Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery Read online

  Table of Contents

  TITLE

  COPYRIGHT

  ALSO BY

  DEDICATION

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Social

  Death

  Tatiana Boncompagni

  Social Death

  Published through Tudor City Press

  Social Death is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  Copyright © 2013 by Tatiana Boncompagni

  Cover art copyright © 2013 by Toni Misthos

  Interior Book Design and Layout by

  www.integrativeink.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9899094-0-2

  eISBN: 978-0-9899094-1-9

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the author or publisher.

  Also by this author

  Gilding Lily

  Hedge Fund Wives

  For Maximilian

  Sunday

  People cheat and people lie. It’s a fact of life I never found particularly newsworthy, except when someone ended up dead. That’s usually where I came in, turning betrayal and blood splatter into TV ratings gold. No Emmys yet, but that just kept me hungry—hungry enough to pick up my phone on a Sunday morning in early November when I ought to have been in deep REM.

  “We got something on the scanners. Homicide on the Upper East Side.” The voice belonged to Larry Shreve, the curmudgeonly head of the FirstNews assignment desk. “You’re the only one who answered.”

  I eyed the clock on my bedside table. “It’s not even five-thirty, Larry. Everyone’s still probably sleeping off last night’s cocktails.”

  “Sorry, Clyde,” he mumbled between sips of what was probably high-octane java. “I know you don’t do breaking anymore.”

  I clambered out of bed, stuffing a fresh blouse into Friday’s skirt. “Do we know who the victim is?”

  “Nope. All we got is an address.”

  “You sending a team?”

  “They’ll meet you there.”

  In the bathroom, I splashed some cold water on my face, pulled my shoulder-length red hair into a ponytail and assessed the image staring back at me. I had big breasts; good skin; and wide blue-green eyes. I could also stand to lose 10 pounds, eat more greens, and get more sleep. Nothing I could change in that instant, so I spackled over the worst of it with makeup and made a feeble vow to start taking better care of myself.

  In less than five I was down on my corner, hailing a cab. That’s when I realized Shreve was sending me uptown to the Haverford, a sixteen-floor limestone tower on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The building, known as much for its high-powered residents as its prewar details, was also the home of Olivia Kravis, the socialite daughter of Charles Kravis, FirstNews’s founder—and my best friend since childhood.

  My cab pulled up to the building just as I was dialing Olivia. We were supposed to meet for a drink Friday night, but I’d gotten held up at work and canceled. Her answering machine picked up right away. “Hey Olivia, it’s Clyde,” I said, hopping out of the cab. “I’m outside the Haverford. Don’t freak out, but someone’s been murdered in your building. Can you find out who it is? The PD isn’t talking.” I tried her cell next, left the same message, and cursed my friend for being one of those crazy people who liked to jog at the crack of dawn.

  I slipped my phone back into the pocket of my trench and took stock of my chances of getting inside the Haverford without Olivia’s help. The police had cordoned off the front of the building with blue barricades and yellow crime-scene tape, and police cars were lining the length of the block. A few TV satellite trucks were pulling in behind my cab. One of them was from FirstNews, and I immediately recognized the driver. “Hey Rich!” I yelled, beckoning him over to the curb. As he parked, the van’s door slid open and out popped my team for the day: Aaron, the sound engineer; Dino, the cameraman; and Jen, the field producer. I’d worked with all of them before and knew them to be a seasoned and hardworking bunch. Things were getting off to a good start. “Who we got for talent?” I asked Jen.

  She handed me an earpiece. “Alex Amori.”

  I moaned. “Say it isn’t so.”

  Alex was FirstNews’s fastest-rising star. He had been a Washington, D.C.-based litigator who’d appeared on CNN and GSBC a few dozen times as a commentator before getting hired by our network as a regular. Our bureau chief had lured him to New York with a big salary. In less than six months he’d made the leap from commentator to national correspondent, covering everything from the indictment of a hedge-fund honcho to a congressional sexting scandal. Alex was the industry’s version of a triple threat: He could write—and I mean really write—talk the talk, and, as if that weren’t enough, he was extremely telegenic. He was also well aware of his talents, and assumed every girl this side of the Atlantic was dying to get into bed with him. Plenty of them probably were.

  Not me, though. I’d worked with Alex a couple of times on Topical Tonight, the national nightly news talk show where I was a segment producer, and both times he’d used the same tired line on me: “Someone as pretty as you belongs in front of the camera.” I’d told him that if he was going to hit on me, the least he could do is come up with something more original.

  I popped my head inside the van. It smelled of fast-food breakfast sandwiches, sweat, and electrical equipment. “Alex isn’t with you?”

  Jen looked up from her clipboard. “On his way. ETA is any minute now.”

  “Hey Dino,” I beckoned our cameraman. “Stake out the shot with Jen while I go see what I can find out from the cops.”

  Most people don’t know this, but television news producers don’t just sit in editing rooms splicing tape together. More often than not, we’re the real news hounds, pounding pavement, chasing leads, interviewing sources and basically using any means necessary to get the story. I estimated that I had at least five minutes until the satellite link was up and running, maybe more, considering we couldn’t go to air without Amori.

  Scanning the crowd, I saw the usual assortment of patrol officers, supervisors, and technicians and set my sights on a uniformed guard who was standing off to the side of the main group. Then I ducked inside the van to ask if anyone happened to have a spare cup of java. Turned out Aaron hadn’t yet taken a sip of his. “It’s for the team,” I told him as he reluctantly handed it over. “I owe you big.”

  Even with the coffee, I didn’t love my odds. The guard was six-foot-two, about twenty-three-years-old, and wore the uninterested expression of someone who’d signed up for the police department for the half-pay pension the
y got at twenty years.

  I handed over the Starbucks, hoping it would loosen his tongue. “Clyde Shaw. Senior producer, FirstNews,” I said, flashing him my best smile. “You know who caught the case?”

  Officially, we were supposed to get our facts from the PD’s information officers—whose job it was to make the department and police chief look good. But in reality, we all had sources on the force who either didn’t know the rules or didn’t care about them. I was counting on my guy to fall into one of those two categories.

  The guard took off the coffee lid and slugged back a mouthful. “You got eyes, Red. Who you see comin’ in an’ outta the building?” He had a heavy Long Island accent and dark crescents under his eyes.

  I peered through the Haverford’s front door and caught a glimpse of John Restivo. Restivo was one of the most experienced detectives in Manhattan North Homicide, which meant the NYPD wasn’t taking any chances with this investigation. And that meant that the murder victim wasn’t just some spoiled hedge-fund wife; he—or she—was a name, and possibly a big one. I knew from Olivia that her building was home to a former governor, two movie producers, an Oscar-winning actress and her country-music star husband, not to mention a slew of high-powered bankers and lawyers.

  “Restivo,” I said. “Who’d they pair him up with?” In New York, when a murder happens, one detective gets assigned from the precinct in which the body has been found and another from one of the city homicide departments. We were in the “one-nine,” as in the Nineteenth Precinct.

  The officer looked at me with stony silence. He wasn’t playing ball.

  “What about the medical examiner and evidence-collection team? They arrive yet?”

  No response. I wasn’t getting anywhere and the clock was ticking. “One last question. They tell you who the victim is yet?”

  He scratched the stubble on his chin. “Nice try.”

  “Oh come on. You can tell me. How about this: I say a name, and you can just nod or shake your head?” I’d been in Olivia’s building enough times to be familiar with some of the Haverford’s better-known residents, and judging by the amount of cops on the scene, the vic had a good chance of being one of them.

  The officer let out a laugh, amused by my persistence. It wasn’t the reaction I was looking for and he knew it. “You get an A for effort, lady. But it ain’t gonna happen. Thanks for this, though,” he said, lifting his coffee.

  I was about to give him a piece of my mind when my phone started buzzing in the pocket of my trench. There was a text from Jen: “Sat up. Live in five.”

  In thirty seconds, I was back at the truck, ready to go. Alex, meanwhile, was nowhere to be seen. “Where is Amori?” I asked Jen.

  She looked around helplessly. “He was here a minute ago.”

  I jogged around the corner, threading my way through the crush of people around the building’s entrance. As Alex’s producer, it was my responsibility to make sure he was where he was supposed to be at all times, and we were due to go live, feeding into the newscast in less than five minutes. If we couldn’t go live and the newscast got screwed up because of it, there would only be one person to blame—me.

  Luckily it didn’t take long to find him. Alex was hanging out exactly where I thought he would be: the GSBC van.

  We had plenty of our own good-looking correspondents, but GSBC had us beat by at least one or two long-legged beauties. They were like the Brazil of network news, and Penny Harlich, the correspondent Alex was busy chatting up, was their Giselle Bündchen. She had long, champagne-blond hair, a perfect body, and luminous skin. Resisting the urge to go over there and drag Alex back to his mark by his ears, I whipped out my phone and typed a sternly worded text: “Get your ass to the camera. We are on NOW.”

  Alex took his eyes off Penny’s cleavage long enough to look at his phone.

  A moment later, he was by my side. I shook my head as we hustled over to Jen and the rest of the crew. “GSBC? Come on, Alex. You wouldn’t flirt with a lawyer from the opposing team, would you?”

  He gave me a look. “Well—”

  “Don’t answer that.” We came to a halt at the van. I held out my hand. “Script, please.” He proffered up a piece of paper as Aaron clipped a lavalier microphone on Alex’s lapel. I scanned what Alex had written. He was a good writer, especially for someone with as little experience in broadcast news as he’d had. I reworked the opening and handed it back to him. “I made a couple of changes.”

  He read through my alterations and flashed me a grin. “Smart and beautiful.”

  Not a lot of girls could resist his puppy dog eyes and gravelly voice, and had Alex taken notice of me when he first came to FirstNews, I might not have either. But that was before I’d watched him in action at the annual summer picnic. He was more dog than puppy, it turned out.

  “Head’s up, man.” Aaron snaked a wire under Alex’s clothes, and plugged it into another wire connected to the phone line in the truck. I already had an IFB—interruptible feedback—device in one of my ears, and my cellphone, which was dialed into the news hour’s executive producer, smashed up against the other.

  “Wrap it up, now,” the director told the anchor over the IFB. “Toss to Alex. Go! Go! Now!”

  I scurried behind Dino as he hoisted the camera on his shoulder. “Three, two, one,” I counted down with my fingers, pointing at Alex to cue him to start.

  Over the next two minutes, Alex recounted everything we knew, which was close to nothing. Dead body. Fancy building. Lots of cops. The anchors then asked Alex a couple of quick questions about whether the police had any leads—if they did, they weren’t releasing that information—before the director instructed us to wrap it up. Alex parsed out a few more lines about us continuing to follow the investigation closely. While we were on commercial break, the executive producer let me know they’d be coming back to us in fifteen.

  I clapped my hands together. “Let’s talk about our next live shot.” Everyone groaned except for Alex, who, truth be told, had impressed me with his delivery. Beyond good looks, perfect elocution, and an ability to recite a script verbatim while people screamed in his ear, he’d also nailed the trickiest part of crime reporting—tone. I hated to admit it, but the network was right to recognize his potential.

  “You change your mind yet?” Alex walked right up to me, standing close enough that I could smell the soap he’d used in the shower that morning.

  I dug my heel into the soil. “About what?”

  “Me. Admit it. I’m good.”

  “Just do me a favor, champ, and make sure you’re where you’re supposed to be next time we’re minutes to air.”

  He cocked his head to one side. “I’m not a toddler, you know.”

  “Of course you’re not. They’d never give a toddler their own show.”

  His carefree smile vanished. “You know about the show? How do you know about that?”

  I arched my brow. “Do I look like I was born yesterday?”

  “I don’t think you want me to answer that.”

  Not that I cared whether Alex thought I was old, but someone needed to show him a picture of Demi Moore. Forty was the new thirty and, by that math, I was twenty-six.

  “I have a call to make. Why don’t you go bat your eyelashes at Penny Whorelick a few more times and see if she’ll tell you who the murder victim is!”

  My crew erupted in laughter as I brushed past Alex, my shoulder scraping his. “Nice one, Clyde,” Dino hooted.

  “Penny told me the victim was a woman,” Alex said, stopping me in my tracks.

  I turned around. “What else?”

  “Her housekeeper found her with the side of her head bashed in and face beaten to a pulp. Gonna take one hell of a cleanup crew.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that earlier? Why wasn’t that in your script?”

  He squared his shoulders. “I gave her my word. Besides, she’s not going to air with it until she gets confirmation.”

  I shook my head. “Lik
e hell she isn’t.” On a breaking story like this, you don’t wait for corroboration.

  “She said she doesn’t trust the source.”

  “Or maybe it’s all just a bunch of bullshit.”

  He crossed his arms in front of his chest. “At least I got something. What’d you get? That cop tell you anything we can use?” He was gloating.

  I stuck out my chin. “What’s your point?”

  Alex laughed. “That cop’s got a day-old beard and bags under his eyes bigger than that wretched thing you tote around.” He pointed to the red messenger I had slung across my shoulder. “You prance up to him in your little heels with some fancy coffee and think he’s just gonna let it all spill because you’re so damn thoughtful.”

  I shrugged. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

  He shook his head, laughing again. “Just admit it was a poor allocation of coffee.”

  I was about to concede the point when I heard screaming in my ear. It was the executive producer of the Sunday morning news hour shouting in my ear. “Change of plans, Clyde, we’re coming back to you in five.”

  “Five?” I screeched. “I’m not ready.”

  “Get ready.”

  “I’m telling you, I’ve got nothing.” I wasn’t going to use Harlich’s hot tip until we could independently confirm it. There was a chance Penny had made it all up in hopes of us reporting it on air and looking like a bunch of idiots when it turned out not to be true. My gut told me she wasn’t smart enough pull a move like that, but you never know. The point was that there’s a legitimate reason you don’t go fishing for tips across enemy lines.

  The EP was yelling in my ear again. “Then get me a bystander, for fuck’s sake. Let’s go with vox pop.”

  Vox pop was short for vox populi, or voice of the people. Hanging up, I searched the crowd for someone I could pull into the shot with Alex, but everyone around us was PD or media. Then I remembered Olivia. Alex could interview her over the phone. I dialed her a second time, but once again, my call went straight to voicemail. “Olivia, I’m desperate. Please call as soon as you get this.” Reeling around in frustration, someone, or rather something, caught my eye. Behind our shot, walking up the opposite side of the street, I spotted a flash of the distinctive green uniform worn by the doormen and porters at the Haverford.