Prophet (40 page)

You gotta be kidding. No. Please, no. So Marian would be live at the clinic, doing a stand-up before and after a videotaped package. But it got worse. John was the anchor assigned the lead-in and the scripted question at the end. It would be his face, his voice, his name framing the story. He was in this mess, like it or not.

Max Brewer wouldn’t like it, that was for sure. Deanne Brewer wouldn’t like it. Rachel Franklin wouldn’t like it. Carl wouldn’t like it. And Mom wouldn’t like it.

And no, John Barrett wouldn’t like it either. Not one bit.

The door to Tina’s office was closed, but he could still hear some
shouting going on in there.

He had to get involved; he had to enter the battle. Hopefully he could bring peace, perhaps a little reason. But he had to contain this mess. He had to stop it.

He took a deep breath and rose from his chair. Then he marched with the utmost sobriety and self-control across the newsroom toward Tina’s office. The shouting became more discernible the closer he got, and by now no one in the newsroom was working.

Hal Rosen the weatherman was fascinated and not at all timid about staring toward Tina’s door.

“I wouldn’t go in there if I were you,” he said, and then clawed the air like a scrapping cat, making the appropriate sound.

John approached the door anyway, but didn’t get there before the door burst open and Tina Lewis came strutting out, her jaw well ahead of her.

“Move, John, if you don’t want to get run over!” she ordered with a wave of her hand.

Leslie was right behind her and caught John’s eye. “John, you talk to her!”

John tried to head Tina off, blocking her path as politely as he could. “What seems to be the trouble here?”

Tina stopped but resented having to. “Don’t you patronize me, you son of a—”

Another voice. Like subtitles. John could hear it—he could feel the pain in it.

The Tina in front of him was saying, “I know you and Leslie are in this together, so don’t act so innocent. I’m taking you both to Ben. I’ve had enough of this—”

But as Tina unloaded on him from her storehouse of epithets and outrage, another voice cried in agony and fury, “Leave me alone! It’s my life! How dare you call me guilty! How dare you remind me!”

John listened intently. The last time this happened, he was disoriented and confused. This time he was fascinated.

Leslie worked her way around Tina so she could face both her and John. She was trying to use a controlled, professional voice, but it still quaked with emotion. “I have confronted our executive news producer with several accusations, and she is understandably upset.”

Tina spit angry words at Leslie along with an expletive.

But the accusations were true. John knew it. He could hear it, even see it. He could see Tina sitting at her desk, talking on the telephone, saying Leslie’s name, consulting a slip of paper and pronouncing the name Judy Medford—M-E-D-F-O-R-D.

But what could he say? He didn’t get the chance anyway.

“What the @$#!!*& is going on out here?” Ben Oliver, news director, hater of waves and wavemakers, ultimate decider between life and death, had come out of his office, down the aisle, and right into the discussion, pouring out salty language where no further salt was needed. “My job isn’t hard enough, now I’ve got to break up fights in my own newsroom?”

Tina immediately gathered herself together and got in the first word. “Sorry for the intrusion, Ben, but we have something here that needs to be settled.”

Ben was unsympathetic. “What are we paying
you
to do?”

She countered skillfully, “Ben, I’m too upset, too wrapped up in this problem to be objective and professional. I need your balance in this.”

Ben grimaced at that line, but listened anyway. “All right, what . . . what?”

“We have a story here that’s—”

Leslie cut in, “I’d like to start please, so it can be told from the beginning.”

Tina was indignant. “I believe I was talking—”

Ben pointed his finger right in Leslie’s face. “You start.” He pointed in Tina’s face. “You finish. And I’ll ask questions.” He glared at John. “Are you in this too?”

John shrugged and looked bewildered. “I don’t think I’ve heard it all yet myself.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I might be involved.”

Ben locked eyes with Leslie. “All right, talk, and talk fast.”

Leslie rose to the challenge. “We were pursuing a story on possible malpractice at an abortion clinic. We had good reasons to believe that the clinic was responsible for the death of a seventeen-year-old girl.”

“What clinic?”

“The Women’s Medical Center.”

“What girl?”

“Um . . . her name was Annie Brewer . . . An African-American.”

“What reasons?”

“An autopsy report, for one thing . . .”

Tina broke in. “Hand-copied excerpts from an alleged autopsy report, incomplete, with the pathologist unavailable to corroborate.”

Leslie pressed on, fighting for her life. “The pathologist’s name is Mark Denning, and he was at the Westland Memorial Hospital where Annie Brewer died on May 26th. He performed the autopsy and filed the report—”

“Which can’t be found,” Tina added, “and neither can Denning.”

“We also had a witness who was in the clinic at the same time and saw Annie get an abortion there—”

“Unwilling to go on the record or appear on-camera. And, Ben, ask her who the parents are.”

Ben looked at Leslie for the answer.

“Max and Deanne Brewer.”

That meant nothing to Ben. “So who are they?”

Tina provided an answer. “You might recall the governor’s rally and the riot that broke out. Max Brewer was right in the middle of it and we got him on-camera, brawling and assaulting people. Prior to that he was jailed for assaulting people at the Women’s Medical Center. The man is a pro-life fanatic.”

John had to clarify that. “Now just a minute!”

Ben’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, so you
are
part of this?”

John explained, “Max Brewer and my father were friends, and I don’t appreciate—”

Ben put it together. “You’re part of it. Hang on . . . we’ll get to you.” He looked back at Leslie. “Keep going.”

Leslie was losing steam, knowing she was losing her case. “We thought we might have a story of malpractice. All the facts seemed to indicate it. So when the Brewers filed to become legal personal representatives of their daughter’s estate and then took a Request for Medical Records to the clinic, we wanted to cover it in case something turned up and the Brewers could prove that the clinic was indeed at fault.”

Tina countered, “And their legal tactic produced nothing. The Request for Medical Records came up dry.”

Leslie stared daggers at Tina and said, “And we both know why, don’t we?”

Tina looked at Ben and said, “The Request came up dry because the Brewers are unreliable, impulsive, and vindictive over the death of their daughter, and they’re simply looking for a scapegoat, which happens to be, in this case, the Women’s Medical Center. I tried to tell Leslie that when she first came to me with the idea.”

Leslie’s face opened up as if she’d just heard a horrendous lie. “Ben! Mr. Oliver, I have good reason to believe that Tina Lewis—” Leslie stopped. Tina was looking toward her office, toward that pile of ruined videotape. Now she was looking back at Leslie.

Ben demanded, “What about Tina?”

Leslie withdrew visibly. “Nothing.”

Ben studied both of them for a moment, then asked Leslie, “Are you finished?”

Leslie gathered up any remaining momentum and finished with, “I started pursuing the story because I was convinced there might be a problem at the Women’s Medical Center. I knew the evidence was sketchy, and I was hoping the Request would turn up something. When it didn’t, I figured the story was dead and I wanted to leave it that way and just let the Brewers be. Now Tina wants to turn it around—”

“I do not want to turn it around! I only want to report what happened—just what happened. We’re already running the story on Slater and Wilson and their differences on parental consent, and I thought this would make a good sidebar. The other stations are running it, they’ve already interviewed the Brewers and the people at the clinic, they’re all set to go, and I figured since we were there, right there, and had footage and good contact with the Brewers, it was our story—it was our idea in the first place. The problem here, as I see it, is that Leslie is interested in running the story only if it’s to the advantage of the pro-life position, and I for one can’t abide that kind of bias.”

“Bias!” Leslie squeaked. “You’re talking about bias?”

Tina butted right in. “And as for Max Brewer, he’s already been in the news because of his behavior at the governor’s kickoff rally. Leslie ought to know that; his brawling almost endangered her. He’s newsworthy.
We have video of him already.”

John jumped in. “Now wait a minute! We’ve been through this before, remember? My father’s on that tape!”

Tina jumped right back at him, “News is news, John! It happened!”

Leslie spouted behind them, “Tina, you’re the one who made me shoot the story that way!”

And now all three of them were talking at once.

Ben heated up quickly and brought the meeting back to order with a nerve-quaking string of cusswords. “If you people don’t shut up I’m gonna fire all three of you!” They ceased immediately. “Now I want to know what happened and that’s all I want to know, and I don’t give a rip what your political persuasions are, is that clear?” He pointed at Leslie. “You were there, weren’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” she answered, her voice greatly subdued.

“So tell me what happened.”

Tina started, “They—”

Ben’s hand went right in front of her face, and she stopped.

“Tell me what happened,” he told Leslie.

Leslie recounted the events of that morning as clearly as she could recall them, trying not to be biased but factual.

“So you didn’t find anything?” Ben asked when she was through.

“That’s right. We were hoping something would turn up—”

“See?” asked Tina. “They were hoping. She’s clearly on the Brewers’ side!”

Leslie tried to remain calm as she countered, “Deanne Brewer was hoping to confirm the cause of her daughter’s death and the people responsible, and I was hoping to have a story. Neither occurred.”

Ben digested Leslie’s account for a moment, then asked Tina, “So what do you have on this?”

“Marian Gibbons went back today to get interviews from the clinic personnel and from Mrs. Brewer. She’s doing the package for the Five and Seven O’clock, and we’ve slated her to do the story live from in front of the clinic.”

“So did she get reacts from both sides?”

“Both viewpoints will be represented. I emphasized that with her.”

Ben shifted his weight backward and looked them all over. “Then why don’t you people just do your job like the reporters I thought I
hired and leave your politics out of it?”

John raised a finger to be recognized and suggested, “Uh, Ben . . . why don’t we just not run the story, or at least wait until we know more?”

Tina was right on top of that. “Ben, Marian is at the clinic right now, she’s on location, and we’ve got a microwave truck out there. Besides, John is involved with this story personally, we know that. His father was a friend of Max Brewer, and it’s obvious that he’s been pursuing this with Leslie. The right thing, the professional thing, is to run the story despite personal conflicts. Besides, the other stations are going to run it, and the candidates are talking on the abortion issue. If we don’t run the story, the question’s going to come up why we didn’t. Not running it will be more politically biased than running it.”

Ben closed his eyes, shook his head, and put his hand to his forehead, muttering something about the sacredness of manure. Recovering—slightly—he asked Tina, “The other stations are running it?”

“Yes sir, both 8 and 12.”

Leslie demanded, “And just how do you know that?”

Tina actually got cocky then. “Hey, that’s part of what I get paid for.”

John tried once more. “Ben, it really isn’t that big a story . . .”

Ben snapped back, “Then act like it. All of you. Run the story . . . Tell it like it happened . . . Cover both sides . . . Let the chips fall where they may. Isn’t that the job we all signed up for?” He saw John about to say something and cut him off. “And you, Mr. Anchorman, you’re on the spot, you follow me? You’ve cost us a lot of money this week and you’d better be worth it. Got it?”

John got the message loud and clear. He nodded resignedly. “Got it.”

“Now get back to work, all of you.” Ben turned and went back into his office.

Tina made sure John and Leslie could see her triumphant smile before she went back into hers.

Leslie wanted to say something to John and he wanted to say something to her, but neither could think of a word. They returned to their desks in silence.

CHAPTER 18

FOUR FORTY-FIVE.
John checked his face in the huge, illuminated dressing room mirror, brushing on his makeup, straightening his tie, making sure he would look good for the cameras.
Keep smiling, John, whether you feel like it or not. Smile for all those people out there who trust you. You’re the professional, you know, the man people trust to bring them the news, to show them what’s really happening out in that big old world.

In the newsroom Leslie sat at her desk, tapping out a tighter version of the Gullywump story for the Seven O’clock. It wouldn’t take long, and then her shift would be over at 5, and she could go home . . . although she was planning on sticking around for a while.

Four fifty. John went onto the news set, its floodlights now coming to life and the camera operators rolling silently into place as they got their orders from Susan the director up in the control room. Mardell the floor director was there, headset in place, ready to take charge, and high atop the boom one technician readied the robotic camera for the big swoop-down shot.

Four fifty-two. Ali Downs took her place in the chair to John’s left, looking over her script, making circles, underlines, and arrows to clarify late changes.