Star Time (40 page)

At lunchtime he stopped off at Harry Winston and bought Diane diamond earrings to commemorate the anniversary. The note he wrote was warm and loving.

On Thursday, executives from two South American banks confirmed that they had been funneling money from Iran to the suspect Maryland bank account on orders from Lopez. Sensing that attacking Chris’s story was putting the administration in a bad light, the White House hastily called a press conference to declare that they had long been confidentially working with the FBI to get to the bottom of Iran's money transfers, and the FBI was continuing the Lopez investigation. For that reason they would make no further comments about the matter. That was as much of a concession as the administration was going to allow itself, but it meant that FBS and Chris were no longer in their line of fire.

Chris was grateful for Friday's arrival. The duel with the White House had taken a lot out of her, the tension more wearing than the investigation. On the shuttle to join Ken in Washington, she tried to weigh what the story had gained her and what she had lost. Her journalistic reputation had been enhanced, but the door had probably closed for a while on the easy access granted her in Africa by the President and First Lady and certainly on another invitation to a White House dinner.

One result of coming under pressure so quickly in her new post was learning she could rely on many on the news team to do their jobs well.
Hedy
, for one, had dug up a strong story outlining Lopez's political connections to Congress and insiders in the administration. Hugo had made sure no lapses occurred in sourcing the story’s proof.

Chris's greatest surprise during those uncertain days was Greg. Ten years before he had abandoned her for personal advantage, but now, despite having only recently become head of the network, he was willing to subject himself to criticism by standing his ground beside her when the safer course would have been to drop the story or maybe just turn over the documents to law enforcement. Why? She had brooded over that since the first meeting in his
office with Hugo, and she still couldn't settle on a satisfactory answer.

She had convinced herself that Greg
Lyall
was an easy man to decipher, one of the legion of the immorally ambitious sharks that kept mindlessly swimming and feeding his growth from birth until death. But more than simple self-interest had motivated him, something smacking of morality—or, she assumed, that he had hoped might pass for morality. She allowed herself to remember instances at KFBS when he fought to
maintain the integrity of the news. Chris did not like feeling respect for Greg. It complicated her cynicism about his motives and confused her.

Chris's thoughts turned to her husband, whom she would soon be meeting at a dinner party to which they had been invited. As a reporter she was used to politicians considering her the enemy: If they couldn't manipulate you, they feared you. She refused to think of Ken that way. But with him, too, the situation had become more complicated.

The guests were already seated at the long dinner table when Chris arrived. Ken rose and stepped forward to meet her. She noted his hearty campaign smile, which meant that appearances here were uppermost in his mind. She kissed him and greeted the others with a general salutation meant to cover them all.

What struck her as she took her seat beside Ken was how silent had become a room that the moment before she entered had been an aviary of sound. Chris decided that if she did not break the ice, the evening would be unbearable for everyone. As usual she chose to do it head-on, like an Arctic tanker.

"Sorry I'm late, but the Obamas couldn't bear for me to leave."

Laughter cracked the strain. The dinner party started up again.

Chris sneaked a glance at Ken. He was laughing, now with a kind of pride in his expression.

That's the way it is, Ken, she told him in her thoughts. It isn't going to change. What you saw on TV was what you’ve got.

Stew
Graushner's
hopes, never allowed to rise above shoe height, dropped back to ground level upon learning how unenthusiastically the networks had received
Scum
. He was gaining the impression that Mickey Blinder had just about run out of places to sell the show. Stew was now living with Susan, who bought the food, as well as "little gifts" of clothing for him that now comprised a complete wardrobe. He drove a car she had rented for him after he told her the repair people had given his up as a lost cause. He applied what would have been rent and car payments to paying the loan he took out for the rest of his daughter's tuition. His income derived from his hateful job at
The Guts of the Story
, which Susan did not know about. He feared that if he gave it up, he would lose not only his income, but "those wonderful ideas about off-center characters" and "that wild dialogue" that Susan believed were being born out of his imagination. But what would he have to offer her when the project was finally turned down by every last one of the broadcast and the cable networks? Why would she want to stay with him then?

"I love the fact that you can let me do things for you and not feel you've somehow lost your manhood," she said, pausing to touch his cheek. "About last night . . . I hope you're not still troubled by it. That happens to every man once in a while.
Sometimes even as often as it's been happening to you."

She took a deep breath and smiled brightly. "It doesn't bother
me
a bit.
Really.
I just jog an extra two miles the next morning."

Her thighs, he recalled, now rippled with muscles.

"I think the format's pretty much there," Greg remarked to Hugo as Chris signed off at the end of
This Is FBS News Tonight
. Hugo had asked him for one final look at the program from the newsroom. So, for the first time in a while, he was back in the control room.

Watching Hugo write down on a list items he wanted to address, Greg thought items must be minor ones. The program had a distinctive, engaging character that achieved what they had been trying for.

Greg went out into the newsroom to tell Chris same thing.

"You sound a little sad," she noted as they walked toward her office.

"I am," he realized. After years of careful paper shuffling, refashioning her broadcast and being at the heart of her big story had provided real satisfaction.

"You've got a whole network out there waiting for you to lead it," Chris reminded him.

"And a lot bigger problems than this broadcast.
This was the easy part. I don't have another Chris
Paskins
up my sleeve to dazzle prime time with."

She raised the question she had been pondering for a couple of weeks now. "Why did you give me the go-ahead to do the Lopez story? It would have been a lot safer not to."

"I figured you needed to break a big, controversial story to get attention . . . stature. Going up against the President was chancy, but perfect."

"So, it was for ratings, not an ideal like truth or the people's right to know."

"Idealism is a luxury I can't afford right now."

Instead of being scornful, she was intrigued. "You could lie to make me think better of you."

They were just outside her office now.

"I lied to you once and never stopped regretting it. I never want to do it again."

His gaze felt relentless. Chris glanced away and ducked into her office. She was alarmed at the feelings breaking biases within her.

Raoul
Clampton
was jiggling his foot. That was not a good sign, Marian knew. It meant he was anxious and might act erratically.

She and the other programming executives were seated around Raoul's conference table. They had spent the morning shuffling plaques on his ancient, old school magnetic board to devise lineups that would improve the scheduling of FBS's present prime-time shows against its competitors. He had a few ideas to present there. And then he asked the development people to present their best prospects for new shows, which they would all then present to Greg
Lyall
and
Ev
Carver at the upcoming meeting. Marian understood that involving them all allowed Raoul to spread the blame.

Earlier in the day one of the lawyers in Business Affairs had sent her a note to ask if she knew anything about a new financial arrangement for
Luba
.
Clampton
had just requested he draft a contract that would increase
Monumental's
license fee by two hundred thousand dollars per episode—retroactively to the start of the fall season. That was even before Annette Valletta signed on for another year, which
guarantee
her a new sitcom the year after. In addition Monumental would get a blind thirteen-week commitment for a new sitcom this coming year.

“A lot to give up with nothing assured in return,” he observed. “Could you tell me more about the deal?”

She had not heard about the deal and could not conceive of Raoul’s giving away a slot sight unseen in next year's schedule without even mentioning it to her.

She was taking only slight notice as Barry Collins, in charge of developing dramatic series, extolled what Marian knew to be predictable choices made safer by casting well-worn stars as leads. Stars don't guarantee TV hits, she had always believed; TV makes its own stars. As Collins neared the end of his presentation, she cautioned herself not to scream out loud if he lauded another cop show or some variation.

"Oh, there's one more show we ought to be very excited about," he added. "It's called 'Squad Five.' Five cops, all with special talents, take on the toughest police assignments in the city. The head of the squad is a former Navy SEAL whose wife was killed by drug dealers out to teach him a lesson. You’re going to love the team he assembles: One’s a rock singer in his spare time. Another’s an ex-basketball star with a bum knee. We're thinking Shaq here. And there’s a really gorgeous chick
who's
a karate champ, but used to be a hooker, so she knows the underworld. This show throbs with realism."

"I love it, Barry," Raoul praised
him,
his voice registering more pep than it had since the meeting began.

The others: "Great, Barry."
"Very creative."
"Good going, Big Guy."

As Raoul called on her to present, she made a crucial decision. "I've given a lot of thought to our comedy lineup. I'm convinced that because we're last in the ratings, we have to be daring, experiment, try for something new to get attention from viewers. So . . .” She slipped the pages before her into a folder and pulled out new ones. “. . .
these
are the comedy proposals we ought to back."

Marian eliminated shows
Clampton
truly hated, but began to list those he had been
luke
warm about that she believed in.

In short order he angrily cut her off. "I think I have a pretty good idea of the comedies I want to go with. I'll present them myself."

He then called on the woman in charge of long-form, movies and miniseries made for TV.

When the meeting ended, Raoul asked Marian to follow him to his office, where he closed the door just long enough to fire her. She started to argue—not so much for herself, but for the shows he should be supporting.

"That's now
my
worry," he told her curtly. "You're nothing anymore. Be out of here in twenty minutes."

Marian was gone in ten, her personal belongings in a cardboard carton she carried. Out of the corner of her eye as she left, she spied her former second-in-command—now her successor—coming down the hall with his own carton in his arms. Marian did not slow down to offer best wishes.

She placed her belongings in the backseat of her car. Her only stop on the way home was Baskin-Robbins, where she bought
a quarts
of Rocky Road and
Jamocha
Almond Fudge.

"Fuck Raoul
Clampton
!" she screamed at the top of her lungs as she
braked to a stop in her driveway. Several birds flew off her bushes in fear.

"Fuck cop shows!" she shouted, and ripped the tops off the ice-cream containers.

"Fuck cookie-cutter sitcoms!"

She attacked the ice cream.

"Fuck my hips!"

Her gaze swung up to pierce sky visible above the open sunroof. "And as long as I've got
You're
attention, God, fuck television and all the assholes in it!"

While she scooped large dollops of first one and then the other ice-cream flavor into her mouth, tears rolled down her cheeks.

Greg arrived at FBS's Los Angeles headquarters early in the morning after a late flight and a few hours of sleep at his hotel.
Ev
was joining him, he suspected, to get a better fix on how to topple Greg after next
year's lineup died. He was already making clear to one and all that Greg had taken responsibility for next year's new shows.