The Weatherman (36 page)

The floor director shouted, “Clear! Let’s try it again, Andy.”

Andy Mack had gone from off-camera announcer in the days of live television commercials, to children’s show host, to newsman, to weatherman, to whatever they asked him to do until the day he retired, or the day he died. A life in television. A local sports hero whose exploits on the gridiron and the wrestling mats only senior citizens could remember. Now he was back in his element, talking weather and memories to a new generation. The gleam had returned to his eyes. His cheeks glowed. The drinking had stopped.

Rick Beanblossom was proud of the old man, though he knew it was only an interlude. The station was already interviewing meteorologists around the country in hopes of replacing Dixon Bell. As he watched Andy Mack and Andrea Labore saying their lines, Rick marveled at the seductive power of television on both sides of the camera.

The news producer pulled open his desk drawer and took out the ring. Held it in his hand. The diamond sparkled in the television lights the way he saw the stars sparkle over Lake Calhoun. When to pop the big question? Perhaps in the spring, the air fresh with romance and new beginnings. Easter Sunday would be a good day. Would she say yes? Probably not. But then again, when they were alone at night it was hard to imagine her saying no. She had his mind swimming in doubt. Again he glanced up at the anchor desk. The glow about her face was straight out of heaven. He admired the diamond ring one more time before slipping it back into the desk drawer.

The trial was at a halt again while the judge considered the mistrial motion. Most legal experts didn’t give the motion a prayer in hell, but thought that Judge Lutoslawski was generously giving the defendant time to cool off and compose himself after the morning’s outburst. Rick picked up the thick trial file and walked to the edit rooms.

Two monitors sat beside the edit equipment: one for viewing, one for editing. A tape popped into the edit machine would appear simultaneously on both screens. So what Rick Beanblossom saw when he walked into Edit Room 1 was the Eden Prairie tornado coming at him, times two. The soundtrack was the high-pitched howling of the ghostlike winds. Then Skyhawk 7 swung out from behind the tornado and he could almost see the faces of Bob Buckridge and Kitt Karson. Out of respect for the dead men the video was rarely shown. Rick swallowed a lump in his throat. “What are you doing?”

“Putting together a tape of my best work,” Dave Cadieux coldly told him.

“For what?”

On a shelf above the edit monitors was a single large monitor where Andrea Labore and Andy Mack could be seen taping their promo. The sound was down to the faint level. The photographer lifted his head to this upper monitor. “I’m getting out before I end up like Andy Mack there and television is all that I know. I’ll shoot commercials, or tape weddings, or make dirty movies for J. C. Peters, but I’ll make a living.” “Something we did?”

“I’m glad we nailed Napoleon. He was scum. But I think what we did to Charleen sucks. No, Charleen wasn’t a news person, but she wasn’t a bad person, either. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life trying to catch people screwing in closets.”

Rick watched as the tornado jumped the river and bore down on St. Paul, Skyhawk 7 in pursuit. “Manipulating the media is like predicting the weather-it’s an inexact science. Would the results somehow have been different had I written the story for a newspaper?”

“You said together we could change things. We could bring newspaper quality to television news. That’s what you told me when you came here.” Dave Cadieux killed the tornado. He ejected the tape and slipped in another. “Maybe television is where you belong, Rick. Other than a mask, you’re not that much different.” The prize-winning newsman said nothing. On the two monitors before them appeared the tormented visage of Keenan Wakefield. He was emerging from dense woods, scratched and filthy. Freezing. A search crew surrounded him, trying their best to comfort him, afraid the boy was going into shock after a cold and fruitless overnight search for Harlan, his missing twin brother.

Dave Cadieux rewound the tape and played it again. “The day I shot this tape I went home and cried. Best work I ever did. But there are so many people blubbering on the news these days it doesn’t affect me anymore.”

Nor did the sight of the crying boy genius have much of an emotional affect on Rick Beanblossom. The four-year-old tape aroused his curiosity more than his sympathy. “I know that spot-it’s down by the river. Run it again,” he told Cadieux.

As the tape was being rewound, screams came from the newsroom. Rick looked up at the large monitor to see Andy Mack clutching his chest and stumbling to his knees in front of the sky-blue weather wall. Andrea rushed to help him. Rick burst out of the edit room, ran through the newsroom, and bound up the steps to the

Andrea was stretching the old weatherman out on his back. She jammed her thumb into his mouth so he wouldn’t swallow his tongue; then she dropped her mouth over his.

Rick slipped the thick trial file under his head as a rest. “C’mon, everybody get back, let him breathe.”

The news people formed a semicircle in front of the cameras.

“There’s an ambulance on the way.”

“Is Chris Mack working?”

“No, he’s off today.”

“Run down the hall and get Jill.”

A photog ran for Andy’s daughter in the programming department.

Andrea brought Andy Mack back to life. He was conscious, but pale white with fright, the bright lights illuminating his chalky face. Rick bent over him. “Just relax, Andy. We’ll get you to the hospital.”

“I always wanted to go like this, in front of the weather wall, doing what I do best.”

Andrea was pumping his chest. “Stop talking like that. You’re going to outlive us all.”

“But I wasn’t the best. He was.” Tears came to the old man’s eyes as he clutched Andrea’s hands. “I was warned. It was on my computer this morning.”

“You were warned about what?” Rick asked.

The old weatherman was wheezing hard now. “He got back at me, Rick. Even from a jail cell the bastard reached out and got me. I told you he was spooky.”

“Andy, you’re not making any sense. Lie still.”

He reached out and grabbed Rick’s shirt and pulled him close. Andy Mack choked out his last words. “Tell Dixon I’m sorry about those women.” His face turned purple. Saliva drooled out the corner of his mouth. Then he was gone.

Rick looked up at Andrea. He looked over his shoulder, but nobody else was within earshot. He bent over the body beneath the weather wall. “Andy? Andy, what are you saying?” He plunged his hands into the weatherman’s chest, trying to pump some life back into him. What had he said? “Andy? Andy, talk to us.” Rick leaned over the dead purple face and breathed into the mouth.

The news people that had gathered around took another

step back, now faced with death they could see and feel for themselves. Rick Beanblossom was kneeling over the body Andrea knew to be dead. What was it he had said about those women? About Dixon Bell? The mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was futile. Rick raised his fist to the television lights, then slammed it into the lifeless chest of Andy Mack. “You come back here and talk to us, you son of a bitch!”

It was the night after Lisa testified. Up to then, up to the time the trial got under way, Dixon Bell had earned most of the privileges available in the jail. The deputies paid him scant attention, since all he seemed to do was sit on his bunk and stare out the window. That night freezing rain was falling over the river. The lights up and down the bluffs were mesmerizing, the yellow-orange radiance evaporating in the dark, inclement weather. He was still upset, still wondering what the jury was thinking after the way he’d acted in the courtroom, still trying to accept this fat middle-aged woman as the Lisa Beauregard he remembered. He was cursed with an excellent memory in a world where so many things are best forgotten.

The deputy came up the winding staircase in the day room to lock him in for the night. As the deputy slid the cell door closed, the rail on the floor flew into the air and the steel door crashed off the track. “What the …?” he swore.

Dixon Bell was out of his bunk in a flash, pulling bricks out of the wall as fast as he could.

The deputy could see him in there trying to escape, but he couldn’t gain entry because the heavy door was stuck. He sounded the alarm.

If Dixon Bell had been a skinny man, he could have squeezed his way out and jumped for his life. One arm was through the wall, his head and his neck were through, and he was wiggling for all he was worth when four deputies broke into the cell and got hold of his legs and his buttocks. They were beating on him while at the same time trying to drag him back into the cell. His head was outside in the rain. It was cold, and wet, and as refreshing

as freedom. Again they’d fucked up the forecast. Snow was melting over the railroad tracks. Patches of black water were showing up in the Mississippi. People were driving by on River Road, and there was this TV weatherman with his head stuck right out of the jailhouse wall, screaming like a banshee.

“Say, didn’t he used to be on Channel 7?” The deputies finally got him pulled inside and stomped the living hell out of him. They threw him into the empty cell next door and shot the bolt. The detention center was lit up like a Christmas tree. Alarms were ringing. Dixon Bell ran to the window crying like the madman everybody believed him to be. He was bleeding through his nose. He was trying to pound through seven layers of glass when the first thunder of spring exploded over the bluffs. Icy raindrops streaked the window. Cars were stopping along the road and people were staring up at him. Then the flashing red lights of an ambulance appeared on the Wabasha Street Bridge and started across the water.

Dixon Bell was locked in an Isolation cell-
TFN
. There was no window to the outside world. Solid brick. A bunk. A seatless toilet. A stainless steel sink and one roll of toilet paper. In the steel door was a small observation window. His spirit was broken, his body bruised and aching. His case may have been lost. Still, his perceptions of the weather had never been sharper. Even totally removed from the elements, he knew that the temperature out there was falling. More snow was on the way. He knew the wind direction and the barometric pressure. Most important, he knew the thirty-day forecast.

The trial was delayed yet again because of the defendant’s mental state. Judge Lutoslawski had yet to rule on the mistrial motion. The deputies at the jail were in hot water over the escape attempt. As a result they tried to make life in Isolation even harder for Dixon Bell. They took out his sixty-watt light bulb and screwed in a forty-watt bulb. The dim light was on only during the daylight hours. No reading material. He was allowed no visitors-or so he had been led to believe.

He was sitting on the floor in the corner, his knees tucked into his chest. It was past dark. The light was out. The only ray of illumination came from the hallway lights spilling through the observation window. Looking through the dim light, he saw an apparition approaching his cell. It was wearing a blue mask. The Phantom of the News. A deputy let him in, then locked the door to the Isolation cell and left them alone.

“How’d you get in here?”

“A source.”

The Weatherman laughed, his first real laugh in months. “I swear, I’ll arrive in hell someday only to find Rick Beanblossom has a source there.”

The masked newsman didn’t say anything at first, just stood there leaning against the door with his arms folded, blocking the light. Dixon Bell could feel his cold stare in the dark. Finally Rick spoke up, in that halting, haunting voice of his. “The deputies told me off the record it was the best escape attempt they’d ever seen.”

“Thank you.” His curiosity got the best of him. “I still haven’t figured out how you did in Jack Napoleon like that.”

“What makes you think I was behind that?”

The Weatherman enjoyed another good laugh. “The Bible-thumping news director is gone. A worthless pornography investigation is killed. The aging-beauty-queen anchor is forced to flee the state in disgrace, promising a multi-million-dollar lawsuit against a giant media corporation you despise. And the love of your life, Andrea Labore, ascends through the storm clouds to the coveted anchor desk. How’d y’all do it?”

“Videotapes,” Rick told him. “Tapes of Napoleon forcing Andrea to watch porn. Tapes of him forcing reporters to have sex with him in exchange for contracts. Tapes with interns. Tapes with a woman who wanted to be the new weather girl.”

“You bugged the news director’s office?”

“No,” Rick said, “Napoleon bugged his own office. We bugged his bugging operation. One of the photogs rigged it so that whenever the video camera was turned on in his office, it would also record in Edit Room 4. We’d just pop in a blank tape every night and then check it in the morning. The stuff was a pornographer’s dream.”

Dixon Bell shook his head in amazement. “There’s only one way to get news people-turn them on each other. Though I kind of liked Charleen. I guess she did what she thought a woman has to do.”

They were both silent for a moment; then Rick Beanblossom said, “Andy Mack had a heart attack. He’s dead.”

If Dixon Bell was surprised, he didn’t show it. “I’m really sorry to hear that now. He had wonderful weather instincts.”

“Did you get along with him?”

“As well as could be given the circumstances. I took his job.”

“Did you ever feel threatened by him in any way?”

“No, he wasn’t that kind of man.”

“Did he ever visit your house? Know where you lived?”

“No. Why do you ask?”

“I found a message left on his computer. It said, Tm gonna ice you, Weatherman.’ Did you put it there?”

“How could I do that?”

“Do you have telephone privileges?”

“Yes.”

“Digital phone, laptop computer-if anybody could find a way to do it, you could.”

“Maybe he left it there himself.”

“You mean the same way you left that message for yourself?”