Enrique nearly fell backwards when his sleep was shattered by a ringing phone. His watch now read 5:08, and he prayed that it had stopped working.
“I thought I turned you off,” he grumped at the phone, but by the second ring, he realized that it wasn’t the 800 line. It was Denise’s private line. By the third ring, it was clear that she wasn’t going to answer it herself, so he snatched it to his ear. “Bitch,” he answered. It was the usual one-word salutation to callers, but this time it seemed to ring with emotion.
The female voice on the other end of the line was at once cordial and efficient. “Mr. Dorfman calling for Ms. Carpenter.”
Enrique’s feet shot to the floor, and he was instantly wide awake. “One moment, please,” he said. Ronald Dorfman was president of Omega Broadcasting. Headquartered in New York, Omega was the company that syndicated Denise’s show and wrote their paychecks. In all the five years that The Bitch had been on the air, Mr. Dorfman had never called the show personally. Whether his presence on the phone was good news or bad, he had no way of telling. But one thing was certain: he needed to find his boss right now.
As he’d expected, Enrique found Denise at the coffee pot, accepting kudos from a group that rarely showed interest in the work she did—the news staff.
A card-carrying pessimist at heart, Denise naturally assumed that she was in trouble. Unlike Enrique, Denise had, in fact, spoken with Mr. Dorfman twice: once on the day she signed her syndication contract, and a second time when a caller pushed her a little too hard and her language exceeded FCC standards by a significant margin. That latest occasion was three years ago, and since then she’d been perfectly content to limit her contact with the Big Guy to the sterile holiday greetings he sent to all on-air personalities at Christmas.
Three minutes after Enrique had pushed the hold button, Denise was on the line. “Hello, this is Denise Carpenter,” she said, her voice full of business, and totally devoid of the talk host jive. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Not at all, Ms. Carpenter,” the secretary said. “Please hold for Mr. Dorfman?’
So now it was Denise’s turn to wait. Enrique sat anxiously on the worn sofa across the tiny office from her desk. There were many perks in radio, and countless ways to stroke the substantial egos of on-air talent, but among these was not plush office space. Hers was little more than a cubicle, ten by ten feet, if you cheated a little with the yardstick. The walls were adorned with pictures, mostly of or painted by her children. There was no degree to post, no brag wall in the traditional sense of lawyers and doctors. Her bragging rights belonged to her single-handed rise through the ranks to command a top-rated show. As she waited for Mr. Dorfman to pick up her line, she sent up a private prayer that she hadn’t inadvertently done something to risk all of this.
“Good afternoon, Denise, this is Ron Dorfman.” His tone was quite friendly, causing Denise’s shoulders to slump a little, a visible sign of relief that made Enrique relax as well. “It’s been a very long time since we talked. How have you been?”
“Really quite well, Ron, thanks for asking. The show seems to be doing rather well.”
The smile stayed in her boss’s boss’s boss’s voice. “Indeed it has,” Dorfman agreed. “In fact, I had the opportunity to listen to you today. Please don’t take offense, but with my job, I really don’t get that opportunity very often:’ She could tell that he was talking around his ever-present stogie.
“Oh, I certainly understand?’ Her shoulders tensed again, bringing Enrique to the edge of his cushion. This was going somewhere.
“This business with the boy who killed the prison guard. Tell me what you think about it.”
“I think it’s great radio,” she said without hesitating. It was the answer she thought he wanted to hear.
“No, that’s not what I mean. What do you think about the situation?”
Denise’s instincts told her to fall into a defensive mode, justifying her decision to talk with Nathan on the air. But she opted to hold back instead; to feel out Dorfman’s purpose for calling. “If you’re asking me if I think he’s telling the truth, the answer is, yes, I do.”
“And why do you think that? There’s an awful lot of people out there who don’t agree with you.”
“With all due respect, Ron, those people haven’t been calling our station.”
“Trust me on this, Denise. There are people, and then there are people. The ones who wear badges don’t agree with you, and they’re making their positions to that effect very well known here in New York.” There was nothing at all adversarial in his voice. “Now, please, tell me why you believe the young man’s story.”
Denise looked to Enrique, who, of course, had no idea what was being said. How do you answer a question like why? How do you sum up a feeling, an intuition, in a way that would make sense to the head of a seven-hundred-million-dollar corporation? Put in the same situation, a child would respond with the most honest answer of alclass="underline" “Because.” But that wasn’t the kind of answer Ron was looking for, was it? She shrugged and stammered a bit as she tried to find the words.
“That’s a tough question to answer, Ron,” she tried, hoping for a reprieve.
“I understand. Take your time.”
He was not going to let her off the hook. “Pardon me for being so unscientific,” she said at last, “but the main reason I believe him is because I have kids around the same age, and I just know when they’re lying. His telling of the story was just too… real.”
Dorfman was quiet for a moment as he considered the answer. “And if we accept that he is, in fact, telling the truth, what does that mean in the grand scheme of things?”
Denise was ready for this. “It means that there are a whole lot of policemen wandering around northern Virginia scouring the countryside for an ‘escapee’ who never had any choice but to run away. I’m not sure what the grand scheme of things is, but I know where my sympathies lay. Nobody—not even Nathan—disputes the basic events, that he killed the supervisor and ran away. What’s in play here is who really is the murderer and who is the victim. Sometimes you can’t tell that merely by counting who’s standing and who’s laying down.”
There was a deep sigh on the other end of the phone, perhaps a drag on the cigar. “Very eloquently put,” Ron Dorfman said at length. “And I agree with you. I had the same feeling, but it’s been so long since I’ve been around twelve-year-olds that I needed some affirmation from a second source. It was a sensational interview.”
Denise would have thanked him, but she sensed there was another shoe to drop. She didn’t have to wait long.
“A New York State Trooper was in my office just a half hour ago to present me with a summons to appear at the Braddock County Courthouse (wherever that is) tomorrow afternoon at two o’clock to argue against an emergency petition filed by one J. Daniel Petrelli, Commonwealth’s Attorney for Northern Virginia. Seems they want to have access to our telephone records. What do you think about that?”
Once again, Denise was at a loss as to the right answer, so once again, she opted for honesty. It had been working pretty well so far.
“I think it stinks, Ron.” Hearing those words out of context, Enrique nearly fell off the sofa, certain that Denise had finally lost her mind. “You said you listened to the show today. Did you hear my conversation with the policeman?”
Dorfman chuckled. “Yes, I did. And I’d be real careful not to be caught speeding any time in the next couple of years.”
“Well, I think I stated my position pretty clearly then.”
“And so you did. But Denise, I want you to understand what the stakes are here. First of all, our attorneys tell me that your First Amendment argument is viable only if the government is put in a position to compel us to hand over the records. If we simply agree to do so, then that whole argument is moot. Follow me so far?”