What's a Girl Gotta Do (9 page)

“Yeah, Greg, this is Barry from Union City,
New Jersey. I want to know if Jack Kemp would support a national
holiday to honor Howard Stern’s penis?”

Live television. You gotta love it.

Chapter Five

THE MAN WHO SOLD newspapers on Avenue B
greeted me with a strange look and kept his eyes on me while I
scanned the dailies. When I got to the News-Journal, I saw him
grin.

P.I. DEAD IN BAD-LUCK HOTEL FOUND
BLUDGEONED—ROOM 13D Inset was my picture, coming out of the police
station, with the caption, “Reporter questioned in murder.”

The Post was more succinct. “JINX!” it
screamed in large black letters. “PRIVATE EYE DEAD IN MARFELES ROOM
13D.” Then, in smaller letters along the bottom of the page: “ANN
Reporter a Suspect? Page 3.”

“Shit, I said. I took a copy of the tabloids,
along with the Times, and paid the guy. I opened the News-Journal
and read it as I walked to the subway. It was unbelievable.

“Renegade reporter Robin Hudson, who is
perhaps best known for belching loudly on live television, was
questioned by police for nearly two hours last night in the murder
of Lawrence M. Griff, 38, of Ozone Park, Queens. Griff, a licensed
P.I., was found in a pool of blood in his room, Room 13D, at the
Marfeles Palace . . . Detective Joe Tewfik of homicide said, “Ms.
Hudson was questioned as a witness in this case and is not a
suspect at this point, although we haven’t ruled anyone out
yet.”

What bullshit, I thought. He knew I didn’t do
it.

“But neighbors and colleagues say Ms. Hudson
appeared agitated on New Year’s Eve, when the murder is thought to
have occurred, and threatened an elderly woman with a tire iron.
Later, she was seen talking with the victim at ANN’s New Year’s Eve
party at the Marfeles.”

There was more, but I won’t bore you with the
details. It’s amazing how one disaster can distort the truth of
one’s life so quickly and so completely. I had held up my tire
iron—pare of my costume—in the street to ward off Mrs. Ramirez’s
cane, and the News-Journal made it sound like I was some sort of
maniac on a wilding spree that started with a tire iron and an old
lady and ended with a man dead in a classy midtown hotel room.
Unnamed “colleagues” and “neighbors” supported this tale of my orgy
of violence with telling anecdotes of past bad temper. Most people
don’t like to get involved, especially with any legal authority,
but some people are so eager to please reporters they’ll gladly
corroborate anything you want with a little factoid or two. I’d
seen it plenty of times.

This was bad. If the News-Journal kept this
up and the police didn’t arrest me, the villagers would soon come
for me in a torchlight procession. Work was going to be a bitch
too. I went straight for Democracy Wall when I got in to assess the
damage to my reputation and found a small mob crowded around
something on the board. Before I could make my way through, a hand
grabbed my sweater and yanked me cleanly from the throng. It was
Jerry.

“You’re wanted at the morning editorial
meeting.” he said. “Rats.”

“Robin, Robin, Robin,” he said. He was so
smug. “How long am I going to have to keep bailing you out of
trouble?”

“Oh please,” I said. I pushed open the door
to the executive conference room and almost every face in that room
turned to me, cold and unappreciative. McGravy energetically worked
his modeling clay with his smoking arm. George Dunbar gave me a
look of sour anger, like he’d just swallowed a pickled mouse. A
miserly man, he could pinch a penny till it screamed. You know the
expression “Money talks”? At ANN it didn’t just talk. It begged for
mercy.

Dunbar rose and spoke. The daily papers were
on the black enamel table in front of him, next to his cup of tea
and two Sweet’n Low packets, one empty, the second one rolled up,
half used, saved for later.

“We have a system here, Ms. Hudson. When a
member of our staff gets information, that member of our staff
calls up the assignment desk and relays that information. When it’s
a story about ANN personnel, it is doubly important that we are
informed as early as possible, so we can manage the crisis.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I figured it wasn’t a
big deal for ANN. I’m just a witness in the case and my involvement
was personal, not professional. I didn’t . . . Mr. Dunbar, the
stories in the paper are wrong. I’m not a suspect.”

“You didn’t do it?” he said, as though he
couldn’t be sure.

“No! Ask the cops. They don’t think I’m a
suspect, not really.”

“The point is, you should have let ANN know
what was going on, so we didn’t have to learn it by surprise.
Either you or Ms. Thibodeaux should have called us,” Dunbar
said.

“If Claire didn’t call, it’s because she’s my
friend,” I said. “Don’t take it out on her. She respects my
feelings and my privacy. She probably didn’t feel it was her
place.”

Apparently, this was a novel concept to some
in the room, who looked at me perplexed.

“You don’t seem to understand how much
trouble you’ve caused,” Dunbar continued. “The police have been
here all morning and reporters have been flooding public relations
with calls. It’s bad enough this involves you. Other ANN personnel
might be involved too. We could have used the extra time to
formulate a response.”

“What other personnel?” I asked. “The issue
is you, for the moment. And how we should deal with your
inexcusable negligence.”

Immediately, I tried to excuse it. “You know,
I had a very weird night. I kind of had other things on my mind. .
. .”

But he cut me no slack. I’d used up my slack
allotment at ANN a long time ago. “You’re a journalist, aren’t
you?” he asked. “You couldn’t make one phone call?”

“I think we ought to vote on disciplinary
action,” said Al Prevost, the morning supervising producer. There
was muttering among the middle-aged males and sole female executive
around the table.

“We’ll vote,” Dunbar said. He turned to me.
“Please wait in the hallway.”

I left and stood in the hallway like a bad
kid outside the principal’s office, a situation I admit I was once
quite familiar with. Through the particleboard door I heard someone
yell, “No way.”

What did they think? They owned my entire
life? I had to tell them everything that happened to me that might
reflect on the company? I felt like marching in and saying, “I’ve
had it. I can’t take this anymore! I quit!” I have these moments
every now and then. But I mobilized those seven major muscle groups
and held my tongue. I couldn’t quit, you see; I had this ironclad
contract. In 1990, long before my on-air disgraces, Dunbar offered
all the reporters long-term contracts with guaranteed job security.
There was a catch, of course. If you took the contract, it tied you
to a modest salary that would go up only with the cost of living
each year. I was just insecure enough to take a job guarantee today
over possible big salaries somewhere in the future. A bird in the
hand, as they say. A bird in the hand will shit on you, I’ve found.
So if I quit, I would be legally prohibited from working in any
media-related field, which meant I couldn’t even do infomercials.
Of course, they couldn’t fire me either, not without paying out the
remaining three years of my contract, an idea so daunting to Dunbar
that I’d have to fart on national television while eating human
flesh before he’d sign that big check. Holy Lump Sum Payout
Batman.

The most he could do was suspend me, like he
did after the cannibalism fiasco, and at the moment that didn’t
sound so bad. I’d just use the time to get to the bottom of this
private investigator business and Jerry would have to find someone
else to play Mrs. Spurdle for the sperm bank series.

I could hear Bob McGravy defending me. My one
and only champion was kind of lacking authority at the moment, his
power greatly diminished after a serious, quality news show he’d
championed—21st Century—bombed in the ratings and after the rising
reporter he championed—me—embarrassed herself on national
television. On account of having worked for Murrow, having a fairly
solid reputation at CBS, and having kicked a serious drinking
problem, McGravy still had moral authority. But moral authority
doesn’t go as far as it used to, and I couldn’t call it, how Dunbar
would go. Vote, my ass. Everybody would argue their point of view,
and then Dunbar would vote. One man, one vote.

How would he vote? As Dunbar wasn’t a
journalist, per se, I wasn’t always clear on his ethics and
instincts. He came from sales at DIC, where he racked up a
miraculous sales record while at the same time having the lowest
budget and expense accounts in the company, forever endearing
himself to Georgia Jack Jackson. When Jackson decided to launch
ANN, he knew he needed a man with a tight fist at the helm, and
Dunbar was that man, the Tightest Fist in the East.

A year before, Dunbar himself made news with
a long piece he wrote for the New York Times op-ed page in which he
put forth a proposal to reduce the federal deficit through
promotional considerations. Sponsors, that’s what the nation
needed. NASA, he wrote, could make millions by having companies
sponsor the space shuttle and satellites. Columbia could be known
as Anacin-3, Discovery as Lipton Fine Teas. Eventually, the idea
could be expanded to include housing projects, aircraft carriers,
and national parks. The piece was hailed as fine satire, and Dunbar
kinda smiled weakly and pretended indeed that’s what it was. But
those of us who knew him knew he’d been quite serious and was hurt
the rest of the country misunderstood him, didn’t see the
brilliance of the plan.

The door opened and McGravy came out. “You’re
reprieved,” he said. “But don’t fuck up.” A ringing vote of
confidence from my mentor.

Dunbar filed out after him, walking, as he
always did, with his head down. I used to wonder why he did that,
if he was shy or something, then one day I saw him stoop to pick up
a coin, which he examined with relish and put in his pocket.

Jerry stayed behind while I went to the
office alone, stopping by Democracy Wall. Someone in Graphics had
made up a wanted poster with my publicity photo. ““Take this, wait
ten minutes, and then leave.”

Wanted, dead or alive,” it read. “Renegade
Reporter Robin Hudson.” It was pretty funny, really. Under
distinguishing characteristics, it listed “Legs to die for,” and
noted that, “as usual,” I was armed and dangerous.

While two producers walked by, watching me
but pretending not to, I took out a felt marker and drew fangs and
made my eyes look a little wilder. I grinned at the two women, and
they hesitated before grinning back at me. If all else fails, laugh
at yourself.

All morning, reporters called and Claire
cheerfully intercepted and directed them to public relations,
except for one: Burke Avery.

“He says it’s personal,” Claire said. I took
the call.

“I’m worried about you,” he said.

“Don’t be. I’m fine. I’m not a suspect. The
tabloids have it all wrong.”

“Oh, I know you didn’t kill the guy. I know
your M.O., Robin, and you are way too sinister to commit such a
clumsy crime. Maybe if the guy had been killed with a lettuce
spinner or a potato peeler. I use sinister in the sense of the
traditional Latin word sini . . .”

“And . . . ,” I prompted.

“And what?”

“And you know that I am basically a good
person with a conscience who could not kill another person . . .
except in self-defense.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Right,
that too,” he said finally. But he was grinning as he said it. I
could hear him grinning.

“Are you still covering this story?” I
asked.

“Of course. It’s my beat.”

“I’m a witness in this case. Don’t you think
it’s a conflict of interest to be reporting on a story in which
your wife is a witness?” Channel 3, where Burke worked, wasn’t
known for its strict adherence to ethics.

“You’re just one witness so where’s the
conflict, realistically? Besides, we’re separated and we parted
amicably.”

Parted amicably?

“Anyway,” he said, completing his three-part
rationalization for staying on this story. “You’re not a
suspect.”

“I wish someone would tell the New York Post
that.”

“Robin,” he said. “It’ll pass. How is ANN
spinning the story?”

“Nobody tells me anything around here,” I
said. “What have you heard about it?”

“I don’t’ know. What do you know?” he asked
defensively. The reporter in him was kicking into full gear and he
was protecting his information while trying to get mine. So was
I.

“Nothing.”

“I don’t’ know anything more than you do,” he
said. “Do you know how ANN is going to cover this?”

I didn’t, but I had wondered about that too,
if they’d put a reporter on it or just do it as an on-cam reader. I
couldn’t cover it, even if Jerry would spring me from Special
Reports, because I was a witness in the case, although what I did
on my own time was my own business and I did have a strong personal
interest in getting to the bottom of it all.

I was supposed to be reading up on sperm, but
instead I clipped out all the stories about the case, to read over
and put into my scrapbook later. There was also a blurb on Amy
Penny in the TV Ticker column of the Post. Amy, reiterating her
aspiration to become a “serious reporter,” was going to do a series
of reports on prenatal diagnostics for her show. Great. She had my
husband. Now she wanted to become a serious reporter. I couldn’t
help feeling that this young, beautiful woman was living the life I
was supposed to be living.

I hid out that day, leaving Special Reports
only to hit the ladies’ room and the cafeteria. Claire thought it
would blow over and in the afternoon, when the calls from other
reporters subsided to a dull murmur, I thought maybe she was right.
I wondered what Griff had on me. Did he know about that night in
Paris? Did he know about my father’s death when I was ten. He had
the story of my mother’s arrest in London. Did he know about the
Sesquin murders? Where were pages two and three? And why me, oh
Lord, why me?