“Did Hunter ever bring his fiancée, Casey Carter, here?” Laurie asked.
A momentary darkness fell over Antonio’s face. “Yes, of course. What a terrible ending. Of course, he brought many women here before he was engaged,” he added.
“But being with Casey changed his bachelor ways?”
“So it seemed. The second time I saw them together, I said to Hunter, You should have the wedding here, and he just smiled. Do you know the saying, Chi ama me, ama il mio cane? It translates to ‘Whoever loves me, loves my dog.’ But what it really means is ‘Whoever loves me, loves me as I am, warts and all.’ That’s how Hunter felt about Casey.”
“Forgive me if I’m reading too much into this, Antonio, but it sounds like you’re saying Casey had warts.”
He shrugged. “Like I said, it was a terrible ending.”
Laurie could already tell that it was going to be impossible to get an unbiased depiction of Casey as a young woman out of anyone. Everyone’s recollections had been permanently transformed by the fact that she’d been convicted of killing Hunter.
“I heard that Casey was quite skilled at target shooting in her own right,” Laurie said.
“You heard correctly. Hunter joked that the only reason she tried was because she was the most competitive person he knew. She was an athlete at some point, as I recall.”
“Tennis,” Laurie clarified. “In college.”
“That’s right. Hunter said she cleaned the court with him. And not to be bested, she certainly was catching up to him at his own sport. She was a very good shot.”
“The police found bullet holes in the walls of Hunter’s living room and bedroom, where he was actually killed. Does it strike you as odd that Casey would have missed twice?”
“That’s hard to say. We only use still targets here. I never saw her shoot skeet or at another moving target. It’s much harder than people realize. That’s why in self-defense classes, they say you’re better off running from a gunman, especially if you run in an unpredictable pattern. Plus, adrenaline and, as I understood it, intoxication, may have affected her skills. So the fact that she missed is not a smoking gun one way or the other,” he added with a smile.
Laurie thanked Antonio again for his time and promised she’d tell Leo he said hello. As far as her show was concerned, some photographs of this Greenwich Village treasure might be worth a few seconds of local color, but she was no closer to knowing who killed Hunter Raleigh.
32
While she was waiting for Gabrielle, Mindy Sampson sat at a table in the back corner of the Rose Bar in the Gramercy Park Hotel. There was a time not many years ago when every person here, from the hostess at the front to the A-list actress at the booth to her right, would have recognized her face. For more than two decades, her photograph had graced the top of “The Chatter,” one of the most read gossip columns in New York City. She’d take a new head shot like clockwork each year, but always wore pale makeup and dark red lipstick and kept her hair naturally jet-black. The look was iconic. Before the Kardashians and the Kanyes and the Gwyneths, Mindy Sampson had understood the value of branding oneself.
And Mindy’s brand was associated with taste making. Who wore it better? Which celebrity couples were to be cheered for, and which scorned? Was the billionaire playboy guilty, or the victim of a reckless accusation? Mindy always had the answers.
Those were the days when papers still left ink on your fingers.
Then came the day when her managing editor told her to “hold off” on her annual tradition of getting a new photograph for her column. They might be making “changes,” he warned.
Mindy was famous by then for gossip, but she still had a journalist’s instincts. She’d seen what was happening in the newsroom. Advertising dollars were down. The paper got thinner each month. So did the workforce. The long-timers, seen in the past as the backbone of the paper, were too expensive to keep on the payroll. College interns were willing to work for free, and recent graduates didn’t cost much more.
A month later, she was told “the news.” They were turning her column, the one she had built and nurtured and branded, to “staff.” No byline. No iconic photograph. She knew “staff” was shorthand for tidbits pulled from the wires.
She did not go easily. She threatened to sue for gender discrimination. For ageism. She even threw in a potential disability claim for chronic pain syndrome. The paper thought they were looking at years of litigation and a public scandal. But then she told her lawyer that she only wanted two things: six months’ severance pay and the name. They could call their watered-down column whatever they pleased, but she would be taking the “Chatter” brand with her.
They may have written her off as an over-the-hill old-timer, but it wasn’t the first time Mindy had been underestimated. She knew before they did that the new media was online. She used her severance pay to launch a website, and she became the one to hire unpaid interns. Now, instead of a salary, she earned money for ads that were sold, readers who clicked on those ads, and product placements. And instead of sifting her words through layers of editors, she could publish to the world with the click of a button.
She hit send on her phone. A new story was filed, just like that, all while she was waiting for Gabrielle Lawson. Of all the personalities Mindy had known over the years, Gabrielle was among the most dramatic. She carried herself like an old-fashioned Hollywood dame. She lived like one, too, thanks to a trust fund from a wealthy uncle who’d never had children of his own, not to mention her settlements from three divorces. She was lucid and functional, but seemed to live in a parallel reality in which her inflated sense of self played a starring role.
For example, when she had something to tell Mindy, she couldn’t just say it over the phone or by email. She liked to meet in the back corners of a bar. In her alternative universe, Mindy was Bob Woodward to Gabrielle’s Deep Throat. What news would she have today?
When Gabrielle arrived, they spent the first few minutes sipping champagne and engaging in small talk. As always, Mindy assured Gabrielle she would run a flattering photograph of her. It was an easy promise to make. Gabrielle had been a good source for her over the years, so she wanted to keep her happy.
On this particular occasion, however, the clandestine meeting was a waste of time. Gabrielle didn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know. When it came to Casey Carter, Mindy had never been lacking information.
33
That night at dinner, the smell of butter, thyme, and a perfectly roasted chicken filled Laurie’s apartment. “This was such a treat, Dad.”
Leo was supposed to have had a mini-reunion with some of his police pals at Gallagher’s Steakhouse. To Laurie’s surprise, he had dinner warming in the oven when she came home. The men’s night had been canceled when two of Leo’s friends, still on the job, had been called to Times Square on reports of an unattended van containing a suspicious package. Two hours later, the NYPD confirmed that the panic was a false alarm. The van’s driver had inadvertently left the engine running while he ran upstairs to his sister’s apartment to give a toy to his niece, and then stayed to visit with his family. The city was safe, and Laurie had enjoyed a delicious home-cooked meal.
Timmy was breathlessly replaying the reports that had come to Leo’s phone earlier in the evening. “Mom, they evacuated three blocks-in the middle of Times Square! They had swat trucks and bomb-sniffing dogs. And Grandpa knew it all, before the news even reported it.”