“I trusted him with my life, Kay.”
“From which I am to conclude that the details in his story came from you,” I said.
“No. They came from my reporting.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t talk to anybody about what I’m writing,” Abby said. “Cliff was aware of my involvement in these cases, but I never went into detail about them. He never seemed all that interested.”
She was beginning to sound angry. “But he was, more than a little. That’s the way he operates.”
“If you didn’t go into detail with him,” I said, “then how did he get the information from you?”
“I used to give him keys to my building, my apartment, when I’d go out of town so he could water my plants, bring the mail in. He could have had copies made.”
Our conversation at the Mayflower came back to me.
When Abby had talked about someone breaking into her computer and had gone on to accuse the FBI or CIA, I had been skeptical. Would an experienced agent open a word processing file and not realize that the time and date might be changed? Not likely.
“Cliff Ring went into your computer?”
“I can’t prove it, but I know he did,” Abby said. “I can’t prove he’s been going through my mail, but I know he has. It’s no big deal to steam open a letter, reseal it, and then place it back in the box. Not if you’ve made a copy of the mailbox key.”
“Were you aware he was writing the story?”
“Of course not. I didn’t know a damn thing about it until I opened the Sunday paper! He’d let himself into my apartment when he knew I wouldn’t be there. He was going through my computer, anything he could find. Then he followed up by calling people, getting quotes and information, which was pretty easy, since he knew exactly where to look and what he was looking for.”
“Easy because you had been relieved of your police beat. When you thought the Post had backed off from the story, what your editors had really backed away from was you.”
Abby nodded angrily. “The story was passed into what they viewed as more reliable hands. Clifford Ring’s hands,” she said.
I realized why Clifford Ring had made no effort to contact me. He would know that Abby and I were friends. Had he asked me for details about the cases, I might have said something to Abby, and he had wanted to keep Abby in the dark about what he was doing for as long as possible. So Ring had avoided me, gone around me.
“I’m sure he…” Abby cleared her throat and reached for her drink. Her hand shook. “He can be very convincing. He’ll probably win a prize. For the series.”
“I’m sorry, Abby.”
“It’s nobody’s fault but my own. I was stupid.”
“We take risks when we allow ourselves to love – ”
“I’ll never take a risk like that again,” she cut me off. “It was always a problem with him, one problem after another. I was always the one making concessions, giving him a second chance, then a third and a fourth.”
“Did the people you work with know about you and Cliff?
“We were careful.” She got evasive.
“Why?”
“The newsroom is a very incestuous, gossipy place.”
“Certainly your colleagues must have seen the two of you together.”
“We were very careful,” she repeated.
“People must have sensed something between you. Tension, if nothing else.”
“Competition. Guarding my turf. That’s what he would say if asked.”
And jealousy, I thought. Abby never had been good at hiding her emotions. I could imagine her jealous rages. I could imagine those observing her in the newsroom misconstruing, assuming she was ambitious and jealous of Clifford Ring, when that was not the case. She was jealous of his other commitments.
“He’s married, isn’t he, Abby?”
She could not stop the tears this time.
I got up to refresh our drinks. She would tell me he was unhappy with his wife, contemplating divorce, and Abby had believed he would leave it all for her. The story was as threadbare and predictable as something in Ann Landers. I had heard it a hundred times before. Abby had been used.