Shooting for the Stars (6 page)

Chapter
9

I
TRIED
reaching out to Abbie a couple of times after the telecast, but never got any response from either her or Lang.

I figured whatever connection I'd made with her during that interview in her office was just my imagination.

But then she called me up out of the blue a few days later and asked me to have dinner with her.

We met on a rainy night at a coffee shop near Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village. Abbie was wearing jeans, cowboy boots, a T-shirt, and a baseball cap. She looked comfortable, more relaxed than she had that first day we met. I was expecting a place a bit more glamorous and chic than a coffee shop. But she picked the spot, so it was fine with me.

“I love this place,” she said. “I'm sick of all those goddamned pretentious, upscale meat market spots where everybody goes just to show how happening they are. I like the atmosphere here. I like the people. It takes me back to when I first came to New York City as a struggling young actress.”

“You ate here then?”

“I worked here.”

“As a waitress?”

“That's right.”

I looked at one of the waitresses serving food to a family at a
booth next to us. I tried to picture a young Abbie wearing a waitress's uniform and dreaming of her big break. I'd eaten here a few times myself over the years. Maybe she even waited on me back then.

“So now you still like to eat here?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“To see how far you've come since those days?”

“Something like that.”

“I understand.”

“Besides,” she smiled, “the macaroni and cheese is real good too.”

Vincent D'Nolfo, the big security guard I'd seen at
The Prime Time Files
studio, was sitting in a car outside. He'd dropped her off and stayed close by in case she needed him at any point during the evening. That made me a bit uncomfortable. But it was sure better than having him join us inside at the table.

The waitress came over and took our order. She was blond and pretty and very young, probably just out of high school. I wondered if she was an aspiring actress or dancer or TV anchorwoman, like so many waitresses in New York City. I was pretty sure she recognized Abbie, but she didn't say anything. Abbie gave her a warm smile. Maybe she saw herself in the girl a long time ago.

“Did you hate it?” I said to Abbie after the waitress left.

“Waiting on tables here?”

“Yes.”

“No, it really wasn't so bad. I mean I was in New York City. I was young. I had all these big dreams. Besides, working in this place was a lot better at the time than the alternative.”

“Which was?”

“Being a housewife in Milwaukee.”

Abbie told me how she'd grown up in a small town in Wiscon
sin. She had been her high school homecoming queen, worked summers at the Dairy Queen, and then gotten married at the age of eighteen to her high school boyfriend, a football player named Billy Remesch. He didn't have the grades to get a football scholarship to college, so he took a job in an auto body shop in Milwaukee. It looked like she would settle down there with him for the rest of her life.

Then Abbie won a drawing at a movie theater. The grand prize was an all-expenses-paid trip to New York City. She was having lunch at the Four Seasons as part of the prize package when a Broadway producer saw her, cast her in a small role in a show, and—just like that—she became an actress. She divorced her husband and never went back to Wisconsin.

There were some hard times at first, and that's when she worked as a waitress to pay the bills. After a few years, she became moderately successful—working enough to make a living. Some decent supporting roles in movies, TV commercial work—and even a recurring part in a hit sitcom that lasted for a season and a half.

After that, she did a pilot for a daytime TV talk show,
Girl Talk
, that quickly took off. She signed a multi-year deal with a top syndication company and became a bigger star than she'd ever been as an actress.

The show stressed reality, and nothing was off limits. Abbie wore her emotions on her sleeve. She'd tell the audience about her diets, her sex life, and her innermost secrets. When she was happy, they laughed. When she was sad, they cried. She knew how to push just the right buttons to connect with the viewing public.

Maybe the show's biggest moment came when she revealed on national television how she'd been physically, sexually, and emotionally abused by her husband while they were married. She said she'd kept it a secret for years. She told the TV audience she was coming forward so that other abused women would also find
the courage to deal with the problem. She ended the show with a poignant plea to her ex-husband to get professional help before he hurt anyone else. The show set new ratings records.

Later, she got an offer to do her own news-magazine show on nighttime network TV. The little girl who once worked at a Dairy Queen was now interviewing heads of state and some of the biggest names in show business.

“It's a funny thing about fame,” she said at one point. “Fame comes and goes very quickly sometimes, like a thief in the night. Take Laura Marlowe, for instance. One minute she's a struggling actress who's going nowhere, the next she's the biggest star in the world. And then she's dead. It all happens so fast. Even if we get lucky like Laura did, we need to be able to enjoy the moment. Because no one ever knows how long it will last. I guess that's the message we can all learn from her life.”

As we ate, we talked about the fallout from her story. The cops had reopened the Laura Marlowe investigation. The trail was very cold after thirty years, of course, but they were at least going through the motions of trying to find the real killer. The press had picked up on it in a big way too, with Laura Marlowe's name back in the headlines all over again. And everyone was talking about Abbie and wondering about the blockbuster exclusive she had promised for next week's show.

“Tell me about the serial killer angle,” I said.

“I can't.”

I stared at her in amazement. “You showed me a picture of a dead singer named Cheryl Carson and three other women. You suggested to me that their deaths were somehow connected. You all but told me you thought they were killed by one person—the same person who killed Laura Marlowe thirty years ago. If it's true, that's one of the greatest serial killer stories of all time. So what else did you find out?”

She shook her head no. “If I told you everything I know right now, you'd think I was paranoid and/or crazy.”

“Abbie, I don't think you're paranoid or crazy.”

“Well, I guess it's sort of like the old joke about the guy who says: ‘Okay, I may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean people aren't following me.' That's kind of the way I feel about my life right now.”

“Does this have anything to do with Tommy Rizzo?” I asked.

“Tommy? No, Tommy's the least of my worries. You're wrong about him—he's really a nice guy. Besides, I think he's finally given up on me. We had a long talk. I haven't heard from him since.”

“Whatever story you're working on sounds like it could be dangerous,” I said. “Maybe you should just walk away from it.”

“I can't do that.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever walked away from a big story?”

“No.”

“My point exactly,” she smiled.

It was one of those special New York City moments that don't happen to me too much anymore. The rain falling gently on the streets of the Village. The parade of people—an entire gamut of New York nightlife ranging from funky-looking neighborhood folks to wide-eyed tourists to street hustlers—passing by outside the window.

We talked about some of my notoriety—the good as well as the not-so-good moments I'd had in the public spotlight. Eventually, of course, the conversation got around to the Houston story. The low point of my career. The story that nearly got me fired from the
Daily News
and would remain as an albatross to my career for as long as I was in the newspaper business.

“I've replayed it all over in my mind so many times over the years,” I said. “How I ever made the decision to put the imaginary
quotes in the story and make it sound like they were really coming from this legendary New York City streetwalker called Houston. I dream about being able to go back in time to undo everything I did wrong on that story. And about how different my life would have been if I hadn't put those fictional words in her mouth. But I did. I'm still not sure why. The only thing I do know for sure is that I will never do anything like that again.”

She brought up some of the big stories I'd done at the
Daily News
. The high points. There were plenty of those too. Many of my biggest crime exclusives had involved serial killer cases. Which is probably why Abbie had asked me all those questions that first day on the serial killer angle.

“So how come you're still a newspaper reporter?” she asked me at one point. “You're a talented guy. Don't you want to do something better than that?”

“Some of us think of it as a noble calling.”

“Newspapers are dying.”

“So I hear.”

“TV, the web, social media—that's how people are getting their news these days.”

“Gee, you sound like my city editor.”

“Have you ever thought about going into television?”

“I don't think it would be a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“I've got a big mouth and I annoy people.”

“Sounds like you'd be perfect for TV,” she laughed.

I wasn't sure if I would ever see her again. I mean I didn't know if this was supposed to be a date or a business meeting or what. But, before we left, she said to me, “We should do this again, Gil.”

“Definitely,” I said.

“Dinner soon?”

“Sure.”

“It's a date then,” she said.

On my way home, I couldn't stop thinking about what had happened that evening.

I mean I'd just had dinner with TV celebrity Abbie Kincaid.

And she wanted to see me again.

Me and Abbie Kincaid.

Zowie!

Chapter
10

I
SAW
Abbie a few more times after that.

Once, she simply called me up unexpectedly and asked me if I'd like to hang out with her again. I asked her where she wanted to go, and she said nowhere. Told me she just wanted to kick back and relax for a night without being out in public. She asked if she could come over to my place.

We ordered pizza and watched a Laura Marlowe movie on TV. The first one,
Lucky Lady
. I found it on Netflix and thought it might be fun to watch a few minutes of it with Abbie. We wound up watching the whole thing. Neither of us talked a lot during the movie, we just kept watching Laura Marlowe on the screen. She was simply mesmerizing. So young, so beautiful, so talented. She had the whole world, her entire future ahead of her then. Instead, it would end too soon in tragedy.

When the movie was over, Abbie made a call on her cell phone and a few minutes later Vincent showed up. She hugged me and gave me a kiss on the cheek before she left. Vincent stared at me the entire time. I gave him my best hard stare back. I don't think he liked me any better than the first time we met. But that was okay. I was getting used to it.

The next time I saw Abbie was completely different. She took me to some fancy restaurant on the Upper East Side that always
got written up in the gossip columns. There was a constant parade of fans and other celebrities coming to our table to greet her. She signed autographs, let people take pictures with her—she was playing the star again. Me, I just watched it all unfold and wondered how this could be the same Abbie Kincaid I'd eaten pizza with in my apartment a few nights earlier.

After the restaurant, we went to some private club where she was again given the star treatment. She exchanged meaningless chatter with all sorts of beautiful people, drank a lot, and even put on a show out on the dance floor. She pretty much ignored me the entire evening. I was just window dressing for her, not anyone important in her life that night. I understood. I guess. I mean I never knew why she wanted to spend time with me anyway. I figured she'd just gotten bored with me and this was the real Abbie Kincaid I was seeing.

At the end of the night, Vincent dropped me off first. He didn't speak to me during the ride to my apartment. Neither did Abbie. She just looked out the windows of the limo at the lights of Manhattan buildings and passing cars as we made our way downtown to my place in Chelsea. When we got there, she gave me a peck on the cheek, Vincent opened the door of the limo, and I walked inside my building without looking back, confused and—truth be told—a little pissed at the way the evening had turned out. I was pretty sure I'd never see either of them again.

It was a few hours later, and I was asleep, when I woke up to the buzzing of my intercom. I looked at the clock. Two a.m. The buzzing continued. Over and over and over again. At first, I wondered if maybe the building was on fire or something. But when I pushed the intercom button to talk to the doorman, he said there was someone there who needed to see me. Abbie Kincaid.

I opened the door a few minutes later and saw Abbie standing there. She looked disoriented, disheveled, and desperate—­nothing
like the big arrogant star she'd been when I'd seen her just a few hours ago.

She was crying too.

And—most important of all—she was carrying a gun.

I let her into the apartment. She was really sobbing now. I gently took the gun from her hand and laid it on a table. She didn't resist. I wasn't sure she even knew she was holding it. She buried her face in my chest, crying.

“What's going on, Abbie?” I said.

She just kept sobbing uncontrollably.

“Where's your security guard?”

“I sent him home. Then I came here on my own.”

“But why . . . ?”

“I just . . . I just want to feel safe with someone.”

She held on to me tightly. She had clearly drank a lot more after she left me. I walked her into the bedroom and laid her down on the bed. She kept muttering a lot of stuff, but most of it just sounded like gibberish to me. “Sign of the Z, sign of the Z, please stay away from me,” she said at one point. I asked her what she meant, but she just shook her head and wouldn't say any more. I remembered one of the threatening letters sent to her had used the phrase “Beware the Z” and figured it must be about that. But I had no idea what any of it meant.

I walked back out to the kitchen, made some black coffee, and took it to her. She drank some of it and, after a while, began to pull herself together a bit.

I sat on the bed next to her.

She didn't want to talk anymore about what she was afraid of, and I didn't want to push it given her condition. So I just kept talking to her about a lot of other stuff until she sobered up. The show.
Her career. To try to make her feel better, I pointed out how amazing her meteoric rise to stardom had been. How that big break of winning the contest back in Wisconsin had turned her life around. How she'd gone from being an unhappy housewife to an actress and then a big TV star virtually overnight.

“Television is really simple,” Abbie said after she'd pulled herself together a bit. “All you have to do is stand out in some way, break away from the pack, do blockbuster things that make people notice you. You can't worry about the consequences. You've got to make news. That's what I do.”

“You mean like revealing that your husband abused you in front of the entire nation?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact, yes.”

“I'm just curious. What happened to him afterward?”

“He lost his job. His new wife divorced him. I heard he was talking about trying to move away and start a new life where people didn't know him. Not much chance of that. I ran his picture for weeks on my daytime show. He can run, but he can't hide.”

“Did you ever have any regrets about doing that?”

“I did a good thing,” she said.

“Okay.”

“Do you know that after we did that show, calls to battered women hotlines went up three hundred percent?”

“That's great.”

“Wives told me they came forward to talk about their husbands just because of what I did.”

“Good.”

“A lot of lives were turned around by that show.”

I wasn't sure if she was talking to me anymore, or simply trying to convince herself.

“I did a good thing,” she repeated.

Finally, she fell asleep. I put a blanket over her and turned out
the light. Then I went into the living room, lay down on the couch, and tried to figure out what was going on here. Sure, she was beautiful and sexy and exciting. And I sure as hell would love to have some kind of ongoing relationship with her, whatever that turned out to be. But she was clearly a troubled woman. And the last thing I needed in my life right now was someone with that kind of trouble. I knew plenty of troubled people already. Hell, if I wanted to meet a troubled person, all I had to do was look in the mirror.

When I woke up in the morning, she was gone.

So was the gun.

There was a note on the table for me that said:

Thank you so much, Gil. You're a sweetheart.

When I'm ready to tell someone my story, you'll be the first.

I promise to tell you all about . . . I owe you that.

xxxx

Abbie

Except she never did tell me, of course.

That night was the last time I ever saw Abbie Kincaid alive.