American Outrage Read online

  “What’d she say?” Jake asked the mother. She was an attractive woman, well built like her daughter but with blond hair that had faded and wrinkles around her eyes from too much sun.

  “She says she thought Brad Pitt was the most handsome man in America, but maybe not now.”

  “Thank you,” Jake said. He looked at the girl and gave half a bow. “Merci.”

  “Oh?” The girl perked up. “Monsieur, parlez-vous français?”

  “No,” Jake said, looking from mother to daughter, “I don’t. No French.”

  “Mr. Carlson,” the mother said in a low tone, leaning forward in her chair, “I know you pay my daughter’s fee, but you misunderstood that I also have a fee.”

  Jake took half a step back and placed his hand on his chest and asked, “Did you get Antoinette’s check?”

  “Yes,” the mother said, taking it out of her purse and holding it up.

  “Fifty thousand dollars,” Jake said, tilting his head toward the check.

  “Yes,” the mother said. “But fifty thousand each.”

  Jake’s mouth fell, and before he could respond Joe Katz, the show’s executive producer, burst into the studio waving his hands. Jake signaled him to calm down and Katz checked himself. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat before calmly explaining to the mother that they weren’t even getting a twenty-four-hour exclusive and that they just couldn’t pay more than fifty.

  The lawyer for the girl’s family slipped into the mix with his back up and began to argue with Katz. The volume of their voices steadily grew. Somehow, Jake ended up with the check in his hands and the girl ran off the set crying. The lawyer and the mother stormed out after her, yelling that they’d sue for breach of contract.

  “Great,” Katz said, frowning at Jake. “I thought you had this nailed down.”

  “Yesterday you said I was the only reporter in America good enough to outdo the networks,” Jake said, tugging the corners of his mouth into a false smile. “Now they pull a bait-and-switch and that’s on me?”

  “Don’t be so goddamn smug, will you?” Katz said. “We ran promos all day promising the nanny.”

  “You think our audience will forgive us?” Jake said. “I mean, now they’ll never know if Billy Bob Thornton’s influence is still lingering, if that’s what pushed Angelina to slap this girl, or if someone just forgot to change a diaper.”

  “Funny,” Katz said, turning to go, “but when the suits out in LA ask, this one’s on you.”

  Jake waited until he was alone, then kicked a chair and went back to the makeup room. He threw himself down in Nancy’s chair and snatched a handful of baby wipes to remove his makeup. The makeup girl peeked in, but saw the expression on his face in the mirror and quickly disappeared. Jake scowled at himself, the tightness in his chiseled jawline and the dark brooding in his glass-blue eyes, and ran a hand through his dirty-blond hair to break up the spray. He went to his dressing room and tore off his suit, replacing it with jeans and a T-shirt that clung to his muscular frame, before he too stormed out of the building.

  On the drive out to Atlantic Beach, Jake dialed up his agent in LA and related the story. She knew about it already because another client of hers was the executive producer of Entertainment Tonight and they’d snapped up the girl and the mother before Jake had his makeup off.

  “Do you know I was actually thinking today that no one fills my candy dish?” Jake said. “How sad is that?”

  “I’m sure you’re sick over it,” she said.

  “You know what I’m sick over?” he asked.

  “Mary Hart’s smart-ass grin?”

  “No,” Jake said, holding the phone away from his face, looking at it. “I’m sick of me.”

  3

  THE NEXT MORNING, Jake huffed and wiped the sweat from his face, churning up through the beach grass. He was just forty, but fit enough to have run a marathon two summers ago even though he still had the thick muscular frame from wrestling in college. The sun wasn’t up yet and the fog was thick, but his white contemporary home rose up like some futuristic temple, a cluster of giant rectangular boxes standing on end, rigid and riddled with glass cubes, nearly glowing in the thin dawn light while its neighboring shake-shingled beach houses still hid in the gloom. A single orange rectangular glow came from the window in the master bathroom and that’s where Jake headed.

  He climbed the split-level stairs and stopped outside Sam’s room, the bed unmade, and wondered if some of his own decisions as a parent had precipitated Sam’s slide.

  No one except Juliet, their housekeeper, knew that Sam slept with Jake on the far side of his king bed, with Louie at their feet. Jake told Sam that if he ever told his therapist that the party would be over. All the books said not to do it, but it had started when Karen went to the hospital for the last time. Sam would come into Jake’s bed in the middle of the night, sobbing and trembling. A week or so after the funeral, Sam just made it his own space. Louie came later, which Jake didn’t like, but tolerated, so that when he traveled, Sam wouldn’t be alone. And after a while he got used to the big warm presence at his feet.

  He climbed the next set of stairs and walked into the master bedroom with its sixteen-foot-high slanted ceiling and sliding glass doors that opened onto a wide balcony. The radio on the alarm clock was playing Beethoven’s Ninth, but not loud enough to drown out the sound of the surf that came in through the open doors. Sam was still out cold with his mouth hanging open and a wet spot on the pillow. Louie raised his head, blinked, and thumped his tail three times on the bed.

  “Come on, Sam,” Jake said, tugging on a thick big toe. “Alarm went off fifteen minutes ago.”

  Sam sat up, his straight dark hair going in every direction, his bulk lost in a triple-X Jets T-shirt. He yawned and looked blankly at Jake.

  “Come on, goddamn it,” Jake said.

  “You swear a lot,” Sam said, rubbing his eyes.

  “Every morning I tell you, if you’re going to listen to the radio during the day, turn up the volume for the alarm at night,” Jake said.

  “You think I was listening to that?”

  “Well, get dressed,” Jake said, peeling off his sweaty shirt and stepping into the bathroom. “We’ve got Dr. Stoddard.”

  “Dr. Stoddard’s an asshole,” Sam said from the bed.

  Jake stuck his head back out into the bedroom. “Hey, don’t get suspended for fighting and you won’t have to see the school shrink. Turn that off and get ready.”

  When Jake got out of the shower, Sam was nowhere to be seen. He went to the doorway and shouted down the stairs. “Hey, you making eggs?”

  Sam shouted back that he would if Jake wanted them.

  “Scrambled, okay?” Jake yelled.

  He walked over to the dresser, where his cell phone rested amid Karen’s hand cream bottles and the stack of books she’d been planning to read. Their covers seemed faded under the blanket of dust. The professional advice Jake got was to put them away, that it was time, but Jake couldn’t do that. He was afraid even to touch them and he’d instructed Juliet that the top of the dresser was off-limits. The cell phone’s red light blinked at him. Messages. Three of them.

  Jake wrapped the towel around his waist and put the phone to his ear. The first message was from one of the show’s field producers, Conrad Muldoon. Frantic. The wife of a murdered FBI agent was finally going to talk. The agent had been investigating a senator’s connection to an Indonesian child pornography ring. Jake, Muldoon, and several of the show’s other producers had been orbiting the woman for months, sending notes, flowers, e-mails, angling for an interview.

  The FBI was telling the woman to keep quiet, even though their investigation had stalled. That same agency had yet to track down a mysterious black Mustang seen by several witnesses racing away from the scene. That bizarre inconsistency had finally hit home with the wife. Muldoon had a crew set to shoot at nine a.m. at the woman’s home in Brooklyn.

  The second message was from an ela
ted Joe Katz, telling Jake congratulations, he had heard the news, and that an interview like this was just the kind of thing he needed to call off the wolves. The third message was from Muldoon asking where the hell he was.

  Jake called the producer while he dressed, explaining that he’d be a little late, but would do his best.

  “You’re kidding,” Muldoon said.

  “Relax,” Jake said, “these people are mine. They’ll wait.”

  “I’m the one that got the call from the mother,” Muldoon said.

  “Conrad, first of all, Katz assigned this story to me,” Jake said. “Second, the only reason the mother talked to us in the first place was because she used to hear me on NPR. I’ll get there when I get there.”

  4

  THE SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST had a full, salty beard and long greasy hair that he wore tied into a ponytail with a red rubber band. The elbows of his corduroy blazer were patched with worn leather and it was missing the same leather button that had been missing since the first time Jake met the man two years ago.

  “Sam and I need to be alone,” he said.

  Jake shifted in the wooden chair outside Stoddard’s office. It was library quiet. The hallway of the administration building smelled like old carpet and floor wax. Every so often, someone would walk past and mount the creaky stairs to the second floor. Once a door across the hall opened and a heavy woman with pink cheeks and curly hair peeked out before closing it. Jake looked at his watch and the cell phone rang again.

  “I’m doing my best to keep her,” Muldoon said. “What’s it look like, buddy?”

  “Not long,” Jake said. “Thanks, Conrad.”

  “No promises,” Muldoon said pleasantly, “but I’m doing everything I can.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the knob on Stoddard’s office door rattled and turned. Sam came out hanging his head.

  “Well,” Stoddard said, clasping his hands, “we’ve had a good beginning. Why don’t you step back inside for a second, Mr. Carlson?”

  Jake looked at his watch and forced a smile. The psychologist offered up a small nod. Jake went in and shut the door, draping an arm over Sam’s shoulder. Stoddard slipped behind his desk and sat down, but Jake stayed on his feet.

  “One of the things I think Sam now understands, Mr. Carlson,” Stoddard said, “is that who we are is nothing more than a series of choices. Sam told me he wants to find what he calls his real mother and that you’ve agreed to help him.”

  Jake just stared.

  Stoddard shook his head and said, “A disaster. Sam has to understand that he was born, and given away. His real mother is not a life-detail because she never impacted a choice. Now, this imagined figure may be one of the excuses Sam likes to attribute to his own poor choices, but we cannot allow this. Not if he’s going to get well.”

  Jake bit the inside of his lip and nodded. It was enough for Stoddard, who then said he’d see Sam every morning of his week-long suspension at eight-thirty, and once a week after that.

  “I think I can help,” he said solemnly.

  Jake kept his arm around Sam all the way across the wet parking lot. The sun was a yellow splotch now, burning away at the mist. When they were in the car, Sam turned to him with wet eyes and a protruding lower lip.

  “Dad, you promised you’d—”

  Jake held up his hand as he started the car and backed out.

  “I don’t care what that guy says,” Jake said.

  “Really?”

  “I told you I’d try to find her.”

  Sam sat back in his seat and let out a big breath, shaking his head.

  “But the school says you have to go and I don’t want you to blow it with Dr. Stoddard,” Jake said, taking a corner fast enough for the wheels to screech. “Deal?”

  “He’s such an asshole.”

  “Hey, come on,” Jake said.

  When Sam asked where they were going, Jake told him he had to get straight to an interview. When they arrived at the woman’s Brooklyn address, Jake dashed up the steps and into the open doorway, adjusting his tie. He found the crew nearly finished taking down the lights. The equipment stood waiting in a cluster of black cases, the kind that always reminded Jake of his days in the high school band. Neither the woman nor Conrad Muldoon were anywhere in sight.

  Skip Lehman ran the crew, and when he saw Jake he suddenly became fascinated with collapsing a tripod. The crew began filing past him, carrying the boxes out to their van. Sam slipped through the doorway and stood with his hands jammed into his pants pockets.

  “What the hell happened?” Jake asked the crew leader.

  “Hi, Jake,” Skip said. He shrugged and shook his head and held his palms up. “I really don’t know. Muldoon said to shoot it. You know it’s not my decision.”

  “Muldoon did the interview himself?” Jake asked.

  “No,” Skip said, “Sara was here.”

  “Sara Pratt? When did she get here?”

  “I guess about nine, maybe a little before.”

  “That fucking asshole.”

  Skip Lehman tilted his head to one side, stroking his ginger beard and glancing at Sam before he went back to work.

  “Where’s the woman?”

  “Upstairs,” Skip said without looking. “She said we could finish and close up. She got kind of teary.”

  “She cried?” Jake said.

  Skip nodded.

  “She cried in my interview, which I didn’t do,” Jake said. “You people are beautiful.”

  “Hey, Jake. We just shoot what they tell us.”

  “Yeah, what they tell you. Great.”

  Jake walked out with Sam in tow. They got into the car and headed for home so he could drop off Sam.

  Juliet, their housekeeper, was used to keeping an eye on Sam and she did a good job of it. Sam didn’t steal or light fires or commit vandalism. He didn’t smoke or drink or do drugs. His trouble wasn’t at home, it was in school. It was teachers and principals and other kids. It was forgetting his sneakers for gym class. It was not sitting still. It was outsmarting his teachers, laughing at the wrong time, fooling around, and getting grades that didn’t come close to his IQ.

  Karen had had him tested years ago. He wasn’t ADD, but he had some of the characteristics. He wasn’t depressed or schizophrenic or bipolar or anything they could put a label on except trouble, too smart for his own good. At home, though, he was just Sam. He liked to read books. He’d take their golden retriever, Louie, for long walks on the beach and come back at dark with smooth pieces of glass and shells that he kept in a big jar on his desk. It wasn’t that Sam wasn’t friendly, but he didn’t have any friends. Karen used to say he was waiting for the right person, someone he could trust, someone who saw the world the same way he did. Jake used to tell her that apparently he wasn’t in any hurry.

  They pulled into the driveway.

  “You going to find her now?” Sam asked.

  “It’s not like calling 411,” Jake said. “If I can find her, it’s going to take time. It won’t be easy. Right now I’ve got another disaster to attend to.”

  “You will,” Sam said.

  Jake told him to behave and that he’d try to make it home for dinner.

  5

  THE AMERICAN OUTRAGE OFFICES were set up like a newsroom, with the executives along the walls behind closed doors and the production staff working at desks in a big open space. Three hours remained until the show went to air and every day it was the same, the place abuzz with people darting between desks and production bays and shouting into telephones. Joe Katz had the corner office looking out over the East River. He held the phone to his ear, but motioned for Jake to sit down while he wrapped up his call.

  Jake took a spot on the leather couch, crossed his legs, and grabbed hold of his shin, trying not to listen. Katz had dark curly hair that had receded halfway up his narrow skull. His glasses were stylishly rectangular, like his black, open-collared Hugo Boss shirt. When he hung up, he smiled at Jake and rested his han
ds flat on the desk in front of him.

  “I know,” he said. “You’re mad, but we needed the story and the wife didn’t want to wait. We got the exclusive with her, Jake. It’ll be huge.”

  “He didn’t try,” Jake said. “He was planning to do this to me. Sara didn’t just happen to be in the neighborhood, Joe. Shit, the little bimbo lives in Jersey City.”

  “He knew you might not make it,” Katz said, examining his pen. Then he looked up. “Hey, she made a play for you. Get over it. Most guys would be flattered.”

  “See this?” Jake said, holding up his hand with the wedding ring. “A play for a guy with one of these is a bimbo.”

  “Jake, can I be honest with you?”

  His tone jolted Jake. Katz was quintessential Hollywood. Everything was great, even when it wasn’t. Jake nodded.

  “First of all, Sara did a good job,” Katz said with a sniff. “She’s probably going to be the next weekend anchor.”

  “How nice for her.”

  “Jake, you’re making a lot of money and ad sales are down. It’s not just this show, it’s everywhere, but they’re down.”

  “I saved you fifty thousand on the nanny interview.”

  “Funny. Another thing I caught shit for.”

  “You came to me for this show, Joe. I was pretty happy where I was.”

  “Except that NPR pays like you’re an English teacher.”

  “They don’t have producers who’d steal your story.”

  “It’s not your story, Jake. It’s the show’s story. We’ve been through this. You know how TV works. Remember Nightly News? Before your career move? Look, it doesn’t matter. The problem here is your salary and what you’ve produced.”

  “Joe, my wife was sick.”

  “You know I’m sorry. I am.”

  “My son is having problems.”

  “Nancy’s son just went into rehab, Jake,” Katz said. “But she’s still hosting the show. You didn’t see her miss a single day.”