Once we get home, I inhale the pizza and plant myself on the couch with beer, potato chips, and dog biscuits. I bounce up and down lightly a few times to test out the couch, making sure it feels right, since I’ll be spending the entire football season here. Tonight’s stay will be of relatively short duration; Saturdays and Sundays, on the other hand, can last for ten straight hours, the only interruptions occasional trips to the bathroom. I’ve considered a bedpan, or a couchpan if they make them, but I’m not sure Laurie would fully understand.
With two hours until kickoff, I start reading the material Vince gave me. Cummings’s initial story on the murders appeared the day after the first killing. The victim was Nancy Dempsey, a thirty-four-year-old nurse who left her house in Paterson on a Monday evening, announcing to her husband that she was going to the supermarket. Her naked body was found the next morning in a vacant lot two miles from her home, strangled from behind. Her hands were severed and have not been found.
After reading Cummings’s piece, I read the coverage of the same murder in the other two local papers. Cummings has a quality to his work that comes through in every paragraph, a unique style and ability that his competitors lack. There is an edge to his words, a scorn for the killer, that makes his otherwise straightforward reporting come alive, and is quite compelling.
Cummings’s article clearly struck a chord in the killer as well, as he contacted the reporter that very afternoon. Thus began a cat and mouse game, chronicled by the articles, during which the killer has kept a running communication with Cummings, who in turn has been cooperating with the police. The stories reflect the need to keep the public informed, while maintaining certain areas of secrecy that the police want preserved.
Two more murders have taken place since, with approximately a one-week interval between them. Victim 2 was a sixty-two-year-old grandmother of three, Betty Simonson, intercepted in Ridgewood while returning home from a canasta game. Victim 3 was a twenty-one-year-old prostitute, known only as Rosalie, murdered last night in Passaic. These two women were also found naked and strangled from behind, with both of their hands severed and removed from the scene.
Cummings has been placed in an extraordinarily difficult situation and seems to have responded well. The stories are revealing and riveting without being overly exploitive. He describes his conversations with the killer in great detail, right down to the inflections in the man’s voice. If he is uncomfortable in his dual role as journalist and informant, he’s hiding it well. In fact, he seems to relish it; in each article he places himself as part of the lead. And through it all comes his intense, though understandable, disdain for the psycho who has chosen him as his messenger.
Tara jumps on the couch, alerting me to the fact that game time is approaching. I call Danny Rollins, my bookmaker, and place a bet on the Falcons plus five points against the Rams.
I know there have been many significant inventors and inventions throughout the course of human history. Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Alva Edison, the Wright Brothers . . . these are men who had a dream and realized it, and they received justified praise for their work. But the greatest invention of them all goes unappreciated, and its creator remains anonymous. I of course am referring to the point spread.
The point spread turns every football game into an even match and therefore makes it eminently watchable. The Little Sisters of the Poor could play Nebraska, and if you give them enough points, people will bet on them. It is pure Americana. Every team, no matter how disadvantaged, has an equal opportunity. My eyes fill up with tears as I think about it, and Tara snuggles next to me, obviously caught up in the emotion of the moment as well.
Unfortunately, in this case the point spread isn’t quite enough, and the Falcons, and I, lose by seventeen. I’m undaunted, though; it’s a long season, and I’m not going to get through it by panicking over a single loss.
I’m in bed within five minutes of the final gun, and maybe ten seconds after that I’m trying to figure out how to fall asleep with this huge pit in my stomach. It’s not just the potato chips and pizza, it’s the fact that Laurie isn’t here.
Laurie is my investigator and my lover and my best friend. We became romantically involved while I was separated from my former wife, which I guess means she got me on the rebound. If that’s true, she’s the best rebounder this side of Shaquille O’Neal, because I am in a permanent state of smitten.
Though we have separate residences, Laurie and I stay together at least half the time. Unfortunately, she has been in Chicago for ten days, working on a fraud case for an insurance company. It’s been a long ten days.
I spoke to her this morning, and she said she was going to be having dinner with some friends tonight, but I try calling her at her hotel anyway. She isn’t in her room. It’s eleven o’clock in Chicago, and she’s still out on the town? Who has dinner at eleven o’clock? And if you do, when do you have a midnight snack? Four in the morning?
What kind of floozy am I involved with?
• • • • •
I SLEEP THROUGH the alarm and then take my time walking Tara in the park, never once looking at my watch. It wouldn’t take Sigmund Freud to peer into my subconscious to find out what’s going on. I want to be late for the “investors’ meeting,” called for nine o’clock in my office.
I arrive at ten after and they’re all there, eager to get started and staring daggers at me for causing the delay. There’s Edna, my dedicated secretary, who normally doesn’t come strolling in until past ten; Kevin, my Laundromat-owning associate, who judging by the strewn wrappers appears to be on his fourth apple turnover; and Willie, the death row inmate-turned-Warren-Buffett-wanna-be. Only Laurie is missing, but she is going to participate from Chicago over the speakerphone.
Leading the meeting is Freddie Connors, the stockbroker who happily stepped into this windfall of fresh investment money by having the good fortune to be Edna’s cousin. He smiles at me. “Andy, we were afraid you weren’t going to make it.”
“God forbid” is my response.
Kevin, Edna, and Laurie all have money to invest because of me. I received a commission of over a million dollars from the Willie Miller settlement, and since I have all the money I could ever need, I split it up among them. I don’t regret doing so, and it is certainly not the reason that I’m feeling somewhat bitter.
Cousin Freddie’s style is to present investment alternatives and to encourage us to actively participate in the decision making. As a group, we have gradually split into two camps. Willie is the unlikely leader of one of the camps, and I lead the other. In Willie’s camp are Edna, Kevin, and Laurie. In my camp is me.
If this were camp color war, my team color would be beige. I study charts, look at the numbers, and make the logical, safe selection. Willie comes up with off-the-wall ideas, hatched in that fairy-tale land he calls a mind, and everything he touches turns to his team color, gold.
My team is getting its beige ass kicked.
Freddie gets Laurie on the speakerphone and then updates us on the status of our investments. In two months their collective portfolios have gone up almost eleven percent, while mine has gone down one point five. I hide my humiliation and nod wisely, as if financial retreat is all part of my grand plan.
We finally get around to discussing our options, and I talk about a telecommunications company well positioned to take advantage of a growing market, relatively debt-free, and possessing a favorable price-earnings ratio.
“An interesting idea,” Freddie concedes. “Good fundamentals . . . sound management.”
I nod smugly, appreciating the praise but acting as if I expected nothing less.
Willie makes a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “You have a better idea?” I ask.
He nods, then asks Freddie, “What was that prediction thing you were telling me about?”
Freddie looks puzzled: Willie is not the easiest guy to understand.
Willie says, “You know . . . that thing where you buy up a lot of stuff ’cause you know people are gonna want it in a few months.”
“Futures?” says Freddie.
“Yeah, that’s it . . . futures. I think we should buy coffee futures.”
Laurie’s voice comes through the speakerphone. “Why?”
Willie goes on to explain that the Olympics are coming up soon, and many of the events are going to be on late at night or very early in the morning. People will want to watch them and will drink coffee to enable themselves to stay awake. It is as dumb a theory as any I have ever heard.
It is not quite the dumbest theory Edna has ever heard, and she nods in appreciation of Willie’s wisdom. “If I
