103
When Gina woke the next morning, her back felt stiff as a result of the shove. Her wrists were still sore from having used her hands to break her fall. Fortunately, the scrape marks on her palms and her right knee were not deep.
Her visit to the Verizon store accomplished half of what she had hoped. After providing her phone number and pin, she purchased a new phone. Fortunately her Contacts were stored in the Cloud. In a matter of minutes the sales assistant was able to download the information, and as if by magic, her emails and texts populated the new phone.
When she asked about retrieving the recorded conversation she had been having with Martina, the sales assistant was unsure. “I don’t know if things get stored in real time. I’ll ask the manager.”
The manager came over and introduced herself. She was a pretty black woman who Gina guessed was about forty. After introductions were made, the manager said, “I’ve been here for twelve years and I never had that question. Let me see. Your recorded conversation would have to have been backed up to be in the Cloud. That usually happens when the phone is charging and connected to WiFi. If your thief was really stupid and he charged your phone in a WiFi zone, you might be in luck. When you go home, check your Apple iCloud account. If it doesn’t show up in a day or two, I’m afraid it’s gone.”
The first thing she did after getting back to her apartment was to check her iCloud account. No recording. She then called her editor. When Charlie didn’t pick up, she left a message filling him in on her phone contact with “Martina” and the incident on the street. Next she dialed the number “Martina” had used to call her. An electronic voice began, “You have reached…” After waiting for it to finish, Gina left a detailed voice mail message explaining what had happened the previous evening and imploring “Martina” to contact her. She sent the same message in a text and then in an email. Ball in her court, Gina thought to herself, wondering if she would ever again hear from the frightened “Martina.”
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.”