Falling Star (49 page)

What?
Now she made her voice all
wheedly. "Tony, you don't want to fire me. Not really." Very slowly
she got closer, as if he was a wounded animal who might attack if
she made any sudden moves. "I'm exactly what you need to pump the
numbers. You know what you should do? You should fire Ken and hire
somebody new to be my coanchor and then we'll go gangbusters! And
you know I don't cost you much." Tony wasn't saying anything so she
kept on going. "Now I'm willing to go for the hundred thirty K the
first year of the contract. You've already punished me by
suspending me and banning me from the lot, and those are both
pretty bad."

He stood there, still staring at her in that
weird way, but she figured she must be getting through because he
wasn't arguing.

"And besides," she went on, "nobody else
knows what's on that tape. We can keep it our little secret."

Then he started shaking his head. "You're a
piece of work, Kelly—you know that? A real piece of work. What
about those lawsuits? You want me to forget those, too? No chance.
I'm firing you. Maybe I can still save myself. Here's the paperwork
you gotta sign." He pulled some documents out of his other jacket
pocket.

Okay. Now was
definitely
time for
desperate measures. She got up real close to Tony and ran her hands
lightly up his chest. "Please." She stared into his eyes and made
her voice all breathy. "I can make you forget all of it, the
lawsuits and everything."

But he pushed her hands away. "Don't even try
that shit on me, Kelly. It won't work."

Right then she gave up trying to be nice.
"I'll sue the station for sexual harassment!" she shrieked. "I'll
name Bjorkman! And you. I'll say that's why you fired me, because I
wouldn't sleep with you, you pig!"

Then he gave her another took she'd never
seen before. "You do that," he said, "and my first stop is Parker
Center. With this tape in my hand." He held it up in the air.
"Because I'm sure the LAPD would want to see it."

Kelly backed onto the suede couch. All of a
sudden she was scared shitless. The cops might come after her? Then
wouldn't everybody know? Every news director in town? She'd never
get another TV job! In LA or anywhere!

That made her start shaking so hard she
couldn't stop. Tony held a pen up in front of her. "Sign these
papers. Here, on this dotted line."

"What do they say?"

"They say you understand you're fired. They
also say you won't sue KXLA for any reason. Ever."

"You won't go to the cops?" she asked
him.

He didn't say anything for a second, but then
he said no, he wouldn't go to the cops. So she took the pen and
signed—because what else could she do?—and he tore off a copy for
her and left.

Kelly watched him go and kept shaking.

No TV job. No agent. No money.

It was everything she never wanted, and all
at the same time.

*

It was 11:12 PM on Wednesday night when
Natalie exited the KXLA lot and made two lefts, the second landing
her on a smarmy stretch of Sunset Boulevard, heading west. She
cruised swiftly, the adrenaline that had pulsed through her body
while she anchored the newscast dissipated. Now she just wanted to
make the right turn that led her north into the Hollywood Hills and
Nichols Canyon and bed.

Just past the intersection at Gower a car
careened into traffic behind her and raced up close to her tail,
its headlights on high beam blinding her in the rearview
mirror.

She squinted, flicking up the mirror's bottom
edge to escape the glare. Then the car behind began weaving
erratically, the driver honking his horn and punching up even
closer to her rear bumper. Her foot pushed down on the accelerator.
Why didn't he just pass her? Was it some maniac?

Her heart sped up, like the speedometer on
her dash. Was it a maniac like that other guy? Years before she'd
had a stalker—a felon who'd tracked her home from KXLA after lying
in wait outside the lot till she drove out after the newscast. The
LAPD's threat management unit had to be brought in. Until the day
he was arrested she'd been petrified.

Was it happening again now, as she drove to
an empty house?

She sped through a yellow light at Cahuenga.
The other car followed, close on her tail. She hit the steering
wheel with the palm of her hand. Damn! It was a Porsche, she could
see now. So it was a rich maniac, but a maniac nonetheless.

I can't go home and lead this guy to my
front door.
Nor did she want a chase through the canyons,
poorly lit and steep and narrow.
I'll drive to Hollywood
Division. No way will he accost me in front of a police
station.
And the location was burned into her memory from her
arrest for stalking Hope Dalmont. How ironic.

Abruptly she pulled into the left turning
lane. But the Porsche sped up along her right side. She glanced
over and looked at the driver.

Miles!

She was stunned. Miles? Had he gone mad? She
glanced over again. He was motioning for her to pull over.

She didn't want to pull over. But how could
she dodge him? Not only would he follow her wherever she went, he
knew where she lived.

Fine. She'd pull over, here on Sunset
Boulevard. Not in the dark emptiness of Nichols Canyon.

She pulled over by a closed Jack in the Box
restaurant. Miles parked just behind, then emerged from his car and
approached her.

She kept the engine running, the door locked,
and the window closed. If he got crazy, she'd just go.

She couldn't believe it. She was afraid of
her own husband.

He bent to regard her through the car window.
"Hello, Natalie." His tone was as calm as if they'd casually run
into each other. "I apologize for accosting you like this but I was
afraid that if I called you wouldn't agree to meet me."

You got that right
, she thought, but
remained mute.

"Will you get out of the car to talk to
me?"

"No."

"Will you at least roll down the window?" She
hesitated, then obliged, but cracked the window only slightly.

His brow furrowed in disappointment. "Fine.
We can talk like this."

Now she was frowning. This was puzzling, this
sudden reappearance of the understanding, rational Miles. Whom she
hadn't seen for some time, not since ...
My God.
Her heart
began to pound.
Not since the night he seduced me to steal the
prenup.
She clutched the steering wheel, thankful that a ton of
steel and eight cylinders separated her from her husband.
He
wants something.

"I've been doing a great deal of thinking,"
he said. His face assumed a tortured expression. "Natalie, I've
realized that all this has been an enormous mistake. It's killing
me. I know now that my professional success is damn hollow without
you."

She stared at him, incredulous.

He leaned in even closer, such sadness
filling his eyes that she couldn't tear her own gaze away. "I'm
saying that I'd like us to give it another try, Natalie. Our
marriage. Before we make the biggest, most heartbreaking mistake of
our lives."

All she could do was shake her head. It was
unfathomable, what this man was capable of. He would stop at
nothing. Nothing was too hypocritical, or grasping, or
contemptible.

"You never cease to amaze me," she said in a
low voice. He looked startled, and she realized it was because
she'd segued from thinking to speaking aloud with nothing in
between. "I bought your shit for a dozen years. I paid for it hook,
line, and sinker. You married me because I brought home a nice big
paycheck, which you were too lazy and incompetent to do yourself.
What a fool I was. Not anymore." Suddenly she slapped her open palm
against the window in the direction of his face and he recoiled,
eyes blazing. "So what do you need now, Miles?" she yelled. "A new
sugar mama, is that it? And you picked me because I performed so
beautifully for a dozen years? You can just forget it!"

Miles just stared at her, until something in
his face twisted. Suddenly he pushed hard against the car, rattling
the chassis. What few passersby there were on Sunset Boulevard at
that hour stopped and stared. "You self-centered bitch!" he
shouted. "You might as well know you got what you wanted! Because I
got fired! Fired!"

She stared at him. "The studio fired
you?"

"They say I plagiarized the script!" He was
standing back from the car now, still shouting at her. "They're not
gonna pay me a dime! In fact, they'll probably sue me to get back
what they already paid me! And the show won't go on the air
once
with my name on it. Not
once
! All thanks to
you." He executed a mocking bow. The people on the street were
mesmerized. "It took me a while but finally I understood what else
you stole when you broke into my house." He leaned so close then
that his breath fogged her window. "Ransacking my private files.
Isn't that just like you? You and that fucking ex-partner of
mine."

"No, Miles." She was shaking her head
violently, her entire body trembling with anger. "Not thanks to me.
Or to Jerry. It was
you
who stole Jerry's work. You alone.
Because you are a talentless hack who has to ride somebody else's
coattails to make it around the block. So don't you dare blame me
or anybody else for getting fired. You did that all by
yourself."

"You need to see me brought down, don't you?"
He jabbed at his chest, his voice rising. "You can't stand it! You
can't stand to have me do well."

"You're delusional." She'd had enough, and
she was frightened. She turned the key in the ignition and the
engine leaped to life. "I'm leaving."

"You're sleeping with him, aren't you?
Jerry?" He leered at her crazily through the window. "That's what
this is all about. That's why he filed with the Guild and went
crawling back to Heartbeat."

"Don't you even speak to me about sleeping
with somebody else!" she screamed. She could feel her control slip
away from her like a car on an icy road. "Not after you fucked
Kelly Devlin under our own roof while we were married! You didn't
think I knew about that, did you, you bastard?"

Shock registered on his face, which gave her
a jolt of pleasure.

"You did a good job of bleeding me dry,
living off my money, sleeping with who knows who, stealing our
prenup." She could barely speak for the rage flowing through her.
"You are a despicable human being, Miles Lambert. I want you the
hell out of my life. I wish to God I'd had the sense to kick you
out years ago." Then she jammed her foot down on the accelerator
and the Mercedes shot forward. She didn't care if she ran over him
or not.

When she looked in the rearview mirror, still
shaking, Miles had dwindled into a distant speck, too small and
impotent to hurt her anymore.

*

Tony paced Pemberley's office, not sure
whether to sit, where to sit if he did, what to do with his hands.
He felt like shit. He looked like shit. And he was pretty sure that
very soon, shit was not only gonna fly but land on his head.

Because there could be no good reason for
Pemberley to have chosen this morning to summon him to Sunshine
Broadcasting headquarters on a next-plane basis. None. Just when
Tony was starting to think maybe,
maybe
, he'd squirm out of
this mess, Maxine informed him that he was wanted in Phoenix ASAP.
Pronto. Yesterday.

"You're here." Pemberley's voice, which
sounded none too happy, boomed from the doorway. Tony's insides
rearranged themselves, much as they had during the turbulent
flight, only worse.

Pemberley walked behind his shuffleboard
court of a desk and scowled at him. He was backlit in the
floor-to-ceiling windows and looked like a silver-haired Darth
Vader. "Scoppio, I've never been more wrong about a man than I've
been about you."

Tony cleared his throat. "I—"

"When I hired you, I thought there was a
better-than-even chance you'd be the best news director I ever had,
in all my years at Sunshine. I expected to be handing over your
bonus within three months of your start date. You came with the
most impressive credentials that had ever crossed my desk. You were
a hard-ass, but in my book that's a plus."

"Rhett—"

"But in the ensuing months, not only did you
fail to get the prime-time newscast to number one and keep it
there, you also failed to get the news department out of the red.
You demoted a well-respected veteran anchor for an inexperienced no
name who in no time at all not only got KXLA slapped with two
lawsuits but got a 6-year-old killed! And then you kept her on
staff!" Gone was Pemberley's logical voice, replaced by a roar that
in southern California would have accompanied a seismic event.

Also gone was whatever shred of calm Tony
still possessed.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph
, he thought, seeing
his career flash before his eyes,
Pemberley knows about the CNN
tape. Thanks, BD.
Or maybe Princess? Or Ruth?
He
realized, suddenly, that he had a few enemies.

"The lawsuits I might have gotten past,
because of my confidence in you," Pemberley ranted on. "But this
flashlight . . .
monstrosity
!" He slapped his open palm on
his desk. "Never!" Then he pointed his finger at Tony like an
accuser in the Salem witch trials. "You lied to me and that I will
not tolerate."

Tony's mind raced. He'd lied? He'd withheld,
sure, but not even Catholics considered that a sin. And in the
TV-news world, it was standard procedure. Before breakfast.

"You told me," Pemberley continued,
enunciating every syllable like he was in the national spelling
bee, "that Howard Bjorkman was to blame for that damnable
car-accident videotape getting off the lot. Well, I've spoken to
Howard Bjorkman."