Silencing Sam

by Julie Kramer

  That apparently settled it for him, too. “You call me when you want to have a normal courtship. The kind where we can hold hands someplace besides a dark movie theater.”

  “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate,” I said, thinking Strother Martin’s 1967 quote from Cool Hand Luke might lighten things up.

  Garnett didn’t respond, just turned and walked toward the crime scene without looking back. So either he didn’t know the line, or he was too mad to play our game.

  I climbed into the van, telling Malik to head to the station and not ask any questions. I didn’t want to visit my parents in this foul frame of mind. This was becoming a very bad day. I tried to keep perspective by telling myself it could be worse.

  Malik was also in a bad mood because the station had implemented an overtime freeze; usually he racked up enough overtime during a ratings month so that his wife could buy a new household appliance. With the cost cutbacks, they’d have to settle for a two-slice toaster.

  When my cell phone started working again, I called the farm to tell my parents we had to rush back to make deadline.

  “Any ideas about the dead body?” I asked my dad. “Him being a stranger nixes any theory of a neighbor angry over a ruined view or jealous they missed out on the wind money.”

  Unless they were working together, I suddenly thought.

  “Nobody around here knows what to think anymore,” Dad answered. “Nothing like this has happened here before.”

  That sure was the truth. This environment grew crops, not news. There, when someone asks, “Where’s the beef?” they actually are talking about cattle, not substance. Same thing with pork. They mean pigs, not government waste.

  To keep my mind off my fight with Garnett, I wrote the story on the drive back. I’d been told I was the lead. And for the first time all day, I smiled.

  ((SOPHIE LEAD CU))

  A DEAD BODY IS THE LATEST

  CLUE IN THE STRANGE

  BOMBING OF WIND TURBINES

  IN SOUTHERN MINNESOTA.

  RILEY SPARTZ BRINGS BACK

  THIS REPORT.

  Plugging in a set of earbuds, I played the interviews back from Malik’s camera and pulled sound bites in the car, complete with time code.

  I transcribed Gil’s answer about hearing a loud noise and going for his gun. I liked the part about how he didn’t think anything was wrong until his dog found human remains.

  “Make sure you use a shot of him and the dog,” I told Malik. “Noreen will like that.”

  ((RILEY, TRACK))

  SO FAR, INVESTIGATORS ARE

  KEEPING QUIET ABOUT

  POSSIBLE MOTIVES FOR THE

  BOMBINGS.

  I closed the piece by saying that no means of transportation had been found for the dead man, thus leading to speculation he might not have been working alone.

  CHAPTER 24

  The next morning I was staring at the suspects chart in my office, trying to figure out a good way to cross paths with the last name on my Sam Pierce suspects list—rich widower Tad Fallon—when an announcement came overhead asking all news staff to report to the assignment desk immediately.

  Our general manager stood in the middle of the newsroom next to a guy who looked about twelve years old, except he wore a suit and tie. Probably to command respect. Noreen stood on his other side with an inscrutable look on her face.

  I had a bad feeling that our mystery man might be a new anchor, brought in to shake things up in a failing economy. But I was wrong. It was much worse.

  “I’d like everyone to know just how lucky we are here at Channel 3,” the GM said. “We’ve brought in one of the hottest news consultants in the industry to help us blend old media with new.”

  Then he introduced Fitz Opheim, explaining how he’d become a legend turning around an East Coast, medium-market station practically overnight. “We expect his uncanny instincts to guide us through these turbulent times of ratings change. Feel free to ask any questions.”

  The GM applauded his own remarks, prompting Noreen to join in, more enthusiastically than the rest of us. News consultants are often the bane of journalism, and I was more comfortable taking a wait-and-see attitude before expressing glee.

  Then Fitz shared his vision. “In troubled times, happy news rules. People want to feel better after the day’s news.”

  His voice was squeaky. At first I thought he must be nervous, but as he continued to describe how viewers watch the news for reassurance, I realized his natural pitch resembled that of Jay Leno.

  I also realized we had a major philosophical difference on the role of media. “I thought people watched the news to be informed,” I said.

  “That idea doesn’t hold anymore,” he said. “With so many places to get information, viewers are overwhelmed with choices. To make sure they choose Channel 3, we need to give them hometown heroes and happy endings. Then their own lives will feel more stable.”

  Fitz paused, like he was waiting for feedback. The GM, Noreen, and much of the rest of the staff offered another round of applause. I couldn’t bring myself to fake it, so I pretended I had a cell call and fumbled to turn off my phone.

  “But we’ll still be covering the news, won’t we?” I asked.

  “Certainly,” he answered. “Crime. Politics. Those remain an essential core of television news. But instead of depressing viewers, we want to start offering them hope. Mitigating bad news with good news.”

  “Like the bad news is someone was killed today. The good news is it wasn’t you?”

  “Not that obvious. More subtle. For example, yes, there was a murder, but overall violent crime is down.”

  “But what if violent crime is actually up?”

  “Then we empower viewers with ways they can stay safe. We play on their core fears.”

  He could tell not all the staff were following him. So he explained that core fears are universal terrors we all share. For example, dying in a house fire.

  “We can use reporter involvement to show them how to get out alive. Crawling on the floor. Staying under the smoke. Feeling the doorknob for heat.” He paused for dramatic effect. “We give them news they can use.”

  That wasn’t such a novel concept; news organizations have been using that News You Can Use technique for years. So I nodded my head like I was a team player and wondered how much the station was paying this guy.

  Then he talked about how on-air staff—reporters and anchors—needed to reach out to viewers with social networking.

  “Like partying?” one of the sports guys asked.

  “Cyber-partying,” Fitz answered. “I want everyone to join Facebook to attract younger viewers. They are the ones who advertisers value. This way that demographic will feel more in touch with Channel 3 talent. That’s the first step to breaking down the wall between us and our audience.”

  Such sites allow people to share pictures and personal trivia with other members who became their cyber “friends.” I’d purposely steered away for a variety of reasons: the MySpace suicide, in which a teenage girl in Missouri was bullied by neighbors posing as a teenage boy and subsequently killed herself; just plain old suspicion about computer hackers; and a simple desire to keep a privacy wall between myself and the viewers.

  But Fitz assured us safeguards existed, and he’d already discussed implementing this system with Noreen, and she was on board big-time. Our boss gave a thumbs-up but didn’t say anything.

  “She’ll go into more details with you later, but keep in mind, your next job review will take into account how many Facebook friends you accumulate, especially in our viewing area.”

  I already felt job reviews focused too much on story count and not enough on story quality. To hear that my value as a journalist was going to be judged on the number of superficial “friends” I made online seemed insulting. Plus, it was likely to be a big time-suck. More time online meant less time in the field, scrapping for exclusives.

  Maybe Fitz could read my mind; more li
kely he noticed me rolling my eyes … but he looked right at me while explaining that social networking sites would be a new way of building sources and breaking news.

  “This will be the future of journalism.” Then he cautioned us: “Channel 3 has a glorious history, but you can’t live on your past accolades.”

  We all knew the motto of any news manager: What Have You Done for Me Lately? And I certainly didn’t need Fitz lecturing me on the similarities between the word “news” and “new.”

  But Fitz recognized that television is a visual medium, and he was not all talk and no action. He had a live demonstration planned for us, with props. Suddenly two men, wearing coveralls, carrying a ladder and buckets of paint, walked into the meeting.

  “To symbolize a fresh start,” Fitz said, “we are painting the newsroom!”

  The newsroom walls certainly needed paint. But the policy of most television stations is to not care how anything looks that doesn’t show on the air. In fact, you can often see a visible line near the anchor set of new and old paint that illustrates where the camera shot ends. So while it was surprising to me that Channel 3 would spend money on a purely cosmetic change, I didn’t particularly care one way or another.

  That changed a couple hours later, when Xiong stuck his head in my office to complain that the painters were advancing on the green room with their rollers.

  “Hey, you can’t paint in there,” I shouted as I raced down the hall to protect the signatures that symbolized Channel 3’s collection of famous guests.

  The crew had already rolled a couple of strips of fresh green across the wall by the Hollywood mirror. Part of former vice president Walter Mondale’s name was gone. So was baseball legend Kirby Puckett’s.

  “Stop,” I pleaded.

  “We’re just following orders,” one of the workers insisted as he pulled the dripping roller from the tray.

  Fitz heard the commotion and came to see what the fuss was about. Without hesitation, he insisted the deed be finished.

  “Channel 3 will make new history. There’ll be new names on that wall before you know it.”

  Walter Cronkite’s signature was the next to go under the roller.

  I found myself wishing there was a gossip columnist I could call to shame my employer. Unable to bear watching Paul Well-stone’s name disappear, I left.

  The last thing I heard was Fitz asking Xiong how many Face-book friends he’d acquired so far.

  CHAPTER 25

  I kept walking ’til I reached my car, then drove west out of downtown Minneapolis to the old-money neighborhood of Minnetonka. I typed an address I’d pulled from property tax records into my GPS, because the tangled streets around Minnesota’s largest urban lake were a maze to outsiders like me.

  The mansions on the water, those that could be seen from the road, conformed to an elite standard of stone, brick, and cedar. The one I was seeking was surrounded by a high iron fence. I parked across from the locked gate framed by two concrete statues of lions and stared at Tad Fallon’s estate. Trees blocked much of the acreage, but I noted that the cobblestone road turned into a circular driveway in front of a massive structure.

  I considered my tongue glib but couldn’t figure a way to talk myself inside through the intercom. And thinking about it, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to get inside if Fallon was a killer. So rather than press the red speaker button and give away my position, I pulled around the corner, where I could still observe anyone entering or leaving the stately home.

  My hope was Fallon would leave in a fancy car, and I’d follow and then engage him in public once he reached his destination. A long-shot plan because parked cars attract attention in posh neighborhoods. But since I’d driven all this way, I decided to wait.

  Ten minutes passed. Nothing. Fifteen. I started trolling the Internet on my cell phone, reading background about him, his deceased wife, and their various businesses.

  Her obituary summed up their public lives. He and Phedra married and merged two very different Minnesota fortunes of new money and old. Her family had come from timber, then started a grocery empire. His owned a nice chunk of a lucrative medical patent. They’d attended the same exclusive prep school. No children. As a hobby, they raised pedigreed bulldogs.

  Happiness eluded them.

  No cause of death was listed in the paid newspaper obit, but I’d seen the death certificate. Officially it concluded accidental poisoning by overdose of prescription drugs. But plenty of high-society and law enforcement sources thought her husband had interceded to keep the word “suicide” off the paperwork.

  Tad blamed a column Sam wrote a few days before her death, alleging Phedra had a drinking problem.

  And while Tad still donated money to all the various charities they’d embraced, he no longer attended any of the gala events. Society crowds considered him an intriguing recluse. That made any hope of following him even more of a long shot, because most of his vehicles remained garaged.

  But I could relate to losing a spouse and was optimistic Tad and I might connect once we connected.

  I was contemplating approaching the fortress, posing as someone in need of a good bulldog, when a squad car pulled up behind me. I rolled down my window as the policeman approached.

  “Can I help you, Officer?” I always liked to get the first word in.

  “May I see some ID?”

  “Have I committed any offenses?” Journalists also like asking questions.

  “Do you have a driver’s license?”

  I considered balking, maybe pressing him further on whether I’d broken any laws, but I figured he’d already run my vehicle plates and had my name, so I handed over my identification.

  “Riley Spartz,” he said. “You that TV reporter?”

  I nodded.

  “What brings you out here?”

  I had been there about an hour and figured a neighbor considered me suspicious and called the cops. It often happened on surveillance. More often with men parked in residential areas. Staking out a house was easier if there was a garage sale down the block. Or perhaps an open house under way. But this was such a swanky street, strangers wouldn’t be tolerated.

  “Just enjoying the neighborhood,” I answered. “Might want to live here someday.”

  The officer looked over my older-model Toyota and shook his head in doubt. Even though I was parked legally, I didn’t want to make a big deal out of my presence, so I told him I was just leaving.

  He wished me a pleasant day and followed me to their city limits.

  When I stuck my head in the green room back at the station, the walls looked like the Kentucky bluegrass sod on the Minnesota Twins’ new outdoor baseball stadium.

  And Clay Burrel’s name’s was the first to decorate the Channel 3 turf.

  I opened a Facebook account to keep my job.

  It was discouraging to see that Clay was already an established player on the social network. He had hundreds of “friends” and had made a big deal out of friending the rest of the newsroom—including me.

  Ditched by his wife, alone in a strange city, I could see how cyber friends might help fill an empty gap for him. To be honest, I preferred flesh-and-blood company. But since Noreen was monitoring our friends inventory, I didn’t feel I had much choice.

  Garnett and I hadn’t talked since our fight. He was clearly waiting for me to apologize. And I did feel some guilt about the way our conversation had ended. Still tormented by Hugh’s death, still feeling judged about my marriage, I had overreacted to him wanting to meet my parents.

  I reached for my phone to call him and grovel. When he took my call, I hoped that meant we could pretend the other day hadn’t happened. I started off by explaining my latest workplace dilemma.

  “Maybe you could join Facebook and be my cyber friend?” I asked.

  He nixed that idea. “I’m not content being merely your friend, much less cyber friend. You want online buddies, click on that Clay Burrel guy.”

  “I though
t you considered him a jerk.”

  “I do.” Then he unveiled his strategy. “Remember, Riley, keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.”

  “Very funny. Al Pacino, The Godfather: Part Two, 1974.”

  The year Richard Nixon resigned. The year newspaper heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped. The year I was born.

  So I clicked the computer mouse on Clay Burrel’s name and made him my first Facebook friend.

  “Done,” I told Garnett. “Now are we cool? Can we be normal again?”

  “Not until we take the next step.”

  Next step? I hoped he wasn’t hinting at shopping for a ring. While I didn’t want us fighting, I also didn’t want us married. Or at least I didn’t think I did. But he had a different measure of our relationship in mind.

  “Not until I meet your folks,” he said, clarifying the terms.

  Then he hung up. And when I tried calling back, he didn’t answer.

  CHAPTER 26

  Doing laundry, I found the business card my parents got at Sam’s funeral, so I went to the man’s corporate office the next morning, asking to see him. No, I explained to the receptionist, I didn’t have an appointment, but I was willing to wait. After all, the building was only about five blocks from the station.

  When I told her I’d come for some advice, she assumed it was financial advice, since that was his job, and asked me to take a seat. After making a call, she stepped down a hallway. Minutes later, she told me it could be a while, and it might be better to come back another day.

  “I don’t mind waiting.” I smiled to assure her I wouldn’t be a problem.

  This was not an unfamiliar technique in news gathering. It’s the strategy of Sitting Until They Feel Sorry for You. If that doesn’t work, you Sit Until They’ll Do Anything to Get You to Leave.

  Rookie newsies sometimes worry about causing scenes, but that only happens if business owners escalate things. They may threaten to call the cops but seldom do. The downside to having police chase away the media is that then owners have to explain to their business neighbors, customers, or employees why the media was there in the first place. And those discussions can sometimes be touchy. This wasn’t one of those times, but bystanders can’t always be sure what to believe.