Limo, page 23
Our mini-cam got a good shot of Kaplan’s squinty eyes behind rimless glasses.
“The records, please,” Kaplan said.
“I did the taxes myself. I’m no criminal,” Carmen said.
“Sure, Carmen might of made a mistake in arithmetic, but she ain’t trying to swindle Uncle Sam,” Angie Rocco said.
“You helped me, Angie!” Carmen said.
“I didn’t help her,” Angie Rocco said to Kaplan. “Mario, the slob, he helped her. He ain’t even my kid. Carmen had another marriage.”
Mario got up with his copy of Penthouse, opened what was clearly a bathroom door, went inside, slammed the door and loudly locked it.
“This ain’t no time for that! Come out of there, kid, and tell Mr. Kaplan what you done about the income tax,” Angie Rocco said.
Mario turned on the water at the bathroom sink.
“It isn’t just you, Mr. Rocco,” Kaplan said. “We’re tracking down every plumber in the United States.”
“I’ve got a cousin in Detroit that can take care of you,” Carmen Rocco said.
“No threats! Don’t threaten Mr. Kaplan!” yelled Angie. “You want the records, Kaplan? I know where she hides ’em.”
Rocco opened the closet door, dived inside and reappeared with the bag of Snickers candy bars.
“It’s a big surprise you gained thirty pounds on your diet!” Angie Rocco said to his wife.
Carmen Rocco waddled into the kitchen.
Angie Rocco sat down and looked at Kaplan.
“Kaplan, I’ll come clean. I got no records,” Angie Rocco said. “Here’s what happened. God’s truth. The niggers took my records. Yeah, eight or ten niggers stuck me up and stole my tax records.”
“Could I have a description of them?” Kaplan said.
“What description? I said niggers,” Angie Rocco said.
“A description of the tax records, Mr. Rocco,” Kaplan said.
This all went out on the air on CBC-TV.
Scanning the monitors, Jack Nathanson guided Hank Judson into Akron, where the party had spilled into the yard and there was a melee near the remote truck.
Rod DeRoache, the Akron commentator, appeared on the Line Screen.
“There is a misunderstanding ‘Just Up the Street’ at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Perry,” Rod DeRoache said.
DeRoache coughed and covered his mouth with a hand for a few seconds before he continued, “A neighbor believes Mr. Perry’s television set is inside our CBC remote truck. The man is being forcibly restrained by the Akron police and our crew. This seems to have put the Perrys and their guests in a nasty humor.”
DeRoache coughed again and gagged.
“And back to you, CBC Central,” DeRoache said.
“Rubber fumes are getting DeRoache,” we heard the Akron director say on the headsets.
Nathanson had been examining the monitors. He switched the air picture to Rochester, where on the porch of the Ralph and Ann Getz house, commentator Jerry Cummings had stopped a teenage boy.
“Could I ask your name, please?” Cummings said.
“Larry Wilkins,” the boy said.
“And is that a bandage on your wrist?” Cummings said.
Before he came to the News Department, Cummings was a veteran of post-game locker room shows for sports. He was best known for having asked O. J. Simpson if being big, fast, and elusive was an advantage for a halfback.
The boy looked at the bandage and then back at Cummings.
“Yeah. Bandage,” Larry Wilkins said.
“Has your wrist been injured in some way, Larry?” Cummings asked.
“Who are you?” the boy said.
“Jerry Cummings, ‘Just Up the Street’ at the Getz home in Rochester, New York,” Cummings said.
“What’s all this stuff?” the boy asked.
“Our equipment. You’re on television, Larry,” Cummings said.
“Yeah?”
“Now tell us about your injury,” Cummings said.
In another post-game locker room show, Cummings had asked Kareem Jabbar if he thought his future was still ahead of him.
“I sprained my thumb a little when I gouged Johnny Ryan’s eye at school,” the boy said. “But I’ll be okay to pitch Saturday.”
Into the headset Nathanson said, “Hey, shut Cummings up with the interview and let the boy go inside.”
“What brings you to the Getz house, Larry?” Cummings asked.
“You ever get a look at Roxie?” the boy said.
In CBC Control, Nathanson said, “Dissolve inside . . . and . . . put it up.”
Now America saw Ralph Getz as he sat quietly scowling on the couch in his living room. The black Lab slept at Ralph’s bare feet. The table where Roxie had been doing her homework was now being set for dinner by Ann.
Suddenly Ralph spoke. But not to Ann.
Ralph spoke to the black Labrador.
“Tell you what, Daphne, if I’d known it was gonna involve all this just to get ourselves on television so Roxie can be famous, I believe I’d of told these TV boys the Getz family don’t need it,” Ralph said.
Daphne, the black Lab, sat up and looked at Ralph.
“We voted to revolt and kill our bosses, Daphne, did I tell you that?” Ralph said. “I tried to tell Ann but she said to wait until the show is over. When the show is over, they’re gonna take those cables out of the beans and tomato plants, too, Daphne.”
“Someone’s at the door. Oh, it must be Larry for Roxie,” Ann said.
Our mini-cam guy followed Ann Getz down the hall.
Nathanson put the mini-cam shot on the Preview Screen.
On the air, Ralph was saying, “Daphne, if I give you a dollar, would you go to the store for some ice cream?”
Nathanson cut the mini-cam shot onto the nation’s TV screens just as Ann Getz opened the door at the end of the hall.
And anybody who was watching “Just Up the Street” on CBC at that moment saw the lovely, young, naked body of Roxie Getz.
You saw her from behind, but she was standing at a full-length mirror, so you also saw her from in front. She was brushing her long hair. She turned and smiled toward her mother.
Then Roxie seemed to notice the mini-cam for the first time, just as Roxie’s mother saw in the mirror that the mini-cam was poking over her shoulder.
Roxie covered her pubes with the hairbrush and held an arm across her breasts.
Ann Getz grappled for the mini-cam and we got a shot of the ceiling before Jack cut the picture back to the living room.
Certain critics later accused Jack Nathanson of being too slow to cut away from the naked nymphet.
In fact, CBC had another minute of Roxie before Ann Getz shut the door in the mini-cam guy’s face. But you had to be in the control room to see it on the monitor.
On the Air Screen, being fed to a hundred and eighty stations, Ralph Getz was telling Daphne that he was thinking seriously about giving up fishing.
“Ask if the dog can do tricks,” I said to Nathanson.
Ralph Getz glanced offscreen as the question was relayed.
Ralph nodded and said, “Sing, Daphne.”
The black Lab put back her head and we all agreed you could honestly hear “Tea for Two.”
Ralph sang along.
In fact, I heard Stanley singing along in the VIP room.
“Hey, guys, we’re getting some greenies back!” Stanley yelled.
“What happened to the kid who came to see Roxie?” I said.
Nathanson found the shot and put it up.
On the front porch of the Getz house, Jerry Cummings was still interviewing Larry Wilkins. But now there were at least a dozen more teenage boys on the porch.
And a guy in a raincoat was trying to reach the camera.
Hank Judson did the transition for a fast cut to Akron. Rod DeRoache, looking ill, explained the odd gathering in the yard. After the argument at the remote truck, DeRoache said, the Perrys’ real TV set had been returned. The Perrys and neighbors had been on their way back inside the house to watch “Just Up the Street,” when Sergeant Jackson arrived with a five-hundred-pound Roman candle.
“That’s right, the boys are getting it down off the truck right now,” Sergeant Jackson said, walking into the picture beside DeRoache.
Sergeant Jackson was about sixty and had grizzled white hair beneath his American Legion cap.
“Furthermore, we are going to shoot this five-hundred-pound Roman candle from a thirty-six-inch mortar. We got it loaded in there already,” Sergeant Jackson said. “When this booger goes off, the world is gonna know it.”
Rod DeRoache smiled and flicked his eyes from side to side, checking what else might confront him.
“This Roman candle is gonna shoot a thousand feet in the air,” Sergeant Jackson said. “Then it’s gonna open into a million twinkling stars in the shape of Mount Rushmore. I mean with all the faces on it, too, Clyde. It’s a gift to the people of America from Legion Post 937.”
“Four dollars it don’t,” said a man in a Softball uniform.
“Save your money, brother, this thing gonna light up the sky from here to Schenectady,” Sergeant Jackson said.
“I got four dollars say it do,” Franklin Lincoln Perry said.
“You covered,” said the man in the softball uniform.
“Brother, you ever see Mount Rushmore?” Sergeant Jackson said. “Well, in case you don’t recall, Mount Rushmore is a big mountain where some cat carved four Presidents’ faces on it. He put George Washington on there. Lincoln. Uh, Roosevelt, I believe. And one more dude. Ulysses S. Grant, I think it was.”
“Don’t make a shit, this ain’t gonna light up no sky from here to Schenectady and it ain’t gonna make no faces,” said the Softball player.
“Twenty say it do,” somebody yelled, and four fat Legionnaires staggered past pulling the enormous, Roman-candle-loaded mortar on a sled.
On a monitor in the upper left corner I saw Tom Parsons, the Georgetown commentator, waving his arms and kicking the curb. I asked Nathanson what was going on.
“Parsons has run into a Senator he knows out front of the Skidmore house,” Jack said. “Parsons wants to interview the guy. I reminded him no interviews if we can avoid it, and he said this is important because the Senator is going inside to visit the Skidmores.”
“Let him do a bit with the Senator,” I said.
Nathanson looked around at me and said, “I am directing this show. Right, Frank?”
I said, “Right, Jack.”
Nathanson moved “Just Up the Street” to Georgetown, where Parsons introduced the distinguished Senator Frick.
Senator Frick said it was a surprise to run into Parsons. The Senator said he had been for a walk, mulling over committee matters, and he had noted he was nearly at the Skidmore house and he thought he would drop in and tell Bob Skidmore it was about time we all got to pulling together to solve the country’s problems. Bob Skidmore, he said, was a brilliant fellow who represented a great company, but the Senator spoke for all America when he said it was a team game.
On the air a gray Mercedes 450 SL whined around the corner, stopped hard on the bricks, backed up and parked at a fireplug. A tall, bearded man hopped out of the driver’s seat and tucked a pair of horn-rimmed glasses into the breast pocket of his navy-blue linen blazer. Out of the other side of the car stepped a very leggy blonde who looked like a taller and slightly older version of Dorothea Skidmore.
The Senator identified them to Parsons as Gladys and Phil de Menil from Easton, Maryland. Dorothea’s sister and brother-in-law.
“Yes, in the car wash business,” Parsons said.
“De Menil? In the car wash business?” the Senator said. “Yes, I suppose it’s possible that he might somewhere own some car washes.”
I put my mouth against Jack Nathanson’s ear and said, “Jack, I ask you for one more thing. Go inside the house.”
On a monitor we saw Bob and Dorothea Skidmore posing almost exactly as before, and on the earphones we heard Dorothea talking about the need to improve the quality of after-dinner theater in America.
“Do it anyway,” I said to Jack.
I glanced at D. Wayne Cooper, who was off in the corner of the control room with a headset on. He grinned sink-hole dimples at me.
Nathanson took us into the living room of the townhouse of the Skidmores, where Dorothea was saying, “I think it’s time we redid this room.”
“Funny, I was thinking the same thing,” Bob said.
“It’s funny how often we think alike,” Dorothea said.
The telephone rang.
“Probably Gladys and Phil calling from the club to say they’ll be late,” Bob Skidmore said.
Bob picked up the phone and said, “Hello.”
Watching “Just Up the Street,” you could not hear what Bob Skidmore was hearing on the phone, of course. But you could look at his face and tell it was not a pitch for lifetime light bulbs.
I knew what Bob Skidmore was hearing, because I knew who he was listening to.
D. Wayne Cooper was saying to Bob Skidmore, “. . . that little blonde is my wife, bubba, and she done told me the whole story. I know this here is Washington and you all think you’re pretty smart. But I’m from Texas and I’m drunk and I say by god you don’t go fucking another man’s wife unless you’re ready to get your goddam head blowed off.”
“Who is it, Bob?” Dorothea asked.
Skidmore shrugged.
“Well, what do they want?” Dorothea said.
On the phone to Skidmore, Cooper said, “Man, that tight blond pussy better have been worth it, because in about two minutes I'm gonna be at your door.”
Our viewers watched Bob Skidmore put down the phone and then heard him say to his wife:
“It’s a terrorist threat. Get in gear, Dorothea! This is serious!”
Followed by the mini-cam, Bob and Dorothea ran into the bedroom where the six-year-old and the four-year-old were sleeping. The mini-cam guy switched on a light as the Skidmores picked up the kids.
“Bob, this is Georgetown!” Dorothea said. “What kind of terrorists would threaten us in Georgetown? We’ll call the police. God, Bob, terrorists can’t kill us on television!”
By now, Cooper’s accent and threat had sunk in deep on Bob Skidmore.
He broke.
“You know Monday nights I play poker,” he said. “I don’t play poker . . . I go to this joint . . . I met a woman there . . . she’s married to a Texas Congressman’s aide.”
Skidmore was blurting this with a sleepy, squirmy kid under each arm.
“She’s not all that good-looking, but I nailed her anyhow!” Skidmore said.
Jack Nathanson switched your home TV picture to Hank Judson and then to Akron.
Looking at the monitors and wearing a headset, you could keep watching the Skidmores.
“I love our children, Bob, don't you?” Dorothea said.
“Damn it, Dorothea, can’t you hurry?” Bob said. “There’s two more kids to get!”
“But to think of you screwing with the wife of a Congressman’s aide from Texas, makes me feel I must have a disease,” Dorothea said.
“Stop the mouth, Dorothea! I’ve heard of that Texas guy. Grab the kids!” Bob shouted.
In Akron they were about to shoot the five-hundred-pound Roman candle that would light up the sky with the faces of Mount Rushmore.
So Jack called the Perry front yard in Akron onto the network. The crowd was standing at a respectful distance from the five-hundred-pound Roman candle in the thirty-six-inch mortar. Except for Sergeant Jackson, who stood six feet from the Roman candle at the end of the fuse.
With his face on the left side of the Air Screen and the Roman candle on the right, Sergeant Jackson looked into the camera and pulled out of his pocket a brass belt buckle with a hole in it.
“I would of been shot to death in New Guinea if I had of not been laying behind a brother who got shot through the navel,” Sergeant Jackson said.
He pulled an old cigarette lighter out of another pocket and said, “I don’t need to tell any of you veterans what Zippo meant to us in the South Pacific. You know how hard it was to strike a match in the jungle when it was raining all the time and you was sweating and the little red stuff come off the match on your finger?”
“Get on with it, man,” said the softball player.
“All right! Here come Mount Rushmore,” Sergeant Jackson said.
Sergeant Jackson flicked his Zippo and lit the fuse to the five-hundred-pound Roman candle.
We watched the spark sizzle along the fuse and disappear into the base of the thirty-six-inch mortar.
All was quiet except for a gasp from the crowd as black smoke spurted out of the base of the mortar.
“Looks to me like they got the base plate of that sucker stuck in the ground at a funny angle,” Cooper said.
The black smoke reduced to a dribble and then stopped.
For thirty seconds everyone in the Perrys’ front yard and everyone watching “Just Up the Street” on CBC stared at the silent thirty-six-inch mortar.
“From here to Schenectady? That what you say, turkey?” laughed the softball player.
Sergeant Jackson said, “Well, now, when you got a whole Mount Rushmore packed in a tube, you got to expect . . .”
Then the five-hundred-pound Roman candle went off with a blast and a flash that reminded me of an ammo dump exploding.
A whirling comet of fire shot out of the mortar that had been mounted at a careless angle, as Cooper had noted.
The comet tore into our remote truck, and all the pictures from Akron went to black.
Jack Nathanson threw Hank Judson onto America’s TV screens. Hank turned in his leather swivel chair to face the camera and said, “When critics of this country say we are losing our soul, I’ll remind them of Sergeant Jackson, a dreamer and man of action, and his valiant attempt to put Mount Rushmore in the sky over . . . hold on a moment . . . we are receiving an audio report from Rod DeRoache on the scene in Akron. . . .”
On your home TV screen you saw Hank Judson but you heard the voice of Rod DeRoache.
“Frankly, it’s a real mess ‘Just Up the Street’ in Akron, Ohio,” said the voice of DeRoache. “Apparently nobody is seriously hurt. I saw Sergeant Jackson on the ground, but he was searching for his cap. No homes are burning, but our CBC remote unit is engulfed in orange. . . .”
