The Starving Years (35 page)

The director said, “There goes the eye-twitch again. Pan up so it’s centered.”

“Think about it,” Isaac said. “This could be big for you, too. Sure, your on-camera days are through. But I can do better for you than that
fact-checker
gig at the Daily.”

Javier leaned in closer. “You’re making a fool of him.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

“Since when does the truth matter so little to you? Can they really pay you enough to make you throw away your scruples—”

“That, coming from you, after you ditched your wife and kid in Costa Rica—”

“How dare you? I didn’t ‘ditch’ them. I’m divorced. It happens.”

“I’m just saying, there isn’t a halo floating above either of our heads.”

The switcher focused on Nelson, and now the sweat on his upper lip had formed distinct, glistening beads. He looked like a junkie. Javier lowered his voice and said to Isaac, “But don’t you believe in anything? Don’t you even want to try to do what’s right?”

“Grow up, Javier. Everyone wants their fifteen minutes of fame, whether it’s flattering or not. He’ll bounce back.”

“That ‘rejected applicant’ business—”

“Hey, it’s what he told our producers, that he was at that employment event looking for work. And now some grass-roots consumer protection group will probably scoop him right up. It might sting right this minute, but in the long haul, this will probably be one of the best things that’s ever happened to him.”

Maybe that would turn out to be true, maybe not, but this idea that Isaac was actually doing Nelson a favor was just the fairy tale Isaac was telling himself. Why? So he could sleep at night after he cashed his Manhattan Minute paycheck. Javier wasn’t sure why he felt compelled to find a kernel of decency in Isaac. Maybe the thought of a decent man leaving him in his time of direst need—because he
deserved
no better—was the fairy tale Javier had been telling himself. Maybe, in reality, Isaac had abandoned him outside Gaza with shrapnel in his face simply because Isaac had no conscience.

“Tell me,” Javier said. “You’ve spoken to Nelson. You get that he’s onto something. Knowing what you know now, would you willingly eat Canaan Products manna yourself?”

“I never touch the stuff anyway. It’s cheap.”

“Besides, you prefer the flavor of Park Avenue.” The memory of Isaac tonguing a smear of Bittersweet Macadamia Mocha from his chest made Javier’s gorge rise.

“So?”

Javier glared at Isaac—and maybe it had felt more satisfying to stare someone down with two eyes, but in this instance, the discomfort his one-eyed glare caused was palpable—and entirely well-deserved. He let Isaac squirm for a long, extended pause, then said, “Since we last saw each other, you’ve put on a double chin.” He took a step back, and for his parting shot, said, “Where do you think Park Avenue manna is made?”

He turned. Marianne stood in the control room doorway, watching and waiting, saying nothing. A single ally, a single decent person, amid everyone who’d sold their souls to the conservative media. Javier wanted to throw his arms around her and bury his face in her hair. But he wasn’t about to indulge himself in a show of weakness—especially not in front of Isaac. He adjusted his stride so Marianne could fall into step beside him without needing to scurry, and he marched out of the control room without looking back.

Nelson’s segment had almost wrapped. Nobody stopped Javier and Marianne as they made their way toward the studio floor. As they passed the dressing rooms, they saw a man in a workman’s uniform having his hair styled while a producer said, “…and that’s the main reason the phones stayed down so long? Because repair crew couldn’t get through the rioting?”

“It’s possible,” he said noncommittally. “There should have been someone on call, but maybe they were stuck behind one of those barriers….”
 

Sure.

They kept walking until they neared the edge of the news set, and stopped behind at a strip of yellow and black tape on the floor. Marianne whispered, “You have a child?”

“A daughter. Sofia. She’s almost seven.”

A pause, and then, “You must miss her a lot.”

“More than you can imagine.”

The anchor thanked Nelson for sharing his “interesting theory” with a subtle hint of condescension, and they cut to a commercial. A tech unhooked Nelson’s microphone as Nelson mopped his brow with the sleeve of his borrowed blazer. He left a smear of pasty, oily pancake makeup on it.

He wove slightly as he walked toward Javier and Marianne. “Man, I’m glad that’s over. It’s so hot in here.”

A slightly nervous intern told them to clear the set. He kept a careful distance from Javier—who wondered if he’d now have a reputation in the industry for being dangerous.
 

Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

They filed out into the hallway and Nelson loosened his tie, stripped off his coat, and ran his hand through his hair, most of which had fallen out of the loose ponytail—which had been tight before he’d made his way to makeup. “Can you believe how dumb that newslady was? Like I’d be announcing this big, crazy theory that Manna’s made of
water?
And she kept interrupting me, too. It was like, I kept losing my train of thought.” He stopped at a water fountain and drank deeply, then cupped some water in his palm and splashed it on his face, and raked it through his hair with his damp fingers. He sighed, turned to Javier, and said, “I don’t think it went very well.”

Javier reached out and cupped Nelson’s jaw, looked deep into his eyes, and said, “You were wonderful.”

Chapter 32

“But you have to let us see him,” Tim said. “We’re family.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, he realized what a dumb choice of words they were. No one looked anything like Nelson. Especially his actual son. “Well…Bao is. And he was in that explosion in Chinatown—”

“I don’t care who you are,” the guard said. He looked a lot better-rested than the wardens at The Tombs, and although there was no gun at his hip, a flashlight that looked like it could do some serious damage hung from his belt. “If you don’t have a Manhattan Minute pass, you don’t get in. Period.”

“At least tell us if he’ll be coming out this door,” Randy said.

The guard glared at him—at all of them—but then he said, “It’s the only way in or out of the building other than the fire exits.”

Was that supposed to be a yes? Or was it a hint that maybe Nelson would slip out the back? Because the news crews that had gathered around the building’s entrance looked like they’d scented blood.

“Maybe we should wait in the truck,” Tim told Randy. He didn’t like the look of the crowd. Yes, it was mostly comprised of reporters and camera crews and their expensive equipment, but the memory of cars getting toppled on Astor was fresh in his mind.

They were working their way past a cable TV truck and a group of construction workers that was watching the crowd grow outside the station when somebody yelled, “Tim? Tim Foster? Hey, Tim! Over here!”

“You might want to tell that loudmouth to stop yelling your name and waving at you,” Randy said, “given the little social call we got at the trailer yesterday from the boys in blue.”

Tim spotted a lesbian activist named Joni he’d met at a recent AIDS-walk, waving at him from beside the National Public Radio van. Joni had a crew cut that might have looked interesting—on someone with a smaller nose. “Tim?” she repeated.

He waved sheepishly. Joni gestured for them to join her—not just her, but a ragtag group of LGBT neo-hippies and activists Tim recognized by face, if not by name.

“We might as well go over there,” Randy said. “They have a pretty good view of the door. Besides, she’s gonna keep yelling your damn name if you don’t.”

Joni enjoyed looking important in big groups, Tim saw, so she was thrilled to increase her small faction by three with the addition of Tim, Randy and Bobby. Plus Bobby was a minority—bonus. She thrust out her hand and gave Tim a painfully firm handshake, and then cut her eyes toward the Manhattan Minute studio and said, “Did you get a look at the broadcast?”

“Just for a sec—”

“They’re creaming that poor guy in the hotseat. D’you think he knows what he’s talking about? He sounds like he might be pretty smart. If he could get a word in edgewise.” She turned toward a pale guy with blotchy skin, a tribal tattoo on his neck, and massive wooden stretcher plugs in his earlobes. He was sitting on a bike rack with a netbook perched on his knees. “What was it he said was affected by the reformulation? Leptin? Look that up.”

“I thought you wanted to know why the phones went down.”

“That, too. But after you look up this leptin thing.”

Stretcher plug guy typed with two fingers, hunting and pecking, clucked his tongue, hit backspace several times, and said, “How’s that spelled?”

“Probably just like it sounds,” Joni told him. “So, Tim, what’s Phil up to lately? ’Cos he told me he could help me figure out how to get out of jury duty. Not that I don’t think it’s important to serve on a jury if you get picked, but it’d take me like an hour to get there on the C Train, and then most of the time in civil court, once they pick the jury, the whole thing ends up being settled before it goes to trial anyway….”

“I haven’t talked to him.” That wasn’t exactly true, of course. Phil had emailed him only yesterday. The ass.

“Really? I thought you and Phil lived together.”

“No. Not anymore.”

“Oh.” Joni stared at Tim awkwardly. “Sorry. That’s too bad.” She turned back to the stretcher plug guy and said, “Did you find anything yet?”

Tim watched him trying to type, and while he could commiserate with the netbook keys being impossibly small, it looked like the guy’s spelling skills probably weren’t helping anything. “How are you even online?” Tim asked them.

Joni pointed over her shoulder with her thumb at the National Public Radio van. “NPR’s on 4G and they’re letting us network to one of their laptops.”

That seemed awfully generous of them. “Really?”

“Theresa interned there last summer.”

Tim wasn’t sure which one of them was Theresa…but it sounded like something someone in his social circle would have done. He sat down on the bike rack next to the stretcher plug guy with Bobby clinging to his opposite arm and said, “I think I can spell
leptin
. Can I see?”

The guy shrugged and passed over his netbook, and said, “I guess. I gotta go scope out the porta-potties anyway. The line was a mile long.”
 

Once the guy left in search of a toilet and Joni was busy wondering about leptin to the NPR sound man, Tim gave Bobby a reassuring pat on the knee, set his fingers on the keyboard, gathered his thoughts, and said, “Randy, you know the photo you took…back when we picked up Bobby?”

“Yeah?”

“Shoot it over to my email.”

Randy pulled out his phone and began keying with his thumb as Tim dictated one of his dozen email addresses. “You gonna send it to someone?” Randy suggested. “Like that person who sent you the video of the riot?”

“Would I have your permission to do that?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

“It’s your image. It belongs to you.” Did Tim even dare say what he was thinking? “You could sell it.”

Randy looked up, first at the NPR truck, which was showing signs of rust around the wheel well, and then at the lavish marble façade of the Manhattan Minute building. Tim regretted saying anything. Yes, Randy could sell it—for a pittance to someone who’d do right by it, or for a fortune, to someone who’d bury it. Tim could have done what most of the bloggers he knew would have done—posted first, asked questions later. After all, he could have argued that permission was implicit in the forwarding of the photo. A jury might buy that. If Randy chose to sue him…what difference would it make? The Voice of Reason could already be sued for libel, which would have scared Tim just a week ago. But his biggest concern was getting caught for hacking into Canaan Products’ mainframe. There’d be a prison sentence attached to that bit of snooping…and now that Tim had seen The Tombs, he had no illusions that he’d survive a single day in the clink.

Copyright infringement? Not particularly terrifying. Maybe Tim should have taken that chance and dealt with the consequences later. Especially since Randy was thinking about it so hard, it looked as if he might reconsider.
 

“If I sold it,” he said, weighing each word carefully, “it could end up sitting on someone’s desk for days. But maybe your friend, the one who sent you the riot video…maybe they have an in with someone like that conspiracy guy that Marianne’s all jizzy over.”

“The…Voice of Reason?”

“Whatever. Whoever it is that posts this stuff where everyone can see it. That’s what I want. That’s why I took it.” He stared down at his phone, and swallowed several times, like he was fighting the urge to vomit, or maybe weep. “Because the more people who see it, the more people who know about it, who believe it…the less likely I am to try and convince myself it didn’t happen.” Tim’s email dinged. One attachment. A jpg. “Once everyone knows it happened, then it’ll be real. Then I’ll know I’m not crazy.”

Tim logged into his site’s control panel, FTPed the photo to the image folder, then pulled up a text editor to link the new image to the front page, right above the old one where a woman was waving a tagboard sign that read
Child Killer.

And while the photo, dark and grainy as it was, would have a certain artistic resonance if Tim posted it with no explanation and simply let people create a buzz—there was no time to let its significance percolate through the layers of online posturing, discussion and debate. Tim typed the current date, and a caption below it:
Manhattan Detention Center—Children crazed with hunger, in restraint.
Melodramatic? Completely. It sounded more like a trailer for a B-movie than a news item. But Tim had been there—seen it, heard it…smelled it. And he didn’t care if his damn caption was impartial or not.

He hit “upload.”

In the B-movie of Tim’s imagination, something big would have happened as his finger pressed the enter key. A camera sweep—with dramatic music, and maybe a closeup. But instead, Bobby wiped his nose on his sleeve, some of the LGBT activists snickered at a joke one of them had made, and a plastic bag blew through the crowd, caught on a cameraman’s rig for a moment, fluttered, and blew away.