Falling Star (46 page)

He was interrupted by a knock.

"Tony?" Anna-Maria whispered through the
door. "It's that Natalie Daniels from the station. With somebody
named Ruth Sperry."

He ran his hands under the water, frowning.
"They're both on the phone?"

"No, in the living room. They didn't want
coffee."

He turned off the faucet. "They're
here
?"

What now? The last thing he needed was
another KXLA catastrophe. As it was, his main female anchor got
named in lawsuits like other people got parking tickets, but he
couldn't fire her because she'd just turn around and sue the
station for sexual harassment, thanks to that moron Bjorkman. And
even though he'd just about convinced Pemberley to let him stay on
as news director, he'd be SOL if anything else hit the fan.

He swallowed hard, then threw cold water on
his face. When he opened the door, Anna-Maria was still standing in
the hallway, wringing her hands. "All right," he told her. "I'll be
right down."

His wife nodded and bustled away.

Tony stared at his reflection in the
medicine-cabinet mirror. A balding, middle-aged, fat guy in gray
sweats stared back—a guy who looked so sick that somebody should
just put him out of his misery.

He forced himself downstairs, where Princess
especially seemed to get a shock when she saw him. "Sorry for
bothering you at home, Tony. It's clear you're not well." Her nose
twitched, like a doe who smelled something bad in the forest. Like
him, for example. "But something has come to our attention that you
need to see."

Ruth held up a videotape. "Where's your
VCR?"

He led them into the family room. "This
better be good," he warned, but nobody seemed to hear. Ruth popped
in the tape and they all watched for a while, but the dark blurry
images made no sense to him. "All right," he said eventually. "Clue
me in. What the hell is this?"

"It's that elementary school shooting from
back in July," Ruth said. "This is CNN's video, which I brought
in-house for
Kids in Danger
. A 6-year-old boy died,
remember? Kelly covered it."

Sure, he remembered. Tragic stuff, sure, but
these days it happened so often that the edge had worn off. You
couldn't be in TV news and not have the edge wear off. His brother
told him it was like being a cop. "So?"

"So watch it again," Ruth said, and this time
she replayed the tape on slo-mo and pointed to the left side of the
screen. This time he saw the point. Man, did he see the point.
There was a shadowy figure, and now he could tell that it was
Kelly. Ruth reminded him how Kelly had groused about having to stay
overnight to cover the story. And then Princess showed him how
Kelly had shone a flashlight up at the windows and how right after
that the shooting started.

And then the kid had died.

Tony stared at the screen, grappling with it.
Was he seeing what he thought he was seeing? In all his years in TV
news, he'd never run across anything like this. Then again, he'd
never run across anybody like Kelly. If it was true, and it sure as
shootin' looked true, then he had a ginormous problem on his
hands.

Jesus Christ.

His stomach started its preheave dance. He
was done for if this tape got out. He was staring at lawsuit city.
Wouldn't the dead kid's family sue, for wrongful death or
something, if they saw this? Wouldn't the feds get involved? Sure
as hell there'd be a mob of picketers outside the station where the
"child killer" worked. Christ, if this got out, Rhett Pemberley
would can his butt faster than ice melts in Phoenix in July.

Tony looked at Princess, on the couch silent
as a cat, and Ruth, still standing by the VCR. The two most
contentious broads in his employ now had the power to bury him with
Pemberley. "Who else has seen this?" he asked.

Princess answered. "So far, only Ruth and
me."

So far
. "Nobody else?" He felt the
need to confirm it.

This time Princess hesitated. Then, "Not
yet."

That was pretty damn clear. He had to hand it
to her. What do you know? Princess
could
go for the
jugular.

Then he had another thought. "Does Kelly know
you
know what's on this tape?"

Princess shook her head. "We came to you
first."

Now
that
was good news. Tony paced the
family room, his mind working. Maybe this thing was a blessing in
disguise. Heavy disguise, but still. Because if he had something on
Kelly, something she didn't want the world to know, he could can
her ass and still keep her from filing a sexual-harassment suit.
Then his Kelly problem would be solved. And he would emerge, not
exactly victorious, but still standing.

He stopped pacing. "All right," he told them.
"Kelly's gone."

Princess apparently needed clarification. "Do
you mean off the anchor desk? Or fired?"

"I mean fired. But it's important how I play
this, so for right now I'm just gonna tell her she's suspended." He
had to get all his ducks in a row, maybe get Elaine to draft
paperwork he'd make Kelly sign. "The most important thing is that
nobody see that tape."

Princess was shaking her head. "I won't agree
to stay mum indefinitely. The LAPD should see it."

He jabbed his finger at her from across the
room. "All the cops'll do is show it to the kid's family. You might
as well ask for another lawsuit."

"Tony." Princess rose from the couch. "A
child lost his life. Kelly shouldn't get away with just losing her
job."

Ruth popped the tape out of the VCR. "I say
the first order of business is to get Kelly fired. Then we revisit
what to do about the tape. Agreed, Natalie?"

Princess hemmed and hawed for a while but
finally gave in, though it seemed pretty damn grudging.

Then Ruth piped up again. "So what about the
show tonight?"

Tony looked at Princess, standing in his
wood-paneled family room. It always came down to her, didn't it?
Whatever went down. Whatever he did.

The next thing he said took a lot out of him.
It was like passing a kidney stone: had to be done but hurt like
hell. "As of tonight," he told her, "you're back on the anchor
desk."

He stopped. Princess waited. It killed him
but he had to keep going. "You've got the job back. I'll haggle
with Marner over the particulars."

All she did was nod. Cool cucumber. But he'd
always known that. He tried to lighten the moment. "So what do I
get for my magnanimity?"

Ruth scoffed at him. "Come on, Tony. You get
survival. Maybe Pemberley won't find out you handpicked a lunatic
to be main anchor."

She had a point.

For the first time he saw these two broads in
a whole new light. Maybe he could do business with them. After all,
there'd been nothing to stop them from showing the tape to
Pemberley first and blowing his ass from here to kingdom come. But
they hadn't.

He smiled at Ruth and winked at Princess, who
he'd never liked more than he did at that moment. Who, in fact, he
was gonna be damn happy to have back on his anchor desk.

Too bad he hadn't known that back in
June.

*

Kelly drove her black BMW 323i east on Sunset
Boulevard like a bat out of hell, trying to do the eight miles from
Bel Air to KXLA in record time. She had to find out if what Rico
told her on the phone just now was true. No way it was, but
still.

That Tony had suspended her? Without pay?
Indefinitely? No way. She'd anchored the night before and he'd
known about the lawsuits then, so why would he suddenly turn around
and suspend her?

One thought kept wriggling into her brain and
she kept trying to squish it. What if Tony found out about the CNN
shootout tape? What if that bitch Natalie watched it a million
times and finally saw her on it with the flashlight?

Kelly clutched the steering wheel.
God.

The light turned red at Beverly Drive but
Kelly ran it, jamming her foot down on the accelerator. A bunch of
idiots in a VW convertible honked like mad but she ignored them and
hurtled on through Beverly Hills and into Hollywood. The closer she
got to KXLA, the more nervous she felt. There was a buttload of
stuff coming down that she didn't like. Howard getting fired?
That'd blown her away. But better Howard than her. And he
had
let her take that Mann accident videotape off the
lot.

Kelly arrived at KXLA and rolled the Beemer
up to the guard gate. The usual afternoon security guy was there
but he had the bar down and was on the phone looking away and
didn't raise it.

She sat and waited and wondered. Finally the
guard got off the phone. Kelly honked her horn at him, since he
still didn't raise the bar. But, she couldn't believe it, he shook
his head and mouthed the word
no
.

She lowered the window. "What do you mean,
no
?" she bellowed. "Lemme in!"

He didn't want to, she could tell, but he
walked his skinny ass out of the guardhouse and approached her car.
"I can't do it, Miss Devlin," he told her. "I was told you've been
banned from the lot. I got orders."

"What the hell do you mean I've been banned!"
she screamed. "I work here! You've let me in a million times!" She
jabbed a finger at her windshield. "Look at my pass! I've got a
reserved space!"

He kept shaking his head. "No can do, Miss
Devlin. I'm sorry." He held his hands up, as if there wasn't shit
he could do about it. "Orders," he repeated. Then he walked back
into the guardhouse and closed the sliding glass door as if she
wasn't even there.

Un-fucking-believable!
She wasn't
gonna put up with this. She was the main female anchor at this
station. She could eat this joker for lunch, then spit him out by
prime time.

Kelly sat in her Beemer, fuming. But could it
be that she
was
banned from the lot?

That really ticked her off. Plus it petrified
her. She grabbed the Club from the passenger seat and got out of
the Beemer. "Lemme in!" she yelled at the security guy, brandishing
the Club and approaching the guardhouse. He looked freaked, which
gave her kind of a thrill. "Lemme in or say good-bye to your
windows!"

He scrunched himself against the wall and
reached for the phone, as if she was a menace or something. But he
still didn't raise the bar so she gave the Club a swing.

Bam!
The glass windows on the little
guardhouse shattered like nobody's business. The guy stood inside
cowering, still on the phone, so Kelly gave it another whirl,
aiming at a window closer to him.
Bam!
More glass fell on
the asphalt, in tiny pieces that glittered in the sunlight. Still
he didn't raise the bar.

Kelly stood there panting. He
still
wasn't gonna let her in? What was this shit? Now she didn't know
what to do. Who should she call? Rico?

She ran back to grab her cell phone from the
Beemer. But before she could dial, it rang. "Yeah?" she
answered.

"You are a fucking maniac—you know that,
Kelly?"

"Rico! I was just calling you! Do you
know—"

"You were calling me for the last time. I
just got off the phone with Scoppio and you've got two minutes to
get off that lot. Do you understand me, Kelly? Two minutes. Before
you get arrested for destroying private property. I'm not shitting
you and I'm sure as hell not bailing you out."

He stopped to catch his breath and Kelly was
so freaked she didn't say anything. How did Scoppio know so fast?
Probably the gate guard had called him. Then Rico started talking
again, and what he said next she never thought she'd hear in a
million years.

"I'm not representing you anymore, Kelly. I
am dumping you as a client. You're on your own now—you got that?
Consider our contract severed." Then Rico hung up. On
her
.

*

Geoff drove the Jag at his usual breakneck
pace to a destination he refused to divulge, grinning at the
hostage in his passenger seat over whose eyes he'd tied a blue
bandanna. This was by no means typical client treatment but it'd
been a while now since Natalie Daniels had been a typical client.
And he hadn't even considered giving her the good news in typical
over-the-phone agent fashion.

"Where are you taking me?" Natalie demanded,
but he refused to answer, judging from her smile that she was happy
to play along. And why not? In extraordinary fashion, and with only
one week to spare before her contract expired, she had that very
day been reinstated to KXLA's anchor desk. In mere hours she would
anchor for the first night in months. And she was about to find out
that she had still another option.

He stopped at a red light at Hollywood and
Gower and pried the lid off the box of Belgian chocolates he'd
brought with him. "Open your mouth," he ordered softly, and after
some initial resistance she complied. Geoff laid a truffle on her
tongue. She chewed, then moaned appreciatively. "Oh, my God, that's
wonderful."

He grinned. He liked this game.

"Amaretto something or other," she declared,
then slapped her palms on her black trousers. "But I don't get
this! Where are you taking me? Why is chocolate involved? What is
this all about?"

"Didn't you forget 'how' and 'when?' " He
made a right from Franklin Avenue onto Outpost Drive and headed
into the Hollywood Hills. "Stop asking questions. Have another
chocolate and let me drive."

She groaned but then opened her mouth to
receive a roasted caramel bonbon and they continued on in amiable
silence. Natalie was one of the few people with whom he could be
quiet, he realized. He didn't feel a need for noise or
conversation. Janet hated silence. Whenever they got in the car or
the house, she immediately turned on the stereo. For background,
she told him. Once they'd even picnicked on the beach and she'd
insisted on bringing a portable radio. To the beach? He'd been
flabbergasted. What was better to listen to than the surf?