Hack, page 11
We mounted the steps and Ernie elbowed us aside, until he was right next to me, ready to shoot, camera up.
“I got orders to bang away so ring the bell,” he said.
“No,” I told him. “No bell.” I turned the heavy brass door knob.
The front door was unlocked, just as Aubrey had promised. I pushed the door open. The narrow, carpeted hallway was very dark and I clipped a thin table standing against the left wall, rattling something. I went toward a door on the right, light leaking from under it. My breath became stronger, my gut and muscles tensed as I advanced. I felt unarmed. I heard faint barking from the rear of the building; maybe a neighbor’s dog? Suddenly, a dim red light from behind me lit the way. Ernie was doing something with his camera, holding it over my head, pointing where I was going, lighting my way with a red beam.
I opened the door and blinked in the bright light.
He was on his back on a rug, his silent throat and mouth open wide like he had been interrupted mid-rant. Ernie was shooting frantically, his camera flashing and whirring. He was humming as he photographed the slashed throat, hacked open, echoed by the astonished rictus of the mouth. Billionaire Nolan Cushing had tears in his eyes, which had run down either cheek. Perhaps he had cried because someone had pulled his famous helmet hair comb-over aside, where it lay stiff next to his bald scalp like a dead pet. On his other side, there was a pool of sticky red blood, with silver coins and green bills congealed in the mess.
“Fuckin’ great, man,” Ernie muttered.
“Wait,” Jane said. “Isn’t that…?”
“Nolan Fucking ‘Cash’ Cushing,” Ernie answered. “The money guy with the silly comb-over. The one Forsythe publically threatened at the funeral. Yes!”
Jane kneeled next to the body and felt for a pulse. I told her not to touch anything but she ignored me. She began compressing Cushing’s chest and ordered me to call the police. She found a fancy pen inside Cushing’s suit and took it apart. She took the hollow bottom half and jammed it into the bottom of the throat wound, leaving part of it sticking out. She puffed into it and Cushing’s chest rose a bit. Then she returned to the chest, pressing rhythmically.
“He’s fuckin’ dead, lady,” Ernie told her, to no avail.
“I have to try,” Jane answered.
I dialed Izzy’s cell phone.
“What?” Izzy said, obviously emerging from sleep.
I told him. He cursed in Spanish.
“Cushing? Like Neil?”
“Yeah, same throat wound, more posing. Scalped. This time with money all over the place. Oh, I get it. It’s a sight gag, a pun. Blood money.”
“Blood money?”
“You’ll see.”
“What do you mean scalped?” Izzy asked.
“Well not technically ‘scalped.’ They took off his wig. Or, his comb-over.”
“Oh. I’ll be right over. Don’t touch anything.”
I hung up and looked at Jane, still valiantly performing CPR. She stopped, winded, and found a tiny flashlight on her keychain, which she pointed into Nolan’s glazed, lifeless eyes.
“Fixed and dilated. Okay, he’s gone,” Jane said, stopping.
She was smeared in blood. After hearing my “blood money” comment, Ernie worked his way around the sofa and shot the body with the currency in the foreground. Then he shot the whole room, flashing in a circle, documenting it all.
I looked around. We were in a fancy leather den with a gigantic vanity wall of Cushing posing for photographs with people more famous than he was. We were obviously in his home. One of them. I noted that the only photographs that didn’t show Cushing with celebrities had him embracing a corgi with a suicidal expression. Even the dog knew he was a shit.
“Good idea calling the cops before the competition sniffs this out,” Ernie said. “You need me for anything else before I go? I gotta get outta here before the boys in blue show up.”
“Why?” Jane asked.
“You kiddin’? They’ll take my camera. That ain’t gonna happen. Besides, I gotta make the late edition. Hey, Shepherd, anytime you need a shooter, call me direct,” he said, handing me his card. “Thanks, pal. With these shots, I’m gonna get me a Jag, baby.”
“Take a shot of that Altoid mint on the coffee table near the body but don’t give it to the office yet,” I told him. “Hold it back, okay?”
He did so without question, shooting the single white mint from both sides and then he was gone. I took a quick look around the empty townhouse, looking for other surprises. I found none, returned to Jane and called the paper. When I told Badger what I had found, he seemed peeved.
“No Forsythe?”
“He’s not here and won’t answer his phone.”
“I already wrote the bloody headline, mate.”
“Bloody is right. Write another one, mate.”
I told him about the blood money and the de-wigging.
“The blood money’s not bad. ‘Fatso strikes again.’ The hair is brilliant. That’s The Wood. I’ll put you on to rewrite. You know, against my better judgment, I’m beginning to like you, Shepherd.”
“Thank God for that.”
“But no cannibalism this time?”
“Nope. He looks whole. Except for the hair.”
“Pity.”
28.
Izzy was unhappy. We were standing outside in the tiny townhouse yard inside the fence, as the CSI folks worked on the crime scene inside. Izzy became angry when Jane explained her resuscitation efforts. It was getting colder and she was shivering.
“So, you’re not a doctor. You’re a vet. And you just decided to roll around in my crime scene like a chocolate Lab with a bone?” Izzy accused her.
“I had a responsibility as a medical person, and just as a person, to try to preserve a life,” she told him calmly.
“Bull. Look at that thickening blood. This guy has been lying there for hours. He’s as dead as they come. What possessed you to shove a pen into my victim’s throat?”
“You’re saying I should not have tried to save this man’s life? His airway was cut. That was the only way I could get air into him,” she explained.
“Enough. How do I know you two didn’t kill Cushing? I only have your word you didn’t. Look at you—you’re soaked in the victim’s blood.”
Jane looked down at her cocktail dress, tacky with hardening blood, and groaned.
I laughed. I showed Izzy my text from Aubrey and explained we had another witness, my photographer, Ernie.
“Really? Terrific. So where is he? Putting pictures of my crime scene in your paper?”
“Yes. He is,” I admitted.
Izzy cursed, a string of suggestions on how to insert cameras and lenses up inside the human body. I noticed he always seemed to curse in Spanish, his father’s second language, not Yiddish, his mother’s second tongue.
“You can’t do that,” Izzy protested.
“Why not? I heard you say you had notified Cushing’s sister of his death.”
“Yeah but she won’t officially identify his body at the M.E.’s office until the morning.”
“Is there any doubt?” I asked.
Izzy ignored me. “I’m too tired for this mishegoss. I need statements from both of you and elimination prints in the morning at the precinct.”
Jane asked if she could go home and take a shower. Izzy agreed and pointed her towards a cop car for a ride. I was going to kiss her goodbye but her face was still smeared with Cushing’s blood. We promised to speak in the morning.
“Thanks for an interesting evening,” Jane smiled, as she closed the squad car door. “I usually don’t do this on a first date.”
“How do I know that?” I asked her.
“You owe me one cocktail dress,” she said, waving goodbye.
I couldn’t wait to pour her into a new one.
Phil appeared and I followed as he and Izzy walked back into the townhouse.
“You two got any more questions for me?”
Izzy thought about it for a while.
“Off the record, okay?” he said, turning as he opened the front door.
“You saw the Altoid?”
He grunted what might have been a yes.
We entered the crime scene and I shut up and watched from a discreet distance as Izzy did his thing.
“So, Cash, where did the money come from?” Izzy asked the dead man. “Your pockets are inside-out. Did he leave the bills and coins after you were dead? Why didn’t you struggle? You just lay down on the floor and let him slash your throat open? Looks like it. Blood spray by the sofa. You bled out. Were your eyes open or did he open them after you were dead—for effect? Why would Aubrey Forsythe kill you? Because you insulted him at the funeral? So, he kills Neil Leonardi and eats him because he kicked the dog and talked back. He wasted you because you’re against gay marriage and insulted his husband—who he also killed? Nolan, buddy, this does not make any freaking sense.”
“I agree,” I said.
“And what’s with the mint?” Izzy continued.
“Maybe he’s saying our friend also had a hint of mint?”
Phil smirked.
Izzy shrugged, noncommittally.
“The mystery of the mint. It made some kind of sense when it was a food critic’s husband and there was cannibalism involved. This time, it’s what? Social comment on Wall Street? Now it makes no sense.”
“Except as an identifier,” I said. “The mint thing is not out there. Well, Aubrey knows about it but nobody else. He wants us to know it’s the same guy but I don’t think it’s Aubrey.”
“But Forsythe called you here and voila! Another body with stupid visual jokes,” said Izzy. “Aubrey wanted you to find this.”
“Maybe. Aubrey didn’t call. He texted.”
“Right,” said Izzy. “Whatever.”
“No,” Phil pointed out. “Maybe it wasn’t Forsythe.”
“Just someone with his phone, maybe, I get that,” Izzy said.
“Right,” Phil said. “Unless Forsythe came here and found the body and then texted Shepherd.”
“Maybe my photographer scared Aubrey away,” I suggested.
“Hey, Cash, why would Aubrey Forsythe come to your house?” Izzy asked the corpse. “Were you boys secret pals?”
He got no answer.
“If he alerted his favorite reporter to a killing he didn’t commit, how come he didn’t mention the murder in the text?” Izzy demanded. “Why didn’t he stick around, so we would know he was innocent?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Izzy said.
29.
I was a star for another week but then it just stopped. At least the killings did. My New York Mail front page, with Ernie’s photos of Nolan’s flipped wig, went around the world, complete with a nifty nickname for the killer:
SCALPED!
Cushing Ca$hes Out
Hacker Strikes Again
Followed by Ginny and the Daily Press, Izzy and Phil explored every avenue of inquiry, with me occasionally tagging along. Aubrey was Public Enemy Number One and was expected to strike again at any moment. The most likely victim-to-be was Aubrey’s other arch-enemy from Neil’s funeral, Tea Party TV pundit Harley Himmler—who surrounded himself with armed guards, courtesy of our mutual boss, billionaire Trevor Todd. No one could find Aubrey, who didn’t call me, no matter how many messages I left on his cell phone.
Every day without Aubrey, or another murder, enraged Badger and Tal Edgar, who bugged me more and more about my lack of exclusives—as if I controlled the news. They threatened to fire me daily. Having worked at the Mail for two unpleasant weeks, I realized that was just their management style—threaten to fire everyone without an exclusive every day, as a motivational tool. I ignored them and went back to writing my neglected pet column. I delved into grave issues such as what to do when your female cat hisses at your beloved sister, a devoted cat-person, every time she comes over. (Have her wear freshly laundered jeans and shoes that do not smell like her male cat at home. Also, catnip on the socks is a big help.) It was relaxing and I did not care if I never saw another corpse again.
I got into a routine with Skippy, with his morning and evening walks and his new job as leftover food gobbler. It took me a while to cure him of barking every time anyone walked past the apartment door and longer to convince him that a human being could not sleep with a seventy-pound Siberian Husky on their face.
I spoke to Jane several times on the phone but she always seemed to be busy when I asked her out on a second date. It was beginning to look like events during our first encounter had put her off. Go figure. Dear Facebook Friends, after you discover a hacked-up body on your first date, how do you get past that?
Mary Catherine quickly bonded with Skippy and she helped me walk him every few days, so we could talk about the lack of progress on our project.
“Tell me about Tal Edgar,” she said, as Skippy sniffed one of the pathetic trees on my block.
“A bully, like his hatchet man Badger, but much cooler,” I told her. “Actually, he reminds me of a warlord. You know, everybody scurrying around trying to kiss his ass or hide from him while he calmly considers who his next victim will be. He obviously digs it.”
“And Badger?”
“Details and dirty work.”
“So you like him for this?”
“Most likely. I have the intercepts he gave me from Aubrey and Neil’s phones. That’s illegal.”
“Yes but we have no evidence for our case?”
“Nope. Why don’t I really piss them off and see what happens?”
“You’re getting bored,” she scolded. “That’s dangerous.”
“Maybe. But maybe dangerous is the only way,” I suggested.
“Not officially. What did you have in mind?”
“No clue.”
“Oh.”
“I’ll think about it,” I promised her. “I’ll come up with something.”
It was all very relaxing until one morning, after one of our walks, Mary Catherine and I ended up on the front page of the Daily Press.
MASSACRE?
NY Mail star reporter is figure in
shocking GI Kid Slay Shootings
A question mark. In America, you can’t say someone is a child molester without proof. But, if you ask it as a question, you can call anybody anything. Is the president a traitor? The Daily Press had a photo of me in shorts and a t-shirt, holding Skippy’s leash and Mary Catherine in one of her power-dress suits and heels, looking hot outside my apartment building. We were laughing and the competing newspaper twisted that, too.
The photo caption read “Strange Bedfellows? Intrepid Mail reporter Francis X. Shepherd and married Manhattan Federal Prosecutor Mary Catherine Donovan, right, share an intimate laugh outside Shepherd’s Manhattan apartment, along with fugitive Aubrey Forsythe’s dog, Skippy.”
The words made it sound like even Skippy was involved in criminal activity. The use of the word “right” was a dig, as if readers would confuse Mary Catherine with the dog. As if. Of course, the byline was Ginny McElhone’s, and the story was dripping with slime:
New York Mail reporter Francis X. Shepherd seems to have experience with murder. As a U.S. Army sergeant, he commanded a gang of GIs who, some sources say, slaughtered innocent civilians in Afghanistan a year ago, in an incident those sources say may have been hushed up by Pentagon top brass.
At least 11 people, including children, died during the firefight near the city of Khost but no one was ever charged in the killings.
If his close personal friendship with an attractive female federal prosecutor in Manhattan, a former Army buddy of Shepherd’s, had anything to do with his getting off the hook, no one is saying.
No one is saying because no one ever asked. It was like a gossip column item. The story came as a complete surprise; Ginny hadn’t asked for comment before going to press. I laughed but Mary Catherine didn’t.
“Didn’t I warn you that raising your profile was a bad idea? This is just the beginning. Keep your head down. This is only the Daily Press. Now that the Mail knows, and Badger and his boss Edgar are on it, it’s going to get busy. Keep your balls to the wall, Shepherd.”
“You, too, Mary Catherine.”
She paused for thought. “This is bad but it could work to our advantage.”
“I told you I’d think of something.”
“You gave her the story?”
“No. She must have found some paperwork from the VA or the army when I was in the shower. When she stole that DVD of Aubrey in McDonald’s.”
“You were supposed to keep your place clean.”
“My mail was diverted here. I get stuff from Walter Reed. My guess is she found paperwork from the hospital to get her started and the rest she googled.”
“You got sloppy,” she snapped.
“How did she find out we were ‘Army buddies?’”
“I don’t know. If you didn’t tell her, it could have come from my office or my home.”
“I didn’t tell her.”
“Okay, maybe I got sloppy. Could have been someone around me. My assistant maybe. I’ll take care of it. Meanwhile, get ready to rumble.”
“Yes, ma’am. Meanwhile, anything from your people on Aubrey Forsythe?”
“No, not a whisper. Who cares?” she asked.
“I care. Even the U.S. Marshals, with their surveillance net and flying cell tower, got nothing? No credit card use, car rental, video facial recognition, phone intercepts, cell phone chatter, cell tower hits, Netflix rental?”
“Nothing. Zip. I told you.”
“That’s strange.”
“Duh. He’s running from two murder charges. He’s hiding,” she pointed out.
“Yeah but you should have found him in a day or two, tops. This bozo couldn’t hide in a clown convention. He has no fugitive skills and is a big, rich, nasty, spoiled baby.”
“I thought you said he had a huge wad of cash to live on so he could stay off the grid?”
“True.”
“He is not your problem,” Mary Catherine reminded me. “Focus.”
