Do You Want to Know a Secret? (4 page)

She looked into dark blue eyes which Harry Granger, her morning co-anchor, said “never missed a trick.” Right now, the white parts were tinged ever so slightly with pink. She reached back and grabbed the small, ever-present bottle of Visine from the top of her desk, tilted her head back, and squeezed.

She forced a smile she did not feel and gazed into the mirror. Her top teeth, the ones that showed, were white and straight. The ones that didn’t show were white and crooked. The orthodontist had never given her a retainer for the bottom ones. Nor had she ever asked for one, she admitted ruefully. As it was, she had only grudgingly and sporadically used the uncomfortable mouthpiece for the upper teeth. She thought of her parents, who hadn’t had that much money but did have plenty of problems of their own. She was grateful that they had found the funds for those teenage braces.

Eliza lifted her chin, jutting it out in the direction of the mirror, and considered the thin scar, a vestige of an eleven-year-old girl’s too deep a dive into a cement-floored swimming pool. Luckily, the scar fell just beyond the camera’s watchful eye.

She knew that she had been genetically fortunate in many aspects of her life. A noted cosmetic surgeon had once told her that people paid him thousands of dollars to make a small, straight nose like hers. The shiny brown hair, now resting freshly trimmed on her shoulders, was kissed with natural highlights, though no one around the jaded
KEY News
broadcast center believed it. At five foot seven, she was tall and thin, the baby pounds from Janie’s birth having come off with some concentrated effort.

Yes, in the general scheme of things, she had been physically blessed. But as Eliza looked at the crow’s feet crinkling insistently at the corners of her eyes and the furrows that had become decidedly more pronounced at her brow line, she knew that the events of the last few years were taking their toll.

Don’t start thinking about all that now, she told herself as her adrenaline started to pump.

Chapter 5

The KEY press
information officer called.
The New York Times
wanted a statement from the president of the news division regarding the
Mole
report of Eliza Blake’s cocaine addiction.

“Tell them it’s ridiculous,” snapped tired Yelena Gregory.

What else could go wrong?

Chapter 6

In the six
years Eliza Blake had been with
KEY News
in New York, the professional gods had certainly been with her. Hired away from the Providence affiliate, where she had anchored the six and eleven o’clock broadcasts, her first job at the network was general assignment reporting. Just a few months into her new position, the vicious winds of Hurricane Anthony had smashed into southern Florida. Mispredicted by the weather service, the malevolent storm had caught Floridians and the network news division unprepared. The end of August found most of the seasoned correspondents vacationing and news management hastily assigned Eliza to the story. She had been on the air around the clock, face wet, hair blowing, raincoat flapping furiously, many times shouting to be heard over the roaring wind. Her reporting had been authoritative and controlled, and yet Eliza had also managed to convey a human reaction to the enormity of what was happening as the hurricane devastated the homes and hopes of thousands of people. She, like too many others in South Florida, had huddled in a bathtub with a mattress over her head as the walls shivered and the roof of her motel began to collapse. Eliza talked herself through the horrific night, making spiritual bargains as the hurricane winds raged. When the senior correspondents arrived the next day to survey the destruction, the story had clearly stayed hers.

Surveys showed that the audience liked what they saw. Executive Row had been impressed. Sensing star potential,
KEY News
president Yelena Gregory decreed that more of the stories likely to make air were to be assigned to Eliza Blake. Eliza appeared with increasing frequency and her audience popularity and identification ratings rose. The scores told KEY management that viewers recognized, liked and tended to believe Eliza Blake. When the female anchor of the morning show,
KEY to America
, departed for another network, Eliza got the job.

That’s when the migraines had started. It had all happened within a year. The anchor job, the new baby, John’s death, checking herself into Carrier. Now, four years later, the ache of losing John had become so much a part of her life that some mornings she noticed that she almost forgot the pain.

Any other time Eliza would have enjoyed filling in for Bill Kendall. Anchoring the
KEY Evening Headlines
was one thing, but filling Bill Kendall’s shoes, even if only once or twice, was heady stuff. But not tonight. Tonight she just wanted to get home.

As her heels clicked down the long corridor from the elevator to the studio, her mind turned to Kendall. Recently, Bill had been arriving late quite often. It was the subject of much staff speculation and now Eliza was concerned, too.

When
KEY News
wooed Eliza away from Providence, Yelena Gregory had suggested that Eliza spend some time observing the anchorman. Bill had been an amiable and charming tour guide of the network news operation. Eliza watched as he filled the morning with telephone calls, script reviews and narration recordings. Lunch varied, Bill explained, but more often than not, it was a notable meeting with some influential type at ‘21,’ San Pietro or the Four Seasons. He said he made it a point to be back in the news center by 2:45 to go over the copy for the 3:00 radio hourly. Kendall loved radio, he had gotten his start there. He never wanted to let the radio guys down.

Another check with Jean, another consult with the executive producer and Kendall would start to go over the contents of that evening’s broadcast. Kendall took his title of managing editor seriously. Few things were more important to him than
The KEY Evening Headlines with Bill Kendall
.

Thoughts of Bill Kendall were pushed from Eliza’s mind as she mounted the anchor desk platform and slipped into Kendall’s chair, sliding her shoulder bag out of sight under the desk. The atmosphere was charged in the studio. Each of the people allowed in at this time of day had a specific function for which they were well trained and well paid. The stage manager, the floor crew, the Teleprompter operator, the makeup woman and the directorial and editorial staffs hurrying back and forth knew well their individual and collective responsibilities and executed them precisely. It was the collective one, the total product, which was called
The KEY Evening Headlines
, from which some got a charge and others derived their entire identities. They worked in rarefied air.

Range Bullock came out to the anchor desk from his glass-walled office which abutted the studio. Dubbed the Fishbowl by KEY staffers, the office was the nerve center of the broadcast’s operations. Producers and correspondents conferred with Bullock in his glass office throughout the day and all final decisions about the editorial content of each evening’s show were made there. Disgruntled employees had been known to gripe about the piranhas trawling the Fishbowl.

The executive producer was all business. “The lead tonight is the typhoon in India. At this point there are an estimated three hundred thousand people dead and damages could run to a billion dollars. Not much by U.S. standards, the money, I mean, but the video is unreal and Roberts has a two-minute package. We’ll follow that with another minute-thirty from Snyder on the fouled-up relief effort. From there we go to commercial.

“Next we do Washington, two pieces in that section, the president’s day and the Supreme Court.” The producer paused, studied the lineup he had planned and ran his free hand through his thick red hair. “The third section will feature the latest shuttle snafu and more dirty linen in the House of Windsor. Fourth section is two pieces on the candidates today, one on the Republicans, the other on the Democrats, and where they all stand after yesterday’s primary. We’ll wrap up with ‘Here’s Looking at You, America.’ McBride’s done a piece on the state of the American funeral industry that will make their toes curl.”

Range Bullock looked over his bifocals and his jawline rippled as he bit down and swallowed. “Of course, all of this is in place until something changes. But you’re used to that, right?”

Eliza knew the observation was made as much for the producer’s sake as it was for her own. She was surprised she was being called for the fourth time in six weeks to fill in for the unusually absent Bill Kendall. She also knew that Range Bullock did not enjoy last-minute scrambling to fill the anchor chair. It was unsettling for all concerned when the regular anchor was absent unexpectedly.

She hoped that nothing was really wrong with Bill. She made a mental note to call him tomorrow and invite him to lunch. Maybe there was something she could do to help him. He had been so kind to her when she needed a friend. She also wanted to get his take on the
Mole
article. Bill had such a good sense of perspective.

Looking at Range, she speculated again. Had Range seen the story? She couldn’t tell. His demeanor was brusque, but that was usual.

“Right,” she answered.

Bullock nodded and patted the pile of papers on the anchor desk. “Go get ’em,” he urged and he walked back to the Fishbowl.

As she read over the copy, first silently and then out loud, Eliza noted the broadcast was packed full tonight. Of the half-hour show, eight minutes were always commercials. That left twenty-two minutes of air time. Tonight there would be almost nineteen minutes of packaged reports, leaving the anchor a grand total of three minutes in which to appear on camera. Eliza knew that Kendall got more than three minutes. Okay, okay, the inner voice told her. Just do your part right and be grateful for this opportunity.

Yelena Gregory walked across the studio to the Fish-bowl, acknowledging Eliza with a casual wave. Had Yelena seen the story yet? If not, it would only be a matter of time until she did.

Yelena wore her authority as she wore her fine dove-gray silk blouse bowed at her neck and the low-heeled black Ferragamos, with a quiet, understated dignity. There was nothing flashy about Yelena. She was a large woman and both her size and the expression on her solemn face left the impression that no one forced Yelena to do anything she didn’t want to do. She and Bullock watched the show together almost every evening.