Hack (24 page)

The main story, “BAIL FOR THE MAIL?” featured a grainy color photo from my baseball cap videocam, provided anonymously by Mary Catherine and U.S. taxpayers, of a snarling Lucky Tal Edgar at his desk. The caption underneath was sweet. “We Will Have You Killed and We’ll Sleep Like Babies.
Mail
editor ‘Lucky’ Tal Edgar threatens
Daily Press
reporter if he reveals alleged criminal activity by
New York Mail
employees now being investigated by police.”

A little video camera logo directed readers to view the full video on the website. It even caught my little run-in with security and my flying fax machine. The main story said Lucky Tal, Badger and the HR thugs were under suspicion in the serial killings, partly because of the revelation of a cell phone video taken by a pedestrian of a sloshed Pookie being hustled into a car by two detective-looking guys less than an hour before I received the text sending me to Central Park the first time. This was Ginny’s exclusive. Funny thing, the guy told Ginny he first sold his fuzzy video to the
Mail
’s photo desk for $5,000 but they never ran it. Buried. Luckily he had kept his original copy on his phone. Eventually, the guy pitched it to the
Daily Press
photo desk, hoping to double his money. The story said investigators had a dragnet out for Matt Molloy and would today try to question Lucky Tal and Badger but that was not the only news.

There was a full read on the Joyce case. Sean Joyce was the white city cop who had shot and killed a twelve-year-old black boy in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn two years earlier. First, according to
Mail
records exclusively obtained by the
Daily Press
, two
New York Mail
“Human Resources” employees—actually security staff and former cops Leslie and Molloy—bugged the family and attributed the dirt they got to a source close to Joyce. In a cell-phone chat with another cop, a devastated Joyce, himself a dad, said the dead boy who fired a blank from a realistic-looking pistol was “a poor dumbass” for waving a toy gun at a uniformed cop. At the time, the
Mail
quoted Joyce as calling his young victim a “dumbass,” sparking outrage. Somehow, a civil rights group known for threatening violence was given Joyce’s home address and the
Mail
photographed the resulting ugly demonstration. There were death threats. Because Joyce would not talk, the paper took long lens photographs of the Joyce kids and blackmailed their father into an exclusive interview to prevent publication of the images. The cop cried and said he wished he could bring the dead kid back. The next morning, he checked into a local motel and blew his brains out.

There was also documentation for more blackmail in major cases, more hacking into phones and computers and emails. When the
Mail
couldn’t get someone to give an interview, they opened their mail and burglarized their home. There was so much incriminating material that the
Daily Press
promised that today’s coverage was just the first in a series.

I had the cab pull over at a bakery, then resumed my journey. Jane answered the door of her townhouse and I could hear Skippy barking, a good bark.

“Paperboy,” I told her. “Collect.”

“It’s too early for emotional scenes,” Jane said.

But she didn’t close the door. She was barefoot, in red tartan PJ pants and a lacy t-shirt.

“So let’s not have an emotional scene. Let’s just talk. I brought the papers and breakfast,” I smiled.

“I’ve had enough of newspapers and killings,” she said.

Skippy appeared behind her, bouncing and yipping at me, eager to play.

“Somebody wants to see me.”

She gave up and let me in. I had to spend ten minutes catching up with Skippy before I could sit down at Jane’s kitchen table, as she opened and served the bagels and fixings.

“I was with Ginny only once—before us,” I blurted out.

She shrugged, a tough customer.

“It’s not over because it never started. She seduced me so she could pump me for information,” I protested.

“You poor thing.”

“She practically raped me.”

“Rape is not a funny subject,” she said.

“No. But you overreacted.”

“Maybe,” she allowed.

She toasted the bagels, put on coffee and we ate. The room was filled with morning sun and her garden out back was green and full of flowers. Skippy begged. I showed her the
Mail
first.

“I don’t want to see that thing again,” she said, after seeing the piece on my parents, headlined “SOUR APPLE FALLS NOT FAR FROM TREE.” “What are we going to do about it?” she asked. “You have to sue them.”

“I prefer to settle out of court,” I said, handing her the
Daily Press
.

She put down her bagel and lox and devoured the paper.

“That’s more like it! I can’t believe how fast you did this. Those bastards. So, the
Mail
has been hacking into people’s phones and computers and bugging them for information? They basically killed that poor cop. They all should be locked up. So, you work for the
Daily Press
now?”

“For the moment,” I said. “As long as it’s fun.”

“You are crazy,” she told me.

“I’m crazy about you, baby.”

“That didn’t sound anything like Bogart,” she giggled.

“I was trying for Bruce Willis.”

“What happens next?” she asked.

“Sorry, that’s confidential.”

“I could seduce you for the information.”

“That’s what I was hoping.”

Later, in bed, she cried again.

“Did you ever feel like you’ve thrown your life away?” she asked.

“You’re talking to a guy who’s spent the last ten years in deserts and mountains, killing people for $54,000 a year.”

“My husband… after he died… I thought we were this amazing couple. But his girlfriends came to his wake. It was surreal. I only knew two of them. One was his secretary, another a neighbor. The others were strangers to me. Even my poor parents noticed. A few wanted to confess to me so they could feel better. Imagine. I wanted to kill them. I wanted to kill him but I just cried, like a silly woman.”

“Jane, why do you have a shrine to him?”

“To remind me not to get fooled again.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Yeah, sorry. You should know what you’re getting into.”

“I’m getting you,” I told her. “You’re the best thing that has ever happened in my life.”

“You poor dumb bastard,” she laughed.

Lucky Tal and Badger were like Wile E. Coyote in the old Roadrunner cartoons, walking over the cliff, defying gravity—until they noticed they were walking on air and fell. Badger no longer looked like his name or even a weasel. He looked like a whipped dog, his head down, as he was escorted from Central Booking at Police Headquarters, his hands cuffed behind his back. Lucky Tal did not hide. He lumbered between two cops and smiled as if this were all one big joke he was playing on us all, which, in a way, it was. When he spotted me among the reporters behind the blue barricades, his face changed to a feral stare of hatred and then quickly to one of joviality. He winked at me.

At their arraignment at the Manhattan Criminal Courts Building, in the same courtroom where Aubrey Forsythe had been arraigned, Lucky Tal looked bored and impatient, like he couldn’t wait to get back to work. He reminded me of senior Taliban captives. They didn’t fear us and knew they would be ransomed or broken out of prison. Why wasn’t this guy worried? Both men were charged with illegal wiretapping, conspiracy to commit burglary and a few other items. No felonies. That was why. The charges were nothing. They would walk.

The judge set ridiculously high bail of $50,000 cash each but a company lawyer posted it instantly. He had wads of cash in his briefcase. Lucky Tal and Badger got into a waiting limousine and took off without talking to the press. Of course, they had their own press and hours until deadline.

Izzy, Mary Catherine and Jane were waiting at a back booth in a nearby pub, where we were supposed to celebrate. Nobody felt like it.

“Those were the heaviest charges we could bring until we can investigate all the other stuff,” Izzy apologized. “If we find hard evidence linking Molloy and Leslie to Pookie’s killing, we can indict Molloy as a prime mover and these two assholes as co-conspirators. We’re just getting started.”

“I got serious vibes from Lucky Tal today,” I said. “They’re not going to sit still and wait for us to come after them. If they killed three people for headlines, why wouldn’t they kill us to make this go away?”

“But we’re not witnesses against them or anything,” Jane pointed out.

“I am,” I corrected her. “Badger showed me illegally obtained messages from Aubrey’s and Neil’s phones. I can also testify about my little video from the other day.”

“They will try character assassination in their newspaper and website, probably other outlets of the company, like the TV stations, but I can’t see them getting physical now that this is in the open,” Mary Catherine said. “It would backfire. I mean, they hacked the First Lady’s phone.”

“I agree with you, Shepherd,” Izzy said, casually switching his chair so he had a good view of the door. “We have to assume that these scumbags will push back. Maybe hard. Mary Catherine and I carry guns but you don’t. We should talk about that.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine,” I said.

“Terrific,” Jane said, as a waitress arrived to take our order.

The smear campaign against me suddenly vanished from the pages of the
New York Mail.
The publisher, elderly billionaire Trevor Todd, was quoted in the paper saying he had ordered a full investigation of the affair and suspended, without pay, two possible rogue employees who were suspected of alleged illegality. Amazingly, he was referring to Jack Leslie and Matthew Molloy. Could they suspend a dead man? Not a word about Lucky Tal or Badger, who were out on bail. Todd said he had absolutely no knowledge of any wrongdoing and was confident that if any mistakes had been made in the exercise of journalism, they were unintentional. Any possible mistakes were perhaps committed by two misguided employees. End of story.

The
Daily Press
, with its new star reporter—me—continued to pummel the
Mail
with past cases, including the hacking of the mayor’s car. The
Mail
had figured out how to access the phone, GPS and audio system of his SUV, so they could listen in to what was being said in the vehicle, eavesdrop on telephone conversations, and always locate Hizzonner.

Skippy and I tried to get back into our routine but I was working the same long hours, just for a different newspaper. To complicate things, Izzy insisted on calling me all the time and made me promise to let him know where I was going at all times.

“What’s new, Izzy?” I asked, when he called my cell at midnight.

“A few things. You leaving work?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“No. I’m a newspaper reporter.”

“Forget it.”

“Just joking. You know I can keep a secret. What is it?”

“Top secret. Your buddy, Don Badger, is going to roll on his boss. The DA is setting up the deal. He says Lucky Tal made him do it. And the big boss, the old man, Todd, he’s in on the whole deal. He ordered it in the first place.”

“That is excellent news.”

“Yup. Don’t tell anyone, even your girlfriend.”

“Okay, no problem. This means we got them, Izzy.”

“Yeah, I think it does, amigo. Talk to you in the morning.”

I hooked a cab, hopped in behind the driver, and dozed off on the way. Car horns disturbed my nap a few blocks from home. I opened my window and let the warm air wake me up. I yawned and tried to figure out what Badger testifying for the prosecution would mean. It would bring down the
Mail
, maybe Todd’s whole empire. Maybe. Robert Joyce, the dead cop’s brother would appreciate that but nothing could bring back the dead.

When the cab stopped I paid in cash and asked for a receipt to hand in with my expenses. I slid across the seat and opened the right rear door, as the cabbie printed the receipt. I started to step out onto the sidewalk, when I realized the cabbie, as usual, had brought me to the wrong address. My apartment was two doors down the block, in the third of the identical buildings.

That was when I saw the guy. He was a watcher, about a hundred feet away on the opposite side of Broome Street. He was casually leaning against a lamppost on the sidewalk, watching my doorway. I froze. My gut felt hollow. He was smoking a cigarette and wearing an open long coat, far too heavy for the warm night. A black tube poked out from under the coat, pointing toward the ground. Right side. Good enough for me. I jumped back in the cab just as the man calmly turned his head in my direction, calm, just checking us out.

“Just remembered something,” I told the confused cabbie. “I need to go back to work. Fast. Do a U-turn, okay. Let’s go.”

“Can’t. This is a one-way. One sec,” he said, flipping on the interior light and picking up a clipboard from the seat.

Damn.

I didn’t want to tell the clueless cabbie there was maybe a dangerous man up ahead because he might freak or refuse. I just needed him to drive away. Now.

Too late. The guy down the block turned and squinted at us. His whole demeanor changed, although he was trying to fake casual. He flicked his butt into the street and began to stroll down the sidewalk toward us. I couldn’t see his hands anymore.

“Either take off now or I’ll get out,” I told the driver.

“What’s the problem?” he asked, the light still on, still in PARK.

The guy down the block was looking right at my face, lit up inside the cab.

Time to go.

I popped the passenger door, ignoring the cabbie’s questions and left it open. I ran fast and low on the sidewalk, back down the block, trying to keep the cab between me and my pursuer. He was right-handed, going in front of the cab onto the sidewalk, so I jogged right, catching a glimpse of him running after me, coat flapping, bringing the gun up. I sprinted across the narrow street toward a foot-thick tree trunk and crooked my arm out like a hook, as if I was a stripper aiming for a pole. I peeked back and saw that the man had stopped in the road, aiming from the shoulder. I spun around behind the tree and sat down hard, as the weapon rattled fast. Full auto. I couldn’t see it but the sound was unmistakable. An AK. He stitched my hiding place, emptying a full thirty-round magazine into the tree, some bullets sparking off the pavement. Asshole. Maybe not—two or three rounds splintered all the way through the tree, inches over my head, showering me with hot, sappy splinters and bark. I couldn’t see any other trees wider than my leg on my escape route. I heard shouting from the direction of my apartment building, then three quick shots, but the rounds weren’t coming my way. Another shooter? I peered around the tree. The first attacker had hesitated and was turned toward the other gunfire, unsure. Time to go. I crouched like a runner at the starting line. Now he was getting much closer, walking towards me, eyes down. Reloading.