“I feel weird having this conversation with him right there,” Margot said.
“He gets what he gets,” I told her.
“What do I tell him?” she asked.
“Tell him he can take it up with Vogel when he gets here.”
She wrote that on her board and showed it to him.
“I aim to. Him and everybody else,” he said. “When Vogel blew it all up, something broke inside my wife couldn’t nobody fix. Move her stuff again, and I don’t want to see what happens.”
Margot stopped looking tough for just a second, and then immediately recomposed herself. She stood and scrubbed her whiteboard clean. She wrote: Tomorrow morning you get thirty minutes to tell America all about it. Then she tossed the whiteboard in Hoot’s lap.
“We’ll let ourselves out,” she said.
Once the front door was closed and we were a few steps from the house, I asked Margot what she had planned. She gave me a dismissive “What,” and turned to stare at the least junky part of the yard, a spot where the trees were thick so there was nowhere for anything to sit. Everyone in the van turned to watch us.
Karin rolled down her window and said, “Nobody wants to stay. Not with that gun-crazy guy.”
Margot called a huddle. As we gathered, I had a sense that the Jessups were watching us from behind those windows. The sun was coming up and all the glass was covered in glare.
“If you leave, it’ll throw off the schedule,” Margot said.
“We know,” Gavin said.
“It means we have to stay longer to wrap this up,” Margot said.
“We have factored that in,” Farm said.
“So, we take you back to the motel while Darryl and I go to the airport to get Chuck?”
“It’s safer,” Karin said.
“What if we all just went to the airport together,” Margot said, making a gathering motion with both arms.
“It’s like two-hour trip,” Farm complained.
“If you’re here and we’re there, we don’t get a chance to talk,” Margot said. “Plus, I’d kind of like to have you with me when I tell Chuck what’s going down. Maybe it’ll keep him in check.”
“Maybe it’ll keep you out of the hospital,” Karin said.
They all agreed to ride along. Even so, we didn’t talk much for the first half hour. After a bathroom break at a truck stop, we reconvened in the van, and drove on. Once we were under way, Margot broke the silence. “Did you know Vogel’s been sleeping with Barbara Stein?”
“The Barbara Stein? The ‘Ain’t life sweet’ Barbara Stein?” Bill asked.
“Whoa, back up,” Karin said. “Stein is married to Dr. Science, right?” Karin looked around and everybody else in the van was quiet. “Right? Married to Dr. Science, who is cool?”
“Stein and Vogel are totally a thing,” Margot said. “I have friends who work on her show who told me about it, like, a year ago.”
“I guess I don’t pay attention,” Karin said.
“It’s better to ignore everything that man does,” I said.
What they did was ignore me and spend the rest of trip talking about how much they hated Vogel and Stein. They talked about how Stein apparently isn’t even from the South, and the way Vogel recently did a bunch of ad spots for the NRA. It got their minds off the trouble ahead.
AT THE AIRPORT, I WENT to pick up Vogel at baggage claim. He’d be expecting everyone to be on location, and we didn’t want to freak him out, especially since the rest of the situation was going to do that for us.
I went into the terminal and checked the board. His flight was on time to land in ten minutes. I went to the bathroom, checked email on my phone. I found a place to sit where I could see the board. The flight status changed to LANDED. After a few minutes, I got up and went to the baggage carousel. People came, and all the luggage spilled out. People took their bags and left. Then the belt was clear, and no Vogel.
I texted Margot: No Vogel.
WTF? she texted back.
The place is empty and he’s not here, I wrote.
The information from his flight rotated off the board. I looked up and down the concourse at the couple of airport employees who were sweeping up and moving bags from behind one door to another; otherwise the place was empty.
I tried calling Vogel but it went right to voice mail.
“Mr. Vogel,” I said. “This is Darryl Hines. I’m here at Will Rogers Airport in Oklahoma City, and I didn’t see you. I hope everything is okay.” When I hung up, Margot was standing right behind me.
“What do you mean he’s not here?” she said.
“All the escalators lead right to where we’re standing. There’s no place he could go.”
Margot called some people in the production offices, who said they hadn’t heard from Vogel in more than a week. They checked his purchasing card and said he hadn’t used it since the first of the month. They told her they were starting to get unsettled about it all.
While Margot dialed somebody else, I had my eye on a bank of big TVs just in time to catch a CNN report on Barbara Stein. She was in trouble for some kind of financial crimes. The video feed showed her surrounded by lawyers and security coming out of the federal courthouse in Manhattan. She was vexed and defiant and alone. No Dr. Science, no Chuck. Just her lawyers. I tried to get Margot’s attention with a short whistle. She was annoyed by the interruption, but when she saw what I was pointing to, she came over, telling her people she’d call them back.
“Is it just Stein?” Margot asked.
“Looks like. Maybe it is. I don’t know.”
“They don’t know anything, and this certainly isn’t on their radar,” she said gesturing to the screen. “You don’t think he’s part of it, do you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really know the man, but how could he not be?”
We rushed back to brief the crew, but we found them standing in a circle, with their phones out, briefing themselves.
“Stein’s totally busted,” Farm said.
“We know,” Margot and I said at the same time.
“Her husband moved to Israel a couple of weeks ago. Filed for divorce,” Karin said.
“She had a prenup, so I guess Dr. Science is hosed.” Farm didn’t sound happy about the idea.
Bill said, “I’ll bet it’s the only thing saving him.”
“A friend of mine who does makeup for Stein says Vogel was on set about ten days ago and they were screaming at each other,” Gavin said, shrugging.
“He is so in the middle of this,” Farm said.
Margot was exasperated. “Well, he wasn’t on the plane.”
“What?” Karin said. “Do you think he’s in jail?”
“Nobody knows where he is,” Margot said, folding her arms and toeing the floor. “But if he was in jail, I think we would have heard by now.”
Farm laughed. “I’ll bet he’s on the no-fly list, and now he’s on the lam.”
“Who cares. Do we stay or go?” Bill asked.
“I vote go,” Karin said.
“The network will make that call,” Margot said.
“I vote home,” Gavin said.
Everyone else voted home but Bill, who said he didn’t need a black mark on his résumé.”
“You know, if we leave, the Jessups won’t get the house,” Margot said. This possibility stopped us in our tracks.
Margot took a moment and stepped away to make a call. She was gone longer than we thought she’d be, and when she came back we could tell it wasn’t good news. The network wasn’t going to let us off the hook. Margot put her phone away and said, “I’m going back to see this through, but no one should feel obligated to join this mission in any way. This is a decision I have made for myself. If it turns out that there aren’t enough people to crew the shoot, I’ll do it myself. Somehow. Everyone who is staying, thank you. If you’re going home, no hard feelings. We’ll cover for you. Don’t volunteer to stay because you think I want you to. Don’t do it for the mon
ey either.” It seemed like she was going to say something else but didn’t. She just looked at the sky and tightened her lips to keep from crying.
Everybody looked around, but nobody wanted to be the first to move or speak.
“Really, you don’t have to …” Margot said.
Karin said, “We’re not going to let you do this by yourself.”
SO, WE WERE BACK TO plan A. Go to the house, clean it up, and shoot interviews. The production office said they’d find Vogel and make sure he got there. Worst-case scenario, they said, he’d come in later and do his part with voice-overs.
“We’re not named, like individually, in the bond, are we?” Bill asked. “It’s just Vogel, right? Just the producers.”
“Bill, fish or cut bait,” Karin said.
Before Bill could jump down her throat, Margot said, “It’s okay, Karin,” then she looked at each one of us with the kindest possible expression on her face. “We’re already in the middle of it. Every Friday I email in production reports and expense sheets, which means if we don’t wrap the shoot this week, we’ll have two days before a red flag pops up in the books. The insurance company will figure it out by Tuesday at the absolute latest and call in the bond. Nobody wants to be in that shock wave. If Vogel is mixed up in this SEC business—and there’s no way he’s not—then we’re all going to need a job because Revive Your Dive is over.”
“How do we make sure the Jessups keep the house?” Karin asked.
“Vogel needs to sign the title papers,” Margot said.
“And you have them?” Karin asked.
“Well,” she said, looking at the ground, “Vogel does.”
“Margot, tell us this will work,” Farm pleaded. When she didn’t answer, he said, “At least tell us it’s worth a shot.”
“After tomorrow,” she said, “Vogel is going to be on his own.”
The trip back was uneventful. Bill leveraged his way to lunch at Fuddruckers, and we all ate too much. The food was heavy and made us tired, and it was too late in the day to do much of anything without Vogel, so we hit the motel, divided up, and agreed to do dinner on our own. We’d head over in the morning and try to salvage what we could of the trip.
IN THE MORNING, EVERYONE ZOMBIED through breakfast and the short drive to the Jessup house. Margot had been talking to the network people, who said to get the video and they’d “add in Vogel” in post somehow.
The plan was to divide and conquer. Margot, Karin, and Bill identified two spots in the house and one outside that could be cleared away. My job was to check the storage container in front and see if we could move anything in there. Nobody wanted to set June off again, and at this point the concern was genuine. We also wanted them to get the house free and clear.
The container had double doors with locking bars, no padlock. The door swung open with less noise than I expected. It was dark inside, but I could already tell that the container was a different story than the house. Two long plastic-topped tables, like the ones you see at a church potluck, ran against the walls toward the far end of the container.
I took a few steps farther and found a string hanging down from the shadows. A quick pull switched on two, then five, seizing fluorescent shop lights. This place was the opposite of the house. Everything in here had its own space. Once my eyes adjusted to the jittery blue light, I saw I was in the strangest possible museum. Everything was in clear plastic bins. Bins of buttons still on the display cards, and bins of hair clips similarly untouched. There was a bin of phone charging cords of all colors and configurations. A bin of car air fresheners, grouped by scent. I filed through the little trees like they were records in a shop: morning fresh, summer linen, new car, copper canyon, pine, vanilla, cinnamon apple, ocean mist, autumn, pumpkin spice, lavender, and a dozen more. There was a bin of a hundred or more gift cards for Chili’s, Applebee’s, and places like that. Also a bin of animal slippers still connected by that thin plastic barb.
An extension cord with a rotary switch was draped over one of the tables. I turned it on, just to see what would happen, and it lit up a glass-windowed curio cabinet full of figurines in the back corner. Inside was a complete menagerie of porcelain horses, unicorns with blue eyes, pink manes, and golden horns. All of this was interspersed with a host of sweet, little child angels, some carrying kittens or pails of water, some with their palms pressed together and their eyes closed.
My grandmother kept versions of these tchotchkes close by her chair. I remember playing with them once as a child and having her slap my hand and sit me down. “These are Nana’s treasures,” she said. “We don’t play with them. They are too special for that.” I asked her what they were for, and she said, “Darryl, this world can be so ugly. It’s easy to lose heart.” She didn’t explain herself any further, she just looked at them and then at me with a sweet smile. Her eyes were so clouded with cataracts, I’m sure she was mostly seeing all of it in her memory.
“Whoa, man. What’s this?” Gavin said. I jumped and turned around. His arms were laden with boxes.
I shushed him, but I don’t know why. “Leave that stuff and get in here,” I whispered.
“Does all this stuff belong to that crazy lady?” He asked.
“It might not belong to her, but I think she’s responsible for it.”
“Looks like a serial killer’s house.” He started rifling through the buttons. “There’s—I don’t know—maybe a thousand different kinds of buttons in here. They aren’t even cool. They’re like for sweaters and baby clothes.”
Margot came in next. “What are you guys doing?” she said.
“Come here,” Gavin said. “It’s nuts.” He was trying to take pictures with his phone.
I noticed a single folding chair in the container on one side between two tables. There was a handmade seat cushion tied to it.
Margot went through all the bins of barrettes and hair ties, and then said, “We gotta get out of here.” Gavin complained, but she insisted. “She can’t know we were in here.” They left. I pulled the string and shut the door.
“We’ll find somewhere else to put this stuff,” Margot said, looking around the yard. “Under that tarp. Not in here.”
“That’s some kind of crazy,” Gavin said.
“We’re in enough trouble as it is,” she said. “It’s time for us to leave.”
They set their boxes under the blue tarp, then went about their business. My phone buzzed. It was a text from Vogel saying he was in town. I must have looked alarmed because Margot asked, “Is it him?” and I nodded.
She braced her hands against her hips and stared straight up at the sky like a woman in a dust bowl photograph. As she gathered herself, her breathing grew deep and slow. I’ve seen her center herself like this probably a hundred times. After a couple of minutes, she woke from her meditation and said, “Okay. When’s he coming?”
I shrugged. “All I know is he’s in town.”
“I will need updates,” she said. “I’m going inside to help Bill and Gavin get everything set up.”
In the army there’s the stereotype of the drill sergeant screaming into the side of your face. You expect it, so it doesn’t surprise you, or get you down, really. It just is. None of us signed on to work for a narcissistic shrimp who yells at you just to yell. In the army you can at least get yourself to believe your sergeant might be trying to keep you alive. With Vogel there were no such guarantees.
My phone buzzed with a text message from Vogel: Apparently, all the motels here smell like vomit. He followed two seconds later with: Where are you staying?
Vogel’s people made his reservations, so he didn’t always stay where we did, which was fine with us. I wanted to know how many motels Vogel had already checked into. More to the point, how many clerks and maids had he already demeaned and humiliated? Would they know he was with us? I found myself wondering if I should lie and tell him some other place, but that would never, ever work. Was he trying to catch me in a lie? Why would this be his strat
egy? My pulse skyrocketed, and my palms were getting sweaty. I tried to breathe like Margot, but it didn’t work. I bit the bullet and typed the truth: America’s Best Value Inn and Suites.
Not the Knight’s Inn? he wrote back.
Was he at the Knight’s Inn? Or did he think we were supposed to be at the Knight’s Inn? Did he think we were trying to ditch him? Vogel was in my head with three texts.
Correct. America’s Best, I wrote.
Almost immediately he sent: Well, I’m at the Knight’s Inn.
I felt like I needed to run all of this by Margot, but I didn’t want to go back into that house unless it was completely necessary. The longer I waited to answer, the more Vogel would think something was weird. I was just about to ask him if he wanted us to move to where he was, when he wrote: I got the last room.
Again, I wasn’t sure what to say. I went with the most rational: You need a ride over?”
Send me the GPS.
Off the hook again.
I’ll be there in 1 hour.
Well, this was actionable intelligence, and it really is the devil you know.
I let myself into the house and worked my way back to the space they were setting up for the interviews. The dining room had a table and chairs in it, but they were covered in boxes. All the junk settled into the bottom four feet of each room, which made it seem like the house was flooding. I found myself getting angry because I couldn’t assume a regular gait. The path was interrupted at irregular distances by things I had to step over or crush. As I came into the room where they were setting up the shot, my foot snagged on a cord, and I fell to the ground, bringing a light stand down with me. Gavin was there and caught it before anything broke.
“Sorry, man. You gotta watch it in this place,” he said.
“Vogel’s here,” I said from the floor.
“How long do we have?”
“He says an hour.”
ABOUT AN HOUR AND A half after he texted me, Vogel drove up in a brown Maserati with plates that said DR·SCI. I stood on the porch texting Margot, while he sat in the car yelling at somebody on the phone. Margot came out and stood next to me, watching him rage on, oblivious to us and the world around him.
It Needs to Look Like We Tried Page 14