Star Time (48 page)

"He was a cockroach."

"Well, still, he must have had some redeeming qualities," Biff continued.

Sally thought that over.

"No," she concluded.

"None?"

"He was a degenerate. Even his taste in lingerie was tacky. But he was putting together a new series for me."

"Still, you must be very upset by the news." Biff took a step forward to comfort her.

"Make one more move and I'll blow you away like face powder!" Sally warned. "You two figured now that he was dead, there'd be no one home to stop you from looting the place." Sally had barely a cent to her name, but hoped that before Danny's death was discovered, she could stash away a few valuables to tide her over for a while.

"I remember that face-powder line from some show," Biff recalled. "Wait, you're Sally Foster, right? That was from
your
show."

She nodded ambivalently because it wouldn't be right to show pleasure at being recognized by a break-in thief.

"Sally," he said, trying to put as much reassurance into his voice as he could, "all we want is a look at his appointment book for tomorrow."

"His what?"

Lily thought she might sound more convincing. "Biff and Danny were producing a show Biff created. Danny had a meeting at some network tomorrow that was interested in it."

"More bullshit!
He's got an appointment to sell
my
series tomorrow."

The three shared a sudden, worried realization.

"Where's his appointment book?" they exclaimed at once.

They rushed to the desk. It was locked.

Sally grasped an empty vase on the desk. "He keeps the key in it. He doesn't know I know that."

She turned the vase over. A small key tumbled out.

They found the appointment book in a top side drawer. Under “Tuesday 11 o'clock” was written: "Marian Marcus, FBS, Do her."

Sally was furious. "He's having an affair with the bitch. The guy was the lowest—"

"No, it says, 'Danger'. It's just tough to read. The working title of my show is
Danger, Stranger
."

"He was dyslexic. He wrote like a five-year-old. He would tell you himself."

"Not anymore."

"Bastard!"
Sally cursed.

"Sorry," Biff said.

"Not you.
That appointment.
He swore to me the meeting tomorrow was to sell
my
show."

Biff remembered. "His assistant said he had his files here."

Sally unlocked the bottom desk drawer. The project files were set on a rack alphabetically. She pulled out the file for her show and the one for Biff's. The most recent correspondence in hers comprised formal rejection letters from networks. Two were from FBS.

"I'll kill him!" Sally screamed, waving the gun. "That lying prick, I'll kill him!"

Biff and Lily dove at the other file. Inside was Danny's handwritten note that Marian Marcus liked the idea and had asked to meet with him and the writer.

"With the
writer?"
Biff roared. "I'll kill the lying prick myself!"

It was left to Lily to remind them. "You're both a little late."

"I'm going to that meeting myself," Biff announced.

"You won't get past her assistant," Sally pointed out, "even if you do manage to get into the building. Marian Marcus won't see you without Danny there. You have no package. Danny was a top producer. They would have relied on him to put up the deficit financing. Now, if you were bringing them a package, say some stars . . . What's your show about?"

Biff explained that it was an hour-long action-suspense series about white-and-black buddy cops who used disguises to break big cases.

"Why does one of them have to be a black guy? A woman would give you the same contrast.
Me, for instance."

"Oh, no.
That was the whole point of creating the show. It was originally supposed to be about the black, but Danny convinced me you needed a white hero to sell a drama show."

"Danny had an instinct for that. But it won't sell without a package. What if I can get Chad Laidlaw to play your hero and the other lead was a woman. Then you’d have a package."

"Laidlaw would be great, but he's already got a series."

"It's getting pulled in midseason. I’ve heard he's worried out of his mind because the pilots at other networks are already cast and set to shoot. The only network it's not too late to make a deal at is FBS."

Lily was not about to let this opportunity slip by. "Biff, you can become the messiah for African-Americans with your
next
series. Let's not lose this one. What do you want, Sally?"

"I'll want a quarter ownership and so will Chad, I'm sure. We'll bring in an experienced producer who the network will approve, and he'll get a piece. The last quarter's yours. You know, plus our salaries."

"Okay," Biff declared. "Is there a typewriter anywhere, or better, a computer and a printer? I have to redo this proposal to take out Danny."

Sally pushed a button. A computer rose up out of a cabinet to one side. "Am I a great partner or what?"

Biff pulled the desk chair over.

"We need a title," he remarked. "I've never really liked
Danger, Stranger
."

"
Adam and Eve
?"
Sally offered.

Biff began typing. Sally phoned Chad Laidlaw, who loved the concept as Sally read it over Biff’s
shoulder .
The package still needed a production company or studio to guarantee to make up any deficit above the network's investment, but they would handle that later. Lily began to write up by hand a short letter agreement that would bind them all. She halted and looked up. She had just remembered something.

"You know, we really ought to do something about Danny."

"You just told me Danny's dead," Sally replied.

"His body's just lying in that alley."

"Maybe somebody found him already."

"Not where he is," Biff pointed out. "He might not be found for days."

Sally was practical. "Look, you can't call from here. The police could trace it. You have to use a pay phone near the body." Sally knew about
such things. One show she had done trapped a killer who used the wrong phone. "Don't give your name or anything."

Lily shivered. "It's not
altogether
impossible that by the time we get back there tonight someone would already have found him and called the police."

“I’m sure,” Sally agreed.

The three went back to what they had been doing, relieved by their decency at not having completely forgotten the deceased.

By noon the next day Marian had given
Adam and Eve
the go-ahead. Biff would write the pilot script. Light, flirting, comic dialogue would characterize the couple's relationship in and out of their disguises. During the pitch meeting, she particularly liked his
extemporizing
the kind of flippant humor that would leaven perilous action sequences. She astonished him by remarking that she had seen one of his performances at a comedy club. She thought he had the sort of funny story-telling skill to pull it off.

Just about the time the newly formed
Adam and Eve
production team was jumping up and down outside the FBS Tower, an assistant medical examiner was sliding Danny Vickers's unidentified body out of a refrigerated locker. The crushed skull made the cause of death immediately obvious, but he would still have
go
through the entire autopsy to be sure.

Because the Rolls
was
stolen before the body was found, two days would pass before Danny was identified, and then only because Sally called the police to say he was missing.

Newspapers played up the story and the fact that he was found with cocaine in his possession. Although the police made determined statements, they privately doubted they would ever locate his killer. They were right.

Danny's death proved a benefit to his ex-wife, whose young son inherited Danny's estate, despite most people's supposition that her fitness trainer was really the father.

It benefited Sally, who got to stay another year in the Malibu house rent-free after she threatened to contest the estate's distribution. She intended a good part of that time seeking the combination to Danny's safe, while living off discreet sales of his artwork.

Television critics believed, but did not write, that America's viewers benefited from Danny's death most of all.

Greg temporarily held off announcing the planned News Division terminations while he pondered expanding its activities to solve a
problem.
An expensive, turgid drama dragging ratings into an abyss on Tuesday nights at ten.
Some of those
newspeople
would be needed if he counterprogrammed in that hour with a much less costly news magazine produced by the News Division. Even if the ratings failed to rise, he would save six hundred thousand dollars a week in a time slot he was certain to lose anyway. If enough viewers displayed interest, the hour might even be profitable.

Every network had one or two prime-time news hours for the same reason:
20/20
,60
Minutes, Frontline
. The trick was to figure out a new format. Greg also had to keep in mind that viewers were being flooded with syndicated tabloid-news, mostly celebrity-obsessed shows on local stations, often during a prime-access half hour before the networks took over for the night. The crudest of those was a popular show he had recently seen called
The Guts of the Story
, which produced stories remarkably like
those
Stew
Graushner
and his partner's series satirized.

"There's a reason those gossip shows and Barbara Walters interview shows are so popular," Greg reasoned aloud. "People like knowing personal stuff about famous people. Let's have Chris do an hour's worth of interviews with important people every week."

"On top of the nightly news, that's a good way to kill her," Matt Blanchard pointed out. Greg and Alan Howe had selected the young senior producer to oversee the new program.

"All right," Greg agreed, "she'll just be the host, and we can film a little background about each person along with some file footage and spend a lot of time having the person talk very personally right into the camera. If it's someone important or sure to draw viewers—say, an inside look at Sarkozy and his wife, if we could get them, or Julia Roberts—Chris would do the interview. You know, get them to talk about personal matters

although who the hell knows what's personal anymore

maybe some piece of gossip about themselves they might not have revealed before. The producer or a correspondent will ask questions from off-camera to get them talking. We cut the questions out of the soundtrack and just have the person's intimate talk to the viewer."

"We could call it
Intimate Portraits
or
Confidential Insight
," Howe suggested. A florid complexion made him appear embarrassed by the suggestion.

"The last one's punchier. Maybe we'll come up with something better. I want to be on the air in a month."

Blanchard stood up. "That doesn't give me much time."

"If we can cover breaking news in minutes," Howe declared, rising to leave as well, "a month's practically a vacation."

Greg did not know whether the last remark had been made to demonstrate a can-do attitude, but it pleased him nonetheless.

Greg and Chris had not spoken in several days and had not been alone since the weekend at the country house. She looked up with a start when Greg stepped into the open doorway of her office.

"I was just thinking about you," she said.

He closed the door and went around the desk to kiss her. She savored it.

"It's always as good as I hope it will be," she whispered. "Okay, what's up? Couldn't get wonderful me out of your mind?"

Greg explained the new prime-time news hour to her. Her contract allowed for such a series and occasional specials. FBS had to capitalize on her growing popularity if a news-magazine program was to succeed.

"It's going to be serious, though," she wanted him to assure her.

"I wouldn't want to be doing, you know, ‘Inside the Park Avenue Hooker.' "

"Sounds like an interesting place to be,” he joked. “We'll need to have some lighter pieces, but the idea is to focus on people who have real significance in our lives, do a little mini-documentary about each, which would include a long segment in which they tell us about themselves. Other interviewers do something like it, but we can make it your own."

"Sounds terrific."