What's a Girl Gotta Do?

by Sparkle Hayter

  Later, as I rode home from Tatiana’s in a creaky taxicab with bad shocks, I thought about how I’d married the wrong man, which meant maybe the right man was still out there somewhere.

  So was the killer.

  When I got home, I turned ANN on to keep me company while I brushed Louise Bryant. The Greg Browner Show was on—the Hawaii version, a taped repeat of the evening show that played during prime time in Hawaii. It made for good white noise.

  “Topeka, Kansas, on the line. What’s your question for Jack Kemp, Topeka?” Greg said in his warm way.

  “Greg, my husband and I think you should run for office in ninety-six.”

  Browner got several calls like this every night. Some of the Perotist carpetbaggers, who had wandered in the wilderness for many months since their man’s defeat in ’92, had tried to get Browner to pick up the Independence banner. But Browner refused to run, elevating himself above the fray and giving his show-ender commentaries greater credibility.

  But for every call of support he got, he got one like his next call.

  “Yeah, Greg, this is Barry from Union City, New Jersey. I want to know if Jack Kemp would support a national holiday to honor Howard Stern’s penis?”

  Live television. You gotta love it.

  Chapter Five

  THE MAN WHO SOLD newspapers on Avenue B greeted me with a strange look and kept his eyes on me while I scanned the dailies. When I got to the News-Journal, I saw him grin.

  P.I. DEAD

  IN BAD-LUCK HOTEL

  FOUND BLUDGEONED—ROOM 13D

  Inset was my picture, coming out of the police station, with the caption, “Reporter questioned in murder.”

  The Post was more succinct. “JINX!” it screamed in large black letters. “PRIVATE EYE DEAD IN MARFELES ROOM 13D.” Then, in smaller letters along the bottom of the page: “ANN Reporter a Suspect? Page 3.”

  “Shit,” I said. I took a copy of the tabloids, along with the Times, and paid the guy. I opened the News-Journal and read it as I walked to the subway. It was unbelievable.

  Renegade reporter Robin Hudson, who is perhaps best known for belching loudly on live television, was questioned by police for nearly two hours last night in the murder of Lawrence M. Griff, 38, of Ozone Park, Queens.

  Griff, a licensed P.I., was found in a pool of blood in his room, Room 13D, at the Marfeles Palace …

  Blah. Blah Blah.

  Detective Joe Tewfik of homicide said, “Ms. Hudson was questioned as a witness in this case and is not a suspect at this point, although we haven’t ruled anyone out yet.”

  What bullshit, I thought. He knew I didn’t do it.

  But neighbors and colleagues say Ms. Hudson appeared agitated on New Year’s Eve, when the murder is thought to have occurred, and threatened an elderly woman with a tire iron. Later, she was seen talking with the victim at ANN’s New Year’s Eve party at the Marfeles.

  There was more, but I won’t bore you with the details.

  It’s amazing how one disaster can distort the truth of one’s life so quickly and so completely. I had held up my tire iron—part of my costume—in the street to ward off Mrs. Ramirez’s cane, and the News-Journal made it sound like I was some sort of maniac on a wilding spree that started with a tire iron and an old lady and ended with a man dead in a classy midtown hotel room.

  Unnamed “colleagues” and “neighbors” supported this tale of my orgy of violence with telling anecdotes of past bad temper. Most people don’t like to get involved, especially with any legal authority, but some people are so eager to please reporters they’ll gladly corroborate anything you want with a little factoid or two. I’d seen it plenty of times.

  This was bad. If the News-Journal kept this up and the police didn’t arrest me, the villagers would soon come for me in a torchlight procession.

  Work was going to be a bitch too. I went straight for Democracy Wall when I got in to assess the damage to my reputation and found a small mob crowded around something on the board. Before I could make my way through, a hand grabbed my sweater and yanked me cleanly from the throng. It was Jerry.

  “You’re wanted at the morning editorial meeting,” he said.

  “Rats.”

  “Robin, Robin, Robin,” he said. He was so smug. “How long am I going to have to keep bailing you out of trouble?”

  “Oh please,” I said. I pushed open the door to the executive conference room and almost every face in that room turned to me, cold and unappreciative. McGravy energetically worked his modeling clay with his smoking arm. George Dunbar gave me a look of sour anger, like he’d just swallowed a pickled mouse. A miserly man, he could pinch a penny till it screamed. You know the expression “Money talks”? At ANN it didn’t just talk. It begged for mercy.

  Dunbar rose and spoke. The daily papers were on the black enamel table in front of him, next to his cup of tea and two Sweet’n Low packets, one empty, the second one rolled up, half used, saved for later.

  “We have a system here, Ms. Hudson. When a member of our staff gets information, that member of our staff calls up the assignment desk and relays that information. When it’s a story about ANN personnel, it is doubly important that we are informed as early as possible, so we can manage the crisis.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I figured it wasn’t a big deal for ANN. I’m just a witness in the case and my involvement was personal, not professional. I didn’t … Mr. Dunbar, the stories in the paper are wrong. I’m not a suspect.”

  “You didn’t do it?” he said, as though he couldn’t be sure.

  “No! Ask the cops. They don’t think I’m a suspect, not really.”

  “The point is, you should have let ANN know what was going on, so we didn’t have to learn it by surprise. Either you or Ms. Thibodeaux should have called us,” Dunbar said.

  “If Claire didn’t call, it’s because she’s my friend,” I said. “Don’t take it out on her. She respects my feelings and my privacy. She probably didn’t feel it was her place.”

  Apparently, this was a novel concept to some in the room, who looked at me perplexed.

  “You don’t seem to understand how much trouble you’ve caused,” Dunbar continued. “The police have been here all morning and reporters have been flooding public relations with calls. It’s bad enough this involves you. Other ANN personnel might be involved too. We could have used the extra time to formulate a response.”

  “What other personnel?” I asked.

  “The issue is you, for the moment. And how we should deal with your inexcusable negligence.”

  Immediately, I tried to excuse it. “You know, I had a very weird night. I kind of had other things on my mind.…”

  But he cut me no slack. I’d used up my slack allotment at ANN a long time ago.

  “You’re a journalist, aren’t you?” he asked. “You couldn’t make one phone call?”

  “I think we ought to vote on disciplinary action,” said Al Prevost, the morning supervising producer. There was muttering among the middle-aged males and sole female executive around the table.

  “We’ll vote,” Dunbar said. He turned to me. “Please wait in the hallway.”

  I left and stood in the hallway like a bad kid outside the principal’s office, a situation I admit I was once quite familiar with. Through the particleboard door I heard someone yell, “No way.”

  What did they think? They owned my entire life? I had to tell them everything that happened to me that might reflect on the company? I felt like marching in and saying, “I’ve had it. I can’t take this anymore! I quit!” I have these moments every now and then.

  But I mobilized those seven major muscle groups and held my tongue. I couldn’t quit, you see; I had this ironclad contract. In 1990, long before my on-air disgraces, Dunbar offered all the reporters long-term contracts with guaranteed job security. There was a catch, of course. If you took the contract, it tied you to a modest salary that would go up only with the cost of living each year. I was just insecure enou
gh to take a job guarantee today over possible big salaries somewhere in the future. A bird in the hand, as they say. A bird in the hand will shit on you, I’ve found.

  So if I quit, I would be legally prohibited from working in any media-related field, which meant I couldn’t even do infomercials. Of course, they couldn’t fire me either, not without paying out the remaining three years of my contract, an idea so daunting to Dunbar that I’d have to fart on national television while eating human flesh before he’d sign that big check. Holy Lump Sum Payout, Batman.

  The most he could do was suspend me, like he did after the cannibalism fiasco, and at the moment that didn’t sound so bad. I’d just use the time to get to the bottom of this private investigator business and Jerry would have to find someone else to play Mrs. Spurdle for the sperm bank series.

  I could hear Bob McGravy defending me. My one and only champion in the executive branch. Unfortunately, my champion was kind of lacking authority at the moment, his power greatly diminished after a serious, quality news show he’d championed—21st Century—bombed in the ratings and after the rising reporter he championed—me—embarrassed herself on national television.

  On account of having worked for Murrow, having a fairly solid reputation at CBS, and having kicked a serious drinking problem, McGravy still had moral authority. But moral authority doesn’t go as far as it used to, and I couldn’t call it, how Dunbar would go. Vote, my ass. Everybody would argue their point of view, and then Dunbar would vote. One man, one vote.

  How would he vote? As Dunbar wasn’t a journalist, per se, I wasn’t always clear on his ethics and instincts. He came from sales at DIC, where he racked up a miraculous sales record while at the same time having the lowest budget and expense accounts in the company, forever endearing himself to Georgia Jack Jackson. When Jackson decided to launch ANN, he knew he needed a man with a tight fist at the helm, and Dunbar was that man, the Tightest Fist in the East.

  A year before, Dunbar himself made news with a long piece he wrote for the New York Times op-ed page in which he put forth a proposal to reduce the federal deficit through promotional considerations. Sponsors, that’s what the nation needed. NASA, he wrote, could make millions by having companies sponsor the space shuttle and satellites. Columbia could be known as Anacin-3, Discovery as Lipton Fine Teas. Eventually, the idea could be expanded to include housing projects, aircraft carriers, and national parks.

  The piece was hailed as fine satire, and Dunbar kinda smiled weakly and pretended indeed that’s what it was. But those of us who knew him knew he’d been quite serious and was hurt the rest of the country misunderstood him, didn’t see the brilliance of the plan.

  The door opened and McGravy came out. “You’re reprieved,” he said. “But don’t fuck up.”

  A ringing vote of confidence from my mentor.

  Dunbar filed out after him, walking, as he always did, with his head down. I used to wonder why he did that, if he was shy or something, then one day I saw him stoop to pick up a coin, which he examined with relish and put in his pocket.

  Jerry stayed behind while I went to the office alone, stopping by Democracy Wall. Someone in Graphics had made up a wanted poster with my publicity photo.

  “Wanted, dead or alive,” it read. “Renegade Reporter Robin Hudson.”

  It was pretty funny, really. Under distinguishing characteristics, it listed “Legs to die for,” and noted that, “as usual,” I was armed and dangerous. While two producers walked by, watching me but pretending not to, I took out a felt marker and drew fangs and made my eyes look a little wilder. I grinned at the two women, and they hesitated before grinning back at me. If all else fails, laugh at yourself.

  All morning, reporters called and Claire cheerfully intercepted and directed them to public relations, except for one: Burke Avery.

  “He says it’s personal,” Claire said.

  I took the call.

  “I’m worried about you,” he said.

  “Don’t. I’m fine. I’m not a suspect. The tabloids have it all wrong.”

  “Oh, I know you didn’t kill the guy. I know your M.O., Robin, and you are way too sinister to commit such a clumsy crime. Maybe if the guy had been killed with a lettuce spinner or a potato peeler. I use sinister in the sense of the traditional Latin word sini …”

  “And …,” I prompted.

  “And what?”

  “And you know that I am basically a good person with a conscience who could not kill another person … except in self-defense.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. “Right, that too,” he said finally. But he was grinning as he said it. I could hear him grinning.

  “Are you still covering this story?” I asked.

  “Of course. It’s my beat.”

  “I’m a witness in this case. Don’t you think it’s a conflict of interest to be reporting on a story in which your wife is a witness?” Channel 3, where Burke worked, wasn’t known for its strict adherence to ethics.

  “You’re just one witness so where’s the conflict, realistically? Besides, we’re separated and we parted amicably.”

  Parted amicably?

  “Anyway,” he said, completing his three-part rationalization for staying on this story. “You’re not a suspect.”

  “I wish someone would tell the New York Post that.”

  “Robin,” he said. “It’ll pass. How is ANN spinning the story?”

  “Nobody tells me anything around here,” I said. “What have you heard about it?”

  “I don’t know. What do you know?” he asked defensively. The reporter in him was kicking into full gear and he was protecting his information while trying to get mine.

  So was I. “Nothing.”

  “I don’t know anything more than you do,” he said before he hung up. “Do you know how ANN is going to cover this?”

  I didn’t, but I had wondered about that too, if they’d put a reporter on it or just do it as an on-cam reader. I couldn’t cover it, even if Jerry would spring me from Special Reports, because I was a witness in the case, although what I did on my own time was my own business and I did have a strong personal interest in getting to the bottom of it all.

  I was supposed to be reading up on sperm, but instead I clipped out all the stories about the case, to read over and put into my scrapbook later.

  There was also a blurb on Amy Penny in the TV Ticker column of the Post. Amy, reiterating her aspiration to become a “serious reporter,” was going to do a series of reports on prenatal diagnostics for her show. Great. She had my husband. Now she wanted to become a serious reporter. I couldn’t help feeling that this young, beautiful woman was living the life I was supposed to be living.

  I hid out that day, leaving Special Reports only to hit the ladies’ room and the cafeteria. Claire thought it would blow over and in the afternoon, when the calls from other reporters subsided to a dull murmur, I thought maybe she was right.

  I wondered what Griff had on me. Did he know about that night in Paris? Did he know about my father’s death when I was ten? He had the story of my mother’s arrest in London. Did he know about the Sesquin murders? Where were pages two and three? And why me, oh Lord, why me?

  After work I went to Keggers for a drink and watched evening news programs on the bar television. Gil Jerome, who now had Crime & Justice, did a piece on the circumstances of the murder. Griff had been found facedown in a pool of his own blood by the night maid. He’d been struck on the front of the head repeatedly with the murder weapon. Everything had been wiped for prints except the inside knob on the bathroom door, which yielded only Griff’s prints.

  To make matters worse, the cleaning lady, Mrs. Jessie Good, had vacuumed the bedroom and disposed of the full vacuum cleaner bag down a garbage chute in the hallway before going back in to clean the bathroom, where she found the body. The bag, compacted with trash from other rooms in the bowels of the Palace, was probably crammed with fiber evidence, evidence lost forever.

  Griff,
Jerome reported, had worked for Boylen Investigations before breaking away to start his own firm. He was divorced and his wife lived in Florida. No children.

  There was no mention of me by name, although there was no mistaking who the “red-haired woman seen lurking around” Griff’s hotel room was.

  After the report ended, the anchorwoman, Madri Michaels, appeared on camera to read, in a dispassionate voice, the ANN statement about me, how I’d been questioned but was not a suspect and how ANN management stood behind me.

  Yeah, way behind.

  Chapter Six

  “RENEGADE REPORTER MAY HAVE led double life, says neighbor,” read the headline in the News-Journal the next day. Between the stuff on my mother, which they’d managed to dig up, and Mrs. Ramirez’s ramblings about my late-night orgies, I was looking more and more like a menace to society.

  At the moment, I was doing a pretty good Jackie Onassis impression, my hair hidden under a black wool scarf wrapped around my head like a skullcap. Oversized dark glasses hid my eyes and cheekbones.

  It didn’t help. When I went to get my papers, I heard a voice behind me whisper, “That’s her. She killed a guy.” I turned and saw two adolescent girls waiting for the bus to parochial school. They were studying me, not with fear but with interest.

  The other news was, they found my tire iron in a dumpster near the service entrance behind the Marfeles. But what did that mean? Either it was simply taken out with the trash, like the bartender suggested, or the killer ditched it there after wiping it clean. There were no fingerprints except for one partial—mine—no bone fragments, blood, or hair stuck to it, just refuse from the Marfeles kitchen, eggshells and whipped cream and cigarette butts and stuff like that.

  I was glad I didn’t have to go straight to ANN. We had an interview scheduled with a white couple who had an African-American baby after doing business at Empire Semen. Jim and Ellis, the sound tech and cameraman respectively, were to pick me up on the corner of Fourteenth and Avenue B at 8:30 A.M.