She was adorable. See what I mean?’
‘Sum her up in one word.’
Mooney thought for a few moments. ‘Tenacious,’ he said.
‘Thank you very much, Mr Mooney..’
‘Anytime, sir. She’s not in trouble, is she?’
‘If she were, Mr Mooney, she wouldn’t be anymore. Not after that accolade. And by the way, congratulations on being number one in the ratings again this period.’
‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’
‘Goodbye, Mr Mooney. Thank you for your time.’
Click.
Just like that. What in the hell was the old bastard up to? If he steals her away from me for some other station, Mooney said to himself, I think what I’ll do, I’ll go over his house and kill the son of a bitch.
II
She got off on four, a floor below the studio, and ran down the hail to the editing room. Eddie, the best editor at the station, was waiting for her. Good old reliable Eddie.
‘You’re a dream,’ she said and kissed him solidly on the top of his bald black head.
‘Anytime. What’ve you got?’
‘An exclusive interview with Jonathan Caldwell.’
‘Are you kiddin’?’
‘It’s all right there,’ she said, pointing to the video cassettes.
Eddie whistled softly through his teeth. ‘How in hell did you swing that?’
‘I nailed him, Eddie. I’ve been following that cute little girl friend of his for four days, and today she led me right to him. What time is it?’
‘Four forty-five.’
‘Shit, just a little over an hour... Okay, let’s put together five minutes and I’ll bend Tubby’s arm to get the extra air time.’
‘Okay, but I better leave you a thirty-second outtake, just in case he holds you to your usual time. That way we won’t have to make any last-minute cuts.’
‘He can’t do that. . . this is a hot break. Everybody in town’s been after Caldwell since he got indicted. And I’ve got him... exclusive.’
‘Hey, baby, you don’t have to convince me. You got to convince Tubby Slocum.’
By five-ten she had her show together and was ready to write the intro and close. She went up to the fifth floor and found Vicki, the floor manager, talking to a human mountain.
Tubby Slocum made even George look like a dwarf. He was six-four and weighed somewhere in the neighbourhood of three hundred and fifty pounds, a great deal of it resting dead centre.
His enormous belly sagged over his belt, his pants hung as full as an Arab tent from his global stomach, his neck swelled out over a shirt that had to be opened three buttons down to accommodate it. His thinning hair, combed in strands from one ear to the other, was always damp with sweat, and when he spoke, his voice, squeezing up through that enormous hulk, wheezed out, like a chipmunk in a Walt Disney movie.
Slocum had inherited his bulk with his job. He had always been ample, but he had become obese in the past four years. Those who disliked him attributed his five-year tenure as producer of both the six and eleven o clock news to the fact that he was a shameless sycophant t Raymond Pauley, the station manager. Fat or not, sycophant or not, he was still the toughest, hardest-driving and best news producer in Boston. Channel 6 had dominated both time slots since he took over. And as long as he stayed number one, Pauley didn’t give a damn how fat he was.
Eliza looked up at him like Hillary appraising Mount Everest. ‘Tubby, I’ve got a hot one,’ she said.
‘You always got a hot one, Lizzie. What is—’
‘It’s E-liza, Tubby.’
‘Right. So what’s so hot?’
‘I’ve got Jonathan Caldwell on tape. Five goddamn good minutes, Tubby...’
‘Your spot’s five minutes, kiddo,’ the big man said, walking laboriously toward the control room. ‘Not four fifty-nine or five-oh-one. Five minutes. Now, if you can run it without any intro and close — great.’
‘Listen to me, Tub. It’s really strong stuff. I’ve got him saying that the only way to do business with the Arabs is through bribery. I’ve got him admitting to several flagrant violations of the Fed banking laws. He says he’s a victim of the times and he says he expects to go to jail and that all the banks do the same thing and the Federal Reserve people are just making an example of him.’
‘Sounds like dynamite. You’ve got five minutes.’
‘Dammit, Tubby...’
‘Hey, you got problems? I got a lot more, okay. I got three teenagers dead out in Lynn in a head—on, a former Secretary of State lost at sea on his sailboat, a Harvard doctor who thinks he can cure cancer with a mixture of prune juice and asparagus, and I haven’t even started on what’s going on outside Boston. You got five minutes, Eliza. Five.’ He held up five chubby fingers and vanished into the control room.
She called the editing room.
‘Well?’ Eddie asked.
‘That son of a bitch.’
‘Four minutes on tape, right?’
‘Yeah, I guess. I need at least thirty seconds to get in and thirty to get out of the interview.’
‘No problem, lady. We got two thirty-second options we can pull out.’
‘I hate to lose that stuff — where he’s talking about being a victim of the times — but everything else is so good.’
‘Go write your stuff; it’s twenty of. I’ll edit the tape and get it on Max.’ Max was the nickname given to the computer that controlled all the tape feeds on a program.
‘Thanks.’
She went back to her office and started writing.
Ten minutes. There was never enough time. She scribbled out a first draft, threw it away, and started pecking out her intro and close on the typewriter.
The phone rang. It was the monitor typist. She needed copy.
‘Two minutes,’ Liza barked and hung up.
She went back to the typewriter and finished the second draft.
The phone rang again. She snatched it up and said, ‘On the way,’ pulled the sheet out of the typewriter and ran down the hail to the crib setter.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
The gal who set the type for the monitor was never in a hurry. ‘It’s okay, you got the tag story, just before the editorial. I got plenty of time.’
As Liza was leaving the room, a secretary called to her, ‘Phone call, Liza. It’s urgent.’
‘Not now, Sally, it’s two minutes to six. I can’t take it, get a number, please.’
‘I think you’ll want to take this one. . . it’s Mr Howe. Charles Gordon Howe, two minutes before air time. She went into Sally’s office and picked it up. ‘Hello?’ ‘Miz Gunn, this is Charles Gordon Howe.’
‘Mr Howe, it’s less than a minute to air time and I’ve got a very hot story working and I really don’t have time right now to-,
‘I’m aware of the time. I wouldn’t be calling if it wasn’t a matter of urgency. It is my station, Miz Gunn.’
‘Right, Mr Howe, but it’s my career. Call me back at six thirty-one. Bye.’
She started back out the door. ‘Thanks, Sal.’
‘Sister, you got more guts than a gladiator,’ Sally said. Eliza headed for the studio.
III
It was out. He was going to fight. The Gunn interview would leave little doubt about that.
Caldwell stared out the window of his office, a bright, cheery room, its walls covered with abstract paintings, and watched the shells, thirty floors below and half a mile away, gliding across the placid Charles River, and his mind drifted back to one glorious day when he had helped row Harvard to an unexpected victory over Yale. But the dream passed quickly and he took off his suit jacket, pulled down his tie and wearily climbed the circular iron stairway that led to the penthouse apartment on the floor above.