The Goliath Run, page 4
“What’s the consensus, Neil?” Jack said. His voice was hoarse; as he spoke he reached into his pocket for a lozenge.
“Well,” Neil said in his reticent manner. “That depends on whether we’re talking about a big shake-up or a small shake-up.”
“Give it to us both ways.”
Neil stepped to the board and began rewriting the names there, moving each to a time slot. “If we want to make a small move, we shift Reynolds and Ramirez from the morning show to eight o’clock. Keep Michaels at nine and bump Jackson to ten. Or—we could leave the morning show where they are and try Ron Rivera at eight, see how he does there. Nobody’s watching him at noon. People like him a lot, especially women, but it’s noon, right? The question is—is he ready for prime time?”
Jack glanced at Bobby, who walked over to look at the white board for a moment, like a punter examining the totes at the racetrack. He turned to Jack but he spoke to Neil.
“We’re getting killed at eight o’clock. Why is that?”
“A number of reasons,” Neil said. “Trump’s approval ratings are worse than ever and when that happens, it seems that more people watch CNN and MSNBC and the like. Which in turn helps keep his numbers down. Plus, it’s summer. People don’t watch TV as much in the summer months, that’s a hard fact. At eight o’clock, they’re still outside, doing sports or whatever.”
Doing sports, Bobby said to himself. Who talked like that? Neil did, but then Bobby was pretty sure Neil couldn’t throw a baseball across the room, or even ride a bicycle. It seemed as if he never went outside; his skin was the color of putty.
“Anything else?” Bobby asked. “Because I see that everybody—left and right—has better numbers than us at eight.”
“Sam Jackson is treading water,” Neil replied. “He still fawns over Trump but not quite as much as he used to. Lot of that going around. He’s floundering, especially with young viewers. Twenty-one to thirty-five, he does poorly.” Neil paused. “I’m not sure why.”
“It’s because he doesn’t shock anybody anymore,” Bobby said. “He just aggravates them. And he won’t let anybody talk. Would you go on a show where the host keeps yelling that you’re a traitor to your country and then doesn’t let you respond? I’m amazed somebody hasn’t punched his fucking lights out.”
Neil nodded. “Rumor is, he wanted a job in Trump’s cabinet. Never happened and he’s been pissed about it ever since. Takes it out on everybody around him.”
Bobby snorted. “Delusions of grandeur.”
Jack nodded. “But we loved him when he was doing three-point-eight every night, didn’t we?” He looked at the board a moment. “What’s the big shake-up?”
“The big shake-up.” Neil started erasing and rewriting the names. “We take a leap and slide Amy Reynolds and Chuck Ramsey into eight o’clock. Michaels stays at nine and we try Rivera at ten. A good spot to get him some recognition. Jackson would be gone.”
Jack nodded, sucking on the lozenge, the wattle at his neck rising and falling with the effort. “What would that cost us—dumping Jackson?”
“Terms of his contract, around twelve million.”
“Cheaper than keeping him on at eight,” Jack said. He glanced again at Bobby. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Bobby said slowly, “that we need to make some noise. This isn’t the time to build something slow. Big election coming up, we need a bounce now. Give Amy Reynolds eight o’clock by herself.”
“By herself,” Jack repeated.
“Yeah,” Bobby said. “She’s ready. The woman is whip smart and let’s face it, she looks like a fucking swimsuit model. So you get the people who want hard news and you get the mouth breathers, even if they watch with the sound off. And she’s hungry. Put her there with Ramirez and she’s going to be on the sidelines half the time. Give Ramsey ten o’clock and slide Rivera into the morning show. He’ll need a co-host. Bring whatersname back from London. She’s been doing some good work. And she fills the babe quotient we lose with Reynolds moving.”
“Who?” Jack said.
“Sally Brown,” Neil said. “She covered the subway bombing. She got the interview with the cop who shot the bomber?”
“Right,” Jack said.
Bobby could tell that Jack had no clue who Sally Brown was. It didn’t matter. Neil erased the board again and set it up the way Bobby had suggested. He stood back to look at it, a young Rembrandt admiring his own work. Bobby half expected him to sign the thing.
“All right?” Bobby asked.
Jack nodded. “How quick can we do this?”
“Like tearing off a Band-Aid,” Bobby said. “Quicker the better. We need to talk contract with Amy. Hers runs until spring and we need to tie her up. We don’t want her making a splash and then bolting to Fox. The others are signed so that’s not a worry.”
“When do we tell Sam?”
“The night before,” Bobby said. “We don’t need him venting for a week on air about what a bunch of chickenshits we are.”
“Um…who will be telling him?” Neil asked.
“You,” Bobby said. He knew that Neil would rather wrestle a live alligator than tell Sam Jackson he was history.
Neil swallowed, presumably anticipating the meeting. “I don’t know that that is my job,” he said after a moment.
Bobby laughed. “Just fucking with you, Neil old boy. I’ll tell him.”
“Too bad Trump didn’t toss him a bone,” Jack said.
Bobby laughed. “Trump’s running out of bones to toss. But can you imagine the two of them in a room together? There wouldn’t be enough oxygen left to keep a mouse alive.”
“You would have to assume he’s seen this coming,” Jack said. “The man gets the numbers.”
“Guys like that never see shit like this coming,” Bobby said. “But he’ll be all right. He can go back to teaching college, or just retire. God knows he’s made lots of money.”
“He doesn’t care about the money,” Jack said. “He cares about the pulpit. He started believing his own press a long time ago.”
“Too bad for him,” Bobby said.
NINE
They took both vehicles to the Carsonville market, as Jo was going from there directly to the town hall meeting in Monticello. She drove the Explorer and Henry the GMC. The drive took the better part of an hour and they left before dawn, drinking coffee on the way. There was a threat of rain and so they set up beneath the awnings provided by the market. The precipitation, virtually guaranteed by the TV weatherman and various internet sites, quite typically never arrived.
Business was slow, as it usually was on a Monday. Carsonville was not a tourist town to speak of, and that factored in too. However, there were a number of good restaurants within thirty miles or so, eateries that catered to diners looking for grass-fed beef, antibiotic-free chickens, organic vegetables and such. They usually sent buyers to the local markets and Jo ended up selling all of her tomatoes and most of the potatoes to a few of them.
Leaving Henry with the truck, she headed for Monticello shortly before noon. The meeting was being held at the request of the Catskill Honey Association. Local councilors had been invited, as had the larger farmers in the area, the ones responsible for the spreading of neonicotinoids on their crops. The ones who showed up did so with the firm intentions of telling all and sundry that the chemicals had nothing to do with the diminishing bee population.
The meeting was a mishmash from the start. A beekeeper from a few miles north of the town took the podium and began to berate the large-scale farmers present, demanding that they cease and desist—in his words—using GMO seeds, and calling out companies like Monsanto for being disciples of the devil. The beekeeper was bugeyed and evangelistic in presentation and he spoke as if his opinion was the only one worth considering.
This did not go over well with the farmers, most of who had come to the meeting hoping to make their cases in a reasonable manner. As it was things disintegrated quickly; there was much yelling back and forth and nothing resembling a constructive dialogue ever developed. Neither of the two councilors present said a single word and when the assembly finally broke up they were out the door like they’d been shot from a cannon.
Jo, sitting in the back, soon wished she had stayed at the market with Henry. The meeting pretty much ended when the farmers walked out, although the beekeeper continued to rant for a few minutes longer. The rest of the association was left to review what had happened, even though most of them would agree that what had happened was that the beekeeper had sabotaged the entire affair.
Driving home, listening to Emmylou Harris, Jo wondered how the association had ever gotten involved with the man. More than that, she wondered how they would manage to get rid of him before he brought the whole thing crashing down around them.
Henry was already home when she got there. Driving into the laneway, she could see the GMC parked by the produce shed. And then she saw Henry. He was sitting on the ground beside the truck, in the dirt. He was crying.
He was on the ground and he was crying so hard it seemed he would never stand up again.
TEN
Jason Welles was shorter than Renata had expected. She’d seen his picture online, of course, and watched a video of him being interviewed on some local news show, but for some reason she’d imagined him to be a big man. He was maybe five-foot seven, but he was built like a middleweight boxer, which is what he was at one time, according to Wikipedia.
At this moment he was in a different ring, sitting across from Sam Jackson in the studio. They were taping the show in the morning because Sam had to fly to Texas that afternoon to receive an award for something or other, Renata couldn’t recall just what. He was always being feted by one right-wing group or another and he nearly always showed up, if a first-class ticket was provided.
The first segment was innocuous and predictable, with Sam going out of his way to welcome the newcomer to the political scene. To someone tuning in for the first time, someone who didn’t know better, he was acting like a kindly mentor to the young politician. Of course Renata knew better. They were just back from commercial now and the gloves were about to come off. Renata wondered if young Welles knew what was coming.
“You’ve hit the ground running, haven’t you?” Sam said to start.
Welles nodded. “Lot of people to reach.”
“So you grew up in Bed Stuy?” Sam asked.
“I did.”
“Interested in politics growing up?”
“Not at all.” Welles was relaxed and loose. He wore a dress shirt and gray slacks. No tie. His hair was clipped close to his skull and he wore thin, stylish glasses. He was a good-looking guy.
“What were you interested in?”
“You know. The usual things.”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “I didn’t grow up in a black neighborhood in the nineties. You played sports?”
“Yeah.”
“What about drugs?”
“What about drugs?”
Sam smiled. “These economical replies won’t serve you well on the hill, sir. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that politicians are long-winded? Let’s try it this way—did you do drugs growing up?”
“Yes.”
“Sell them?”
No hesitation. “Yes. I was convicted in 1999 of selling an ounce of grass to an undercover agent.”
Sam feigned surprise. “You were convicted of selling marijuana?”
Welles laughed out loud. “Come on now. You’re going to tell me this is news to you? What—nobody around here knows how to Google?”
“I’m sure somebody does,” Sam told him. “I just sign the checks.”
“Right,” Welles said, “I was twenty years old and made a mistake.”
“You’ve been very critical of the President’s health-care policies,” Sam said. “Why is that?”
“The President doesn’t have a health-care policy,” Welles replied. “Obamacare needed tweaking, not gutting.”
“It was too damn expensive.”
“I know it was expensive but that’s the nature of the beast. If you look at the Canadian system, the Norwegian example, it’s all the same. It costs a lot of money to insure people. But it’s an investment that needs to be made.”
“You don’t think that it smacks of socialism?”
“It smacks of progression,” Welles said. “We owe it to our citizens. We owe it to our children. People need to know that if they get sick, they don’t have to worry about going bankrupt on top of everything else.”
Renata straightened. He’d just opened the door.
“You say we owe it to our children,” Sam repeated. “Do you have children?”
“Two.”
“How old?”
“I have a daughter, eight, and a son who’s five.”
“Don’t you have a teenager as well?”
“No.”
“You have a son with a woman named Juanita Sanchez,” Sam persisted. His tone never changed. “Born in 2004.”
“That’s not true.”
“What’s going on here?” Sam said. “I’m told it is true. Do you know a Juanita Sanchez?”
“I used to know her.”
“Ex-girlfriend?”
“Yes.” Welles waited but Sam didn’t say anything. Not a word, not a gesture. Twenty seconds seemed like an hour. Welles was compelled to go on. “She suggested a few years ago that I was the father to this boy. The one you’re talking about. She later recanted.”
“So you took a DNA test?”
“There was no need to,” Welles said. “She recanted. I’m not the father.”
“But she claimed you were at one point?”
Welles was growing hesitant now. Defensive. “We had a bitter break-up. She was upset.”
“She’s not still upset?”
“I would hope not. I haven’t spoken to her in more than ten years.”
Sam nodded. “I spoke to her. Yesterday, in fact. She doesn’t seem upset…but she says you’re the father. She says she never pursued the matter because you refused to show any interest in your son. She also says you’ve never paid a nickel of support.”
“He’s not my son,” Welles said. “And she admitted that years ago.”
“She’s singing a different tune today,” Sam said. “And she’ll be singing it on this show later in the week. Let’s leave it until we hear her side of things, shall we? It might come down to the DNA after all.”
“I’ll take the test,” Welles said. “This is ludicrous.”
“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t,” Sam said. “All that concerns me is the truth. I know that you’ve only been living in district eight for a year and a half. Did you leave Bed Stuy because of these potential paternity problems? Are there any other children out there we should worry about?”
“No, and I resent the implication.”
“You come on my show singing the praises of a health-care system that will allegedly protect our children’s future and then you’re offended when I ask if you know who your children are? The people of district eight deserve a little more transparency than that, Mr. Welles. You can’t pick and choose your responsibilities the way you pick a district to run in.”
The segment deteriorated from there, with Sam lending all he could to the rot. Welles kept his composure but he was out the door the moment they went to commercial. When Sam came back for the end piece he made a speech about the need for our elected officials to be truthful in all things. He never actually called Jason Welles a liar, but he came close enough that Renata knew that there was going to be significant outrage coming their way, both from the black community and the DNC.
She was wrong about that. Before the credits rolled, the news of the shooting came in.
ELEVEN
Sam cancelled his Texas trip. They all remained at the station for the rest of the day, following the news as it slowly arrived. The network’s affiliate in Pittsburgh had two reporters on the scene within an hour of the shots being fired. Hays was identified by one of the local cops. They found his mother’s body shortly thereafter. The beagles too.
By six o’clock the media scrum on the scene was enormous. Reporters, knowing that the police wouldn’t be releasing much information this early on, had taken to canvassing the neighborhood, looking for stories about the shooter Hays. Anybody within five miles who wanted to be on TV that night got their wish. All they had to say is that they’d once had a conversation with Arthur William Hays, or knew him in passing. If they’d had a confrontation with the man, that was even better. Or if they knew his mother, they were in. If they had a corresponding anecdote, not matter how benign or irrelevant, they were going to get airtime. The bartender at McPhee’s Country BBQ was portrayed by one interviewer as a folk hero and by another as the elitist catalyst who set things in motion. A man who had purchased a beagle pup from Hays eight years earlier got to tell his tale, as inconsequential as it was. The networks were going to run with the story almost non-stop for the next couple of days, if not longer, and there were only so many ways to say that twenty-two children and two teachers were murdered in a small Pennsylvania town. This time, the devil truly was in the details.
Renata sat with the crew at the station, watching the monitors on the wall. She was shocked and angry and nearly immobile with grief. Her daughter, Amy, was still in Australia and Renata found herself texting her every half hour, gripped by an irrational fear that the insanity in Pennsylvania might suddenly spread itself across the globe.
Sam had been in and out since the news had arrived, and now had been gone for lunch for ninety minutes, apparently the only one in the building with any appetite. It was mid-afternoon when he returned, just as Matt Shepherd from the network arrived at the school with a camera crew. Shepherd stood on the street, with the blanketcovered bodies as a backdrop, and repeated what everybody else had been saying for hours now. Twenty-two children. Two teachers. One madman.
