“Please sit down,” the station manager said. “I received a telephone call today from an old friend of mine. I could hardly believe what he told me. I hope, Ms. Stewart, that he was mistaken in what he heard you say to our district attorney today at lunch.”
She wet her lips, threw an apologetic glance at Pinkie and replied, “He heard correctly.”
Pinkie thought he was alone when he eased open the bottom drawer of his desk and reached for the secreted flask. He took a long pull on it and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. When he looked up, Kari was standing in the doorway of the glass office. Everyone had cleared out after the ten o’clock news. The news-room was quiet and shadowed behind her.
“Don’t let them do this to me, Pinkie.”
He hadn’t seen her since they left the station manager’s office. He had returned to the newsroom to find a fresh crisis on his hands. The producer of the early news show was ninety-seconds short of material. Should they run the story about the pregnant elephant at the zoo or the one about the blind typing teacher?
He had put out that brushfire and the myriad others that flame up during the production of a newscast. But Kari was constantly on his mind. He wondered where she had gone to lick her wounds. Now he could see that wherever she had been, she’d been crying.
He tilted the slender silver flask in her direction, but she shook her head. She dropped into the chair opposite his desk. He took another swig before capping the flask and returning it to its hiding place.
“You did it to yourself, Kari.” He settled his bulk more comfortably in his chair. “I warned you, but you didn’t listen.”
“I’ll apologize to him, publicly if I have to.”
“You should do that anyway. But it’s not going to change their minds. They’re furious with you. And they should be. What you said to that man was inexcusable.”
“All right. I did something wrong. I confess.” She swallowed a sob. “But suspension for three months! Isn’t that a bit severe? I thought maybe for a week. Two. But three months! I’ll die, Pinkie. My job means everything to me. I’ve lost my husband, my baby. My work is all I have left.”
She placed her hands flat on his desk and leaned forward in a pleading attitude. “Intercede for me, Pinkie. Tell them some of what I’ve gone through at the hands of that man.”
“No.”
She yanked her hands away from his desk as though it had suddenly burned her. “You won’t help me?”
“Not this time, baby; I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
Pinkie sighed and ran his hand down his face. “Because I think you need this time away. You’re not the person you used to be, Kari. You haven’t been for a long while.”
She couldn’t take his criticism, not on top of the chastising she had already received. “I’m doing my job!” she said heatedly. “The ratings are up.”
“Not anymore. Remember my telling you that I was getting tired of your personal attacks on McKee? Well, I was only one jump ahead of our viewers. Our ratings are slipping and I can’t help but think you’re one of the reasons.”
Her pride was hurt, but she knew Pinkie was right. Hunter had won the public’s approval. The citizenry had officially endorsed him as their D.A. Her continual badgering of him would only antagonize her audience.
“I realize that I need to change the slant of my stories,” she said quietly, twisting her hands in her lap.
“The city hall beat has already been assigned to someone else, Kari. That was one of the manager’s orders.”
Panic, cold and lethal, stabbed through her. “Then give me back my entertainment slot.”
Pinkie was shaking his head. “Can’t do it. Sally’s locked into it.”
“By sleeping with one of the salesmen!” Kari shouted.
“And he’s liking it!” Pinkie roared back. “But that has nothing to do with it. Personally I can’t stand her goody-two-shoes style, but the ratings say the audience feels otherwise. I don’t know if they like her boobs or what, but the bottom line is, they like her. I warned you about this. Remember, I told you to think all this over carefully before—”
“Stop lecturing me! You’re not my father.”
“No, but I thought I was your friend.” His face went beet red and he forced himself to calm down. “Kari, if you’d been anybody else, I would have nailed your ass to a tree a long time ago. You’ve pulled one shenanigan after another with this McKee thing, but I’ve tolerated it. If I weren’t your friend, you’d be long gone by now.”