Night Fall

“Tell me the rumor.”

“About this couple banging on the beach with a videotape going, and maybe they filmed the explosion. Some local cops passed it on to some of our guys. That’s all I heard.”

“Did you hear that this couple might have stayed at the Bayview Hotel?”

“Sounds familiar. I gotta go.”

He stood, and I said, “I need a name.”

“What name?”

“Any name. Someone like you who worked the case and is out of the clutches of the Feds. Someone who you think has some information I can use. Like maybe about that rumor. You remember how this works. You give me a name, I talk to the guy, and he gives me another name. And so on.”

He stayed silent awhile, then said, “You never did listen to good advice. Okay, here’s a name. Marie Gubitosi. You know her?”

“Yeah… she used to work out of Manhattan South.”

“That’s her. She was on and off the task force before you got there. She’s happily married, two kids, and off the job. She’s got nothing to lose by talking to you, but nothing to gain either.”

“Where can I find her?”

“I don’t know. You’re a detective. You find her.”

“I will. Thanks for the name.”

“Don’t use my name.”

“Goes without saying.”

He started for the door, then came back to me. He said, “We talked about your interest in doing background checks. I’m going to make some calls for you, for the record. Send me your resume or something. You may get a call for an interview.”

“What if they offer me your job?”

“Take it.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I walked to Ecco on Chambers Street. The maitre d’ recognized me, and said, “Good afternoon, Mr. Mayfield. Your wife has arrived.”

“Which one?”

“This way, sir.” He escorted me to a table where Kate was sitting, sipping a sparkling water, and reading theTimes.

I gave Kate a kiss and took a seat opposite her. She said, “I ordered you a Budweiser.”

“Good.” It’s actually not bad being married. It’s comfortable.

My Bud arrived, and I clinked glasses with Kate.

Ecco is a pleasant older establishment, frequented by people who work for the city or the courts, including jurors, and also including, unfortunately, defense attorneys, such as my ex-wife. I hadn’t run into her or her insignificant other here yet, but I would someday.

The waiter came with menus, but we ordered without looking at them. Salad and grilled tuna for Kate, and fried calamari and pe

I’m on the Dr. Atkinson diet. Harvey Atkinson is a fat dentist in Brooklyn whose philosophy is, “Eat what tastes good, and clean your plate.”

Kate said, “You’re putting on a little weight.”

“It’s the horizontal stripes on my tie.” What did I say about marriage?

“You need to eat right and get more exercise.” She changed the subject and asked me, “How did your meeting go?”

“Good.”

“Did it have to do with yesterday?”

“Maybe.” I asked her, “Do you know who interviewed Leslie Rosenthal, the manager of the Bayview Hotel?”

“I asked Mr. Rosenthal the same question five years ago. He was first interviewed by an NYPD task force detective, a man whose name he didn’t get. The detective, realizing he may have found the source of the blanket on the beach, then called in the FBI. Three guys showed up who identified themselves as FBI. One guy did all the talking, but Rosenthal didn’t catch his name.”

“No cards?”

“That’s what he said. According to Mr. Rosenthal, these three and some others questioned the staff and looked through the hotel’s written and computer records, making a copy of all the recent guest registrations and checkouts. I assume they tried to determine if two of these guests were the ones who’d taken the blanket to the beach that night, and who may have videotaped themselves, and inadvertently videotaped TWA Flight 800.”

I replied, “And what we don’t know is whether or not these three guys were successful in locating this couple. My instincts say they were. So, even if we found this couple, they’ve already been sanitized or vaporized.”

Kate did not reply.

I continued, “And so has this videotape, if it ever existed.”

“Well… if that’s the case, then we should at least find that out. Look, John, I never thought we were going to solve the mystery of TWA 800. I just want to… find this couple, and talk to them…”

“Why?”

“I don’t know until I talk to them.”

“That sounds like one of my lines.”

She smiled. “You’ve had a great influence on my thinking.”

“Same here,” I said.

“I hadn’t noticed.”

The appetizers came, and I asked her, “Do you think Mr. Rosenthal is still at the Bayview Hotel?”

“I know he is. I check every year. I did a background on him, and I know where he lives and all that.” She looked at me and said, “I’m notworking the case. But Iam keeping the files up-to-date.”

“What files?”

She tapped her head. “Up here.”

“Tell me what else is up there.”

“I did that yesterday. Now it’s better that you ask when you need something.” She added, “You need to arrive at questions before you arrive at answers.”

“Okay, I understand you want me to work this case the way a detective would work it who just caught the squeal-meaning, who just got notified of the crime. But this is an old case, and I never worked on the Cold Case Squad. I used to get my cases before the blood even congealed on the corpse.”

“Please, I’m eating.” She pushed a forkful of salad at me. “Eat this.”

I opened wide, and she shoved this stuff in my mouth.

She said, “Ask me another question.”

“Okay. Have you ever discussed this with Ted Nash?”

“Not once.”

“Not even over di

“I wouldn’t have discussed this even if I was in bed with him.”

I didn’t respond to that, but said, “I’m going to call him.”

“He’s dead, John.”

“I know. I just like to keep hearing it.”

She scolded me, “John, that’s not fu

“Good. I’ll call him.”

The main course came, and I ordered another beer, and dug into my pasta. Kate said, “Have some of my vegetables.”

“So, Jeffrey Dahmer asks his mother over for lunch, and she’s eating and says, ‘Jeffrey, I don’t like your friends.’ And he says, ‘Well, then, just eat the vegetables.’”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Usually gets a laugh.” I got serious and said, “So I assume you also did not speak to Liam Griffith about this.”

“I spoke to no one. Except the guys on the twenty-eighth floor, who told me it was none of my business.”

“Right. So you made it my business.”

“If you want it to be. It all comes down to finding this couple. If they were found, and if it turned out that it was a dead end-that they didn’t see or tape anything-then that’s the end of it. The rest of the case-the eyewitnesses and the forensic evidence-have been gone over a million times. But this couple… whoever it was on the beach that night who left a lens cap to a video camera on that blanket…” She looked at me and asked, “Doyou think there was a videotape being recorded, and do you think it captured on film what the eyewitnesses said they saw?”

I replied, “It depends, obviously, on which way that video camera was pointing, and if it was even turned on. And then you have the problem of film quality and so forth. But let’s say everything came together by chance and that the last seconds of that TWA flight were recorded. Let’s even say the film still exists. So what?”

“What do you mean, ‘So what?’ Two hundred eyewitnesses would be looking at that film and-”

“And so would the FBI and CIA and their film experts. Someone needs to interpret the film.”