American Outrage Read online

  Copyright © 2007 by Tim Green

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Warner Books

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  The Warner Books name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  First eBook Edition: April 2007

  ISBN: 978-0-446-19471-6

  Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Epilogue

  ALSO BY TIM GREEN

  Fiction

  Ruffians

  Titans

  Outlaws

  The Red Zone

  Double Reverse

  The Letter of the Law

  The Fourth Perimeter

  The Fifth Angel

  The First 48

  Exact Revenge

  Kingdom Come

  Nonfiction

  The Dark Side of the Game

  A Man and His Mother: An Adopted Son’s Search

  For Illyssa, because

  meeting you was the best thing

  that ever happened to me.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With each book I write, there are many people who help with essential steps along the way, and I would like to thank them.

  Esther Newberg, the world’s greatest agent and my dear friend, for her wisdom. Ace Atkins, my dependable, brilliant, and talented friend, for his careful reading and fantastic ideas. Jamie Raab, my publisher, and Jaime Levine, my editor, who polished this story with unmatched insight and creativity. As well as all my friends at Hachette Book Group, beginning with our leader, David Young, Maureen Egen, Chris Barba and the best sales team in the world, Emi Battaglia, Karen Torres, Jennifer Romanello, Flamur Tonuzi, Martha Otis, Jim Spivey, and Mari Okuda.

  My parents, Dick and Judy Green, who taught me to read and to love books and who spent many hours scouring this manuscript so that it shines.

  A special thanks to former FBI agent John Gamel, who helped me navigate the inner workings of the FBI and kindly took my calls at all hours of the day. Deputy Chief Michael Kerwin, the good cop who’s been with me from the beginning. Kevin Harrigan and Marc Harrold for their insights into international adoption. Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick for his friendship and guidance. Jim Costello, who appears in the book as himself, for his insight into mortuary science. And Christine Hagan, my friend from A Current Affair, who also appears as herself and is the most brilliant First Amendment attorney I know.

  I’d also like to thank Peter Brennan and the entire staff at A Current Affair, who welcomed me into the world of tabloid TV with a warmth that I learned is the exception rather than the rule.

  1

  SAM’S HEAD WAS BACK against the wall, his eyes painfully closed, wearing the look of a refugee. Crusted blood caked the edges of his nostrils and sloppy crimson smears marked the trail that must have run down either side of his mouth and off the chin. His white Yankees T-shirt, oversized to hide a stomach that spilled over his belt, was stained and rumpled.

  Jake’s jaw tightened and he drew deep breaths of air through his nose. He flung open the door and Sam looked at him, blinking back fresh, seventh-grade tears. The principal, Ms. Dean, burst out of her office, shooting her glare at Jake, then at Sam, then back to Jake. Ms. Dean wore a frumpy blue dress. She had a small, grandmother’s face, with curly white hair and petite round glasses, what you might expect on a can of baked beans. She tapped the backs of her fingers against the open door of a conference room and said, “In here, please.”

  Jake put a hand on Sam’s husky shoulder, giving it a squeeze before he followed the principal’s orders. She snapped her fingers at Sam. Jake cleared his throat, felt his cheeks go warm, and sat down at the far end of the table after folding his raincoat and laying it over the back of the chair to drip. Ms. Dean pointed to a chair and Sam sat down at the opposite end of the table. The principal put a piece of paper in front of Jake, handing him a pen.

  “An order of suspension,” she said. “This is three. The next one and he’ll be expelled, Mr. Carlson. We can’t have this fighting.”

  “Ms. Dean,” Jake said, offering her the same smile that he used to open the hearts of total strangers.

  “No, Mr. Carlson,” she said, showing him her trembling palm. “I know it’s been hard for Sam, losing a parent. But this school is supposed to be a safe zone for my students.”

  “Are you sure about what happened?”

  Ms. Dean frowned, the little crescent wrinkles at the corners of her mouth rippling outward and down toward the tuft of fuzz on her chin.

  “He bit them,” she said.

  Jake flashed a look at Sam, who only hung his head.

  “I saw the teeth marks,” she said. “And there’s blood on his braces.”

  Sam tightened his lips and winced.

  Jake scrawled his signature below the principal’s.

  “Come on, Sam,” Jake said. He got up and grabbed his coat, walking past his son and letting himself out into the office.

  “I think he should see Dr. Stoddard,” the principal said, raising her voice. “Obviously, whatever you’re doing privately isn’t working.”

  Sam followed close behind, filling the
entryway with his large presence. Jake wasn’t a big man, but at just thirteen, Sam was nearly as tall and weighed about the same. It wasn’t unusual for people to overestimate his age by three or four years.

  Outside, Jake held the umbrella for Sam, giving him all the protection it could offer against the teeming late spring rain. He saw Sam into the passenger side, slamming the door before collapsing the umbrella and tossing it into the trunk. He climbed into the seat of his BMW coupe and wiped away the courses of water running down his face.

  “You bit them? Are you kidding me?”

  Sam slumped further into the seat and deepened his scowl. He folded his thick arms across his chest and angled his head away so that Jake could see nothing of his features except the ends of those long dark lashes and the tip of his pug nose. Jake slapped the steering wheel, whipping droplets of rain from the stringy ends of his hair across the burl-wood dashboard. He cursed, slammed the car into gear, and raced off into the downpour toward home. The wipers pounded out their beat, fighting off the hissing buckets of rain as they crossed the bridge to Atlantic Beach.

  “My father would have kicked my ass,” Jake said. “Is that what you want? Is that what this is about? I’m too easy on you? I’m your buddy and you want some goddamn assurances that I’m in charge?”

  Jake pulled up short at a light, stomping on the brake so that Sam bumped his head against the dash.

  “Where’s your goddamned seat belt?” Jake said. “Can you follow at least one rule?”

  Jake just stared at Sam until he popped open the door and ran out into the rain.

  All Jake could do was watch as he ran across the parking lot, a husky, hunched-over shape in tennis shoes, whose bear-gait sent him into the misty gray rain coming in off the ocean until it swallowed him completely.

  “I don’t belong,” Sam said, his face contorting as if someone had pinched his skin, then let go.

  “I’m sorry, Sam,” Jake said. He knelt down and touched Sam’s shoulder.

  Jake hadn’t bothered with the umbrella when he went after him. His suit clung tight to his body and dark blue dye stained the backs of his hands. Sam sat balled up underneath the boardwalk with his head in his knees, trembling. Heavy drops from the boardwalk above plunked into the lake of water surrounding them and the rain hissed as it struck the dunes beyond.

  “They say you’re not my dad,” Sam said, his head back in his knees, his shoulders shuddering. “Everyone sees you on TV and they say you’re not my dad. I tell them to shut up, but I don’t look like you, and if someone hits you, you always said to hit them back.”

  “Sure,” Jake said, moving his hand from Sam’s shoulder to his dripping head, “but you don’t bite people, Son. You just don’t.”

  Sam’s head jerked up and his big dark eyes had that red cast.

  “There was three of them. Mike Petroccelli was choking me from behind and I put my head down. I didn’t bite him. He was pulling my head off and my braces cut his arm. There was three of them. I didn’t bite. I swear to God.”

  “Is that what all these fights are about?” Jake asked. “You being adopted?”

  Sam nodded his head and dropped it between his knees. When he spoke, his words were muffled. “I want you to find my mom.”

  Jake lost the feeling in his arms and legs and his head felt light.

  “Your mom’s gone, Sam,” Jake heard himself say.

  “No,” Sam said, his voice barely audible above the shattering rain on the boardwalk above, “not Mom, my real mom. I want you to find her.”

  Jake felt his lunch pushing up into his throat and he swallowed it back down.

  “The records are gone. That was part of how we got you. We wanted you so badly, your mom and I. You have to know how bad we wanted you, Sam.”

  “Someone knows.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, someone out there knows. There are things on the Internet about everyone.”

  Jake shook his head. “You’re talking about finding a person. You don’t just go Yahoo! it.”

  He studied Sam for a moment then looked at his watch. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’ve got to get you home and get to the city. I got the nanny Angelina Jolie just fired.”

  Sam rolled his eyes.

  “I know,” Jake said. “Who gives a shit, right? But we get to live in a house on the beach and eat Häagen-Dazs by the gallon.”

  “You find everyone else,” Sam said, looking up at him, his eyes looking into Jake’s. “That’s what you do. You find people. They talk to you. That’s your job. I want you to do that for me. I want to find her.”

  Before the crap he was doing now, Jake had spent time in the streets of Kabul and Baghdad. He’d seen the mobs, the fighting, smelled the gunpowder, the burnt and rotting flesh. That didn’t scare him the way this did because this wasn’t someone else’s problem that Jake was there to give an account of. This was his problem, and he knew it was a problem. His instincts, the same ones that had launched his career as a journalist, had told him back then when they got Sam that something was wrong. It wasn’t anything on the surface, all the documents were there. The lawyers had signed off. There were assurances.

  But Karen had gone through the first of many operations back then, and she was desperate for a baby, desperate because she knew that no matter how it turned out she could no longer have children of her own. And back then, when they were praying that maybe she’d been cured, Jake wanted to give her that baby more than he’d ever wanted anything. To make her a mother. To make her life complete. And as hungry as Jake was for his own success, it paled next to the yearning he felt for Karen to have what she wanted and for her to be happy.

  So, he had pushed it.

  Jake realized Sam was still looking into his eyes and it made him start. Sam was a boy whose eyes usually shifted, his head tilting down, and his face disappearing beneath that dark thatch of unruly hair. This time, though, Sam held his gaze. And maybe it was because Jake had seen that same desperate look in the faces of so many strangers that, despite the fact he was scared, he said yes.

  “Okay, Sam,” he said. “I’ll find her. I’ll try.”

  2

  JAKE CINCHED UP HIS TIE and went to sit down in the barber chair nearest the door.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Jake,” the makeup girl said, covering her mouth. “That’s Nancy’s new chair. Can you use this one over here?”

  Jake looked from the girl to the other chair. Nancy Riordin was the host of American Outrage. Jake had been hired as the show’s number two.

  “Nancy’s not here, is she?” he asked.

  The girl shook her head, but patted the other chair and smiled at him through the mirror that ran along the entire wall, round bulbs above and below.

  “Please.”

  Jake started to say that he’d seen Sara Pratt, another reporter, in Nancy’s chair the previous Tuesday, but bit his lip instead and sat down.

  While he had the makeup applied and his hair sprayed down, Jake ran his eyes over his script and wondered if he really was the top correspondent anymore. He’d been hired as that, promised that, but things had subtly changed during the past year and a half since Karen had taken a turn for the worse. The candy dish he kept on his desk didn’t get mysteriously filled anymore, and when he left his shoes on the floor of his dressing room, they were no longer guaranteed to be shined by the next day. Twice in the last month he’d had to pick up his own dry cleaning.

  The stage manager poked his head into the room and said, “Two minutes. We’ve got the nanny on the set with her mother.”

  “Her mother?” Jake said, squinting at the stage manager in the mirror.

  The stage manager shrugged and disappeared. Jake took out his cell phone and dialed his friend Meghan Lisson, a reporter from NPR who had met the nanny over in Africa.

  “Jake, Jake, Jake,” she said when she answered the call, “flowers are fine. Roses. No candy. Happy to help, but how the hell does a guy like you go fro
m pirates in the Gulf of Oman to Angelina’s nanny?”

  “What’s up with the mother?” Jake asked, flexing back his lips and checking the perfect white teeth in the mirror for food.

  “You know she’s booked tomorrow on GMA, The View, and Larry King Live?” Meghan asked. “Did you know American Outrage is the only evening magazine with an interview?”

  “Why is the mother here?” Jake asked. “Who is she?”

  “I speak French, so it didn’t even cross my mind,” Meghan said with a laugh, “but the girl doesn’t speak English. Her mother is probably there to interpret.”

  “Is she interpreting on GMA?” Jake asked.

  “You don’t think Diane Sawyer speaks French?”

  “The audience doesn’t. Christ.”

  “Settle down, it’s been done before. Everyone else will be doing it too. Maybe subtitles. Gotta go. Do pink roses, will you? The red ones smell.”

  Jake hung up. The makeup girl brushed out his eyebrows and whipped off the cape.

  “You want me to run a quick iron over that suit?” the makeup girl asked.

  “It’s a three-thousand-dollar suit,” Jake said, looking down and brushing the sleeve.

  “It’s pretty wrinkled.”

  “Yeah, I’m okay. The stripes will hide it, but thanks.”

  He got up and the show’s lawyer, Christine Hagan, appeared waving a copy of the script.

  “You can’t say ‘when Angelina hit you,’” she said, her face turning colors. “We’ll get sued and lose. We don’t know if she hit this girl. She could be some crackpot milking this thing. You have to say ‘allegedly.’ Every time you talk about her being hit, you have to say that.”

  “Got it,” Jake said.

  “You got it, but it was in the script. You say she hit her and I’ll bury the whole piece. I’m not letting us get sued by Angelina Jolie.”

  Christine kept after him all the way down the hall and Jake just smiled and nodded.

  He walked into the studio with an audio man fixing the microphone to his lapel and clipping the transmitter to the back of his belt. He stepped up onto the set and gave the girl his best smile.

  “Antoinette,” he said, holding out both hands. “No, don’t get up.”

  He bent down and kissed her good cheek, scanning the other side of her face for the red finger marks where she’d allegedly been slapped by the movie star for her impertinence, wherein lay the tragedy. He then looked at the mother, who quickly spoke to the girl in French. The girl blushed and looked down, saying something.