Prophet (85 page)

Now Susan and Tina had joined Pete at the window.

Pete chuckled incredulously. “He’s doing 430, the Slater Story.”

Susan was awestruck. “He’s doing it anyway!”

Tina murmured, “Like father, like son” and turned away.

John slowed down as he read the final lines of his narration. The clock wasn’t running now, and he would never get the chance to read the lines again. “A month later Annie Brewer, a high school senior, died from an abortion she received at the Women’s Medical Center.” And then there was silence. No commercial break with its bright lights, loud music, new cars or cold, inviting bottles of beer. No angry throng seething and ranting around him.

Just silence. John could almost sense his words still echoing somewhere in the room.

He’d said it. He’d done the story. He laid the script down gently, respectfully, and then sat there for a moment, leaning on his elbows, his knuckles against his chin, just decompressing, allowing himself to feel.

It was so quiet. Had it ever been this quiet in his life before?

“Barrett, you are one weird fellow, you know that?”

Ben Oliver was standing at the other end of the news desk. How long had he been standing there?

“Hi, Ben.”

Ben rested his elbows near the spot where Bing Dingham usually did his sports reporting. He just stood there and studied John for a moment. “So Tina bumped the story.”

“It got on the Five O’clock, but she bumped it from the Seven.”

“You lost out to the rhinoceros.”

“Afraid so.”

Ben laughed derisively and threw in a well-woven curse as well. “Yeah, I know . . . I should’ve been here. But I won’t lie to you, John . . . I just plain didn’t want to be. It would’ve meant trouble, the kind I don’t like and don’t need any more of.” He sniffed in disgust. “I couldn’t have made much difference anyway. You push your weight around too much, you get accused of bending the news, you know?”

“I can appreciate that.”

Then there was silence, the ominous kind. John finally broke it by asking, “So, Ben, will I be working here tomorrow?”

Ben’s gaze fell to the top of the desk for a moment and then returned to meet John’s. “Well . . . Loren Harris went over your contract. The contract says we can’t fire you, but it does allow us to reassign you.”

John was expecting this. “Uh . . . to what? Feature reporting?”

“Yeah . . . reporting fluff. Soft features. Barbershop quartets and oyster eating contests and slug races, things like that. Of course, it’ll mean fewer hours. You’ll only be working part-time.”

John leaned back in his chair and laughed quietly. He’d heard this kind of offer being made before, usually to reporters who didn’t show up the next day.

Ben had to laugh too. He knew he wasn’t fooling anyone. “You know how it works, John. Loren’s forcing you to quit. That way we kill our scapegoat and we don’t have to give him any severance pay. Such a deal!”

“Can I have a day or two to think about it?”

“Oh gosh, yes.”

Another moment of pensive silence. John gathered up his script. “Ben . . .”

“Yeah.”

“Do you . . . do you understand what I did here today? Do you know why I did it?”

Ben looked at John with eyes that hadn’t missed a thing.

“For the same reason you’re getting . . . reassigned. You’re not being a good citizen in La-La Land; you don’t believe all this stuff anymore.” He looked at the plywood backdrop with the city skyline, the false monitors, the textured blues and greens. “I think . . . I think Loren’s afraid that one of these days you’re finally gonna lose it and
start hollering, ‘We’ve been lying to you! The city you see behind me isn’t real—it’s just
painted
there, you hear me?’”

“‘Mommy, the emperor’s naked . . .’”

Ben put a finger to his lips. “Shhh! You want to get us
both
fired?”

John had to laugh. Ben did understand.

Ben came closer and sat in Ali’s chair. “But let me tell you something, John, just for the record. I was watching your performance just now, when nobody else was. You did all right. As a matter of fact, I think it was the best you ever did.” Ben’s eyes twinkled. “You went over by at least thirty seconds, but you did all right.”

“I believed it. It was true.”

Ben nodded. Then he added in all sincerity, “John . . . you did the right thing.”

WILLY FERRINI HAD
just gotten back in town and was enjoying another one of those Hiram Slater commercials on the wide-screen television at Clancy’s when Henderson took him aside for a chat—
way
aside actually, all the way down to headquarters.

Willy was not a noble person, of course. He had no one’s interests but his own in mind. “Hey, you don’t wanna talk to me. Talk to the man on top—Martin Devin. He’s the one who hired me to . . . uh . . .”

“To what?” Henderson asked, circling impatiently around the same interrogation room where he’d grilled Howie Metzger.

“To get the tape from Ed Lake and then from that old Barrett character.”

“Did he tell you to kill Barrett?”

Willy shook his head and waved aside that notion. “Hey, he just said to do whatever it took. He wanted that tape back. He said not to come back without it, and that’s what I told Ted and Howie.”

“You mean, of course,
the
Martin Devin, the governor’s chief of staff?”

Willy liked the important sound of that. He smiled and nodded.

Henderson instructed, “Say yes for the tape.”

Willy remembered his confession was being taped. “Oh yeah . . . Yes.”

THE PHONE IN
John’s apartment rang two times, and then the answering machine clicked on, playing a message John had recorded as soon as he got home. “Hi, this is John. I hope you won’t mind if I don’t answer the phone right now. I’m all right, but I . . . well, I need to be alone for a while. Maybe we can touch base again tomorrow, okay? Go ahead and leave a message after the beep.”

“Hi,” came a familiar and concerned voice. “This is Leslie. I saw the Five and Seven O’clock, and I can just guess what happened. Listen, hang in there, John, and remember, we’re all behind you. As soon as you’re ready, I want to talk about it, so give me a ring.”

John sat in a chair at the dining table, looking out at the city coming alive with lights as the darkness of night deepened. The newscast was over now. He’d told Mom and Carl how he needed this night to himself, and they understood. Now he could feel all he wanted until the feelings made sense. He could even cry.

Another call came in. “Hey, John, this is Susan—you know, the show director. Hey, guy, I’ve never done this before—you know, just stuck my neck out like this, but . . . I just want to say I’m sorry you got bumped. That story on Slater—I don’t think it’s going to go away. I think you’ve really uncovered something, and you should feel good about it, and uh . . . that’s . . . well, I guess that’s all I need to say. I hope to see you around. Good-bye.”

John appreciated Susan’s call. Someday those encouraging words would work their way through his sorrow and do him some good. Someday.

But tonight as John sat there quietly, motionless, looking out over the city, all he could do was weep over it.

Just like Dad.

Another call. “Hi, John. This is Aaron Hart. Listen, we were all watching tonight, and you did great. I won’t bother you about this until you’re ready, but you’ll be interested to know that the Brewers are going to go after the clinic, and they’ll be getting help from . . . uh . . . Rachel Franklin, Shannon DuPliese, and Cindy Danforth. Dr. Huronac and that Claire from the clinic too. Anyway, as soon as you get the chance we need to pool all the information and see what we
have—but not until you’re ready, okay? You just take it easy, be encouraged, and . . . we’ll hear from you in your own good time. Bye.”

John reached over and turned off the phone’s ringer and the answering machine’s volume. Then he sat there in the silence, alone with himself.

Despair. That’s what he was battling right now.

Aaron . . . what good will you do, really? If you shut down one clinic, another will pop up somewhere else; tear one clinic down, they’ll just build another one. The problem isn’t that clinic; it’s in the hearts of all those lost and crying souls out there. The answer’s got to come to them, to each heart, to each and every pain and resentment, to every wound that ever needed healing, to every soiled conscience that ever needed cleansing. It would take a miracle!

And tonight . . . what good did I do, really? What difference did I make? Was anybody out there even listening?

John’s Bible lay on the table. He’d turned to 1 Kings 19, where Elijah the prophet was hiding for his life in a cave and cried out to the Lord, “I have been very zealous for the LORD God Almighty. The Israelites have rejected your covenant, broken down your altars, and put your prophets to death with the sword. I am the only one left, and now they are trying to kill me too.” He read the passage several times as he sat there alone in the dim lamplight of his dining room. Elijah’s words captured just how he felt.

“Well, Lord, now it’s over, so maybe You’ll tell me just what it was all about.” John heard no answer. He saw no vision.

He pointed toward the city and began to weep again. “Lord God, what about their cries? Why do You let me hear them? What can
I
do about it?”

John sat up straight in the chair, watching the city, hoping for a thought, an insight, an answer from God, anything that would bring sense to his misery.

But God remained silent.

“Lord . . . what’s to become of us?”

That was his last question. He listened only a moment longer and then, drained of tears, despondent in spirit, he settled back in his chair with nothing more to say or think or do or hope, his eyes closed to the whole helpless world. And there he stayed, he didn’t know for how
long.

JOHN OPENED HIS
eyes, for no reason he was aware of except that something had prodded him, much as a sound, a light, a bump, or a squeak might wake a person without his knowing exactly what had done it.

The first thing he noticed was the pattern of the vinyl flooring on the dining room floor. There was nothing unusual about it, except that he was seeing it so clearly where before the light had been too dim.

Light? Yes. Light that wasn’t there before.

Fascinated, he sat there and watched as the light grew, fanning out gently, displacing the shadows, steadily building and widening until it filled a long rectangle across the dining room floor.

It was coming from his bedroom, shining through the open doorway. Had the light come on in there?

Couldn’t be. This light was not from some fixture or lamp. It was more like the glimmer from diamonds or the glint from polished silver, and yet it was soft, warm, comforting, with a hint of gold that seemed to move within it like myriads of tiny flames.

John moved for the first time and only then became aware of his muscles and the weight and size of his body. He rose from the chair and stood on his feet. Yes, his feet, his physical feet on the physical floor in his real, physical apartment. He was really here, the light was really here, and this was no dream.