Good Sam

by Dete Meserve

  The receptionist brought me back to the moment. “Would you like me to call Mr. Hansen back and let him know you can’t make it?”

  “Yes, please tell him I’m unavailable,” I said, louder than I had intended. I wasn’t going to meet Jack for cinnamon toast tonight. It would stir up too many memories. Things I didn’t want to feel.

  I met my friend Teri for dinner instead.

  “I loved your story about Good Sam,” she said over hot french dip sandwiches at a café around the corner from the station. “It made me cry.”

  “You cry over greeting card commercials.”

  I’d known Teri ever since we’d yawned through American history class together at Columbia University, and she was the sentimental type even then. If she didn’t have her nose in an Emily Brontë novel, she was watching classic weeper movies like Terms of Endearment and A Walk to Remember. She even looked like a romance-novel leading lady, with glossy, honey-streaked curls and high cheekbones. After college, Teri applied for a creative position at the Hallmark Channel and was offered the job just seven minutes into her interview. She suspected they hadn’t made their decision on the basis of her degree in English literature or her minor in French literature, but had simply chosen her because of her resemblance to a heroine from a Jane Austen novel. “Your story proves there’s good in the world,” she said. “People are out there doing selfless acts of kindness.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure he’s selfless. I mean, why does someone give away large sums of money?”

  “Because they want to help people.”

  “Because they want something in return.”

  Her dark brown eyes lit up. “What would that be?”

  “Attention.”

  “It’s not a crime to get attention for helping people, is it?”

  I fiddled with my ring. “No, but he’ll use the attention to get something else he wants.”

  She poured herself some more wine and I motioned to fill my glass too. “To be honest, I think viewers would prefer to think this is the work of a Good Samaritan, not some kind of marketing gimmick.”

  “Unfortunately, this is the news I’m doing. Not story time. We don’t tell viewers what they’d like to hear. We try to uncover the truth.”

  She paused, tilted her head. “Seems like ever since you and Jack broke up, you’re becoming more cynical,” she said softly.

  I considered this for a moment. There was some truth to it, of course. But it wasn’t the breakup that was making me look at things with a skeptic’s eye. The world was changing. Mass shootings, bombings, multibillion-dollar Ponzi schemes, sex trafficking, long lists of politicians taking bribes, and investment bankers convicted of massive fraud. The list was endless. Even though I only covered a fraction of these stories, there was no doubt the world felt more troubled—less good—with every new headline.

  Teri drove a fork into dessert, a rosy baked apple scented with cinnamon. “He was quoted again in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Did you see the article?”

  “Nope,” I said. I knew which “he” she was talking about.

  “He was named Investmentline’s Fund Manager of the Year. His company’s doing well too.”

  I wanted to change the subject to something other than Jack Hansen. But how? “Sounds like a puff piece.”

  “Not entirely. They said his tough management style attracts clients and gets results but leaves behind a trail of people who don’t trust him.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “Is he still calling you?” she asked gently.

  “He still calls and leaves messages. Send flowers every few weeks.” I slid my fingertips along the rim of my glass, comforted by the smooth, repetitive motion. “He’s in town and asked to meet me for dinner tonight.”

  Teri frowned. “You should have gone. Honestly I don’t understand why you two don’t just get back together already.”

  We were silent then, both of us gazing into our drinks. The first time Teri had met Jack, she had instantly fallen under his spell. On the surface I could see why. He was everything many women look for—good-looking but not overly so, intelligent, successful, and charming. He had the brash manner of someone who had been born into privilege and connections and politics, yet he didn’t flaunt it.

  But if you chipped away at the veneer, Jack was a liar, plain and simple. “Shading the truth” was an essential part of his job in the investment-banking business, but it didn’t stop there. He lied about the mundane and the inconsequential too. He’d tell me he was going to the office, but he’d spend the morning on the golf course instead. He’d say he was working late to crunch numbers, but he was really taking clients out to dinner and drinks.

  You can overlook lies like that if you want to. Other lies hit you square in the face, knock you off your feet, and suck the life breath out of you. One night after finishing work early, I decided to surprise Jack at his downtown office. I had come bearing chorizo and olive paella takeout from Ciudad, but when the elevator doors opened, there was Jack kissing Ashley Holloway, another investment banker in the firm.

  “It’s not what it looked like,” Jack said. Then he went on to say that Ashley had been distraught about a fight with her fiancé, and when he gave her a hug to comfort her, she was the one who had initiated the kiss.

  I might have forgiven him if he hadn’t concocted such an elaborate lie. It was only a kiss after all. But if he thought I was dumb enough to buy his story then, there was no telling what other whoppers he would tell later on.

  “The way I see it,” Teri said. “Jack apologized for what he did. And he swore it would never happen again, right?”

  I glanced at my lap and realized I had twisted my napkin into a tight knot. “I just don’t trust him.”

  “There isn’t any guy out there who’s truly good all the time,” Teri said with a sigh. “Unless you’re looking to marry Gandhi.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “See what I mean?”

  Chapter Three

  Three times a week, more often if I’d overindulged at dinner, I ran 3.2 miles around Lake Hollywood early in the morning. The morning after my dinner with Teri, I decided to run the loop twice. There’s no faster way to end your career as a news reporter than gaining ten pounds eating late-night pasta dinners and profiteroles.

  Lake Hollywood isn’t really a lake, it’s a manmade dam and reservoir—and it’s not technically in Hollywood either. But it’s as close as we get to nature smack in the center of the city. And it’s where I do my best thinking.

  I’ve been a runner for as long as I can remember. When my father and I weren’t discussing American history, current events, or voting trends, we were running through parks, alongside train tracks, on the beach, and on craggy mountain trails. I ran my first 5K race when I was in second grade.

  Now running has become an almost meditative way to think about the stories I’m working on. But even on the second loop, I couldn’t get my mind off Good Sam. As much as I had initially grumbled about the assignment, I found myself returning again and again to think about it. Somewhere out there in this vast city, someone was doing something generous and good. And for a brief moment in the midst of a string of reports on a crime rampage on Hollywood Boulevard, a shutdown of the 5 freeway, a politician resigning in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, and a bomb threat at the airport, we were able to devote a lot of airtime to it.

  But stories like Good Sam don’t last in today’s news world. Unfortunately, Good Sam was what we call a fly-by-night, a soft news story without staying power. Like cotton candy, fly-by-nights dissolve before viewers can form any reaction.

  After I finished my run, I showered and dressed, and then I drove to the station. I walked into the newsroom to find a group of reporters and interns gathered in David’s office instead of the Fish Bowl.

  “Two hundred and twelve e-mails, one hundred and nine comments on the website,” David was saying. “It got hundreds of comments on our Facebook p
age…”

  “What’s he talking about?” I whispered to Alex.

  “The Good Sam story,” Alex said.

  “Are you kidding me?” I said.

  “Some people are offering tips for finding him,” David continued, scanning through a list on his computer. “A few are thanking us for reporting on good news for a change. Most are telling tales of woe—lost jobs and family tragedies, huge medical bills, that kind of stuff. Others are writing about their unfulfilled dreams, of needing down payments for new homes, wishing for cosmetic dentistry and even plastic surgery. Nearly all of them ask us to pass their requests on to Good Sam.”

  Good Sam was not a fly-by-night.

  “The story’s all over CNN and everywhere on the Internet,” David said. “The Wall Street Journal ran a piece about Good Sam, saying they admired him but thought he’d be better off giving money through a charitable foundation and getting the tax deduction. Everyone’s got a theory about who he is. There’s even a video on FunnyorDie.com saying that Good Sam is Snooki from Jersey Shore.”

  I tapped on Twitter on my smart phone. I’d often wondered how effective our station’s tweets were at generating viewer interest in a story. Between taking still photographs at the scene to post on the website, writing up stories to post on the website, and posting our tweets, it was often daunting to fit everything in on tight broadcast deadlines. But Channel Eleven required tweets from all its reporters, even if most of the time only one or two of our followers responded to them.

  That wasn’t the case for #GoodSam. I stared at the screen. Seventy-two replies and several dozen retweets.

  “And best of all,” David said. “We were number two in both newscasts last night.”

  I felt a warm shiver course through me. Most people don’t rejoice about coming in second, but considering that Channel Eleven usually ranked fourth out of seven stations, earning the number two slot, even for a night, was real progress.

  Susan Andrews smoothed her Trina Turk sheath dress in camera-friendly persimmon and sighed impatiently. I could tell she wasn’t happy with the attention this story was getting. After all, it was her steady stream of reports on celebrity marriage breakups, racial slurs spoken by celebrities, celebrity drug use, and celebrity murder trials, along with the occasional story about politicians engaged in extramarital affairs, that dominated our newscasts on a regular basis.

  “What I want you to find out—what our viewers want to know—is, who is Good Sam?” David said. “Why is he giving away so much money to so many? Kate, you got any leads?”

  “Nothing solid,” I admitted.

  “I can tell you who he isn’t,” Alex said, reading from his notebook. “It’s not the Red Cross or United Way or any of the major charitable organizations in town. We called a dozen of them this morning, and they all say they’re not responsible.”

  “What if this isn’t charitable?” I asked. “What if it’s the work of someone who’s gaining something from all this attention?”

  “Like?” David asked.

  “Politicians who want a good reputation, anyone trying to sell anything, anyone who’s had negative PR and needs a positive spin—”

  “Who don’t you suspect?” Susan interrupted.

  “I think we should look into the connections between the people who received money from Good Sam,” I said, ignoring her. “A few of them know each other. Cristina Gomez used to clean Marie Ellis’ house. Larry Durham is Dr. K’s carpenter. Coincidence or connection?”

  “Good thinking,” David said, crushing his Dr Pepper can. “Alex, see if you and your team can dig up any connections between these people. Check real estate records, driving records, school records, church records, everything. I want us to be the station to uncloak his identity—”

  “Excuse me, Kate,” the receptionist interrupted. “There’s a man in the lobby asking to talk to you. He says he’s Good Sam.”

  I glanced at David. Could it be this easy?

  The only man in the lobby was young—twenty-three at most—with metal-rimmed glasses and pasty white skin that looked as though it was rarely exposed to the sun.

  I walked toward him and extended my hand. “Kate Bradley.”

  “Tyler Nesbit,” he said. Then a smile lifted the corners of his mouth. “Good Sam.”

  Blame it on my having seen too many movies where the mystery man looks like Gregory Peck or George Clooney, but I imagined Good Sam would be at least thirty-five, with a serious expression and an air of wealth about him. Tyler Nesbit looked like the skinny high school kid who fixes your computer.

  The lobby was crowded with school kids on a field trip tour of the station, so I took him into one of the glass-enclosed conference rooms we used for small meetings. The room afforded a bird’s-eye view of our sprawling newsroom below, a perspective that was clearly distracting Tyler.

  “That’s Susan Andrews, right?” he said, pointing to someone across the room.

  I tried to spot Susan on the busy newsroom floor but couldn’t. “Could be.” I was silent for a long moment. “Are you Good Sam, Tyler?”

  He turned from the window and looked me in the eye. “Yes, I am.”

  I was skeptical, but he had all the details right. Yes, he could have memorized all of it from the news reports, but he had a plausible reason for being Good Sam.

  “My parents died when I was fourteen, and my trust fund money recently became available to me,” he said. “But it’s more than I could ever spend. For weeks I prayed about it. I asked for guidance on how I could serve the Lord with all this money. One night I dreamt I was standing on the doorstep of a beautiful cottage. I had a large bag of money slung over my shoulder, and as I placed the bag on the ground, I felt completely at peace with the world. I took it as a sign of my destiny.”

  I motioned for him to sit down in one of the black leather chairs. Then I took a seat myself, trying to gather my thoughts in the process. “You think it’s your destiny to give away five hundred thousand dollars to strangers?”

  His voice grew bigger, more confident. “Galatians, chapter six, says, ‘Fear not to do good, my sons, for whatsoever you sow, that shall you also reap; therefore, if you sow good, you shall also reap good for your reward.’”

  “Why are you coming forward now?”

  He pushed his glasses to the bridge of his nose. “Because I believe this is my calling now. Through this work I am to spread the word.”

  “What word is that?” I asked.

  “God is coming.”

  I hesitated a moment, unsure how to handle what he’d said. When you’ve spent your career reporting on dead bodies, bullet wounds, and burned buildings, you don’t get much experience interviewing people about their religious beliefs.

  So I dodged. “What’s the significance of the number eight on all the bags?”

  He leaned forward. “It’s not an eight. If you place the bag on its side, you’ll see it’s the symbol for infinity. It’s there because God is infinite.”

  Although he had the facts straight and his story seemed plausible, something about him didn’t ring true. Was it simply that he looked like Doogie Howser with freckles when I was expecting Brad Pitt? Was it his reliance on Scripture and holy words that made me uncomfortable? Or was my reporter’s instinct for scams and hoaxes on target?

  “I think a lot of people will want to hear your story,” I said quietly. “And I think I can make that happen with the top story on the six o’clock news—maybe even get the network to pick it up.”

  His eyes snapped back to the newsroom below. “Will you be interviewing me down there?”

  “Maybe. But the news honchos here and at the network are sticklers about facts. So help me out with some of the details. You gave money to one family so their daughter could go to law school. What was her name again?” I made my question sound informal, as though we were two friends having a casual conversation. But the question was a trap. There was no way he could know the answer from watching the newscasts, because I�
��d never mentioned the girl’s name and as far as I knew, none of the other stations had either.

  He pursed his lips. “I gave the money anonymously. I didn’t know anyone’s names.”

  “But you knew their daughter wanted to go to law school,” I pressed. “And you put her name in a letter with the money.”

  His eyelids fluttered then drifted out again to the scene on the newsroom floor. “Yes, I did. Sorry I can’t remember every detail. This whole process has been very demanding…”

  “Let me see if I can find her name in my notes.” I said. I scanned my notes, pretending to look for her name. “I see it here. Elizabeth. Is that right?”

  He brightened. “Yes, Elizabeth. That was her name.”

  “Why did you want Elizabeth to go to law school?”

  “Through me I wanted Elizabeth to know that God takes care of everything. Consider the ravens. They do not sow or reap. They have no storeroom or barn. Yet God feeds them.” He spoke rapidly, as though he had rehearsed the words before. “And how much more valuable are we than the birds? Luke, chapter twelve, verse twenty-four.”

  I sat there a moment and let his words hang in the air.

  “Tyler, the girl’s name was Lauren, not Elizabeth.”

  He leaned his head back, and his pale blue eyes quickly scanned the ceiling as though he hoped to find an answer there. When he looked back at me, I could see tears had begun to form. “Yes, I know that. I just got confused. You have to believe me.”

  My voice was a whisper. “How could you possibly forget the name of someone to whom you gave one hundred thousand dollars?”

  David Dyal wasn’t surprised that Tyler Nesbit was not Good Sam. “Look, we got one. Channel Nine apparently got two fake Good Sams.” David said, chugging yet another can of Dr Pepper. “They’re all over the Internet—guys claiming to be him.”