Kiss the Girls and Make Them Cry(92)
I have to assume I’m never going to get that recording back, Gina thought to herself. The only option left to her was to work with the names she had.
She glanced at the list she had made while waiting at the police precinct. Laura Pomerantz, Christina Newman, Mel Carroll. Each name presented a problem that was going to make her search more difficult. She wasn’t certain if Pomerantz’s first name was Laura or Lauren. There were a number of ways to spell Newman. The name “Carroll” could begin with a “C” or a “K,” and Mel didn’t sound like a name that would appear on a birth certificate. Short for Melissa? Melanie? Carmela? She didn’t know.
An additional complication was the heavy Spanish accent of the woman who called herself “Martina.” Did she say “Christina Newman” or “Christine Anaman”? Gina asked herself as she opened Facebook on her computer and began her research.
* * *
A full day of work had produced a list of leads that filled four pages on a legal pad. As she had thought from the very beginning, any woman who was victimized at REL would remove all references to the company from her Facebook page. Not a single name on Gina’s pad had any direct link to REL.
A late-afternoon run in Central Park helped reduce some of the stiffness in her back. She showered, cooked some pasta, and was ordering herself to get back to her research when Charlie Maynard called on his cell. He began by asking if she was okay, and then apologizing for not getting back to her sooner. After marathon meetings all afternoon, he was going in for a session with the publisher.
He told her he had done some checking. After killing her story, Geoffrey Whitehurst had taken an on-air job at a station REL owned in London. “I detest journalists who sell out,” Charlie said. “After your article breaks, Gina, I’m going to see that the closest he ever gets to working in journalism again is delivering newspapers.”
Charlie had a concern about her cell phone incident. “Are you sure that doesn’t have any connection to your investigation?”
“I got a brief look at the guy. He was a kid,” Gina assured him. “I’ve been waiting, hoping for weeks for my mystery source, Deep Throat, to call me. There’s no way anybody could have known she was going to do it last night.”
“All right, be careful. Keep me posted on any new developments.”
104
Michael Carter stood on the street in front of his apartment. Unlike the previous times he had met with Junior, there was no place along the curb to pull over. Precisely at 9 p.m. the black Lincoln Navigator slowed to a halt where he was standing. Oscar opened the back door and Carter climbed in.
“Oscar, find a place where you can pull over,” Junior ordered. Turning to Carter, he said, “Then we’ll talk.”
They rode in silence for two blocks. Junior stared straight ahead. This is my third time in this car, Carter thought to himself, but the only time when it’s been moving.
Oscar pulled over to the curb in the NO PARKING area in front of a church. Without any conversation, he left the engine running, got out, closed the door behind him, and walked away.
In Japan, Carter mused, underlings show deference by letting the person with higher status speak first. They were a long ways from Japan, but it might be a good idea—
“How did we ever let it come to this?” Junior asked, his voice filled with anguish, his eyes red and on the verge of tears. “Carter, you created a monster,” by now he was screaming, “and I was foolish enough to get involved with your plan!”
Carter didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know that people who were as rich as Junior could get this angry. For the moment he thought it would be better to let him vent.
“My father spent a lifetime building REL News. Part of me is relieved he’s too ill to see what’s going to happen to his company. As a tribute to him I wanted to elevate it from America’s best news organization to the best in the world. And now, thanks to you and your… ‘schemes,’?” grimacing as he said the word, “my family’s company will be mired in scandal. All because I put my trust in a hack labor lawyer.”
By now Carter had had enough. In the army he had been forced to listen as higher-ranking first sergeants and sergeant majors vented their spleens, blaming those in lower ranks for their shortcomings. This wasn’t the army, and he didn’t have to take it from a jerk whose only accomplishment was being born into the right family.
“You know something, Junior, you’re right. That’s one hell of an organization your father built. The face of the company is an out-of-control sex maniac who can’t keep his hands off the young female employees. Your CEO, when he’s not busy running the business, is a murderer whose victims include the company’s CFO. I was only at REL a short time. I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet all the other fine people who work there.
“Let’s make one thing clear, Junior. I didn’t create the mess at that cesspool family business of yours. I devised a plan to clean it up, a plan Sherman backed, a plan you backed as soon as you found out about it.”
“You’re convinced that Sherman was involved in Myers’s death?” Junior asked.
“You’re damn right I am. Using the information I gave him, he got rid of the women who were troublemakers. Now he’s eliminating anybody who could point to his involvement in the settlements. If I go for an unexpected swim in the river, the only one who’ll know anything is Matthews, and God knows he’ll keep his mouth shut.”