Copyright 2010
This book is dedicated to Donna, Michael, Alexandra, Jen, Doug, Aiden and Benjamin.
Special thanks to Janet Benton, one of the finest book editors in the business.
Note: Although this book includes some real-life newsroom circumstances, policies, challenges, and accomplishments, none of the characters are based on real individuals, and none of the TV stations reflect actual Television operations. This is a work of fiction, with a definite point of view. Fiction? Yes. Reality? Maybe on some dark day in the future, if, indeed it is not too late
How the hell did I get here? After forty-seven years of covering the news, thirty-seven as an anchor, now I’m in the middle of it. I’m on my back on the asphalt, and my head doesn’t feel too good. I feel blood dripping from my nose and forehead and seeping through my shirt. I was just thrown from my car onto the Route 422 Bypass near Oaks, Pennsylvania, a gridlocked suburb of McMansions and strip malls. My car is burning a few feet away. I hope it doesn’t explode. All four lanes are blocked by the twisted carnage of melted metal. I have no idea what is going on, but I see thick black smoke in the air, and I smell death. Nothing smells like death more than burning human flesh. I’ve smelled it at accident scenes, during violent protests, and in war zones. But this is different. I’m one of the victims.
Up above, the clouds are spinning fast, like small jets moving in circles, or little ghosts. I must be having vertigo. The dizzy nausea brings an involuntary spasm to my chest. Liquid pours out. The smell of burning tires isn’t making me feel any better. Neither are the bodies.
A dead woman, thrown from her car like I was, lies a few feet from me. She wears a beautiful daisy-print dress, but it’s covered with blood. I keep looking, trying not to think about the pain shooting from my face down to my chest and legs. My legs feel like they’re on fire. I take a breath. Judging from how I feel, I will probably be dead soon, too.
My lungs are burning, scorched by smoke. I gasp for air. But there is no clear air to breathe. My neck does not turn, but in my peripheral vision I see what looks like a head protruding from a car directly to my left. It is. The rest of the body must be on the other side of the dashboard.
I try to get up. I position my elbows on the ground. But I can’t do it. I try to pick up my head, but I start vomiting blood. The blood is choking me up. I can’t breathe. I must divert my mind from the gagging. I think about Rebecca, the kids, the cop, the son, the boss, the blood-soaked map, the missing parts, Bernie, the newsrooms, and the voice I heard while I was driving--the newsman on Newsradio 1070, who said, “This is a nightmare scenario.” What scenario? The one I’m in, or is there something bigger? Then the station went silent and I ended up in this mess. What the hell did he mean?
Up above I see smoke from the east and west converging, turning day to night. All of a sudden, a video plays in my mind. First I see people whose faces look like what they were when they were, then old places, children laughing and crying, explosions, ceremonies, births, ashes. It’s all in black and white. My God! Am I going into shock? Suddenly the pictures vanish. I see nothing. Am I blind? Then suddenly I feel limp. The pain goes away. One long breath flows out of my mouth, a huge vapor. And as the air escapes, the lids of my eyes close, and I fade to black.
I should have known. I should have known from the Lakeview High School fiasco. I worry myself sick over the power of the newsroom, the power that can kill. I’ve been worrying for years, and frankly, I was getting too tired to complain. But I’ve had enough. I’m not going to throw away decades of hard work so that the bastards can win.
I love news. I love getting it. I consume it like food. I’ve been hungering for news since I started gathering information for class projects in seventh grade. I love calling people. I love breaking news. I devour newspapers and magazines, and I watch CNN at all hours of the day. I have a passion for people and the things they do. News has been a piece of my life for fifty years. Oh, the sound of it gets my adrenaline going. But like all the merry men and women in newsrooms everywhere, I whistle in the dark, if you know what I mean. “Stand by. We are dealing with a police emergency in progress.”
The sound of the police dispatcher’s voice is piercing, and it never stops giving me or my news buddies a sense of impending doom. “Stand by. All cars. Move in with care to the Cambria area, Second and Cambria. Be cautious.” Her voice is trembling. “Sear--sear--search for suspect,” she says. “Two men down. Police by radio.”
Scanners are the soundtrack of newsrooms. Most days the sound fades into the background, becoming a disjointed sort of music to work by. But the newsperson’s mind always jumps to attention at the words “police by radio.” They mean that a cop is on the scene and may be in danger.
“All units in,” she continues. “Citywide call for units. Move quickly. Highway Patrol . . . move in available units.”
Highway Patrol? In Philadelphia, the Highway Patrol is not what you might think. It’s not police who cruise the roadways. It’s an elite group of super cops who are called in when there is deep trouble, or the threat of it. Believe me, you don’t want to mess with Highway Patrol. In a town where eight police officers have been killed in the past few years, Highway Patrol moves first and asks questions later, which frankly is the way it should be when danger is facing you. Hesitate and it might be over. Personally, I give cops the benefit of the doubt if they are forced to shoot and kill an approaching madman.
On the Channel Five scanner at the round assignment desk in the center of the newsroom, the Philadelphia Police Department radio blasts out several more shrill beeps.
The dispatcher’s agitated voice seems to rise as each minute passes. “Once again, Second and Cambria. Proceed with caution. Please be advised--Car One is headed to the scene.”
Car One is not exactly Air Force One. But it’s a large Ford LTD with enough radio controls and GPS systems to steer the space shuttle. Inside the car is the nervous, thug-hating police commissioner of Philadelphia, Douglas Underwood.
“Underwood’s en route,” I yell out from my office near the police radio to the others in the newsroom. “It must be big.”
Around the assignment desk is an octagon of cubicles. The anchors, pampered as we are, have separate desks facing out to the street. Mine is in the corner nearest the assignment desk, just off the elevator entrance to the tenth floor. At the next blast of beeps, I look toward the assignment desk. Archer McDonald, the executive producer of the 11 o’clock show, rises from his seat. Senior Writer Quinn Michaels looks pale. His father is a cop. The harried radio dispatcher now begins to scream through the speaker.
“Repeat. I repeat! Nineteenth District. Shooting. Second and Cambria. All medical squads in. Again, all medical squads--rescue one, rescue two, all in. All in now. Approach-–approach with extreme caution. Officer on scene.”
I get up from my desk and walk over to the assignment desk. I lean on the counter, which is filled with empty coffee cups and a pile of suburban county phone books, and watch News Director Barbara Pierce. Barbara Pierce is someone who keeps failing up. I mean, this woman keeps getting promoted, even though she keeps screwing things up. I always wonder: Does she have pictures, photos of someone where they shouldn’t be? How does a person like Barbara keep moving higher? She went to a big time journalism school, but I’ve always presumed they didn’t teach ethics. I mean, Barb worked for Susan, the Philadelphia native who came down from network to save Channel 9. Channel 9 was resurrected, and I mean, you would think that Barb learned from Susan, and would bring some honesty to the place when she jumped ship to join the “mighty five,” as she calls our place?
I guess people get rewarded in America all the time for failure. At the moment of the emergency call, Barb sits at her desk across the room from mine. The afternoon sun blazes through the window, a sweeping panorama of glass extending from the building's Market Street side to the view of City Hall and wrapping around to the side that faces the concrete canyon of West Market Street. We are seven blocks away from Ben Franklin’s home. But journalism was much different in Big Ben’s day.
Barb and I have the closest desks to the assignment desk. We flank the desk like two news birds waiting to attack. Barb is tensed in her chair, her eyes bulging, face contorted with anxiety. Barb chews on the remains of a cheese danish left over from a meeting with advertisers a few days before. This. Unfortunately, is a newsroom-wide habit. It looks tasty, but at several days old, it’s not something I would eat. Her mouth is full as she screams in that sweet way of hers, “What the fuck is going on?” She runs to the assignment desk, half of the danish still in her hand, the rest in her mouth.
Bob Harris is the assignment manager. He’s the guy who finds the news, gets it covered. If he misses a story, his life will be unbearable. Bob is indefatigable. He eats news, and getting it eats him alive. There is no assignment manager in local news in America who sleeps well. Bob will be fired; he knows it and waits for the day; but in the meantime, he salivates for news.
Bob is now seated on a stool at the assignment desk in the center of the newsroom, surrounded by scanners and a six-foot-tall map of Philadelphia, the suburbs, New Jersey and Delaware. His “office” is the spine, the nerve center of the newsroom, resembling the oval counter of the maitre de at a fancy restaurant. Leaning on the counter, Bob stands up and roars back to the nervous news director: “It’s a shooting at Second and Cambria.”
“Where?” Pierce asks.
“Second and--”
“Isn’t that a rundown, shitty neighborhood?” she says, her hands gesturing in the air, a conductor without form.
“Yeah--but we’ve got two men critically wounded.”
Pierce puts her hands on her hips and answers in her cigarette-scarred, gravelly voice, “Bag it. Nobody gives a fuck about that godforsaken, bombed-out neighborhood. Shootings there are a dime a dozen. It’s not worth a reporter. Just get some video. Whack it and track it back here. I’m not biased, mind you. I just know what sells tickets to TV in this town.”
“Whack it and track it” means bring back the footage, edit thirty seconds of video and treat it as news that means little to the viewer.
“Whack it, Bobby,” Barbara says. “You can’t make cream cheese out of shit. So whack it, and get that crew out of there. You get me, Bobby boy?”
He winces. He looks down, as if he’s been ordered to the back of the class or the bus. The word “boy” does not sit well, either.
Barb goes inside the assignment desk area, squirming, her arms locked together over her chest. At this anguished stage in her career, I believe she could screw up a two-car funeral. I think she’s capable of anything. She is sly and cynical, and there hasn’t been one day in her life when she hasn’t feared for her job. I watch from across the assignment desk and wait for her next move.
I blame this situation on Bernie. Bernie the owner. Bernie the greedy jerk. Bernie who screws with life. But I have to admit there is plenty of blame to go around. Let’s face it, local news has gone to hell. In this town and around the country, ratings are down by 35 percent. So all of us, even the alleged ethical intellectuals like me, are fighting for a bigger piece of a smaller pie.
Decision time nears. Barb is about to hold the three o’clock meeting. Every newsroom in America holds a three o’clock meeting. That’s when they decide what blood and guts, sex and gossip, and unsubstantiated health advisories will go on tonight. That’s when the real good newsrooms look for stories that impact directly on people. Frankly, To Barb, murders of minorities are not news, and in that sick, decadent way of hers, she is convinced that if the victims are black, it doesn’t count. Is she bigoted? She says not. But if that’s not bigotry, what is?
Barb is feeling even more pressure than usual, because this has not been a good November. The overnights--the ratings--are not good. They suck. So Barb is looking for anything to lure the folks in, except that she’s blind to the day’s biggest story. Barb is a deer in the headlights.
When Garcia Perez sees the men sprawled on the pavement, his right hand shakes so violently that he can barely hold the two-way radio microphone.
“Oh my God!” he calls.
Cops are tough, but cops are people. They put on a great show of pride, an appearance of invulnerability. But inside, they cry just like the rest of us. When they see death, they get depressed.
Cops hold this society together. They get paid peanuts for dodging bullets, breaking up domestic dustups, and taking care of all of us. I respect cops in a way that few people do because I have watched them on the job, not through the glamour of TV but in the real-life messes they have to clean up after.
Once they deal with that, the gore, the idiocy of crime, the process of looking for the reasons begins. Cops are paid to be suspicious. The weapons between their ears can be more powerful than the automatic pistols inside their holsters.
Garcia Perez is one of the most honored cops in Philadelphia. He has guts, and he is smart. Very smart.
For Perez, the job at Second and Cambria requires two sets of priorities. He must assemble the facts for the official record, and he must cover his own ass. He speaks again, then goes quiet.
“Oh my God, please get me some . . .” The dead air is frightening in the crowded radio room at police headquarters on Race Street, where the radio dispatchers listen to the voice of a man in distress.
“Get me some help . . . fast . . . a rescue squad . . . shit . . . it may be too late. I think it is. Oh, Mama, this is deep shit here.”
Perez has seen victims before, but never like this. As far as he knows, there never has been anything like this. He looks down at the men. They are bleeding out. The man on the left is also choking, his eyes bright with alarm. The blood is dripping down over his chin. Every time he regurgitates, it is blood that seeps from his mouth.
“Get rescue in fast,” Perez calls. “I’m at Second and Cambria.”
The first on the scene of any crime is one lonely cop. Victims may still be breathing. Chances of saving them are bad to nothing. What he sees might cause palpitations of the heart or worse among those who are untrained and unprepared to watch death. At Second and Cambria, the blood is flowing from various bullet holes in the two bodies, emptying onto the pavement and winding in small pools till it runs over the curb and into the street. But cops are used to seeing blood, so what is it that freaks Perez out? Is it the path he has chosen?
Perez tries to avoid the faces of the victims. Instead, his eyes focus on the street signs, then move quickly to a mural on the side of an abandoned building. Murals are a big deal in Philadelphia, and this one has Julius Erving, Dr. J, driving in, his legs three feet off the ground, making a lay-up for the Sixers. With his eyes on Dr. J, Garcia reaches into a pouch. He looks away from the mural art and back to the dying men. Carefully, he puts the plastic gloves on his hands. He drops the small pistol, the Beretta, into the pouch. The service revolver remains in the holster.
With the backup gun safely stored in the pouch, Perez picks up the microphone again.
“This one guy is bleeding to death,” he continues. “There’s something really strange. Oh, God . . . I don’t believe what I’m lookin’ at. I’m gonna be sick.”
Perez pauses to recover, then grabs a handkerchief from his pocket and knots it. He places it in one of the wounds of the man wearing the Phillies jacket. He needs to make it look like he’s helping, but he also needs the men to die before the first medics arrive. The victim’s eyes are glazed. The other man is coughing, suffocating in his own blood. The purplish, fresh blood of the wound starts spreading over the officer’s fingers. The blood quickly spreads, covering the glove.
He takes his hand away and lets it hang in the air, holding the bloody handkerchief. Stinging from the cold wind and the sight of the carnage, he feels the nausea grow in his stomach.
Parts of the bodies are lying alongside the men. Crime scenes are routine to police officers, but a moment like this, with all these screwed-up emotions, is something they never train you for at the police academy. He puts the essential tools from his emergency medical kit back in the pouch that he wears around his waist. Slowly, he picks up the disconnected parts and wraps them in plastic. Like critical evidence, the pieces of the mystery are slipped into the pouch.
Tears form in Perez’s eyes. He hears the wailing sirens of his reinforcements, but the pounding of his heart seems even louder. Within minutes, he knows, both of these men will be dead. He could force it, but he also understands the delicate nuances and finite work of medical examiners who miss nothing. As he carefully walks around the bodies, he wonders if this crime will take him to the path of redemption, and if the boss will allow him to reach closure. “God’s will,” he thinks. God’s will can guide him to the finish.
My late friend Ron T. was a fighter for ethics in the news. We came from the era of “yellow journalism,” the tabloid exploitation of sensationalism. We tried to be better, but it didn’t always work out. Ron, mimicking a toothpaste commercial, always said, “I wonder where the yellow went.” “Yellow journalism” meant reporting without responsibility. Ron, if you’re listening, I know where the yellow went. It’s right here in this goddamned newsroom. Channel Five in Philadelphia--always first and sometimes wrong. Right now, we are not first, or second. We are not there, or at least it appears that we are missing the story.
We are summoned to the rectangular meeting desk in the southwest corner of the room. Seven chairs are filled for the three o’clock meeting. The rest of the gang stands. A bowl of candy sits at the center of the table. Barb, finished with the stale danish, reaches over and grabs a Goldenberg’s Peanut Chew. It’s a Philly specialty, and the dentists love it. Barb is amazingly thin, considering all the newsroom crap she ingests. As she chews the candy, she opens her mouth to speak.
“Let’s move it and shake it. We’re two weeks into the rating book, and we’re in deep shit. Channel Seven is kicking our butts. Even Diana Hong over at Channel Nine is moving up. That broad is good. I worry about her. She’s a looker, but she’s got brains. Has anyone met her? Hong and the also-rans at Channel Nine are knocking at our door. Any smart-ass ideas for tonight?”
“The shooting of two men is a smart-ass idea,” I say. “Are you listening, Barb, or are you brain dead?”
“Fuck you.”
The truth is that plunging ratings are making Barb into a callous, hypocritical fearmonger whose purpose is to get a news audience any way she can. But to be honest, she has never really cared. She is an honored graduate of the class of shame, circa 1990, when the people in local news started heaving into the trash bin of filth. Barb cares little about the public interest, just her own survival and mind-screwing her staff enough to keep them off-guard, insecure and screwed up so badly that they fear for their jobs more than they care about the damn truth.
She says it again. “Fuck you.”
“I’m calling human resources,” I answer.
“Go piss up a rope,” she says. The first time I heard “go piss up a rope” was in basic training in the Air Force. Barb never served her country, but she loves the expression.
She unmasked her style when she told me once, “Listen, I don’t want anyone to know how I feel about them. That way they are like little puppets and I can hold the string on their balls, if you know what I mean, Mikey.”
Yeah, Barb. I know what you mean. Barb’s style of management is a blueprint for failure. And we are failing--I mean, our skills are falling--off a cliff. And so are the damn ratings.
You want to get the picture? Look at the stories we covered last night at eleven. We led the show with the story of a hooker ring broken up in Kensington. I don’t mean London; there’s a Kensington in Philadelphia. Our other stories included video of a new mega-drugstore in the center of the city. We followed that with a domestic killing in Camden, New Jersey, three accidents on two of our fabulous crawlways, and a mayoral proclamation honoring Buster Bortman, a philanthropist who was recently released from the Federal pen at Lewisburg after serving one year for tax fraud. The increasing death toll in Iraq and the staggering stock market were relegated to the second fifteen minutes of the show, when most people are brushing their teeth or hoping for bodily contact.
The November sun is moving quickly now over the office buildings to our west. As darkness falls, a double murder is unfolding. The boss is in a state of nervousness, accented by the cigarette she lights in the middle of the newsroom.
“Barb, I’m calling the Fire Marshall,” I say.
“Call the Fire Marshall, call Human Resources. Take a car to the fricken murder and get your rocks off, Mikey. I’m ready for real news.” She looks at me in that wily, weird way of hers and says, “Let’s cover the school board hearings on the new Holocaust curriculum.”
“Now that’s a story,” I say.
“You like it, Mikey?”
“I like it, Barbie.”
“Then let’s pass.” She looks at the story proposals. “Here’s a good one. An abused puppy is rescued by some kids in Allentown.”
I love pets, but it’s all about sex, babies, pets and vets in this newsroom. The heart tuggers. Some people care more about abused pets than abused people. But it is a great story.
“Okay,” I say.
“Good, we’ll cover that. And how about we send a crew to the Thanksgiving party hosted by Angel Esperanza. He’s been doing it for twenty-five years.”
Bob Harris says, “Why don’t we get to the Cambria murders now.” It’s a ruse because Bob knows damn well that he’s got a shooter headed to the scene.
“Forget Cambria already. You are ticking me off, Bob. Move on!”
“Okay, why don’t we cover the controversy in Yeadon? A principal there wants to ban all classroom teaching of Darwinism.”
“What? Have you lost your fuckin’ mind, Bob?” Barb looks at him with a face of terror. “Do you think there is any way our audience knows the difference between Darwin and dick?”
For my part, I’m getting a headache. This is not just a content problem. Recently, Pierce has lost her groove. She stereotypes the viewer. She seeks an audience with phony premises: If it bleeds, it leads; if there’s flesh, you’ve got an audience.
But her point of view does hold some truth. After all, as the men on Cambria Street gasp their final breaths, Barb knows that most viewers in the suburbs, the whites in the twenty-five to fifty-four age range that advertisers prefer, care little about the city, except for its theaters and swank restaurants. For suburbanites, the path is simple--drive in, have a valet park your car, eat and be entertained, and after you’re done, get the hell out of Dodge. Barb is first and foremost, she believes, a realist.
Keith Byrne is sitting across from me at the meeting desk, and I can feel his impatience. His blue eyes are barely visible, staring as he does out the picture window, then turning as he gives Barb the big squint. He says, “Cover the damn story, Barbara. It’s a two-fer. Two may be dead. C’mon, Barb, let’s rock.”
Keith Byrne, my friend and future draft pick in the anchor sweepstakes, is hungry, but not for food. He is breathing heavily because he wants news. After listening to the boss, Byrne opens the top drawer of the supply cabinet, grabs two pencils, and walks over to the electronic pencil sharpener bolted to the wall of the assignment desk next to the maps. I have to hold back a smile. Every time Byrne gets tense, he inserts a pencil in sharpener. He seems calmed by the sound of the machine slicing through the wood and the lead, the buzz of that little saw inside the machine.
Byrne is frustrated, not only by the agony of trying to get the real news covered but also by another distraction. Byrne, who for some reason views me as a mentor, is still looking in the wrong places for the right woman. Keith is currently obsessed with Suzie Berman, who was just brought up as a reporter from the company station in Kansas City.
Suzie is a looker, but not a zipper hire. A zipper hire is a reporter hired because a general manager likes her so much that he wants to open his zipper and let his feelings hang out. In our station that is a real possibility because the general manager is a woman, a woman who also connects to female passion. I think Keith Byrne likes Suzie for two reasons. One, she is a news junkie. Two, Keith is crazy about her face, her arms, her legs and the way she walks. He talks about her fingers, how delicate they are. The way I figure it, if a guy is hot about a woman’s fingers, he must either be a QVC fan or crazy, at least about her. I can tell you that when I first met my wife, Rebecca, back in the day, I did not look at her fingers.
Is the pencil inside the sharpener a symbol of where he wants to be? Maybe he is sharpening his act in hopes of finding true love, or something close to it, with Suzie.
At this moment, Keith Byrne looks like he’s going to explode. He is an award-winning writer who is never appreciated by his boss. If you want great journalism, exclusive reports, a breed above the rest, he is the go-to guy.
Go-to-guy is tall and handsome, with a dark head of hair so full he could be a model. His face is chiseled, dimples crease his cheeks every time he smiles, and he has the all-American blue eyes of a movie star and an Einstein brain. I hate him for his looks, but I love him for what’s between the ears. I mean, Keith is from central casting for women who like hunks.
I am the reverse; I’m what they call ethnic. My nose is long; my hands wander in the air when I talk. My smile is crooked. So Byrne and I look different. But we have shared values. Keith knows the difference between news and bullshit. The day of Lakeview, he saved the day by being smart. After all, who knew what the Lakeview High trouble was until Keith cut through the bullshit? Even the cops were confused.
Go-to guy is pissed off. And as Barb looks at him with scorn, he is getting more pissed off.
“Wait a minute,” he screams. His shout-out briefly outdoes the volume of the pencil sharpener, which keeps buzzing and cutting. Finally, he collects the sharpened pencils in his fist and walks quickly toward the news director.
“Go to hell,” she yells back.
“Hold on,” he says. ”They are people at that crime scene. God dammit, Barb, you are so full of shit they would need a landfill to empty you.”
Pierce’s dark eyes dart from side to side. Then she looks straight at Keith like he is a dead-on-the-dock, limp fish.
“Don’t you ever embarrass me again, you no-talent, underqualified pain in the ass. You belong in fucking Clovis, New Mexico, you dick-dangling disaster.”
Not trying too hard to disguise his contempt for her decision, Byrne blows her a kiss with the middle finger of his right hand and says, “Love you, babe.”
Barbara Pierce is not a babe. She is the most profane, frightening, and demented news boss Byrne has ever had. Tall and lurking, Barb is imposing in a Hulk Hogan sort of a way. Her face has rugged lines. Her eyes are deep set. She wears long skirts , and high heels, and her eyes are surrounded by blue circles. Sleep is not her friend. Pierce began as a proud, fact-finding journalist. But now, Barb will not let facts or accuracy get in the way of a story. Survival of the fittest. That’s what this game is all about.
Still, despite her toughness, she does have rare moments of feelings. She thinks of other people’s feelings, on average, about once a year. I stand up, walk around the table, and put my arm on Byrne’s shoulder. “Take it easy, man,” I tell him.
“Mike, how can I?”
“Just cool it.” I believe Keith will be my successor some day. So I always try hard to counsel him to be patient and stick to his convictions.
He looks up, the creases of his forehead strained in anguish. “In our newsroom,” he says, “memories fade until the next fuckup.” Keith swivels in his chair and looks at me. I look back. I know what I have to do. In pompous-ass mode, I often say, “It’s getting the news that counts, stupid.” So I say it again. Keith says, “Right, Mike, but if you get it, they have to let you report it. Otherwise, man, it’s only news to us.”
I nod. Then a dramatic, fear-stirred voice on the police radio cuts through, telling us that the bodies are still on the scene at Second and Cambria. If Barb doesn’t decide to cover this, we will be clobbered by Channel Seven, WTVX, our main competitor and the market leader. I can’t let this happen. I motion to the news director to come into my office for a moment. The staff sits in silence as we walk away.
My desk area is small. But the view is perfect, a panorama of Philadelphia. I mean, Old Ben once walked here. Tom Jefferson told the British to go to hell. John Adams risked his life to save the damn country. And I’m sitting in my desk chair, about to start arguing with a malcontent boss on how to cover a double murder. This is America.
She walks after me, eyes glaring. “What’s up, Mikey?”
“Barbara,” I say, “don’t call me Mikey.”
“Shit, I’m sorry, but . . .”
“It’s disrespectful. I was doing news when your mother was nursing you. Listen, you can’t just walk away from a double homicide because the victims are black.”
“Bullshit,” she replies. “The news is what I say it is. If it happens in the suburbs, it’s real big. Mikey, I mean Michael?”
“Yes?”
“I mean Michael, the only way we win, babe, is to think white. These crap-ass killings are just a way of life in the badlands of Philadelphia. A dime a fucking dozen. As I see it, in those neighborhoods, death by gunshot or even by knife is part of the damn quality of life.”
“Let me make something clear,” I tell her. “Byrne is right on. A double murder is a double murder, no matter where it happens. This could lead to a bigger story. You’ve got to cover it.”
“I got to do nothing,” she says. She stands up. She puts her face in her hands, then raises her head and moves her hands into a vice-like grip. She looks disgusted.
“Time was when you ran this place, Mikey. But those days are over. I got to deal with you because you are a fixture, but fixtures fall just like anchors sink to the bottom.”
“Get the hell out of here,” I answer. “You are a poor excuse for a news boss.”
She looks at me, kicks a chair, and says, “You’re right, you bastard, you always are, but . . .”
“Yes?” I say.
She grins ear to ear, and in a whisper she says, “I am not going to cover the fucking story. You can yell at me till the cows come home.”
With that, she walks out to the center of the newsroom, unwraps a small package, and devours two Goldenberg’s chews. She doesn’t even chew them. It is amazing she doesn’t choke. I stare across the room. I am pissed and in a rage, and I can feel the veins trying to explode through my forehead. I get even crazier when, rather indelicately, she blows a kiss at me, crumbs seeping out the side of her mouth.
More sounds erupt from the scanners. This time, the trembling voice is a man’s. He’s one of ours, our cameraman.
Garcia Perez runs to his car, opens the trunk, and throws the pouch into the rear of the compartment near the automatic rifle box. Time is running out. He needs to dispose of the latex gloves before reinforcements come in. He looks around. He feels someone close. Behind him is a man with a camera. He takes the gloves off anyway and stuffs them into the cargo pocket on his left trouser. The camera guy is taking video of him. Did he see him slip the gloves away? Perez doesn’t care. But he senses a need to look like he’s suffering. Perez kneels on the ground. On his knees, he wraps his head in his hands and covers his eyes. The cameraman looks familiar, Perez thinks. The cameraman puts down his camera. He says, “You okay, man?”
Perez answers, his voice muffled by his hands still gripping his forehead. “I just never get used to this shit. Been doin’ it for years. Never get used to it.”
The cameraman looks at Perez with sympathy and concern. Then he moves back and focuses his camera on the bloody remains. While the cameraman stands directly over the bodies, Perez, now out of view, crawls on the ground, as if he is sick, but he is really searching for any residue, anything that might have fallen from his double-layered belt, the outside pure leather, the inside a Velcro-locked compartment for storage of bullets, tools of the trade, or even small knives. Very quickly, he grabs the rubber cover from each of his shoes and stuffs them in the rear of his trousers, where, hopefully, they will stay until he can hide them away alongside the fingers, the toes, and the teeth.
“I got a twenty at Second and Cambria,” says our cameraman, Jimmy Manstein. Then, “Oh my God . . . Mother Mary . . . Mother Mary.”
”A twenty” means the exact site he’s calling from. Manstein is the greatest cameraman in the history of Philadelphia television news. I mean, Manstein walks through fire and lives to show the story. He deftly maneuvers through a horde of Secret Service agents to get footage for our station. His video of the funeral of Princess Grace of Monaco, Philadelphia’s only royalty, was breathtaking and up close. He is the man. He doesn’t just take pictures. His eyes see news unfolding. He is tall, with the grace of a ballerina and the disposition of a Marine, which he was in Gulf War number one. But at this moment, standing at Second and Cambria, he is scared shitless. Believe me when I tell you that fear is not usually a part of his makeup.
“This is Manstein,” he continues. “Got two dead men, shot a few times, dead I think just a few minutes. Both of these men have no . . . Oh my god. I . . . I can’t believe this.” His voice gets higher. “I . . . uh . . . I . . . do not . . . see any fingers. No toes. No teeth.”
Then he screams into the microphone, “One guy has a blood-soaked map on his chest with arrows pointing toward Valley Forge. Cop says no big deal. Anything going on in Valley Forge?”
When the radio crackles, Bob Harris rushes over to the middle of the assignment area. He asks, “You still there, Jimmy?”
“Yeah, I’m looking at the bullet holes. I’m looking for the fingers. One cop here. Rescue units One and Two. These guys are deader than dead. They bled out. No fingers, toes, teeth. I gotta go . . . The smell. The blood is on my shoes. I gotta go.”
At the news assignment desk, Bob picks up the microphone and says, “Bring the video back. We’re not covering it.”
“Why the hell not?” Manstein roars back.
“Because,” Bob replies with a mixture of sadness and sarcasm, “because the boss says that we--uh--are not covering it.”
Pierce hears the exchange. Her heels the floor, she grabs Bob by his hair, and she yells.
“Why the hell is Manstein there? I told you I didn’t want to cover this fucking story, goddamit! Bobby, what the hell is wrong?”
Harris says, “Get your hands off my hair. I sent him there. You said to whack it and track it. No reporter. Just video.”
“Did I tell you to do that?”
“Yes, you did, Barb.”
“Well, get him the hell out of there.”
I feel utter disgust. We are walking away from serious news. Why is a murder victim carrying a map to Valley Forge? And who has the fingers, the toes, the teeth?
My desk phone rings. I pick it up. Civic leader Angel Esperanza says, “Marone, get Newsboy on the phone.” I motion to Keith. He’s in my office in a few seconds. I activate the speaker phone.
Esperanza continues. “Newsboy, I’ve got a lead for you. It’s a story that will shake the foundations of City Hall. Call me on the cell in five. Get a pencil. But don’t sharpen it first. This is a mini-bombshell.”
“Yikes. This is so hot. Like you, you little basket of sunshine.”
Harvey Hopkins is sipping from a cup of black coffee, and some of the liquid is dripping from his lips to his chin and falling to the knot of his tie. He uses the coffee to balance the alcohol, but it never really works. On this day, as the gunfire rings out on Cambria Street, Hopkins is knee deep in vodka and being embraced by the perfumed being of Ann Marie Hartz, the weekend weather person for Channel Five. According to Harvey, Ann Marie gives great forecast, and great highs and lows.
Love is not the mission of the legendary anchorman. All people grow old, but anchors, larger than life on the small screen, grow older in front of thousands who remember them when. More than the thinning grey hair, more than a sagging face, he needs reaffirmation. His affair with Ann Marie is an emotional tonic meant to relieve him of the aging process.
Anne Marie is naked, her body draped across Hopkins's bulging stomach. She lifts her neck up and says, “Honey, you gotta lay off the sauce.” Ann Marie moves off his body, gets up on her hands and knees, and moves her face to his neck, where she offers a soft kiss and whispers in his ear. “Baby, I’m so into you. I worry about you. Please sweetie, lay off the sauce and the other shit.”
Hopkins looks at her. “I know, but yikes, sweetie--oh, shit. I can't stop it. It makes me feel good. Actually, it makes me feel--nothing. I love that.” Harvey rests his head on the soft pillow and puts his right arm over her naked back. He glances over at the clock on the nightstand at her side of the bed. The bedroom is furnished with the narcissistic accoutrements of his reckless career. On the top of the armoire facing the bed are three gold statuettes, local Emmy awards from his lead-anchor days in Pittsburgh. The wall, papered in a dark beige, is filled with a blend of plaques and pictures from the groups that have honored him. In the far corner, on the wall near the window, is a framed picture, in color, of a little boy. The child’s eyes are filled with hope. He thinks of Tommy all the time. Tommy, the ghost of Harvey’s past, was just three when the leukemia arrived. After Tommy’s passing, Harvey and his only wife, Teresa, divorced. Since Tommy’s demise, love, real love, has never visited Harvey.
Harvey slips out of Ann Marie’s arms and stands up, putting the coffee down on the nightstand. His legs shake as he lifts them one at a time to put on his trousers. He zips his fly and prepares to go down the freight elevator, as he does every day. From the ground floor he will enter the cab waiting to drive him to the station. The six o'clock broadcast will start in two hours, which leaves him just enough time to wash up, apply his makeup and, in the final moments before air, sniff the white powder tucked away in his briefcase.