“Only the elite survive there,” my former boss, David Dyal, had warned me. “You’re fearless, but you’re not ready for the kind of politics and competition a place like that serves up every day.”
I was planning to prove him wrong.
Still rattled by the fall on Fifth Avenue, I felt nervous energy churn in the pit of my stomach as I wound my way through the aisles in search of my assignment editor, Mark Galvin. At least fifty reporters were seated in the open area, but unlike in the Channel Eleven newsroom in LA, no one turned to greet me. And the few who even glanced in my direction went on with their work without even a nod, as though I were just another cog in the vast ANC machine.
An intern had told me I’d find Mark at the “Hornet’s Nest,” also known as the assignment desk, and it didn’t take me long to spot it. The iconic blue letters—ANC HEADQUARTERS—loomed large at the front of the room. Positioned below the sign, beneath banks of monitors and fortressed behind a low wall of signature royal blue, was a line of stressed-looking assignment editors. Even from a distance, I could feel the tension and frustration as they tried to direct and appease the news directors, producers, reporters, and cameramen gathered around them.
“You’re Kate Bradley, aren’t you?”
I whirled around.
“Jeremy Whitfield.” Dressed in a midnight-blue suit and matching tie, Jeremy had thick black hair combed tightly to his head and a carefully groomed beard. “White House reporter—I’ve interviewed your father a few times. With all the battles about the budget and possible shutdown, he’s on everyone’s interview list these days.”
“I have a hard time getting on his call list too,” I said with a laugh.
“What brings you to ANC?”
“I work here. Today’s my first day.”
He shot me a look of surprise. “Our lucky day then. Let me take you to lunch while I’m in town. Let’s team up together on a few stories. You probably have some good insight and connections on the Homeland Security bill that’s stuck in Congress. And it’d be fascinating to hear what it’s like to be a senator’s daughter.”
I drew a deep breath. “I’m not here covering politics.”
“You’re not?” He raised his voice. “Then what are you covering?”
“Crime and justice.”
He looked at me as if I’d grown two heads. “You’re not covering politics?”
“It was nice meeting you, Jeremy.”
As I started to walk away, he called out to me, “So, is that yes to lunch?”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “It’s a no. But thanks for the invite.”
I found Mark Galvin in the Hornet’s Nest a few minutes later, but unlike Jeremy, he didn’t seem happy to meet me. In fact, he looked a bit unhinged, his bristly gray hair tufted oddly on one side as though he’d just gotten out of bed.
“You’re late,” he said without looking up from his iPad.
“Andrew Wright said I should come in at nine instead of—”
“Andrew may be the head of this division, but he doesn’t set the hours for my reporters.”
“Got it. But Andrew did say I should—”
“Name-dropping may get you something with other folks here, but not with me.”
“I was just trying to say that—”
“I know,” he said, his tone sharpening. “You and my boss are old pals. Your father’s a US senator. But when you’re working here, you’re going to be treated like every other reporter on my team.”
He looked up then, fixing a pair of steely-gray eyes on me. Their downward slope made him look like he was perpetually disappointed.
“Got it.”
“Your desk is by Stephanie over there.” He pointed off to a wide swath of desks to the right, but I decided against asking for more specifics. “I need you to work up a story on the Homeland Security bill that’s at an impasse in Congress.”
“Homeland Security.”
“Yeah, you are up on that, aren’t you?”
For a minute, I thought he might be joking, but his thin lips were fixed in a tight, flat line.
“Of course.”
“Maybe you can call your dad and ask him what it’s going to take to get the sixty votes they need.” He drew a big X through whatever he had been reading on his iPad. “Welcome to ANC.”
“Sixteen people shot in under seven hours yesterday,” Stephanie said as I laid my bag on my desk, in a surprisingly spacious cubicle not far from the Hornet’s Nest. “All over the city: Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn. Insanity.” She rose from her chair. “Stephanie Nakamura.”
“Kate Bradley.” I extended my hand.
Stephanie was a classic network-news beauty: chin-length dark hair, high cheekbones, and flawless skin. This morning she was dressed for off-camera work: skinny jeans, a long-sleeved white cotton top, and black boots, Prada maybe.
“I’m on deadline for a piece on the uptick in violence in New York and other major cities. Guessing they put you on the political hamster wheel?”
“Apparently. Even though that’s not what Andrew promised me.”
“I wouldn’t bank on whatever promises he made,” she said, frowning. “The news always comes first in Andrew’s world. What we reporters want is . . . well, let’s just say it’s further down the list of priorities.”
“I didn’t cover politics when I was in LA, and I don’t plan to be covering it here . . .”
She flashed me a wry smile. “You think that, with the ten to fifteen White House and congressional story lines happening every day, they’re going to assign Senator Bradley’s daughter something else besides political stories?”
I felt the heat rise to my face. “Most of my experience has been in breaking news. I broke the Good Sam story a while back. And then the Robin Hood story—”
“That’s why you made it this far. But you know who had that desk of yours? Bryan Griggs. He covered major stories like the Las Vegas shooting, Weinstein, OJ’s release from prison. One of the best. Pressured Andrew and Mark for more freedom on the stories he covered, and now . . .” She lowered her voice. “He’s not working here anymore.”
I swallowed hard. “I can handle anything these guys throw my way. I had a tough assignment editor and hard-ass news bosses in LA.”
In the blue-white light of the newsroom, Stephanie’s face had an almost ghostly glow. “Not like this, you haven’t.”
CHAPTER TWO
Sirens blared as I walked back from the ANC studios that day, plodding three blocks on packed sidewalks to the subway. The ambulances’ earsplitting wails were only part of the aural assault—backhoes digging up a foundation on a new apartment building, a deafening rat-a-tat of jackhammers at another building site a block away, and a rhythmic banging, metal on metal, that ricocheted off the brick and echoed in the streets.
After a face-melting, hair-frizzing ride on the cramped subway, I stepped out into the fading sunlight and headed into the crosswalk. A taxi driver honked and screamed at me in a language I didn’t understand. But its meaning was clear: Hurry up. Move. Idiot.