Falling Star (18 page)

Kelly punched a few keys to print the script
upstairs in the copy room next to Ruth's office, then gathered up
her tapes and dragged herself up there. What a pain in the ass. Now
she had to get script approval from Ruth. Even Tony said she
couldn't bypass her, as she had for the car-accident story. The old
battle-ax must have gotten to him somehow.

Kelly was in the hallway just outside Ruth's
office when she heard Ruth's voice, all loud and upset. "What? What
do you mean you got arrested?"

Kelly stopped short. Who was Ruth talking to?
Who would she know who'd get arrested? Kelly inched forward to peek
inside the office, where Ruth was on the phone.

"Hope Dalmont had you arrested?"

Kelly snapped backward. Ruth knew somebody
that Hope Dalmont had arrested?

"Natalie, slow down! What in God's name did
you do?"

Natalie? Despite the wall and the ten feet
that separated them, Kelly could tell that Ruth was appalled. She,
on the other hand, was thrilled. And not entirely surprised. On
some primal level she'd half expected Natalie to screw up again.
She was wound tighter than a drum.

But what in the world could she have done
that would've gotten her arrested—by Hope Dalmont, no less? This
was big. Kelly's every instinct went into overdrive. In fact, this
was enormous.

Kelly glanced furtively both ways down the
hall and behind her down the stairs, her heart thumping. Not a soul
around. Down below she could hear the afternoon tape editors
schmoozing with the receptionist. But there was nobody but her and
Ruth up here on the second floor. Silently she waited, shifting the
betatapes to her other arm.

"Where are you now?"

Kelly cocked her ear and heard the scratch of
pen on paper. "Hollywood Division?"

Kelly arched her brows. Wow. That was where
the real perverts got booked.

"And when are you getting out?" Silence. "Of
course I'm not going to tell anybody! But how do you expect to keep
something like this a secret?"

Shit!
Somebody at the end of the hall.
Kelly pirouetted to race down the stairs, bypassing the chattering
tape editors on her way to the newsroom. Swiftly she organized the
jumble of her thoughts into a plan. She snorted softly. What a day
this was turning out to be. It would more than make up for having
to cover that idiotic funeral.

Her cubicle was all the way at the back of
the newsroom, by the beehive of the Assignment Desk. Like everybody
else's, her desk was piled high with tapes, newspapers, and
magazines, every inch of the cubicle wall's light gray padding
covered with tacked-on newspaper articles and jotted reminders. She
dumped the funeral tapes in the only open space and stared at her
phone. Eight of the ten newsroom lines were lit up in bright
unblinking red. She glanced around. It was three in the afternoon
and the newsroom was full. Most of the morning reporters were back
from their shoots, logging video and writing scripts. It was
dangerous to make a phone call here. Somebody might overhear. She
smirked. That had been known to happen.

She snapped her fingers. Yes! That was the
place to do it. She trolled through the Cs in her Rolodex, scrawled
a telephone number on a memo pad, then flipped back the cards so
nobody could see anything interesting if they bothered to look.

The ladies' room by the executive wing was
empty as usual. And the phone had a dial tone, which wasn't always
the case. Kelly perched on the beat-up pink couch and rehearsed her
pitch. Then she punched 9 for an outside line, plus the number
she'd jotted down.

"City News Service," a bored female voice
answered.

"Yes." Kelly cleared her throat. "I'm calling
to tip you off to a story every station in town will want to run.
Get ready to put this on your urgent wire."

*

Tony pushed open the double doors that
separated KXLA's executive suites from the production wing. Once
back on the production side, he had the same thought he always did:
it was like going from a rich country to a poor country. From
carpet to concrete. From walls hung with oil paintings to walls
with cracking paint. From fancy-shmancy cappuccinos in ceramic mugs
to percolated coffee in Styrofoam cups.

All of that was fine with him. Every day he
thanked God he wasn't one of the suits. He'd get bored in ten
minutes from the shit they had to deal with.

He turned left at the end of the hall by the
hair and makeup departments and lumbered past the studio, heading
for the newsroom security door. He hated budget meetings, and this
one had been particularly bad. Not only weren't the suits going to
give him another ENG truck—they might cancel the lease on one of
the three he had. But whose ass was on the line if three monster
stories hit at the same time and he had only two satellite trucks
for five shots? Like that never happened in LA. Christ, he could
have riots, earthquakes, and wildfires at the same time, with a
celeb murder or two thrown in for good measure.

He got back to his office and poked around in
the bottom right-hand drawer of his desk for his afternoon snack.
Every few weeks Anna-Maria bought him one of those home-economy
size bags of chocolate bars, not that so-called bite-size shit but
the normal-size bars grown men could eat. He was working on a bag
of Three Musketeers now, which was high on his favorites list,
right up there with Snickers and the ones with the coconut—he could
never remember the name. He tore off the wrapping and took a chomp.
"Maxine!" he bellowed out his door. "Coffee!" He was just about to
take another bite when he glanced up at his row of monitors.

Holy shit.

He rose and edged closer to the second
monitor from the left, almost not believing his eyes. It was
Channel 8 doing a live shot, he couldn't immediately tell where.
But clear as day, right in the middle of all the action, was
Natalie Daniels. She was being led down the outside stairs at . . .
Hollywood Division
? And she was wearing—he couldn't believe
it—one of those bright orange jail jumpsuits. Propped up by that
fancy agent of hers, she looked like absolute shit, especially with
all the flashbulbs going off in her face. A monster crowd of
reporters and cameramen bumped into her so much she almost fell
down, except that the agent held her by the elbow. Tony raced
forward and punched the up volume button to hear veteran street
reporter Phil Davies from over at Channel 8 do his live shot.

"Sources say Dalmont may file stalking
charges, though details on that are still pending," Davies
reported. "No official comment from her camp, but the actress is
said to be holed up at her Bel Air estate. We'll have more details
on this incredible breaking story at five when—"

"You saw it?" Howard stood panting at his
doorway.

Tony nodded. "We had a crew there?"

"Yeah, an urgent wire came over City News
Service while you were in the budget meeting. I was sure it was a
prank, so I didn't call you out of there. But I did send a crew and
a reporter."

"What the hell was Daniels doing going after
Hope Dalmont?"

"I have no idea."

Tony was stunned. Princess was a Psycho
Anchor. Stalker by day, anchor by night. In all his years of TV
news he'd never had
this
problem before.

He trudged back to his desk, pondering.
Jesus, she must have been really close to the edge. All he'd done
was tell her she was on the bubble and off she went stalking
celebs?

So now what was he gonna do?

First order of business. He plopped in his
chair and polished off his Three Musketeers bar. On one hand,
Princess getting arrested would be good for the numbers. Because,
by God, this was something people would want to see. Psycho Anchor,
news at ten. But what if she was really looney times? By this point
he had to wonder.

"Get Elaine from Legal," he ordered Howard.
"I want her in here ASAP. And tell Kelly she's gonna fill in for
Natalie tonight." He looked up. Howard looked dazed. "What's your
problem?"

Howard shifted from one foot to another, like
he was agitated or something. "Are you sure you want Kelly filling
in for Natalie?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"No, no," Howard stammered, but he still had
a weird expression, like he couldn't believe what was happening.
Tony watched him back out. Sometimes he wondered what his managing
editor had for balls.

He pulled out the bottom drawer of the wide
metal file cabinet behind him where he stored all the talent
contracts. DANIELS, NATALIE. He pulled out the thick manila folder
and slapped it open on his desk, putting on his bifocals at the
same time.

"Tony, there is an explanation for—"

"Save it, Ruth." He looked up to see her
filling his doorway like a huge bee in some black-and-yellow
sweater getup, her face red as if she'd just run down the stairs.
"I don't wanna hear it. Elaine, get in here."

He motioned in Elaine Nance, the station's
senior attorney. Tony thought she looked like a tree hugger who'd
accidentally gone to law school instead of Earth First. She dressed
in goddamn green corduroy every day of the week. She edged her
skinny ass past Ruth's fat one and slid into the chair in front of
Tony's desk, her granny glasses sliding down her nose.

He tossed Natalie's contract folder in
Elaine's direction, ignoring Ruth, then leaned back and crossed his
hands over his belly. "Okay. Tell me what we have to do to suspend
her."

*

Natalie tried to calm down by staring out the
closed passenger window of Geoff's navy blue XJS as he drove west
at a virtual crawl along sweltering Hollywood Boulevard. They'd
left the horde of reporters and camera crews behind at Hollywood
Division, but late on a July afternoon the gritty, potholed street
was jammed with both tourists and locals. Everything from the
cinemas to the sex stores was doing blockbuster business.

The car was silent save for the hum of the
air conditioner, which Geoff had cranked to the max. She glanced
down at her bright orange polyester jailhouse jumpsuit, hot and
stiff and uncomfortable even under the blast of artificially
generated cold air. She wanted nothing more than to get home, lock
the doors, peel the damn thing off, and crawl into bed. She glanced
sideways at Geoff and felt a surge of gratitude. He'd made no
recriminations. He'd simply shown up, bailed her out, and whisked
her through the mob to his car. "Thank you for doing all this,
Geoff," she said quietly.

"Don't worry about it, Natalie."

He was composed, businesslike. Impossible to
read.
What an embarrassment I must be to him
. She realized
that she cared a great deal about his opinion of her and until
recently had never doubted that it was high. She sighed, then
ventured, "You're awfully quiet."

He switched lanes to speed past an especially
slow car, then shrugged. "I don't know what to say."

"Somebody else would say 'I told you so.'
"

He shook his head. "I just never thought the
celebrity stuff suited you. Play to your strength—that's what I
said."

She laughed ruefully. "At the moment it's
hard to know what my strength is."

He was silent. Mercifully they left
Hollywood's traffic behind as he made the right turn onto Outpost
Drive, a steep curving residential canyon that led up to Mulholland
Drive. And home. He gunned the accelerator and the Jag shot up the
slope. "I don't know if I've ever told you this, Natalie," he said
finally. "You're the best damn anchor I've ever seen. I'm not
kidding. Bar none."

She stared at him, too stunned and grateful
to speak. Tears pricked her eyes but she held them back, not
wanting to cry in front of him. His being her agent required that
she maintain a certain facade. She tried to manage a light tone.
"Even after today?"

"Today hasn't changed that." He negotiated a
switchback, the Jag's tires squealing. "Now you're the best damn
anchor I've ever seen who's been arrested. You're in a category all
your own."

He gave her a sideways grin then and she let
out a hiccupy laugh because she was almost crying. He edged the car
too close to the right and a protruding branch slapped the Jag's
windshield.

She reached into her purse for a tissue.
"There's something I never told you." It felt like a confessional
moment. "The day of the quake, when Tony told me he wasn't planning
to renew me, he said that maybe my judgment isn't what it used to
be. That I'd been behind the anchor desk so long I'd gotten
soft."

Geoff shook his head. "Don't start doubting
yourself, Natalie. This was a misstep but everybody makes those.
What separates the winners is how they recover."

She gazed out the window. The Jag had arrived
at the hill's steep crest and Geoff turned left onto an open and
dusty stretch of Mulholland that had killer views of the LA basin.
Natalie let her head drop back and stared up at the black ragtop.
"The thing is, I don't know how to recover. I've made a
laughingstock of myself. Viewers who didn't see me blow up at the
remote will see this. I've cut off my own head and handed it to
Tony on a plate."

"Don't be so sure. This will make you more of
a ratings draw than ever and Scoppio is smart enough to recognize
that."

She was not convinced. She could too easily
imagine Scoppio sitting at his desk, wolfing down a chocolate bar
and snickering at her comeuppance. She shut her eyes and they drove
the remaining half mile in silence.

Geoff rolled the car to a halt outside her
house and turned off the ignition. The narrow canyon road was
quiet.

Natalie fidgeted with the balled-up tissue in
her hand, shredding it into bits that piled like tiny snowflakes on
her orange polyestered thigh. She was reluctant to get out of the
car and go inside. An empty house. Again. She raised her head and
stared unseeing through the windshield. "I'm just so petrified that
I'm going to lose this job, Geoff." Tears gathered behind her eyes.
"I feel like everything I've built up over all these years is
slipping away and I can't stop it. Everything I do to try to stop
it only makes it worse."