Details at Ten (12 page)

“Brent Manning.”

“Those low-down dirty dogs! Brent Manning makes me sick! Everybody in this station knows I can’t stand him. They deliberately gave him my story to get on my last nerve.”

Brent Manning was one of those guys who thinks he’s all that, and while he’s good, he’s not Scoop the Journalism God. Brent is TV news; the man is cut from network tape. He’s lanky, with chiseled features, blue eyes, blond hair, and he’s aggressive like nobody’s business. He can smell a story a mile away. Brent is doggish about news, too, always criticizing something and somebody because he’s a perfectionist. Now he was on my story and getting it back would be like trying to get my arm out of a pit bull’s mouth. “Where is Brent now?”

“I heard that he’s out going on a ride-along with one of the beat cops in the neighborhood. You know, they’ve got flyers of this kid and they’re supposed to go door-to-door canvassing the neighborhood.”

“Thanks, C!” I hugged her and went to my desk.

I was going to go see my boss, Bing. But I kept getting sidetracked. People kept stopping by my desk, asking if I was okay, and riding me about getting dogged in the paper. There was already a Post-it on the computer that said Bing wanted to see me. Some tattletale must have told him I was in, because Bing came right up behind me and noted, “Obviously you’re okay. Good.”

The crowd around me flew. Bing could clear a room faster than fire. He grunted. “Georgia, my office.”

We walked to his office in silence. Bing sat at his desk where he had been watching an air-check, which is a recorded copy of a live broadcast. It was a copy of last night’s ten o’clock news, currently set on pause.

“Now,” Bing said with a dissatisfied look on his face, “your story last night made no mention that this missing kid case is gang related.”

Pride wanted me to say I knew. Instinct wanted me to lie. But as my grandmother used to say, pride goeth before a fall. “I had a hint of it but I couldn’t confirm it so I didn’t go with it. I didn’t want to risk being wrong and escalating the gang situation there.”

Bing talked about me like a D-O-G. As he ranted and raved I was a silent spectator, stuck and unamused. I waited patiently for him to take a break. “Bing, I heard that you put Brent on this story,” I finally managed to get in. “I heard that you want me to do the fire-bombing and that’s it. But I want it all. Put me back on the story and I’ll be on top of it.”

“Brent’s the best reporter in this shop.”

Oh, no, he didn’t go there
. I snapped, “Brent’s a North Shore boy. He knows Lincoln Park and the oyster-eaters who live there. This is a South Side story—Englewood and fried shrimp. He doesn’t know the community. He doesn’t know the people. I doubt if he even knows that Chicago was founded by a black man.”

“Don’t be patronizing! You blew it!” Bing raged. “Not only did you get beat, Georgia, you didn’t answer your page this morning!”

“My pager’s broken!” I lied.

“We had to get somebody else on the story, so we sent our top gun.”

“C’mon, Bing! This story belongs to me like the last shot belongs to Michael Jordan and you know it.”

“It’s Brent’s ball now.”

I picked up the newspaper on his desk. “I don’t like being made fun of publicly and I feel responsible for Butter getting on-air. In fact, she wouldn’t have gotten on if you hadn’t prodded me into it. Remember, Bing?”

God must have struck him deaf and dumb for a minute because he didn’t say a mumbling word. Finally, Bing released the pause button on the ten o’clock air-check and turned toward the set. “End of discussion, Georgia.”

I had to get back on the story. But how? How could I bump Brent? I went back and sat at my desk and thought about it. Then I got an idea.

I picked up the phone and sat low because I didn’t want anyone to interrupt my call. I phoned Butter’s house. Kelly answered; I knew her voice by now. “Kelly, hi, it’s Georgia.”

“Heard anythin’?” she asked.

“No, but I know personally that the police are working very hard on the case—”

“Reverend says—”

“Kelly, I know what Reverend Walker thinks. I saw the paper today. Detective Eckart asked your family not to tell anyone about the gang connection.”

“I know, but Reverend told Mama it would be better to shake up things. He said that would help. Reverend’s the one who called the newspaper reporter.”

“I respect the Reverend,” I said, without adding that I was mad as a bear at him, “but I got nailed in that article and I’ve been doing nothing but trying to help you from the very beginning.”

“I ain’t see it. We didn’t say nothing bad about you. Mama likes you. Trip too. We just want Butter back. Later for all the rest of that stuff.”

“I know. That’s all I want, too, Butter back home safe. You believe that don’t you, Kelly?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Okay. I want to stay on this story, but to do that I need a favor. I need this favor bad so we can keep working together and get Butter back.”

“What?”

“TV reporters are going to be calling you up for interviews today.”

“Yeah, Channel 3 and 10 called already!”

“Okay, now my station is sending a reporter out named Brent Manning—”

“He called, too, said he’d be by.”

“Right. Kelly, don’t talk to him. Give the other stations their interviews, but don’t talk to Brent. Tell him you don’t feel comfortable talking to anyone at my station but me. Period.”

“Okay, no one but you at Channel 8.”

“Right.”

“Okay, I promise and I’ll make sure he don’t get in. Nobody but you, Georgia.”

“Thanks, Kelly. I’ve got a feeling I’ll be seeing you fairly soon.”

I hung up, signed on to my computer. I checked the assignment desk’s daily log. It listed the stories we were covering, the reporter assigned, and the crew sent with the reporter. The log entry read: Missing Kid. Manning. Unit 23. Great! They’d sent Brent with Zeke because he’s been covering the story with me and knows the area and all the players. But Zeke hates Brent Manning as much as I do. I called his truck and prayed that he was in it.

“Unit 23!” Zeke answered.

“Zeke, it’s Georgia but don’t let on.”

“Yeah.”

“Is Brent in the truck with you?”

“Yeah, I keep telling you maintenance guys that something smells shitty in here.”

“So you know they took me off the story and put him on.”

“Yeah.”

“I need your help, and I know you can’t stand Brent any more than I can.”

“Yeah, man, I really want to get this smell out of my truck!”

“Great. Do me a favor. When you get to the Stewart house, they’re not going to let you in—”

“Really?”

“—I asked them to freeze out Brent so I can get back on this story-”

“I hear you.”

“—but he’ll never tell the powers that be back here that he can’t get in for an interview. Zeke, I need you to call back to the station, rant and rave that we’re not going to have anything, and that we’ll get totally beat unless they get me back out there!”

“Okey-dokey! No problem. See ya!”

I faked a call or two, treading water until Zeke’s call came in. I wasn’t going to set up squat unless it was about Butter.

Within the hour I heard a rumbling up at the assignment desk. I saw a couple of the managers get crazy, concerned looks on their faces. Clarice looked up and across the newsroom at me, smiled, then dropped her eyes back to the computer in front of her. I saw the managers each take a phone. I heard their voices rise. I saw Bing come out of his office and stomp right up to the assignment desk and start a powwow.

I started singing to myself “Respect,” by Aretha-know-she-can-sang-Franklin. I only made it through two “sock it to me’s” when …

“Georgia!” they called out.

I’d gotten my story out of the pit bull’s mouth. I wondered what the pit bull, Brent Manning, was going to say?

T
his is bullshit! Bullshit!” Manning was shouting on the phone inside the news truck. Even with the windows rolled up I could still hear him bellowing and berating and victimizing whoever had the sorry-ass luck of being on the other end of the line.

A courier had driven me out to the location so I could hook up with my crew, and the courier would drive Manning back to the station. A courier’s job is to transport for the station: pick up packages, take tapes to a crew, drive reporters to one location or another. Transport. That was the plan. But there was just one little lump in this bowl of grits: Brent Manning didn’t want to go. He was still in the live truck. The cartoon section back at the TV station didn’t call Brent ahead of time and tell him that they were pulling him off the story. They wanted to avoid his wrath until the last possible moment.

“You pull me now,” Brent threatened, “then don’t put me back on this story
ever!
I’m not a yo-yo—I’m the best talent in the city of Chicago. I will not be treated otherwise.”

Zeke was standing on the driver’s side of the truck leaning on the hood laughing his butt off. Brent had locked him out of his own unit because he’d figured out that Zeke had dropped a dime on him back at the station.

I was on the passenger side waiting for Brent to give me the tape he shot during the cop ride-along, which I’d need as an element in my version of today’s developments.

Finally Brent Manning hung up the phone and got out of the truck. He walked right past me, got into the courier’s car, and slammed the door. Brent was trying to take the tape with him and leave me hanging.
You got the wrong one, baby
. I ran up to the window and banged on the glass as hard as I could. “I need the tape, Brent!”

He said something to the courier and the car started rolling back in reverse.

“Brent! C’mon, gimme the tape!” I shouted and hit the glass again.

By now Zeke was standing on the street on the driver’s side and the poor courier just threw up his hands and put the car in park. Brent rolled down the window, tossed the tape out, and rolled the window back up.

“Wheee-doggy!” Zeke laughed as we watched the courier car speed away. “Testy jack-off, ain’t he?”

Channel 3 and Channel 10 had their trucks parked outside. “Bet it’s crowded in there,” Zeke said, looking over at Butter’s house. But I barely heard him. My mind was on screening Brent’s tape to see what was on it because I’d have to write around it for my two-minute story. But since it was so hot and would be even hotter sitting inside the truck playing the tape, I got Zeke to fill me in.

“Georgia, it’s just standard stuff … knocking on doors handing out flyers. The beat cop talked about how dangerous it was on the street, how quiet it had been, and how he knows that something’s going to pop soon.”

“Great. It’s no biggie then.” I was confident that I could write to the video cold, so we headed up to the house.

“Hey!” Trip said, answering the door. Butter’s cousin peeped around Zeke and me with a hateful expression on his face. “That white man gone?”

“Hey watch it! I’m a white man!”

Trip’s eyes narrowed, then he kind of pouted. “You okay though.”

Zeke smiled at him, then rubbed the back of his neck. Trip giggled at the sign of affection.

Inside, I recognized two reporters from the other stations. They were good reporters, competitive but fair. One was interviewing Miss Mabel and the other was talking to Kelly.

The living room was crowded with everyone’s gear. It’s expensive and heavy. The camera costs about thirty grand. The other accessories—tripod, lights, battery belt, case, Beta tapes—another twenty-five grand. Zeke was lugging around about forty pounds worth of stuff and the heat wasn’t helping a bit. Zeke wearily added his equipment to the pile because I told him we needed to hang tight. Why piggyback off the comp? Naw, that’s stale. I’d wait until they finished and do my own interview. The lights added a heat inside the front room that set me to sweating. I asked Trip, “Can I have a glass of water?”

Trip grabbed me by the hand and started pulling. “C’mon!” He led me back into the kitchen.

“Where’s Reverend Walker?” I asked.

“He talked to them other reporters and left when he heard Aunt Kelly talkin’ to you. Said he had somewhere else to be.”

Uh-huh, he knows he was wrong
. Reverend Walker obviously didn’t want to face me after the way he bulldozed Doug’s plan and got that story in the paper.

“I’ll getcha a glass!” Trip said, opening up one of the low cabinets. Inside there were six plates, rose patterned, old and chipped, but sparkling clean. And there were six clear glasses and four yellow plastic tumblers. Trip grabbed two tumblers. “I don’t mess wit’ them glasses, Grandma crazy ’bout them glasses.” He handed the tumblers to me and said, “Bugs. Rinse.”

I let the water run and it came out pink.

“Rusty pipes,” Trip said. “Keep running it.”

I continued to let the faucet run. Soon the water was clear, but I just didn’t want to drink it. And I didn’t want to embarrass Trip.

I said, “Hey, how ’bout instead of just plain old water to cool us off, why don’t we get some ice cream?”

“Yeah!” Trip’s eyes got wide and a grin opened up from one side of his face to the other. “Eskimo bars!”