscar for
Lucky Lady
. Arriving at a premiere for
The Langley Caper
. On the set of
Once Upon a Time Forever
. Signing autographs for fans. And finally showing up at the party in New York on the last night of her life.

“Even though Laura Marlowe died thirty years ago, her legend continues to grow,” Abbie said. She was standing in front of the New York Regent Hotel where the shooting took place. “One story is that she's still alive somewhere, that she really didn't die that night at this hotel. Like UFOs or Elvis Presley, there are reports of Laura Marlowe sightings in the tabloids and even some of the more legitimate press on a regular basis. Fans have set up websites devoted to the ‘Laura isn't really dead' theory. We take a look at this and many other questions about the tragic '80s star in this
Prime Time Files
special report tonight. Some of the answers we found will shock you.”

She spent the next several minutes of the segment debunking all those rumors. She said the evidence proved incontrovertibly that Laura Marlowe was indeed dead. Then it started to get interesting.

“The person who police say killed her was a man named Ray Janson. Janson was obsessed with the actress and told people he wanted to marry her. He also said ominously at one point: ‘If I can't have her, then no one will.' Janson had stalked her for several days, according to the cops, building up to the final deadly confrontation at this hotel on the night of July 17, 1985. Police say Janson fled the scene, then committed suicide by hanging himself a few days later in a Manhattan hotel. The case was closed. But should it have been?”

Abbie went to an interview with a retired Long Island police sergeant named Greg Birnbaum, who told the following story:

On the night of July 17, 1985, Sgt. Birnbaum had arrested
a man for speeding in Southampton, not far from where Laura Marlowe had a summer beach house. The driver had been going seventy-two miles per hour in a forty-five zone. His license was also expired and he became belligerent with the officers, saying he was in a hurry to get somewhere. The police report said it appeared he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, although subsequent tests turned up negative.

The suspect was eventually taken to the Suffolk County Court and booked at 9:20 p.m. He spent the night in jail, paid a $150 fine, and was released on his own recognizance in the morning. The name of the suspect, taken from his expired license and his car registration, was James Janson. Which, it turns out, was the Laura Marlowe stalker's real name—James Ray Janson.

He had begun using his middle name of Ray because it was the name of the character Laura marries in the movie
Lucky Lady
. “A check of old police records by
The Prime Time Files
turned up a form that Janson had signed while he was in custody,” Abbie said. “We discovered the signature matched that of the Ray Janson who had died in the hotel room days later. It was definitely the same man.”

This was followed by an interview with another retired cop, a New York City homicide detective named Bill Erlich. He was one of the detectives who worked on the Laura Marlowe murder case. Erlich said that, contrary to legend and popular lore, no one actually saw Janson shoot the actress. A lot of people saw him hanging around the hotel the day or so before the shooting, asking questions about her and hoping to get a glimpse as she walked through the lobby. Then an eyewitness saw someone running away from the scene that he identified as Janson.

“When he turned up as a suicide in the hotel room a few days later, we just figured it all fit together,” Erlich said. “In retrospect, maybe we should have investigated it more.”

Then came an interview with Laura's mother and husband. They talked about how shocked they were over these new disclosures. They speculated on how big a Hollywood star the actress would have become if her life hadn't been cut short so tragically. They also threw in a few plugs for the Laura Marlowe museum, memorabilia, and website.

I remembered the two of them shared in the actress's estate. This story would be a bonanza for their business, I thought to myself. Birnbaum and Erlich, the two cops on the program, would be courted for big bucks by all the media. And Abbie's ratings would soar. Everyone was going to make money off this. Everyone except Laura Marlowe.

“The big question this leaves us with, of course,” Abbie was saying on the screen, “is who really killed Laura Marlowe? If Ray Janson didn't do it, and it now appears that he was in police custody some seventy-five miles away on Long Island at the time of the shooting, then someone else did. That person has gotten away with murder—one of the most famous murders of all time—for the past thirty years. Next week on
The Prime Time Files
, we'll have even more shocking revelations about this case. Tune in then.”

The segment ended with the famous picture of Laura Marlowe, blowing a kiss to her fans just before she died.

When it was over, Stacy came and sat with us.

“That's a helluva story,” she said.

“Yeah, ain't it?”

“Did she tell you anything about what she was going to say?”

“No.”

“You're sure about that?”

“Stacy, you said to write a story about her story without knowing what it was going to be. The whole thing was your idea.”

“And she hasn't told you anything about what she's got coming up next week either?”

I thought about our conversation on serial killers.

“No,” I said, which was sort of the truth.

“Can you try to talk to her again?”

“Sure.”

“This could be a really big exclusive.”

“Yeah, but it's her exclusive—not ours.”

“Who cares whose story it really is?”

“Well . . .”

“You better get back to the office and write it up right away. I want to get it up on our website as soon as possible. Hell, if we play this right we'll get more traffic from it than
The Prime Times Files'
own webpage does.”

On my way out of Headliners, I passed by the picture of myself on the wall again and wondered why the guy in it looked so happy.