Cold Open, A Sam North Mystery (25 page)

Chapter Sixty-Five

It was nine-thirty and the newsroom was quiet. I was at my desk, staring at the computer screen and the script I had started. I read it out loud to see how it flowed:

Liberty News has uncovered evidence that Terrance “Buck” McConnell was responsible for and involved in the death of Liberty anchor Jack Steele.

It was too flat, and I played around with it a bit.

Shocking evidence tying Buck McConnell to the death of Jack Steele.

I needed a stronger opening line.

Liberty News has learned that Jack Steele was killed … by presidential hopeful Terrance “Buck” McConnell.

I was getting closer, but I wasn’t there yet.

I stood and turned my head slowly from side to side, trying to stretch the tension out of my neck. I looked out across the big room and the empty desks. The little TV monitors scattered around the room flickered. Outside, the lights of the office towers on Sixth Avenue shone through the darkness.

I glanced at my phone. There were no new calls and I was now officially worried about Liz.

I hadn’t spoken to her since lunchtime, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. I had called her four times—mobile, office, mobile, apartment—but nothing. I told myself there was some rational, and probably mundane, reason she hadn’t gotten back to me. But I wasn’t sure I believed it.

I sat down and was fiddling with the script when my phone vibrated.

“Sam North,” I said, answering the call from a number I didn’t recognize.

There was a lot of street noise, and no one spoke for a second. Then I heard a male voice. “Hey, remember me?”

“No,” I said.

A horn honked and a siren yelped in the background.

“Shit, I’m the guy that made your career,” he said.

“Then you’re definitely not my agent.”

“It’s Wade.”

“Wade, how are you?” I asked.

“You got your money’s worth on that Jack Steele footage, huh?” he said.

“I did.”

I looked at the clock: 9:33:42 p.m. The workday had just begun for Wade.

“What can I do for you, Wade?” I asked.

“Got a little something that may be of interest to you,” he said.

“What do you have?”

“Heard a call go out for a druggie an hour or so ago. Cops found some guy who was a heroin OD in a rat hole way down on Lower East Side, down under the Williamsburg Bridge. Guy was dead as a doornail.”

“I’m listening.”

“You know I only call you with the top-tier stuff,” he said.

“Only the best.”

“Well, we got ourselves another little Liberty News connection. How do you like that?” he said.

“Probably better once I understand it,” I said. “Can you spell it out for me?”

“Absolutely. So, they’re wheeling the body out, right? And I see a Liberty News ID hanging off the guy,” he said.

I stood still with the phone pressed against my ear.

“You know some guy named Marty Glover?” Wade asked.

My knees buckled. I put my hand on my desk for balance and opened my mouth to speak but nothing came out.

“Sam, you there?” Wade asked.

I was having trouble breathing and felt dizzy.

“Hello? Hello? Hey, Sam, you there?”

I sucked in a long deep breath and looked up and tried to pull myself together.

“Yeah, I do know him, Wade,” I said.

“Oh, shit, Sam,” he said. “Sorry, man. But he’s dead.”

Chapter Sixty-Six

I rode the elevator downstairs and bolted as soon as the door opened. I needed to find Liz. Now. I ran across the lobby and looked outside for the Jeep and saw it parked on the corner of Forty-ninth. I was steps away from the revolving door when someone came up behind me.

“Remember me, asshole?”

I turned and saw a short, fat guy; the same guy I had leveled out at Herman Bindagi’s house. Before I could speak he shoved me hard into the revolving door and my face crashed into the glass. He jammed himself in behind me and was pressed against my back, pushing me into the glass.

“Not a hotshot now, are you?” he said as he shoved me again into the glass door.

His partner was on the other side, waiting. I had seconds to think of something. The door rotated open and I was pushed outside. I stopped short and in one motion rammed my right elbow backward into the guy behind me. He groaned as the elbow strike connected. With the same arm I snapped off a face punch to the guy in front of me. My knuckles crunched into his nose, pushing it up and back and snapping his head back, and blood shot out.

I spun around and rammed my knee into the groin of the guy behind me and he yelled and pitched forward. I sidestepped him and he fell into his partner, who took his hand off his face, shoved him aside and came at me.

“I’m going to fucking kill you,” he screamed.

I raised my knee high and snapped off a kick to his groin, and he fell forward. I snapped off another one, this one to his face, and he crumbled to the sidewalk.

“Ohhhhhhh,” was all I heard.

Arms wrapped around me from behind and squeezed my chest like a vise and I felt the air being forced up and out of my lungs. He tightened the grip and the pressure built and my ribs screamed in pain. I tried to inhale and pull in some air. I got a little bit, held it for a second, and tried to draw strength from it. I moved my elbows forward and loaded as much energy into them as I could and then rammed them backward, letting them go with every ounce of force I had. They smashed into his gut and I drove them in as deep as I could.

The guy behind me groaned, and air shot out of his mouth like I had done the Heimlich. His arms fell away and I was free. I snapped my right hand back with a reverse wrist strike hoping to hit his face. The back of my hand smashed against his forehead and he yelped.

Someone yelled and I looked over to the sidewalk and saw Freddie streaking toward me. I took off and raced away from the building toward him.

“Get back in the car. Let’s go,” I said.

There were footsteps coming behind us as the pair crossed the plaza and raced toward the Jeep. We got in and Freddie had the thing started before I got the door closed. He slammed it into drive, cut the wheel, and punched the accelerator. We lurched forward and jerked out into the traffic of Sixth Avenue.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

“She hasn’t called?” Freddie asked.

“No.”

“Where you want to go first?” he asked.

“Not sure.”

“When was the last time you spoke to her?” he asked.

“About twelve thirty.”

“And no texts? No voice mails?”

“Nothing.”

It was almost ten, and I was sure something had happened to her.

“Let’s go by her place,” I said. “See if her doorman has seen her.”

Ten minutes later we pulled up in front of her apartment building on Fifty-fifth Street between First and Second Avenue. I walked in and saw Gene behind the counter. I made every attempt not to sound panicked and asked if he could call up to her apartment.

“No answer,” he said, hanging up. “Everything all right, Sam?”

“I hope so.”

I went back outside and sat in the Jeep.

“You want to swing by her office?” Freddie asked.

“She’s not there,” I said.

Freddie started the engine and we drove and it felt better than sitting still. We went down Second Avenue in silence, staying in the middle of the avenue and catching most of the lights. We passed the strip of restaurants and the big theater complex just below Thirty-fourth Street in Kips Bay. Couples were out. People were going places and doing things.

I heard Rinaldi’s words in my head. The warning about waiting too long to call in the professionals. I looked out at the passing buildings and prayed I hadn’t pushed this too far.

Chapter Sixty-Eight

We had driven around awhile longer, just moving for the sake of moving, before going back to my apartment. We sat and waited for what felt like forever until I couldn’t take it any longer. Now, just before one a.m., we were driving up Sixth Avenue.

“McConnell, or someone connected to him, has Liz,” I said.

Freddie said nothing for a moment, keeping his eyes on the street in front of him as he drove. We pulled to a stop at a red light at Twenty-eighth Street.

“I know,” he said.

“It’s more than twelve hours since I talked to her,” I said.

“And he knows you got it figured out. And that you know something has happened to her,” he said.

“I need to make a move. To do something,” I said.

“He’s making you twist. You done everything you could. Called. Texted. Went by her place. Called her friends. He’s going to come to you when he wants to,” he said. “He’s playing with you now.”

“He’s going to try and strike a deal,” I said.

“Probably try and use Liz as a bargaining chip,” he said. “You for her.”

“Unless he doesn’t see any reason for either one of us to live.”

The light changed and we moved on, passed by cabs and a handful of cars heading up Sixth.

“But McConnell still needs you,” Freddie said. “Still has to find out exactly what you know, and who else you’ve told it to. He’s scrambling, too. About to run for president and you’re going to blow it up on him.”

Freddie pulled the Jeep to the curb in front of Liberty. The same place I was attacked a few hours ago. I scanned the plaza and the sidewalk and didn’t see any sign of the thugs.

“There’s nothing else you can do right now,” Freddie said. “Except wait.”

“I don’t do that well,” I said, as I opened the door and got out.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

I went upstairs to the newsroom, the lights were down and it was as close to empty as it ever got. The room was filled by the eerie flickering of screen savers and the glow from all the TV monitors that were on with the sound down.

I took a right when I walked in and went to the far corner to a hallway lined with four edit suites, each the size of a walk-in closet. I could at least work while I waited rather than sit around and make myself crazy. I would have my taped piece ready to go, and nail McConnell at his big announcement at noon.

I opened the sliding glass door to the first suite, stepped inside and slid the door closed behind me. I sat down at the console with my back to the door and logged onto the computer, then clicked on the icon for the editing software and opened up my script. I leaned over the desktop microphone used to track voiceovers for our taped packages and read out loud, practicing to see how it sounded. I read the script once, then twice, and neither sounded right.

Sitting back, I stared at the words on the screen and tried to concentrate, I tried to focus and played with the script some more, trying to find the right combination of words. I leaned closer to the mic and read it again:

“When Jack Steele was found dead, his body floating in the East River, police ruled it a suicide. But—”

There was a noise behind me, and I jerked around to see the door sliding open and Daniels stepping in. I exhaled in relief and sat back.

“Scared the hell out of me, Cal,” I said. “Maybe you knock next time.”

He didn’t say anything. He just stood there in his navy-blue suit and white shirt, its collar unbuttoned and tie knot off to the side, and stared at me.

“I didn’t think you were still here,” I said. “Give me a half hour and I’ll have this McConnell piece done for you to look at.”

Still, he said nothing. He just stood there at the door, silent and staring down at me like he was in a trance. His face was hard with tension and his eyes were locked on me.

“Cal, I don’t know if you know, but Marty …” I started to say, but had trouble finishing the sentence. “Marty is … dead.”

His expression never changed.

“They found him in some drug den down by the Williamsburg Bridge.”

His face grew red and his eyes angry.

“I know,” he said.

“You do?”

He kept quiet for a moment and the room felt even smaller.

“I was there,” he said.

My body snapped back in the chair as if I had been shoved.

“It was horrible,” he said, his voice sounding like a low growl. “Horrible.”

His hand moved as he reached behind him for the sliding door. He slid it closed, and I shot up and out of the chair and rushed him. He stepped forward and stuck a pistol against my forehead.

“Sit down,” he said.

I hesitated, and he jabbed the barrel of the gun into my forehead.

“Sit the fuck down,” he said.

His eyes were wild and his face grew a deeper red and I sat down.

“You were there?” I asked.

“Marty was a loser, Sam,” he said. “But he was easy to deal with. Promise him a payoff, in this case twenty Gs, and he’d do anything. Even write a suicide note.”

“I got it right,” I said.

He shook his head. “But you, you present a whole other set of problems.”

I stared at the barrel of the gun and kept quiet.

“You know what you’re problem is, Sam?” he asked. “You find out there’s something much bigger going on and you just can’t leave it alone, can you?”

He yanked at his tie knot like it was bothering him.

“You just had to keep pushing and pushing and persisting, didn’t you?” he said. “Bothering everyone with this crazy Robbie Steele shit.”

“I’m stubborn, what can I say?”

He looked at me and shook his head. “Well, now you’re going to be dead,” he said. “Get up.”

Chapter Seventy

“Where’s Liz?” I asked, as we crossed the lobby.

“You’ll see her soon enough,” Daniels said. “Maybe.”

He walked alongside me with the gun stuck in my ribs. I looked over at the guard. His head was back and mouth open, and he was snoring like he was in a competition.

We stepped outside into the warm, musty air, and I scanned the cars at the curb looking for Freddie. There was no sign of him. But there was a black Mercedes at the corner and Daniels was steering me toward it.

“So it was you,” I said.

“Stop talking,” he said.

“You were the connection between McConnell and Marty. I was trying to figure out how he got to Marty. It was you.”

“Shut up,” he said.

“You’re connected to McConnell,” I said. “I don’t know how, but you knew Jack was about to find out about that drug bust.”

Daniels picked up the pace and jammed the gun deeper into my side.

“And you used Marty as the go between,” I said. “Maybe offered him a payoff to keep you updated on what Jack knew about McConnell? Then when things got worse and Jack wouldn’t back off, what’d you do? Up the payoff and have him write the suicide note?”

“Marty did what I told him to do,” he said.

“You used him.”

“He was a fucking mess. He had more debt than the U.S. government. He needed me,” he said.

“And you used him.”

“Shut up. You have no idea of how much I helped that man. You think he could have gotten a job anywhere else in this business? He was weak and dependent. He needed me, Sam.”

“Marty talked to Jack that night,” I said. “Found out Jack was going to meet Barnes. Then what?”

Daniels said nothing, just pushed me along toward the waiting Mercedes.

“He called you, right?” I asked, as we closed in on the Mercedes. “Said everything was a go. But what I can’t figure out is what happened to Barnes. Did he come in to meet Jack? That’s where I get stuck.”

Daniels spoke up as we reached the car.

“Jack was an arrogant and stupid man. All he had to do was sit down and talk to McConnell and this could have been solved. But he was as stubborn as you. He became hell bent on exposing Buck and trying to make an even bigger name for himself.”

“And you knew he was going to be killed?”

“Jack knew full well what the consequences were. You want to fuck with someone as powerful and driven as McConnell, you’re asking for trouble, as you’re about to find out,” he said.

“You going to kill every reporter who tries to expose McConnell?”

“Enough of the self-righteous reporter bullshit, okay?” he said. “Jack was trying to stay relevant. His numbers slip and he panics and thinks he needs to be some crusading journalist. The man was as much a journalist as I am.”

“He was trying to show people what a dirt bag McConnell is,” I said.

“No, he was trying to get his numbers up with a sensational story,” he said. “If he had listened to me, none of this would have happened. Hell, I made him and I could have fixed the numbers if he would have shut up long enough to listen to me.”

Daniels was grinding the gun into me now, getting angrier as we stood there.

“Jack was a drunk fucking DJ when I pulled his ass out of radio,” he said. “You think he would have the tens of millions of dollars, the books, the billboards all over the country, the Fifth Avenue apartment, without me? You think he marries someone like Robbie Steele without me?”

“What the hell did McConnell promise you, Cal?” I said. “Money? A job in the White House if he gets there? What?”

Daniels had the gun in my chest now.

“Get in the car,” he said.

“Why the hell are you protecting McConnell? There has to be something,” I said.

He pushed me toward the back door of the Mercedes. “Let’s just say we go back a ways,” he said.

I turned and we were face-to-face. Close enough for me to see the lines that creased his forehead and wrinkles by the corners of his eyes. A thin coat of sweat lined his brow and his face was rigid with a scowl.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “You went to Harvard.”

His face tightened even more and he smashed the gun into my ribs, I doubled over as my breath rushed up and out of my lungs.

“Shut your fucking mouth,” he said.

I straightened up and looked at him. “The article on the wall of your office,” I said. “You didn’t drop out to support your mother. You got thrown out.”

He shoved me into the side of the car and the door flew open and Bulger jumped out.

“Cal, not here,” he said, moving to the rear of the car.

“That’s it,” I said. “You were there that night. Barnes said there was a third guy at the drug buy. It was you.”

He stepped to me and jammed the gun under my chin and pushed up.

“You need to stop talking,” he said.

“You got booted out of Harvard because of the drug bust, didn’t you?” I asked. “McConnell got Daddy’s lawyers to make the criminal charges disappear, but Harvard was done with you.”

He turned to Bulger. “Get him in the backseat before I shoot his ass right here,” he said.

“It all makes sense,” I said. “There was a chance to make a quick score dealing drugs. Things go wrong, and suddenly you’re thrown out of Harvard, Michael Barnes goes to jail, and Buck McConnell skates through no worse for the experience.”

Bulger opened the back door, grabbed a fistful of my suit at the shoulder, and shoved me inside. “You stupid son of a bitch,” he said. “You couldn’t take a hint from me, could you?”

Daniels piled into the backseat next to me and yanked the door shut, and I heard the locks click.

“You’re so interested in Jack’s last hours,” he said, “we’ll show you exactly what it was like.”