Star Time (11 page)

Concerned that a reluctant Greg might obstruct her from becoming the replacement, she cornered Stew
Graushner
alone in the commissary and broached the idea, her manner suggesting that Greg had already given her the go-ahead. The idea appealed to the news director. This was not really hard news in his mind, just a kind of community service. Of course she would still be doing a lot of the glamour stories—he liked the savings aspect of her doing two jobs.

Chris then went to Greg and happily reported that
Graushner
had just approved her to become the new action reporter. She was sure, she asserted, that Greg was as pleased as she.

"Didn't I tell you that if you were patient," he said, "I'd arrange things for you?"

Chris might have gone for his throat if she had not noticed his wide grin. She did not think it funny.

What neither Stew nor Greg realized was that the abuses Chris now considered herself empowered to investigate would not be limited to tricky magazine-subscription ploys or poor nutritional value in suspect canned goods. By slowly and carefully widening her reach, she intended to make her role that of a thoroughgoing investigative reporter. She would have to do a lot of the digging on her own time, but once in a while, she might be able to
sharpshoot
at a really significant target. And those reports would make her name. As she had done all of her life, Chris had taken steps to determine her own future.

The only request Chris made that Greg turned down was assigning Hugo Ramirez as her exclusive producer—Hugo was too useful at taking on a variety of pieces. But Chris still hoped to be able to request him on important stories.

Chris fairly bubbled now at work and at home with Greg. So many obstacles in her life seemed suddenly to have been removed. She suggested to Greg that they begin pooling their paychecks and paying
bills from a joint account instead of totaling up what each had spent and equalizing it. Greg thought it better to hold off on that leap of commitment for a while.

Greg should have been happy, too, but he was not. His own job had become a burden. Paradoxically, the full measure of his depression at work did not descend on him until shortly after the November sweeps, on the day the ratings service announced that KFBS news had moved up into a clear second place in the L.A. market at six o'clock and was tied for second at eleven. Ironically, the consultants had played an unexpected part in news broadcasts’ rise, although Greg was careful not to point that out. Having come across Brett Winters, the anchor for one of L.A.'s top-rated local news programs, when they were researching KFBS's market, the consultants recommended that a client station in Chicago hire him. It did so. Within weeks KFBS had climbed into his former station's ranking. The consultants would take credit for the success of both clients.

All Greg could see in Stew
Graushner's
eyes that morning was the relief of a man just reprieved from a date with the executioner.

"This came none too soon, Greg, none too soon," the news director confided. Then he added, "I just told Carver in no uncertain terms that he's got to give you at least another six months to climb into first, you know, by the second sweeps period."

Stew was positioning himself to cut Greg loose if blame threatened to fall; he and Carver would take credit for success and deflect it to Greg for failure.

At that moment the recognition of ratings' utter primacy finally penetrated into every nerve and muscle cell in Greg's body. As
Ev
Carver had warned him, morality according to the gospel of television was the same as that of football: Winning was not the important thing, it was the only thing. And every night presented a new game to lose.

A sense of futility underlying his triumph settled on Greg. Once or twice he started to talk about it with Chris. Each time he held back, sensing that she, so focused on the significance of news, would not understand. Even if he was smart enough—and remained lucky enough—to guide his broadcasts to the very top, the best he could hope for was a move to another station that was looking for him to do there what he had managed to pull off here. Moving might earn him a higher salary, a better title, but never money on the lavish scale of his friends in television who were producing series or specials they developed or who were reaping deal-making rewards in finance. Greg was dismayed to realize that he had no idea where five years of striving had gotten him.

Just as damaging to his spirit was his growing awareness that as the news broadcast's format had become increasingly fixed and he had fewer
creative decisions to make, the work was becoming progressively less satisfying. What he had originally loved about it was that each day was an adventure in which he must always remain ready to take immediate action. Some days now he would have given a lot for a good old-fashioned catastrophe to disrupt the nearly preordained lineup. Once more he began to perceive the outer persona he presented at work as managing the tedium of each day apart from his inner self. And that inner self felt trapped.

In early January,
Ev
Carver called on Greg to handle a chore for him. The company's CEO, Barnett Roderick, would be arriving in Los Angeles for a general station review. His daughter would be with him. They would be coming from Bush's inauguration in Washington and would continue on to Acapulco for a vacation. The other network executives arriving with them were going on to the San Francisco station.
Ev
had designated Greg to be the daughter's escort at the dinner that night.

"Why don't you just escort her yourself?" Greg asked.

"I'm bringing Sally Foster, for one reason. Roderick wants her there. The network's toying with the idea of spinning off her role in
Heritage Hall
into a new series. Besides, Roderick once met my ex-wife. He wouldn't approve of a barely separated man dining with his daughter. He's protective as hell."

"But he's been married a couple of times himself."

Ev
laughed. "
Which means he knows better than to set his daughter up for more of the same.
"
Ev's
voice suddenly lowered to a near whisper; an order would follow, Greg knew, that would be perilous to ignore. "Putting you at the table is business,
Lyall
, pure and simple. If she's happy at dinner, the old man is happy. Just sit there, smile at her a lot, and keep your mouth and your fly closed. Understand?"

Greg nodded, ambivalent as he left
Ev
Carver's office. Although eager to meet the head of the company, Greg was not looking forward to being propped up like a department-store mannequin beside a daughter who was doubtless so lumpish that station managers had to shanghai companionship for her. He also had no desire to explain to Chris that he was going out to dinner with another woman—she would grow jealous and demand that he decline the invitation. Conversely, he could not reveal to his superiors that the reason for declining was that he was virtually living with Christine
Paskins
, whom he had recently named action reporter. He eventually decided to tell Chris a truncated version of the truth: that
Ev
Carver had asked him to sit in on a dinner meeting with Barnett Roderick.

"Was Stew invited?" Chris naturally wanted to know.

"I don't think so. Roderick likes to meet young up-and-coming executives. Carver's chosen me."

Chris was pleased for him and hoped the recognition might reduce the stress he had been under.

Ev
was at the airport when the Gulfstream jet carrying Barnett Roderick, his daughter, and several high-ranking network executives landed. Two limousines transported them to the FBS building, the company’s West Coast headquarters. Another transported Diane Roderick and the luggage to the Beverly Hills Hotel. She was told that someone would pick her up at six-thirty and bring her to the Ivy to join her father and
Ev
Carver for dinner.

Senior West Coast network executives convened in the FBS conference room to hear the previous year's results and the business plan for the next.
Ev
had rehearsed his finance and sales directors for two days. Having done well for the company was not enough,
Ev
knew. You then had to sell what you'd done to those who mattered.

He had performed ably in Chicago and instead of being moved up, had been shifted to L.A. Now, he was coming through for them here, too. The station's profits and ratings were up, and he was delivering nearly eight percent more L.A. viewers than before to the network's nighttime schedule, which meant higher network ratings and profits as well. This time they had better move him up into senior management in New York or risk losing him to a rival. It was now or never.

The eldest of five children, Everett Carver was born Eduardo
Vidorio
Carvalho
, Jr., in one of the tougher sections of Chicago. His father was a Portuguese with a mechanical bent who
emigrated
to the United States and eventually opened an auto-repair garage.

The son, known then as E. V. to differentiate him from his father with the same name, was conscripted to work in the garage after school and hated it. He detested the disrespect that the blue uniform and the black grease on his hands engendered in the rich men who brought in their cars to be fixed. But observing them taught him that wealth lay in
their
direction, not among his immigrant father's wrenches and murky lubricants.

E.V. chafed under the subservience his father exacted. The elder
Carvalho
tried to beat the wildness and rebellion out of his son. The day he was graduated from high school, E. V. pummeled his father unconscious and walked out the door of their home. He never looked back.

He bounced around from job to job until he landed at a boiler-room securities operation, where he sold overpriced, often worthless stock to
unsuspecting prospects over the phone. His nerve and glib salesman's tongue brought the nineteen-year-old big money. He quickly rose to vice president of Sales. He bought custom-made suits and bedded beautiful women he took to the city's most expensive restaurants and clubs
—
until the day the SEC and the Justice Department raided the crooked securities firm, arresting him and everyone else on the premises.

He and the president of the firm were sentenced to prison for what the judge termed "flagrant and vicious securities fraud" and were forbidden from ever dealing in securities again. Because of his age, the prison sentence was reduced to a year's probation. E. V. had learned a valuable lesson: Dealing dishonestly was a foolish risk because a smart man with a talent for selling could safely make a lot more money honestly.

Although he remained known to the probation officer as E. V.
Carvalho
, with the sleight of hand a new social-security card provided, he became Everett Carver at the college where he registered and at the ad agency where he talked his way into a job. At the company's Christmas party, he met the daughter of one of the agency's partners and began dating her. Within weeks they eloped. The name "Everett Carver" went on his marriage certificate and eventually on his college diploma. He had transformed himself into a new man.

From media buyer for the ad agency, he went over to Sales at FBS's Chicago TV station, where he leveraged his high revenues into visibility that eventually led to his being named station manager and to his turnaround of the station. He tried to view the lateral transfer to KFSB-TV as a promotion because its shaky condition needed the best organization’s top manager to apply CPR.  But it also meant that he had to prove himself once again.

After less than a month in Los Angeles, he decided that life there would offer more to him without the baggage of an unsophisticated wife who complained about his frequent late nights out.

"This city's a
cocksman's
candy store," he had marveled to a friend.

She eventually had to cave in to his terms: the support payments she needed in exchange for a divorce and an abortion.

Greg watched the first few minutes of the six-o'clock broadcast and then drove to the Beverly Hills Hotel. He asked a man at the front desk to phone Diane Roderick for him.

"I'm Diane Roderick," a woman's voice behind him called out.

Greg spun around to find an attractive young woman laden with bags and boxes. She had evidently just returned from shopping.

"Could you give me a hand?"

She handed him the boxes, barely glancing at him, and obtained her key from the front-desk attendant. Then she headed out of the lobby.

Taken aback, Greg regarded her departing figure for a moment, then shrugged and followed her into the garden behind the hotel. She was average-sized, he noted, her hair a chestnut-brown color worn shoulder length. From what he could tell from the rear, she had a well-proportioned figure and good legs. Her patterned dress was chic and highly styled. He tried to remember her face. Sleekly elegant, he recalled, the features well-formed. He thought he remembered her eyes as gray and her expression as faintly imperious. I wouldn’t expect less from the rich, he quipped to himself.