Necessary People

by Anna Pitoniak

  “The footage?” I said. “There’s no way they’d turn that over to us.”

  “Not the footage,” Jamie said. “The staff. They might have seen something.”

  At the hotel in New Jersey the next day, Saturday, we started by ordering lunch in the bar, talking with the bartender—he would have had a front-row seat to the unfolding drama. But it turned out he was new, only a few weeks into the job. We paid the bill quickly and moved on.

  Over the next few hours, drifting through the hotel as inconspicuously as we could, we tried talking with the maid, the concierge, the bellboy. Each was polite and helpful, until our questions moved from the general to the particular. Once they sensed an agenda, they backed away and shook their heads. This was turning into another dead end. I looked at my watch. Almost 5 p.m. The traffic back into the city would be bad.

  Five p.m. A sign had said that the hotel bar opened at 10 a.m. That meant—

  “Jamie,” I said. “Let’s go back to the bar. I bet the shift is about to turn over.”

  Sure enough, there was a new person on duty. We took two seats at the bar.

  There was something different about this bartender. He looked me straight in the eye when I ordered, but his manner was abrupt. The drinking he oversaw at this blandly corporate hotel was intense and joyless, drinking designed to make you forget that you were exhausted and wearing a rumpled polyblend suit, and that your alarm was going off at 6 a.m. Prostitution was practically legal at a hotel bar like this. Jamie cut straight to the chase and told him why we were there. The bartender nodded, and said, “Yeah, I remember.”

  I felt a jolt of adrenaline. Our first confirmation that George was telling the truth.

  “Can you tell us what you saw?” Jamie said.

  He cocked his head like, do you think I’m an idiot? Jamie removed a stack of twenty-dollar bills from his wallet, folded them in half, and slid them across the bar.

  “Appreciate it,” the bartender said, pocketing the bills. “What I saw was eight or nine people come to the bar for a nightcap. There was a younger guy who was buying the drinks. A bunch of young women and a bunch of old guys. They paired off pretty quickly. One of the old guys told me he had dibs on the redhead.”

  “How long did they stay?” I asked.

  “A few hours. The old guys were drunk, and getting grabby. I almost had to kick them out. They were making the other guests uncomfortable. The younger guy stayed to close the tab.” After a pause, he added, “You should talk to the night manager who was on duty that night.”

  “Why?” I said. “Did she see something?”

  “Ask her yourself. Her shift starts at ten.”

  We stood in a far corner of the parking lot, near the dumpsters and the back door to the hotel kitchen, propped open to let in the mild night air. I could hear the clatter of pots and pans, the rat-a-tat of a knife chopping, the tinny radio and shouted Spanish. The night manager crossed her arms, waiting for us to begin.

  “You might remember a group of guests who stayed here a while ago,” Jamie said. “Five rooms, reserved by Danner Pharmaceuticals. They had dinner in the restaurant.”

  “We’ve got 206 beds in this hotel,” she said. “Average length of stay is one night. And you’re talking about how long ago, so you do the math.”

  “Maybe it’s unlikely,” I said, “but if you recall anything—”

  She waved a hand. “Relax. I remember. Jesus, how could I forget?”

  There had been noise issues, she said. A guest had called the front desk to complain about shouting and raised voices. The first time the night manager knocked on the door, it settled down for a while. Then it started back up, and it was worse. The guest next door said she could hear loud thumps, something shattering. Sobbing and screaming.

  The manager went back upstairs, this time with a security guard in tow. She passed a man in the hallway. He was sweaty and out of breath, his shirt unbuttoned and flapping open, but she had no cause to stop him in that moment—he was a guest, after all.

  When she reached the room, the girl was alone. She had two black eyes, a broken arm. Bruises around her throat, blood dripping from her nose. The doctor had already gotten a taxi and was long gone. The night manager wanted to call the police, but the girl insisted that George could just drive her to the emergency room. She was okay, she said. She’d drunk too much and tripped over the furniture. She was clumsy like that.

  “He tried to pay me off,” she said. “That kid, George. His hands were shaking like crazy. Here was five hundred dollars for the cleaning fee, he said. The cleaning fee! Give me a break. I did have to replace the carpeting in that room, by the way. Her blood was everywhere. No way to get the stains out.”

  “So you didn’t take the money,” Jamie said.

  “Take a bribe from a jackass like that? No way. He let this girl get beat to a pulp and then pretended like all she had was a bump on her forehead. The Danner guys don’t stay here anymore.” She grimaced. “Too ashamed to show their faces.”

  Chapter Eleven

  after the breakthrough, Eliza assigned two more producers and a handful of assistants to the story. But even with added resources, so much of our reporting hinged on serendipity. An assistant had a friend at Bayer who had heard about unfair tactics at their rival. Another producer knew a guy who had once dated a girl who worked at Danner, a very pretty girl who carried Gucci handbags and leased a BMW and didn’t know a thing about pharmaceuticals.

  For my part, I was working on the woman from the hotel. George had finally gotten hold of her new number. She called herself Willow, and now lived in Florida. She was skittish and unpredictable, responding to texts but not phone calls, Facebook messages but not e-mails, vanishing for long stretches of time. Jamie offered to try speaking with her, but I felt protective. If she wanted to live far away, with a new name and a new identity, starting over—who could blame her?

  A story like this, Eliza explained, was delicate. It took a long time to convince sources to go on the record. If our competitors heard what KCN was working on, they might try to scoop us. For that reason, Eliza insisted we keep the circle small. “I don’t want some intern spilling the beans at happy hour,” she said. “Only tell the necessary people.”

  Stella still didn’t know what the story was, but she no longer seemed to care. In August, she anchored the Saturday morning news program while the regular host was on vacation. A year into her work as a reporter, it was becoming obvious that the KCN executives had bigger plans for her. Her assignments got better, and she was no longer on the morning shift. She appeared on shows across the network, often in prime time. Our lobby was lined with larger-than-life posters of Rebecca Carter and her ilk: the chief White House correspondent, the morning show anchors, the Peabody-winning investigative reporter. The bona fide stars of the network. A few weeks after Stella’s first turn in the anchor chair, her poster went up in the lobby. Stella, with a royal purple sheath dress and shiny blond hair, arms crossed and gaze serious, with the KCN tagline, The News You Need.

  In the past, at least Stella had the grace to behave with self-awareness. When she vacationed in Gstaad and St. Barts, she downplayed the glamour. When men competed to buy her drinks, she dismissed them as shallow and dumb. Even just last year, when she and Jamie started dating, she broke the news conscientiously. Stella always made an effort to bridge the socioeconomic and aesthetic gulf that separated us.

  And why did she do this? Because she needed me. Because I was loyal. Because I was the only person who gave her the steadfast attention she craved. Because she was most alive when she had an audience, and I made her feel alive. Who else could see past her vanity, her temper tantrums, her mood swings, and give her what she needed in order to feel like herself? She had to make those efforts, because if she were to alienate me completely, who would she have left?

  Well, I’ll tell you who. The most loyal audience there is: viewers of cable news.

  “A toast,” Thomas said, lifting his glass. The
six of us—the Bradley family plus Jamie and me—were seated around their dining table on a Sunday evening in October. Thomas glowed with the pride of a parent whose once-problematic child has, by succeeding unexpectedly, erased every painful memory of the past. “To our Stella.”

  “We’re so proud of you, sweetheart,” Anne said.

  Stella smiled. “Don’t forget the best part, Daddy. We won the demo last week.”

  “Like winning a beauty pageant judged by a blind man,” Jamie said quietly.

  “Oh?” I whispered. “You mean eighteen- to forty-nine-year-olds aren’t flocking to cable news in droves at 9 a.m. on Saturdays?”

  “What are you two talking about?” Stella said. “You know it’s rude to whisper, Violet.”

  “Nothing.” I lifted my glass. “Just toasting to you.”

  It was chilly for October, and there was a blazing fire in the dining room fireplace. So many meals like this had peppered my years of friendship with Stella: the finely embroidered napkins, the heirloom silver, the distinctive taste of oregano in the roasted Cornish game hen. The world could change, years could pass, but there would always be these constants. Thomas often boasted of how his Bradley ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War. And, really, how different was this life from that of his ancestors? Strip away the changing technologies and fashions, and what remained was the comfort and the power of wealth. And especially the endurance of wealth: the system we lived in produced certain victors, and pointed to those victors as proof of its own efficacy. Just look at Stella.

  “You must hear all sorts of buzz about Stella,” Anne said, looking at me as she cut her food into small pieces. “Ginny tells me she’s really putting her mark on the place.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Although I’ve been a bit distracted lately. It’s been busy.”

  “Violet’s being modest,” Jamie said. “She’s working on a big story.”

  My cheeks grew hot. A year into their relationship and he still hadn’t learned how to avoid pissing Stella off. “We’ll see if it turns into anything,” I said.

  “Oh, it will,” Jamie said. “It’s the kind of story that makes careers.”

  Stella leaned over. “But you can’t say anything about it,” she said. “Right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “So I guess we’ll have to wait and see.” Stella smirked.

  “I think that’s work.” Jamie pulled his buzzing phone from his pocket and stood from the table. “Would you excuse me for a minute? I should take this.”

  A few minutes later, I excused myself, too. In the hallway en route to the powder room was Thomas’s study. The door was ajar, and Jamie was inside.

  I pushed the door open. “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Come here,” Jamie said. “Look at this.”

  I hesitated. “Thomas wouldn’t want us in his study.”

  “I came inside to take my phone call but then I got distracted. Here, look.” He pointed at a framed photograph on the bookshelf. “Do you recognize that man? At the edge of the group. Gray hair, blue tie.”

  I peered at the picture. “Gray hair, blue tie, that describes every guy in this group.”

  “This one,” Jamie said, pressing his finger against the glass, leaving an oily smudge.

  “He looks familiar,” I said. “But why?”

  “Remember when we were looking up the executive team on Danner’s website the other day? That’s where you’ve seen him before. This is the CEO of Danner Pharmaceuticals.”

  “Whoa.” I squinted. “You’re right.”

  “I Googled it. Looks like this was a dinner given by the pharma lobby. There was some industry recognition award, excellence in leadership or whatever.” Jamie rolled his eyes. “Both Thomas Bradley and the Danner CEO were among the recipients.”

  “So they don’t necessarily know each other,” I said. “Maybe they do, or maybe they just happened to be in this picture together.”

  Jamie paused, turned to me. “Have you told Stella about the story?”

  I laughed. “Do you think I’m an idiot?”

  “I’m sorry, Violet, I have to ask.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Have you told her about it?”

  “Oh, give me a break.”

  “You’re the one sleeping with her, James. You never slip up during pillow talk?”

  Jamie shook his head. “I’m being paranoid, I know. I just—I don’t like how murky her loyalties are.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing she’s not working on this story.”

  “Imagine after it breaks. Do you think we’re really going to be welcome here, in the Bradley household?”

  “You’re being dramatic,” I said.

  “Am I?” Jamie said. “This is big, Violet. You can’t predict the ripple effects.”

  A few weeks later, Willow finally agreed to meet me in person. She wasn’t saying yes to an on-camera interview yet, but this was the most important step before that.

  Eliza looked pleased when I told her. “Good,” she said. “I knew you’d get there eventually. How soon can you meet her?”

  “The day after tomorrow, it looks like.”

  “And you and Jamie will both go? Where does she live?”

  “Florida,” I said. “The Panhandle.”

  “So if you can get her on the record, we’ll have”—Eliza started counting on her fingers—“George, Willow, the hotel employees, the voice mail from George’s boss, the guy from Bayer. What am I forgetting?”

  “We’re working on the other girl, the BMW girl. And one of George’s old friends from Danner. He’s on the verge of quitting. I’m telling him that he should get out ahead of this.”

  “The right side of history. No one can resist that line.”

  “So what do you think?” I said. “Do you think we have it?”

  “Just about,” she said. “Get Willow to commit to an interview, and we’ll start putting the package together when you’re back.”

  Jamie and I were on a flight to Panama City the next afternoon, the sky already darkening as the plane took off from JFK. As I watched the fading ribbon of sunlight across the western horizon, I was aware of a vague panic gathering underneath my rib cage, my pulse and breath quickening. The airplane was climbing a steep trajectory into the sky. The engine revved and slowed, the cabin rattled in the thinning atmosphere. I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through my nose. A moment later, I felt Jamie’s hand squeezing mine.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “I don’t like flying.”

  “Is that really what’s going on?”

  I opened my eyes just long enough to see Jamie’s look of concern. Then the plane gave another violent rattle and I shut them again.

  “When was the last time you went home?” he continued.

  We can talk about it some other time, Jamie had said, years ago. That meant now, apparently. “It’s been a while,” I said.

  “But you must think about it,” he said. “Isn’t this right around where you grew up?”

  The plane was bouncing like a kite in the wind, my hands gripping the armrest. “You really know how to pick your moments,” I said.

  “Maybe if we have some time tomorrow, we can take a drive and—”

  “Jamie,” I said. “Jesus. Just leave it alone, okay?”

  It had been cold in New York, sterile and chilly on the plane, so when we stepped outside in Panama City, the warm humidity came as a relief. It washed over me like a familiar greeting: the pudding-like night air, the glow of sodium lamps in dark parking lots, the constant buzz of mosquitoes. Jamie heard my sigh and turned to me.

  “You okay?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sorry I snapped at you.”

  He spread his arms wide. “Who can stay mad when you’re in the South? I love this place. I’m sick of winter and it hasn’t even started.”

  “Does Florida count as the South?” I said, dropping my bag in the trunk of the rental car.

>   “The Panhandle does,” he said.

  When we checked into the Marriott, Jamie asked the woman at the front desk where we should eat. “Well,” she said, hesitating. She knew we were from New York; I was wearing black and had just asked if the hotel had a gym. “The only thing nearby is an Applebee’s.”

  Jamie slapped his palm against the counter. “Applebee’s it is!”

  “Really?” I said, after we turned from the desk.

  “Oh, come on,” Jamie said. “Let’s live a little.”

  It was across the highway from the hotel, glowing like a beacon, in a strip mall that included a Piggly Wiggly, a Hobby Lobby, a bank with a drive-through ATM, and several vacant storefronts. “Is it bad that I’m perversely excited for this?” Jamie said, as we walked across the mostly empty parking lot. “I haven’t had a blooming onion in years.”

  “That’s Outback Steakhouse,” I said. Why did I know these things?

  “Good God,” he said, grabbing my arm in mock horror. “You’re right.”

  “You’re becoming one of those obnoxious New Yorkers we hate so much.”

  He grinned. “I suppose it takes one to know one.”

  Jamie goaded me into ordering half the menu with him: fried things, cheesy things, several sugary cocktails with names like Bahama Mama. After two hours, we were drunk and happy. Our waitress was an older woman with bleached hair who kept giving us freebies. “I like you kids,” she said, with a smile that lit up her whole face. Jamie called her “ma’am” and exclaimed “God almighty” whenever she delivered a new dish.

  “Your accent has suddenly gotten a lot stronger,” I said. “Is it the booze or the zip code?”

  “Both,” he said. “This feels like home.”

  “Coronaries and alcoholism,” I said, picking up a French fry. “I’d say so.”

  He grinned. “You’re having fun. I can tell.”

  Of course I was. This feeling of nowhere else to be, so might as well have another drink—it was more fun than I’d had in months. But that was only the first layer. A deeper part of me was watchful and wary, unsettled by how close we were to my hometown. What if I ran into a high school classmate? It wasn’t inconceivable. What would I do? What the hell would I say?