Murder Straight Up

20

Media Associates was housed in a three-story red-brick building that had been refurbished into a rather trendy showplace. Volvos, BMWs and Audis disguised as Mercedeses filled the lot that took up three sides. Among Ross’s files on the Channel 3 people I’d found some very interesting documents. I brought them with me in a briefcase.

A sneering guard in a military-type security uniform checked me in with a trace of pity in his eyes for the ten-year-old Harris Tweed jacket I wore. The military ambience continued with a stern-looking receptionist, who forced me to sign in and wear a little plastic badge with visitor stamped on it. She escorted me down a long hall to Kelly Ford’s office.

On the way we passed maybe a dozen young men in look-alike three-piece suits. They exuded that arrogance that comes to people who spend their lives at superficial tasks for far too much reward. They protected their secrets by wearing corporate camouflage — didn’t any of these fuckers get their shoes scuffed? — and saving their passion not for bed or art but for advancement. They were toadies, and the worst thing of all was that they didn’t realize they were toadies.

When I appeared in her doorway, Kelly Ford was working at a big IBM electric typewriter with the skill of a champion secretary. When she heard me say “Hi” and turned my way, there was a sad little smile pulling at her mouth. She was embarrassed. “Well, hi,” she said far too effusively. She even got up and shot out her hand for me to shake. “Why don’t you sit down and let me finish this letter? Would you mind?”

What could I say? As I sat there looking around her small but very well-appointed office — just once I’d like to see one of the big corporations hang silk paintings of dogs and Elvis and stuff like that — I realized she’d hurt my feelings. What we’d done last night had been a little understandable grudge fucking. I was feeling sorry for myself about Donna Harris, she was feeling sorry for herself about Robert Fitzgerald. Our respective griefs should have bound us together in at least a tenuous way. But all she had for me this morning was remorse disguised as officiousness.

She was rolling along and I couldn’t resist. “How you doing?”

She stopped typing and looked up. “Me?”

“Sure. You.”

“I’m doing just fine. How are you doing?”

“I’m doing fine, too.”

She looked perplexed and irritated. “Well, that’s nice.” Then she went back to her typing.

It was a lovely way to spend ten minutes, and by the time she paid attention to me again, I felt as badly about last night as she did. We’d grudge fucked, all right, except by the dawn’s early light the guy she had a grudge against was me.

She turned around and took a big corporate smile from the drawer and fitted it expertly over her mouth. “Sorry,” she said, nodding to the typewriter. “Just had a little work I needed to finish up.”

“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.

From the cheap briefcase I carried I took a large manila envelope and put it on the conference table.

“You told me your office was broken into,” I said to Kelly. “I believe these are the documents that were taken.”

“What the hell is this?” Fitzgerald said. He reached for the envelope. I snatched it away. Gave it to Kelly.

“Ross knew what was going on,” I said to Fitzgerald. “And very soon I will, too.”

He stepped back to the phone and ripped it from its cradle. “This is Robert Fitzgerald. I want a security guard here immediately. We’re in Room—”

He was so furious he started to sputter. Bill Han-ratty, ever the brown-nosed weatherman, said, “Room One-Fourteen D.”

They stood there staring at me, the whole newsteam, and then Kelly Ford started crying and said, “Dwyer, please, please leave before it gets any worse.”

It was the first time this morning that I had liked her. I reached out and touched her hip, and then I pushed my way past the others and out into the hallway.

The security guard came down with great and serious intent. I didn’t want to make things difficult for him. I put my hands up in a gesture of mock surrender and said, “I’m the asshole they want to get rid of.”

He had no sense of humor. “Yeah, you look like an asshole.”

I was two steps from my car, enjoying the sunlight again, when I heard a familiar voice say, “I can help you with that man Ross.”

I turned to find the distinguished Dev Robards coming up to me. Behind us, at the doorway, I saw Bill Hanratty watching us with great interest.

Dev’s face was flushed. “Hanratty and I want to talk to you.”

“You and Hanratty? I thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t. But we became partners of a sort.”

I nodded back to Media Associates. “What the fuck is going on here?”

“We’d like to set up an appointment with you.”

“When?”

“Right after the show tonight. There’s a steak house. The Castle.”

“I know where it is, but it’s a little expensive for what I make.”

“Jesus,” he said. “This is important. I’ll pick up the tab.”

“You’re in too deep, aren’t you, Dev?”

“Way too deep.”

“You going to be all right?”

He shook his head. “I haven’t been all right for so long, I don’t think it matters.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know a pair of twins named Ayres, would you?”

He nodded. “Bad, bad people.”

“Yeah, I kind of guessed as much.”

He looked back at Media Associates. “Fitzgerald just told me that he’s letting me go. They’re bringing in another anchorman.”

“You’re a real journalist, Dev. You don’t want to traffic with those jack-offs anyway.”

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “after all these fucking years.” He cried just enough to need to blow his nose, which he did with ferocity. “Now I’m almost glad we did it.”

“Did what?”

“That’s what we’re going to tell you,” he said, “tonight at The Castle.”