Loverboy Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Prologue

  Part 1: Start Me Up Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part 2: Loverboy Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Part 3: My Back Pages Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Part 4: Read All About It! Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Part 5: Tangled Up in Blue Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Part 6: The Long Good-Bye Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Part 7: I Love You to Death Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Endorsements

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  June 1978

  The killings started that summer as suddenly as they would again a long time later.

  Jimmy Carter was in the White House then. Disco ruled the airwaves. White suits and gold chains were hot. So was the movie Saturday Night Fever. On TV, everyone loved the Fonz and Laverne & Shirley and Charlie’s Angels.

  On a steamy Saturday night in New York City, a boy and girl were making love inside a 1974 Chevy Nova parked on a ridge in upper Manhattan overlooking the Hudson River.

  The boy was muscular, with dark hair and wearing a sleeveless T-shirt. The girl was blond, fresh-faced and dressed in a white blouse, jeans and platform heels.

  Neither of them saw the person watching them until the very end.

  “Hey, what the hell!” the boy suddenly yelled.

  There was a figure standing alongside the car in the dark, near the open passenger window.

  “Take a hike, will ya?” the boy said.

  The shadowy figure didn’t move.

  “C’mon, we’re busy . . .”

  Still no response.

  “Who are you anyway?”

  Suddenly a hand came up and pointed in their direction. There was a glint of metal in it. Then the noise of gunshots reverberated in the quiet summer air.

  Boom—boom—boom—boom—boom!

  Five times the shooter fired.

  Inside the Nova, there were screams and chaos. And then, finally, silence.

  The girl in the car—who New York City newspaper readers would learn the next day was a twenty-three-year-old nursing student named Linda Malandro—lay dead in the passenger seat. Her boyfriend, whose name was Bobby Fowler, was still alive, but only barely. He told police later he didn’t remember anything after the gunshots.

  A few minutes after it happened, the shooter was in another car and driving away from the scene. The car got onto the Henry Hudson Parkway and headed south toward the skyscrapers of Manhattan.

  The sound of the Bee Gees singing “Stayin’ Alive” blasted from the radio.

  The shooter laughed, pounded the steering wheel to the time of the music and sang along with the words.

  From somewhere in the distance, police sirens began to wail.

  Summertime.

  New York City.

  1978.

  Part 1

  Start Me Up

  Chapter 1

  Everyone gets everything they want. I wanted a mission. And, for my sins, they gave me one.

  —Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now

  How do you call your loverboy? I simply say . . . “C’mere, loverboy.”

  —Mickey and Sylvia, “Love Is Strange”

  All I ever remember wanting to be is a newspaper reporter.

  When I was growing up, other girls dreamed about being Billie Jean King or Lauren Hutton or Gloria Steinem. Me, I wanted to be Lois Lane.

  I always figured working for a newspaper was a noble calling—like being a priest or a doctor or joining the Peace Corps. I just never imagined myself doing anything else.

  Lucy Shannon, reporter.

  God, I used to love it.

  The first time I walked into the city room of the New York Blade, I thought it was the most exciting place in the world. There were people running around everywhere. Editors screaming. Telephones ringing. Reporters frantically typing away at their stories.

  The Blade city room back then was located on the fourth floor of an old building in downtown Manhattan, near the Brooklyn Bridge and the South Street Seaport. There was a row of glassed-in executive offices along a wall and maybe fifty or so desks for reporters scattered throughout the rest of the room. The windows overlooked the East River on one side and a housing project on the other.

  Once, when I was first there, someone in the housing project had a bit too much to drink and started taking target practice at one of the windows with a pellet gun, sending glass flying and all of us diving for cover. After that, the desks on that side of the room became known as the clay-pigeon area. And the waiting line for seats on the other side suddenly became longer than the one to see Cats.

  In those days, the Associated Press machine spewed out reams of wire copy which would be punched onto sharp metal spikes the editors kept on their desks. One day two of the editors got into an argument and had a spike fight in the center of the office, using them like swords.

  Another time, a frustrated reporter picked up a typewriter and threw it through a window.

  I loved it all. Passionately. The kind of all-encompassing, no-questions-asked love you think will never die or grow old or turn bad. Just like the way I felt on my wedding day.

  Of course, I was wrong about that too.

  A lot has changed at the Blade since then.

  A few years ago, we moved into a brand-new state-of-the-art building in midtown with carpeted floors, modular furniture and little partitions so that everyone has his own work area. The typewriters and wire machines are gone. Reporters use computer terminals to write their stories and store all the wire copy.

  I’m different too.

  My love affair with the place ended a long time ago. There’s no excitement when I walk into the city room these days. Me and the Blade, we’re just like an unhappy married couple living a lie. We don’t have much use for each other anymore, but we’re too tired to go to divorce court and put the damn relationship out of its misery.

  I sat down in front of one of the computer terminals now, bleary-eyed and with morning coffee and bagel in hand. The message light was blinking on the screen.

  I took a big gulp of the coffee, pressed a button on the keyboard and
read the message. It was from Walter Barlow, the Blade city editor. He said I should E-mail him back as soon as I got in.

  “Do you remember when people used to actually talk to each other?” I said to Janet Wood, a reporter who sits at the desk next to mine.

  She shrugged.

  “Hey, Lucy, this is the nineties.”

  The ’90s. Terrific.

  “Whatever happened to the eighties?” I asked.

  Walter Barlow was a big man—close to three hundred pounds, with a huge stomach that hung out over his belt. He was pawing through a box of assorted glazed, jelly and cream-filled doughnuts when I walked over to his desk.

  “So many flavors, so little time,” I said.

  Barlow grunted. “Have you finished that feature I assigned you on the flower show?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  That was a lie. But just a little one. I mean, I didn’t figure a lightning bolt was going to come down from the sky or anything.

  Barlow had the daily assignment list in front of him.

  The big story this morning was about a missing Brooklyn teenager named Theresa Anne Vinas; she’d gone into Manhattan a few nights ago and had never been heard from since. There was also a piece about an early-summer heat wave—it was only June, but the temperature was already threatening to hit one hundred. A water-main break in Washington Heights. A political profile of the police commissioner, a man named Thomas Ferraro, who was being touted as the next mayor. And a press conference with a woman who won $27 million in the lottery by playing her dead husband’s Social Security number.

  “Let me do the missing Brooklyn girl,” I said.

  “Janet’s already working on it.”

  “I could help her.”

  I looked down at the rest of the assignments. Most of them were pretty routine—press conferences, interviews. Then I saw something that wasn’t routine. A feature about a Hollywood film company that was in town to shoot a movie about a mass murderer who had stalked New York during the late ’70s and early ’80s. The Loverboy killings.

  “They’re doing a movie about Loverboy?”

  “Yeah. Your big story, right? The one that made you a star.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “I bet they’re going to want to talk to you about it, Lucy. Hey, maybe you could be a technical adviser or something.”

  “I don’t want to talk about Loverboy,” I said.

  Barlow shrugged and took a bite of one of the jelly doughnuts. “By the way, Vicki wants to see you,” he said.

  “Victoria Crawford? The editor?”

  “I believe her title is editor in chief.”

  “She hasn’t said a word to me in six months. I wonder what she wants.”

  Barlow looked up at me now. He seemed concerned. I guess I must have looked like I was in a state of shock or something. And not just over Victoria Crawford either.

  “Lucy, are you okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  That was a big lie.

  But then I’ve been lying to men all my life.

  I didn’t see any reason to stop now.

  Chapter 2

  Victoria Crawford had an impressive office in the executive suite. Plush maroon carpeting, a picture window overlooking the skyscrapers of Manhattan, framed journalism awards and memorable Blade front pages on the walls. On the desk in front of her was a baseball signed by the members of the New York Yankees. Next to it was a picture of Crawford on the cover of New York magazine.

  She walked out from behind her desk and shook my hand.

  “It’s been a long time since we’ve talked, hasn’t it, Lucy?”

  “More than six months.”

  “Too long.”

  She gestured for me to sit down. Then she went back behind her desk. She was wearing a white silk blouse, a short pleated skirt and a pair of brown brushed-suede pumps that probably cost more than I make in a week. The only problem was, the short skirt made her look a tad bowlegged. I wondered if I should point this out to her. I decided against it.

  Vicki Crawford and I had started out together as reporters at the Blade. Then, a few years ago, the paper was bought by a wealthy real estate tycoon named Ronald Mackell. Mackell spent a lot of time in the city room in the beginning, and he and Vicki became close. Very close. So close that he divorced his wife and married Vicki. Now she was editor of the paper.

  It was bizarre for most of the staff to have to work for Vicki Crawford. But for me, it was downright torture. Things had come to a head at the Blade Christmas party when I got very drunk, not an unusual occurrence in those days, and told her she reminded me of the hookers in spandex pants and heels outside the Lincoln Tunnel.

  “What are you talking about?” she’d said. “I’m worth seven hundred and fifty million.”

  “Yeah, and those women get twenty dollars for a blow job.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s like Winston Churchill once said about whores: ‘We’ve already established what you are, now we’re just haggling over the price.”

  But now Vicki Crawford leaned across her big desk and smiled at me.

  “I think it’s time we let bygones be bygones,” she said. “Okay?”

  “That works for me.”

  “Good.”

  Vicki relaxed a bit. She leaned back in her chair and picked up the baseball. She tossed it in the air casually as she talked, catching it in her left hand.

  “Do you still talk to David?” she asked.

  David was my ex-husband. One of them.

  “Sure. My lawyer talks to his lawyer, and his lawyer talks to my lawyer. It’s great. If we could have had the lawyers in bed with us when we were married, we’d probably still be together.”

  Vicki smiled.

  “How many divorces is that?”

  “Three.”

  “And how old are you?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  She shook her head sadly.

  “I don’t do marriage well,” I said.

  “What about your . . . well, your problem?”

  “You mean my drinking?”

  “Yes.”

  “I haven’t touched a drop since the beginning of the year. I drink bottled water in bars, diet soda at lunch, and I celebrated my birthday with a tall glass of carrot juice. I’m so healthy it’s disgusting.”

  “I’m really glad to hear that.”

  She kept tossing the baseball in the air and catching it.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said.

  “Sure.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  “I don’t understand . . .”

  “Well, I really don’t think you called me in here just to check on the condition of my health or my marriage or to talk over old times together. You want something from me, Vicki. What is it?”

  She looked at me blankly for a second, then nodded.

  “Lucy, do you know who Leo Tischler is?”

  “Sure. He owns Tischler’s Department Store.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Tischler is also one of the Blade’s biggest advertisers, if I remember correctly.”

  She nodded again. “Tischler’s got a son, Barry, who works at the store. He’s a vice president. Barry’s wife is worried about him. You see, he . . .”

  “Likes to sneak into the women’s department at night and dress up in frilly lingerie?”

  Vicki didn’t laugh. “This is a very serious matter.”

  “Okay.”

  “A matter of some delicacy. Some sensitivity.”

  Her voice became very solemn.

  “Emily Tischler can’t find her husband,” she said.

  I shrugged. “Has she checked Lost and Found?”

  Vicki Crawford dropped the baseball she was holding on the glass top of her desk. It made a loud crashing sound. She glared at me across the desk. She wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “You know, I really don’t like you, Shannon.”

 
I didn’t say anything.

  “I never did like you,” she continued. “I thought you were shit when we were reporters together, and I think you’re shit now. But you’re in the union, so I can’t do a damn thing about you.”

  I smiled at her.

  “Have we gone past the part where we were letting bygones be bygones?”

  “You want to know why you’re here, I’ll tell you. You’re right—Leo Tischler is one of the paper’s biggest advertisers. And he asked for you personally.”

  “Why me?”

  “It seems you did a big feature on him a few years back, and he was very happy with it. Do you remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” As I recalled, Leo Tischler had made a pass at me during that interview.

  “I tried to put someone else on the story, but he insisted on you. I didn’t know how to tell him you were now a broken-down alcoholic.”

  I let that one pass.

  “Anyway, go up and talk to Emily Tischler, Barry Tischler’s wife. She lives on the Upper East Side. After that, you can talk to old man Tischler too.”

  “Let me get this straight—the Tischler kid’s disappeared?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Does anybody suspect foul play?”

  “Not really. Barry Tischler has a reputation as a womanizer. In all likelihood, he’s shacked up somewhere with some young thing.”

  “So do you really think it’s a story?”

  “If I really thought it was a story, I wouldn’t be giving it to you.”

  “Oh.”

  “The wife wants to go public with this, so her father-in-law figures somebody should placate her and hold her hand a bit. You’re elected. We’ll decide afterward whether or not we’re going to print anything. Understand?”

  “Okey-dokey,” I said.

  I stood up.

  “And, Shannon . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “This is a million-dollar-a-year advertising account we’re talking about here. Don’t fuck it up.”

  I nodded and started for the door. Halfway there, I turned around and said:

  “By the way, Vicki, here’s a little fashion tip for you. It’s not a good idea to wear short skirts when you’re bowlegged.”