Star Time (72 page)

"I can stop Carver, dead in his tracks. I have the ammunition. I'm willing to do it if you and I can come to an arrangement."

Barnett's expression twisted into the vindictive anger he had displayed the evening Greg left Diane.
"For what?
So you can stay on as CEO? I'd rather let the company go." Months of brooding resentment
turned Barnett's voice into a snarl. "You're a despicable fortune hunter, a snake who used my daughter and then callously discarded her when your lust fastened on someone else. I would rather see FBS blotted off the face of the earth than leave it with you."

Greg stood up. "That's your last word?"

"That's final."

Greg reluctantly opened the door to the boardroom and led the way back in.

"Pretty quick," one of the directors noted.

Greg's gaze fixed on Jay Dickenson, who was caucusing to one side with some of the uncommitted. Greg assumed the former politician would do well if the takeover went through: Big fees funneled to him in some way, with maybe the chairmanship and stock options. All Greg himself had to do to pick up $3 million outright and $12 million more over four years was come out in favor of the offer. He knew FBS's worth and future prospects better than anyone. If he spoke in favor of the offer, the other directors might well follow. Then, before he made a public announcement in favor of
Evcar's
offer, he and
Ev
would sign his contract. It made very good sense.

Then why did accepting an offer that would secure his financial safety rankle so? Why did he care what happened? Greg could not evade the knowledge that he cared deeply, that he was appalled so corrupt a man as Carver was grabbing for the worth he himself had begun to build into the company.
Ev
understood money and power, buying and selling, but had little
feel
for the nuances of a changing, worldwide communications industry. He would cut costs by slashing into the bone and muscle of staffing and would cater to what he conceived of as the public's simplistic news and entertainment tastes, a reflection really of his condescension. Inevitably, the company would slide backward into ruin.

No matter how Greg tried, as if it were a bad meal, his conscience could not keep that awareness down. He took the floor when the meeting recommenced.

"I had hoped you would decline
Evcar's
offer without my having to reveal what I'm about to. But momentum seems to be building for acceptance. I have to tell you, there isn't the faintest possibility that
Ev
Carver can ever acquire this company."

Dickenson exploded. "The man has every bit of financing
he
needs and more."

"I'm not talking about financing. I'm talking about character."

"Oh, jeez!"
Dickenson moaned.

"You may not be interested in character as a qualification for buying into a broadcasting company, Jay, but the Federal Communications
Commission will be. I've had investigators dig into his past. To begin with,
Ev
Carver's real name is E. V.
Carvalho
. As a young man, he was convicted of securities fraud and barred for life from dealing in stocks. He changed his name by lying on a Social Security application."

Dickenson was shaken, but too much was on the line for him to retreat now. "That had to be ages ago. He was probably just a kid. The man has become an upstanding citizen."

Charles Morrison spoke up. He was one of Barnett's oldest friends and a distinguished lawyer who had recently retired as a partner at a large Wall Street law firm. "He's right, Jay. The FCC's policy statement on the character of applicants they license for ownership would clearly bar a man who's been concealing his identity and a criminal past, particularly involving fraud."

Like a draft from a suddenly opened window, Greg could feel opposition to the offer sweep through the room. During his very first interview with
Ev
at KFBS, to decide whether he should become executive producer of local news,
Ev
had belittled the FCC and the importance of laws and rules. He had declared that the only thing that mattered in television was ratings because they meant income. That was very nearly true, Greg had learned.
Very nearly, but not completely.
A decade later, perhaps unfairly, the rules had just jumped up out of the grass and fatally bitten
Ev
Carver.

Barnett took control of the discussion. "Next item on the agenda is new business. Greg's employment contract as CEO will be ending next month. We have to decide whether to extend it."

As chairman Barnett had the right to pick the order of speakers and the length of time they could hold the floor. Barnett had his backers all lined up and ready to speak against Greg, one after another. And they did.

"FBS has become a laughingstock during his administration, the butt of all those late-night comedians."

"I won't condone what happened with those protestors last night, but that minister,
Dearey
, was speaking for every upstanding, moral American when he berated Greg. It is appalling to think that on our own broadcast millions of viewers heard about Greg's and that
Paskins
woman's vile behavior. They had to be disgusted. Is that what we want in the man who heads this company?"

"My grandchildren were watching last night. I hope to God they don't know what those words he used mean."

When Barnett grudgingly finally called on Abel Hastings, Greg wondered if the uncommitted board members could still keep anything approaching an open mind.

Abel zeroed in on the revival in the company's fortunes over the past year. He quoted hard figures as evidence. Expenses had been sharply cut and revenues dramatically
raised
. Instead of losses, there would be profits this fiscal year. The company was pervaded by a new optimism, a new belief in its destiny. That was all Greg
Lyall's
doing.

An older director insisted on interrupting. "Raoul
Clampton
was the real brain behind new shows like
Scum.
That's why Tiny Small at Monumental, which produces the show, snapped him up to run their TV operation.
Clampton
did a hell of a job putting all the pieces in place, so Greg here could grab the praise. "

Abel reminded the other directors that Greg's employment agreement permitted a single valid reason for not renewing it: failure to lead the company into profits. But by any measure, profits would be strong next year and on an upward swing. Therefore, he concluded, no grounds existed to dismiss Greg, and the directors had no choice but to renew his contract for four more years.

Morrison, the lawyer, signaled that he wanted to be called upon. He read from a piece of paper containing a carefully researched legal opinion. Its conclusion: that the clause in the contract requiring Greg "to continue to be of good character" gave the Board an absolute right to dismiss him now on moral grounds.

Barnett smiled like a big cat after a full meal. "You see, Greg, the issue of character

yours as well as Carver's

cuts both ways. The person who heads this company must be above reproach."

The CEO of a large manufacturing company, one of the
undecideds
, declared that the "good character" clause in Greg's contract had persuaded him. "I just hope Barnett is willing to step back in again and take over."

The unsolicited endorsement brought spontaneous applause from Barnett's group.

All he needs in another director, Greg silently counted, and he'll have a majority; one more, and I'll be gone. The mood of the meeting provided little hope. He may have acted with courage during last night's on-air demonstration, but the incident had been a fiasco that put him and the company in a terrible light. His personal life was an embarrassment to them all. Firing him was the easiest course.

Greg's supporters spoke vehemently for him, but the main reason to keep him on— that having saved a dying
company,
he embodied its hope for the future—seemed to fade in importance. Greg guessed that he would be out of a job within half an hour. Gone would be the seductive, heady power to influence America's attitudes and help form its goals. One year.
Such a short time.

The Chairman was smiling now, sure of his victory, ready to end the debate and ask for a vote.

Greg recalled how, many years earlier, he had conceived of Barnett as some sort of gracious tempter, a human Mephistopheles offering him unimaginable wealth and infinite power, the satisfier of all his desires. All Greg had had to surrender in return back then was the love that comprised the essence of his soul. Now, however, the conviction overcame him that he had blamed Barnett to rationalize the shift of guilt off his own shoulders. The devil that tempted him had borne his own face. Other people—Barnett,
Ev
—were merely surrogates for his ambition. But that ambition was now exhorting him not to accept defeat without calling out Barnett from behind the enemy ramparts for one final, perhaps futile personal battle.

Greg drew Diane's note from his shirt pocket. He unfolded it and read her words silently, to himself.

I
hereby nominate Gregory
Lyall
to vote all of my shares of stock in the Federal Broadcasting System, Inc. at his sole discretion.

Diane Roderick
Lyall

He and Diane had been ill-matched from the beginning; he had tried to love her and never could. In his office she had expressed the hope that having a child would resolve their conflicts and harmonize their differences. But she had said something that disturbed him. What was it? Oh, yes. She had said, "I hope you realize how much I'm offering you." Her tone spoke not to his heart, but to his self-interest, demanding that he recognize the monetary worth she had placed on the negotiating table. If they had still been together, he would have replied with equal sharpness. Would a child have had to overhear their quarrel? 

That thought flung him back some thirty years, into the bed in the little room he and
Meggy
had shared. He remembered clutching his blanket in a futile defense against the fear clawing his intestines as he heard through the wall his mother castigating his father. Months of resentment chilled the house until she left for California. He finally understood why not even the love of her child could keep his mother in that house.

Nearly a decade ago, when he chose her over Chris, he had discovered the immutable law of nature that every blessing carries a curse, some sacrifice,
some
loss. And he realized
that  the
price he would have to pay for Diane's vote was too great. Resuming their marriage would destroy the joy he took in life, no matter what he stood to gain. His resentment and despair would only increase as time passed. And guilt would always remain for putting Chris through the torment of a second desertion. Each day he would miss Chris and hate himself even more. The marriage would ultimately fail just as surely as before because what
he and Diane wanted always turned out to be what the other could not bear to give up. Their animosity would inflict more suffering on their child than if they were apart from the start.

I promise you this, he pledged silently to his unborn child. You'll always know that I love you very much, and I'll always be there when you need me and even when you don't. That's the best I can give you, but it's the most important. I know.

Very deliberately, Greg ripped in half Diane's note giving him the right to vote her shares and then ripped it in half again and then once again. He dropped the confetti into an ashtray.

"Would someone move for a vote?" Barnett called out.

"Not yet," Greg responded before anyone else could. He stood up. "You've all had your say. Now it's my turn." His gaze was fixed on Barnett's.

"A little while ago, your daughter told me she was pregnant with my child. My best wishes to you, Barnett. You're going to be a grandfather."

The Chairman's expression did not change.

"She also told me," Greg continued, "that I could vote her shares for my own slate of directors. She owns eighteen percent of the company." He did not reveal that he had decided to decline her shares. "Several money managers have also pledged large blocks of stock they control if it comes to that. And they'll round up others."

Greg looked across the table at David
Penner
, the investment banker whose clients held a significant number of the company's shares.
" David
, counting you and your clients and the votes you've rounded up for our side so far, how much of the company's stock would you be able to vote?"

"Somewhere around twenty, twenty-five percent."

"If Diane were to vote with
me, that would total of over forty percent of the shares,
" Greg said.

Tom Blake, president of the bank that was FBS's prime lender, decided the moment called for his voice as well. "A lot of the company's debt comes up for refinancing this year. We and the other bondholders have developed a lot of confidence in Greg. If he was no longer running FBS, we might think twice about rolling it over."