Death On the Dlist (2010) (2 page)

IT HAD TO BE TONY RUSSO. SHE’D RECOGNIZE THAT VOICE ANYWHERE. IT
had been in her ear for hours on end for months. The Jersey accent had actually grown on her, but this was the first time she could attach a face to the voice on the phone.

She had imagined someone tall, dressed in a suit, businesslike, maybe like an on-air anchor. He couldn’t be more different. Barely topping five-feet-six, he was dressed in a baggy pair of low-rider jeans working their way down. Fashion “trends” were not for everyone, and with that in mind, Hailey didn’t want to see Tony’s other side.

The show’s host, Harry Todd, was Tony’s polar opposite. Todd had to be in his late fifties despite insisting, even when confronted with evidence to the contrary, that he was only thirty. He’d undergone every plastic surgery procedure known to man and doggedly followed every trend to stay young. His current stab at youth was spiking his highlighted hair straight up in the middle, stiff with gel, like a mohawk. Ego aside, he was the undisputed star of daytime talk.

Somehow, Todd garnered a huge share of the daytime market and not only managed to hang on for nearly twenty years, but was still perceived as a ratings monster, and nobody dared suggest otherwise. GNE would go right down the crapper without Todd as the tent pole holding up the daytime numbers.

And Anthony Russo was Todd’s chief booker.

Russo booked Martha Stewart on
Harry Todd
straight out of jail and even got her to wear the famous green poncho she knitted behind bars. He got Brad and Angelina, and every sitting president since Reagan.

The show was executive-produced by a female power broker by the name of Sookie Downs. Downs had come up through the network and landed at the helm of the biggest daytime talk show in the industry. She ran the show with an iron fist from her mansion somewhere in the Hamptons, literally smack in the middle of an apple orchard.

Rarely making the trek into the city, she relied on her henchman, Tony Russo, to hold the show together and do her bidding. He carried a private cell phone on his hip at all times so they could stay in constant contact. Right now, Russo looked Hailey straight in the eyes. “You’re so beautiful. I had no idea! Do people just come up to you on the street and say ‘You’re beautiful’?
I love it!
”

Hailey gave him a hard look. Was he serious?

He looked so sincere . . . but glancing over at him as they walked side by side toward a huge, swanky bank of elevators, she noticed he had already looked away from her and was scanning the lobby of the building to see if there was anyone there he needed to glad-hand before they got on. Meaningless compliments apparently just rolled off his tongue.

Okay. She sized him up pretty quickly. He was just one of those TV types she’d always heard about, shallow, frenetic, would say or do anything to get a story. Note to self . . .
Take Russo with a pinch, no . . . a box . . . of salt.

The elevator was so spacious it felt like a room, oak paneled with high-def flat-screen color TVs installed flush on either side of the doors. Pretty luxe. Both screens were tuned to GNE and were flashing shots of dead civilians on a roadside in Afghanistan. The screen quickly dissolved into four old white men in suits, in boxes like
The Brady Bunch
intro, politicians arguing about White House strategy.

The elevator shot smoothly up to the thirtieth floor, where they stepped off and turned right. Russo swiped another security pad built into the wall next to huge swinging glass doors. Pleasant music piped into the area just outside the elevator banks ended abruptly and Hailey could hear raised voices in the distance. Even a long corridor away from the show’s headquarters, tension was palpable. It hung in the air.

Walking along with Russo, she turned right into his office. The windows looked down onto a tiny park with cement instead of grass and some sort of statue in the center. It was surrounded by high-rises whose windows were grimy, many of them looking back vacantly, their blinds askew, suggesting they desperately needed tenants.

“Nice office, huh?
I love it!
”

He certainly
loved
a lot.

“Took me ten years, but I got the window!”
I guess beauty’s in the eye of the beholder . . .
Hailey managed to keep that thought to herself. He seemed so proud of his window office, she felt guilty for noticing the bleak view.

“You’ll just have to excuse me, Hailey. I don’t feel so good today. I ate at the diner across the street, and I’m pretty sure there was a hair in my eggs. I’ve felt nauseous ever since. Has that ever happened to you? You know . . . a hair in your eggs?”

“No . . . I don’t recall a hair in my eggs . . .” She could add nothing to Tony’s personal horror story.

He went on. “Yep . . . I finally got the window office. Everybody wanted it, but they gave it to
me
.” While Russo’s face and body were angled toward her from behind a corporate-looking desk, the same as every other desk in the building, his eyes remained glued to his computer, its lighted screen glowing dimly back onto his face.

Something on his computer screen triggered Russo to leap straight up, rolling his chair back. “Hold on . . . I gotta get a print-out right
now
!
Don’t move! I’ll be right back!”

Racing from around his desk and out the office door, Russo left Hailey alone with the rows of TV monitors covering the walls. They were all tuned to daytime talk, and nearly every screen had a group of women sitting on a couch in front of a studio audience. Banners across the bottom screens screamed out shocking scenarios. One said
“Leaves Wife of 27 Years for Step-Daughter.”
Sitting on the sofa were three women glaring across the set at a chubby, forlorn-looking man in a suit that was way too snug, seated beside a twenty-something girl in a low-cut top and tight jeans.

The second screen showed a group of women sitting around a table drinking out of large coffee mugs. The banner across the bottom read
“Wife Poisons Husband and Boyfriend With Antifreeze Hidden in Lime Jell-O.”

On the third, a former fashion model was seated on a sofa with a woman who was obviously a fitness trainer, dressed in scanty aerobic workout tights. They were cheering on obese women walking down a runway.

Before Hailey could focus on a fourth monitor, a door slammed, and she turned to look through Russo’s glass office wall toward the noise. It was Tony, rushing down the carpeted corridor toward all the other cubies.

“I was right! I found it! A new story, people! A torso! A bloody torso stuffed in a suitcase washed up on the beach in Jersey City! Unidentified! White female! People! We’ve got a show! You’re dead . . . We’re
alive
!
”

Hailey could only assume he meant the show was alive, not cancelled.

Tony waved a handful of AP wires over his head like a cannibal brandishing a bloody scalp still warm off a skull. A loud flurry ensued among the bookers, who pounced on their phones to start rounding up guests and booking satellites.

Hailey studied their reactions, hunching over their screens, some with a phone to each ear and, somehow, manipulating BlackBerrys at the same time. What about the torso? Wasn’t anybody a tiny bit concerned that a once-living human being had been severed in half?

“What about the head?” somebody yelled out over the short walls of the cubicles to no one in particular.

“Shut up and book! If we’re lucky, it’ll wash up tomorrow and we can do that . . . or better yet . . . maybe they’ll fish it up while we’re live today!”

What was wrong with these people?

And how in the world did
I
get tangled up with
them
? Hailey stood up and stalked to the coffee machine. It was loaded with expensive Starbucks offerings. These people obviously had money to burn. She went for her usual, whenever she couldn’t get Irish Breakfast, chamomile with skim. No sugar.

Stirring the tea in the Styrofoam cup with a red plastic stick, she thought back on just how she landed here, in the center of a towering high-rise in the heart of Manhattan, the vortex of the television news industry.

“It’s a gift from God. A gift!” Tony popped his head around the corner.

“What gift?” Taking a first, hot gulp, she looked at him over the Styrofoam rim.

“The torso! We’ll do it the first fifteen minutes . . . You don’t mind being the second story off breaking news, do you? I mean, it’s
a woman’s nude torso
!
No head!
It’s a gift from God!”

Tony took her by the elbow and began steering her down the corridor.

“So I’ll have somebody walk you to hair and makeup, and then on to the studio. Harry can’t wait to meet you! He’s just thrilled! You’re just what we need! You’ll be an overnight star . . . The audience will
love
you! A lawyer-turned-shrink whose husband was a cop gunned down in the line of duty. And you’re a fox! The camera’s gonna love you!”

Hailey stiffened like she always did, even now, this many years later, when someone brought up Will out of the blue. It was like cold water thrown on her face.

“Mr. Russo, I’ve never been married. Will was not a police officer. He was in college studying to be a geologist when he was murdered.”

“Who’s Will?”

With that, Hailey turned on her heel. Walking as fast as she could without actually breaking into a trot, she made a beeline for a door that had a fire exit sign, along with the words alarm will sound posted above it in red letters. Turning the knob, she threw the words back at him over her shoulder.

“I don’t think I’ll be able to do your show today . . . Thanks for the offer. I’ll find my own way out.”

Russo was stunned. A
Harry Todd
guest? Refuse to go on air? A no-name former prosecutor who didn’t jump at the chance to guest on a nationally televised talk show? She was walking away from
the number one daytime talk show in the whole country
?
He couldn’t wrap his mind around it . . .
Someone who didn’t want to be on TV?

In all his years, Tony Russo had never encountered such a thing and took off, hot on her heels. She had the head start, but he was gaining on her, darting through the heavy metal stairwell door, which had coincidentally set off an alarm when she opened it.

The cement stair shaft reeked of smoke. The steps were littered with years and years of old cigarette butts from every employee who wanted to sneak a puff without having to go outside. Now she got the alarm. Sneaky smokers must have entered through another floor that didn’t alarm. Hailey’s abrupt exit was not so sneaky.

“Wait!” he called out after her, pumping his chubby legs furiously to catch up. Russo was going as fast as he could, but Hailey was an avid runner . . . only when Russo slipped on the third flight, skidding down eight or nine stairs on nothing but rump and elbows, did Hailey stop to look back up.

Everything went quiet. She no longer heard his footsteps. Hailey took a few tentative steps back up. Did he fall? Was he hurt?

After a half-flight up, from around the corner of the stairs, she spotted him. His khaki pants had slid down even farther than before, and his stack of papers had scattered the length of the stairwell. His glasses were missing, and to top it off, he looked like he was going to cry. Something that sounded like a muffled man-sob echoed against the walls.

Cry? He was a grown man, for Pete’s sake.
Hailey sprinted back up the steps.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah . . . I just don’t understand why you ran out like that. What happened? It took me so long to book you and fly you back to New York to be here on the set with Harry . . .”

“I’m leaving because you have no idea who Will is. Everybody, including me, we’re just stories . . . stories to fill up your hour . . . nothing more. Will was murdered.
He’s dead.
He was gunned down just before our wedding. And it means nothing to you. I won’t let him be shilled out for ratings. The whole thing makes me sick, but now that I see you’re all right, I’m leaving.”

Hailey turned and started back down the stairs, but after only a few steps, she heard it again, louder. An outright sob, no longer muffled. Was he actually
crying
?
Shedding tears? Ridiculous.

The sobs got a little louder. Tony Russo was outright crying. Hailey stopped, her hand on the railing. Was he that sensitive? Reaching into her bra, she pulled out one of her father’s old white cotton handkerchiefs she always carried for good luck, turned, and headed back up.

When she reached him again, he was even more of a mess, now huddled against the painted cement-block wall, sitting on one of the steps with his head in his elbows resting on his knees. He didn’t look up, although there seemed to be a brief pause between sobs.

“I’ll lose my job over this. I know I will. I work like a dog, literally night and day. This job is all I have, Hailey. My parents live in another state, I never see them. I’m not married, I don’t even have a girlfriend. Running
The Harry Todd Show
takes every spare minute I’ve got. It’s all I have. And now, Sookie will fire me. I let the ‘big get’ get away. I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Standing at his feet, Hailey looked down at his head and for the first time noticed hair plugs and some sort of surgical scar that looked vaguely like the Atlanta Braves’ Hatchet. After years of prosecuting and making her living as a professional “observer,” she couldn’t help but make a note of the plugs in three neat rows converging in a loose V shape, to resemble a widow’s peak. As he was a few inches taller than she, she’d never had this particular bird’s-eye view.

“You’ll seriously lose your job if I cancel? I’m just one guest.”

“But you’re
the
guest for today. Harry was interviewing you alone, on the set. One-on-one. That’s a big deal . . . and they’ve already promo’ed you
‘Hailey Dean . . . for the hour.’
It’s run for days on the network and the Web site. The whole world has seen it. I lose you . . . I’m screwed.”