Nobody Knows (6 page)

It would be healthier if he found some outside interests, too, Charles thought as he settled into the big chair across the room from the television. But what? He had never taken up golf, and truth be told, he wasn’t exactly enthusiastic about learning now. Maybe fishing? He should track down that old fisherman who was always at the beach and see if he would share his knowledge.

The retiree’s attention was diverted by the Suncoast News meteorologist, who was talking about the tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico and explaining the storm grading system. “Winds up to thirty-eight miles per hour, that’s a tropical depression. If winds reach thirty-nine miles per hour, that’s a tropical storm. When a tropical storm reaches a constant wind speed of seventy-four miles per hour or greater—that’s a hurricane.

“Stay tuned, folks, and we’ll keep our audience in the Sarasota Bay area up to speed on how Giselle develops.”

Cassie drove into the parking deck underneath the fifteen-story bank building that housed what was left of the KEY News Miami Bureau and gave the garage attendant a quick
“Buenos días.”
She eased the Explorer into her designated slot, next to the one marked
EL JEFE,
the space for the boss. But the latest round of corporate layoffs had eliminated the head count for a Miami bureau chief. Senior Producer Leroy Barry had inherited the boss spot. Leroy’s parking space was empty.

The bundle of newspapers was waiting near the elevator, and Cassie picked it up.
The Miami Herald, The New York Times, USA Today
, and
The Washington Post
. It stung every morning to see the masthead of what had been her hometown paper. Cassie had to force herself to go through the
Post
’s pages, reading about people with whom she had been on a first-name basis, people who’d always returned her calls, people who didn’t want to know her anymore. Once, Cassie had influence and power in the Beltway world; now she was weak. In
an environment based on power and access, weakness was repulsive. Even those who sympathized with her situation were uncomfortable associating with her, and Cassie knew it.

She was a leper.

If she had paid more attention to her family and less to the job, it would be different. She would have drawn strength and emotional sustenance from a loving relationship with her husband and daughter. But she had neglected both Hannah and Jim. She hadn’t meant to, but she had. Everything at KEY News had seemed so damned important. It was so easy to get sucked in. The broadcasting adrenaline was addictive and intoxicating. Now, especially without her family, withdrawal was excruciating.

Yelena Gregory had tried to make the Miami assignment sound positive when she broke the news that it was her decision, as president of the news division, that Cassie move from the Washington Bureau, but not to New York as planned. Both women, though, knew the truth.

It was fine to be stationed as Miami correspondent on the way
up
the news ladder. But Cassie most definitely was on the way down. Wanting to make a point, Pamela Lynch was suing KEY News along with Cassie for $100 million. KEY News was sticking with Cassie while the case was in the courts. But after that, Cassie suspected she’d be on her own, cut loose by the company she had worked for most of her professional life.

How quickly things change
, she thought as she got off the elevator on the eleventh floor and walked along
the outside terrace to the office. Six months ago she was on track for the spot on
Hourglass
. Her agent had been salivating about going into the next contract negotiations. Now he didn’t return her calls.

Cassie punched in the security code at the front door, which unlocked with a buzzing sound. She entered the dark and depressing space. A large office, meant for dozens of staffers, was now used by only a handful. Because of the leaner operation across the board, the KEY corporate stock was doing well. Cassie knew this because she was suddenly paying attention. The shares she had accumulated over the years would be up for grabs in the divorce proceedings.

Her office was off to the side of the no-longer-busy central newsroom. She went in and whipped through the newspapers, listened to her voice mail, and checked her e-mail. Next she scanned her computer for the
Evening Headlines
early rundown. Cassie felt another catch in her throat as she saw that Valeria Delaney was slated to do a story from the Justice Department. Valeria was an ambitious young thing, and she was lobbying hard for the justice correspondent title officially left unfilled since Cassie’s departure.

Cassie pushed the phone pad keys and waited for further humiliation. She had to keep calling the Fishbowl, pitching story ideas, and see if they’d bite.

“Bullock,” came the curt answer.

“It’s Cassie Sheridan, Range.” Why did she feel like a nervous kid when she got the executive producer on the line?

“Yeah, Cassie. What’ve you got?”

She knew Range was just going through the motions
with her, though neither of them wanted to acknowledge it. Almost every story Cassie had proposed since she had been in Miami had been flatly rejected. The reasons given had varied, but she knew the bottom line: they didn’t want her on the air. Not unless it was to do the miserable stories that no one at her stage of the game really wanted to do. For those awful natural disaster stories, the Fishbowl would use her.

“There’s a story in the
Herald
this morning, Range, about the FBI’s Organized Crime/Drug Program investigation of drug trafficking here in Miami. I thought I’d call around and see what I could come up with on it.”

There was a momentary pause on the line.

“Range?”

“I think it would be best if Valeria worked on this one, Cassie. Why don’t you give her a call and ask her to check things out with the FBI?”

Oh God, the morning’s humiliation was now complete. She took the pen she had been holding and jammed it in her palm.

But Range wasn’t finished with her yet. “Cassie, what’s the deal with this tropical storm in the Gulf? From the sound of it, we better get in position over there.”

She’d been avoiding it. If she didn’t bring it up, maybe it would go away. Yeah, right. But she didn’t want to think about the possibility of a hurricane. She wanted to see Hannah this weekend. Cassie was only thirty-nine, she reasoned with herself. Hannah was only thirteen. There was still time to make things right between them.

But in Miami, as in Washington before, work called the shots.

The arrival of the Suncoast Broadcasting Company news crew added to the hubbub on Siesta Beach. Trudging through the sand and dripping with perspiration, the WSBC-TV news photographer-editor Brian Mueller followed his reporter. They couldn’t locate the kid who had found the hand, but they recorded an interview with a sheriff’s deputy and got reaction from people on the beach.

“I think it was a shark,” said one woman.

“This is a helluva way to start the day,” said a man who identified himself as a vacationing New Yorker.

The guy’s right
, thought Brian. This was a crappy way to start what was going to be a long, long day. Once they got enough here, they’d have to hurry back to the station and put together the story for noon. Then the news director would have the bright idea that the piece should be updated for the six o’clock hour, so they’d scarf down some lunch, then go back out and try to find some new element to advance the story. Then
rush back again to the station, edit and feed into the show. But that wouldn’t be the end of it.

Brian had to shoot that charity event at the Ringling mansion tonight where the Boys Next Door were going to play. He had to get all those society types arriving for cocktails on the Cà d’Zan terrace. He’d be lucky if he was home by midnight.

“They aren’t paying me enough,” Brian muttered under his labored breath as his reporter pointed toward the sheriff’s investigators walking away from the seawall, signaling that the photographer should get the shot.

Brian hoisted the camera up to his shoulder, aimed in the direction of the officers, focused, and recorded a shot that pushed in on the case an investigator carried. The hand was wrapped up in that case. Gross.

Nope, Brian thought, Suncoast wasn’t paying him enough to do the stories he had to drag himself out on. And certainly not enough for the twelve- and thirteen-hour days he routinely put in, or for the road trips that the news director expected him to make during sweeps periods. But the job did give him respectability. Brian liked to tell everyone he worked in the news business, though his larger source of income came from somewhere and someone else.

The flashy red sports car he drove signaled to his outside friends that he was doing quite well, but the people who worked in the newsroom with him were puzzled. Each had an idea of what the others were making, and Brian Mueller was not making enough at WSBC-TV to afford a Corvette and that prime condo
he was renting right on the water. They didn’t know Brian made his real money moonlighting for Webb Morelle. Webb paid big and the work was enjoyable, but editing X-rated movies didn’t go over well with most folks. Pornography, exotica, adult entertainment, whatever you wanted to call it—if you mentioned that you worked on sex videos, people thought you were a pervert.

Not that a lot of those same judgmental people weren’t watching the porno flicks themselves. Webb was always boasting that pornography in the United States was bigger business than pro baseball, basketball, and football put together. Lots of people were watching, but no one admitted it.

“Hey, Brian, I think that’s him!” called the reporter, motioning toward a skinny kid walking from the direction of the road to the seawall accompanied by a whitehaired yet robust-looking man sporting a mustache and wearing the long-sleeved shirt, pants, and brimmed hat of a fisherman. When the boy and his companion reached the wall, they stopped, and Brian recorded a long shot of the boy pointing and gesturing as he talked to the old man.

The reporter approached the boy. “Are you the one who found the hand?”

Vincent nodded.

“Mind if we ask you a few questions?”

The old guy interrupted. “Who are you and who do you work for?”

For just an instant the reporter looked crestfallen, and Brian tried not to smile. The reporter liked to think
that everyone in Sarasota watched him on television and knew who he was.
Well, they don’t, buddy. Get over yourself
.

“We’re with Suncoast News. I’m Tony Whitcomb. This is for a report on the noon news today, and I’m sure it will be on again tonight.”

The fisherman looked at the news pair skeptically, but the kid was champing at the bit to talk. “Come on, Gideon,” said the boy. “I’ll be on TV!”

“Maybe you should check with your mother first,” suggested the old man.

The boy hesitated and looked up at Whitcomb for his reaction.

The reporter glanced at his watch. “We’ve got to get back to the station, kid, so we don’t have a lot of time. How ’bout I give you my card and you call me and tell me if your mom doesn’t want you to be on TV?”

Gideon shrugged, and Vincent eagerly began to tell his story for the WSBC-TV camera. The boy made no mention of the ring.

Just as the operator called to connect the Miami Bureau to the conference call with the Fishbowl in New York, Leroy Barry dropped his knapsack on his desk, unzipped it, pulled out a can of Coke, and popped open the flip top. He put the phone on speaker, hit the mute button, and settled back in his chair, lifting his feet up onto his desk. He wasn’t going to be called upon to speak, so he could relax.

The drill was the same every day. The conference call was designed to fill in the domestic news bureau personnel on what was being worked on throughout the United States and the rest of the world to air on the
KEY Evening Headlines with Eliza Blake
that night. The Los Angeles Bureau chief spoke first, listing what was going on in the western half of the country. Next came the South and North editors, speaking from their desks in New York on what they had on the agenda based on their calls with the Miami, Chicago, and Dallas Bureaus and information gleaned from the KEY affiliated local news departments in their regions. Then
the Washington senior producer chimed in with what was going on in the nation’s capital. Range Bullock rounded out the call with news of foreign coverage and any
Fresher Looks
or special stories not mentioned by anyone else.

With a notepad and pen in hand, Cassie slid into the only other chair in Leroy’s cluttered office as the call began. It was a busy news day. Los Angeles had sent a reporter and crew to Montana to cover forest fires raging there. In the Northeast, West Nile virus was popping up again and a heat wave was smothering the northeast corridor. Washington had at least three stories that looked like they would make air tonight. The president was returning from a NATO summit meeting, the Pentagon was releasing new successes on the terrorist target front, and the attorney general was zipping around on personal business on a chartered private jet at taxpayers’ expense. Leroy thought he noticed Cassie cringe when it was announced that Valeria Delaney was covering that one.

“We have spectacular volcano eruption pictures from Mount Etna,” Range declared. “Fabulous flowing lava and scorched earth. Gerald Mazza will have a package from Sicily on that.”

Cassie noticed that Leroy was absentmindedly clicking his pen. A bad sign. He was eager to have a story. Leroy was always eager to have a story. He knew that a running list was kept in New York of the number of pieces each producer and correspondent put together. He also knew that having a high count would hold him in good stead come next contract negotiation. More important, his ego demanded that his packages
regularly air. In the past five months his story count had dwindled, and they both knew why. The Bowl wasn’t using Cassie, and Leroy resented the hell out of the position that left him in.

He angrily stabbed the button on the phone console, ending participation in the conference call. “With a little luck, that storm will keep building,” he said. “I can’t stand waiting around here. I want to cover some news.”