Four Days of Fall Read online

  But why hadn’t he let her tame him? He could have left Liz. Yes, the kids had been young, but kids their age, they all lived in fractured families. He and Eleanor had agreed that continuing to sleep together might hurt their working relationship, but that was only because he had wanted to gallop through more fields and furrows as a newly successful television star. And most of furrows had been beyond the confines of work.

  Almost all of them.

  Only a few inside the fence.

  Just a few.

  Five to be exact.

  He counted them at three in the morning the day after Paul was sent packing. He had not been there when it happened. Eleanor, who always knew everything, had texted him a warning. It had been a cowardly thing to do, but he knew Paul would implore him, just as he had indeed implored him, later, at the bar. Reeking of booze and fury but giving off not a hint of remorse. They flaunt it, goddammit! They flaunt it!

  Why hadn’t he done something about Paul? Eleanor had warned him about that, too, the day after the election. You boys are all going to have to change your ways. Women have had enough.

  “There,” she said, as she pressed the bandage against his head. “At least you won’t be bleeding on things. Now, are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

  Suddenly, Russ wanted nothing more than to wrap his arms around Eleanor and press his face into her lean brown belly. But that might frighten her. Or worse, anger her.

  “Ell, do you think I’m a bad man?”

  “Trick question?”

  “I’m worried.”

  “You should be.”

  Madison buzzed in on the intercom. “Russ, there are some police detectives out here to see you.”

  Russ looked toward to Eleanor, but she only shrugged.

  “I’ll leave you to it,” she said as she headed toward the door.

  “No! Don’t leave. Just let them in.”

  The detectives were a matched set, a tall man and a short woman, neither of them much over forty, if that, in suits that were cheaply stylish. As they introduced themselves—Murphy and Yablonsky—it occurred to Russ their names were like those of cops from a forties movie. And if it were a forties noir, he would be the hapless protagonist, the shmuck, felled by a femme fatale.

  A dangerous woman.

  But weren’t they all dangerous nowadays?

  Murphy, the female cop, said. “We need to ask you a few questions about Phoebe Shapiro. We’re investigating her death.”

  Phoebe Shapiro dead?

  And detectives here asking him about it?

  He realized he was staring. “When?” he asked. “How?”

  Murphy arched an eyebrow. “You mean you didn’t know?”

  “No, I didn’t know.”

  “Russell has been out of town,” Eleanor said. “He just got back last night.”

  “I was given an award,” he said, quickly. Too quickly. “Out in Los Angeles.”

  “So you didn’t know Phoebe Shapiro been killed in a hit-and-run accident a two nights ago,” Murphy said. Skeptical or contemptuous. Impossible to tell. Neither was good.

  Russ escaped behind his desk. It felt safer. “Please. Sit down.”

  Yablonski stretched out in a chair; he had to be six foot five at least.

  “Been in an accident lately?” he asked Russ.

  Russ replied testily. “What do you mean? No, I haven’t been in an accident.”

  Yablonski nodded in a studiedly neutral sort of way. Russ remembered his head. How could he have forgotten about something that was pounding so hard?

  “You mean my head. Yes, I tripped as I was coming into work this morning.”

  Murphy, who looked to be a good foot and a half shorter than Yablonski, perched on the edge of her chair like a hungry little bird. A bird who pecked men to death. Men like Russ. “So when was the last time you saw Ms. Shapiro?” she said.

  “I’m not sure,” Russ said, not lying. “She interned here three, four years ago, maybe?” He looked over at Eleanor, who had hoisted herself on the edge of his desk, her palms flat against the mahogany. Good old Eleanor. Utterly unruffled.

  “Four years ago,” she said.

  Murphy looked back at Russ. “And you hadn’t seen her since then?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  “Not that you remember,” Murphy said, nodding. “Okay. And you didn’t know she was killed in a hit-and-run.”

  “I told you. No, I didn’t”

  “How well did you know her, Mr. Stockton?”

  He knew here well enough to know that there was a dragon tattooed at the very top of her soft inner thigh, that her thighs were two fleshy stems as pale as milk extending from the cushy buttocks that bloomed beneath a tiny waist he once told her was “waspy” and she’d laughed and replied, “I’m Jewish, Russ.” He knew Phoebe Shapiro well enough to know her areolas were pink and sweet as bubblegum, and her lower lip trembled irresistibly when she was upset.

  “She interned here for nine months,” he said. “We had occasional conversations. But I can’t say I knew her well.”

  “So you didn’t know her well, and you didn’t know she’d been killed,” Murphy said. “Can you explain how her family got a sympathy bouquet with a card you had signed?”

  “That was me,” Eleanor said. “Since Russ was out of town I handled it. I handle that kind of thing anyway.”

  “And you hadn’t seen her since she interned here?” Yablonski asked Eleanor.

  “Oh, I had seen her several times. We had coffee together about six months ago. Phoebe was a terrific young woman. Smart, talented, passionate. It’s a tragedy.”

  Russell nodded solemnly, even as he wondered when the hell did Eleanor start taking such an interest in the interns?

  “Well, one of Ms. Shapiro’s friends had the idea that maybe she was going to speak up about a Me Too issue she had,” Murphy said. “Would you know anything about that?”

  “No,” Russ said. “Certainly not.”

  In a weird way, it was comforting, because Phoebe surely couldn’t have been talking about her time at Take Stock.

  “Well, we understand your producer was fired recently for inappropriate behavior.”

  “Not with Phoebe.” Paul wouldn’t dare touch Phoebe.

  Murphy arched an eyebrow. “How would you know that, Mr. Stockton, especially considering you didn’t know her that well?”

  “You’re absolutely right,” Russ said, as quickly and neutrally as he could. “I don’t know. I guess just assumed she would have already come forward. I’m sorry. I’m defensive about this issue. I deeply regret what happened here.” He stopped. He was making things worse instead of better.

  Murphy looked toward Eleanor. “What about you? Did you know anything about that?”

  “No,” Eleanor said. “But clearly, we weren’t as vigilant as we should have been here at Take Stock. Still, Phoebe had several different jobs after she finished her internship here. I think it would be a mistake to assume anything.”

  “Oh, we’re not assuming anything,” Yablonski said. “We’re pursuing all leads. But when her friend told us she was going to make a statement about one of her workplaces, we naturally wondered who might have a reason to stop her.” The big lug detective swiveled his head around the room, ostentatiously. “We wondered who might stand to lose something.”

  Russ felt the blood rush to his face, fueling the base drum in his head, which by all signs was roughly 1.5 seconds from exploding.

  “If all you came to do was throw around unfounded insinuations, you’ve done your job, detectives. So if you’re finished, we’ve got work to do.”

  Eleanor hopped off the desk and made a move toward the door as if to usher them out.

  Yablonski unfolded his Franken-frame into a standing position. “Just one more question. Do you know of anyone who might have a grudge against Ms. Shapiro?”

  “No,” Russ and Eleanor said in unison, which made them look stupid, but Russ didn’t care. He just wan
ted the cops gone.

  And when they were, finally, and Eleanor closed the door, he sat back in his chair, feeling as if his bones were dissolving and he was about to ooze onto the floor.

  “God, I’m tired. Damn it, this is awful. Phoebe. She was so young.” He could have added “and beautiful,” but he didn’t out of deference to present company.

  Eleanor stood watching him with her arms folded. “Yes, it is. And yes, she was. And she was beautiful.”

  “I didn’t realize you were so fond of Phoebe.”

  “Who says I was?”

  “You did, more or less, to the cops just now.”

  “No. I said she was a terrific young woman who was smart and talented and passionate. I said it is a tragedy. I didn’t say I was really fond of her. Although she was nice enough, and funny.”

  “So why did you have coffee with her?”

  “I keep track of all your girls.”

  Russ drew back. “What do you mean, my girls? What do you mean, keep track?”

  “I mean your interns,” Eleanor said mildly. Mock innocence or simply mocking. As with Detective Murphy, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know which.

  “I keep up with their careers,” she went on, “and make sure they move onward and upward from here. Open doors, give them nudges when they need it.”

  A quick knock and Gabe poked his head in.

  “Am I interrupting?” he said, bouncing in few steps. Gabe liked to stay on his toes, literally, and with his baby face and gelled up stand of hair, he had a look of perpetual wonderment about him. “I’m not sure what to ask about first. The cops or the head wound.”

  “Phoebe Shapiro was killed in a hit-and-run,” Russ said. “That’s why the cops were here.”

  Gabe pushed his glasses up on his nose, their thickness making his already large eyes larger. “Phoebe Shapiro? I’m blanking here.”

  “She was an intern four years ago,” Eleanor said. She regarded Gabe with disdain, but then that’s how she had always regarded him. Russ’ Mini Me, she called him. These days the disdain occasionally broke into outright hostility. Eleanor and Gabe were rivals, not because Russ encouraged it, but because he hadn’t known what to do about it. And now with Paul’s job open—God, what was he going to do? He was lucky to have two segment producers, especially these two. He wanted them both exactly where they were. He needed them both exactly where they were. But he knew in his bones that while Gabe may have begun his job with a case of Russell Stockton hero worship, he wasn’t a kid anymore, and he was too ambitious, too restless, to be content with stasis. He’d even been talking about going in front of the camera, which would be disastrous. Gabe was many things, including a tech wizard, but he was not on-camera material.

  Still, Russ needed a way to placate the kid’s ambition, give him the feeling of movement. But then how did he know Eleanor would tolerate what would look like a slight even if it weren’t? In the past few years Gabe had become his right-hand man, but Eleanor—Eleanor was Eleanor.

  He really just needed to focus on the offer from Vincent Sabine. With that deal about to be final all problems would also be solved. Hell, what Sabine was offering was their very own network. He must never lose sight of that. In the meantime they simply needed to focus on the story down in North Carolina. They would be headed down there soon to start interviews.

  North Carolina.

  Another big story.

  Larson there, too.

  “Forget the cops,” he said. “We need to focus on Argofel. I think we’ve got a solid framework. We’ll talk about it this afternoon. And I tripped and hit my head. End of story.”

  He added in a mutter, “Madison needs to stop blabbing so much.” But it occurred to him that a) he often told Madison how lovely she looked—she’d been hired for her looks, after all; b) she had now been summoned into his office when he was shirtless; and c) the whole damned world had indeed gone insane, end of story.

  He looked at his watch. “I’ve got an appointment upstairs. And I’m seeing Sabine at noon.” Finally, he allowed himself to feel a real rush of optimism. There was no maybe about it. Sabine’s offer was practically on the table.

  How had he let all this petty bullshit get him down?

  Gabe grinned. “Think they’ve heard upstairs? Careful, Russ. They’re going to try to tempt you.” He puffed out his chest in a Robert Duvall impersonation. “I love the smell of preemptive temptation in the morning.”

  “Oh, yeah, something smells in here,” Eleanor said as she headed for the door. “I don’t think it’s preemption.”

  But Gabe was probably right, Russ thought, as he headed up on the elevator. He’d figured the same thing, and so had his agent, Sam, who made him promise not to react in any way this morning to anything that was said to him. Contract negotiations are just like an arrest. You don’t say a word without your lawyer present. Just keep it zipped.

  They’d been as discreet as it was possible to be. However, with Sabine rounding up investors for what was going to be a massive multi-platform news and infotainment venture—Vice for grownups—it was hard to be discreet at all. Russ’ name wasn’t officially attached, but that could change this week. And yes, of course it could solve his problems with Gabe and Eleanor. All that money showered on them. And with Sam’s help he was going to own a piece of the pie. At last. Yes, he was a star here at the network, but he was still just an employee.

  And the network most certainly wanted him to remain an employee, he decided as he entered the conference room to face the array of suits at table. The sunlight streamed in shards from the cragged skyline beyond the window; it shadowed their faces and painted auras around their heads.

  But surely that was an illusion, the late morning sun stood overhead.

  How easy it was to be fooled by setting and circumstance. Irritating that even after all these years of reporting ugly facts that disrupted the luxurious calm of conference rooms like these, he could still find himself the kid from Collier City, scrambling to keep his balance. But soon he would claim his own chair at a table like this. He would own a piece of this magnificent skyline, have the sun play tricks with light and shadow at his command.

  Jerry, head of News, began. “We wanted to talk to you about a few things. We have some concerns. We hope you know what a valued member of the team you are.” He smiled tentatively. Jerry always smiled tentatively when he was around Hal, the network president. “You do know that, I hope.”

  Russ nodded. He was keeping it zipped. We’ll consider all offers.

  “Oh, let’s stop all the pussyfooting around!” Hal snapped. Hal, who could use an old-timey word like “pussyfooting” and make it sound nasty. Hal, who wore suspenders like it was still the eighties, yet had traded in three wives since then. Wives who got younger and younger and whose breasts got larger and larger as Hal slashed and maneuvered his way to the top of the network. “Russ, we’re worried about this Argofel thing. Their legal team is breathing down our necks. And they’re like every other corporation in America. They’re sitting on so much cash they can rain boatloads of shit on us for decades. And plenty of big swinging dicks on their board more than a little pissed at the idea of their stock taking a dive because we got nosey. This is no knock against you Russ, but we have to know if this story is worth it. I mean really worth it.”

  Russ gazed past Hal at the massive window where he could almost make out Paul’s face in the glass, laughing. He could almost hear Paul’s voice, whispering sucker and drawing out the “s.” Why had he not expected this? How many times had they been through this drill? Every story that had to be argued and defended, because some evildoer had the money and the clout to make enough noise to make it go away. Paul had always been the most forceful in the argument. And yes it was Paul who had scoped out the Argofel story down in North Carolina to begin with.

  But Russ didn’t have Paul now—and he didn’t need Paul.

  “I wouldn’t be pursuing it if I didn’t think it was worth it. Argofel is unleas
hing a massive new kind of poison onto the world.”

  Hal shrugged. “But at the end of the day, it’s just another corporate pollution story. They’re really kind of a dime a dozen, and nowadays the public’s divided on these things anyway. Lots of people think pollution is just the cost of doing business.”

  “But if there’s anyone who can make people care about pollution, it’s Russ,” Jerry said. A ridiculous statement made more ridiculous by Jerry’s false hearty attempt to be assertive in Hal’s presence.

  “And besides,” Russ added, “It’s a whole new kind of pollution. It isn’t just that they haven’t treated the waste. They still don’t know how to treat it. And the ingredients in this stuff, it’s like science fiction. We could be looking at after effects on par with the atom bomb test sites—“

  “Could be,” Hal shot back. “We could be looking at something bad, but we don’t know. What we do know we’re looking at is massive liability from Paul McGann. The vultures are already circling. We’re going to be paying off women from here to fucking Sioux City, Iowa.”

  Nina, head of legal, chimed in. “A lawyer for a woman in Sioux City, Iowa contacted us yesterday and says McGann groped her while you and your team were covering the oh-eight caucuses.”

  Paul’s wavering face fairly chortled from its window prison, as his voice burrowed in Russ’ ear. You thought you could drop me like yesterday’s dirty underwear, you bastard. I’ll show you. I’m sticking.

  Nina went on. “And we really just need to know if there’s anything else that we don’t know.”

  Russ stiffened. “What the hell does that mean?”

  Hal slapped the table. “What the hell do you think it means? It means have you kept a civil tongue in your head and your paws and your dick to yourself? It means are we going to be liable for you, too?”

  At “you too” Russ fairly flinched. When it comes to #MeToo everybody is going to know that it’s #YouToo. He stared at Hal. Really looking at him for the first time since he’d come into the room. What was that in Hal’s eyes? Anger? Fear? Panic? And maybe not just because of lawsuits over Paul. There was nobody who couldn’t be taken down with this thing. And Hal, a man who could make pussyfooting sound dirty, with his fixation on women with the impossibly smooth faces and the distorted figures of blow-up dolls, what had he been up to?