Strangled - Brian McGrory [48]
“I could, Brett. But the problem is, I’m not there. I’d love to help you, Meredith, and Matt out, but I’m working on a story for tomorrow’s Record. I’ve got my own job to do, Brett. As a matter of fact, I’ve got to run and do it now. Thanks for your kind offer.”
I heard him whining into the phone as I hung up.
Not ten seconds later, the phone chimed again.
“Yeah, Flynn here.”
“Jack, Regis Philbin here…”
Seriously, it was Regis Philbin. I love the man, I really do, but now was not the time to profess it. I write a story destined to rock my native Boston right to its parochial core, and this is how it begins to unwind, with a bunch of TV people wanting to piggyback on what they don’t have. And I thought it was newspapers that were in trouble. Well, okay, maybe we are as well, but at least there’s some honor to it.
As soon as I extricated myself — politely so — from that offer, I turned my phone off, rose from bed, and gazed out the window at the flashing neon up and down the Vegas strip — Paris to my left, New York–New York and the Bellagio across the street, the outdated Bally’s to my right. I wondered if my gamble would pay off today, not just for me but for women I didn’t yet know, women who were marked to die. Which is when it hit me. Most stories, truth be told, were little more than an exercise in this grand and illustrious business of reporting. If you get it, terrific, you make a splash, maybe cause some humiliation, perhaps even a resignation. Believe me, been there, done that, with mayors and governors and even a president. But this one, this one was different. People’s lives were on the line, people I didn’t know. A killer might have been playing games with these notes and driver’s licenses and all that, but it wasn’t a game at all. I was in the middle of it, but felt like a mere conduit, working on behalf of people I would probably never know.
I did know this, though: I needed a good hand, I needed it fast, or more people, myself possibly included, were destined to die.
15
At about nine o’clock, I slowly drove down Rodeo Road, a street, I’m fairly certain, that was pronounced like the sporting event with the cowboys on the bucking broncos, and not the more affected shopping boulevard that runs through the heart of Beverly Hills. I once quite literally bumped into Angelina Jolie on that boulevard, but that’s not really the point here. I’d bet Mongillo’s lunch money that I wasn’t going to run into her today.
Still, the houses surprised me for their size, which is to say they were large, as well as for their condition, which was well kept. These were nice homes painted in subtle, sophisticated colors with wide, irrigated lawns and freshly trimmed fauna. All very un–Las Vegas — although what did I expect, giant lighted flamingos in residential developments? Some of the houses had big bay windows, others had triple-car garages. It appeared very quiet, this neighborhood, meaning there weren’t kids running around the streets playing kick the can, but maybe that’s because kids don’t play that anymore.
Anyway, 284 Rodeo Road was a gray center-entrance house with two levels and a brick driveway. More important, it was also where Bob Walters had come to live after retiring from the Boston Police Department, which gets back to the point about me being surprised. This didn’t look like the kind of street where old men on a public-service pension could afford to retire, but maybe he bought at just the right time, as it was being built, or maybe he had family money on one side or the other. People and money, I’ve learned in life, will always surprise you in ways good and bad.
I glided past the house to get a sense of what I was dealing with, as well as to stall for a little more time, and a block or two down pulled a U-turn and circled back. The garage doors were closed, as was the center door. The windows were all pulled shut, some of them darkened by drawn shades or curtains. The sprinklers were not on, but then again, they weren’t on any other lawns, either. Maybe that