Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery (18 page)

Chapter Forty-Four

I was out on the sidewalk in front of the Steeles’ building. It was ten thirty at night, and the air was hot and damp even at this hour. A few empty cabs cruised down Fifth. I scrolled through the contacts in my phone and called Lee, hoping it wasn’t too late.

He answered on the third ring.

“Whattya want?” he asked.

“Good evening to you, too.”

“It’s night, my friend.”

“I’m picturing you in a smoking jacket with a nice evening drink in the study at the Lee compound. Relaxing, maybe counting your money.”

“Hah. Try again,” he said. “You ever hear of some outfit called Trim Waist Inc.?”

“No.”

“Makes sense, you’re in shape,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“It’s a competitor to Weight Watchers. A fast-growing competitor. They need money.”

“And you have money.”

“The question is, do I want ShorePoint to own a piece of a diet company? You know how fast these fads come and go.”

“Buy, profit, and get out.”

“Yes, that’s generally the rule, but it’s the profit part with these guys that worries me.”

“I need a piece of information,” I said.

“Yes, I should have known. And I thought you were calling to say hello,” Lee said.

A bus groaned past on its way down Fifth.

“Remember the other day when you said you had people calling you, offering you dirt on Buck McConnell?”

“How could I forget your visit to ShorePoint? It counted as a celebrity sighting in our humble little office. Maybe next time you bring a few glossy publicity photos.”

“You said you heard from guys who went to Harvard with him. Guys who said they saw him buying his way out of trouble back then.”

“I did say that,” he said.

“You also said you had one guy tell you that he could help you take McConnell down if you wanted to,” I said.

“Correct again. I did say that.”

“But you didn’t want to.”

“I had made my money off IT&E.”

“Can you connect me with him? This specific gentleman?” I asked.

Lee hesitated. I looked up Fifth and saw a woman walking a very small, furry dog. Behind her a few headlights shone as a handful of cars came down Fifth.

“He’s a private man, a very successful fund manager. I’m not sure he’d appreciate being contacted by a member of the media, even an esteemed one,” he said.

“How about you tell me where I could find him, and he’ll never know you were involved?” I asked.

“And this is all in a quest to pin something on the sleazy Buck McConnell?”

“Yes. The same man who felt it was okay to spy on you and your children.”

“And this is something big?” he asked.

“Possibly very big.”

“Wrongdoing?”

“Of the worst kind,” I said.

“Then I would merely be doing my duty as an upstanding citizen of our great republic?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Then how can I possibly not get involved?”

Chapter Forty-Five

I stood in the back of St. Patrick’s Cathedral at seven-thirty the next morning watching a couple of dozen people make their way back to their pews after communion. I spotted the man who best fit Lee’s description of Anthony Edmunds, and kept an eye on him as he returned to his pew and knelt in prayer.

He was dressed in a gray suit, and I assumed he was on his way to work at the office of Edmunds & Associates, two blocks up Fifth Avenue. One of the bits of information Lee had told me about Edmunds was that he had made it a point to attend daily mass at St. Pat’s on his way to the office.

I had searched the Web for a few hours last night, looking for every article I could find on Edmunds, and finally came up with one from the
Journal
that mentioned he was religious. And a nice feature spread on him in
Westchester
magazine showed him and his wife at home in their Mount Kisco estate and also mentioned he attended daily mass at St. Pat’s.

Mass ended, and everyone made their way back through the cavernous cathedral as tourists trickled in, staring up at the ceiling and stained glass. It was peaceful and quiet, and I watched Edmunds leave through one of the side doors at the rear of the church.

I followed him out onto the plaza that faced the corner of Fifth and Fifty-first.

“Mr. Edmunds,” I said as I came up on him.

He turned and looked puzzled as I extended my hand.

“Sam North. With Liberty News.”

We shook, but he wasn’t quite sure why I was there.

“I read that you attended mass here and was hoping to run into you.”

“You have. I’m Tony Edmunds.”

“You went to Harvard,” I said.

“You moonlight with alumni relations?” he asked.

“No. But I’m chasing a story related to one of your classmates. High-profile guy.”

“It was Harvard. Most of the class was high profile,” he said.

“This one may run for president.”

Edmunds turned to leave and waved a hand.

“I have no interest in—”

“And he may have committed a horrible crime,” I said, and it slowed him down on his way out. “Can I talk to you? It will take five minutes.”

“I really don’t think it’s a good idea,” he said.

“I need some help here,” I said. “I’m working on something about Buck McConnell that, if true, is pretty bad.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I’m late for—”

“I know something happened years ago, back when he was in—”

“As I said, I can’t help you, Mr. North.” He turned and started to walk away.

I went after him. I put a hand on his arm to try to stop him, and he turned with a look that said that was a bad idea.

“Please take your hand off of me,” he said.

“I read where you scrapped your way into Harvard, working through high school in the Bronx, hustling to get good grades,” I said.

I kept talking and removed my hand from his arm.

“You busted your butt to get in. Then you came out and busted your butt to build Edmunds and Associates.”

He looked at me and I thought he was going to say something but he stayed quiet.

“But I’m guessing you saw how McConnell operated at Harvard. How he seemed to have his own set of rules.”

“Mr. North, I really don’t think I can help you. And I need to be going,” he said.

This was as close to desperate as I had ever been. I was unofficially out of a job. I was chasing a story that was going to be either gigantic or nothing; this guy knew something that could help decide which way it would go, but he didn’t want to share at the moment.

“Tony,” I said, loud enough to startle him and draw the attention of the few people walking by on Fifty-first Street.

“Mr. North, really,” he shot back.

“You know something,” I said. “Something that’s damaging to McConnell. Why do you want to protect him?”

“I’m not protecting him,” he said.

“You keep hanging on to what you know, and you are protecting him.”

Edmunds stared at me, and I expected him to turn to walk away again. But he didn’t. His eyes scanned the people walking by, then came back to me.

“Let’s go somewhere where we can talk,” he said.

Chapter Forty-Six

“I think this suspension thing may have bought us some more time,” I said.

“Here’s the funny thing with that,” Freddie said. “It’s your ass that’s been fired, and I don’t care about this buying-more-time crap.”

“I wasn’t fired, I was suspended. Let’s be semantically correct.”

We were driving up the west side with the towers of the GW Bridge off in the distance. The humidity had lifted, and the sky was a clear blue over the dark waters of the Hudson to our left.

“I got a career to think about, a life to live,” Freddie said. “I got clients lined up and waiting for me, personally, to train them and whip their asses into shape.”

“Not nearly as exciting as this,” I said.

“Far more exciting than this,” he said.

“I have a plan, okay?” I said. “I just need you for another shoot or two, then that’s it. You’re cut loose. Back to training the beautiful things of the Upper West Side.”

“Care to share this plan?” Freddie said.

“Let’s assume Ripley called Daniels to follow up and was told the good news that I had been suspended.”

“Fired.”

“Right, suspended. I’m sure that news was then relayed to Buck McConnell.”

“Smiles all around over there this morning,” he said.

“Exactly. They think I’ve been defeated, that I’m going to crawl away quietly.”

“I know I did.”

“Yes, thank you for your unwavering faith in me,” I said.

“You got nothing to go on here, bro. You’re on fumes now with this story.”

“And that is exactly what I want McConnell and Ripley to think. If they think they won and that I’m flat-out defeated, chances are they’re going to call off the dogs, in this case that guy with Gulfway Energy. My gut tells me we can probably operate in relative peace while I push forward.”

“How about you push forward without me?” he asked.

“Who am I supposed to bounce ideas off of? Have witty exchanges with? You know, trade quips.”

“Billions of people in the world, you’ll find someone,” he said.

“Boy, you really are in a sour mood. And despite my big win this morning.”

I swept my hand across the dashboard in a grand motion.

“How can you be in a bad mood on a glorious day like this?”

“Maybe because you won’t tell me where we’re going,” he said.

“I told you, Norwalk. Got to talk to someone up along the sound.”

“We going out on a boat?” Freddie asked.

I looked at Freddie, and it hit me. “Aha,” I said. “Now I get it.”

“Nothing to get,” he said.

“The big, tough cameraman gets seasick, doesn’t he?”

“Do not.”

“Come on. That’s what’s been bugging you. You’re afraid of boats. Now it all makes sense. The cranky mood. The anger.”

Freddie said nothing and took the curve too fast as we came around onto the Saw Mill River Parkway and drove north into Westchester.

“It’s not a sign of weakness, my friend,” I said. “I’m sure there are plenty of big, tough guys who get a little woozy out on the high seas.”

“Keep it up and I’m throwing your ass out the car.”

I looked over at the narrow shoulder, which was moving by at an unsafe speed.

“I’ll hitch a ride,” I said. “How do you like that? I’m calling your bluff.”

“Throw your ass out and then call the
Post
. Say I saw you on the side of the road. Can see the headline now, ‘Fired TV Reporter Wanders the Highway,’” he said.

“Yes, that will be the story next to, ‘Tough-Guy Cameraman Afraid of Boats,’” I said.

“They’ll come get a picture of you sitting on the guardrail looking lost,” he said. “Caption say you looking for a ride back to your career. How you like that?”

We flew along the Cross County Parkway, raced across Westchester and got on I-95 and headed into Connecticut. Inlets and channels and little rivers feeding into the Long Island Sound were visible on our right as we sped through Greenwich.

We exited I-95 in Norwalk and wound our way down to the sound. Norwalk was a little city on the water with a revitalized downtown. All the old industrial buildings had been turned into apartments, shops, bars, and restaurants.

We drove along a street that ran parallel to the Norwalk River, which emptied into the Long Island Sound. It was picture-postcard-perfect weather, and small pleasure boats and sailboats cruised back and forth on the river. Little marinas were on the left, small unpretentious buildings with docks out back. On the right were small boat shops.

I watched the address numbers as we drove closer to the sound and spotted our building.

“There she be,” I said, “number seventeen.”

It was a long, flat, gray, weather-beaten building that ran right up to the bank of the river out back.

“What a dump,” Freddie said as he pulled into a little gravel parking area in front.

“It’s a nonprofit—give ’em a break,” I said. “You try living on donations.”

“May have to if I keep working with you.”

White gravel crunched under our tires as he pulled the Cherokee up to a little sign on a grassy path by the door to the building: “SoundSafe. Keeping the Long Island Sound Clean. Est. 1983.”

“This the guy Edmunds told you about?” Freddie asked.

“We’ll find out.”

“We going in guns blazing and camera rolling?” he asked.

“No, no, no. This is my last shot to pull this together; you freak these people out, and I’m done.”

“Don’t give me a reason,” he said.

“You stay back and work on your attitude; a little introspection about your anger issues would be good. I’ll go in and see what we got.”

The front door was open and I walked inside. The place had a laid-back feel to it, the way places by the shore usually do. Like life slowed down when you were around large bodies of water. I stepped inside, and it took my eyes a few seconds to adjust from the brilliant sunlight to the darkness within the long shack of a building.

The place appeared empty. On my right was a desk and on my left were two others facing it. Farther down on the left was an old couch and a few chairs around a coffee table in kind of a loosely defined sitting area. A radio was on somewhere, the announcer talking about a blowout sale at a furniture store. The rear of the building was open, like a big garage door was up.

“Hello?” I called as I walked toward the open back door.

No answer.

The back opened out onto a little grass patch with an old wooden bench where you could sit and watch the boat traffic on the river, which was maybe forty feet away. The sound was off in the distance down to the right, with the cluster of the rocky Norwalk Islands right in front.

There was an ancient, weather-beaten boat up on cinder blocks not far from the back door, and I walked across the grass and then a gravel stretch to the boat. It looked like something out of the dark ages: a large wooden hulk, like an old-time fishing boat, with a small square cabin in the middle by the wheel and the controls.

It was painted light blue with the word SoundSafe in white in a swirling cursive like a wave. A local phone number was painted behind the tail of the wave.

I spotted a pair of Top-Sider-clad feet on the other side and went around. There was a guy with his back to me inspecting a hole in the hull. He was dressed in shorts and a faded red
T-shirt. He had a head of thick light brown hair and maybe a matching beard from what I could see. Sunglasses rested on top of his head.

“I’m looking for Michael Barnes,” I said.

His eyes never left the boat.

“You found him,” he said.

“What happened to the boat?” I asked.

“Some fucking clown in his little water chariot clipped me down there,” he said, nodding toward the long wooden dock that jutted out into the river. There were two smaller and equally beat-up boats by the dock.

“Quite a fleet,” I said.

“Thanks. I guess that means you’re here with a check so I can replace them all,” he said.

“Not really.”

“You look like a banker,” he said.

I was dressed professionally, pressed dress slacks and a pressed white dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbows.

“Thanks.”

“It wasn’t a compliment,” he said.

His face was round, red, and weathered, and his hair looked as though it had been a while since it had seen a brush. “What are you here for?” he asked.

“Drugs,” I said.

He looked at me like he was trying to keep from throwing a punch. “You’re a funny guy,” he said.

“I like to think so.”

“Comedian, I guess,” he said.

“Nope. Oh for two. TV reporter.”

“That’s considered lowest of the bunch in some places,” he said.

“What about around here?” I asked, and introduced myself.

“I’m not a big TV watcher,” he said. He started to walk to the back of the boat and I followed. “You doing another one of those nice features on the former druggie turned environmental watchdog? Someone probably does one a year on me, used to be twice.”

“Dropping off in popularity. Can’t imagine why,” I said.

“If you’re younger than thirty, you probably have no idea how crappy the sound used to be.”

We were walking now and at the back of the boat. He was inspecting it for additional damage.

“I’m working on a story on an old friend of yours … Buck McConnell,” I said.

His hand was on the back of the boat, scratching at a piece of rotting wood. He kept at it like he hadn’t heard me. After a moment he stopped and turned to me. “What the hell do you want?”

“I need to know what happened at Harvard on the night of October 21, 1971,” I said.