The Journalist (5 page)

Case rang up the sale.

Zack thought for a moment then said, “Anyway,
I’m going to the office, work to do, study the President’s
footwork.” He paused. “What you said earlier

something’s up. When you get more, let me know.”

“I hear you, Father.” He winked. “And watch
out for O’Brien’s left hook.”

Case extended his left hand in a thumbs-up
gesture.

Zack thought about correcting the

Father

connotation but didn’t want to upset Case’s illusion, his image or
the arroz con camarones. O’Brien was another matter.

Chapter Five

Savoring the exotic outside air, Zack popped
a stick of Juicy Fruit. Joe Case’s dinner topics_talk of a
recording, something’s up, capitalism, talking to our brothers,
masters of the world, profit has no home—bounced in, out and around
images of O’Brien—young, alive, quarrelsome, brilliant (actually,
genius), eyes like the blue of a-a-a what?
How about just
blue.
Cropped hair, blond the color of beach sand, always
disheveled, fleshy nose almost too big but not, high cheekbones,
unpainted lips the shape of—

“Hey, champ.” Joe stuck his head out the
front door. “You got a phone call.”

“Who?”

Joe grinned. “Three guesses, first two don’t
count.”

“Tell her

tell her
I’m not here.”

“Later.” Joe disappeared inside.

“O’Brien.” Zack shook his head. It’s insane,
never work, fantasy. He checked back in with the comments Joe had
been talking about, especially the “something’s up” one. Maybe Joe
was talking to Pi people too much. He glanced at his gold marine
Bulova. In less than an hour, the much-ballyhooed Armstrong speech
might give some clues.

“Day becomes night, night becomes day, fish
fly, birds swim, Tweedledee, Tweedledum, virtual
reality

”

He squeezed into his Subaru, coaxed it to
life, cranked the air to max, punched into traffic and headed to
North Miami and
The Boca
.

In what had been a ritual since he began life
as a layman, Zack went to his office Sunday nights for a jump-start
on the upcoming week. The routine also assuaged an emptiness left
from his previous life’s Sunday night cloistered rituals. But
tonight, beyond the personal void, a nutty insanity romped round
the longitudes and latitudes of Planet Earth, he thought. He
recalled again Joe Case’s comments—love/hate, order/chaos,
blackness/light, give/take, how many steaks can you eat a
week


He glanced up. “What do You think of that?”
Paused. Nothing. “That’s what I figured.”

His thoughts went to a Miami Herald. article
he had read some time ago about President Armstrong: Comedian, star
of ABC’s sit-com Meat Loaf, Benjamin Armstrong, after the show’s
cancellation, has had what he called “an on-the-road-to-Damascus
jolt.

Zack recalled a Variety story that reported
it differently:

Ben Armstrong, on his way to Las Vegas to
open at the MGM, after ABC splitsvilled his TV show for
“undisclosed personal reasons,” experienced a neurological
overhaul, saw a bright light


More a nervous breakdown, Zack thought and
remembered highlights of the Variety article:

Two month after his Las Vegas debut went
bust, Armstrong returned to Spartanburg for rest and
relaxation...then Armstrong, feeling that Damascus jolt more
intensely, turned TV evangelist/faith healer and, at last count
boasted a million-follower mailing list which, when he announced
his bid for the Presidency, donated to the local Eleventh Hour
Baptist Church...

Zack wiped his mouth with his hand, muttered,
“And now the snake handler is Commander-in-Chief of the largest
military machine in the history of Adam and Eve’s vegetable
patch.”

He looked out the side window. “Anybody
listening?”

His phone rang. He didn’t answer.

Dodging around traffic, Zack mulled
Armstrong’s resume, partially gleaned from his autobiography,
God’s Way, My Way, The Only Way
–son of Piedmont Media owner
George Barnes Armstrong...mother, Ida Shaffer, Daughter of the
American Revolution...great-great-grandfather Luke, cousin to some
English duke...Ben a backyard barbecue king, famous pecan pie
maker, married to Gertrude McCartney, daughter of a fast-food
king...no children...

Zack stopped at a red light and said to his
car, “Benjamin Armstrong, saved by a blinding light on the way to
Las Vegas, short time after which he began a television ministry,
The Miracle Touched
...sweeping victory in 2016...now
president, Commander-in-Chief of the United States of America...TV
star turned preacher with his finger on the button, and where we go
from here is anybody’s guess—only in America.”

He filed the book stuff and came to mind what
he had found about Armstrong when nosing around the
internet—Benjamin Paul Armstrong, only son of media mogul George
Barnes Armstrong who owned, last count, two hundred and ten radio
and TV properties in the Southeast...as George plowed broadcasting
gold, Benny earned a B.A. from the University of South Carolina,
theater major, emphasis acting...first job a weatherman at Daddy’s
Spartanburg TV station...short time later he popped up at L.A.’s
hottest production studio, became the star of the hit ABC sit-com
Meat Loaf
, which ran for nine years until Benny’s character,
Meat Loaf, had a sex change operation...TV ratings gone south, ABC
canceled the show, Ben found the Lord and, with the help of Daddy’s
broadcasting empire, became TV evangelist/faith healer extra
ordinaire...regular visits to Phoenix’s billionaires Linda Roy and
Lem Beaulieu...inherited, when Daddy died, billions...a Jack
Daniels connoisseur...community activities include President of the
National Association of Religious Broadcasters, Past President of
the National Association of Broadcasters, Chairperson of the South
Carolina’s Tallyho Beagle and Rifle Club...list went on and
on...

The light changed, Zack pulled away, and his
mind went to another story he had dug up in a thirty-year-old issue
of the
Spartanburg Herald Journal
that had Benny serving for
a brief stint as a Grand Duke of the Spartanburg County Gaggle of
the KKK White Knights.

The KKK connection denied by Ben with
reported threats of bodily harm, Zack said to his car, “No wonder
in South Carolina politics Ben’s name is associated with Vaseline,
cod liver oil and rails.”

Zack went over a summary of all the above and
concluded–red-white-and-blue, absolutely qualified, blue-ribbon cut
and dried, add to that the current juicy rumor floating around in
media circles that his media guru, Babs Lande, is his closet
masseuse–Ben’s smoother than an eight-ounce Everlast boxing
glove..

He wiped his face with his palm, thought, And
that smoothness, coupled with a promise to deliver peace to an
American people weary of terrorist alerts, drive-by hand grenades,
Uzi-toting school teachers, random Wendy’s shutdowns, three-fifty
Big Macs, six-fifty regular at the pump, throw in a Viagra shortage
and the flashy, gold-chained, lying sonofabitch, with a few billion
bucks spread around television commercials, bagged him, with thirty
percent of the vote, the three-way 2016 Presidential election!

Zack sucked his front teeth, thought, Like
Joe said, you get what you pray for. He paused.
Or is it you get
what you pay for?
In any case, Benny had U-hauled his fat
saddlebag chops into the White House and the fabric of world
history on a TV sit-com and a prayer. He looked up. “And Thy wonder
has been wrought.”

Driving easy in lighter traffic, Zack put his
thoughts to a draft editorial for Wednesday’s
The Boca
.

Many things about President Benny bother
us. Two are what Ben might call golly-wumpers. First wumper is his
subtle reference to

innate racial
behavioral patterns

and what he
calls,

their relation to the
spreading terrorists’ gangland violence that is hemorrhaging
America to death.

The other
wumper, most troubling, is his reference to Divine guidance—-a

hallowed voice

that he alone is privy to.

Zack pondered aloud. “But then, what do I
know? Maybe he does talk to God. Maybe God talks to him. And maybe
the Second Coming came

” His phone rang. He
ignored it.

Chapter Six

The San Luis shopping strip resembled a
south-of-the-border movie set—beige stucco walls, exposed wood
beams and a pink flamingo fountain stuck center stage. Near the
main entrance, anchoring the mini-mall, a McDonald’s offered free
fries with an order of two cheeseburgers. At the far end of the
mall, Zack had leased and transformed the former Oscar’s Health
Studio, a two-story building, into
The Boca
’s home.

Zack parked in a slot near the front door and
repeated the incentive he invoked when recruiting minimum wage
help.

“Free parking, worth at least a hundred bucks
a month.”

Stepping to the sidewalk, he noted again the
winsome evening, the quietness of the mall and the eerie stillness
of the sky. He smelled the coconut palms, hibiscus, fresh-cut
Bermuda grass. The entire scene, sketched in the air, seemed like
the artist had forgotten it, had no place to hang it, no home to
show it. Also, lingering in his thoughts: his dinner conversation
with Joe Case—the recording he had, working on, wouldn’t talk
about; the love/hate, order/chaos, blackness/light, give/take, how
many steaks can you eat a week, profit has no home thing.

Why is that last so strange to you?
Zack thought.
Maybe because it’s so simple

one thing I know, something is strange in this
evening.

At
The Boca
’s front door he unlocked
the dead bolt and entered the stuffy building. Scanning the cramped
reception desk for notes, mail, whatever, he shuffled through
several pink phone messages, saw nothing of importance. Then, one
from Mary O’Brien hit him like a quick left jab.

TO:
Zackary
URGENT:
Always

DATE:
Friday
TIME:
5:00 p.m

WHILE YOU WERE OUT

MS/MR:
Mary

OF:
You know

PHONE #:
You know

MESSAGE:
Boca, Need an
answer


He mumbled to himself, “I wish she’d quite
calling me ‘Boca,’ and she has to stop leaving these ‘you know, you
know’ notes all over the place. You know, you know

I don’t know but everybody else seems to know and she
knows everybody knows

”

He remembered when he’d avoided Mary on
Friday. He had worked half a day, took
Veracity
out, spent
the weekend fishing, reading, thinking, enjoying a few cold
Bohemias and did a little writing. He looked at Mary’s message
again.

“Need an answer.”

“So does everybody

”
he said aloud.

Her image again stuck in his head.
Young
enough to be your granddaughter.
He stuffed the message in his
front pants pocket.
I’ll call her later.

Sacking a tinge of something akin to his
former life’s contrition, wondering why, knowing answers were not
forthcoming (good ones, anyway), he walked down the hall past the
press room (formerly a weightlifting area), and waved to two
weekend part-timers. Around a corner, he ambled up a narrow wooden
staircase that led to his second floor shoe box office. He never
understood why, but his thoughts were more

say, unencumbered

surrounded
by the cozy imitation maple paneling. He looked forward to going
there, something about something—the grain of the paneling, the way
the nails showed. An other-side-of-the-tracks ease.

He opened the office door and through a small
curtainless window late-afternoon sunlight filtered a thousand
specks of dust. He flipped on the overhead fluorescent light,
tugged the ceiling-fan chain, went to the brown plastic window
air-conditioner and punched it to high. As the vintage machine
rattled to life, he paused to wipe some dust from his wall of
makeshift bookshelves which displayed hundreds of book from Homer
to Aquinas, Freud to Harry Stack Sullivan, musings of McLuhan to
the fiction of Sinclair Lewis, Ferber, and Faulkner. Also present
was the old Bible his mother Martha had given him at his twelfth
birthday. And on the bottom shelf were six stately volumes titled
Great Religions of the World
—Catholicism, Protestantism,
Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam.

He sat behind his desk in the wooden swivel
chair he had purchased at an Army surplus store. The chair matched
the stained wood Army surplus desk. He studied, which for Zack was
the entire top of the desk, his cluttered in-basket, then turning
his computer-video phone on, he checked his audio messages.

(Beep) “Zack, Jim. Got a plum story for
Wednesday’s front page.”

(Beep) “Boca, Mary. I tried to call
you

”

He turned the volume down and checked his
email. There it was. Same while-you-were-out message from O’Brien,
this one with more detail:

Boca, I tried to reach you Friday, but you had gone
early. We simply have to get you an updated cell phone, Iphone
something, there’s a whole new world out there, texting

everything

and a pager, call
messaging, forwarding—it’s A.D.

He thought about calling her, started to
punch in her phone number, stopped, thought: Get hold of yourself,
she’s young enough to be your daughter (thought you said
granddaughter), on your payroll, too good to be true, it wouldn’t
last six months.