Let Me Whisper in Your Ear Read online

  “Tell me you never went to Palisades, Gwyneth. You, who grew up in one of those big houses next door in Fort Lee. You never went to the park?”

  “Of course I did, Joel.” Gwyneth sighed with exasperation.

  “Wasn’t it the best?”

  “It was okay.” Gwyneth was conceding nothing.

  “Fine. Sneer if you must. But it’s the truth: I loved that old place. Loved riding the Cyclone, loved not getting sick on the Round Up when everyone else did, loved gawking at the two-headed calf in the freak show, and the cow with six legs.”

  “You would.”

  Joel looked momentarily hurt, but he shrugged it off. “I suppose I was a showman even then. There is nothing I like better than a good show, and I’m telling you, Gwyneth, this will be a great show for Hourglass. We can get it done in time for the February ‘book.’”

  The “book” was the bible of commercial television. The ratings of the programs broadcast during each of the four sweeps periods determined what advertisers would pay for commercial time in the months to follow. The networks aired what they thought would be their most sensational programming for sweeps in February, May, July and November.

  “So there’s nothing you like better than a good show, huh?” Gwyneth decided to try distracting him, uncrossing her legs and leaning back slightly against the buttery smooth leather cushions.

  His eyes lit up and he stomped out his cigarette. Joel crossed the room and took a seat close to Gwyneth on the sofa.

  “We’ll make a decision about it in the new year. How’s that, kiddo?” he whispered as he began to kiss Gwyneth’s long, graceful neck.

  No, we won’t, thought Gwyneth. The decision is made. You just don’t know it yet.

  3

  FELIPE CRUZ’S HAND trembled as he hung up the white receiver onto the telephone mounted on the kitchen wall. Without seeing, he stared at the red tomatoes and orange carrots printed on the wallpaper they’d hung in an effort to cheer up the old kitchen.

  How was he going to tell Marta?

  The test results were back. The DNA testing, which he’d only first heard of during the O. J. Simpson trial, now solved, at least partially, the agonizing mystery that had plagued their lives for the past thirty years. Three decades spent in despair and depression, worrying and wondering. Half of their lifetimes. Lives that they marked as “before” and “after” Tommy disappeared.

  The DNA tests were done on samples taken from a pile of bones found by construction workers in early December as they dug the foundation out of the cold ground for yet another high-rise apartment complex scheduled to perch atop the prime real estate of the Palisades. The Cliffside Park police called the Cruzes to alert them that the examination had shown that the bones were those of an adolescent. Felipe and Marta had not slept through the night in the two weeks since they’d given their own genetic samples to authorities for comparison.

  Now they knew. After thirty years of living in a state of heartbroken anticipation, clinging to what became an increasingly desperate and faint hope, they finally knew. DNA, a human being’s genetic road map, ultimately marked the location of their only child. The bones were Tommy’s.

  God, forgive me. It’s a relief.

  Now, at least this Christmas, they knew that Tommy was not still out there somewhere. The years had just crept along. Tommy’s birthdays rolled by. The first without him had been the worst. Then his fourteenth, his fifteenth … his fortieth, forty-first, forty-second. Somehow, they had survived, always praying and wondering if their son would turn up one day. And, if he did come back into their lives, what horrors would he have lived through? Many nights, year after year, Felipe had rocked a sobbing Marta in his arms in the dark as they speculated on what could have happened to their son. And then they stopped speculating. Out loud, at least. They could not talk about it anymore. Not if they wanted to go on living.

  The pain was so great that at times they discussed how they might kill themselves. They agreed that they would—if not for their religion. Devout Roman Catholics, they believed that they must live out their lives, no matter how painful, according to God’s will.

  Felipe felt a tug in his chest. How could God have wanted this? he wondered.

  Marta would be home from the market soon. Felipe paced the kitchen floor, mentally rehearsing what he was going to say. But then he realized that the moment Marta saw his face, she would know. He would not have to come up with the words to tell the mother of his son that their boy was dead and had been rotting less than a mile from their house for the last thirty years.

  But Felipe was going to have to come up with a way to tell his wife that the examination of what was left of Tommy’s bones showed that almost every one of them had been broken and that the police held out little hope of tracking down the owner of the silver chain and marcasite cross that they had found lying among Tommy’s remains.

  4

  Wednesday, December 22

  COLD, GRAY DECEMBER always brought the dreaded Yearenders.

  Three days before Christmas, Laura sat at her desk, yellow highlighter in hand, poring over a computer listing of all the people whose deaths had warranted an obituary in the New York Times over the past year. The printout was as thick as Gone with the Wind.

  Next year, I’m not doing this, she promised herself. While most people are making out their Christmas lists, I’m making my list and checking it twice, all right. A list of the dead.

  Laura swept her blond bangs back from her forehead, instinctively rubbing the thin scar above her browline, and sighed. This was the last thing she wanted to be doing. Not because it was a ghoulish task in the otherwise cheery holiday season. In fact, she found it rather interesting, reading upon who had died over the previous twelve months. Even though she followed the news very closely, there were always some people she’d forgotten or missed—the ones who were not household names, who did not get a full television obit when they died, but who were noteworthy enough to get a write-up in the national newspaper of record.

  No, it wasn’t the work that bothered her. It was the timing. There was just so much to do at this time of the year. The socializing, the shopping, the rushing, the wrapping. It was stressful enough to get all that done. Who needed to be worried about choosing the top-sixty croakers?

  Come on, Laura, she chided herself. Don’t be cynical. You know you want it to be good. Every KEY television station will use it.

  The Yearender piece would run on New Year’s Eve. Two minutes and thirty seconds of flashes of the faces of those who had gone on to their rewards, set against some appropriate music. This year, Laura had selected the signature song of a legendary singer who had died a few months earlier.

  She knew it would come out well. It always did. She’d done several of these Yearenders now and, each time, when they played out to the network, her newsroom co-workers watched, fascinated. They were a tough crowd, most of them not given to compliments. But even some of the most jaded could be moved by the combination of visual images, wonderful music and thoughts of people who had all made impressive marks on this world, passing on to whatever comes next.

  Laura always felt satisfied after the Yearender was done. But mostly she felt relieved. Relieved that she’d made another deadline and that she could then pay a little attention to her personal life, such as it was.

  Being a producer assigned to the KEY News Bulletin Center meant that Laura’s life was not her own. When she accepted the position, she knew it meant that she would be constantly on call. Weekends, holidays and vacations were only fully her own as long as no major news story broke. If something big happened, the beeper, her constant companion, would sound and she was expected to call in to KEY News headquarters immediately and, most often, report in person quickly thereafter. In the year she’d worked in the Bulletin Center, she’d left dozens of dinners uneaten, and days off interrupted.

  Whenever she felt a bit sorry for herself, when the rest of the world seemed to work a normal schedule, wi
thout fear of having a random act of violence or a whim of Mother Nature cut one’s plans short, Laura reminded herself that there were lots of people who lived this way. Police and firefighters staffed their departments around the clock. Hospital doctors and nurses had to make sure their institutions were covered twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

  In fact, when reflecting on it, Laura thought that KEY News was a lot like a hospital. The fine surgery was performed on KEY Evening Headlines and on the magazine shows like Hourglass, where untold hours of excruciating exactitude were spent perfecting every aspect of each broadcast. The Bulletin Center was more like the hospital emergency room. The correspondents, producers and editors assigned to Bulletin duty dealt with whatever the news gods blew their way, and they dealt with it immediately. Seconds counted in being first on the air with the news and beating the competition.

  Laura was so engrossed in going over her obituary list, she jumped when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

  “Hey, Laura, how’s it going?” Mike Schultz loomed over her desk.

  “Getting there,” Laura answered, capping her highlighter. “I’ve whittled down the list to the most important dead people—now we just have to keep our fingers crossed that no one else dies in the next nine days.”

  “You can bet somebody big will buy the farm before the year’s out,” Mike replied.

  Laura nodded, knowing her boss was right.

  5

  MIKE SCHULTZ HAILED a cab and told the driver to take him to Penn Station. He really was not looking forward to the commute home, but he was looking forward to a double Johnny Walker Black.

  Mike was a burly bear of a guy. At six-foot-two, he carried his extra weight well, but his large frame sported fifty pounds of unexercised baggage put on since his college football days. That was only two pounds a year, he rationalized to himself.

  His doctor viewed it differently. “You’re looking at an early heart attack. Cut the crap out of your diet, get some exercise, quit smoking and stop stressing out over that damn job!”

  “Okay, Doc.” Mike sighed resignedly. That’s easy for you to say, he thought.

  He tried. He really did. Instead of grabbing a bagel with a double-cream-cheese-and-jelly-“schmear” at the deli across the street from the commuter train platform, he’d take the time to slice a banana and cover it with raisin bran and low-fat milk, scarfing it down before he rushed out the door to catch the train from Park Ridge, New Jersey, to Manhattan. At lunchtime, he’d choose carefully from the cafeteria salad bar, instead of loading upon his usual cheeseburgers, french fries and onion rings. He’d even try to get out of the office at some point during the day to grab a twenty-minute walk.

  It was harder, though, when he got home. He ached for a scotch or two, or three, after a day in the Bulletin Center. He wondered what effect always being on alert had on a human being. He was sure it wasn’t good. Knowing that anything could happen at any time, and it would ultimately be his responsibility to get the news on the KEY Television Network, was part of the senior producer’s job description. True, he had correspondents, producers and editors under his command to fight the war to get the news immediately on television and, in doing so, beat the other networks. But when things went wrong, when human error or logistical nightmares caused the excuses to fly fast and furious, the buck stopped with Mike Schultz.

  He wanted out. It was getting to him. At first, it had been a relief just to be working in his field again. He’d been determined to do the job well and show the executives on the front row that he had what it took to be a leader and a valued team player in the KEY News hierarchy. Hadn’t he always been a good soldier, willing to do what KEY wanted and needed him to do? Someone had to take the hit for the Gwyneth Gilpatric scandal. He still remembered with a shudder the day Yelena Gregory had summoned him to her president’s office and explained that, for the good of KEY News and the reputation of its star correspondents, Mike would have to take the fall.

  He had been dismissed from the staff of Hourglass, the second most highly rated news show on television. He went from traveling in the network news fast lane to being persona non grata in the industry. None of the other networks would touch him. For a year, he was out of a job … without a job, but with a wife, three kids and a mortgage.

  They’d made it, scraping along on Nancy’s substitute teaching, Mike’s working nights at a local liquor store and dipping into the children’s college fund. After months of that nonsense, he had called Yelena Gregory and threatened to expose what had really happened when he worked at Hourglass with Gwyneth Gilpatric.

  Suddenly, Yelena reassured him that of course they wanted him back. He was a valued part of the team. They had just wanted to give the brouhaha time to settle down.

  More time passed, the money oozing from the Schultz bank account, the confidence leaking from Mike’s psyche. He didn’t want to cause a problem, didn’t want to go public. He didn’t have the energy, the pocketbook or the heart to fight KEY News. He just wanted to work in television news again.

  Just as he was steeling himself to call the media critic for the New York Times, Yelena Gregory phoned. They had a position for him. They wanted him to be the senior producer at the Bulletin Center, a department far less prestigious to KEY News insiders than the famous Hourglass magazine broadcast. Mike would be stuck with the tough, essentially grinding work of honchoing the center.

  Mike had been so grateful to be working again, he almost forgot that KEY News had screwed him. KEY News and Gwyneth Gilpatric.

  6

  “MISS LAURA WALSH is here,” the gray-coated doorman announced.

  Laura stood in the warm lobby of the august prewar building on Central Park West, happy to be out of the frosty night air.

  “You can go right up, Miss Walsh.”

  The mahogany-paneled elevator rose smoothly to the top level. Laura watched the polished brass floor indicator as she made her ascent. Penthouse. The doors opened silently and Laura found herself entering directly into the long marble-floored foyer of Gwyneth Gilpatric’s apartment. A magnificent Christmas tree dominated the space, its branches densely covered with whimsical and theatrical ornaments. Laura scanned the tree but did not notice what she was looking for.

  “Laura, darling!” Gwyneth approached with open arms. “I’m so glad you’re here. I don’t see nearly enough of you these days. But from what I hear, you may be working at Hourglass again.” Wearing gray slacks and a tunic with gunmetal icicle beading, Gwyneth gathered the younger woman in an enthusiastic hug. “Come in. Come in.”

  Gwyneth escorted her guest into the enormous living room. The wall ahead was glass, offering a spectacular view of Central Park and the glittering Manhattan skyline to the south. Laura caught her breath at the beauty of it. On the coffee table sat an hourglass, full of pale pink sand, surrounded by a small army of Emmy Award statuettes.

  “Sit in front of the fire, Laura. Will you have a drink? A glass of wine? I have a bottle of merlot open and breathing. I know that you like merlot.”

  As always, Laura was flattered that Gwyneth remembered anything about her. “Some merlot would be nice,” she answered as she sank into the largest and most luxurious white sofa she had ever seen.

  “Ma’am, the prime minister is on the phone again.”

  “Please, Delia. Call me ‘Ms. Gilpatric.’ ‘Ma’am’ sounds so old-ladyish. Laura, dear, will you excuse me? I have an interview set up in London next month, and Tony and I keep playing phone tag. This should only take a minute.”

  Gwyneth disappeared somewhere to take the call, and Laura settled in to enjoy the beautiful surroundings. What it must be like to live in a place like this! As many times as she’d been here, she’d never gotten used to it. It was like stepping into a dream.

  Laura reached over to lift the heavy hourglass and turned it upside down. The fine pink sand sifted slowly through the small opening at the middle of the vessel. She read the inscription on the small brass plaque that was mounted on
the teak base: TO GWYNETH, YOU MAKE EVERY HOUR PRIME TIME. JOEL.

  Joel Malcolm, the executive producer of Hourglass, was almost the television news legend that Gwyneth was. He had created the award-winning magazine show and Gwyneth Gilpatric had ridden it to stardom.

  Laura considered her boss, that first summer at KEY News. Malcolm initially had been brusque and uninterested in Laura when she interned that July and August at Hourglass. That had changed dramatically when he learned that Gwyneth seemed to consider the young college student a pet project. Malcolm went from indifference to congeniality. When the internship was over, Malcolm had ordered a large cake and champagne to thank Laura and wish her well as she returned to college for her senior year.

  “To Laura,” he had toasted, raising his glass of Piper-Heidseck, and, turning his handsome head to look at the staffers gathered, he added, “She’s been a terrific addition to our team, and she’ll be missed around here. But,” he continued, smiling over at Gwyneth, who was perched on a desk in the corner of the newsroom, “something tells me we’ll be seeing Laura Walsh again here at KEY News. And something else tells me that that will be our gain.”

  Laura remembered how embarrassed she had been at the time. She knew others on the staff had been talking, resentful of what they rightly perceived to be the favoritism lavished on Laura. She was relieved to finish the internship and get back to school. But as the next academic year passed and graduation time neared, Laura was more and more certain that she wanted to work in broadcast journalism. And what better place to work than KEY News?

  Pulled by the twinkling city lights that magically illuminated the dark, shadowy Manhattan skyscrapers, Laura rose from the sofa and walked out to the terrace. She caught her breath as she was hit by the dry, icy December night air. Wrapping her arms around herself for warmth, Laura stepped over to the telescope that stood at the side of the terrace. She peered through the instrument, squinting and focusing on the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art across Central Park.