Man of the Hour (41 page)

“All right!” he said. “You want to be a man? Be a man then! You want to be a Muslim? Be a good Muslim! Be a soldier! Don’t be a coward, like your father, building houses for the Jews and taking their money. Do your duty. Fight like a man. Be a soldier for God. You say it’s against the Holy Book. But this is a war, not a book.”

Somehow, she sensed his argument was not really with her; he was trying to talk himself into something.

“I don’t think our father is a coward,” she said softly. “He survived the refugee camp and managed to make a new life here. To me, that makes him a hero.”

“And he left his family behind.” Nasser grimaced. “What kind of a hero does that?”

He turned off the blinker, took the car out of park and started down the West Side Highway again. “For you, it’s a new life,” he muttered.

Her mind was empty, her mouth was empty. What were the words he used before? Terrible choices. That’s what he’d just given her. Terrible choices.

He stepped on the gas and all the downtown buildings seemed to come rushing at her. A red neon umbrella glowing on the side of an office tower.

“So,” he said, “did you tell him you were with me when the bomb goes off?”

“I did.” She sank down in her seat, feeling caught up in thorns. “What else could I do? You’re my brother.”

“Exactly, right.” He pulled himself up at the wheel. “This is for the family.”

52

“YOUR STUDENTS REFER TO
you as an eccentric,” said the talk show host. “Are you?”

Not if you use John Wilkes Booth and the Unabomber as your standards,
bucko
, thought David. No, scratch that. You’re on television. Never practice irony in an underdeveloped country.

“I use any means necessary to get my students to use the equipment in their heads.” David sat up straight and faced the camera, realizing it probably didn’t help to quote Malcolm X now either. “If that makes me an eccentric, fine.”

“Did you bomb the school bus?” asked the host, Lindsay Paul, a formerly dashing young newsman in the twilight of his good looks, undergoing a certain Fred Flintstone-ishness of the features.

“No, I did not.”

David was back on the air, live and going national on America’s second most popular cable news network. He’d sworn he wouldn’t do this again, but circumstances had conspired. He had no choice, he told himself. None of his other frantic efforts—working the phones, talking to the kids, and trying a second time without success to read students’ disciplinary files—were yielding any results.

“Then why have you become a suspect in this case?” asked Lindsay, gray-suited, dark-haired, and earnest in a two-dimensional way. “Come on, you must have done something.”

“Well, then, somebody should step up and tell me what it is,” said David. “I don’t have a clue otherwise.”

Behind the camera, Ralph Marcovicci was giving him an enthusiastic thumbs-up.
Piece of cake
, Ralph kept telling him before the show began.
Piece of fuckin’ cake.
Lindsay was one of Ralph’s oldest and dearest, as Donna would say. “He’ll throw you one friggin’ softball after another right down the middle of the plate,” Ralph assured him.

“So the obvious question is”—Lindsay leaned forward, Flintstone brow knit in concern—“if you didn’t do it, who did?”

“That’s the point of my coming on tonight,” said David. “My lawyers and I believe that someone out there knows something. And they haven’t come forward.” He thought of O. J. Simpson on the golf course.

“Why not?” Lindsay tucked in his drooping chin, trying to remind viewers he’d once been a serious journalist. “Why hasn’t the FBI found them?”

“I don’t know.” David shifted in his chair, and tried to avoid looking at himself in the monitor, lest it turn him to stone like Medusa’s severed head. “Maybe they’re scared or just don’t want to get involved. But I’m hoping they’ll hear me speaking tonight, look into their hearts, and decide to do the right thing.”

He looked over and saw Ralph next to a cameraman, silently applauding. Judah Rosenbloom was elsewhere in the studio, manning the phone lines in case a useful tip came in.

“And as far as everyone else goes, I just want people to see that I’m human, and not a monster after all.”

“Fair enough, David Fitzgerald!” boomed Lindsay.

The cameraman moved forward a little and the host looked up, giving his rugged-integrity face.

In a million years, I’ll never be able to do that. David glanced over at the studio clock, seeing he had another ten minutes to go in his segment. After this many appearances, he thought he’d start to relax and become more natural on television. But he still felt awkward and too aware of himself. And it was different now, appearing as the accused man fighting back, instead of being the hero justly celebrated. Before he’d been puffed up, full of himself; now he felt clenched and defiant, painfully aware of how every word counted.

“Let’s throw open our phone lines and take some calls on the air,” Lindsay said suddenly.

David stiffened.
Calls on the air?
Had he heard right? Off-camera, Ralph Marcovicci was flushing red and furiously giving Lindsay the finger. There’d been no mention of taking phone calls on the air. In fact, David’s understanding was that Lindsay and Ralph had specifically agreed
not
to have them. But a new hum was coming over the studio speakers. The deal was off, the calls were starting. Storming off the show would only make him look guilty.

David stayed in his seat, remaining very still. By this point, he understood that any tightening of the jaw or shiftiness in the eyes would be multiplied a hundred times by the camera.
Of course
, the deal was off. He wasn’t a real celebrity they were going to need again. They could afford to break their word to him. He should have expected it.

“We have Kevin, from Brooklyn,” said Lindsay, checking an overhead monitor.

“Yo, Brownsville’s in the house!” A voice falling off a cliff.

The line went dead and another caller came on.

“Yes, Emma Brown from Springfield Gardens, Queens!” said Lindsay, looking up at the new name in green letters on the monitor. “You’re on the air!”

David’s nostrils quivered and he realized the host sitting two feet away in a swivel chair had just passed gas.

“Good evening, Lindsay.” A stately, older African-American woman’s voice. A voice out of the church. “I am the younger sister of Mr. Sam Hall.”

A little pistol shot of panic rang out in David’s mind as he remembered the stories in the newspaper about her threatening a lawsuit. This was not going to be good.

“I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am,” Lindsay intoned. “He was a great man. I was a tremendous fan of his music.”

“I just want to know how this man can sit here, asking people to help him, when my family couldn’t even afford a proper burial for my brother until the mayor stepped in.”

What do I say? What do I say? David rifled through his mental files of homilies and platitudes, searching for some appropriately diverting bit of wisdom,

“Well, ma’am, that is a separate issue, really,” Lindsay cut in, with just a pinch of common sense.

But Ms. Brown was on a roll. She was ready to testify. “That’s what you say! But my brother is dead and I want to know when the man responsible is going to be punished for this. Where’s the justice for my brother? He was murdered for absolutely no reason. And this man’s sitting there, talking to you on television, Lindsay. I just cannot understand.”

The emotion in her voice easily overcame the lack of logic in her words. David knew that counted against him. People watching at home would only hear the emotion, the anger. The medium didn’t encourage dispassionate analysis. It demanded unconditional empathy. He could either get crushed by the moment, or find a way to ride it.

He took a deep breath and tried the latter. “Emma,” he said, as if he’d met her before. “I completely agree with everything you just said. Your brother was a good man, and I want to help find his killer and bring him to justice as quickly as possible. I’m more anxious than anyone to find out what really happened. My life’s on the line too.”

Off-camera, Ralph was silently urging him on, rotating his arms, mouthing, “Give me more.”

“But you—” She started to come back at him.

“And once this matter is cleared up, I will probably be joining you in a civil suit against the city and the state,” David improvised. “So that may be something we’re better off discussing off the air. I wouldn’t want to do or say anything to compromise our case.”

It was all just blowing smoke at smoke, since there’d been no such discussions with Ralph and Judah, but Emma seemed to lose focus anyway.

“I … well …”

“And I believe my lawyers are developing information that may become very useful to you in the near future,” David went on, seizing the momentum away from her. “We could help each other.
I didn’t do this.
”

Perhaps after all this time, he
was
getting the hang of presenting himself. And who knew, maybe his lawyers would discover something to help Sam’s family.

“Emma, is there anything else you want to say?” asked Lindsay.

“Uh. Well. I guess I’d like to speak with my lawyers first.”

“Thank you.” Lindsay turned, giving the cameraman another angle on his face, as he checked the monitor. “Sioux City, Iowa. Glen. You’re on the air.”

“Yes.” A slow young white man’s drawl came over the speakers. “I’m a former student of Mr. Fitzgerald.”

“Okay.” Lindsay sat up and smiled, sincere and telegenic.

David tensed up again, having another moment of rollercoaster vertigo. Every time he thought he’d survived one of these treacherous drops, here came an even steeper and scarier hump.

“I just would like to say this man is a pervert.” Even the boy’s voice made David think of ascending the Cyclone. “He bought me beer when I was a sophomore. Then he got me drunk and took me down to the boys’ locker-room, where he … attempted to touch me in an improper manner.”

So here they were again, at the top of the ride. There was a pause and Glen exhaled on his end, as if he’d been keeping this in for a long time. His calm matter-of-fact tone made the call seem both surreal and utterly authentic at the same time. Ralph Marcovicci had his hands over his head as if he was about to get hit by an incoming Scud missile.

This was worse than disaster. It was annihilation. What if the judge was watching? David felt like he was suspended in mid-air. How do I get down without crashing?

He decided to try to do it slowly. “Excuse me, Lindsay?” He cleared his throat. “May I ask this caller a couple of questions?”

“Be my guest.”

“Glen?” David looked up earnestly at the camera, as if the caller’s image had appeared there. “Would you mind telling me your last name?”

He was desperately trying to come up with a face to match to the voice. How would one of his former students end up in Iowa?

“Sir, I’d prefer not to give my full name for obvious reasons. I’m trying to protect my parents.”

“I see.” David was careful to avoid sarcasm or obvious defensiveness. “Then would you mind telling me what year you graduated?”

“Recently.”

It was a crank call. He was sure of it. But if he tried to brush it off too quickly, he knew it would appear suspicious. He was still on top of the Cyclone, his cart rocking slightly in the wind.

“Glen, which of my classes were you in?”

“English.”

“Which English class? I teach several.”

Glen hesitated for just a moment. “First period.”

“Well, I haven’t taught first period for several years.” The cart started to descend gradually. “That’s a matter of record. Anyone could look that up.”

“Sir, I know what you did to me. And I know it was wrong.”

A nervous, snapping tone had crept into the boy’s voice. He knew he was getting backed into a corner. But again, David worried that the sound of righteous indignation would trump common sense. Not too fast. Let’s bring it down slowly. The boy might come across as more believable if he was attacked too vigorously.

“Let me just ask you one more question,” David said cautiously. “What books did you read when you were in my class?”

The phone line crackled and the boy didn’t speak for a few seconds.
I’m going to make it
, David thought.
I’m on my way down. Easy now, baby.
Lindsay Paul looked over, confused, at the darkened room toward the back of the studio, where the calls were supposedly being screened. Finally, a high-pitched voice came over the speaker, muffled and stifling a giggle.

“Fuck you, faggot!”

Lindsay Paul looked huffy and bemused, like a society matron who’d just discovered all the guests nude and drunk in the library. “Thank God for the seven-second delay,” he said, forcing a smile. “Sorry about that, folks. We have time for two more calls.”

But David was on the ground and through with this torture. For once, he decided to take advantage of the silence. “You know, Lindsay, I have something else I want to say before you take those calls.”

“What is it?”

He turned and faced the camera straight on. “Just that I guess the irony here is that I’m going back on the air to fight the image that’s been presented of me in the media. Which is a bit like going to a cathouse to get rid of the clap.”

He saw Ralph bury his face in his hands, but decided to press on. “So it’s okay, some of the things that have been said here tonight.” He glanced over at Lindsay in wary amusement. “As we say in Coney Island, you pays your money and you takes your chances.”

He shrugged and gave his full gaze back to the lens. “But all I’m asking is, let’s be fair. I don’t care how many high-speed, multi-channel, digitized systems you have. I always tell my students, make your case or get outta my face. No one can say they saw me with bomb components. No one can say I had a timer. And certainly no one in their right mind can say I ever laid a hand on my wife or my child. And the reason is: None of these things are true. I didn’t kill Sam Hall and I didn’t make the bomb. I may not be perfect, but I am who I am. So don’t convict me on a whisper. My kids have a saying: If you got a beef,
then step to it
. So that’s all I have to say: if you know what really happened, step to it. You know what you have to do.”