by R. G. Belsky
Gloria Bateman never did talk any more about what she knew and what she didn’t know.
Why should she? She had never cared about anyone else but herself in the past, and she didn’t want to do anything to mess up the sweet deal she had here in America. She’d always done whatever it took to survive. Starting back in Vietnam when she sold herself to get out of the country and then again in the U.S. when she snared a rich husband—and someone who could help her daughter—in Marvin Bateman.
I wondered if Gloria Bateman ever thought about what her life might have been like if that hit-and-run had never happened and she’d stayed together with Pham Van Quong in that little apartment and they’d raised her daughter to be different from the greedy person that she turned out to be.
Probably not.
But I thought about it.
Things in the newsroom are pretty much back to normal, whatever that is in TV news.
Brett and Dani talk a lot about hiring the right nanny and other stuff like that now as they get ready for the baby. I had come up with an idea to take advantage of all that. We now had a regular segment of the show a couple times a week aimed at expectant parents, with Brett and Dani talking all about the joys of her being pregnant.
It turned out to be a wildly popular idea, with more people than ever tuning in to it. Brett and Dani were good at it, relating to the audience and the issues on a personal level. Both of them seemed happy that they were about to become parents. So maybe I’d really accomplished something here. Pulled off a new version of Happy News!
No one has said much to me about losing out on the big talk show job. Normally, I get a lot of kidding about everything from the staff—about my age, my unsuccessful romances, and other stuff like that—but I guess everyone realized this was a tough one for me.
I’m still not sure whether or not I would have taken the job and moved to Los Angeles and left Channel 10 behind. But I’m glad now that I’m still here. I love my job, most of the time anyway. Jack Faron gave me a raise when he found out I was staying, and the station owner, Brendan Kaiser, praised me for all the big news I’d made for the station.
Hey, careers don’t always last long in TV news, especially for a woman approaching fifty.
But I’m still here.
Fighting the good fight.
I’ve become friends with Nick Pollock, which isn’t a big surprise after what we went through together on this story. We’ve hung out together a few times since then, just like I do with my friend Janet.
“He’s like you, only male,” I told her.
“Is that possible for you?”
“What?”
“Being friends—just friends—with a man like that.”
“It’s a problem if there’s sexual tension in the relationship. But there’s nothing like that here. It’s great! He’s not interested in me at all. At least he’s not interested in me … well, that way.”
“And you’re sure about that?”
“He’s getting married. I met his partner. Nice guy, I like him. If I ever do find a man to go out with again, we can all double date together. Is that still cool to say these days? I’ve kinda lost track about what you’re supposed to do and what you’re not supposed to do in terms of sexual etiquette these days. But then I had trouble in the old days, too, when it was all so much simpler.”
“Anything else going on in your personal life? What about that TV guy from LA? Did you ever hear from him again?”
“Yes, he actually called me. Was upset I left our dinner so early and wanted to meet up with me again. I told him what he had told me when he said the job had fallen through: ‘There’s a moment for everything, and sometimes that moment just passes—and then the ship has sailed.’ I said that’s how I felt about him and me too.”
“What about Scott Manning, the guy you always seem to be in love with—more than any other man you’ve ever met since I’ve known you? I figured the two of you were going to wind up together.”
“He’s still married last time I checked. That kind of puts a crimp in the living happily ever after fantasy.”
“And your ex-husband, the homicide cop who worked on this case with you?”
“Also married.”
“Which leaves you …”
“Unmarried.”
But I’ve kind of buried the lead here.
About me, that is.
Me and Christmas.
I went home from work on Christmas Eve through crowded streets. There was Christmas spirit everywhere. Stores brightly lit. Christmas carols reverberating through the air. Holiday decorations all around. Except at my place. No sign of any Christmas spirit at my apartment. I let myself into my darkened living room, poured myself some scotch, and sat on the couch contemplating the four walls.
I had almost wound up going down to Virginia to spend Christmas with my daughter and granddaughter. They were so insistent about it that I agreed to try and make it. I even bought presents to take with me. It would have been our first Christmas together. But, in the end, the Laurie Bateman story broke wide open and—as has happened to me so many times in the past—my professional life took precedence over my personal one. I decided to cancel the trip. I said I’d send the presents to them in the mail and we’d have to wait for another Christmas.
And so there I was sitting by myself in my apartment on Christmas Eve. Drinking alone and watching Miracle on 34th Street on one of the cable channels. It’s a Wonderful Life was coming on after that so I could watch again how an angel earns his wings by saving George Bailey on Christmas. Holiday miracles like that always seemed to happen on-screen, but not so much in real life. At least not for me.
I stood up now from the couch where I was sitting, poured myself another drink, and looked out my window at the lights of Manhattan. Outside, I could hear Christmas bells ringing a holiday tune.
Silver bells, silver bells,
It’s Christmas time in the city
Ding-a-ling
Hear them ring
Soon it’ll be Christmas Day
Suddenly I heard another bell ringing. But not from outside. This was my doorbell. When I opened the door, my daughter was there. My Lucy. And my granddaughter, Audrey. Along with Gregory Nesbitt, the man my daughter had married. They were carrying bundles of brightly gift-wrapped packages.
“We decided if you couldn’t come to see us, then we’d come spend Christmas with you,” Lucy said. “Merry Christmas, Mom!”
When I recovered from my shock at seeing them there, I hugged her as tightly as I could. I hugged Audrey tightly too. And I hugged Nesbitt as well. I didn’t know him very well, we’d only met a few times—but I figured if my daughter loved him, he must be a good man.
“I have presents too!” I told them.
“For me?” Audrey asked, her eyes wide with excitement.
“Especially for you, honey.”
Pretty soon, we were ripping open presents and eating and drinking and celebrating Christmas like a happy family.
Which is what we were.
I guess I was wrong after all.
Sometimes Christmas miracles do come true.
EPILOGUE
DEATH CAN BE a funny business sometimes.
I’ve spent my life covering death and making jokes about death in newsrooms, never thinking much about how one day death could become real for me.
Then a year ago I nearly died at the hands of a serial killer who had murdered twenty other women.
Now I’ve cheated death again with Bert Stovall.
But it was a different kind of life-and-death situation that scared me the most right now.
A long time ago as a young college student in Ohio, I’d had a spontaneous sexual encounter with a man I would never see again.
But that seemingly casual encounter had led to a series of memorable events in my life—and the consequences of that night weren’t over for me yet.
Because I’d found out that the stakes had gotten a lot higher.
&n
bsp; I look over at Lucy now and I see the daughter that I never knew for too many years until she became the woman she is today.
I look at my granddaughter, Audrey, and see the little girl I still have a chance to be there for while she’s growing up.
Which is what makes me so afraid.
We all face death at some point, and—no matter how much we try not to think about it or make jokes about it—we’re always aware that one day death will come knocking at our own door.
And we have no idea how or when that might happen.
I do not know if my daughter will be a victim of the deadly cancer gene from Doug Crowell that I inadvertently passed on to her at birth. I do not know if that cancer gene was passed on to my granddaughter. I do know that Doug Crowell is dead, and I am alive with Lucy and Audrey at the moment.
That’s good enough for now.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
They say authors should write about what they know, and that’s what I did in Beyond the Headlines. This latest TV journalist Clare Carlson mystery of mine is about the glamorous world of celebrities; about the ramifications on people even today from the traumas of the Vietnam War; and, of course, about the media.
I’ve had quite a bit of experience with all three.
As a longtime journalist at the New York Post, New York Daily News, Star magazine, and NBC, I covered celebrity news like Julia Roberts’ romances, Elizabeth Taylor’s divorces, Oprah’s diets, Lindsay Lohan’s and Britney Spears’ epic meltdowns and Michael Jackson’s scandals.
But the celebrity story that I drew upon the most to tell the tangled tale of Laurie Bateman in this book was the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
I spent two years at Star Magazine consumed by that story—first with the news that Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman had been murdered; then the bizarre white Bronco chase through the freeways of LA; O.J.’s arrest on a double murder charge; the circus of a trial with Judge Ito, Kati Kaelin, Johnny Cochran, and the whole other cast of characters; and finally O.J.’s stunning “acquittal” by the jury.
The Laurie Bateman case I write about here is a lot different, but I wanted to tell another story—albeit a fictional one this time—about a celebrity whose popularity sways public sentiment enough to take over a courtroom and beat a murder rap. In Laurie Bateman, I tried to create a character who was the ultimate Kardashian-like celebrity for our times: someone who is famous simply for being famous.
My firsthand experience with Vietnam, on the other hand, was not as a journalist but as a soldier in that long-ago conflict.
I was drafted and spent a year in the U.S. Army there before the Vietnam War began winding down in the early ’70s, just like Charles Hollister and Bert Stovall in the book. And, believe it or not, I worked in an intelligence unit just like I put them into for Beyond the Headlines. But that’s where the similarities end: I didn’t kill anyone or steal anyone’s multi-million-dollar idea for a microchip while I was there.
I did try to write a Vietnam novel about my experiences after I came back from the Army, but never was able to quite pull it off. Maybe some day. But, until then, this is the closest I’ve come to creating a fictional version of some of the things I went through in that war—and the impact it had on all of us who were there when we were very young.
But the biggest focus in Beyond the Headlines, just as in my previous Clare Carlson books, is on the media: I try to give readers an inside look at what a big-city newsroom—and the journalists who work in it—are really like when they’re chasing after a sensational headline story.
Clare Carlson herself is modeled after many of the colorful characters I’ve worked with in that kind of newsroom. Men and women both who are totally obsessed with their jobs, with breaking the big story—and, as a result, their personal lives are often pretty much of a disaster.
Yes, Clare Carlson is definitely a flawed character.
But, despite all her faults, a lot of people still like Clare.
Hey, I like Clare.
And I like writing about her.
I hope you like her, too …
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
Dear Reader,
We hope that you have enjoyed Beyond the Headlines and suggest that you read R. G. Belsky’s prior Clare Carlson Mystery novels; that is, if you haven’t read them already.
The series starts with Yesterday’s News. TV news director, Clare Carlson won a Pulitzer Prize more than a decade ago for her coverage of the heartbreaking disappearance of eleven-year-old Lucy Devlin. Now new evidence plunges Clare back into the sensational story—forcing her to confront her own tortuous past to untangle the truth about Lucy Devlin.
This fast-paced page-turner introduces Clare Carlson, the indomitable reporter who won’t give up—can’t give up.
Clare returns in Below the Fold when her reporter’s instinct propels her to dig deeper into the murder of a “nobody”—a homeless woman found on the streets of New York. Soon there are more murders, more victims: a female defense attorney, a scandal-ridden ex-congressmen; a decorated NYPD detective; and—most shocking of all—a wealthy media mogul who owns the TV station where Clare works. No way they can be connected—but Clare Carlson won’t give up—can’t give up—even when she knows she’ll be the next victim.
The Last Scoop, the third in the Clare Carlson series, like the others, can be read in any order. The story begins when Martin Barlow, Clare’s first editor, a beloved mentor who helped start her career as a journalist, approaches her for help in what he claims is a sensational story—the biggest in his career. Clare initially attributes his far-flung conspiracy allegations to the rantings of an old man, but when Martin is murdered during an apparent mugging, Clare digs deep into his secret files and uncovers the shocking last story he was working on—about a mass murderer no one knew was out there.
That wraps up the Clare Carlson Mystery Series to date. We are happy to announce that It’s News To Me will follow in 2022. We hope you will read each book in the series and will look for more to come.
Oceanview Publishing