[Tom Reed and Walt Sydowski 04.0] No Way Back

by Rick Mofina

  “Who can tell us what Thomas Jefferson meant when he said...”

  Reed couldn’t recall the last time he had come to Zachary’s school. Ann usually took care of all the parent-teacher stuff.

  He blinked at the murals on the hall walls under student renderings of the Stars and Stripes, the California state flag, the city flag. The theme was “Our Nation Is Great Because of…” Color photos of smiling eleven and twelve-year-olds beamed from their handwritten papers on topics of Love, Truth, Friendship, Freedom, and Courage. Reed stopped. Zach’s face smiled from his paper on Courage. How would he tell him?

  They came to the small lobby of the main office where a tall, silver-haired woman in a coral pantsuit, holding her folded glasses in one hand, Zach’s file in the other, greeted them with concern on her face.

  “Hello, I’m Lenore Lord, Zachary’s principal. Can you tell me what this is all about?”

  “We’ll tell you more when we know more,” McDaniel said.

  “Should I be concerned with the other students?” Her brow creased.

  “This is a police matter that only involves one student.”

  “Is it Zachary’s mother, Ann, Mr. Reed? Is she hurt?”

  “I don’t know much.”

  “Does this have anything to do with the emergency north of the park? Some teachers in the lounge said there’d been a shooting.”

  “We really can’t divulge any details,” McDaniel said.

  “I see.” The principal’s attention went to McDaniel’s badge. “And you’re with the FBI. Perhaps I should talk to the San Francisco police.”

  “Ms. Lord, I’d like to see my son now.”

  “This way.”

  They followed her into the labyrinth of administration offices, before stopping at the final door.

  “Give me five minutes alone with him,” Reed said before he entered.

  Zach was on a sofa, hands clasped between his knees, surprise blooming on his face when he saw Reed. The parent who never came to school.

  “Dad?”

  Setting eyes on his son, Reed saw how much he looked like Ann. It came upon him full force, like a dagger piercing his heart.

  “Hey there, Zach.”

  “Why are you here?” Zach stood.

  “It’s okay, you can sit down.”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  “No, you’re not in trouble.” He put his hand on Zach’s knee. “I’m going to take you home.”

  “Home? What for? Where’s Mom?”

  “Zach, I’m going to need your help on something, something very important.”

  “I don’t understand, Dad.”

  “Son, it’s your mother.”

  “Mom?” He blinked. “Mom? What? Is she all right?”

  “We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Dad?” His chin crumpled. “Where is she? What happened, Dad? Where’s Mom?”

  After Reed told him everything, Zach stared at the wall with the flag, the president’s picture, the governor’s picture.

  “Son, it’s very, very serious. It’s a bad situation. The FBI are going to take us home in case Mom calls, or there’s new information. They’re getting Grandma in Berkeley and bringing her to our place right away to wait with us. Do you understand?”

  “She was buying you a present.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Mom. I heard her talking on the phone the other day. She had a surprise present to pick up today at the jewelry store. It was for you.”

  “I know that now.”

  Reed put his arm around Zach’s shoulder. “We have to be prepared, son. We have to hope for the best that she’s going to be all right, that maybe they just needed her car. But we also have to be prepared for anything, okay? You understand?”

  Zach was at that awkward age, that period of passage from boyhood into adolescence just before the intense years to manhood. Yet it soothed Reed to feel his son’s arms clamp around him. He needed a hug too.

  “I’m scared, Dad.” Tears rolled down Zach’s cheeks.

  “Let’s go, son.”

  They were joined by McDaniel when they left the school and hurried down the steps to the car. For a second Zach was overcome by the gravity of the situation brought on by the sight of the San Francisco police and second FBI car with its dash-mounted cherry flashing. He flung his arms around his father. At that moment Reed looked across the street, into the lens of the sole TV news camera shooting from the side of an SUV that didn’t have any station logo on it.

  After McDaniel drove off with Reed and Zach, the woman turned to the cameraman.

  “Did you see how the kid’s arms went tight around his dad? The emotion in the kid’s little face with his father next to the FBI agent? Did you get all that?”

  “Got it.”

  “It’s just so freaking good.” Contorting her face before her compact mirror, she engaged in a few touch-ups. Eyes, cheeks. “That’s just terrific. It just keeps getting better.” She smiled at herself and the prospect of her career skyrocketing.

  10

  At the edge of the Tenderloin District, just short of the promise of gentrification, but beyond the sidewalks dotted with syringes and islands of vomit, is San Francisco’s newest TV news bureau.

  Take the creaking stairs of the old Paradise, the aging hotel that morphed into an office building now called Golden Boulevard Plaza. Go to the third floor. Head for the rear and the dark green wooden door fractured by years of police raids. Check out the sign, WORLDWIDE NEWS NOW.

  That was the local flag of the new international tabloid TV show headquartered in London. Trafficking in celeb dish, scandal, gruesome crime, and tragedy, Worldwide aired successfully to some ninety million viewers in thirty-six countries including the U.S., where it was struggling to carve itself a share in the planet’s most lucrative market. To no one’s surprise, exclusive dramatic video footage, obtained by any of its bureaus, routinely activated cell and bedside home phones up the corporate masthead in time zones around the globe.

  That was the case in the minutes after the San Francisco bureau shipped off its raw footage of the jewelry store murder abduction to New York, which sent the pictures to London’s night desk, who alerted the execs.

  “This is New York, stand by, San Francisco,” Worldwide's speakerphone said.

  “We’re standing by.”

  Tia Layne, chief of the two-person bureau, put her feet on her desk, lit another congratulatory Camel, waved out her match. She squinted through her smoke stream at Cooter, the cameraman working at the computer. Tia pushed the mute button on the office phone keypad, dropped her voice as a precaution.

  “This is our ticket Hear back from the others yet?” Keeping his eyes on his computer screen, Cooter scratched his two-day growth, then adjusted his foot-long ponytail. “Two San Francisco stations, affiliates to the networks.”

  “How much?”

  “Five thousand each. Wait. A broker in LA will go ten.”

  “Tell them the all-news people are up to twenty. Stress that they think the story has legs and we’ve got access. I’m going back on speaker.”

  Cooter cut a trace of a grin as he typed. After all this time, he thought he knew Tia. They’d met on the set of a “no-budget” sleaze film in Thailand three years ago. She’d got there by way of losing her job after one month as foreign correspondent. Her Sydney-based news agency fired her because she couldn’t prove several people she’d named in her stories existed. Tia then worked as a drug courier, then as an actor in multi-X-rated movies where Cooter was the cameraman. After some one hundred films Cooter thought he knew every inch of Tia. But today she was revealing something he’d never seen. She was a business shark who’d done her homework. Guess being an American caught up in a police investigation that nearly lands you in a Thai prison, or worse, kinda changes your tactics.

  “Still standing by in San Francisco,” Tia said. “What’s going on?”

  “London’s the holdup. They want William in on
this.”

  Tia raised her eyebrows and began jotting numbers on a pad, recalling how not so long ago her life had gone to hell in Bangkok. Her dream of starting her own production company died when all the money she’d saved from her “acting” career was seized by the Royal Thai Police during a huge money-laundering probe. Her manager was washing her earnings with those of his drug lord friends.

  Never again, she vowed.

  She and Cooter got back to the U.S. a week before the entire Thai crew would have been charged and jailed. They arrived in Los Angeles penniless and out of work. In the early days, Cooter fell into a hazy California shell-shocked type of existence crashing and getting high with his old TV news friends who worked at LA’s biggest news stations.

  Through Cooter’s friends, they learned Worldwide News Now was searching for freelance stringers in San Francisco. They’d helped Cooter make Tia a few on-camera audition tapes that created the impression she had a little “on-camera” experience. Well, it wasn’t really a lie. Some of the LA gang vouched for them.

  At twenty-seven Tia looked good, possessed a naturally sultry voice that she used as a tool of seduction. She would give those hairdo college girls a lesson in how to perform in front of a camera.

  Tia and Cooter got the job. Sort of.

  They weren’t staff; instead they got a twelve-month freelance contract. No salaries. They’d be paid for assigned stories but could negotiate a price for anything they generated themselves, provided Worldwide had first right of refusal. Tia had worked out the deal. Bangkok crime lords had taught her well. Nobody would ever screw her again. At least not without her consent and their contribution. Tia crushed her Camel with the heap of others in the take-out wrapper on her desk.

  “Hello, America.” The speakerphone came to life again. “This is London. Love your pictures. Stand by.”

  Tia shook her head, glanced at her watch, reread their contract again. They had been with Worldwide three months. Given the show had more than seventy bureaus around the world all competing to get their work on a daily thirty-minute program, it was a victory just knowing the execs were considering your work.

  “Seth in New York, are you there? It’s Nigel in London.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “William Banks will be joining us. He’s at a convention in Monaco. We just picked up five more countries, so he’s very positive. He’s on a yacht.”

  “Nigel, Banks here. Let’s get going. Everyone ready?”

  “Ready in San Francisco.”

  “The pictures are good,” Banks said. “Can you brief me?”

  Layne tapped a nail to Banks’s photo in an annual report. He headed Worldwide’s entire news operation. The top news guy.

  “It’s your stuff, Tia, go,” Seth in New York said.

  “We had a line that several Hollywood names were charting their movie choices under the advice of a low-profile San Francisco fortune-teller.”

  “I like that,” Banks said.

  “We were in her neighborhood getting establishing shots, b-roll, when a jewelry store was robbed, a San Francisco police officer murdered, and the wife of a celeb reporter taken hostage. We got it all.”

  “Yes, I saw your pictures. Outstanding,” Banks said. “How old is this?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  “Too late for tonight’s show in America. How exclusive is it?”

  Cooter had been monitoring the Bay Area casts. Nothing.

  “Absolute exclusivity,” Layne said.

  “Yes, well, what about security cameras or amateur footage?”

  “Police are holding a news conference soon. We’ll learn from them what they have.”

  “Right, we could start teasing Worldwide for tomorrow’s show. Nigel? Seth? Set it up for Europe and buy extra time in America.”

  “Certainly, William.”

  “Fine then,” Banks said. “Very nice work, sorry, your name in San Francisco?”

  “Tia Layne and we’re not done here, Billy.”

  From New York to London, to the yacht on the Mediterranean at Monaco, the silence fell thick on the line.

  “Excuse me, Miss Layne?”

  “I’ve got our contract in front of me. All I’m required to do is give you first right of refusal on our work. Which I did. Now you tell me how much you’re going to pay for it, because I can get thirty thousand from the U.S. networks. This is supreme stuff and this story could go long.”

  It took about half a second for Banks to realize he was dealing with someone nearly worthy of his time.

  “Who did you say this celeb reporter was, whose wife has been taken hostage?”

  “Tom Reed, a San Francisco Star newspaper reporter, Pulitzer nominee, a big crime reporter.”

  “Never heard of him. Have you, Nigel?”

  “Not at all, sorry. Seth, is he relevant to Americans?”

  “Well, he was on Larry King, he’d broken a few big crime stories.”

  “San Francisco?” Banks said. “We’ll go fifteen.”

  “Thirty, because I know that’s what the U.S. brokers can get us.”

  “And how would you know that? Have you been shopping?”

  “I’m aware of the market.”

  “Ms. Layne, is it? I get the feeling you’re extorting us and, to be blunt, I don’t much like it”

  “To be blunt your annual report states the corporation earned one hundred million dollars in profits last year and your challenge is to secure footing in the U.S. market. Now my deal requires me to offer you first right of refusal on our work and release it to you if we’ve agreed on a sum. If we don’t agree, I’m free to shop it. Now, I’ve showed you our work and I’ve told you our sum. Thirty thousand.”

  “Twenty.”

  “No. Thirty. You consider this: thirty thousand and you tease it all over the U.S. tomorrow. We bury it two-thirds into the show, pull in more numbers, spike your ad rates a bit. After we air this stuff—and you damned well know it’s good—every major American news network is going to want to use it. You license it to them stipulating full duration credit to Worldwide News Now and you’ve just got more free advertising in your critical market than you could possibly dream of. You consider this, you got advertising twerps in New York you pay more than thirty thousand a year and they couldn’t come close to touching what I’m giving you: the recorded murder of an American police officer, the kidnapping of a celeb wife. It’ll be controversial, there’ll be national newspaper editorials. The day after you use this, Worldwide News Now will be the most talked about show in America. So you want to dick me around for thirty thousand and then watch what you could’ve had, flashing in your face on CNN or FOX? I think shareholders would love knowing about that after they read it in the Wall Street Journal. You’ve got thirty seconds.”

  There was nothing but silence all the way around. Cooter was shaking his head, wondering if this was the same woman he had recorded in more sexual acts than he could remember. “Agreed. Thirty thousand, Ms. Layne.”

  “On one condition.”

  “No conditions.”

  “Fine. You do get CNN over there?”

  There was a tense audible sigh.

  “What’s your condition, Ms. Layne?”

  “Thirty thousand for each additional exclusive portion of footage we deliver to you on this story.”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Thirty.”

  “Thirty. But it must be exclusive.”

  “Agreed. Then you’ll make today’s payment for sixty. We’ve got Tom Reed exclusively picking up his son at school minutes after Ann Reed was taken hostage.”

  “Fine. And, Ms. Layne?”

  “Yes, Mr. Banks?”

  “This deal is null and void if we determine your footage is not exclusive at airing, or if a single frame has been previously shopped. I’ve got your contract in front of me too.”

  “Then we have a deal.”

  “Indeed we do.”

  After the calls ended, Tia Layne and Cooter wat
ched their exclusive footage again, the murder of a San Francisco police officer, the kidnapping, Tom Reed picking up Zachary.

  “Hold it, Cooter, run that again. See? Look at the kid’s face.” Tia bit her thumbnail. “People are just going to eat this up.”

  Tia lit another cigarette, watching and thinking of any way to keep this story going. To her, Tom Reed’s anguish and his wife’s life were mere articles of commerce. Product. And she was determined to produce more.

  11

  Ann Reed smiled at the reporters packed into the Police Commission Hearing Room in the Hall of Justice for the first press conference.

  News cameras pulled in tight on her photo, which had been reproduced from her driver’s license, enlarged, and posted on the corkboard. Nothing in her pretty face betrayed the fact that death was so near. On the board next to her were the pictures of SFPD Officer Rod August and Leroy Driscoll, the dead suspect from the van. The cameras tightened on them too.

  As they settled into chairs, reporters gossiped, sharing their disbelief and theories over what had happened to Reed, scanning the pack to see who the Star had assigned to cover the story of one of its own. The reporters who knew Reed wanted to convey their sympathy. Those who didn’t wanted an inside angle.

  Lieutenant Leo Gonzales of the homicide detail began by summarizing the case. He pointed to the color photos, on the board, of a car identical to Ann Reed’s. He detailed her physical description, including the clothing and jewelry she was wearing at the time of her abduction.

  The last time she was seen alive.

  Then Gonzales cleared his throat, leaned into the mountain of microphones, and dropped a stunner.

  “We’re hoping Officer August’s final radio call will help us solve his murder and find Ann Reed. We’re going to play the last seconds of those dispatches for you. We believe the voices in the background are those of Ann Reed and the suspects. We hope someone will recognize them and we’re appealing to the public for help.”

  The revelation rippled through the room. Gonzales explained how, in the moments after August had called in his location and a vehicle check, SFPD dispatchers received a 911 call from a barbershop of a 211, an armed robbery in progress. The caller reported gunshots in the neighboring jewelry store. When the dispatcher tried to alert August, who was in the area, she maintained an open line to his unit radio. It recorded the gunfire that killed him. It also recorded the seconds that followed and what detectives believed were the voices of the suspects passing by with the hostage.