Bury the Lead Read online

  I’ve known Vince for about a year. He’s cantankerous and obnoxious on the surface, but when you chip that away and dig deeper, you find him to be surly and disagreeable. You probably could say Vince and I have become good friends, if your definition of “friends” isn’t too rigid. We’re not “Ya-Ya Brotherhood” types, but we hang out some in sports bars and trade insults, which fits my definition pretty well.

  Vince usually starts off our conversations with five minutes of complaining, but he doesn’t do that when I arrive this time. Instead, he offers me a chair and starts telling me what’s on his mind, almost like a normal human would do. “I want to hire you,” he says.

  Since I’m a criminal attorney, I’m surprised. Under all the bluster, Vince is a straightforward, ethical guy. “Are you in some kind of trouble?” I ask.

  “Of course not. I want you to represent the paper. Not officially. Like a consultant.”

  Vince’s paper is owned by a newspaper syndicate, which employs lawyers by the barrelful. “You already have lawyers. What do you need me for?”

  “They’re idiots. Besides, you’ll be dealing only with me. They won’t even know about you. You’ll be my own private idiot.”

  I’m not understanding any of this. “So you’re going to pay me?”

  “Pay you? Are you out of your mind?”

  My friends share two common views about money. They think they don’t have enough, and that I have too much. “This is what I do for a living, Vince. I’m a lawyer. I got an A in money grubbing in law school.”

  He throws up his arms in an exaggerated gesture. “Fine. You want my money? No problem.” He yells out so he can be heard beyond the closed office door. “Shirley! Don’t mail that check to the Orphans Fund! I need it to pay the big-time lawyer!” He turns to me, shaking his head in disgust. “It’s just as well. Little brats don’t have parents, they think that entitles them to three meals a day.”

  I know that Vince is lying; I would know that even if he had a secretary named Shirley. But I’m not going to get any money out of him, and I’m curious as to what is going on, so I accept a jelly donut as a retainer. For the rather rotund Vince, it’s a significant payment.

  Vince describes his concern about the newspaper’s position in the Daniel Cummings matter. He has no idea why the killer has chosen Cummings as his conduit, and though he loves the resulting boost in circulation, as a journalist he’s uncomfortable that his newspaper seems to have become part of the story.

  “These last couple of weeks there have been more cops in here than reporters,” he says.

  “But you’ve been cooperating?”

  “Of course. I mean, there’s no source to protect, right? Daniel’s only source is the killer, and he has no idea who he is.”

  “So what are you worried about?” I ask.

  “I’m not sure. Nothing specific, but who knows where this is gonna go? Who knows what the cops are gonna ask us to do?”

  This doesn’t seem like Vince; he’s usually far more confident and decisive than this. “Okay,” I say, “I’ll keep an eye on things. I’ll have to talk to Cummings.”

  Vince nods. “I told him you would. Just so you’ll know, he’s not thrilled about it.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugs. “He seems to think you’re a major pain in the ass.”

  “You told him that?”

  “I didn’t use the word ‘major.’ I used the word ‘total.’ He also doesn’t want you interfering with how he does his job.”

  I nod. “I don’t expect to. Is he a good reporter?”

  “As good as any I’ve ever had,” he says. “When do you want to talk to him?”

  “How’s tomorrow morning? Around eleven? And I’ll want the stories he’s written on the murders to read through tonight. Plus the stories in the other papers.”

  “Done,” he says. “Laurie back yet?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “Maybe if you’d take on some clients, she wouldn’t have to go work for somebody else. Hey, why don’t you put her on this case?”

  Laurie is a former police officer whom I employ as my private investigator. There is no way she’d want to work on this. “First of all, this isn’t a ‘case,’” I say. “Second of all, she likes to be paid in money, not donuts.”

  He takes a big bite out of a glazed one. “Women don’t know what they’re missing.”

  • • • • •

  TARA GREETS ME at the door when I get home. She has a tennis ball in her mouth, a not-so-subtle reminder that I haven’t taken her to the park in two days. I drop off the stories Vince gave me and we head out.

  The place we go to is called Eastside Park, less than five minutes from my house on Forty-second Street in Paterson, New Jersey. It’s the house I grew up in, the house that contains every memory worth remembering. I moved back in after my father died, and feel like I’m home, now and forever.

  Paterson has always been considered a good place to leave, and getting out was long regarded as a sign of upward economic mobility. For that reason, even though I’m still there, I am in touch with very few of my childhood friends, who have headed for parts wealthier.

  Going to Eastside Park always brings back memories of those friends and the times we shared. It’s where we played baseball, football, and tennis, where we tried to look cool in the futile hope that the girls would notice us. It’s also where I hit my one high school home run. It was against East Paterson High, a city we never had much respect for, mainly because any place that names itself based on its direction from Paterson can’t have too much going for it. We were obviously right, since they’ve since changed their name to Elmwood Park.

  But back to the home run. I can still feel the ball hit the bat, can still remember flying around the bases as the left fielder tried to field it. It should have been scored a triple and an error. I knew that then and know it now. But my cousin was the scorekeeper, he ruled it an official home run, and nothing can ever change that.

  I didn’t have Tara in that distant past, which automatically means the present is a hell of a lot better. We toss the ball around for about fifteen minutes. I don’t throw it quite as far as I used to; Tara is eight years old and starting to slow down. Considering the implications of that sends very real spasms of anxiety through my gut. And since I’m not a big fan of self-inflicted gut spasms, I avoid such thoughts at all costs.

  When we’re done, we stop at a coffee shop with outdoor tables. I get an iced coffee, and Tara has water and a bagel. Her favorite is cinnamon raisin, probably because she knows I don’t like them and therefore won’t steal any. As we usually do, we hang out for a half hour, which gives Tara enough time to be petted by fifty or so passersby.

  We stop off on the way home to pick up a pizza and some beer. The NFL season is opening tonight, and I want to get it started on the right note. I’ll just have enough time to go over the papers Vince gave me before kickoff.

  Once we get home, I inhale the pizza and plant myself on the couch with beer, potato chips, and dog biscuits. I bounce up and down lightly a few times to test out the couch, making sure it feels right, since I’ll be spending the entire football season here. Tonight’s stay will be of relatively short duration; Saturdays and Sundays, on the other hand, can last for ten straight hours, the only interruptions occasional trips to the bathroom. I’ve considered a bedpan, or a couchpan if they make them, but I’m not sure Laurie would fully understand.

  With two hours until kickoff, I start reading the material Vince gave me. Cummings’s initial story on the murders appeared the day after the first killing. The victim was Nancy Dempsey, a thirty-four-year-old nurse who left her house in Paterson on a Monday evening, announcing to her husband that she was going to the supermarket. Her naked body was found the next morning in a vacant lot two miles from her home, strangled from behind. Her hands were severed and have not been found.

  After reading Cummings’s piece, I read the coverage of the same murder in the othe
r two local papers. Cummings has a quality to his work that comes through in every paragraph, a unique style and ability that his competitors lack. There is an edge to his words, a scorn for the killer, that makes his otherwise straightforward reporting come alive, and is quite compelling.

  Cummings’s article clearly struck a chord in the killer as well, as he contacted the reporter that very afternoon. Thus began a cat and mouse game, chronicled by the articles, during which the killer has kept a running communication with Cummings, who in turn has been cooperating with the police. The stories reflect the need to keep the public informed, while maintaining certain areas of secrecy that the police want preserved.

  Two more murders have taken place since, with approximately a one-week interval between them. Victim 2 was a sixty-two-year-old grandmother of three, Betty Simonson, intercepted in Ridgewood while returning home from a canasta game. Victim 3 was a twenty-one-year-old prostitute, known only as Rosalie, murdered last night in Passaic. These two women were also found naked and strangled from behind, with both of their hands severed and removed from the scene.

  Cummings has been placed in an extraordinarily difficult situation and seems to have responded well. The stories are revealing and riveting without being overly exploitive. He describes his conversations with the killer in great detail, right down to the inflections in the man’s voice. If he is uncomfortable in his dual role as journalist and informant, he’s hiding it well. In fact, he seems to relish it; in each article he places himself as part of the lead. And through it all comes his intense, though understandable, disdain for the psycho who has chosen him as his messenger.

  Tara jumps on the couch, alerting me to the fact that game time is approaching. I call Danny Rollins, my bookmaker, and place a bet on the Falcons plus five points against the Rams.

  I know there have been many significant inventors and inventions throughout the course of human history. Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, the Wright Brothers . . . these are men who had a dream and realized it, and they received justified praise for their work. But the greatest invention of them all goes unappreciated, and its creator remains anonymous. I of course am referring to the point spread.

  The point spread turns every football game into an even match and therefore makes it eminently watchable. The Little Sisters of the Poor could play Nebraska, and if you give them enough points, people will bet on them. It is pure Americana. Every team, no matter how disadvantaged, has an equal opportunity. My eyes fill up with tears as I think about it, and Tara snuggles next to me, obviously caught up in the emotion of the moment as well.

  Unfortunately, in this case the point spread isn’t quite enough, and the Falcons, and I, lose by seventeen. I’m undaunted, though; it’s a long season, and I’m not going to get through it by panicking over a single loss.

  I’m in bed within five minutes of the final gun, and maybe ten seconds after that I’m trying to figure out how to fall asleep with this huge pit in my stomach. It’s not just the potato chips and pizza, it’s the fact that Laurie isn’t here.

  Laurie is my investigator and my lover and my best friend. We became romantically involved while I was separated from my former wife, which I guess means she got me on the rebound. If that’s true, she’s the best rebounder this side of Shaquille O’Neal, because I am in a permanent state of smitten.

  Though we have separate residences, Laurie and I stay together at least half the time. Unfortunately, she has been in Chicago for ten days, working on a fraud case for an insurance company. It’s been a long ten days.

  I spoke to her this morning, and she said she was going to be having dinner with some friends tonight, but I try calling her at her hotel anyway. She isn’t in her room. It’s eleven o’clock in Chicago, and she’s still out on the town? Who has dinner at eleven o’clock? And if you do, when do you have a midnight snack? Four in the morning?

  What kind of floozy am I involved with?

  • • • • •

  I SLEEP THROUGH the alarm and then take my time walking Tara in the park, never once looking at my watch. It wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to peer into my subconscious to find out what’s going on. I want to be late for the “investors’ meeting,” called for nine o’clock in my office.

  I arrive at ten after and they’re all there, eager to get started and staring daggers at me for causing the delay. There’s Edna, my dedicated secretary, who normally doesn’t come strolling in until past ten; Kevin, my Laundromat-owning associate, who judging by the strewn wrappers appears to be on his fourth apple turnover; and Willie, the death row inmate-turned-Warren-Buffett-wanna-be. Only Laurie is missing, but she is going to participate from Chicago over the speakerphone.

  Leading the meeting is Freddie Connors, the stockbroker who happily stepped into this windfall of fresh investment money by having the good fortune to be Edna’s cousin. He smiles at me. “Andy, we were afraid you weren’t going to make it.”

  “God forbid” is my response.

  Kevin, Edna, and Laurie all have money to invest because of me. I received a commission of over a million dollars from the Willie Miller settlement, and since I have all the money I could ever need, I split it up among them. I don’t regret doing so, and it is certainly not the reason that I’m feeling somewhat bitter.

  Cousin Freddie’s style is to present investment alternatives and to encourage us to actively participate in the decision making. As a group, we have gradually split into two camps. Willie is the unlikely leader of one of the camps, and I lead the other. In Willie’s camp are Edna, Kevin, and Laurie. In my camp is me.

  If this were camp color war, my team color would be beige. I study charts, look at the numbers, and make the logical, safe selection. Willie comes up with off-the-wall ideas, hatched in that fairy-tale land he calls a mind, and everything he touches turns to his team color, gold.

  My team is getting its beige ass kicked.

  Freddie gets Laurie on the speakerphone and then updates us on the status of our investments. In two months their collective portfolios have gone up almost eleven percent, while mine has gone down one point five. I hide my humiliation and nod wisely, as if financial retreat is all part of my grand plan.

  We finally get around to discussing our options, and I talk about a telecommunications company well positioned to take advantage of a growing market, relatively debt-free, and possessing a favorable price-earnings ratio.

  “An interesting idea,” Freddie concedes. “Good fundamentals . . . sound management.”

  I nod smugly, appreciating the praise but acting as if I expected nothing less.

  Willie makes a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “You have a better idea?” I ask.

  He nods, then asks Freddie, “What was that prediction thing you were telling me about?”

  Freddie looks puzzled: Willie is not the easiest guy to understand.

  Willie says, “You know . . . that thing where you buy up a lot of stuff ’cause you know people are gonna want it in a few months.”

  “Futures?” says Freddie.

  “Yeah, that’s it . . . futures. I think we should buy coffee futures.”

  Laurie’s voice comes through the speakerphone. “Why?”

  Willie goes on to explain that the Olympics are coming up soon, and many of the events are going to be on late at night or very early in the morning. People will want to watch them and will drink coffee to enable themselves to stay awake. It is as dumb a theory as any I have ever heard.

  It is not quite the dumbest theory Edna has ever heard, and she nods in appreciation of Willie’s wisdom. “If I don’t drink coffee,” she breathlessly reveals, “I’m asleep by eight o’clock.”

  “I’m the same way,” Laurie chimes in.

  “Then you must have had a gallon of it last night,” I say, becoming more and more pathetic by the moment. “Come on, people, this is ridiculous. You think the whole country is going to drink coffee to stay awake?”

  “Of course not, but anyb
ody who wants to sleep can drink that decaf stuff,” says Willie. “That’s part of the futures thing, right?”

  Freddie nods. “Sure.”

  Willie smiles triumphantly. “So we got everybody covered.”

  The discussion goes on for a while longer, but everyone jumps on Willie’s bandwagon, leaving me alone with my price-earnings ratio. Kevin comes over and patronizingly tries to cushion the blow. “I think your reasoning is sound, Andy, but Willie’s on a hot streak, and I believe in riding hot streaks.”

  “I hope you and your fat black tongue make a fortune,” I say, hitting a new low. I stand up. “Well, it’s really been fun, but I’ve got to go see a client.”

  “We’ve got a client?” Edna asks, surprise evident in her voice.

  “We’ve got a client?” Kevin asks simultaneously, shock evident in his.

  “Yes,” I say. “We’re a law office. That’s what we do. We represent clients.”

  The truth is, that’s not what we’ve been doing lately. I’ve been a little burned-out since my last major trial, when I defended Laurie against a murder charge. It was intense because of how much was personally at stake. Since then I’ve pretty much found a reason to turn down prospective clients, many of them because I thought they were guilty, but some because the cases just didn’t seem challenging or interesting enough.

  People who don’t know any better are always comparing me to my father, viewing us both as hardworking, high-powered attorneys. Even putting aside the glaring difference that he was the district attorney and I am on the defense side, there is still little comparison. I can’t recall him ever missing a day of work; he often likened it to working on an assembly line where the products coming through were accused criminals. I pick and choose my cases and show up when I please.

  You might say I couldn’t carry my father’s briefcase, but you’d be wrong. The truth is, I’m too lazy to carry it. And I offer as proof the shock on the part of my staff on hearing we have a client.