The Nightgown (2 page)

The driver rolled down his window and hollered, “Hey, you with the insurance company? I got that car in my lot, if you want to take a look at it.”

It briefly occurred to me to say,
Yes, I’m with State Farm, tell me everything
. Except, of course, if the bosses at
The Eagle-Examiner
heard I had done it, they’d fire me before they even hired me: it’s unethical for reporters to misidentify themselves. So I trotted over to his truck and said, “Actually, I’m here doing a story for
The Eagle-Examiner
. Mind if I have a look at the car, anyway?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he said, then gestured to the other side of the street. “It’s right over there. You can see it from here.”

Sure enough, across the street and mid-way down the block, I could see Walter’s Auto Body. And there, hiding in plain sight, was a black Lexus with a seriously mangled front end. I could see the crease where building had met car. The front bumper was nowhere to be seen. The hood was crumpled about halfway up. The windshield no longer existed. It was clear that while a little bit of the energy of the collision had gone into knocking out a chunk of the go-go bar, most of it had transferred into the car.

“Is it totaled?” I asked.

“Don’t know yet. Takes a lot to total a new Lexus. But I don’t even know if I’m working on the thing. The police called and asked me to tow it. I haven’t heard from the owner.”

Which meant it was possible the tow truck driver didn’t know who the owner was. That was a break for me, to finally get a source who wouldn’t be worried about angering the mighty Lenny Ryan.

“Did you see the accident?” I asked.

“No, but I heard it. It was loud. I thought a truck dropped a load or something. It was a nasty hit. I just hope whoever was driving it is okay.”

I collected the guy’s name and tried to pump some other information out of him, but he didn’t have much for me.

“Did you see the driver?” I asked.

“No, just the ambulance. It got here pretty quick and carted the guy off.”

“Where would an ambulance around here take someone?”

“It was from Carteret Rescue Squad. Unless you tell ‘em otherwise, they take you to Robert Wood Johnson.”

I would probably have to call Robert Wood Johnson but, as a rule, hospitals are worthless to reporters. Ever since the invention of this infernal thing called HIPAA – the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which includes privacy regulations that are the absolute bane of the Fourth Estate – hospitals had become virtual black holes of information: nothing, not even light itself, escapes.

As such, I knew what little time I had left would be wasted there. No, given the apparent reluctance of secondary sources, I had to go to the home of the man himself. Maybe he had been treated and released. Maybe there would be a relative who could tell me what happened. Maybe a concerned neighbor would be dropping off a casserole. Something.

I phoned Tina en route to Clark, exchanging what shreds of information I had gotten for an address and directions to the domicile of Leonard R. Ryan. When I arrived at his nicely appointed home – two stories, three garages – and knocked on the door, I was surprised to see it opened by a tall, smiling, silver-haired gentleman.

“May I help you?” he said, calmly.

“Good evening, Senator,” I said, taking an educated guess this was the man himself and not his twin brother. “I’m Carter Ross. I’m doing a story for
The Eagle-Examiner
about your accident.”

The Senator smiled pleasantly and, without a hitch, replied, “I think it’s best I not comment. Let’s leave it to the police.”

He wasn’t drunk – or, if he had been at 5 o’clock, he had sobered up in a hurry. He wasn’t high, either. He was as unruffled as if he had just come away from a day at the spa.

“With all due respect, Senator, the police know who you are,” I said. “They don’t want to risk saying the wrong thing, so they’re not saying anything.”

He smiled again. “Well, far be it from me to second guess the police. You’ll have to put me down as a no comment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, tonight is my anniversary and my wife and I are getting ready to go out to dinner.”

Lenny Ryan gripped the door and began pushing it in the direction of my face, which I wasn’t about to let happen. I couldn’t walk away from this encounter with nothing. Sal Szanto would send me packing to Pitts County with an encouraging word about how I should reapply for a job in five years, when I had a bit more seasoning. With all due respect to the fine people of Pitts County, I’d rather eat nails.

So I stuck my foot in the door.

“Look, Senator,” I said. “Here’s how this works. I have only so much time between now and when I need to start writing this thing. Either I fill that time talking to you, or I go back to Roxy’s and keep showing your picture to the dancers until one of them has some faint inkling that she may recognize you from somewhere. Then I call you, ‘Senator Ryan, described by a dancer as a frequent visitor to Roxy’s’ with every chance I get.”

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.”