“Come on,” I said to Petey, jumping up and swinging open the door. “And listen, do NOT shoot me from the waist down. When I say, ‘as you can see,’ you zoom into the building, but you do NOT pull out to a wide shot. Got it?”
“You’re awfully demanding for someone with no pants,” Petey grumbled, then grabbed the tripod.
• • •
“Amanda, can you hear us?”
“Yes!” I yelled. I was on the sidewalk, twenty yards from the squad of officers and flashing police cars at the corner, where five minutes ago I’d gotten the PIO to confirm that the Richard Betts I found was the same one in the post office.
“We can’t see you,” the voice in my ear said.
“I’m here! I’m here,” I said, waving my arms at the sat truck half a block away.
“This is Tony in New York. We need you in front of the camera right now. We got your shot up and we’re coming to you out of this break!”
Tony’s voice was crunchy with static, but at least I knew the IFB Petey had put in my ear was working.
I started jogging back to the camera, my arm twisted around my back, holding the battery pack firmly between my shoulder blades to keep it from falling off my bathing suit strap, now serving as a bra. “You’re going to say I’m from Newschannel 13, right?” I asked. “That was the deal, okay?”
“Yup, yup. It’s in the copy.”
For a second, I considered running into the truck to find my purse and apply some powder to my sweaty face, but there was no time. I raced up to the camera, bent over to look into the lens, using it as a mirror, and was horrified by the sight of my own unkempt reflection. I stuck the stick microphone under my armpit, attempting to smooth down my humid beach hair with both hands.
“We’re coming to you in ten!” Tony said in my ear. “Ted Forest is your anchor.”
I heard the familiar sound effect for BNN’s breaking news. “From BNN headquarters in New York,” the anchor said. “We have breaking news out of Long Island. A gunman is engaged in a standoff with police at a post office in Smithtown, and there are hostages inside. Newschannel 13’s Amanda Gallo was the first reporter on the scene. Amanda, what can you tell us?”
“Ted, I was standing at this spot twenty minutes ago when the sound of three gunshots burst from the building behind me. Police still don’t know if anyone inside was injured or killed. But as you can see, there is a battalion of police officers, a SWAT team, and a dozen emergency vehicles surrounding this scene. Hostage negotiators are in contact with the gunman, trying to end the standoff. According to my sources, the gunman is fifty-seven-year-old Richard Betts from Pennsylvania, an apparently unhinged zealot. Police say his online postings suggest a festering anger that today exploded.”
Chapter 2
The Impossible Dream
My sour stomach was surging from the stop-and-go motion of the Newschannel 13 crew car as we inched along in lunchtime traffic. I wanted to take a nap but Doug, my fotog, had the AC cranked, and even with his windbreaker draped across me, I had goose bumps.
“I can’t take this crap,” Doug said, hitting the dial to change from a pop station to classic rock. I could tell Doug had gone overboard last night celebrating the end of our grueling assignment, and now those Long Island Iced Teas weren’t mixing well with the Long Island Expressway. Doug had one hand on the wheel and the other on his cell phone, using his thumb to text. Just then the car to our right swooped over, cutting us off. I saw its back bumper zoom in for a close-up and Doug jammed on the brakes.
“Hey, buddy! Pick a lane and commit to it!” Doug yelled, which struck me as comically philosophical when a simple honk of the horn would have sufficed. “Sorry,” Doug said to me, checking his rearview mirror. “I just want to get home to see the kids. Been a long week.”
Doug always drove, regardless of how long we’d been working or how tired he claimed not to be. “Oh, good, looks like it’s just a bad accident ahead,” he said. “For this traffic, somebody better be dead.”
Ah, more news humor.
• • •
I’d been on camera for twelve hours straight when police finally crashed an armored vehicle through the glass doors of the post office to rescue the hostages. By then, the gunman had killed three people, including a police officer, and injured five others. I turned my head as the bodies were carried out. Stay focused, stay focused, I told myself, trying to swallow the heat that always burned in my throat the seconds before tears fell. Do not get emotional. I heard my journalism professor’s voice in my head. This is not about you. You’re here to give the facts. We stayed on location for three days, knocking on the doors of victims, interviewing officials, and getting Betts’s backstory; it made for long days of standing in the sweltering August sun, from the five A.M. morning show through the ten P.M. evening news. Some nights I was so tired, I fell face first onto the hotel bed without washing off my drugstore makeup or taking off the shirts Charlie had picked up for me, on sale at the Gap nearby.
I stared out the window of the SUV at the passing landscape and wished I weren’t on the road so much and could spend more time with Charlie. I couldn’t count the times I’d lurched along some highway like this, covering random stories in the tristate area: how to start a small business in Danbury, a life-saving medical breakthrough at a hospital in Princeton. Last July, I’d spent two days at the Jersey Shore covering a beached whale. And last month Doug and I drove all the way to Montauk so I could prove once and for all which ice cream parlor had the most delicious peach ice cream in a blind taste test. All this and I didn’t even have a contract with Newschannel 13. I just kept working my ass off, hoping they’d offer me one, or better yet, someone else would.
A muffled ringing was coming from somewhere deep in my purse. I smiled. Maybe Charlie was out of class early. I unearthed my phone, unnerved to see “Jake Raddle” on the caller ID.
“Oh, no,” I said. “It’s my agent. You don’t think he saw those stupid photos online, do you?”
“If so, he probably loved it,” Doug said, grinning over at me and reciting from memory, “Reporter Leaps Lauer Without Pants.”
I felt sick thinking of that stupid homemade website, with pictures of me right next to Matt Lauer’s live shot, holding my microphone, wearing a deadly serious expression, but no pants. Sure, I secretly liked that the website said I was first on the scene, but I hated that it didn’t explain why I wasn’t wearing pants. I didn’t know who the asshole was who took the pics and posted them; maybe a competitor from another station, or some neighborhood kid. Either way, the link was retweeted thousands of times. My own personal pantsgate.
“Hi, Jake,” I said into the phone.
“Well, hello there, my little shooting star,” Jake responded, with the particularly slippery voice he used when impressed, usually with himself. Jake was short and squat and wore a reptilian leer. He lived in a New York City penthouse and had a taste for hand-sewn European shirts, along with an insatiable appetite for finding talent who had “it,” as he called it. Jake loved to wine and dine up-and-coming reporters at fancy restaurants to give them a taste of their glorious future under his representation. There’s nothing that seduces quite like shrimp cocktail and sizzling steak when you’ve been eating canned tuna and popcorn for a couple of years. Jake’s own expanding waistline seemed to be a tribute to those tax-deductible business dinners. I’d signed Jake’s contract right there and then, on the white tablecloth of the Four Seasons, after I’d devoured the steak, before the strawberries and whipped cream arrived.
But ever since getting me out of Roanoke, Jake had proved almost impossible to reach. He acted like Newschannel 13 with its one satellite truck and bare-bones budget was a great gig because it was in New York City. And since they hadn’t given me a contract, they could dump me at any time.
“Where have you been?” I asked him. “I’ve been leaving you messages. I hope you recorded all my
coverage of the post office story. I got the exclusive with the wife of the police officer who was killed. You need to add that to my résumé link, then I need you to—”
“You won’t be needing that old résumé tape much longer,” Jake interrupted.
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“I’ve arranged an interview for you . . . for the biggest break of your life,” he slithered.
“What? What is it?”
“I’ll tell you. My tireless pursuit of bigger opportunities for you has finally paid off. I’ve secured an interview for you with Benji Diggs. Yes, that Benji Diggs.”
“No way!” I squealed, a shiver of excitement shooting up my spine. There was no bigger broadcaster than world-famous Benji Diggs. At just forty years old, Diggs was named “the Master of Mass Media” by Time magazine, and Vanity Fair called him “A one-man media empire!” At least once a month, a cover story on Benji Diggs appeared in some magazine, his Midas media touch the subject of expansive profiles. Variety proclaimed, “With Diggs’s multimedia platform and countless charity events, he’s taken the mantle from Merv Griffin and Dick Clark, even eclipsing Oprah.”
Diggs was famous for a lot of things: broadcasting a daily radio show, publishing a couple of media/marketing best sellers, putting on an annual charity ball that brought in millions for cancer research. But his biggest feat was creating successful TV shows, including the longest-running reality show in history, The Impossible Dream!
It was appointment viewing. Every week The Impossible Dream! found contestants who would admit to a secret lifelong dream—maybe it was to be an astronaut, or a rock star. Whatever their fantasy, Benji Diggs gave them a shot at it by creating seemingly impossible challenges, mental and physical, that, if completed, would advance contestants to the next level. At the end of the season, the person who’d made it to the top would get their wish fulfilled by Benji Diggs, who would emerge from behind a hidden door and announce, “You dared to dream . . . and now the dream is yours!” Diggs would then pop them on a rocket ship or the Rolling Stones’ tour bus or whatever.
“He wants me to be on The Impossible Dream!?” I whispered into my phone, covering my mouth so Doug wouldn’t hear.
“Oh, goodness, no,” Jake laughed. “Diggs is starting a new cable news network. It’s been top secret, though, of course, I’ve known about it all along. And it’s better than CBS or NBC or even BNN because it’ll be on twenty-four hours a day,” Jake explained. “It’s cable! You’d have endless face time!”
Endless face time . . . Take that, Jeff Davis! “So what is it?” I asked. “And why start another cable news network?”
Jake laughed as though that were a preposterous question. “Because this one will be different. First of all, it’s not going to be conservative like Fox or liberal like MSNBC. It’s going to be straight down the middle—without any bias. It’ll give both sides. That’s why he’s calling it the FAIR News Network.”
“Isn’t that already called CNN?”
“Oh, good grief, Amanda,” Jake snorted into the phone. “CNN covers breaking news around the world. That’s different. If you want to know what’s happening in Syria, you turn on CNN. Bo-ring. FAIR will be the news that the country has been clamoring for. It won’t just cover conflicts, it will solve them. I tell you, I am sooo sick and tired of all of the division. So much yelling and anger, I could scream. Now imagine a kinder, gentler cable news network where, for the first time, both sides will be brought together, not to yell at each other, but to talk it out.”
“Hmm,” I said.
“It’s truly groundbreaking. But that’s what makes Benji Diggs such a genius. Anyway, he loved your coverage of the hostage thing. Apparently you got the police side and you gave the gunman’s mind-set. I don’t know, I didn’t see it, but he wants to meet with you today at three.”
My eyes darted to the clock on the dashboard. It was 12:30. We were probably two hours outside the city, give or take.
“Yes, that’ll work,” I said, rolling the dice that I’d be able to dash to my apartment and shower in the space of half an hour.
“I mean, this is it, Amanda. If this interview goes well, you could jump to the next level. The national level. He’s offering a national correspondent title, it would be a three-year deal, no outs, twice what you’re making now. Oh, and a generous clothing allowance.”
I tried to imagine what twice my Newschannel 13 salary would look like on a bank deposit slip . . . plus he’d said the magic words to cast a spell on any struggling newsgal.
“Clothing allowance,” I murmured. “Oh, my God.” I reached up to push my greasy hair out of my face, and was assaulted by the smell of my own blouse—the pale blue cotton blend with cap sleeves Charlie had brought for me on that very first day, along with, finally, some khaki pants, which I’d worn in live shot after live shot, hour after hour, sweat dripping down my back. The blouse now carried a rank combo of sweat and Hampton Inn bedspread.
“You’ll have your own designated team, a cameraman and producer,” Jake went on, “and you’ll cover stories all over the country. You would need to start almost immediately.”
“You had me at clothing allowance!” I giggled.
“Thank heavens I had the foresight to keep you off contract at Newschannel 13. You’re free to leave anytime! All part of my master plan for you.”
Sure it was. “So what do I need to know?”
“You need to know that Benji Diggs is taking over the world. At this rate he’ll be president someday. This is IT, Amanda. Don’t screw it up.” Then, as a helpful afterthought, he added, “Oh, and remember to wear pants this time.”
“Very fu—” I heard him hang up.
“What’s up?” Doug asked, turning to look at me as I put the phone back in my bag.
“Benji Diggs wants to meet me!” I said before I could stop myself.
“No way!” Doug said.
“Yeah. He’s starting a new network. A news network.”
“Really?” Doug asked. “What is it?”
“It’s called FAIR News,” I gushed. “And it’s about to change the world.”
Chapter 3
Left and Right
After a thirty-second shower, the fastest surveying ever of my closet’s scant options, a failed attempt at hailing three passing taxis, and a last-ditch bicycle-drawn rickshaw ride, I arrived at a towering skyscraper in Midtown and stood in front of the future FAIR News Network headquarters. It felt special knowing something big was going on in there that the general public wasn’t aware of yet. I glanced up and saw its glass panels catch the summer sun and send off blinding rays that gleamed like lasers. I stood on the sidewalk for a split second admiring the light show before marching inside, signing in, and taking the elevator to the third floor.
Opening a set of glass doors, I walked into what I guessed was a waiting room but could have been a sports bar. Pop music played through ceiling speakers and there were four big TV monitors built into one wall projecting CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and BNN all at once, creating a news din that three young women at desks were ignoring. The women were not seated at their desks; rather they were walking on moving treadmills while typing on keyboards raised to elbow height. In the middle of the room sat a quiet foosball table, next to a mesh bin holding, from what I could see, a collection of Nerf footballs, a kickball, softballs, tennis balls, rackets, a lacrosse stick, and a Frisbee. And in the corner of the room, right next to the entrance, was an open box, three feet tall and big enough to climb into, brimming with small multicolored rubber balls.
“Oh, hi!” one of the young women said, turning from her computer and leaping off her treadmill. She wore a turquoise sundress that was, to my mind, too short for the office, and a pair of platform heels, too high, I felt, for speedwalking on a treadmill. “Amanda, right?”
“Yes,” I answered. “I’m looking for Benji Diggs. Is this
the break room?”
“LOL!” she said. “This is Benji’s office. I’m Melissa, his assistant. Benji says it’s important to keep the creative juices flowing. And,” she giggled, “Benji always says it takes balls to start a news network. So we have balls! Did you see our ball pit?” she asked, extending her arm to the supersized playpen of multicolored balls. “You can jump in there and roll around. It’s like an awesome body massage. Want to try it?”
I looked over at the red, blue, green, and yellow balls sitting idly in their pen. “Maybe on my way out.”
“Benji is just finishing up a phone call,” she said. Then, putting her hand to the side of her mouth dramatically and lowering her voice, she confided with obvious pride, “He’s on with Ryan Seacrest. You know they’re besties, right?”
“I don’t think I did know that,” I said, slowly feeling the panic rise as I realized I hadn’t had time to research him online. Luckily his office held some clues. I moved toward a wall covered in framed photos of Diggs throughout his career: a half dozen or so 2 x 3-foot color posters of Diggs joshing around with his reality show competitors. There was Diggs, arm in arm with Tom Bergeron, pretending to be “Dancing with the Stars.” In the next, Diggs was shadowboxing Blake Shelton in front of a neon red The Voice sign. Then, an extra-large photo of Benji Diggs and Ryan Seacrest on a red carpet, both in sunglasses, smiling out at the crowd surrounding them, each with an arm raised, as if in victory. In the middle of the wall was a black-and-white photo, blown up to its grainiest proportions, of a probably six-year-old Benji Diggs sitting at a soundboard wearing oversized earphones that almost swallowed his head.
I walked farther along the wall and, wait, what’s this? I stopped in front of a photo of Benji Diggs and the famous actor Victor Fluke together on the set of Fluke’s long-running hit TV show Home of the Brave. The photo had to be at least fifteen years old, because Fluke still had his mustache and trademark cowboy hat. I’d forgotten how handsome he was in his heyday, like Tom Selleck in his Magnum, P.I. prime. Fluke played the part of the beloved patriarch Sam Stockton, the character we’d all grown up wishing was our dad. After Stockton was finally (and tragically) killed off, Fluke went on to star in a series of amusing aftershave commercials featuring a character called “The World’s Most Successful Man.”
Amanda Wakes Up Page 3