Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery
Read Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery Online
Authors: Tatiana Boncompagni
Table of Contents
Social
Death
Tatiana Boncompagni
Social Death
Published through Tudor City Press
Social Death
is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2013 by Tatiana Boncompagni
Cover art copyright © 2013 by Toni Misthos
Interior Book Design and Layout by
www.integrativeink.com
ISBN: 978-0-9899094-0-2
eISBN: 978-0-9899094-1-9
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author or publisher.
Also by this author
Gilding Lily
Hedge Fund Wives
For Maximilian
Sunday
P
eople cheat and people lie. It’s a fact of life I never found particularly newsworthy, except when someone ended up dead. That’s usually where I came in, turning betrayal and blood splatter into TV ratings gold. No Emmys yet, but that just kept me hungry—hungry enough to pick up my phone on a Sunday morning in early November when I ought to have been in deep REM.
“We got something on the scanners. Homicide on the Upper East Side.” The voice belonged to Larry Shreve, the curmudgeonly head of the FirstNews assignment desk. “You’re the only one who answered.”
I eyed the clock on my bedside table. “It’s not even five-thirty, Larry. Everyone’s still probably sleeping off last night’s cocktails.”
“Sorry, Clyde,” he mumbled between sips of what was probably high-octane java. “I know you don’t do breaking anymore.”
I clambered out of bed, stuffing a fresh blouse into Friday’s skirt. “Do we know who the victim is?”
“Nope. All we got is an address.”
“You sending a team?”
“They’ll meet you there.”
In the bathroom, I splashed some cold water on my face, pulled my shoulder-length red hair into a ponytail and assessed the image staring back at me. I had big breasts; good skin; and wide blue-green eyes. I could also stand to lose 10 pounds, eat more greens, and get more sleep. Nothing I could change in that instant, so I spackled over the worst of it with makeup and made a feeble vow to start taking better care of myself.
In less than five I was down on my corner, hailing a cab. That’s when I realized Shreve was sending me uptown to the Haverford, a sixteen-floor limestone tower on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The building, known as much for its high-powered residents as its prewar details, was also the home of Olivia Kravis, the socialite daughter of Charles Kravis, FirstNews’s founder—and my best friend since childhood.
My cab pulled up to the building just as I was dialing Olivia. We were supposed to meet for a drink Friday night, but I’d gotten held up at work and canceled. Her answering machine picked up right away. “Hey Olivia, it’s Clyde,” I said, hopping out of the cab. “I’m outside the Haverford. Don’t freak out, but someone’s been murdered in your building. Can you find out who it is? The PD isn’t talking.” I tried her cell next, left the same message, and cursed my friend for being one of those crazy people who liked to jog at the crack of dawn.
I slipped my phone back into the pocket of my trench and took stock of my chances of getting inside the Haverford without Olivia’s help. The police had cordoned off the front of the building with blue barricades and yellow crime-scene tape, and police cars were lining the length of the block. A few TV satellite trucks were pulling in behind my cab. One of them was from FirstNews, and I immediately recognized the driver. “Hey Rich!” I yelled, beckoning him over to the curb. As he parked, the van’s door slid open and out popped my team for the day: Aaron, the sound engineer; Dino, the cameraman; and Jen, the field producer. I’d worked with all of them before and knew them to be a seasoned and hardworking bunch. Things were getting off to a good start. “Who we got for talent?” I asked Jen.
She handed me an earpiece. “Alex Amori.”
I moaned. “Say it isn’t so.”
Alex was FirstNews’s fastest-rising star. He had been a Washington, D.C.-based litigator who’d appeared on CNN and GSBC a few dozen times as a commentator before getting hired by our network as a regular. Our bureau chief had lured him to New York with a big salary. In less than six months he’d made the leap from commentator to national correspondent, covering everything from the indictment of a hedge-fund honcho to a congressional sexting scandal. Alex was the industry’s version of a triple threat: He could write—and I mean really write—talk the talk, and, as if that weren’t enough, he was extremely telegenic. He was also well aware of his talents, and assumed every girl this side of the Atlantic was dying to get into bed with him. Plenty of them probably were.
Not me, though. I’d worked with Alex a couple of times on
Topical Tonight,
the national nightly news talk show where I was a segment producer, and both times he’d used the same tired line on me: “Someone as pretty as you belongs
in front
of the camera.” I’d told him that if he was going to hit on me, the least he could do is come up with something more original.
I popped my head inside the van. It smelled of fast-food breakfast sandwiches, sweat, and electrical equipment. “Alex isn’t with you?”
Jen looked up from her clipboard. “On his way. ETA is any minute now.”
“Hey Dino,” I beckoned our cameraman. “Stake out the shot with Jen while I go see what I can find out from the cops.”
Most people don’t know this, but television news producers don’t just sit in editing rooms splicing tape together. More often than not, we’re the real news hounds, pounding pavement, chasing leads, interviewing sources and basically using any means necessary to get the story. I estimated that I had at least five minutes until the satellite link was up and running, maybe more, considering we couldn’t go to air without Amori.
Scanning the crowd, I saw the usual assortment of patrol officers, supervisors, and technicians and set my sights on a uniformed guard who was standing off to the side of the main group. Then I ducked inside the van to ask if anyone happened to have a spare cup of java. Turned out Aaron hadn’t yet taken a sip of his. “It’s for the team,” I told him as he reluctantly handed it over. “I owe you big.”
Even with the coffee, I didn’t love my odds. The guard was six-foot-two, about twenty-three-years-old, and wore the uninterested expression of someone who’d signed up for the police department for the half-pay pension they got at twenty years.
I handed over the Starbucks, hoping it would loosen his tongue. “Clyde Shaw. Senior producer, FirstNews,” I said, flashing him my best smile. “You know who caught the case?”
Officially, we were supposed to get our facts from the PD’s information officers—whose job it was to make the department and police chief look good. But in reality, we all had sources on the force who either didn’t know the rules or didn’t care about them. I was counting on my guy to fall into one of those two categories.
The guard took off the coffee lid and slugged back a mouthful. “You got eyes, Red. Who you see comin’ in an’ outta the building?” He had a heavy Long Island accent and dark crescents under his eyes.
I peered through the Haverford’s front door and caught a glimpse of John Restivo. Restivo was one of the most experienced detectives in Manhattan North Homicide, which meant the NYPD wasn’t taking any chances with this investigation. And that meant that the murder victim wasn’t just some spoiled hedge-fund wife; he—or she—was a name, and possibly a big one. I knew from Olivia that her building was home to a former governor, two movie producers, an Oscar-winning actress and her country-music star husband, not to mention a slew of high-powered bankers and lawyers.
“Restivo,” I said. “Who’d they pair him up with?” In New York, when a murder happens, one detective gets assigned from the precinct in which the body has been found and another from one of the city homicide departments. We were in the “one-nine,” as in the Nineteenth Precinct.
The officer looked at me with stony silence. He wasn’t playing ball.
“What about the medical examiner and evidence-collection team? They arrive yet?”
No response. I wasn’t getting anywhere and the clock was ticking. “One last question. They tell you who the victim is yet?”
He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Nice try.”
“Oh come on. You can tell me. How about this: I say a name, and you can just nod or shake your head?” I’d been in Olivia’s building enough times to be familiar with some of the Haverford’s better-known residents, and judging by the amount of cops on the scene, the vic had a good chance of being one of them.
The officer let out a laugh, amused by my persistence. It wasn’t the reaction I was looking for and he knew it. “You get an A for effort, lady. But it ain’t gonna happen. Thanks for this, though,” he said, lifting his coffee.
I was about to give him a piece of my mind when my phone started buzzing in the pocket of my trench. There was a text from Jen: “Sat up. Live in five.”
In thirty seconds, I was back at the truck, ready to go. Alex, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. “Where is Amori?” I asked Jen.
She looked around helplessly. “He was here a minute ago.”
I jogged around the corner, threading my way through the crush of people around the building’s entrance. As Alex’s producer, it was my responsibility to make sure he was where he was supposed to be at all times, and we were due to go live, feeding into the newscast in less than five minutes. If we couldn’t go live and the newscast got screwed up because of it, there would only be one person to blame—me.
Luckily it didn’t take long to find him. Alex was hanging out exactly where I thought he would be: the GSBC van.
We had plenty of our own good-looking correspondents, but GSBC had us beat by at least one or two long-legged beauties. They were like the Brazil of network news, and Penny Harlich, the correspondent Alex was busy chatting up, was their Giselle Bündchen. She had long, champagne-blond hair, a perfect body, and luminous skin. Resisting the urge to go over there and drag Alex back to his mark by his ears, I whipped out my phone and typed a sternly worded text: “Get your ass to the camera. We are on NOW.”
