“And Henry,” she added, “if you value your position as counsel for this family, as I know you do, I strongly recommend that you not breathe a word of this to my mother. I trust we understand one another. Thank you, and good day.” She hung up. That, as they say, was that.
Now, should she call Milo? Joan sank back against the Queen Anne chair’s unforgiving wooden spine. No, her every instinct told her she should wait for him to call her.
She thought back to the prior morning, whose misery had peaked when Milo abandoned her to fly to New York. He’d come into the bedroom after that prosecutor finally left, brandishing his little blue Nokia cell phone.
What do you have to say about this, Joan?
Oh, Milo, I’m sorry. She’d assumed a regretful expression, and knew she looked both pathetic and sexy huddled among the rumpled sheets where they’d shared so much pleasure the night before. I just wanted to be with you. I couldn’t abide the thought of you being called away.
But Milo refused to be mollified. That terrorist threat you were so sure wouldn’t come to anything, Joan? Well, it’s a damn good thing you’re not in charge of Homeland Security, because a bomb went off at the Rose Bowl.
What astonishingly bad luck. She couldn’t have been more surprised if Milo had announced that aliens landed at Cypress Point. Then he’d ranted about how irresponsible she’d been, didn’t she understand he had a job to do, did she even remember what a job was—it had gotten fairly insulting. She would have become quite angry if she hadn’t realized that it was just Milo being Milo, passionate and melodramatic and Mediterranean. By the time he declared he was leaving for New York, in what he termed an attempt to save his reputation, if he still had one worth saving, she’d offered to go with him. Nothing like a few nights in Manhattan—wouldn’t a stay at the Pierre be nice? With perhaps some shopping on Fifth Avenue and a show or two?—to get a man back on an even keel. But Milo wouldn’t hear of it. In fact, he seemed shocked at the suggestion.
Didn’t you hear a word I said, Joan? I’m fighting to keep my job! Then he’d scowled at her. Or maybe you’d rather I didn’t keep it, since you find it such a damned inconvenience?
No, she wanted him to keep it—after all, a man without a job was hardly a catch, unless he was between jobs, sitting on his fortune and plotting where next to increase it—but she just wished Milo’s job weren’t so unpredictable. Frankly, yes, it was inconvenient that he was a hostage to news events. It was very difficult to plan dinners or parties or trips when something bad happening somewhere in the world would derail everything.
Joan sighed, feeling quite annoyed. Honestly, she didn’t know how news anchors’ wives put up with it.
*
Milo cooled his heels outside the office of the president of WBS’s news division, his mind spinning doomsday scenarios for his professional future. He’d gotten quite good at that particular game in the last twenty-four hours. It was a macabre version of mental solitaire in which every deck was stacked against him.
He had played the game at the San Francisco airport, where his and every other flight was delayed thanks to beefed-up security, a direct result of the terrorist bombing story he’d failed to cover. He’d played it while flying east, every passing mountain range and heartland plain bringing him that much closer to the dreaded showdown with WBS brass. And he’d played it during those restless overnight hours, when his high-priced Manhattan hotel room failed to offer succor or relief.
The voice of the president’s secretary, a well-preserved blonde who’d trailed Richard Lovegrove as he climbed the news division’s executive ladder, sliced into Milo’s thoughts. “Richard shouldn’t be long now,” she assured him, though she’d told Milo exactly the same thing a half hour before. “Are you sure I can’t get you some coffee?”
“No, Rachel, thank you very much.”
She nodded, wearing a rueful expression that Milo knew he wouldn’t see on her boss’s face when he was finally ushered into his office.
Milo found the fact that he was meeting with Lovegrove extremely worrying. He’d anticipated a severe dressing-down from Stanley Cohen, the domestic news producer, and knew O’Malley would be present for the sheer joy of personally delivering a few body blows. He’d half expected a pro forma wrist slap from Al Giordano, the division’s senior VP and one of Milo’s few longtime supporters. But the fact that his transgression had drawn face time with Lovegrove himself boded ill indeed.
Glumly, Milo resumed staring around him. It was ironic how often nondescript offices housed extraordinary power centers. Here he sat at WBS’s Midtown headquarters, a glass-and-steel monolith in the red-hot vortex of network news, and the carpet was industrial, the furnishings ho-hum, and the artwork nonexistent. Instead, framed posters of network talent served as decor throughout much of the building. From the wall behind Rachel’s desk, a photographic replica of Jack Evans, anchor of the WBS Evening News and the person Milo most wanted to replace, gazed at him with a half smile that oozed intelligence and sincerity. Next to Evans grinned the cheery duo who anchored the highly rated breakfast show. Just at the moment Milo was finding their multimillion-dollar, no-cut contracts particularly grating, Lovegrove’s office door swung open. The man himself emerged, looking every suave inch the top-dollar management consultant he had been before he segued smoothly into the network management ranks. He waved Milo inside and shook his hand, but desisted from the comradely back slap he typically dispensed as part of their ritualistic greeting. Milo took the omission as a bad sign.
Everyone Milo had expected to see was present and accounted for and stood up in turn to shake his hand. In contrast to the elegant silver-haired Lovegrove, Stan Cohen looked like a poor man’s newsman. Complete with paunch, receding hairline, and rolled-up shirtsleeves, he could have replaced Ed Asner as TV’s Lou Grant. Then there was sleek, perfectly groomed Al Giordano—a man after Milo’s own heart—sporting his usual three-thousand-dollar handmade Italian suit. Rounding out the lynch mob was the hangman himself, Robert O’Malley, indulging his affectation of dressing all in black, as if he were a TV-news producer by day but morphed into a theatrical director after hours. Milo suspected that even executive producing Newsline, prime time’s most celebrated newsmagazine, wasn’t sufficient gratification for O’Malley’s enormous ego.
They all took seats on the upholstered chairs and small sofa in Lovegrove’s corner office. The thought raced across Milo’s mind that this must be what it felt like to be the defendant in a court trial, though here Lovegrove served as both judge and jury. Milo was his own defense counsel and no doubt O’Malley would play the role of prosecuting attorney. It made Milo think of Alicia Maldonado, whose opinion of him by now must be rock-bottom low. At the moment, he couldn’t say he deserved otherwise.
Lovegrove kicked off the proceedings. “Milo, can you explain what happened yesterday?”
“I can explain it, Richard, but I won’t try to excuse it.” He glanced at Cohen. “Knowing I would be on the West Coast over New Year’s, Stan alerted me to the latest round of terrorist warnings issued by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. I have to admit that, given the history, I didn’t think they would amount to much. In fact, Stan didn’t, either. He and I discussed that.” Milo paused, and the older newsman nodded agreement. “But I certainly understood that it is only when the government takes a threat very seriously that it goes beyond warning law-enforcement agencies and actually alerts the public. And in this case, of course, the threat was directed not only at a specific target but during a specific time frame.”
“The point is,” Cohen interrupted, “that I told you I might need you. Who gives a shit how likely it was whether I would or not? You agreed to make yourself available, so I didn’t line up a fallback. I shouldn’t have needed one.”
Milo watched Stan Cohen struggle to control his anger. Clearly he’d taken some heat for Milo’s failure to show. Great. Milo had few allies at WBS to begin with, and now he’d turned the domestic news producer in
to an enemy.
“Again, Stan,” he said, “I will not try to excuse my behavior—”
“You damn well better not.”
“Stan.” That warning came from Lovegrove, who then turned again to Milo. “What exactly is the reason Stan couldn’t reach you?”
Milo had decided in advance that he would stick as close to the truth as possible but omit those details he could avoid divulging. He’d vowed he would not outright lie, a strategy born less of morality than pragmatism. He’d learned as a teenager that an invented story invariably had holes.
“The reason,” he said, “is both simple and inexcusable. I turned off my cell phone.”
“You turned off your cell phone.” O’Malley repeated Milo’s words with obvious derision. “How did you expect to be reached with your cell phone turned off?”
Milo could feel the back of his neck getting hot but said nothing, judging it best not to joust with O’Malley. If he started, he might not be able to stop. And if there was one thing he had to do during this inquisition, it was to keep his cool. If he could manage that, he might be able to keep his job.
Giordano jumped in. “I take it you had a social obligation New Year’s Eve, Milo?”
“I did.”
This was territory Giordano understood. His “social obligations” at any given time consisted of a minimum of two mistresses and his legal wife in the co-op on Park Avenue.
“And I imagine,” Giordano went on, “you did not want to have the evening’s festivities interrupted?”
“Heaven forbid,” O’Malley cut in.
“I didn’t, but let me repeat, that is no excuse.” Milo focused on Lovegrove, the man who more than anyone else held Milo’s fate in his hands. “I understand my obligation to make myself available whenever news events warrant. Particularly when I say I’ll be available. I absolutely respect that obligation, Richard,” he added, despite an audible snort from O’Malley’s direction.
“As I see it,” Cohen said, “the problem is that the entire system breaks down when correspondents aren’t where I need them when I need them. This time I had to rely heavily on affiliate reporters, and Farley was forced to hire a Lear to get down to Pasadena from Sun Valley. That took time and it cost money.”
For a moment, Milo remained silent. I am so hosed, he thought. He had the most pathetic excuse in the world. The only weaker excuse would be the unvarnished truth. Well, guys, I don’t know what to tell you, but the woman I slept with New Year’s Eve, who happens to be the widow of the guy whose murder case I’m covering, turned off my cell phone because she wanted to make sure our sexual antics didn’t get interrupted.
What could he do but reiterate his apologies? “Again, Stan,” he said, “I’m sorry. Believe me, I know it was a serious lapse of judgment to turn my cell phone off, but it happened only once and it won’t happen again. You have my promise on that.”
A ripple of discomfort ran through the room, though Milo noted O’Malley didn’t seem to participate. Lovegrove crossed his arms over his chest and frowned, Giordano examined the ceiling, and Cohen noisily cleared his throat.
It was Lovegrove who broke the silence, with a comment that both confused and unnerved Milo. “If this were the first time I’m sure we’d all be looking at this differently.” Then he pressed his intercom button. “Rachel, have McCutcheon and Nguyen arrived?”
Mac and Tran? Milo struggled not to show his shock. What were they doing here? Clearly they were surprise witnesses, summoned to court to blow the case wide open, but to what transgression could they testify? Then Milo remembered, and his heart sank.
The two walked in—Tran shuffled, really—and Milo felt a surge of guilt at being the sort of correspondent who forced his crew into playing snitch. He rose to greet them, shaking their hands in turn. Tran wouldn’t meet his eyes. Mac shot him a look that reflected such a complex brew of emotions Milo couldn’t immediately parse them, and wasn’t sure he wanted to. Anger? Disappointment? Disdain?
Mac and Tran claimed the last two empty seats. The workmen of the news business, they were outfitted in LL Bean cords and flannel shirts. To Milo’s eyes they looked strangely bereft without their gear.
Lovegrove cleared his throat. “I wanted Mac and Tran here today because Robert believes they can shed some light on the situation, given an incident last weekend.” He shifted his eyes to O’Malley. “Robert?”
Here it comes, Milo thought. He felt as if he were on a jetliner that had gone into a death spiral. He was powerless to save himself. The only question was how painful the end would be.
O’Malley clearly was trying to look somber, but to Milo his glee was evident. “Last Saturday, Milo, you were scheduled for a 9 AM flight out of San Jose down to San Diego. For a Newsline shoot.” O’Malley turned to Mac. “Tell us what happened, Mac.”
Mac shifted on the small sofa. He looked down at the carpet, where Tran, too, was staring. “Milo missed the flight,” he said. “For a while we couldn’t reach him.”
“Did you know where he was?” O’Malley asked.
Mac hesitated, then, “We knew he wasn’t in his hotel room.”
Milo jumped in. “I did miss the flight, but I caught the next one and we finished our shoot with no problem.”
“Yes.” Tran looked up. “The interview went fine. We had no problems.”
Milo shot Tran a grateful look but O’Malley went on as if Tran hadn’t spoken. He pulled what Milo could see was a Newsline location log from a sheaf of papers and displayed it in Milo’s direction. “After the shoot, you immediately flew back to the Monterey Peninsula, didn’t you, Milo?”
“Of course I did. Because Treebeard was being arraigned.”
“Oh, so that’s the reason?” A malevolent light gleamed in O’Malley’s dark eyes. “Where do you stay while you’re in town, by the way?”
“I don’t believe that’s any of our concern—” Giordano began, but O’Malley cut him off.
“It sure as hell is if it affects whether or not he makes call times.”
Lovegrove raised his hands. “All right, gentlemen.”
But O’Malley wouldn’t let up. This time he looked at Tran. “You knew where Milo was when he missed the San Jose flight, didn’t you?”
Tran said not one word. The silence deepened, lengthened, like a stream of water strengthening into a creek. Milo felt a fresh surge of hatred for O’Malley at that moment. O’Malley knew full well that Tran felt a profound loyalty to WBS, the network that had lifted him out of a ravaged Vietnam thirty years before. Tran would not willingly betray a correspondent, yet his deeper loyalty lay with the network.
“Tran?” Lovegrove asked, and Milo felt a looming dread.
Tran looked up, his features stony. “I didn’t know where he was.”
“But you suspected,” O’Malley said.
“That’s enough,” Milo said. “Stop badgering him, Robert. I’ll tell you where I was, since you’re so all-fired interested in knowing. I was in Joan Gaines’ suite in Pebble Beach.”
For a second there was silence, though Milo could swear he heard the words Pretty-boy Pappas! ricochet off Lovegrove’s creamy office walls. O’Malley looked around the room as if trying to assess the impact of this sordid revelation. To Milo he seemed almost grotesquely excited to see his pretty-boy characterization take such solid and irrefutable form. But little reaction was visible on any man’s face, which worried Milo even more. Apparently he was past the point of surprising anyone with anything he did.
“You were with her New Year’s Eve, too, weren’t you, Milo?” O’Malley asked. “And you turned your cell phone off because you didn’t want your little soiree to get cut short.”
“Joan and I are old friends,” Milo went on, though his words sounded hollow and pathetic even to his own ears. “We’ve known each other for a long time.”
“Her husband was killed on December twentieth, isn’t that right?” O’Malley said. “And you stayed overnight in her suite exactly one week later? Yo
u must be old friends.”
“That’s enough, Robert.” Lovegrove’s tone was sufficiently stern that O’Malley actually did shut up. Then Milo felt Lovegrove’s gaze come to rest on him. He had the strange sense that the verdict—or was it the ax?—was about to come down.
Lovegrove seemed to weigh his words carefully. Through the double-glazed windows, Milo heard the wail of sirens. An emergency somewhere else in Manhattan. Milo wondered whether it, too, was self-induced.
Finally Lovegrove spoke. “I’m giving you one more chance,” he said, and for several seconds Milo was so grateful he couldn’t speak.
Stunning. Unbelievable. He wasn’t getting fired. He would come out of this after all. Finally he found his voice. “Thank you, Richard. I very much appreciate it. Thank you.”
“But make no mistake,” Lovegrove went on, “this is your last chance. While I agree with Al that generally speaking it is not the network’s business how our correspondents conduct their personal lives, you’re on shaky ground here. Your focus should be covering the murder trial, yet your involvement with the victim’s widow has caused you to go AWOL twice in one week.” He paused. “Would you rather I removed you from the story?”
“No, Richard,” he heard himself say, “I would rather stay on it,” and he knew every executive in that office was relieved to hear that answer. They all craved the ratings draw of the love triangle.
Lovegrove nodded. “Fine. But until this story is wrapped, I want you to maintain an arm’s-length relationship with Mrs. Gaines. After that, what you do is your business. But make no mistake, I don’t want any behavior on your part to give even the appearance of a conflict of interest.”
“I understand, sir.”
“You should be adhering to a high standard of ethical behavior, Milo. You’re one of the news division’s most visible faces. I would even go so far as to say you’re one of its most beloved personalities. You should be above reproach.”
To Catch the Moon Page 23