Yesterday's News

by R. G. Belsky

  “You’re kidding me, right?” I said when Maggie had finished giving me the details of the problem.

  “Nope, Brett and Dani are both really serious about this. They want you to make a decision.”

  I thought about it for a minute.

  “How about this?” I said finally. “We let them alternate intros. Brett goes first night, then Dani the second. Same with the signoff at the end of the show. They each get to go first that way—half of the time.”

  Maggie chuckled.

  “That is brilliant, Clare.”

  “Hey, that’s why they pay me the big bucks.”

  Maggie said she’d run the plan by Brett and Dani, but she was pretty sure they would both go for it. We went through some other stuff and then she got up to leave. Before she did, she stopped and looked around at me.

  “So, what are you going to do about Elliott Grayson?” Maggie asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  “It could be a really big story.”

  “And a game changer for the Senate election,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “Now all I have to do is figure out how to run it.”

  CHAPTER 47

  “WHAT DOES GRAYSON say about all this?” Janet asked me.

  “I don’t know. He won’t talk to me.”

  “Why not?”

  “I think it’s because I wouldn’t kiss him.”

  Janet sighed. We were walking down Madison Avenue. I was on my way back to the office. She was on her way to court. I’d asked her to meet me to help me figure out what to do next.

  “You still don’t know for sure that he’s done anything wrong or that he’s really involved in all of this,” she said.

  “I know he’s involved somehow.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “My journalistic instincts, Janet. I just have a feeling about this one.”

  “Are you sure your personal history with the guy doesn’t play any part in this?” she asked me.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Well, maybe the abortive romance with him is clouding your judgment.”

  “You can’t believe that. After what I told you about him?”

  “I’m just saying that you don’t always handle failed romances well. If you were happily married or in a good relationship, it would be a different story. But you tend to overreact when things don’t work out with a man. Like the whole thing you told me about Sam and Dede and the call you made to his house. I just think it would be nice if you met a good guy and stopped playing musical chairs with all these men. I think it might help the rest of your life, too, including your professional life.”

  “My God, why do I come to you for advice? It’s like I’m talking to my aunt Agnes.”

  “What is it you want me to say?”

  “Something that will help me figure this all out.”

  “Like what?”

  “You’re a lawyer.”

  “Okay, but …”

  “So, what should I do about Elliott Grayson? How do I get him to talk to me—and maybe trap himself in a lie? What would you do if you had a case like this?”

  We stopped at a light on 51st. She thought about it for a second until the light changed. Then she started talking as we kept walking.

  “Sometimes I get people to say stuff on the witness stand. They don’t want to talk about it, but I get them to answer my questions by letting them think that I know more than I really do. It doesn’t matter so much if I know the answer. All that matters is that they think I do. They feel they have to say something to protect themselves.”

  “So you’re saying that if Grayson thinks I have a lot of bad stuff on him—more than I really do—and that I’m going to put it on the air … Well, he might decide he’s better off talking to me. He doesn’t know what evidence I have or don’t have. It’s kind of like poker. I can bluff him.”

  “It’s just a thought.”

  “That’s not bad, Janet.”

  “You never know … it might smoke him out.”

  “Yes, but first I have to make contact with him somehow.”

  “Well, I have no idea how you can do that if he won’t meet with you or answer your calls.”

  “I think I do.”

  “What?”

  “An ambush interview.”

  “What’s an ambush interview?”

  The idea of the “ambush interview” is to get the person on camera to ask him a question even if he won’t say anything. You surprise him at his home or his job or anyplace you know that he’ll be. Several things can happen. Maybe he’ll talk to you. Maybe he’ll run away. Maybe he’ll cover up his head and face. Maybe he’ll take a swing at you or try to smash the camera. All of these things are good, as long as you can get them on video. Even if the guy doesn’t say anything about the story, it adds real action and color and drama to the report you’re doing.

  I explained this all to Janet now.

  “That sounds pretty confrontational,” she said when I was done. “Grayson will go nuts if you do that to him.”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “How about that?”

  CHAPTER 48

  THE FIRST THING you have to do in an “ambush interview” is get to a spot where you can pull it off.

  In this case, it was going to be Grayson’s campaign headquarters. I found out that he was supposed to be there for an endorsement from some local union organization at two p.m. I got there a little before that. The offices were located in Midtown, on East 53rd Street near Park Avenue. The Grayson headquarters took up most of the fourth floor of a fifteen-story office building. There was security in the lobby, of course. A guard checking IDs.

  I decided to try the simple approach and bluff my way through. It’s a lot easier to do that when you have a camera crew with you. Someone with a camera crew just looks like they belong there. I told the crew with me to follow me in the door and just do whatever I do. We walked purposefully through the lobby as if we knew exactly where we were going.

  “Hey, I need your ID,” the guard yelled after us.

  “I already showed it to you.”

  “I didn’t see it.”

  “Look, we’re late for an interview with Elliott Grayson. It goes with the announcement at two p.m. of his big union endorsement. This video has got to be shot today for a campaign promo. If we’re late, it’s going to be someone’s ass. You want to hassle us, fine. We’ll tell Grayson exactly why we weren’t able to get up there on time.”

  He shrugged. He didn’t want any problems.

  “Okay, go ahead.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll have to call up and tell them you’re coming. What’s the name?”

  “Just say the camera crew is here,” I said, as we got on the elevator and pressed the button for the fourth floor.

  I figured that was pretty safe. There had to be lots of camera crews coming and going through Grayson headquarters these days. That shouldn’t arouse anyone’s suspicions. In the end, it didn’t matter anyway. As the elevator door closed, I saw more people pouring into the lobby. The guard saw them, then put the phone down to go deal with them. He’d probably never even made the call.

  Upstairs, the campaign headquarters was a madhouse. Just the way you’d expect it to be a few days before the election. It was easy to blend in amid all the confusion.

  Grayson’s office was in the back. Gwen Thompson, the woman that I’d had the run-in with at the prosecutor’s office the first time I saw him, was sitting at a desk outside his door. I figured Gwen might be tough to get past. I was right.

  “What are you doing here?” she screamed as soon as she recognized me.

  “I’m here to see Elliott Grayson.”

  “He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “You called here a dozen times. Don’t you get the message?”

  “Oh, he’s probably just playing hard to get.”

  “Get out of here!
”

  “Not until I see Grayson.”

  Elliott Grayson suddenly emerged from an office to see what all the shouting was about. I could tell from his expression he was surprised as hell to see it was me there. He’d been so cool and in control the other times I’d seen him. For the first time now, he looked rattled. That was good for me, I figured.

  “Elliott Grayson, have you told us everything you know about Lucy Devlin?” I shouted above the noise.

  “I’m not answering any questions like that from you,” Grayson yelled back.

  “Have you told us everything you know about those six missing children whose bodies you dug up in New Hampshire?” I asked.

  “Get out of here!” he said now. “You don’t belong here. You have no authorization to—”

  “Tell us about the death of your sister, Sarah, when she was a child …”

  “What?”

  He looked especially agitated now that I’d brought up the name of his dead sister.

  “Elliott Grayson, I have a lot of questions to ask you before the election about Lucy Devlin, the missing six children you found in that grave, the death of Sandy Marston and Louise Carbone, plus the death of your ten-year-old sister, Sarah Grayson, when you were growing up in Clarion, Pennsylvania.”

  “Don’t you ever talk about my sister!” he said angrily, almost as if he hadn’t heard any of the rest of what I said.

  “If you’ll just sit down with me now and answer these questions—”

  “I want you out of here!” he screamed.

  “Not before you answer my questions about Lucy Devlin, the missing children, Sandy Marston, Louise Carbone—”

  “Out!” he yelled at me again.

  “And, yes,” I said, “questions about the death of your ten-year-old sister Sarah, too.”

  Grayson moved toward me now with his fists clenched. For a second, I thought he was going to try to hit me. While we were filming the whole thing for TV. Senate candidate fights it out with newswoman and her TV crew. Now that would be great TV. Boy, talk about a video going viral! But instead, he thought better of it, stopped a few feet away—and then yelled to his campaign staff: “Someone just get this woman the hell out of here.”

  “Security!” Gwen screamed and set off a loud buzzer on her desk.

  The place turned into bedlam after that. Cops, security people, campaign workers all came pouring out from everywhere. Gwen herself was out in front, waving her hands in my face and yelling at me and the film crew to get out.

  I told the film crew to keep shooting video of the whole thing for as long as they could.

  Eventually, security people dragged us back to the elevator, down to the lobby, and out the front door.

  The “ambush interview.”

  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

  This time it did.

  He hadn’t answered any of my questions, but I’d accomplished what I set out to do when I went there to confront him.

  * * *

  I went on the air with it that night. The newscast led off like this:

  ANNOUNCER: This is the Channel 10 News. With Brett Wolff and Dani Blaine at the anchor desk. Steve Stratton with sports, and Wendy Jeffers at the Accu 10 weather central.

  If you want to stay up to date in this fast-paced city, you need to keep on the go with Channel 10 News.

  And now here’s Brett and Dani …

  BRETT: There’s a five-alarm fire raging in Brooklyn.

  There’s been a stunning courtroom verdict that could allow a top mobster to go free.

  And there’s a $100 million lottery winner out there somewhere.

  DANI: We’re also going to take a look at some of the fun things to do in the fall around New York City. September getaways to make that transition from summer just a little easier. Some of them may surprise you.

  BRETT: But first, we have a special Action 10 report on a breaking political story from our own Clare Carlson, who’s uncovered some blockbuster revelations about Senate frontrunner Elliott Grayson.

  ME: New Yorkers go to the polls soon to vote for a US Senator. Right now, the leading candidate is Elliott Grayson, who’s expected to sweep to victory in the Democratic primary over council president Teddy Weller.

  Grayson is also considered an overwhelming favorite to win the general election in November. But who exactly is Elliott Grayson? What do we really know about him? More importantly, what don’t we know about him?

  We know that he’s been the poster boy for law enforcement. Crime buster, crusading prosecutor, terrific conviction record. This list of achievements culminated recently when he solved the long-ago Lucy Devlin disappearance case. Tracking down the alleged kidnappers to a farmhouse in Idaho, killing them in a shootout, and then finding the body of Lucy Devlin after years of mystery over what happened to her. That was big news everywhere, including this station.

  But a closer examination of Grayson and his record by this station has raised some disturbing questions. Questions about his actions in the Lucy Devlin case. Questions about his investigation of other missing children cases. And questions about a lot of other things, too, including even the mysterious death of his own sister.

  We’ve tried to get answers from Grayson to our questions, but so far, he’s refused to talk to us. He doesn’t return our phone calls or respond to our e-mails—and this is what happened when we went to his campaign office.

  The picture cut to the video we’d taken showing the chaotic scene there. There were shots of the cops and security pushing us out of the office. Me shouting out questions to him, and him refusing to answer. Then Gwen Thompson screaming and everyone yelling at us as we were forcibly escorted out onto the street.

  ME: My message to Elliott Grayson tonight is this.

  Talk to us, tell us the truth, answer our questions. The people of New York City expect that from their next Senator. Otherwise, before the election, Channel 10 News will run a special report detailing all these allegations and raising new questions about Grayson. The only reason we’re not doing it now is because, out of fairness, we want to give him once last chance to respond.

  Many of these facts we’re prepared to reveal are shocking. Many are disturbing. Many are hard to believe.

  The only person who can say they’re not true—and hopefully prove to us why not—is Elliott Grayson. And he’s not talking.

  The ball is in your court, Mr. Grayson. Otherwise, viewers …

  Stay tuned for this special report before Election Day. It just might change your vote.

  Both Brett and Dani looked stunned when the camera went back to them.

  BRETT: Well, thanks, Clare … we’ll be watching for that.

  DANI: Uh, William Bero thought he was just making a routine trip to the store for milk and bread. Except he stopped to buy a lottery ticket there, too.

  BRETT: Now that lottery ticket has changed his life, because it’s worth $100 million! More on that after these messages …

  When we were off-camera, I turned to Brett and Dani. “What do you think?” I asked them.

  “Wow,” Dani said. “Grayson’s not gonna like this.”

  “That’s the basic idea.”

  CHAPTER 49

  JACK FARON CONFRONTED me in the hallway on the way back to my office right after the telecast.

  “What the hell was that all about?” he asked.

  I hadn’t told Faron what I was going to do. Not about the ambush interview at Grayson’s office. Not about going on the air with the ultimatum to Grayson to talk to us about Lucy Devlin and all the rest. I figured he wouldn’t let me do it if he knew beforehand. I was right. He was plenty mad.

  “Don’t worry, Jack. I have a plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “C’mon,” I said, “we have all this stuff about Grayson, but we can’t use most of it on the air. Only Grayson doesn’t know that. He knows what he knows, and he knows what he did, and he knows what would happen if all this came out on the air. Which we kn
ow we can’t do. But he doesn’t know that. Are you following this?”

  Faron looked like he was going to have a stroke.

  “Anyway,” I said, “the idea is we scare him into talking to us, bluff him into reacting, prod him into doing something stupid—anything to put this all in motion.”

  “That’s your plan.”

  “You have to trust me on this.”

  “And what if Grayson doesn’t do anything?”

  “Then we’re in trouble.”

  “You’re damned right we’re in trouble.”

  He paced up and down the hallway, waving his arms at me in exasperation.

  “You just promised our viewing audience a big exclusive on a scandal. Only you don’t have a big exclusive. What you have is a lot of suspicions, half-baked theories, and suppositions. Let’s say Grayson doesn’t do a thing. He doesn’t take the bait. What do you tell the audience tomorrow night that’s waiting with bated breath for all these revelations you promised to reveal about him?”

  “What I did tonight will smoke Grayson out, Jack.”

  “I sure hope you’re right.”

  So did I.

  * * *

  As it turned out, I didn’t have to wait very long. I didn’t even have to try to call Grayson again. He called me.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he yelled over the phone.

  “My job.”

  “You’re going to cost me this election doing your damn job.”

  “Kinda neat the way that works out, huh?”

  “You’ve got everything all wrong, Carlson.”

  “I simply reported the facts that I have.”

  “You don’t know what I know.”

  “That’s because you won’t talk to me.”

  “I don’t have time to talk to you now. I’m in the last days of an election campaign.”

  “Fine. Then you can find out exactly what I do know by tuning in to the Channel 10 News. I’m spelling it all out there. That ought to give the voters something to think about on the way to the polls on Election Day.”