Morning Glory (18 page)

So that was good.

Ernie gave a nervous laugh. “Or there’s that piece on the weather vanes. It’s a really good—”

“Ernie,” I said.

He held his hands up in defeat. “Tarred and feathered. Got it.”

“Okay, everyone!” I said. “Great meetings, great ideas. Keep ’em coming. And good show today. Thank you—”

Mike cleared his throat. We all looked at him in surprise. He hadn’t talked at one of these meetings in weeks.

“Yes? Mike?” I said, eyes wide. If he said anything about the tar-and-feathering, he was next into the cauldron.

“First of all,” he said, “I’d like to apologize to Colleen for my recent unprofessional behavior on the air.”

Colleen’s eyes widened. I exchanged a worried look with Lenny. What, was he trying to sabotage our new ratings boost? That was so Mike Pomeroy of him.

“Second, I have a story I’d like to cover. It’s on … sauerkraut.”

“Huh?” The sound came from my mouth as well as from several other spots around the table. Was “Sauerkraut” some gang of German anarchists I wasn’t familiar with?

“Big annual sauerkraut festival upstate. They do bowling with cabbage, they make a big record-breaking sauerkraut cake, they have a competition for the best sauerkraut. Thought it might be good if I anchored the show from there. Change of pace.”

No one said anything for a moment.

“Wow, Mike.” I shook my head. “I wasn’t expecting …”

“Local flavor. Food.” Mike shrugged. “I could talk about, you know. Sauerkraut. Different flavors. Stuff like that.”

“Really?” I said. “You want to cover something like—”

“You have a problem with it?”

Sauerkraut, huh? To be honest, it sounded incredibly boring, but how could I deny him. This was Mike making his own effort. He was trying to be a team player, and if sauerkraut was what it took to open him up to the idea of doing a fluff piece here and there, he could kraut it up all he wanted.

“So I can do it? Do the kraut, I mean?”

I nodded, dumbfounded. Who knew that the way to Mike Pomeroy’s heart was through fermented cabbage?

After the meeting, I pounced on Lenny. “You know what this means, right?”

“That his medicine interacts poorly with scotch?” Lenny deadpanned.

“No, that I’m really getting through to him. That he
finally
sees what I’m trying to do.” We left the conference room and headed down the hall toward the bullpen.

“Are you sure about that?”

We passed Mike’s office. Inside, he was already hard at work making the final arrangements. “No, not Albany. The country house …,” he said to someone on the phone.

I waved at him. He grinned, waved back, and shut the door.

“See that?” I said in triumph. “The man loves me. We’re starting to share a vision.”

“Well, you
are
both a little nuts,” Lenny said.

And then I had an even better idea. “I know—I’ll go with him. That’ll make him happy. You can be in charge of the show that day. Don’t cry.”

“I’ll do my best,” Lenny said.

“It’s all very promising, right?”

“Right,” said Lenny. But he didn’t sound so sure.

 19 

T
he next morning, well before dawn, I waited in the darkness near Columbus Circle for the van that was supposed to take us upstate. I was, I admit, a bit concerned that Mike and his longtime cameraman, Joe, were going to ditch me. Mike hadn’t sounded thrilled about the idea of me tagging along. I think he thought I was going to try to control him. But really, what sort of control did one need to exert at a kraut convention? Was he going to start interviewing hapless chefs on their feelings about Yemen or health care reform? Besides, when had I ever been able to influence Mike Pomeroy once he had a mike in his hand?

A white panel van with the IBS logo on the side pulled up to the curb. The door slid open, revealing Mike in a shirt and tie underneath his heavier hunting jacket. His suit jacket hung on a hook in the truck’s main compartment, right next to all the camera equipment.

“Hey there!” I said cheerily, and climbed inside. “I brought granola bars.”

“And a mix tape?” Joe asked, then snickered.

“You know you don’t have to come,” said Mike.

“I want to!” I cried. “Are you kidding me? You doing a story like this? I wouldn’t dream of missing it.”

Mike sighed. “All right, fine, whatever, blah blah blah. Let’s just get on the road.”

I buckled my seat belt and dug into my purse. “Okay. Peanut butter almond or mocha flax?”

The ride upstate was actually quite pleasant, as Mike and Joe reminisced about their favorite war stories from their tenures at
Nightly News
—literally, war stories. I heard about Iraqi police officers who whistled show tunes on their prison rounds and exactly what the Dalai Lama’s entourage did when they weren’t praying (hint: Uno).

By the time we pulled into the parking lot at the festival grounds, I was riding pretty high. I called Lenny to check in while Mike and Joe set up their establishing shots.

“We’re going to open from him,” I said, “and then he’ll throw to Colleen. Then you can pop us back for the bumpers—”

“Is he really going to do this?” Lenny asked over the phone. He sounded even more doubtful from a distance.

“I told you,” I said. “ ‘Sharing a vision.’ Ooh, they’re filming the first interview. Call you right back.”

Mike had crossed the lawn to one of the booths and was talking to a portly man in a stained white apron. The man was smoothing back his hair and smiling so wide I worried his face might crack in two.

“So,” Mike was asking him when I got close enough to hear. “What do you think is the secret to a really good, um, kraut?”

“Well,” said the sauerkraut chef, “I would say the type of cabbage you use can really affect the kind of acidity you can create during the fermentation process. You see, you need to build up the ideal levels of the right kinds of bacteria—”

Mike cut him off. “That’s terrific. Really terrific. Didn’t know any of that. Well, back to you, Colleen, for … whatever.” He smiled at the camera Joe was holding.

“And cut,” said Joe, looking out from behind the viewfinder. “Yeah, that was good.”

I gave him a dubious glance. Who was the producer here? “That was okay,” I said. “But maybe next time you could—”

Mike and Joe, however, were already running toward the van.

“Where are you going?” I called.

“To cover the news,” said Mike.

I ran to catch up with them as Jim loaded the camera gear in the car. What the hell?
This
was the news. This. Kraut.

Right?

I fixed Mike with my most executive of executive producer glowers. “Mike,” I said slowly, keeping an iron grip so my tone didn’t slip from pleasant to serial killer, “I am beginning to think that there’s something you aren’t telling me. Here, in the middle of nowhere. With a cameraman. On
Daybreak
’s dime.” Mama didn’t raise no fool.

“Look,” Mike said, handing Joe the boom mike. “I know what you want. You want me to sit there all day like a trained monkey and do shtick for you, bickering back and forth with Colleen like Lucy and Ricky—”

Lucy and Ricky, George and Gracie, whatever. Man, there really were no good comedy couples anymore. “Are you bickering or battling?” I asked. “Lately it’s been battling, which is good for us. Think Speidi.”

“Who?” he drawled.

“Spencer and Heid—”

“Don’t care.” He raised his hand. “As I was saying, you want me to do that while you chase ratings like some sort of crazed hamster on a wheel.”

Crazed
hamster
? “Oh, come on.”

“I’m done,” Mike said, climbing into the van. “I’m done bickering. I’m done battling, and I’m done talking to
or
about useless celebrities with asinine combined names. If I’m going out, I’m doing it on my own terms. This morning at eight
A.M
. I’m going on the air with a story. A real story. A
news
story.”

I stood there, silent. For a second I thought he was going to sing.

“Well?” he asked me as I stood on the grass, my heels sinking yet again into the turf. “
Are you coming with me or not?
”

“Are you kidding?” I asked, climbing in. “I’m afraid to let you out of my sight.”

“I don’t
know
what it is,” I explained to Lenny for the fourth time.

“See, I’m not sure what that means,” Lenny said. He sounded a little breathless on the other end of the line. Maybe he was pacing. If I were him, I’d have been pacing. “Is he giving you the silent treatment or something? My daughter does that.”

“I mean he won’t tell me.” I glared at Mike, who was watching me in the rearview window. He grinned. “I mean he’s kidnapped me and driven me upstate. He’s rounded some sort of bend. You have to get Colleen ready with a backup story.”

Mike snorted.

I rubbed my temples. “Tell Ernie … tell Ernie he can do his weather vanes.”

“What!” Lenny cried. “No! Jesus!”

Here I was, trapped in this metal tank, headed who-knew-where, while back in Manhattan, my show went to the dogs. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “I need
something
to run when Mike’s story tanks.”

Mike snorted again.

I hung up the phone and leveled a look at him. “You are a terrible person.”

“Yes, you’ve told me that.”

“You baited me with sauerkraut. That’s so low. What the hell is this story, Mike?”

“The governor,” he said simply.

“What governor?” And then it all came together. His secret phone conversations. He wasn’t planning a sauerkraut exposé. He was talking about that same old boring tax story he’d been hounding me about for weeks. “The financial audit shit?” I shouted. Even Joe flinched, and he apparently stood up well to mortar fire. “You’re going to bury us! No one will watch that.” I looked out the window. “Besides, we’re nowhere near Albany.”

“No, we’re not.” Mike turned to Joe. “Off this road here.”

“Joe,” I pleaded, as he steered us onto a bumpy country road. “Joe, what are you doing?”

The road gave way to a long paved driveway, at the top of which was a pretty mansion surrounded by green lawns and carefully placed shrubbery.

“Oh my God,” I said, remembering more of that half-overheard conversation. “We’re at the governor’s country house.”

“Yep.” Mike and Joe started unloading the van.

“You are insane,” I said to him. “You are experiencing a psychotic break and I
won’t
be dragged down with you. I refuse.”

“Suit yourself,” said Mike. “You can stay by the car. Joe, ready?”

“You can’t just go up there with a camera. You’re going to get us both arrested … and
fired
. If I get fired, I never work again, you lunatic!”

Mike slipped on his suit jacket, checked his hair in the van’s side mirror, and started up the hill, Joe and his camera following behind.

“I’m not going to run it!” I called. “You can’t make me run it! I’ll run live coverage of Colleen getting a bikini wax first!”

And she’d do that for me too. Colleen was a pro. Unlike this certifiable madman. He was still going. He didn’t care.

“Mike!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “They’re going to cancel the show!”

Now he turned and looked at me. Joe did the same.

“If we don’t get our numbers up by the end of this week, we’re toast. They’re going to replace us with sitcoms and game shows on reruns.”

At last. At last it was out there. I almost collapsed from relief. Mike’s expression softened just a tad as he stared back at me, small and tired and holding things together with duct tape and prayer.

He had to understand.
Come on, Mike
. Another news outlet biting the dust? Surely he cared about
that
.

And then he turned back around and starting ascending the drive.

Oh, did I hate him! I hated Mike Pomeroy. I rued the day I first saw him on the evening news. I cursed the moment I got the idea to hire him. I denounced any vestigial scraps of my childhood crush.

I pulled out my cell and called Lenny. “Are you ready to go?” I asked him. “I need you to be ready in case …”

“What the hell is going on?”

Now in front of the door, Mike checked his watch and scanned the lawn. “You’ll know when to go live,” he said to me.

“Go live with what?” I asked him. I nearly gave him the finger. Into the phone, I said, “Lenny, I need those weather vanes. I need ’em, I need ’em.”

“Please, no,” said Lenny.

Mike checked his watch one more time, then rang the doorbell. A moment later, Governor Willis answered. He looked rested and relaxed, a smile on his face, a cup of coffee in his hand. Might as well have been a campaign poster.

“Pomeroy!” he called with a smile. “What the hell are you doing here?” They shook hands jovially. Probably another one of Mike’s old drinking buddies.

“Becky?” said Lenny in my ear. “We’re almost ready. Colleen’s in place and we … um, we have the weather vanes.”

I watched Mike talking to Willis. He hadn’t brought a cameraman here to chat about scotch, that was for sure. And not even Mike Pomeroy was going to interrupt the governor’s breakfast to discuss something as boring as an audit. What did he have up his sleeve?

“Becky?” Lenny asked. “Am I running it? Becky?”

“Gary,” Mike said to the governor. “I wanted to know how you felt about a few things.…”

“Uh, okay.” The governor seemed good-natured but confused to find Mike on his porch in anchorman wear.

“I need to know in ten seconds,” Lenny said, now frantic. “
Ten seconds
, Becky!”

“All right,” I said. “Do it.”

“Run the weather vanes?” Lenny asked.

“Yes. I—no. Wait. Just wait a second.” Because Mike Pomeroy was
on
right now. Kosovo on. Condoleezza Rice on. Hurricane Katrina on. I knew that look, and not just from TV. It was the look in his eyes when he’d shot that pheasant. It was the look of a predator about to pounce.

“Specifically,” Mike said, like a pitcher winding up, “I’d like to know how you feel about the fact that the attorney general is filing charges against you for racketeering, for steering government contracts to your relatives and cronies.”

Willis gave an uneasy laugh. “Mike, I don’t know where you get your information.”

“Not to mention the money laundering,” Mike said as if he hadn’t heard him.

Lenny was still shouting in my ear, but it was like I heard him through a great fog. “We’re coming back from break. Five, four, three—”

Mike leaned against he doorjamb, cool as an icy drink. “And you can tell me: There’s a hooker or two in there also, isn’t there, Gary?”

Oh my God. This was news. This was real
real
news.

“BECKY!” Lenny yelled.

“Live!” I screamed into the phone. “Live! We’re going live now!
Come to me right now!
”