“Could you lean back, please?” she said to Carol.
Carol arched her back and tilted her head. This accentuated her chest which rose into view like the morning sun. Jason, with Adam’s words still ringing in his ears, was desperate to look anywhere else. Reluctant to disturb his posture, he shifted his head to the left, where two of the lighting technicians were staring at Carol and muttering to each other. To the right he could see Harry in the control room, standing next to a couple of unfamiliar suits, who reminded him of the team of accountants who show up in the middle of the Oscars to explain how the votes were counted.
“You all right?” Carol asked him.
Jason turned his head carefully and locked his gaze on Carol’s face. It turned out she had hazel eyes. For some reason he had always assumed they were blue.
“Yeah, just a little nervous, I guess. I’ve never been on TV before.”
“Just relax. It’s one of those things in life, once you’ve done it for the first time you realize it’s not as big a deal as you thought.” Her eyes sparkled when she said it, but it might have just been the lights.
“Just sit back and focus on what I’m saying. Don’t let the cameras and the lights distract you. Just pretend we’re having a conversation, and when in doubt, keep talking.”
“Okay, thanks. Do I look at you, or do I look at the camera?”
“You can look at me, or you can look at an invisible cat sitting just above my right shoulder. But don’t look at the camera, and don’t look at the lights, and don’t look around, like at the booth or at Lou. Oh, and, if you hear a noise, don’t look towards that either. Just pretend you didn’t hear it.” Turned out Carol had a lot of different voices—one for the news, one to shut you up in the hallway—and this one, which wrapped around you like a blanket.
“Got it,” Jason said with a smile only half-forced, and managed to squeeze off a joke. “Does it have to be a cat, or can it be anything I want?”
She smiled brightly, and Jason quickly ran down the list in his head. Don’t look at the booth, don’t look at the lights, don’t look at the camera, don’t look at her tits. He held his entire body perfectly still. He was ready.
“Everybody set?” Lou called out from somewhere. “Okay, people, let’s do it.”
A perfect silence filled the studio, and after a few more beats than Jason expected, Carol suddenly lit up and started talking. “New Yorkers are known for their gruff exteriors, for not getting involved. Well, today we’re talking with our very own Jason Sims, the helicopter hero. Two days ago Jason flew his helicopter down into the middle of a crime scene, possibly saving the life of a young woman. We thought we’d find out a little more about the story and about the hero right under our own noses. Glad to have you with us, Jason.”
Jason’s ears burned from that “helicopter hero” crack, which he thought they had an agreement about, but he followed Lou’s advice and plowed ahead.
“Thanks, glad to be here.” It seemed fitting that his TV career would start with a big lie.
“Everyone knows the story, but could you tell us in your own words exactly what happened?”
She looked right at him for the answer, and it gave him confidence, so he reciprocated by talking directly to her instead of to the invisible Nixon floating in the space above her shoulder.
“Well, it was just like you said, you know. I was in the air, and I looked down and saw something funny. Then when I saw what was happening, and that she had broken free, well, I thought I could get in between her and them.”
Carol jumped in. “You make it sound so simple.”
The camera behind Carol rolled towards him, and he felt his eyes widen. “Well, it-uh, seemed simple at the time.” He kicked himself for letting go of that “uh.”
“You nearly crashed into the side of a building!”
“That was after. I didn’t think about how much dirt would be thrown up. I guess that part wasn’t simple at all.”
Inside the control room, Harry was pleased. “I told you the kid would be a natural,” he said to no one in particular.
“The sound is clean, too” added the assistant director. The Price-Waterhouse gang watched from the back of the booth.
“Why didn’t you just call the police?” she asked.
“We, uh, I thought about it, but you get a pretty good look at the City from up there. I could see a precinct house just a few blocks away, but no police cars. Anyway, there wasn’t much time.”
This line ruffled some feathers in the back of the booth, and Harry talked over his shoulder to reassure them.
“We talked about this. We can work around it.” He picked up a headset off the console and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Lou, remember, we’re going to cut any cop talk.” Harry set the headset down. “We’re not out to embarrass anybody.”
Lou was on the set. He gave an “okay” sign to Carol, but it was directed at the booth.
Carol rolled her finger in a circle at Jason, letting him know they were about to wrap up.
“Jason, you’re a native New Yorker. You hear a lot of talk about the City and its future. What does it look like from up there in your helicopter?”
“From up there, it’s the same old New York it’s always been. You can see the trains rolling, and the waves of people walking on the street. Sure, there’s more traffic. But regular people know how to get around in this town.”
“Thanks so much for giving us a few minutes of your time. Before we let you go, let me ask you, how does it feel to be a hero?”
“I don’t know. I sure don’t think of myself as a hero.”
“Really? What do you think of yourself as?”
“Just a regular guy. I mean, anyone who saw a woman being attacked, they wouldn’t just stand there. I just happened to have a helicopter.”
Carol flashed her best smile. It could even have been real. “Just a regular guy with a helicopter—I’m not sure everyone would agree. But there you have it, another New York Story. Back to you, Nate.”
Lou stepped forward. “Okay, we’re out.”
Jason looked at Carol. “Was that okay?” He felt good about it, and was really glad it was over, but worried about how it might look on TV.
“Sure, great,” she said, still smiling, “You’re a natural.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Are you going to take the traffic job?”
Jason wondered why she knew about that. He also noticed Carol had introduced a voice Jason decided to catalogue as “friendly-professional.”
“I don’t know—”
“A job like that opens a lot of doors.”
Carol stood up as her assistant arrived and the two of them talked quietly.
Jason walked away from the set, changing course to intercept Lou, who was walking in the opposite direction. He was looking for a little more debriefing. “You know, I was a little worried about—”
“Don’t worry about anything, it was great. And anything that wasn’t great, they’ll clean up in editing. Those guys are magicians.”
Lou never broke stride, continuing towards the control room. The man was in constant motion.
Jason turned back toward the set, but it was already being taken apart. Carol and her assistant were gone.
16
Jason got to the roof early. Still a little pumped up from the interview, he walked around a bit, cooling off in the breeze. Usually he looked south, finding the Woolworth Building and tracking the great interwar skyscrapers farther downtown. But it was an especially clear day, and he looked east, first to the horizon and then coming back across Queens in a failed attempt to pick out the apartment building he grew up in, which was less than eight miles away.
“Good to see you out there this morning.” It was Sammy, which took Jason by surprise. Sammy rarely drifted far from the booth. “I like to see you right back on that horse.”
Jason smiled. “I figure as long as I keep it off the streets, it won’t happen again.”
They started to walk in the general direction of the helicopter.
“You never know,” Sammy said after a moment. His voice was flat when he said it, missing the usual lift that hinted he could transition from talking to singing without missing a beat, even though it was impossible to imagine Sammy singing.
Jason stopped walking and looked at Sammy. “What do you mean by that?” Sammy didn’t meet Jason’s eyes, and he kept walking. “Accidents, they don’t happen just by accident. They need a little help,” he said, his voice almost back to normal.
“Not the piano story again, please,” Jason called out to Sammy, who was getting a bit ahead of him.
“You broke your fool arm doing that, didn’t you? You go around calling that an accident too, just cause you didn’t mean to do it.”
“This was different,” Jason protested.
“I know.” Sammy moved his feet a little more slowly, his head turned toward the Chrysler Building. Then he stopped and looked squarely at Jason. “Did I ever tell you how Robert Johnson died?”
“You did not know Robert Johnson,” Jason insisted. Sammy’s stories often placed him within the proximity of legendary figures, and Jason considered him to be a deeply honest man. But he had to draw the line somewhere.
“Now what makes you so dead certain I never made the acquaintance of Mr. Robert Johnson?”
“He was from central Mississippi, and you were all the way down south,” Jason said keenly, boxing Sammy in and showing off his command of geography at the same time. “And you told me the first train you ever saw was the one that took you to Detroit.”
“Very true, very true.… ’Course, that was where he was born. Died in Greenwood.”
“Yeah? Where’s that?” Jason asked reluctantly, knowing that Sammy must have had something good up his sleeve, and that he’d never heard of Greenwood.
“ ’Bout twelve miles south of my mama’s backyard.… But no, I never met the man.” His voice got serious again. “You know I’d never tell you anything that wasn’t true.”
“I know,” Jason said quietly. He felt guilty, but wasn’t sure why.
“I did have a friend worked at the Three Forks, though. You know, where he played his last gig. Saw the whole thing.”
“He was stabbed, right?”
“Poisoned. Mr. Son House was there. I know you’ve seen him—you told me you shook his hand once at the bus station outside of Newport—well there you were, one handshake from the night Robert Johnson died. You couldn’t tell it nowadays, but Mr. Son House was a giant back then, bigger than them all, and maybe seven, ten years older.
“Anyways, that night they play a little bit and dance a little bit and drink a little bit, and Robert, well, he had a wandering eye, kind of like that friend of yours you talk about. After a while someone passed Robert an open bottle of whiskey—no seal. Robert goes to drink, and Son House knocks it out of his hand. He says, boy, don’t ever take whiskey from the bottle unless you break the seal yourself. You break the seal, you know where your spirits are coming from. Well now, Robert was a young man, twenty-seven years, and didn’t like being talked to. Before you know it another open bottle is in his hand. Son doesn’t move this time, just stares at Robert, and Robert looks him right in the face, lifts the bottle, takes a long drink. Couple of minutes later, he falls, crawls outside, and dies.”
“They say he made a deal with the devil,” Jason added.
“Well, they’re wrong,” Sammy said flatly, using the same tone Jason used with people who talked about UFOs. “Jealous husband did it. And he didn’t howl at the moon, neither, just crawled outside and died in the dirt. Wasn’t nothing special about it. Only mystery is why it didn’t happen sooner.”
Sammy started walking again, this time straight for the helicopter. Bill was already there, leaning against the door from the stairs holding two attaché cases. When Bill saw them he went over to the helicopter and got in on the passenger side.
Jason and Sammy reached the helicopter, and Jason started the engine. He left the door open as it started to warm up.
“So what’s the lesson?” Jason said to Sammy over the increasing noise of the blades.
“Ain’t no lesson,” Sammy yelled back. “Just a story about accidents!”
The copter was good to go. Sammy stepped back, put his ear protectors on, and pulled the stays away. He stepped farther back from the helicopter, and looked at Jason, the wind rippling his light blue jacket.
“Let’s go, already,” Bill said to him.
Jason was about to lift off but stopped and turned his head to the side, as if trying to remember a forgotten name.
“Wait a sec,” he finally offered.
Bill watched while Jason hesitated, then unhooked his safety belts and trotted over to Sammy. Sammy pulled down his ear protectors, and Jason leaned over and shouted into Sammy’s ear. It was more than a couple of words, and Bill set down one of his cases, looked at his watch, and scanned the instrument panel. If there was a horn, he planned to honk it. Looking back over he saw that Sammy was nodding vigorously—a good sign, they were probably done. Jason trotted back to the copter and strapped himself in. Out on the roof Sammy was shaking his fist, the okay sign. Jason shook his fist back, and the helicopter lifted off.
A silence fell between Bill and Jason—and not their usual silence—this one wasn’t empty. Jason didn’t want to talk first, but unless he was willing to force the issue by flying in circles, he’d have to be the one to crack.
“Where to?” he finally asked.
“Queens. The parking lot behind Shea Stadium.”
“I think the Mets are out of town.”
“Could be, I don’t know. The way they draw, you’d never know the difference.”
They stopped talking again. It was tense, at least it seemed so to Jason. He took the stack of twenties from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to Bill.
“I think you dropped this. Sorry about the blood.”
Bill didn’t touch it. This was money nobody wanted, and with the economy the way it was, Jason figured that was a very bad sign.
“Keep it,” Bill said gruffly. “You earned it.”
“I don’t keep quiet for a living,” Jason responded, maintaining his cool in a way he once wouldn’t have.
“No?” There was an edge in Bill’s voice.
“No. I keep quiet when I have nothing to say.”
Bill exhaled, and his shoulders rolled back a bit. It had never occurred to Jason that Bill was worried he’d go running to the cops or something.
“Listen…I don’t know.…” Bill’s tone was apologetic. “We went down pretty fast. The people I work for, these people, let’s just say they’re pretty serious about their privacy.”
“Aren’t we all?”
Jason looked out the window. He didn’t have anything against Bill, really, but he knew he couldn’t keep going like this. He didn’t care what Morgan was up to, but he was getting paid to be a part of it, and that wouldn’t fly. He had to be all the way in or not in at all.
They flew over a huge cemetery, and Jason surveyed the congested highways below. The traffic was crawling on the Grand Central Parkway and the Long Island Expressway, but cars were actually moving on the Van Wyck, and Jason had this ridiculous urge to call Dave Edwards with the good news.
“Look at that,” Jason said, pointing at the cemetery. “When I was a little kid, we only came out to the boroughs for a reason. I thought it was just the place they buried people from the City.”
“The parkway looks like one long funeral procession today,” Bill observed.
“The city will never have the money to fix these roads properly.” Jason decided to float his only remaining political position past Bill. “I think they should just ban all the cars from Manhattan,” he said nonchalantly. The theory was actually more sophisticated than that, with provisions for buses and taxis, and maybe permits for resident owners. But he didn’t want to confuse the issue.
“It�
��s got nothing to do with the City,” Bill countered.
“What do you mean? The City’s broke, so it can’t afford to fix the roads once and for all. So they just keep patching them up—running to stand still. Politicians, they can only think about getting by in the short run, even if they’re screwing the future.”
“It’s not money, it’s politics,” Bill explained. “Highway money is federal. The Feds fucking hate New York. Over there—set down over there. Not the main lot, but the smaller one inside that gated area.”
Jason brought the helicopter right over Shea Stadium. He thought about getting down really low—low enough to see the grass move, but it was just a thought. He landed gently in an empty parking lot behind center field. There was no one in sight, and probably no one around; the Mets were at the beginning of a long road trip.
As usual, Bill instructed Jason to set down about 100 yards away from a waiting car. It was a good-sized car, but this one wasn’t a limo. Bill grabbed one of the cases and trotted over to the car. A short man in his mid-sixties got out. He was alone and had a gentle face. He looked more like a grandfather than a businessman, or a crook, or whatever it was he must have been. Bill reached out with the case, but the older man put his hand on Bill’s shoulder and started talking to him. He talked calmly and at length, putting his arm around Bill, who might have looked concerned; Jason couldn’t tell from where he was sitting. He guided Bill into the car, and was still talking as the door closed. Jason couldn’t see inside.
Jason looked over at the stadium, then at the car, then back at the stadium again.
Finally he hopped out of the helicopter and walked toward the stadium. He’d never been on the field before, and this was his chance. He found an opening in the large outer wall, which revealed a yard and then a second wall beyond that—but no doors. There were a few crates lying around, Jason grabbed two and stacked them together near the wall and stood on them, leaning on the inner wall for balance. It was the center field fence, and Jason stared out at the entire stadium in front of him. It was completely empty. The seats were folded and the tarp covered the infield.
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