“Right.”
“You want to see the Chandler interview videotapes, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve got them on three-quarter-inch, so we can go into one of the conference rooms and see them there.”
“Great.”
“Is something wrong?”
“Not really, I guess.”
“Good,” she said.
And that was that.
On the way into the conference room, we passed many large windows where television newspeople were being trained.
Mind you, they weren’t doing things like reading books about history or politics; they weren’t out in a ghetto finding out about the impact of Reaganomics on the impoverished; no, they were sitting in rooms with TV cameras and big monitors so they could study themselves and how they looked on the tube. An actor friend of mine sick of starving to death as a thespian had gone to a place like Media Associates, and two weeks later had his first job as an anchorman. He didn’t know diddly about news or news gathering, but that didn’t matter — he had a face you could put on Rushmore and a lot of gray at the temples. Distinguished, you know. He liked to laugh that with his first paycheck he bought a subscription to Time magazine so he could find out what was going in the world. “Shit, I even have to read newspapers now, and I don’t mean just the comics.”
At one of the windows I stopped, because I saw Kelly Ford’s image on a TV screen. On the other side of the window sat several people with notebooks taking notes. Out of the muffled sounds I heard that she had taped an instructional segment on how different kinds of attire altered the image you projected.
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. “This should be good.”
She flushed. “That’s one of my duties. Teaching our newsies about makeup and wardrobe.”
She photographed very well; she wore a high, frilly collar and a fitted gray skirt similar to the outfit she was wearing today. Next to her on the screen stood a rather nondescript young man in a plain white shirt. First she put a blue blazer on him. He looked preppy. Then she put a tailored gray suit jacket on him and combed his disco hair into a part. He looked like an earnest young banker. Then she put a blond wig on him as well as the blazer. Except now she took off his tie and opened his shirt collar. He resembled a lounge singer. It was a fascinating process.
“I wish I had longer to spend,” she said, “but I don’t.” She was getting a bit tart. Our time together last night was drifting farther and farther away.
Before we reached the conference room, we passed several more windows that looked in on various groups having various meetings.
The last one was especially interesting to me: inside sat the entire Channel 3 news staff, including station owner Robert Fitzgerald. Another corporation clone was giving them some kind of chalk talk on a portable blackboard. “He’s breaking down the new ratings,” she explained. “In the last Nielsen we did very well. We did even better this time. That’s what he’s explaining to them.”
“Did your ratings improve because of the story on teenage suicide?”
“Yes,” she said, “I’m happy to say they did.”
He had one of those young, handsome faces that are almost too sensitive. You wanted to see him smile instead of looking so self-involved. In all I watched six different interviews with Stephen Chandler, and each one grew progressively tougher to view.
His face was in shadows, but you still got a very good idea of his looks. He spoke in a surprisingly deep voice that only cracked when he was near tears. He described a life that nobody should have had. Deserted young by father and mother. Transferred to various foster homes, in two of which he was abused. Drugs by the time he was fourteen. And then two serious suicide attempts.
The only bad part of the interview was David Curtis. He was a gag. He reminded me of my actor friend who’d become an anchorman. He sat there with his clipboard and made judgments on the kid. “Aren’t you feeling just a little sorry for yourself? Isn’t that why you take drugs?” And “Isn’t it true that you broke into some houses to support your drug habit?” And finally, “Didn’t you once attack one of your foster fathers with a butcher knife?” Even if the accusations were true, they obviously weren’t what the kid needed to hear. At one point, sobbing, Stephen Chandler said, “I’ve screwed it up, I’ve screwed everything up.” You could hear the high, hard edge of despair in his voice. Just looking at the kid made you think of melodramatic left-behind notes and wrists that were opened like silent mouths by razor blades.
But the real star was David Curtis, of course, and that’s the way it was structured. He kept referring pompously to “The Channel Three investigation,” as if Channel 3 were akin to the Vatican, and he kept giving us a lot of sob-sister horseshit that he delivered right into the camera. He was so hammy he made Geraldo Rivera look sincere by comparison.
“Bastard,” I said in the darkness.
“What?”
“Curtis. He really pushed the kid too far. And he was a horseshit reporter to boot.”
She was instantly defensive. “This series won several awards.”
“Yeah, the press congratulating itself as usual on sensationalism.” I was angry, and I didn’t give a damn if she knew it.
She got up and shut off the TV set. She had tears in her eyes. “I thought we were friends.”
“We are.”
“Then you’ve got a strange way of showing it.”
But I was just as crackling with bitterness as she was. “Yeah, like you showed back there in your office?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Less than twelve hours ago we were in bed fornicating.”
“Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Well, I hoped it meant a little something, anyway. Harbor in the goddamn storm if nothing else.”
“I’m sorry. I was foolish. It shouldn’t have happened. But that doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.”
I stood up. I felt a bad case of the sanctimonies coming on. I wanted to grab my foot and stick it in my mouth, but it was too late. “You should drop him, Kelly. And drop this whole sleazy fucking business. All you’re doing is pandering to the lowest common denominator. This isn’t journalism, it’s just bad show biz.”
By the time I calmed down, she was already looking away from me and toward the door. Where Robert Fitzgerald stood.
“Exactly what is he doing here, Kelly?”
“He asked to see the Chandler tapes.”
“Do you know what he is, Kelly?”
She flushed. He had her cowed again as he always had her cowed.
“He’s a minimum-wage security guard who thinks he knows more than the police do about David’s death.”
He took a few crippled steps into the room. He was controlling his rage, and obviously at great cost to his cardiovascular system.
“Now I want him out of here in two minutes and I never want to see you with him again. Do you understand me?”
Before she could speak, I said, “Very impressive, Fitzgerald. But you’re a little late.”
The others gathered near the door, listening to us — Dev Robards, Marcie Grant, Mike Perry, Bill Hanratty.
“Kelly, I said two minutes.”
“Later this afternoon I’m going to turn some files over to the police, Fitzgerald. They belonged to a private detective named Ross.”
His flush told me all I needed to know.
He started toward me. He should have looked impressive in his double-breasted worsted suit, but now he had reverted to street boy, lame street boy, and you saw that he wore his hair too long for the boardroom and there was too much anger in the dark eyes for civilized circumstances. I should have identified with him, felt sorry for him, I suppose. But I didn’t in the least.