“You’re crazy if you think I’m going to give you that information.”
“Okay, I’m crazy. But it could help.”
“Sure it could help. And I could lose all my business if my clients find out I’m naming names.”
“But one of them could be the killer.”
“They’ve got the killer. That kid.”
“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. I know you want to help find whoever did this. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have a heart.” I wondered if a heart really did lurk behind that big belly of his. “And if you help now, maybe the cops won’t come down heavy on you. Melissa would never have met Torrey if it weren’t for you.”
Silence. Then, “Two o’clock. Entrance to the Peabody Museum.” He hung up.
The clock read ten to twelve. Seemed like as good a time as any for lunch, but then I spotted Dick and Marty coming around the corner into the newsroom, Dick’s face solemn, Marty’s mouth moving. What was that all about?
Marty saw me watching them and gestured for me to come over. I wasn’t sure I was going to like this.
“We’ve just come from a meeting with Bill Bennett about the Melissa-Allison story.” Marty’s face was flushed. Uh-oh.
“Why didn’t anyone tell me about this? I’m the main reporter on this, not him.” I indicated Dick, who was still uncharacteristically quiet.
Marty steered us into one of the empty conference rooms near the circulation department and closed the door. He turned to me.
“He didn’t like your story about Mark Torrey. Said Torrey’s not involved. David Best was charged, we need to concentrate on him.”
I was speechless.
“Apparently he’s getting some heat from somewhere, and he said unless we have cold, hard facts we’re not to write any more about Torrey or McGee. The Yale murders are moving inside, off the front page.”
I finally found my tongue. “This place is fucking unbelievable.”
Marty sighed. “Listen, for what it’s worth, I agree with you. I think there’s something dirty with Torrey. I got a call from someone I know at City Hall who said we should keep digging, because if it comes out, the shit could hit the fan.”
“What could come out?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. But she said we’re on the right track.”
“Kind of like Deep Throat.” So Dick wasn’t unconscious.
“I talked to my mother. She said if I kept talking to Torrey, I could be charged with obstruction of justice.”
Marty’s eyes grew wide. “Is there a complaint or a warrant for his arrest that we don’t know about?”
Dick and I looked at each other. We’d been so wrapped up in these murders that we had let some things slide. Like routine cop checks, where we actually go to the police station because they won’t tell anyone anything over the telephone.
“I’ll take that as a ‘we don’t know,’” Marty said. “Get over there and find out.”
“Which one?” Dick asked.
“Which one what?” I could hear Marty’s exasperation.
“Which one of us do you want to go over there?”
Marty rolled his eyes. “Annie. It’s her beat, those guys will talk to her.” I could hear what he didn’t say. Dick’s attitude with the cops had gotten him a reputation no reporter should ever have with a source. They thought he was an annoying asshole and cut him off cold. Although I could be the most abrasive person I’d ever met, and sometimes I’m even bothered by my own abrasiveness, somehow the cops seem to like that in a woman. I think Tom first got turned on when I was working the night beat and I made a smart-aleck comment about his handcuffs.
So it wasn’t subtle. But I got what I wanted.
Speak of the devil, Tom was coming in just as I arrived at the station.
“Did you get anything on that note?” I asked, hoping he’d gotten nothing. I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out who my stalker was.
“No. Not yet. But they’re working on it.”
“Is there a warrant for Mark Torrey’s arrest?” I didn’t have enough time to beat around the bush, since I was supposed to meet Hickey.
Tom’s eyes narrowed, and I knew he was going to lie.
“Don’t give me any bullshit, Tom. Is there or isn’t there?”
“I’m not working on that,” he answered, skirting the question.
So there was some sort of investigation. “Who is?”
He shrugged. “It doesn’t have anything to do with this department.”
“But there is something going on?”
Tom took my arm and led me over to the corner. “You have to get information from someone else,” he hissed in my ear. “I’m getting all sorts of shit, and it’s because of you.”
I wanted to remind him of the handcuffs, but it would only piss him off even more. We were swimming over our heads in the pool of conflict of interest, and I was pretty certain one of us was going to go down. Right then it seemed like it would be Tom, but we would both lose in the end.
“Then just tell me who I should ask about this and I’ll leave you alone,” I whispered.
He pulled back a little, and I could see the circles under his eyes. He’d been working overtime and not getting much sleep. “It’s out of our jurisdiction. Talk to the feds.” He started to walk away.
“The FBI?” I asked, too loud because the desk sergeant looked up.
Tom sighed. “See ya.”
My watch said 1:45 and I had to get going to meet Hickey, but I wanted to call my source at the FBI. I walked across the street to the train station and dialed the familiar number on my cell phone.
I’d met Paula Conrad at one of my mother’s dinner parties. She’d been dating an up-and-coming lawyer and I could see she was suffering as much as I was. We’d locked ourselves in the upstairs bathroom, which is as big as my apartment, and smoked cigarettes until my mother knocked on the door, asking if we planned to burn the house down or if we were trying to kill ourselves by asphyxiation. Since Paula had a mother who was exactly like mine, we became immediate friends.
I didn’t like to call her at work. While I didn’t mind risking my reputation by sleeping with Tom and trying to get information from him at the same time, I always felt that if I needed something from the feds, I could try to get it from the public information guys and leave Paula out of it.
But desperate times call for desperate measures. I never got anything out of the PR guys except the most basic information, and I might be able to get something from Paula that I could actually use.
“Hey, what’s up? I haven’t seen you in a while.” Paula was always in a good mood. In most people that would annoy the hell out of me.
“I’m working on these murders.”
“Oh, yeah. I’ve read about it. What a shame.” And she was really sorry about it, too. There was no bullshit.
“I hate to cut to the chase, since it’s been ages, but I need some information. I know I don’t ordinarily ask you, but I’m hitting a lot of closed doors on this.”
“Mark Torrey.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“I saw his connection to that dead girl. I figured someone would come around asking questions.”
“What’s up with him? Why is he so hot?”
I heard her ruffle some papers on her desk. “We got tipped off a couple of months ago that he might be ripping off a lot of people.”
“Ripping off how?” I was acutely aware of the time. I didn’t want to push her, but I didn’t want to be late for my appointment with Hickey, either.
“He says he’s a financial adviser, but he doesn’t have a stockbroker’s license, even though he’s telling people he’s got one. He takes people’s money and says he’s investing it in all sorts of things, mutual funds, CDs, stocks. But the money’s disappearing. He’s been submitting false statements to his investors.”
“Whose money is he taking?”
Paula chuckled. “Your mother’s, for one.”
I almost dropped the phone. “What?”
“And a bunch of people in her circle.”
“Why isn’t it local? Why are you guys investigating?”
“His company, McGee, is based in New York, and he’s doing business here, too, so he’s crossing state lines. We also think he’s stashing the money in the Channel Islands. It’s a pretty sophisticated scam. We’re not the only ones who want him. The Securities and Exchange folks are pretty pissed, too, as well as the IRS. He hasn’t paid his taxes.” She paused. “By the way, you talked to him, didn’t you?”
I could tell it wasn’t a casual question. She really wanted to know, and for professional reasons. Okay, I’d crossed the line of our friendship by trying to get information out of her, so I owed it to her.
“Yeah. Met him in an office on Orange Street, but I don’t know where he is now. The phone number I had is now out of service.”
“Shit. I was hoping he’d stay in touch with you. He hasn’t been to City Hall or his house in a week.”
“Didn’t you know about the apartment at University Towers?”
“Not until I saw your story. We checked it out, but it was clean.” I heard her sigh. “Goddamned local cops don’t tell us shit.”
I knew that worked both ways, though, so I kept my mouth shut.
“We’ve been wondering where he’s been running his business from,” Paula continued. “I’ll need that Orange Street address.”
I gave it to her.
“Torrey did call me this morning, but he said he wasn’t happy with the story and our ‘relationship’ was over.”
“That’s too bad.”
A thought crossed my mind. “Was my mother the one who tipped you off?”
She was quiet, too quiet. Then, finally, “I really can’t say.” But she told me without telling me.
I was going to push her for more, but my watch hands were precariously close to two o’clock. “Listen, Paula, I have to meet someone. Can I call you back?”
“Sure. But if Torrey does call you again, please let me know right away.”
I promised her I would and hung up.
Hickey wasn’t in front of the museum, so I’d rushed Paula for nothing. I paced up and down on the sidewalk, mulling over what she’d said to me, when a white Toyota sedan with a dent in the rear passenger’s-side door pulled up beside me. The rear passenger window was rolled down, but I couldn’t see inside, there were too many shadows and the angle was all wrong.
“Get in,” a male voice echoed.
I looked around and pointed a finger at my chest. “Who, me?”
The door opened, and my reflexes made me step backward, away from the car.
“Get in the car!”
I kept walking backward, praying I wouldn’t be gunned down like a dog, when Vinny appeared out of nowhere beside me and the car door slammed shut and the Toyota sped off.
“You don’t have your gun,” he said quietly.
“What’s going on?”
“I keep trying to tell you you shouldn’t get involved in all this.”
“Are you following me?”
Vinny grinned. “Sue me. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
“You just want to see if I lead you to Mark Torrey, who was probably in that car. Why didn’t you go after it if you’re such a hotshot private eye?”
He shrugged. “Why do you think it was Torrey in that car?”
“Who else would it be?”
“You think he wants to talk to you?”
I sighed. I was tired of this cat-and-mouse shit. It was turning out to be the longest day I’d ever had, and it was barely half over. “I know about Torrey. I know he ripped off my mother and a bunch of other people.”
“You have good sources.”
“I’m a good reporter.”
“I’m not saying you aren’t. Don’t get so defensive.”
“Just leave me alone, okay? I’m tired of seeing you all over the place. I’m supposed to meet someone here, and I don’t want you to scare him away.”
“Does your meeting have anything to do with Mark Torrey?”
“It’s none of your fucking business.”
“I like it when you sweet-talk me.” His eyes were dancing, and his resemblance at this moment to Frank Sinatra was even stronger than usual. My eyes settled on his lips, and for a second I wondered what would happen if I leaned over and kissed him.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, too,” he whispered, moving so close he brushed his arm against mine. The connection startled me, pushed me out of the moment. I backed up.
“I don’t even want to go there,” I said.
“Might be fun.”
“Yeah, in another lifetime.”
“I don’t think he’s going to show.”
His change of topic threw me. “Who?”
“Your appointment.”
“He’ll be here.”
Vinny shook his head. “I don’t think so. Want to go in?”
I had no clue what he was talking about, but then he indicated the museum. I had fond memories of the Peabody Museum, the reconstructed dinosaur bones, the bird room, getting kicked out of Girl Scouts because I was caught smoking in the back during a field trip. I wasn’t up to a trip down memory lane, though. I shook my head. “I have stuff to do.” Although I wasn’t really sure what my next move would be.
“You’ll tell your mother I didn’t say anything to you about Torrey?”
It had crossed my mind that I would let my mother think Vinny told me, just to get him back, but then she’d get pissed at him and he’d have to bear her wrath and I didn’t want to do that to anyone.
“No, I won’t say anything.”
“Thanks.” He started to walk away.
“Are you going to keep following me?” I asked loudly.
He turned, cocking his head in a very Sinatra way, and I was attracted to him again for about a nanosecond. “Maybe I will, maybe I won’t.”
I was about to say something, but I heard my name being called behind me. It was Hickey.
“Sorry I’m late.”
I turned back to try to finish up with Vinny, but he’d disappeared in that really annoying way he had. I concentrated on Hickey. “That’s okay.”
“Let’s go inside.”
It was starting to drizzle, and while an afternoon at the museum with Vinny had been out of the question, I could more easily talk to Hickey while warm and dry. We bought a couple of tickets and moved into the dinosaur room, as if there were no other room to see. The bones climbed high over our heads, and we stared at them for a few minutes to give them the respect they deserved.
Hickey sat down on one of the benches, and I sat next to him. There was only one other person in the room, across from us, hovering near the prehistoric turtle skeleton.
“So what do you want to know?” he asked. His eyes skirted around the room, as if someone was going to pounce on us.