Star Time (70 page)

Jonathan laughed in a rich baritone. "You control nothing anymore, Mr.
Lyall
. Nothing! We have your whore here. So, Mr.
Lyall
, you do not control your precious airwaves. I do."

Jonathan
Dearey
had given so many versions of the speech that it flowed from him and into the television camera like white-hot lava.

"Unless you turn from your wicked ways, America, God will smite this nation as surely as He smote Sodom and Gomorrah. The avaricious financiers sitting atop this country manipulate money and spend lavishly on their shiny toys and their wanton sluts and produce nothing. Americans have no jobs because the rich send their jobs to our enemies in China and India and Vietnam. And when their banks are insolvent from their fraud and stealing, their lackeys in Washington bail them out with the people's tax money, while the rest of us are left to starve. Is it any wonder that America is about to be overwhelmed and destroyed by its depraved, unnatural behavior and by colossal, staggering debt?"

At that moment the police broke into the studio and quickly overwhelmed the intruders.

"But I haven't finished," Jonathan
Dearey
said in utter surprise as he was handcuffed. He turned to a relieved Chris. "You should at least have the courtesy to let me finish."

He was hustled away.
Chris reached up and hugged Greg for one relieved instant. Then she turned to the camera.

"People are engaged in Occupy Wall Street movements in downtown New York City and other cities in the U.S. and around the world. These protestors, led by a man who called himself the Prophet Jonathan were notable only because they managed to shove their way into national
airtime." She then began
to describe for the viewers what had just happened

A few minutes later an associate producer located Greg. "Mr.
Lyall
, a woman on line five is asking whether you're all right. She says she's your mother."

Greg regarded the shiny-faced young man before him, but what he saw was a woman's dark-haired countenance framed by the living-room window through which he had glimpsed her for the last time. The sight was more than a quarter century old, but it appeared sharper to his eye than this young man's features.

"Tell her I'm all right." He paused for a moment, deciding. "And get her phone number. Tell her I'll call her when all this quiets down. Be sure you tell her that."

Chris remained on the air until the last major election result became known. It involved Ken.

Although his popularity had risen sharply since the Defense secretary's disgrace, pollsters had labeled him the underdog in a close race. For most of the evening, he was behind, but around midnight, the vote differential started to narrow. Three hours later, he finally passed his opponent.
An hour after that the networks declared him the winner.

An FBS field producer at Ken's campaign headquarters thought it would make great television if he could get Ken on camera for an interview with Chris. But Ken had the good taste and the shrewdness to decline. If he waited until after seven in the morning to make his victory speech, the morning newsmagazine shows would be on the air and the audience much larger.

Slumping from fatigue and despair, Marian shuffled through the Plaza's brightly lit lobby. She had already accommodated herself to
her certainty that Derek would be gone. She did not know the hotel where Gail Dawson was staying, but had no inclination to break into the woman's room and make a scene. If Gail had not provided the inducement for him to leave tonight, someone else would have been the pretext tomorrow or the next day. Why prolong the misery?

She took the elevator upstairs.

"Where the hell have you been all night?" Derek cried out the instant she entered the suite.

"Me? What did you come back here for, your toothbrush?"

He was standing in the middle of the living room with his arms crossed, as if he had been pacing the room, waiting for her. "Don't try to avoid this thing by trying to blame me. You're the one who disappeared all night. I checked. Greg
Lyall
was gone and so were you. He's some
smooth operator. Your buddy Christine fell for him. Why not you? You're in New York seeing him all the time."

Marian was aghast at Derek's audacity. "You practically told me to get lost. You were all over Gail Dawson."

"You knew I was doing that to make you jealous, but I couldn't get a rise out of you. You know I'm not the type to look at another woman."

"What possible reason would you have to want to make me jealous?"

"What reason? You're brilliant . . . and incredible at what you do. I see how the men you meet with look at you. They're powerful, incredible men and they're awed by you. They want you. Half the time I can't even follow the conversation. Who am I compared to them?"

His face reflected his agony. "I've been hoping that if I could make you jealous, you'd think I was worth sticking with. But you're too smart to be fooled like that." His shoulders drooped. "Why in the world would you get jealous over someone like me?"

Slowly, Marian's arms opened wide and she walked toward him. "Oh, baby, I love you. You don't have to make me jealous. Even though all those other men are absolutely crazy about me, you're the one I love. Come here, baby. Come to Marian!"

Greg was in his office when the overnight ratings arrived. The brief siege had sent FBS's ratings through the roof.

Stew
Graushner
parked his car in a lot and walked to the court building with Susan. He halted before the entrance, his feet cemented to the pavement. As a reporter and producer, he had covered a host of trials, even a couple of sensational divorce trials. In one a young woman claimed her older and hugely wealthy husband was having an affair with another woman. The city's population was jubilant when the sweet young thing won a multimillion-dollar award. Two days after she received the check, she disappeared. The following month she was discovered in Europe, with the judge's law clerk. Now Stew was the poor sap on the slaughtering block.

Susan tugged at his arm. "No one likes these things, but Hal says you have a chance to keep the division of property reasonable."

Stew shook his head dejectedly. "You better try to get along with her, Susan. She's our partner for life."

Susan finally coaxed Stew forward into the building.

Several wizened spectators were talking together outside the courtroom doors. He remembered that trial-watching was a form of entertainment for the retired and unemployed.

"What's the judge like?" he asked them.

"Depends on the case," one answered.

"Divorce."

"Yours?"

Stew nodded. The man groaned in reply.

"What? What?" Stew cried out.

"He's a very old-fashioned guy," one man explained.
"Believes men should take care of their women.
Wives try their best to get him to hear their cases. If he thinks you've got another woman, then he really goes nuts."

Only Susan's hanging tightly to his arm prevented Stew from fleeing out the building and onto a plane for Katmandu. Hal Diamond, his lawyer, was waiting for them in the front row of the courtroom. He looked worried.

"I've had investigators tailing her off and on for weeks—you'll get their bill in a day or two—but she's clean as a whistle. She's just too shrewd to misbehave so close to the trial date." He frowned. "It's a shame she knows all about you and Susan."

Just then, Patty arrived.

"Our TV show seems to be doing well," she remarked pleasantly upon greeting Stew and Susan. She then fixed on Hal with a sly smile. "I hear you had a wild night with that redheaded cocktail waitress at the Beverly Wilshire."

Hal appeared flustered. Patty proceeded to the plaintiff's table to await the opening bell.

"Jesus," Stew groaned. "After weeks of surveillance we have nothing on her, but she knows who my lawyer was
boffing
. We're dead."

He curled up on a chair at the defense table. Silently, he chanted the one prayer he knew: the Twenty-third Psalm. But no matter how many times he repeated that the Lord was his shepherd so he need fear no evil as he walked through the valley of the shadow of death, he knew in his heart that God's rod and
staff were
doing their comforting one table over.

"All rise," the clerk intoned.

A tall, austere man in his late fifties swept in through the door behind the bench. His cheeks were hollow, his head totally bald, and his eyes dark and unforgiving. The case of
Graushner
v.
Graushner
was about to be heard.

After the opening statements, Patty put herself on the stand. As she recited the history of the marriage, the judge appeared increasingly sympathetic. When Hal objected to one statement as hearsay, the judge sternly admonished him "to let the woman speak."

"My dear," the judge said, turning back to her, "you just tell me in your own words about your terrible experiences."

For forty-five minutes Patty recited all the cruelties inflicted on her. The judge's glances at Stew grew so hateful that only Susan's restraint again kept him from fleeing.

"That brings us up to the time when I learned he was writing and producing a TV series," Patty said brightly, smiling at the judge and bending forward to expose her cleavage down to the navel. He hiked up her skirt as she crossed her legs.

Not an easy bit of coordination to master, Stew acknowledged with some admiration.

"What's this about a series, my dear?" the judge asked.

"A new network television series he stands to make millions from called
Scum
."

The judge suddenly straightened and turned directly toward Stew.

Patty raised her arm and pointed at Susan. "And that woman there, the one he's living with, she writes and produces it with him."

"Is that right?" the judge exclaimed.

"In nearly every episode there's a very sinister woman character, the professor's shrewish wife, who makes his life miserable. She's a lawyer and is clearly based on me."

"Is that right?" the judge repeated with a chuckle as he looked more closely at her. "You're the one on the show they call the Curse?"

"Yes,
Your
Honor. My friends and professional colleagues all recognize me in that character. She is a vicious attempt to mock and humiliate me and destroy my professional and personal reputation."

Patty bowed her head as if too enfeebled by the calumny heaped on it to keep it high.

"I never miss that show."

Patty looked up. The judge was laughing.

"Did you get him to sign that separation agreement"—he guffawed—"and then kick him out just like Curse did on the show . . . just before he got fired?"

"Yes, Your Honor, but it was more complicated than—"

"The guy was really broke, right? I remember. The professor's wife—you . . .
were
making great money at a law firm. But you forced this guy who was absolutely broke to pay your kid's tuition?"

"Well, yes, but—"

"And the way the Curse

you

come back into his life after he'd finally hit it big?"

Patty nodded glumly.

The judge was laughing so hard he could barely get his words out. "And then you told him how proud he should be of you for how well you were destroying his life with divorce papers."

"Yes, but I swear to you I wasn't dressed in a vampire outfit at the time, Your Honor. It was a little Yves St.—"

In hysterics, the judge pounded the bench top, nearly falling out of his chair. "So, you're Curse, and he's the professor. That's the funniest thing I ever heard."

He managed to tilt himself upright long enough to grab the gavel and slam it down.

"Divorce granted without alimony." He pointed the gavel at Patty. "Get out of here before I make you pay the poor slob damages for harassment."

Whoops of laughter convulsed him.

Stew and Susan jumped up and hugged each other. Then they ran over to the bench and pumped the judge's hand, inviting him to play the part of the judge when they shot an episode about the professor and Curse's divorce trial.

As they left the courtroom, Hal told Stew, "I'll send you a bill for court time."

"But I gave you twenty-five thousand dollars."

Hal's tone was incredulous at such naïveté. "That barely got us through pretrial motions. There was all the research I did, all the preparation." He gave a little wave and veered toward another courtroom where another case awaited him. "See you."

Susan threw her arms around Stew. "Let's drive right to Las Vegas right now and get married."

"This is the happiest day of my life: the divorce.
Getting rid of Patty.
Marrying you."