THERE WAS A ringing sound coming from somewhere.
I shook my head from side to side, hoping the ringing would go away. But it didn’t. It kept getting worse and more insistent. I closed my eyes and tried to ignore it. That didn’t work either. Damned sound just wouldn’t go away.
I opened my eyes again and suddenly the events of the night before—most notably how much I’d had to drink—began to come back to me.
The ringing sound was still there. Ring, ring, go away. Come again some other day. I reached over to swat my hand at it and found my phone. I picked up the phone, dropped it on the floor, and finally got it up to my ear. The ringing stopped.
“Hmmm,” I said.
“Clare, is that you?”
I recognized the voice. It was Rob Kinsey. The overnight guy who answers phones for us in the Channel 10 newsroom until everyone else gets to work. I looked over at the clock next to my bed. 6:15 a.m.
“No, Clare Carlson died several hours ago. Let her rest in peace.”
“You sound bad.”
“I feel worse.”
“I may have partied a bit too hard last night. What’s up?”
“Terri Hartwell’s office is looking for you.”
“I talked to Terri Hartwell yesterday. She thanked me for everything we did on the story. What does she want now?”
“Maybe she wants to thank you again.”
“What did she say?”
“It wasn’t her who called. It was someone from her office.”
“Who?”
“A guy named Chad Enright.”
“Chad Enright called to talk to me?”
“Yes. He wasn’t too nice about it either.”
“He never is.”
What the hell was Chad Enright calling me about at 6:15 a.m.? Did he know about me spotting him and Morelli and Grasso in that parking garage? Maybe Hartwell had told him after our conversation yesterday. But why call me now about it?
“You got Enright’s number?” I asked.
Kinsey read it to me. It was a cell phone number.
“Okay, I’ll call him when I get to the office.”
I figured I might be able to go back to bed and get another hour of sleep.
“Enright wants you to call him right now.”
“It can’t wait until the sun comes up?”
“He said it was urgent.”
I hung up with Kinsey, pulled myself up into a sitting position, and punched in the number Enright had left. He answered on the first ring.
“I have to talk to you, Ms. Carlson. There’s a lot of things going on here. You think you know the story, but you only know part of it. I want everyone to hear the real story before it’s too late. I’m prepared to tell you everything. About me. About Morelli. And about Terri Hartwell.”
“Okay, tell me.”
“Not on the phone. It has to be in person. This is too important to talk about on the phone. Meet me. Meet me right now. It will be a blockbuster story for you. And I’m going to lay it all out for you exclusively.”
Jeez, who did this guy think he was? Deep Throat? On the other hand, if anyone knew what secrets Hartwell was hiding—assuming she was hiding secrets—it would be Chad Enright, her top aide. Enright wasn’t my idea of the perfect source. But you don’t always get to pick and choose your sources in the journalism business. And I’ve had even less desirable sources than Chad Enright in the past. I think.
“Where?”
“Meet me downtown at our building. In an hour. Less if you can make it.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.”
I drank some coffee—well, a lot of coffee—took a shower, and got dressed as fast as I could. I called Kinsey back and told him I was going to meet with Enright so I might be late getting into the office. I left voicemail messages for both Faron and Maggie with more specifics about my conversation with Enright and the meeting I was headed to. “Should be interesting,” I told them both.
Then I took a subway downtown to the district attorney’s offices. The subway stop was a few blocks’ walk from the building on Foley Square. As I got nearer, I saw Enright standing on the sidewalk in front.
This guy sure was eager to see me.
“Okay, let’s go upstairs to your office and talk,” I said as I approached him.
“No, I don’t want to go inside.”
“Why not?”
“I have my reasons.”
“Are we going to have this big important conversation you told me about right here on the sidewalk?”
“No, let’s do it in there,” he said.
He pointed to a car—a large black Lincoln Continental—sitting at the curb next to us.
“Your car?”
“Yes.”
It didn’t look like the kind of car Chad Enright would drive. I walked over to it. The windows of the Lincoln were dark and tinted so I couldn’t see inside.
“I’m more comfortable out here,” I said.
“No, this has to be private. Just the two of us. No one else can see us or know about us meeting like this. Please, get in the car.”
I hesitated. This was all making me uncomfortable. But I wasn’t too worried yet. I mean it was daylight now. We were standing there during the morning rush hour on a busy New York City street. Nothing bad could happen to me with all these cars and people around, right?
“Believe me, this will be well worth your time,” Enright said.
I was still trying to decide what to do when the rear door of the car came flying open. A man reached out, grabbed me around the waist, and dragged me into the back seat with him. I looked over to see who had done that. Not Enright. Enright climbed inside the back seat of the Lincoln now, too. But there were three other men in the car.
A second in the back seat who was holding on to me and also had a gun pointed at me now. He was the one who had pulled me off the street and into the car. I recognized him right away. Michael Grasso—Morelli’s top henchman.
And now I saw the third person.
Sitting in the front seat next to the driver.
I recognized him, too.
Victor Morelli.