Adam held up his hands. “I don’t know what to say, Sammy. Picking out the saints from the sinners isn’t my strong suit. They all look the same to me.”
“Just watch your friend’s back, is all I’m saying. Not much more important in this world than that.”
“I know.”
Adam went back to his office, still looking for a spark. He tried the TV, a true sign of desperation. Didn’t matter, it was just a bunch of dead air—all the stations seemed to have signed off for the night. Channel Nine was still on, and when it came back from commercial Adam realized that they were showing his favorite Stanley Kubrick movie, The Killing. 2001 might have been an important film, but The Killing was a great movie, and he’d watch a great movie over an important film any day.
It was near the end, and Sterling Hayden’s perfect caper was in the final stages of its inevitable collapse. There he was, at the airport, watching the cops, and watching his bag, bulging with cash, sitting on the baggage cart bouncing along to the plane. Then out onto the impossibly dark runway, it rocks a little more, a little bad luck gives one final push, and it falls and bursts open. Money everywhere, millions of dollars, blown in the wind by the propellers. The cops approach, slowly. “Run, Johnny!” his girlfriend urges. But he just stands there. “What’s the difference?” he says it flat—not scared, not bitter, just reporting the facts.
“Right on, Stanley!” Adam cheered to himself, “What’s the difference! You tell ’em!”
He turned off the set and bounded over to his typewriter and typed quickly, not stopping to think.
Great albums are made by uncertain artists, struggling lost and half-blind to articulate the right question. Great movies are made by commanding craftsmen, masters of purpose and execution, who tell you the answer. That’s why music, when it matters, is a universal prayer that draws you closer, while film’s implicit certainty, even in the hands of an awe-inspiring genius like Bergman or Welles, must, to some extent, stand apart, just out of reach. And it is why, my friends, when people one hundred years from now play Blood on the Tracks for the first time, it will still blow them away.
He finished the Dylan essay in an hour, and then threw himself back into the City’s finances. Closing his eyes he saw the money from Sterling Hayden’s briefcase flying all across Manhattan.
13
Jason finished the morning traffic flight. He was getting a little bored with the traffic and a lot bored with Dave, neither of which changed much from day to day. Unbelievable backups invariably spilled endlessly into the distance from all the major crossings, and Dave spent even more time fixing his hair and makeup between reports, something that you wouldn’t have thought possible. When he wasn’t primping he would rehearse out loud, trying to punch up his material, occasionally tossing out new synonyms for “delay,” which he expected Jason to critically evaluate.
Back at the station Jason was killing time. It would be more than two and a half hours before his next—and probably last—flight with Bill. He stood off to the side of the set, as was his habit, mostly watching Carol. Adam thought he understood Jason’s fascination with Carol, since she was so self-evidently attractive and captured the attention of most of the men at the station. But Jason liked to think that he found her intriguing in spite of that, or, more accurately, not because she was so attractive but because she constantly had to deal with the consequences of that fact. Not that she wasn’t nice to look at.
It was a commercial break, and various technicians and assistants were wandering around the set, including Lou Bettleheim, who somehow managed to range all over the station as he directed the show. Harry, who was in the enclosed control room just behind the cameras, tapped on the glass and motioned for Jason to come inside. Harry was having several conversations at once when Jason entered, and the whole room was buzzing with activity. Jason sat on a stool and watched a commercial on a small monitor in the corner.
“We’re back in five,” Lou’s voice called out from somewhere, and a hush quickly came over the room. Jason looked over at Harry, who motioned for him to wait for the last part of the show to finish. Nathan suddenly appeared everywhere, and Jason compared the versions—on the cluster of big monitors in front of the control room, on Jason’s little monitor, and looking through the glass onto the set. He looked best on the little monitor.
“Repeating our top stories,” Nathan began in his confident, inimitable staccato, “four men dead in a West Side shootout…apparently.…”
One of the large control room monitors displayed mug shots of four young black men. Jason was startled, as he was almost certain that he recognized one of them as the glaring would-be rapist from his exploits of the other day.
“Apparently…” Nathan repeated, hesitating.
“He’s off the cards” an assistant director alerted the room, with only a modest sense of urgency in his voice.
Nathan coughed, and then continued, “excuse me…apparently the victims of a turf war between rival gangs…though details are still coming in.”
“He’s still off,” reported the AD, somewhat more urgently but still in measured tones, “I don’t know where he—”
“New toll and parking surcharges go into effect tomorrow,” Nate continued.
“Okay, he’s back on.”
“…and a large crowd is expected at the funeral of Sid Maynes, to be held later today in Brooklyn.”
The monitors all switched to Carol, who lit up for the camera. “Be sure to join Cathy and Steve for the five o’clock report, with updates on all our stories, Tommy Thompson with local sports, and our nightly feature on rush-hour traffic tips.”
She turned sideways and both anchors appeared together in a two-shot.
“Any big plans for the weekend, Nate?” she asked with an exaggerated smile.
“Not really. Actually, Carol, I’m going to be about the station tomorrow.”
Carol’s smile froze a bit at this piece of unscripted business, but she held it and kept with him.
“Look out! Last time you said that on Monday we had a new set and two new writers. I thought I came to the wrong station!”
“That was just a coincidence!” He was back to full staccato Natespeak, and the tension eased in the room.
“Well, just to be sure, Nate, call me on Sunday night if we’re changing the format!”
“I sure will, Carol; you know what I say, better safe than sorry.” He turned away and was alone on the screen.
“For Carol Chase and the rest of the Channel Six News Team, I’m Nathan Johnson. We’ll see you Monday with the rising sun at six. Have a good weekend.”
“And that’s it, we’re out,” reported Lou, who had been in the control room but was out on the set before he finished his sentence.
Jason watched Nate rise slowly from his seat, pushing down on the desk with closed fists for leverage. He didn’t remember having ever seen Nate angry before, or for that matter expressing any untethered emotion, and was curious about what was going on. But Harry came over and interrupted his train of thought.
“Listen kid, I need to talk to you.”
Jason kind of liked Harry, as far as it went. He imagined him in his younger days as one of those committed New-Dealers who kept in touch with his army buddies and got into fistfights about McCarthyism. But they rarely spoke, and when they did it was usually about some rule that Jason hadn’t been aware of or wasn’t following.
“Look, if it’s about that memo, I never got it.”
“Memo? Which one?”
“Any of ’em. Fact is, I’m not sure if I have a mailbox. So I don’t see how I could know—”
“What? Look, I just wanted—”
“Phone, Harry,” the Assistant Director interrupted.
“Sorry, kid. Gimme a minute.”
Harry walked over to the phone. Jason looked out from the booth and saw Nathan engaged in a hushed but very sharp conversation with Lou. Glancing down, he noticed that they were also visible on the little monit
or next to him. Discretely surveying the control room to confirm, as expected, that nobody was paying him any attention, Jason casually turned the volume knob, not sure that it would do anything. It did, and the conversation was so clearly audible that he lowered it a bit.
“That’s outrageous. I went off the cards because the story is bullshit! We’ve been over this before.”
“Quadruple murder is bullshit?” Lou responded. “That’s news, even in this town.”
“I saw the notes on this—those kids were shot in the head. No shootout, no drugs. Four white kids shot in the back of the head, we’d run the story different. We ran the story different at eight, till you colored it in.”
Lou took all this with an atypical patience—Jason had seen him ditch whining talent faster than a mother passing off a screaming toddler to the sitter. But Nate took a “contributing editor” credit, which Carol didn’t, and Lou gave him his time.
“We got an update,” he explained. “They weren’t shot in the head. None of that stuff.”
“Not shot in the head? Where the hell did you get that from? I read the copy. Hell, I wrote that copy.”
“Cops messengered it over during the broadcast. We had to change it.”
“During the broadcast?” Some inner version of Nate was climbing closer to the surface. “What do they do, watch the morning news, and correct every story they don’t like? What’s the matter with you people? You think every time the cops—”
“Sorry, kid. How’s the head?”
It was Harry, back from his phone call. Jason slipped off the stool and tried to subtly turn the volume down on the monitor at the same time.
“All right, I guess,” he answered, sitting down.
“Thinking of becoming a reporter?” Harry said, looking over at the monitor.
“No. Just violating a little privacy, I guess.”
“Same difference, huh?”
“Nowadays.” Jason was kicking himself for snooping, and felt like he’d been caught buying a dirty magazine.
“Jeez, loosen up. I’m supposed to be the tight-ass around here.”
“That’s what it says on the bathroom wall.”
Harry let that one pass without even acknowledging it. He steered Jason towards the back of the booth, where they sat across from each other in a couple of small black director’s chairs.
“Listen, this is serious,” he said, leaning in. “I got a call from the guys upstairs—they’d like to see you in front of the camera. You know, helicopter hero and all that. Good for ratings.”
“Huh?”
“They want to hire you as a reporter for the station.”
“They want to make me be a reporter because I crashed my helicopter? I don’t get it. Whose brilliant idea was this? It’s a good thing I don’t work at a hospital—they’d want to make me a surgeon.”
Jason was riffing, something he rarely did with outsiders, and they were talking past each other.
“Don’t worry, we’d keep you in the air,” Harry said reassuringly. “But you could do the traffic, too.”
“Traffic? Traffic reporter?” He repeated it as if it was a contradiction in terms. There was a job that had been invented by television. Could the conversation take a worse turn? If it had been anybody other than Harry he would have ripped into a long lecture on the subject. He was irritated by the very suggestion. He was irritated that he was irritated. He tried to adjust his posture, but you really couldn’t move around in those damn director’s chairs. Why did such chairs exist? Oh right, because they were light and mobile, so you could move them from set to set during a movie shoot. Why they had them at the station remained a mystery.
“I don’t think so,” he said more politely. It was time to get out and move on. “Besides, what about Dave?”
“Fuck ’im. I’ll give him the afternoon rush. Pretty soon he’s gonna figure out we’re not going to put him behind a desk, he’ll quit anyway.”
Harry redeemed himself a bit with this unanticipated dumping on Dave. Jason was confident that Dave was exactly the sort of person who had a bright future in TV, but he appreciated Harry’s assessment just the same.
“C’mon, Harry, you can’t be serious. TV reporter? I couldn’t cash that check.”
Harry sat back in his chair. He didn’t seem shocked, and Jason wondered if he had expected this, but had to ask.
“How about an interview? It would really help us. We’re getting killed by Channel Eight.”
“Interview?” This was a curveball, and Jason hadn’t seen it coming. He flinched, and took a weak swing. “Look, I know Andy Warhol says TV is something to be on, not something to watch, but he’s wrong. In fact, he’s been wrong about everything except the Velvet Underground. And I haven’t done anything that—”
Harry looked at Jason like he wasn’t speaking English, and then cut him off before he could reach a definitive “no.”
“You could do it with Carol. Just hang around for a while, we could shoot it today.”
“I don’t know, you know, I have a lot to do. I mean, how long would it take?”
“Half-hour, tops. Five minutes of makeup, ten minutes of questions, fifteen just standing around. Boom-boom-boom, it’ll be over almost as soon as it starts.”
“Look, this is crazy. But if it would really help, I’ll try and meet you halfway. But that’s it, right? One interview…with Carol.” He shot a confirming look at Harry, who didn’t contradict him. “I can give you half an hour. And no use of the phrase ‘helicopter hero.’ ”
Harry leaned over with an open hand and tapped him on the knee three times.
“Great, kid, great. I’ll set it up.”
14
Hey.” Jason arrived at Adam’s office. Remarkably, it was in more disarray than usual—Adam wasn’t even visible behind the stacks of books and papers.
“Hey.” The voice came from behind him, as Adam entered. He looked expectantly at Jason. “So?”
“So, what?”
“How was the big date?” Adam said, sounding like a gleeful prosecutor.
“Good. Very good.”
“Did you—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Adam grinned triumphantly. “Pussy.”
“Don’t call me pussy, asshole.”
“Pussy.”
“She talked about you a lot,” Jason said, deftly outflanking him.
“Really,” Adam said, eager to hear more. “Like what?”
“Nothing, just about how you were all jazzed about what you’d found. And she said you were cute.”
“I am cute,” Adam, said, beaming, and let Jason sit with that for a few beats. “She called you timeless.”
“Timeless? What the fuck does that mean?”
“I don’t know, but trust me, for a Ph.D. it’s better than cute.” Adam adjusted the orientation of a set of folders on his desk as if they were ever so slightly out of place. “Chick digs you, man. Try not to fuck this one up.”
“Thanks, I’ll try to fall back on that sage advice at the right time.” Jason scanned the stacks of paper cluttering the room, which looked like they’d been rearranged. “So, you got something for me or not?”
“Not here. You’re going on one of your top-secret missions again today, right? How much time before you fly?”
“Not till twelve-thirty. But I have to be here before. We can go out, but not far.”
“How come?”
“Mail!” They were interrupted by a tall young black man pushing a cart. He handed Adam a bundle of letters wrapped together by a thick rubber band.
“Thanks, Jimmy.”
“You got anything going out?” Jimmy asked.
“You know I don’t mail anything from here.”
“Yeah, but I’m supposed to ask.”
As he started to leave Jason called out. “Hey, you got anything for Sims?”
“Sims?” Jimmy asked. The name wasn’t ringing a bell. “What department?”
“I
don’t know, traffic?”
“That ain’t a department. We got administration, custodial, editorial, executive, legal, personnel, staff, talent, and technical. Which one are you?” He gave Jason a long look. “Probably not executive, legal, or talent,” he concluded, poking through the mail with his fingers. “No offense.”
“He ain’t any of ’em, Jimmy,” said Adam, sorting through his letters. “He just wants some mail.”
Jimmy took this as his cue to leave. “Well, you know what they say,” he offered over his shoulder, “you gotta write ’em to get ’em.”
Adam stared at Jason, waiting for him to speak. “Do we have individual mailboxes somewhere,” Jason asked, “or do you have to have an office that they come and bring your mail to?”
“You must be under the mistaken impression that you’re not speaking with the finest investigative journalist of our time,” Adam said, who had set down his letters and was now deftly balancing the Nerf ball on his fingertip.
“Oh, I would never forget that—you remind me too often.”
“In any event, this little mail rap of yours—it’s not going to throw me off the track. I ask you again, Senator, why do you have to get back here before your flight?”
“Oh, that…it’s nothing, really,” Jason said. He pretended to absent-mindedly sift through some albums splayed on the far side of Adam’s desk. “I agreed to do an interview for the station. This the new Dylan album? Nice cover.”
Adam stood stone-faced, and casually tossed the ball across the room before shaking his head, lifting his hands and moving them back and forth, and letting out a big rasp, “A star! You’re gonna be a big star!” It was in the neighborhood of a Jimmy Durante impression.
“Shut the fuck up. I really don’t want to do it. An interview? On TV? Jeez, if Harry himself hadn’t asked—”
“And Carol wasn’t the interviewer?” Adam interjected.
“—I’d have never agreed. TV? That camera in your face? I don’t know what I was thinking. Maybe I should—Hey, how did you know it was Carol? You talk to Harry about this?”
Urban Flight Page 10