Shooting for the Stars Read online

  For a long time, nothing happened. There was a bit part here and there, but Laura Marlowe was just one of thousands of pretty young girls trying to break into show business. Then, at the age of nineteen and reportedly so discouraged that she was ready to quit, she somehow got plucked out of obscurity and landed the role in Lucky Lady that made her famous. She did her second hit movie by the time she was twenty, and she was only twenty-two when she died shortly after filming that final movie.

  Even at the height of her fame, though, there were problems.

  During the filming of The Langley Caper, she was involved in a serious auto accident that left her in the hospital for six weeks and raised fears that she might be permanently disfigured. There was also a behind-the-scenes legal battle going on between her mother and the agent who had represented her for several years before she hit it big in Hollywood—she’d been fired by Laura’s mother. They finally reached an out-of-court settlement, but people around Laura said she seemed very upset over the whole thing.

  By the time she began shooting Once Upon a Time Forever, she was not in good shape. They had to shut down the production several times when she simply stopped showing up on the set. There was a lot of speculation about the reasons for her disappearance. The most prevalent theory was that she’d suffered some kind of breakdown and was undergoing treatment at a rehab or clinic. Eventually she returned and completed the movie, only weeks before her murder in New York City.

  Somewhere along the line she’d gotten married. Her husband’s name was Edward Holloway, and he was with her in New York the night she got shot. Looking on in horror as the unthinkable happened, just like Yoko with John Lennon. Kneeling at his wife’s side as she lay on the street dying. There was a picture of him delivering the eulogy at her funeral, and descriptions of him breaking down in tears at the gravesite.

  Since then he’d dedicated his life to keeping her memory alive. There were Laura Marlowe posters, cups, and other mementos; a Laura Marlowe film seminar and acting school; and even a fan club and newsletter.

  “She was the most beautiful person to ever walk this earth,” Holloway said in one article. “I think about her every day. And I want everyone else to know her too, even if she is no longer here with us.”

  The article also pointed out that the Laura Marlowe memorial business still earned about $5 million a year.

  Dying young like Laura Marlowe sure did pay off for the living.

  * * *

  Stacy Albright, the Daily News city editor, walked by my desk.

  “Did you get the interview with Abbie Kincaid?” she asked me.

  “It’s set for tomorrow morning.”

  “Great.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I think this could be a really important story for you.”

  “You know, I was just thinking the same thing.”

  “I’d really like to see you become a big part of the team I’m building here, Gil.”

  “Hey, Gil Malloy is a team player.”

  “Let me know how the interview goes tomorrow.”

  “Sure. Just to be clear, Stacy, the interview is supposed to be about an exclusive story that Abbie is going to break on her TV show this week. About the death of Laura Marlowe, the old movie actress. But they won’t tell me what the exclusive is.”

  “Yes, that’s the agreement we worked out.”

  “So what exactly is my story here?”

  “Let me explain again, Gil,” she said, as if she was talking to a small child. “I’m trying to set up a marketing partnership with The Prime Time Files. The idea is we’d promote their exclusives and they’d do the same with ours. In this case, in return for us doing an advance promo on Abbie’s exclusive, they’ll mention our article in the show and also let us live stream the segment simultaneously on the Daily News website and provide us with video to use afterward. Quid pro quo, if you will. I know this is difficult for someone like you—who is more familiar with the old-fashioned, more traditional ways of journalism—to adapt to the ways we want to do things now. But it is essential for our success in new media to not just be a print newspaper anymore. So let me know as soon as you finish the interview tomorrow. I’ll work with you on getting up something very quickly on our website before you write your piece for the next day’s paper. I think this could be a positive experience for both of us. Don’t you agree, Gil?”

  “Right back at you, Stacy,” I smiled.

  * * *

  She walked back to her office. Stacy Albright personified everything that was wrong with newspapers today. She was twenty-six years old; she’d been named city editor a few months ago after increasing traffic by 250 percent on the Daily News website by completely redesigning and relaunching the site. Her background was in social media, multi-media cross-platform management, and digital marketing. I’m not sure if she ever actually covered a news story on her own. But in the wake of layoffs and dismissals and other changes that had turned the Daily News upside down in recent times, she had somehow become a rising star while many of the real editors were now gone. Welcome to the world of newspapers in the age of the Internet.

  Me, I’d somehow managed to hang on at the News through all of the turmoil. Even though I had a pretty checkered career at the paper—filled with lots of high points, but also some infamous low moments too.

  When I started some fifteen years ago, it was all high points. I was the boy wonder—going from copyboy to reporter to columnist in just a few years. I won awards for my coverage of 9/11, crime in New York City, City Hall investigations, and a bunch of other stuff. It was like I could do no wrong.

  But then I did. Something wrong, that is. I wrote a story about an interview I did with a legendary New York hooker named Houston for an investigative series on prostitution in the city. The Houston interview was so good that it won me a lot of awards and even got me nominated for a Pulitzer. Except the interview never really happened. Instead, when I couldn’t actually find Houston, I used a bunch of second-hand quotes I’d gotten from people on the street and tried to pass off as a first-person interview with her. I’m still not sure why. I guess I just wanted the story so badly that I was even willing to violate my integrity as a journalist to get it. It’s the only time I’ve ever done that. But once is too much. I crossed over the one line that no journalist can ever compromise. The truth.

  I thought my newspaper career was over. But then one day I got a second chance. I wrote another big story—about a corrupt police official who had killed people to hide the secrets of his past in order to further his rise to police commissioner. Later, I broke another big exclusive linking the murder of the Manhattan DA’s daughter to a series of unsolved serial killings over the years. I was a star again.

  But it turned out not to be that easy for me.

  There was the integrity issue, of course. A reporter’s integrity—his ability to make people trust him—is the most important thing he has. There was always going to be someone who would bring that up. Oh, Gil Malloy—he’s the one that made up that story about the hooker, right? But the truth was that really wasn’t so much of a problem for me anymore. In the world of social media and instant journalist online, people tended to forget, forgive, and move on a lot quicker than they used to. You were only as good—or as bad—as your last story.

  And that was my real problem.

  You see, I’d somehow become more of a celebrity at the Daily News than an actual day-to-day reporter. The two big exclusive stories I’d broken had both been high-profile cases that garnered me a lot of attention. There were TV appearances, magazine interviews, book deal offers—all that sort of heady stuff afterward for me both times. So the paper used me as the public face of a Daily News reporter whenever they wanted to be noticed or make a big splash in the media. That’s how I wound up getting assigned to the Abbie Kincaid story. It was simply a publicity stunt for the paper—or, as Stacy Albright descr
ibed it, a marketing partnership. So I was a star again these days. Sort of. Except I wanted to be a real reporter. And, to do that, I needed a story. A real story. A big story.

  I shut off my computer and walked out of the office. On my way through the Daily News lobby, I looked at the picture of Laura Marlowe on the front page from the night she died thirty years ago, blowing a kiss to her adoring crowd at the movie party just before she was murdered. She looked so young, so beautiful, so full of life. Not knowing how little time she had left.

  “I think this could be a positive experience for both of us,” Stacy Albright had said to me in the newsroom earlier.

  I didn’t believe her, of course. I figured the Laura Marlowe story would be just a waste of time for me. Another example of how far my career had fallen since the days when I was always on Page One.

  In the end though, it turned out Stacy was right—and I was wrong.

  Chapter 3

  THE next morning I woke up early to get ready for my appointment with Abbie Kincaid.

  I showered, shaved, and combed my hair; opted for an open-collared white dress shirt instead of the T-shirt along with a pair of khaki slacks; and put on a navy suede sports jacket and black loafers. I picked up a large coffee at a Starbucks and carried it with me as I walked into the lobby of the building where The Prime Time Files offices were located. I was clean, coiffured, and caffeine-ready for my big moment with the star. I might have even passed for classy.

  A very large security guard wearing a red blazer with the network’s emblem on the label wanted to know who I was. I told him I had an appointment with Abbie Kincaid, and I showed him my press card. He stared at it for a moment too long. Then he took down my name and asked me to wait while he called upstairs to check.

  I waited.

  After several minutes another security guard—almost as big and wearing an identical red blazer—led me to an elevator and rode with me to The Prime Time Files studio on the twelfth floor. On the fourth floor a third red-blazered guard got on the elevator when we stopped briefly.

  On twelve, I was met by a young, peppy-looking, blond-haired woman. She was wearing a miniskirt, a starched blue blouse, and the same red network blazer as the three security guards.

  I wished I had one too.

  I was starting to feel left out.

  She took me into the reception area for the show. Another big security guard was standing there. This one was well over six feet tall and weighed maybe 225 pounds, all of it muscle. His hair was long, pulled into a ponytail at the back; he had a beard and he was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt that said: THE PRIME TIME FILES: DON’T MISS IT.

  He asked for my press card too. He stared at it almost as long as the guard did downstairs, apparently looking for clues. “Lotsa security here,” I said.

  He didn’t answer me.

  “The thing about security,” I said to the guy, “is that it can often be counterproductive. You put in all the security so you can operate your business—accomplish the things you need to do—with a feeling of safety. But then the security measures themselves sometimes become a problem, turning out to be so onerous and time-consuming that they prevent you from carrying out the activities you put them in place to protect in the first place. Eventually the security hassles become a bigger impediment to you in the work-place than the safety concerns which led you to implement them.”

  The big security guard looked at me blankly.

  “In other words, the cure turns out to be worse than the original problem,” I said. “Do you follow what I’m saying here? Because it really does make a lot of sense.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” he shrugged. The guard said I could sit there while he went to find Abbie. Then he disappeared through a door that led to dressing rooms and a sound stage. While I waited, I took out an iPad I’d brought with me and went through the morning papers—the Daily News first, then the Post and the Times. There was a budget crisis at City Hall, a new threat of war in the Mideast, and a heat wave was headed our way. None of them had any breaking news on Laura Marlowe. Hey, you never know.

  At some point from behind the door, I could hear the sounds of people arguing. A man’s voice, very loud, and then a woman shouting at about the same level. The shouting went on for several minutes.

  Then the door flew open and a man stormed out. He seemed very agitated. He was moving so fast he almost ran into me. I stood up to get out of his way, and we were face-to-face for a second. I could see the fury and the anger there. The guy looked vaguely familiar to me, but I couldn’t quite place who he was. He pushed past me without saying a word and walked out.

  The bearded guy with the ponytail appeared and gestured for me to come inside.

  Abbie was sitting behind a desk in her office. At first glance, she looked like she did on TV. She was a few years younger than me, probably in her late twenties. She had green eyes, long auburn hair, and a striking figure like a model—which came across even better in person than on the screen. She was wearing a brown pants suit and a beige blouse that showed off that figure quite nicely.

  But as I got closer, I saw that her makeup was smeared and she looked like she’d been crying. She dabbed at her eyes with a piece of tissue.

  “Is this a bad time?” I asked.

  Abbie shook her head no.

  “I could come back later . . .”

  “Just give me a few minutes,” she said.

  She took a few deep breaths and tried to compose herself.

  “I apologize you had to see this,” she said finally. “Not a very elegant way to introduce myself to you. So let’s start at the top again.” She stuck out her hand. “I’m Abbie Kincaid. So glad you could meet with me today.”

  “I’m Gil Malloy of the Daily News.”

  I shook hands with her and then sat down in a chair across from her.

  “So who was that guy?” I asked.

  “Just someone I’m dating.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Actually someone I used to be dating.”

  “That’s an important distinction.”

  “I told him we had to end the relationship.”

  “He didn’t seem too happy about it.”

  “Tommy doesn’t want to, but I do.”

  “The course of true love rarely runs smoothly,” I told her.

  I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “Do you know him?”

  “Who?”

  “Tommy.”

  “No, I don’t think so. He did look kind of familiar though.”

  “I’m sure you’ve heard of his father. Thomas Rizzo.”

  I stared at her in amazement. Thomas Rizzo was one of the legendary mob figures in New York. Some people called him the boss of all bosses. We’d done a lot of stories about him in the Daily News over the years, and I think a few of them mentioned the kid, Thomas Jr. That’s why I remembered his face.

  “You’ve been going out with the son of the Godfather?” I said.

  “It’s not like that,” Abbie said. “Tommy’s actually a very nice guy.”

  “Whose father just happens to kill people for a living.”

  She shrugged. “Tommy told me the stuff they say about his father isn’t true. Besides, he isn’t involved in his father’s business anyway.”

  “Says who?”

  “Tommy. He’s really different, you know. Went to Harvard. Made the Dean’s List there.”

  “So what were you two arguing about before I came in? Whether or not he takes you to the big fraternity dance on Friday night?”

  “Look, we went out on a few dates, that’s all. Nothing serious. It was all very casual. Tommy wanted to pursue the relationship and make it something more. I didn’t. I told him that. He came here today to try and get me to change my mind. But I won’t. End of story.”

  “Oh,�
�� I said.

  She gave me a funny look. “What does that ‘oh’ mean?”

  “ ‘Oh’ as in, how exactly do you go about telling something like that to the son of a man like Thomas Rizzo.”

  She sighed. “Like I said, Tommy’s a great guy. He’s going to make some woman a great husband someday. Unfortunately, it’s not going to be me. But he’s still very hung up on me. That’s what that was all about between us in here a few minutes ago.”

  She smiled across her desk at me.

  “I’m sure you’ve been in messy personal situations like this at some point,” she said.

  “Not exactly.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Look, Abbie, I try not to date the offspring of major crime figures. It’s just a little idiosyncrasy of mine.”

  Abbie flashed me her megawatt smile, the smile that had won her millions of viewers on TV. Then she told me she was just going to freshen up a bit before we talked. I said that was fine. She took off the jacket she was wearing, hung it on the back of her desk chair, and then went into an adjoining room where she closed the door.

  I sat there waiting some more. I was getting used to waiting at The Prime Time Files. It seemed to be the thing to do. At some point, I looked over at the brown jacket hung from her chair. It was a terrific-looking jacket. The only problem was a bulge I noticed in one of the pockets. Hard to look fantastic—even if you are Abbie Kincaid—when you’re carrying around something that big.

  Several minutes passed. I looked at Abbie’s jacket again. The bulge in the pocket was still there. I walked over, leaned down, and stuck my hand in the pocket. There was a gun inside. I didn’t know a lot about guns, but I can tell if one is loaded. This one was loaded. I put it back inside the pocket.

  I wondered if the gun had any connection to all the security I’d noticed on my visit to the place.