Star Time (62 page)

"Without giving her a chance to defend herself?
If her reporting about that missile base is accurate, viewers will side with her. So will any judge who examines her contract. How will we look then?"

"So you want your mistress to stay on the air. That's not a surprise. We didn't need a meeting to establish that."

"And you want her off.
Also no surprise."

Greg took a deep breath. He saw a way to compromise that would
brake
both sides before they collided, although not one that was ideal from his perspective. Ratings might dip more than if she stayed on the air—and Chris would be irate. "All of her efforts right now should be devoted to proving she's innocent of the secretary's charges. Maybe she won't buy this, but I think it fair we limit her on-air reporting to this nuclear-missile-base controversy. Take her off
Confidentially Speaking
, too. If she's exonerated, she goes back on both."

"Not much chance of that happening—" Barnett observed. The Defense secretary had given Barnett his solemn assurance that Chris's charges were false and that he had been smeared.

"Just hope she's right. FBS's credibility won't count for much with viewers if she's guilty."

"I want that other woman to take her place.
The large one."

"
Hedy
?"

"That's the one. She's been doing a good job on weekends. If we substitute with a man, women will scream we're discriminating."

Barnett's reasoning was persuasive, Greg privately conceded, but that particular switch would make his selling job to Chris even harder.

"I'll get back to you," he said.

Greg's tact did little to prevent Chris from becoming first furious and then demoralized. "Roderick was watching out for
his
interests. You were watching out for
yours.
Mine got lost in the shuffle."

"That isn't fair. They were looking to take you off the air completely."

Chris crossed her arms. "I want my agent here."

Greg felt as if she had slapped him. Jaw clenched, he told his assistant to call Carl Green for him.

An hour later the meeting in Greg's office reconvened, with Chris still glaring at him.

Greg began by once more describing in detail the course the dispute had taken, so as to demonstrate that the compromise with Barnett was the best he could extract.

Carl looked at Greg with soulful eyes. "Greg, I know you've got Chris's best interests at heart. After all you kids have gone through, if you don't, who does?" Although the photos had stunned Carl, he was adroit at adjusting to new conditions.

"But?"

"But not being on the air is living death for Chris."

"She'll still be reporting on the missile-base problem. And when that's resolved, she goes back into the anchor chair."

"
If.
If.
If.
And not when.
If
she can get the truth out of those Defense motherfuckers."

"If she can't, the directors have the legal right to suspend her anyway."

"A little
rachmones
here, Greg, a little heart."

Chris leaped to her feet to confront Greg herself. "This is
deja
vu: you telling me you did your best to defend me and me screaming that you sold me down the river. I'm surprised you didn't tell the directors I'd do a series on the 'Great Toilets of Fifth Avenue.' "

"Inside joke," Greg muttered to Carl with a grimace,
then
directed himself to Chris. "Let's not forget that this nation is still reeling over those photos. Not a very dignified pose for a respected news anchor."

"I notice nothing was said about
you
resigning."

"Admit that the directors have some cause here—like a half-a-billion-dollar liability and the reputation of their news organization."

"Then they ought to back my reporting all the way," she retorted sharply.

Greg put his hand on hers. "This will just be temporary—until you're cleared. You'll get that in writing."

Slowly, the necessity of yielding to the compromise sank in. "I guess this is as good as we have any right to expect under the circumstances."

Carl stood up to leave. He did not voice his thought, which was that they gave better odds in Las Vegas, and you still came home broke.

"Oh, by the way," he asked, "who's going to sub for Chris till she's back?"

Greg hedged. "That's still up in the air."

"Just as long as it's not
Hedy
Anderson," Chris declared.

Chris instantly detected the slight sag of Greg's shoulders.

"You son of a bitch."
Before all this happened, she could have demanded that
Hedy
be fired or sent into oblivion, and it would have happened.
No longer.

Carl, however, did not object.
Hedy
was a client.

Annette Valletta was nearly immobile now, barely able to move to the bathroom or balcony. Some days she had only enough energy to sit up in bed, sponge herself with the help of the maid, and put on a little makeup and perfume before collapsing back onto her pillow. What kept her going through all the adversity and hopelessness, through all the inconclusive medical tests, was her belief that one day she would lick this thing and be back where she belonged, on millions of TV screens.

Johnny was sitting on the chair beside her bed as her finger listlessly pushed the remote-control unit's button. She settled on
Wide World of Entertainment
. A video fan-magazine, the popular syndicated show featured gossipy stories about film and television personalities and projects. The show's producers had heard rumors of Annette's withdrawal from
Loving
Luba
and replacement by Sally Foster. In return for keeping the story absolutely confidential until Thursday, two days from now, allowing Johnny time to break the news personally to Annette, they had been granted an exclusive to report it, featuring interviews with Sally and Johnny.

"Tonight," one of the show's hosts announced in the opening tease intended to induce viewers to stick with the show, "the exclusive story behind why one of television's brightest and most beloved stars, Annette Valletta, will not appear in
Loving
Luba
this year and her best friend, Sally Foster, will."

"What?" Annette cried out like a woman being roasted on a spit.

"It's a sad and touching story, so stay tuned."

"Sally will replace me in
Luba
! That can't be true."

"We kept it from you," Johnny confessed, "hoping you'd get better and could come back onto the show. But you haven't."

"Double-crossed!
Betrayed!"

"Look, FBS didn't want the show to die."

"So who jumped in?
My husband and my best friend.
Now I really have nothing to live for."

"It wasn't like that."

"Get out!" she screamed. "Get out and let me die in peace! I never want to see you or Sally again!"

Johnny tried to placate her, but finding that impossible, threw some clothing into a suitcase and drove over to Sally's. Actually, he was due there later anyway, after Annette fell asleep.

Biff Stanfield was due to go onstage soon. He sipped his Pepsi at the bar, listening above the muted patter from the adjacent nightclub to his bartender friend needle him

"All that big talk about your TV pilot, how come you're still working at this shit-hole club?”

"As soon as I get word the show's been picked up," Biff declared, "I'm out of here. You'll never see me performing like a monkey for these assholes again."

"The governor just turned down your pardon," a woman's voice remarked.

Lily was standing behind him. He had not expected her. She had told him she would be relaxing at home tonight, doing her nails, watching TV, and catching up on a briefcase full of legal briefs.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he wanted to know.

"Guess what I just heard on
Wide World of Entertainment
."

"That the Comedy Channel is doing a canine version of
The Bachelor."

"That Annette Valletta is sick, and our dear, loyal friend and partner, Sally Foster will be taking over for her in
Loving
Luba
."

Biff was stunned. "You've got to be kidding. We have a deal with FBS."

"Not if they don't put your show on. You told me you called Sally Foster. Has she gotten back to you?"

"No. But I can't believe they would do something like this."

"I'd say the one to talk to is Marian Marcus. But I expect she hasn't been answering your calls either."

Biff jumped up. "I've got to see her in person and find out where I stand."

"You're about as welcome at FBS right now as that Defense secretary they've been trashing on the news. You won't even be able to get past the guards."

"I'll think of a way," he growled.

FBS rented a corporate jet to fly Chris and a crew to Maine first thing in the morning. While they were in the air, the company's lawyers obtained a federal court order to enter the missile base and shoot video of it, providing the video was shown first to the judge and not put on television without his approval. Federal marshals were sent to verify the base's location.

At the place in the coast road where their GPS showed the access road should have led to the guarded entrance they confronted a wall of trees.

Chris was dumbfounded. The group entered on foot and hiked all across what should have been the base. No buildings. Not even any clearings. The land appeared to be virgin forest. She felt they had entered some sort of time warp in a science-fiction story and had regressed to a date before the base was built.

"This is impossible!" Chris cried out. "There were people here. Trucks entered and brought in supplies."

The group walked back to their vehicles. A large truck rumbled toward them. Chris rushed to halt it. She seemed to remember seeing the truck on the road before.

"I'm up here most every week," the driver confirmed. "I pick up lumber at the mill, about ten miles farther on."

"Do you remember the military base that was here?
Soldiers?
A fence?
It was back a little bit from the road, so you might not have noticed it right away."

The man eyed all the people awaiting his answer and shook his head.
"Can't say that I do."

He hurriedly continued on his way.

Several people in town corroborated her recollection that soldiers occasionally appeared in town. But no one could agree on where the soldiers had come from. And memory seemed to differ too much to be accurate on just where the base out of town had been located.

"There were guards and a fence," she prodded one man.

He wasn't sure.

"Wasn't that a lot farther south?" another remembered.

She flew back to New York City in a deep melancholy.

Meanwhile, the researcher trying to track down the Craig brothers was also having little luck.
Neither man could be located, and
no one in the military would discuss them. Finally, she reached their mother at work in Columbus, Ohio. The woman, a telephone-sales representative, was bitter at the television network for bringing such trouble to her family. The only thing she had heard—and that was strictly
rumor—
was
that both her sons were being held in a military prison and charged with treason.

Within an hour FBS's lawyers served subpoenas on the Defense Department to question the Craig brothers. Less than an hour after that, the answer came back that the whereabouts of both men was unknown and that they were the objects of a manhunt.

Biff carefully printed "FBS NEWS" on a white card using a black marking pen and taped the card to the home video camera he had borrowed from a friend. After donning sunglasses and a baseball cap to his outfit of jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, he drove to the FBS Television Studios.

A guard stopped his car at the entrance.

Biff's accent roughened into working class. "
Yo
, how's it going?" he greeted the guard, who nodded. "Have the rest of the crew cut out in the remote van yet? We were supposed to go out on assignment."

Biff lifted the camera to display the white card on the side.

"Your credentials," the guard demanded.

Biff patted his T-shirt pocket. "Oh, jeez, I must have left them on my jacket. All that stuff is in the van. I've got to get to a phone and locate that van fast. Thanks."