The Newsmakers (2 page)
ISBN 978-0-7180-3767-3 (hardcover)
1. Â Â Â Women journalists--Fiction. 2. Â Â Â Reporters and reporting--Fiction.
3. Â Â Â Conspiracy theories--Fiction. Â Â Â I. Stuart, Sebastian, author. II. Title.
PS3623.I382N49 2016
813'.6--dc23
2015029197
16 17 18 19 20 21 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Jacob and Dani. I love you to the moon and back.
âMom
CONTENTS
IT
'
S A CLEAR, HARD WINTER
day, and blinding sunlight pours into the conference room, glinting off metal surfaces, triggering migraines, and making the room uncomfortably hot, stifling. But in these tall midtown towers, you can't turn down the heat. You're trapped.
Nylan Hastings is not happy. But he won't let them know itâthe dozen executives and producers who are sitting around the large table. He doesn't do sweat. But they're failing him. Failure is another thing he doesn't do. He does success, excessive historic success.
But Global News Network is floundering, bleeding well over a million dollars a week, searching for a voice and an identity in a hypercompetitive market where every smartphone spews out the latest headlines in what has become a never-ending, unrelenting, assaultive news cycle.
Nylan scans the assembled faces. They're smart, competent men and womenâan eager bunch of pathetic fools, toiling away on the middle rung of life's ladder. He pays these people well and it's time for them to deliver.
A week ago he called them all together and said, “I need a star. Someone I can mold and nurture and transform into the face of GNN.”
Today he says simply, “Let's see what you've found.”
The mood is tense as they open laptops and pull up videos. An
associate producer he hired away from CNN goes firstâshe presses a key, and her candidate's greatest-hits reel plays on the room's large screen. He's a man in his late twenties, as handsome as a movie star but a cipher; he reads the news well and knows the power of his dark-eyed smile, but beyond that he has all the presence of negative space. Besides, Nylan doesn't really want a man.
Then another reel plays, and now Nylan watches a serious young woman who's attractive and seems to know her stuff and is quick on her feet, but she has no real appeal; there's something schoolmarmish, almost condescending, in her tone. People don't want to be lectured when they watch the news.
The pretty young woman in the third reel is so sunny Nylan wishes he had his dark glasses handy.
Then there's another reel and another and another, and the brittle baking sun sets the stage for the parade of mediocrityâdo these people really think looks and diversity and intensity are a substitute for raw talent, for that intangible quality that makes someone leap off the screen and into the mind and heart? And maybe even the soul? Speaking of mediocrities, Nylan makes a note to thin this pack; he asked for a star and these mongrels drop half-dead ducks at his feet. He feels himself getting angry, that hard, bitter rage that festers deep inside him, dormant but ever ready to flare to monstrous life. He loves his rage. It's his best friend and has been since he was a little boy. A little boy in a big house. But he reins it in, modulates it as he's so diligently trained himself to do.
“You're disappointing me here,” he says. “All I see is adequacy. I don't like being disappointed and I don't like adequate. In anyone.”
He stands up abruptly, paces back and forth. He looks at the people around the tableâfear shadows their faces. How Nylan loves their fear. It's a tonic, a balm, a power surge. They're all expendable. Everyone is, really. Except the man at the very top.
“You're disappointing me,” he says again, his voice growing louder. “And you're boring me. You're giving me beauty queens and prom
kings. No soul, no guts, nothing that anyone with a B+ in communications from a third-rate safety school and the money for a nose job couldn't have.”
He looks around the table and sees it in their eyes, that their fear has a new companionâshame. It excites him to see them bow their heads and avoid eye contact.
“I don't want to see another tape unless you're so sure of it you're willing to put your own job on the line. Otherwise you're wasting my time.” Naturally, there's silence from the lambs. He waits another beat, lets them squirm.
“I didn't think so. This meeting is over.” As he's walking toward the door, a male voice speaks up.
“Actually, Nylan, I have someone I think you'll be interested in.”
He turns. The speaker is Greg Underwood. Greg is one of the smart ones, has some fresh ideas and a vibrancy that seems to pulse off of him in waves. Everyone else at the table tries to disguise their relief that Greg's head is on the chopping block and not theirs.
“I hope you're right. For both our sakes.”
“She's working at a small New Hampshire station right now, but I don't think she'll be there for long. She's got real talent.”
“Let's see her,” Nylan says.
The tension around the table ratchets up as Greg presses a key and a young woman who looks a little north of thirty comes on-screen. As they watch her report from the news desk and then from the site of a deadly house fire and then interview the parents of a missing child at their modest home, the room goes quiet. She's blonde, very attractive, polished but not too polished, and she gives the news urgency and import; she draws the viewer in, makes that intangible connection that transcends thought and reason. Nylan stands very still and watches, rapt. There's something intriguing in her gaze, an intelligent, exquisite vulnerability. She's hiding something and almost getting away with it. A pained darkness lurking behind that bright blonde beauty.
“I've seen enough,” he announces.
Greg looks at him with a firm expressionâhe's no cowering fool. He stops the presentation and closes his computer. Nylan goes to the window and looks down at the line of traffic snaking slowly up Sixth Avenueâthe sun bouncing off the cars momentarily dazes him and he turns away. It's so nice to be above it all. And now, for the first time in weeks, he feels he's starting to ascend even higher. He turns back to the table, to the eager, anxious, tragic faces.
Greg speaks before he has a chance to. “What do you think, Nylan?”
Nylan makes eye contact with Greg, letting the rest of the nonentities blur in his peripheral vision.
“I want her,” he says, and walks out of the room.
ERICA SPARKS STRIDES DOWN NINTH
Avenue on her way to the Global News Network headquarters on Sixth Avenue. It's her first day on her new job as a field reporter, her first job in New York City. And, if things go well, the first step toward scaling the heights of television news. She feels a little shiver of pinch-me excitement race up her spine.
Stay cool, one step at a time, one foot in front of the other.
Getting here was hard, but she's made it. Now she just has to stay on the beam. It's five thirty a.m., her call time is six, and she's just three blocks from the studio. Erica believes just being “on time” means you're already five minutes late.
She reaches West Fifty-First Street and heads east, and catches a glimpse of herself in a storefront window. The tailored coral suit looks just right. Her hair is hidden under a cap and her face is plain. She's going to leave hair and makeup to the pros. She got up at four, showered, had a cup of Irish breakfast tea and a banana, did her half hour of Tae Kwon Do exercises, and then scoured the Web looking for potential stories. She's not going to sit back and wait for the world to come to her; it doesn't work that way. The inquisitive bird gets the worm. The corporate rental she leased for six months is convenient if soulless, but
that's all right for now. She doesn't want anything fancy, no chicken counting, budget-budget, focus-focus.
It's mid-April, a mild morning. Around her the city is kicking to life, trucks rumbling down the pavement, early commuters rushing past, empty taxis cruising for fares, maintenance men hosing down sidewalks, food vendors pushing carts from their garages to take up their stations on the midtown streets. The neighborhood is a mix of shiny, new condo buildings, all glass and amenity-filled, and tenements, home to long-term New Yorkers and immigrant families of all stripes and colors. Erica loves the city's gorgeous mosaic, the crazy cacophony, the sense of endless possibility and promise.
Suddenly she hears yelling, a woman's voice, slurred and hysterical. Up ahead there's some kind of commotion. A police car pulls up, the doors fly open, and two cops leap out. Erica's reporter instincts kick in and she picks up her pace, remembering her maxim: always rush
toward
the sound of gunfire. When she gets close, she sees the wailing woman sprawled on the sidewalk, skinny and strung out, pale-skinned with skanky hair. A Hispanic man stands nearby, clean and bright-eyed, holding a little girl.
“The bastard won't let me in my own apartment,” the woman screams at the cops.
“She's been out all night doing drugs and I don't know what else. I don't want her around my daughter,” the man explains, soft-spoken and sure.
“She's my daughter too, you filthy creep!” the woman wails. She jumps up and races to the man, grabbing for the girl. The little girl starts crying, “Mommy, Mommy.”
One of the cops pulls the wasted woman off the man. She turns and slaps the cop, hard. Out come the cuffs.
Erica watches. The little girl is crying, crying so hard. Domestic disturbance. Unfit mother. Unfit mother.
Suddenly Erica feels that terrible, raw hurt come crashing down and hears another little girl crying.
Mommy, Mommy, wake up, wake up!
It's twelve o'clock, Mommy, please wake up! I'll miss kindergarten, Mommy.
And Erica, curled on her side on the living room floor, does wake up. Her head feels like concrete being chipped at by a jackhammer, her mouth tastes like sand and dirt and shame.
Erica blinks and she's back on the sidewalk. She knows what she needs to do. She ducks into the nearest doorway and takes five deep breaths. Then she says, in a strong, low voice: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can't change . . . and the courage to change the things I can.”
She steps out of the doorway. The woman is being loaded into the police car. The little girl is clinging to her daddy's neck. As Erica approaches, the father gives her a rueful smile. He's a good man. The little girl looks at her with wide eyes, and Erica has an urge to gather her up in her arms and shower her with kisses. She smiles at the girl and continues on her way.
And now here she is in front of GNN's headquarters in the Time and Life Building on Sixth Avenueâright in the heart of America's media capital, just blocks from NBC, FOX, and CBS. Nylan Hastings, the network's founder, is sending an unmistakable message: watch out, big boys, there's a new kid in town. And Erica is about to start a fresh chapter in her life. The incident on the street has only strengthened her resolve. She's come this farâand now she wants to go all the way to the top.
Erica Sparks walks into the soaring lobby, passes through security, walks over to the elevator, and presses the button that reads U
P
.
AS THE ELEVATOR SHOOTS SKYWARD
, Erica feels her excitement rising with equal velocity. There's a poster of Nylan Hastingsâcharismatic, idiosyncratic, enigmaticâon one wall of the elevator. Below his picture is his one-sentence mission statement for the network:
To connect and unite humanityâand write a bold new history for our planet.
Erica, like the rest of the world, is fascinated by Hastings. She studies his boyishly handsome, artfully airbrushed face, half smile, and inscrutable blue eyes for a moment, thinking:
You and me, buddy.