Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(81)
On the assumption that Michael Carter was a lawyer, she went to the New York Bar Association website and tried to conduct a search. Only members could use that option. She emailed Lisa and asked her to do it.
Gina held the three-page settlement in her hand and considered what to do. If she was right, this could be a key piece of evidence in a murder trial. Using her phone, she took pictures of the three pages and the back page where Paula had written notes. She emailed the pictures to herself to assure she could retrieve them in case anything happened to her phone.
After hustling down to the lobby, she was told there was no business office in the hotel. The clerk agreed to make a copy for her. He found it strange but agreed that Gina could accompany him to the copying machine in the back office. She didn’t want any gaps in the chain of custody. He refused her offer of $10 to let her borrow a roll of masking tape.
Back in her room she put the original back in its envelope and box, used the tape to seal all four boxes, and carried them to her car. After leaving them on Lucinda’s porch, she eased onto Interstate 80 East for the drive to Omaha.
As Gina gazed past the endless rows of corn, she thought to herself, I’m on the trail of a great story, but I have no idea who’s going to publish it.
87
Theodore “Ted” Wilson finished shaving in the bathroom of his Beverly Wilshire hotel room. He toweled off his face as he walked into the bedroom, pulled on and buttoned a starched white shirt, and chose a tie. Conducting the road show for the REL News initial public offering was an exhilarating experience. It was also a grind. The PowerPoint presentation to the private equity groups and pension funds in Chicago had gone well, but the Q&A period had run significantly longer than they had anticipated. There were a lot of questions about to what extent the profitability of REL News was linked too strongly to Brad Matthews. What if he had a heart attack? Suppose he chooses to retire? Did any other on-air personality have the gravitas to slide into Matthews’s chair if for any reason it became available?
Ted’s team had missed their scheduled departure to Los Angeles and had been forced to scramble onto other flights. Instead of first class, he had found himself sandwiched in the middle seat between a young man who should seriously consider a career as a sumo wrestler and a woman with a squirmy two-year-old on her lap. By the time they checked into the hotel, it had been one o’clock in the morning.
Most team members were looking forward to the end of this traveling and the long hours, to having a chance to reconnect with spouses, children, and significant others. Although Ted would welcome the chance to catch up on lost sleep, part of him dreaded a return to normalcy. For the past few weeks work had filled the void in his spirit, the empty space in his life that had been created by Gina. The thought of trying to find someone to replace her was more daunting than simply being alone.
The delay in reaching the hotel hadn’t changed their plan. Breakfast at 7 a.m. Today at ten o’clock they would make their pitch to CalPERS, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. The largest public pension fund in the United States, CalPERS managed the assets of over 1.6 million public employees, retirees, and their families. CalPERS was considered a bell cow in the industry. Get them to commit to a significant investment in REL, and many other pension funds would follow their lead.
CNBC was on the television. The federal investigations into the alleged monopoly power of Google, Amazon, Apple, and Facebook were plodding forward. All four companies were major clients of Ted’s bank.
He had just finished knotting his tie when he heard his cell phone vibrate, signaling the arrival of a text message. He walked over, glanced at the screen, and almost felt his heart stop. It was from Gina. Please trust me.
Ted tapped on the screen to go into his text message file. This has to be the first line of something much longer, he thought. But no, this was the entire text. Please trust me.
Slowly, he sat down on the bed. The alarm clock read 6:53. In minutes he would have to head downstairs.
What does she mean? he asked himself. For a moment he was angry. She had no right to do this to him. Disappear with no explanation and then send a cryptic message to further toy with his emotions. But the resentment passed almost as quickly as it had appeared. Any contact with Gina, even these three words, was infinitely preferable to heartrending silence. In the early days of their separation, he would jump at the arrival of a text, believing this one had to be from her, offering some explanation for what happened and a path leading them back to where they had been. But there were only so many times one could be disappointed. Hope can sustain, but at the same time it can make one feel like a fool and act accordingly.
Why would she ask me to trust her? Is it possible there’s some reason she broke it off, but can’t share it with me?
Ted’s mind raced through the time they had spent together, searching for any hint of what Gina was trying to communicate. He recalled a company dinner he had brought her to early in their dating relationship. Taking him into her confidence, she had shared with him that she was working on a story about a major charity in the New York area that supported veterans wounded from their service overseas. The charismatic founder, who had lost a leg in Afghanistan, had been widely hailed for his fund-raising prowess. But he had a darker side. Two former employees had confirmed to Gina that he had child pornography on his computer. Their discreet complaints to the board had gone nowhere. Her article would expose him and force his resignation.