by Al Roker
But it was our eccentric, usually genial meteorologist, Professor Lloyd Sebastian, transformed by Lo and Jolly’s magic into Randolph Scott’s crusty old sidekick, Gabby Hayes, who made me realize something was definitely amiss. Lloyd approached me, even more sour-faced than Gabby, and said, “I thought we were friends, Billy.”
“We are friends, Lloyd.”
“Actions speak louder than words,” he said, before returning to his green screen.
What the what?
The show’s closing theme had barely stopped playing when Kiki informed me that Gretchen Di Voss wanted me in the conference room immediately.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“Her assistant didn’t say. But …”
“What?”
“I’ve heard grumbling about … you and Gin.” Kiki looked at me expectantly.
“What about us?”
“I assumed you’d know.”
“Well, I don’t.”
She shrugged. “I imagine Gretchen will clear it up,” she said.
Chapter
SEVEN
It was Rudy Gallagher who did the clearing.
He and Gretch were in the conference room with the old man himself, the company’s CEO Commander Vernon Di Voss. None of them seemed too happy to see me. I didn’t think it was because my costume reminded them of Herb Jeffries. Gretch was scowling. The commander, in obvious discomfort, studied an unlighted cigar as intently as if it contained tomorrow’s overnights.
Rudy looked like he was about to start foaming at the mouth.
“Who the hell told you to stick your nose in this company’s business?” he roared.
“What are you talking about?”
“You’re gonna deny you put her up to it?”
“Put who up to what?” I asked.
“I’d worked out a reasonable deal with Fred and Hildy,” Gretchen said. “And then you had to put your oar in the water.”
Fred and Hildy. Gin’s agent and manager. My nose. My oar. I was starting to get the drift of things. “This is about the conversation I had with Gin last night at the Bistro?”
“Conversation?” Rudy yelled. “I’d call it a goddamned battle plan”.
“That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it, Rudy? All I did was listen to what she had to say and nod from time to time.”
“That was some fu—” Rudy glanced at the old man and self-censored. “Some bloody expensive nodding.”
“The little lady hardballed us but good,” the commander said, shifting his attention from the cigar to me.
“How hard?” I asked.
There was a sudden silence. Gretch broke it. “It’s no longer a secret. Fifteen million a year for the next three years.”
I blinked at her in disbelief. “Fifteen million dollars? Nobody’s worth that kind of loot, unless they’re wearing a sports jersey and testing negative.”
“You’re beautiful, Blessing,” Rudy said. “First you instruct that little bi—witch to hold us up, then you have the gall to criticize Gretchen for making the deal.”
“I didn’t tell Gin to hold you up. And I’m not criticizing anybody, except maybe you for calling your very valuable superstar a bi—witch.”
“It’s not just the fifteen mil,” Rudy continued, as if I hadn’t spoken. “It’s what this does to the budget of a show I’m exec-producing. Everybody thinks the contract bar has been raised. They must’ve speed-dialed their agents as soon as the word spread. I’ve been fielding calls for the last hour, explaining that nobody else is getting a bump.
“But I do know how we’re gonna save a few bucks. You’re through here, Blessing. Pack up your pots and pans and get the hell out.”
“Hold on there, Rudy,” the commander said. “Let’s just cool down a little and let Billy explain himself.”
I gave them a quick rundown of my chat with Gin. “If I’d mentioned the words ‘fifteen million dollars,’ they would have stuck in my throat, Commander, especially considering what I’m being paid.”
The old man gave me his paternal grin. “Well, I’m not sure your participation in this matter merits a raise, but neither do I think it merits a dismissal.”
He turned to his daughter. “Gretchen, my sweet, I hope you’ve alerted Heck Cochran about the new contract.” Hector Cochran was the VP in charge of promotion and public relations. “I want Gin on every talk show in the free world, even Howard Stern’s, and I expect to see her charming freckled mug smiling back at me from magazine racks everywhere. In other words, I will be quite vexed if we do not get a dollar-per-dollar value back in publicity.”
It was his exit speech, but before he and Gretchen could make it to the door, Rudy said, “Just a second, Commander. That’s it? Blessing cost this company millions and we just blow it off?”
“Weren’t you listening, Rudy?” the old man said. “Billy just told us that he did not advise Gin to ask for more money.”
“You believe that?”
“You’re a relative newcomer to our operation, my boy,” the commander told him. “Billy’s been with us long enough he’s like one of the family. Shouldn’t one trust members of one’s family?”
As soon as the commander and his daughter had exited the conference room, Rudy spun around facing me and said through clenched teeth, “Well, you’re not part of my fuckin’ family, Blessing. I’m disowning your ass. You can forget about the Food School pilot.”
“It’s your show, but Lily and I have worked out some of the kinks and—”
“I also plan to take a long, hard look at Blessing’s in the Kitchen,” he said, interrupting me. “There are definitely some changes to be made there. Maybe we should get one of the hot new chefs to share the kitchen, one of the shaved-head muscle boys who do tae kwon do while filleting a sole. Bring in a younger demo.”
He gave me a zero-mirth grin. “The old man won’t let me can your ass, but there are lots of ways to cook a goose, right, chef?”
“That’s true, Rudy,” I said. “But unless you know what you’re doing, you just might get burned.” A careless comment that would come back to haunt me.
Chapter
EIGHT
Gin’s new proactive positioning on the morning show did away with the spare moments in the past when we’d both been free to do quick coffee catch-ups between segments. And as soon as the closing credits rolled each day, Heck Cochran’s people whisked her off on publicity errands. So after the first week, I stopped trying to link up with her to find out why she’d embroiled me in her now-infamous contract negotiations.
Time had made the point moot, anyway. My on-camera associates apparently had been arm-wrestled by Rudy into staying satisfied with their admittedly lucrative lots. And their old self-involved but generally pleasant attitudes returned. Even Rudy seemed to have reached the stage where he could look at me without frowning.
As best I could tell, he’d not followed through on his threat to banish me from the Food School pilot or to mess with Blessing’s in the Kitchen. I suspected the commander may have had something to do with that. Or maybe Rudy had just been too busy with other matters to bother. He certainly seemed distracted.
By the time I finally did bump into Gin one morning, minutes before the start of WUA!, her contract was old news. The blogosphere blaze had cooled down and her picture no longer graced newspaper front pages, though the tag “The Fifteen-Million-Dollar Woman,” bestowed on her by the Post, lived on.
“It’s been a while since we talked,” I said.
“I know, Billy. It’s been so hectic. But I love it.”
At six-forty-three a.m. Gin was glowing like the midday sun. And it wasn’t the makeup. Her boyfriend, Ted Parkhurst, was a lucky buck but also, I thought, something of an idiot for continuing to work on other continents when his rep as a journalist was such that he could probably have found something closer to Manhattan to write about.
“I’m getting everything I’ve always wanted, Billy,” she said. “And it’s all because of you.” S
he warmed me with a look that, to my jaded eyes, came damn close to adoration. “My guru.”
“That’s very flattering, Gin. But I really didn’t do anything. I certainly didn’t tell you to hit them for fifteen mil.”
“You gave me confidence.”
“Didn’t you tell me it wasn’t about money?” I said.
“Well, it wasn’t when we talked. But then Gretchen seemed really set on keepin’ me on Wake Up! She asked me what it would take for me to stick aroun’ for another three years, and I kinda flashed on Katie Couric gettin’ fifteen million from CBS and thought, heck, she’s only on for a half-hour every evenin’.”
“Gretchen didn’t even blink?” I asked.
“Oh, she went through the usual. ‘There’s not enough in the budget.’ ‘These are times of economic uncertainty.’ Bla-bla-bla. That’s when my team started remindin’ Gretchen of my TVQ and threatenin’ her with the possibility of my poppin’ up opposite WUA! on The Early Show or Good Morning America. Then they played with the numbers a little. The thing that finally turned the trick was my agreein’ to read ad copy.”
Way back when John Chancellor anchored the Today show, he established a rule that anchors remain apart from any form of commercial activity. He thought it undercut their effectiveness as objective observers of daily events. Other network news executives agreed, apparently, because it became a sort of industry standard. But that razor-thin line, like the one separating reportage from opinion, has worn away.
“So now you’re making twice as much as Charlie Gibson,” I said.
Gin beamed. “And three times as much as macho-man Lance. And you know what, Billy? With the money comes respect.”
“Who’d have thought?” I said.
“I definitely would not be doing the interview with Carl Kelstoe this morning if I weren’t the fifteen-million-dollar woman. And I owe it all to you.” She gave me a brief hug and literally danced across the floor to get ready for the start of the show.
There seemed to be no way of convincing her that I’d had little to do with her good fortune. It would have served no purpose for me to mention that she’d unknowingly put my career in jeopardy. She was floating on air, and I didn’t want her to feel any guilt if Rudy did decide to cook my goose.
I was surprised that he wasn’t on the set, spreading his usual malcontent. When I mentioned it to Kiki, she said, “I sensed there was a lightness to the day. Was there something you wanted from him?”
“Not in this lifetime,” I said, and left my dressing room to check the progress of the barbecued ribs I’d be playing with near the end of the hour.
Gin’s interview with Carl Kelstoe, the president of Touchstone International, considered by some to be the world’s largest security company, took place shortly after the news segment that kicked off the second hour of the show.
Touchstone mercenaries working for this country had been accused of starting a riot eleven months ago in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province that resulted in the deaths of seven NATO soldiers and five Afghan soldiers, with nineteen pedestrians left wounded. Kelstoe was making the rounds on the news shows, doing public-relations damage control, before heading to D.C. to appear before a congressional committee studying the cause of the riot.
Watching the interview from the control booth, I was fascinated by the merc master. He must have been six-four, with a crew-cut king-size head atop a thick neck and a body that resembled Superman’s, clothed in a gray gabardine suit that had been perfectly tailored to fit his v-shaped physique. According to stereotype, a guy that big should have been slow and maybe even a little mentally deficient. But Kelstoe was agile, of both body and mind.
As Camera 2 zoomed in for a close-up, the monitor picked up eyes so light brown they were almost golden. Kelstoe focused them on Gin as if she was the center of his universe.
Looking at his rugged mug, I guessed that most men would want to be his friend and most women would at least think about being his lover. Thanks to my misspent youth, I had a different take. I pegged him right off as a sociopath, the kind Shakespeare said “would smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
In his seemingly guileless way, and in a whispery voice that might have been distinctive if Clint Eastwood had never gone to Italy, Kelstoe told Gin and our viewers that it would have been impossible for his expertly trained men to have acted the way the province officials claimed.
“The incident occurred just weeks after the end of Operation Mountain Thrust,” he said, “and there was a high degree of confusion and tension in the province.” His was the soft but mesmerizing voice of a snake oil salesman shrewd enough to make it sound like the voice of reason. “The so-called ‘innocent civilian’ my men had stopped was in fact an armed Taliban insurgent who was there to cause trouble. My men stopped him, ordered him to surrender his weapon. He refused, shouting and cursing them. It was a tense situation. And then someone in the crowd—I think we can safely assume it was another Taliban member—threw a rock that hit one of my men. His gun went off and regrettably killed the man they had stopped.
“That’s when all hell broke loose. I’m sorry—can I say ‘hell’ on television?”
“It’s your story,” Gin said.
“Well, anyway, the crowd started stoning my guys, and two of them fell. Their weapons were yanked from their hands and used on the arriving troops. It was a terrible tragedy, but I’m not sure what else my guys could have done once that rock was thrown.”
At that point Lance would probably have closed down the interview and wished Kelstoe well. Gin may have done that, too, a few weeks ago. But no longer. Not since she’d become the Fifteen-Million-Dollar Woman.
“It’s been reported that your mercenary soldier fired the shot before the rock was thrown, that it was thrown because he’d used his gun on a man who was doing nothing more incendiary than brushing against him on a narrow walkway.”
“I’ve had over a year to investigate this,” Kelstoe replied, “to study exactly what transpired every single second of that deadly event. If I had discovered one thing to make me believe any of my men were responsible for that tragedy, I would say so.”
“The congressional committee may see things differently,” Gin said. “Am I right in assuming that whichever way the decision goes, you could wind up losing the lucrative contract Touchstone has with our State Department?”
“I don’t see that happening.” Kelstoe’s smile started to harden, and his whispery voice showed a hint of anger.
“But you have lost important contracts since the incident, right?” Gin asked.
“I’m not sure exactly what you’re referencing. …”
“I’m thinking of Markham Books,” Gin said. “Until recently, the publisher has used Touchstone to ensure the safety of its more controversial authors on their book tours. But when ex–Mossad agent Goyal Aharon arrives later this week to promote his debut spy thriller, your main competitor, InterTec, will be guarding him. Isn’t this a result of the investigation into Touchstone?”
That wiped the smile from Kelstoe’s face. “It’s just business,” he replied tersely. “You win some and you lose some. With our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and an unmatched success rate, we’ve got quite a lot on our plate right now.”
“But you can’t deny that a negative report from the committee would clean that plate a little?”
Kelstoe glared at her and, just for an instant, dropped his protective shield and exposed a naked ruthlessness. Then the shield snapped back in place and he said, “More likely, when Congress hears the full story, Touchstone will be needing a nice, big platter.”
I’d had enough of the dishware metaphor, and of him. As I turned away, I saw that the commander had made one of his rare visits to the control booth. He was staring at Kelstoe with such intensity that I asked if he was all right.
It took him a few seconds to break loose from his thoughts. “I’m fine,” he said with uncharacteristic annoyance. “Why shouldn’t I be? And where the he
ll is Rudy?”
Ah, if we’d only known.
Chapter
NINE
“I’m sorry, Billy, sorry I hurt Bridget, sorry I let you down,” Juan Lorinda said with what appeared to be sincerity. We were in my office at the restaurant several hours shy of the time Juan was hoping to be shaking and stirring his first cocktails of the evening at the bar downstairs. He’d certainly prepped for the job. His cheeks were clean of stubble, his brown eyes bright and imploring. His hair was freshly cut close to the scalp. His shirt was starched and a brilliant white; the pleats of his black trousers were razor-sharp. I caught the scent of bay rum in the air.
It had been two weeks since he’d slapped my waitress and his former girlfriend, Bridget Innes. He’d said he wanted to “spend some time getting my head back on straight” before returning to work. The two weeks had been his annual paid vacation. If he took a third, he’d be on his own.
“You sure you’re ready?” I asked. “As much as our customers might enjoy a little violence with their pear martinis, I don’t want any more of it.”
“I … I know. It was … It won’t happen again.”
“Bridget gave me her version of the situation. I never did hear yours.”
He cleared his throat and sat straighter in the chair. “No big story. I jus’ had feelings for her. I have feelings for her. But she don’t have the same feelings for me anymore. She’s makin’ it with some other dude. And I know I got to get past that.”
“Identifying the problem is a good first step,” I said. “But I want you to be straight with me. And yourself. Getting past a busted romance can take a while.”