The Nightgown Read online

  I’ll give Lenny Ryan credit: his tell was very small. Just a brief grinding of his teeth. I was bluffing like hell – that go-go-bar manager wasn’t going to let me within fifty feet of his dancers – but Lenny didn’t know that. I had him.

  “Young man, are you threatening me?” he said quietly.

  “Senator, I would never threaten anyone. It’s unethical. But as a reporter playing fair, I feel I have an obligation to tell you what might be written about you in the paper. Don’t worry, I’ll call you to get your response. Maybe I’ll even ask Mrs. Ryan for her thoughts here on her anniversary night – for journalistic balance and all.”

  He coughed gently into his right hand, then rubbed his neck for a moment.

  “Well, I always do pride myself on being cooperative with the media,” he said. “So. Very well.”

  He coughed again, then continued: “I was trying to drive while handling a constituent matter – finding an out-of-work father of three a job, if you must know – and I’m afraid I took my eyes off the road. The next thing I knew my car jumped the curb and crashed into the building. That the building was a gentleman’s club was, I assure you, a coincidence. I’ve never been there before. I’m just thankful no one inside was hurt. As an elected official, I ought to be held to a higher standard, and I’m afraid I set a very bad example. I’m embarrassed by my actions, and I’m going to ask the police to cite me for reckless driving. Then I’m going to plead guilty and pay my fine.”

  He began closing the door again.

  “Now,” he said. “I believe that’s more than enough mea culpa for you to write your story. And I’ll be sure to tell my good friend Harold Brodie the next time I see him that you’re a very determined young reporter.”

  Harold Brodie was The Eagle-Examiner’s legendary executive editor. Ryan was returning my threat with one of his own: If I pushed too hard, he’d complain to Brodie. I got the hint.

  “Thank you, Senator,” I said as the door closed. “Sorry for your accident. Try to enjoy the rest of your evening.”

  I was sure as heck going to enjoy mine. I had stared down one of the state’s most powerful politicians and gotten him to admit to reckless driving. It would make for a good story, one that would show the editors at The Eagle-Examiner I had some serious reporting chops.

  Still, something about it wasn’t quite right. One of the toughest things as a reporter is taking the known facts and intuiting what should be there, but isn’t. If you can figure it out, it’ll often point you to a flaw in your story that you otherwise couldn’t see. As I hit the sidewalk in front of the house, the flaw finally occurred to me:

  Lenny Ryan had just been in a major car crash. And he didn’t have a scratch on him.

  I climbed into my Nova, pointed it back in the direction of Carteret and called Tina, feeding her the Senator’s verbal self-immolation.

  “Thanks, Carter,” she said when I was done. “This is terrific, really terrific. I appreciate your help. I’ve got some extra bodies in for the night shift now. We can take it from here.”

  “No you can’t,” I said. “I’m not done yet. I’ll call you later with more.”

  I hung up before she could dispute me. In later years, ignoring the wishes of editors – Tina, in particular – would become a fairly routine part of my life. Back then it still felt a little dangerous, especially when I was trying to convince the paper I was worth hiring.

  But this wasn’t just about getting a job anymore. This was about getting a story. And there was some part of me, perhaps written in a series of A’s C’s G’s and T’s in every one of my cells, that felt compelled to figure out what it was.

  It wasn’t at the hospital. That was for sure. And at this point I had a better chance of finding Sasquatch at a tanning salon than finding eyewitnesses. If anyone had seen it firsthand – and it’s not like there were a lot of pedestrians in that part of town – they’d be long gone.

  That left me with one unturned stone: the Carteret Rescue Squad.

  I pulled off the road just long enough to scam wireless – God Bless people who use Lynksis routers without password protection – and ascertain the Carteret Rescue Squad was housed on Leick Avenue. According to Google maps, it was near Goumba Johnny’s restaurant and something called Yeshiva Gedola. Say what you will about New Jersey, but if there’s strength in diversity, we could beat the snot out of anyone. Especially Pitts County, Pennsylvania.

  The rescue squad’s headquarters was an unassuming white rectangular building with a large bay garage and room for two ambulances. It being a nice spring evening, one of the bays was open, which any good journalist takes as a standing invitation to enter.

  “Can I help you?” I heard a female voice inquire.

  I turned to see three people – two guys and a woman – seated around a small folding table, holding playing cards.

  “Hey, sorry to bother you,” I said. “I’m doing a story for The Eagle-Examiner about the man you took to Robert Wood Johnson earlier tonight? The guy who crashed his Lexus into the go-go bar?”

  I purposefully didn’t say the name “Lenny Ryan” in case they were somehow unaware they had been carting a VIP. But I was treated to the same Dummy Tree look Tina had given me earlier in the night.

  Finally the woman said, “We didn’t take a guy to Robert Wood Johnson.”

  “You didn’t?” I said, wondering if I got the hospital wrong.

  “No,” she replied. “We took a woman.”

  I tried not to smile. I may or may not have succeeded. “A woman?” I asked. “You mean the driver wasn’t a distinguished-looked silver-haired gentleman?”

  “No, it wasn’t that creep Lenny Ryan, if that’s what you’re asking,” she said. “Lenny Ryan wasn’t even there. The driver was a…how do I put it…”

  She was struggling for the right words. The second guy, who hadn’t spoken yet, helped her: “It was one of the dancers.”

  Now I was really having a hard time holding back my smile. Not only had I caught the righteous Senator Ryan in an outrageous lie, I had caught him with what appeared to be a stripper for a girlfriend.

  “She got a name?” I asked.

  “Come on, you know we can’t tell you that,” the woman said.

  “But you took her to Robert Wood Johnson?”

  “Sure did,” the woman said. “You can’t use our names in your story, though. We’d get in trouble.”

  “Tell you what: you give me the name of the dancer, and I’ll get the whole story from her. I’d never have to mention you guys.”

  The three EMT’s exchanged glances, struggling momentarily with their collective consciences, then the woman said: “Lenny Ryan has let our funding get cut three years in a row. Screw him.”

  That was how I left the Carteret Rescue Squad a short time later armed with the name Jessica Martin. I knew I couldn’t use it in the newspaper yet – not without better sourcing – but I could at least use it to find her.

  And the first place to look was Robert Wood Johnson Hospital. It was true that hospitals couldn’t tell you squat anymore, but there was no gag order on their family or friends, the kind of people who just might be hanging around the emergency waiting room.

  I started my search outside, where a few nicotine addicts were sating their cravings, asking each person, “Excuse me, are you here for Jessica Martin?”

  Then I moved inside, working slowly around the large, crowded room. If a hospital PR person got wind I was working the waiting room, fits would be thrown, security would be called and a reporter would be expelled. So I kept it quiet.

  I was three-quarters of the way through when a dark-skinned Hispanic woman, who was maybe a little younger than me, said, “Yes, I’m her roommate.”

  “I’m Carter Ross. I’m working on a story for The Eagle-Examiner. What’s your name?”

  “Alison Coutinho,” she said, seemingly accepting that the newspaper must do stories on all car accidents and that it wasn’t at all unusual to be approached by a
reporter in an emergency room.

  “Is Jessica okay?” I asked.

  She let her shoulders slump. “Someone from the hospital called and told me Jessie asked for me. But now that I’m here, the nurses won’t tell me anything because I’m not related.”

  I somehow resisted the smartass question about how they figured that out. Alison continued: “But they did say I should stick around and give her a ride home, so that must mean she’s going to be released soon.”

  I looked at Alison Coutinho, trying to figure her out. She had on jeans and a T-shirt, hardly what you would call stripper attire. And, without being unkind, I wouldn’t exactly say her figure it was suited to exotic dancing. It was what my very polite mother would call “full.”

  “So how do you and Jessica know each other?”

  “We go to Kean,” she said.

  I’ll be damned. A stripper who really was working her way through college. And a good college, too. Kean University was a small, well-regarded liberal arts school in Union.

  “And Jessie, uh…” my voice trailed off, as I tried to be delicate. “She, uh…dances…on the side?”

  “I don’t blame her. She makes a lot more money than I do working at the library, that’s for sure,” Alison said. “If I had a body like she does, I’d probably dance, too.”

  “Right,” I said. “And how long have she and Senator Ryan been an item?”

  Alison slid back in her chair and sat more upright. “You know about that?”

  I gave her a lopsided smile. “I’m a newspaper reporter, ma’am, it’s what we do.”

  “Well, I’ll let Jessie tell you about that, if she wants to. That’s none of my business.”

  “Fair enough. You mind if I slip out and make a quick phone call? I’ll be right back.”

  I could feel my hands shaking as I dialed Tina. This was big. Huge.

  Tina was, as expected, a little peeved about being hung up on. But she got over it quickly enough when I told her what I had, to the point where she was nearly as excited as I was. Still, her final edict was firm:

  “We can’t skewer a prominent man’s reputation on the say-so of three unnamed sources and someone’s roommate,” she said. “You need Jessica Martin on the record, or we’ve got nothing.”

  By the time I returned to the waiting room, Alison was in the midst of being joined by a tall, finely boned women with long, straight blond hair. She looked far too high class to be working at a go-go bar in Carteret, which is probably why Lenny liked her in the first place. She had a few superficial cuts on her cheeks and forehead and the beginnings of a nasty black eye, presumably from where her face had mashed into an airbag. She also had her left arm in a sling.

  None of which hid the fact that she was stunning.

  I’m not saying Jessica Martin’s beauty made it okay for Lenny Ryan to cheat on his wife. I’m just saying she would have made a lot of men question their marriages.

  I could feel my heart pounding as I introduced myself, partly because gorgeous women had that effect on me but more because Jessica held my future as a newspaper reporter in her long, delicate fingers.

  “Hi Jessie, I’m Carter Ross,” I said. “I’m really sorry about your accident. I’m doing a story about it for The Eagle-Examiner.”

  Between her red eyes and runny nose, it was clear Jessie had been crying a lot already this day, and I feared my pronouncement would prompt more sniffling. Or she was getting ready to bury her purse in the side of my head. She was tough to read.

  Either way, I knew this was my moment to win her over. It was brief. And there could be no mistake in what I said next. So I went for the kill:

  “Lenny Ryan tells me he was trying to find a constituent a job when he lost control of his car and ran it into a building,” I said. “He told me this as he was getting ready to take his wife out for an anniversary dinner. Do you maybe want to tell me a different version of the events?”

  A long-dead playwright once warned about the dangers of a woman scorned. Much has changed about the world since he made that observation, but thankfully for this reporter, the fundamentals of it have not.

  “Lenny Ryan,” Jessica Martin said, “is a miserably lying worm.”

  “Noted,” I said, as I pulled out my pad.

  She winced as she adjusted her sling-covered left arm, then calmly said: “You know what that prick told me? He told me he loved me. He told me he was going to leave his wife for me. For six months he had been telling me that. He said he was just going to wait until after the next election, so he could do it quietly. And I believed him. Then he gave his wife a nightgown for their anniversary. A nightgown!”

  “This all…this is about a nightgown?”

  “Yeah. He had let me borrow his car to run an errand and I found it in the backseat. It had a note attached and everything: ‘To my darling Priscilla, Thank you for 38 wonderful years. Love, Leonard.’ It was from Victoria’s Secret. What kind of man gives his wife a Victoria’s Secret nightgown and writes a note like that if he knows he’s going to leave her?”

  “So you found the nightgown in the backseat and…drove his car into a wall to get back at him?” I asked, already dreaming of the headlines that could result from this. Whether it’s Monica Lewinsky’s blue dress or O.J. Simpson’s bloody glove, a big story often needs a small image to make it pop. Mrs. Ryan’s nightgown would serve nicely in that regard.

  “He loved that car. He probably loved that car more than me and his wife combined,” she said, then stopped and smiled wickedly. “The fact that I drove it into a wall was purely an accident, of course. I was just so distraught I must not have been paying attention.”

  “Of course,” I concurred. “And that will be noted in whatever I write.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I am curious, though: Why drive it – accidentally, of course – into the go-go bar?”

  “Well, you know he owns that place, right?”

  For at least the third time that night, I utterly failed at tamping down a grin. “No,” I said. “I was unaware of that. And I’m pretty sure his constituents are unaware of it, too.”

  “I know they are. He told me he had it hidden and that the press could never find it. He had made me a part owner and was going to let me manage it so I could stop dancing. I’ve got the paperwork in my purse. Want to see it?”

  Within ten minutes we had left the hospital and found a Kinkos, where I made photocopies of all the incriminating documents I needed. Leonard Ryan was assigning a 10 percent stake in the Roxy’s Go-Go to one Jessica E. Martin.

  I got Jessie’s cell phone number and a few more pertinent facts about her relationship with the Senator. It had started when the club manager showed Ryan a picture of their newest dancer, this breathtaking blond. The next thing she knew, she was the object of Lenny Ryan’s rather relentless affections – which included everything from poetry and love letters to cash and jewelry.

  And, yeah, she promised to dig up some of the poetry for me in the morning. I figured this story was going to have some serious legs. It would be nice to have fresh fodder for the follow.

  We parted with an exchange of cell phone numbers and promises to keep in touch, and I pushed my Nova to the very limits of its dubious engineering to make good time back to the Newark offices of The Eagle-Examiner. It was 10 by the time I arrived, and while I had already dictated most of the good stuff to Tina – who had sent it along to her rewrite guy – we had agreed I should do a write-through for the final edition, so I could put it all in my own words.

  It was a writing test, all right. But it was a real one. This was my own batter, my own cake. And if I can risk mixing baking metaphors, I was going to turn it into a huge chunk of humble pie for Senator Lenny Ryan.

  I was given until 11:30 to write, and I took every second before sending it over to Tina. As she read it, I don’t mind admitting I may have ogled her a little bit. She was sitting in a contorted position, doing some kind of thoroughly impossible stretch that was
inspired by either modern Yoga or ancient torture. She had swept her hair up into some kind of clip, allowing me to admire a lovely little cleft where her jaw bone and neckline met. It was the kind of place I decided would require further study someday, if circumstances allowed.

  “Not bad for a rookie,” she announced when she was done, shipping it over to the copy desk, which was going to slam it into the three-star edition just before it went to press.

  “Thanks for all your help,” I said. “If I may say so, we made a pretty good team.”

  She smiled – a broad, full-lipped, lovely smile – but followed it with, “Don’t start liking me. No journalist should want anyone to like them. It makes for bad reporting. You want someone to like you in this business? Buy a cat.”

  “I thought it was, ‘If you want someone to like you, buy a dog,’” I said.

  “That works for politicians in Washington, but not for reporters at this newspaper. Dogs need people to return home on a regular schedule and walk them. If you get a job here, I guarantee there’d be a lot of nights when you’d come home late to find Rover has peed the rug. Cats are a better fit for reporters.”

  “Okay, I’ll get a cat,” I said. “I think I’ll name him Deadline.”

  She gave me another alluring smile and we settled into chatting – the where-ya-from, how’d-ya-get-here kind of stuff. Soon, one of the clerks brought up a stack of freshly printed newspapers, making a straight line for me.

  “Sal Szanto asked me to give this to you,” she said, then handed me my very own copy of the next day’s edition of The Eagle-Examiner.

  It was still slightly damp. And, sure enough, it had a story stripped across the front page with my byline on it. It also had a piece of Sal Szanto’s stationery taped to it. Szanto, like most good newspapermen, apparently valued brevity. Because his note consisted of just two words:

  “You’re hired.”

  From

  BRAD PARKS

  Award-Winning author of THE NIGHTGOWN

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