The Trials of Max Q, page 42
That was, until I received the invitation to Gwen Delaney and Stephen DuBois’ wedding. It was the moment JP died and J-News took over completely.
I threw every tortured emotion I had into covering the most dangerous stories in the most treacherous areas of the globe. I was willingly turned into a packaged image of the news warrior, who not only ran toward the danger, but looked good doing it. I wore three days growth on my face to feed the image. Same with my wardrobe, which led to my nickname of J-News, because it was said I looked like I just stepped out of the J-Crew catalog into the war zone.
But I wasn’t all style over substance—I took on the toughest stories in places most journalists wouldn’t even think to venture. Some, my mother included, claimed I had a death wish. Maybe I did. My youthful idealism was replaced by a hard-edged and arrogant swagger that I’d convinced myself was necessary to survive in such a dangerous business. I wasn’t very well liked, but I was respected … at least I thought so.
Then last spring, I walked back onto the campus of Columbia like the conquering hero I believed I was, to be a guest lecturer in my old journalism class. When I finished my ode to myself, a pretty girl with long, raven hair and radiant green eyes rose to ask a question. I was startled by the resemblance; for a moment I actually thought it was her. Then very much like Gwen, she zinged me with a question, asking me if I’d missed being a journalist since my industry had become nothing but loud, ratings driven sensationalism.
It was at that exact moment that my midlife crisis began. And I was forced to face the truth—it wasn’t my journalistic roots driving me. And worst of all, somewhere along the way I had become just like Lauren—a self-involved self-promoter who was addicted to publicity.
The reality was that I kept feeding the J-News monster because it was the only thing that could remove Gwen from my daydreams.
Chapter 5
Shouts of “John Peter! John Peter!” shocked me back to the present. Unless I was the next contestant on the Price is Right, I had no idea why Lauren was shouting at me with such vigor.
“You promised that our lunch wouldn’t be interrupted,” she chastised.
I found this a little odd coming from someone who’d made three phone calls, sent four texts, and posted a picture of herself on Twitter since we’d arrived. “What are you talking about?”
“Your big slug friend is here.”
“What?”
Before Lauren could answer, I felt the gargantuan arms wrapping around my neck, clamping me in a headlock. It could only be one man.
When he released me from his clutches, and my breathing somewhat returned to normal, I looked up to see the smiling man who was once a professional wrestler known as Coldblooded Carter. For longer than I can remember, Jeff Carter has been my scout, confidante, bodyguard, and the man with numerous contacts throughout the world that helped uncover the stories that ratings bonanzas are made of.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt you two lovebirds,” Carter’s booming voice filled the patio.
Lauren looked at him like he was the Ebola Virus. “John Peter and I were discussing our plans for the Fourth of July, and yes, you are interrupting.”
Carter laughed, further infuriating her. “So what are these big Fourth of July plans, JP?”
Lauren answered for me, “Following my big interview with Lamar Thompson, we are going to spend the holiday with my family in Hilton Head.”
Carter faked a look of interest. “Wow! Meeting the parents—this is a big step, JP.”
“And Hilton Head society,” I added, now also smiling.
Carter flashed his famous sly grin and I could tell he was about to jump off the top rope and drop a flying elbow on her plans.
“Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention that JP won’t be able to attend your family gathering. We have business to attend to.” He tilted his head toward the ground as if he was mourning the dead.
My ears perked up, suddenly interested in the conversation.
Lauren boiled over. This had happened before. “John Peter,” she addressed me like a mother scolding a child.
I shrugged, as if unable to stop the inevitable.
“You have a choice, John Peter—me, or that big slug. If you walk away from this table we’re over.”
Carter picked me up like a rag doll and slung me over his shoulder. “He’s not walking away … I’m carrying him.”
A rumble of laughter erupted from the other patrons. From my perch, I caught a glance of Bridget, who was unable to fight off a smile.
Carter carried me out of the patio area to a chorus of, “John Peter, get back here!”
He finally set me down on the bustling sidewalk outside the restaurant.
“Thanks, I think you saved my life,” I said, meaning every word.
Carter laughed. “I have three ex-wives—I can sense when a man needs to get six time-zones away.”
Chapter 6
We began walking away from Norvell’s, looking like the oddest of contrasts.
Even though I stood six-foot tall, Carter still towered over me by half a foot. His head was shaved to the scalp—his only hair above the neck was a goatee that reached two full inches below his chin. He wore his trademark wraparound sunglasses and sleeveless denim jacket.
I, on the other hand, looked like I was preparing for a career on the PGA Tour, wearing a lavender golf shirt and a pair of khakis.
Carter was not one for small talk and got right down to the reason he abruptly ended my lunch, and perhaps my relationship.
He opened his camouflage colored backpack and pulled out a black and white photo of a bearded man wearing the latest in Middle Eastern headgear. “Do you know who this is?”
I halfheartedly examined it. When it didn’t ring a bell, I shrugged. “No idea.”
“This, my friend, is Az Zahir.”
Still nothing.
We reached our subway entrance and descended the crowded, muggy stairwell.
Carter found an unpopulated spot on the swamped subway platform. When the coast was clear, he told me the story of a young man from Chicago named Az Zahir, who was once an engineering student at Northwestern University. He was whisked away from his home in the middle of the night, accused of being a ranking member of Al Muttahedah, and was plotting to do some demolition work on a few of America’s favorite buildings and monuments.
Al Muttahedah was a merger of the leading Islamic terrorist groups, who were pooling their resources to try to make a dramatic comeback in the War on Terror. They’d been operating under the radar until I exposed them last year in an investigative report for GNZ. They weren’t happy about the sudden spotlight that had been cast on them, and supposedly put a bounty on my head. Carter comforted me, explaining that groups like them are only interested in killing innocent people, and I was anything but innocent.
Our train screeched to a halt with the whistle of air brakes. But prior to boarding, I was approached by a family. They asked if I would take a photo with them, and I happily obliged. Carter didn’t share the sentiment. He grabbed me by the collar and pulled me onto the train. Brute force was always his answer to solving a problem, and while it’s not always politically correct to say, it’s usually an effective method.
We found a spot and grabbed the overhead bars to steady ourselves. Carter’s glare repelled anyone who thought of getting within ten feet of us. He showed me the picture again, and this time it clicked.
“I remember now. He was involved in that plot to blow up Soldier Field during the NFC championship game. His parents were on the news every night crying about his civil rights like he was some modern day Rosa Parks. I think they claimed he ordered the tote bag, but they accidentally sent him the suitcase nuke.”
“He was such a good Samaritan he won an all-expense paid water-boarding vacation to lovely Guantanamo Bay. But his stay was short, as he cut a deal with the CIA, which released him so that he could re-join his buddies at Al Muttahedah. The CIA wanted to use him as bait to help them assassinate their leader, Mustafa Hakim. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but Az Zahir double-crossed the CIA, and the assassination attempt was foiled. Al Muttahedah was now reportedly hiding out Zahir. His last sighting was in Uzbekistan, almost six months ago. But of course, the US government denies any of this took place.”
“Let me guess—they granted us an interview to give them a platform to spew their hatred? We barter propaganda for ratings. Just please tell me we’re not going to Uzbekistan. I hate Uzbekistan.”
Carter gulped a frustrated sigh, and slowly blew it out. He looked like he wanted to put me in the most painful wrestling hold he could think of. But instead, he pulled out a pen and paper from his backpack and wrote down our destination for me. After I read it, he ate the piece of paper.
Chapter 7
When our train hit the 84th Street stop, Carter growled at me, “Okay, I told you my part, now it’s your turn.”
“My turn?”
“I gave you the details of the mission, now I wanna know what’s going on with you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“For starters, this lethargy thing. I just handed you the interview half the industry would sacrifice their first born for, and you’re more interested in taking photos with the Cleaver family.”
“Lethargy? Don’t pull a muscle on the big words, Carter.”
He shook his head. “You can try acting like your normal cocky-jerk self, but you’re not fooling anyone. I’ve seen the signs for months. Your mind is somewhere else, and this smiling and being nice to people thing is starting to creep me out.”
“Where did you get your psychology degree … Pro Wrestling University?”
“I’m serious.”
There are a couple of rules that I live by. One, is to only go so far when messing with a former professional wrestler who still suffers from symptoms of steroid withdrawal. The other I learned from Murray Brown, who drilled into me to always lead with the headline. So I did. “I’ve decided I’m leaving the business when my contract runs out next month. This will be my last assignment.”
He started laughing. “What’s wrong, sweetheart—too rough being a rich and famous television star?”
I just stared out the window at the wall of the subway tunnel that was whizzing by. “I don’t know. I guess ‘the life’ sort of caught up with me. I remember a time when I was happy. And believe it or not, I wasn’t always considered, how did you so eloquently put it … a cocky jerk?”
I rambled on about the ratings pressure in the news business and no longer having the stomach for the bombs and blood. All could jade the Easter Bunny.
Carter wasn’t the “cry on my shoulder” type and asked if I wanted some cheese with my whine. He then gave his version of a pep talk.
“You deal with shady people in shadier places. The minute they see you lose an ounce of swag they’ll eat you alive.”
“It just wasn’t supposed to turn out this way,” I continued whining—even if I would never admit it—as we hit our stop at 116th and squeezed out the doors of the subway car. I had to stop and pick up travel items at my residence on the Upper West Side. It was our standard operating procedure, and so ingrained that Carter didn’t even discuss the step with me. Perhaps another sign I’d been doing this too long.
I caught Carter rolling his eyes as we climbed the subway stairwell. He slapped on his wraparounds like he couldn’t even bear to look at me. We began walking toward my walk-up brownstone. It was no coincidence it was near Columbia University—a place that reminded me of happier times.
“You don’t choose life, it chooses you. Do you know how many kids out there would kill to be JP Warner when they grow up?”
“Until they start trying to kill them because they are JP Warner.”
“Hey, it could be worse—you almost ended up spending the Fourth with the Bowden family.”
His words sent me spiraling back into history. “The Fourth of July used to be one of my favorite days. My family would go to the Samerauk River and watch the fireworks. Gwen and I …”
“Stop right there,” Carter cut me off. “Are you still pining away for this Gwen? I thought that was the liquor talking that night. For chrissake, she probably has six kids and lost her looks somewhere under a pile of plastic kids-toys in the back of her minivan … at least that happened to all my ex-wives.”
“I’m not pining away for anyone,” I lied. I’d mentioned Gwen to him the night following the Columbia incident, after having a few too many drinks. We made a deal: I would never bring up such “girly nonsense” ever again, and he would refrain from “knocking some sense” into me.
“It’s just the realization that there isn’t going to be a happily ever after. You put your dreams on hold, time goes by and one day you realize it’s never going to happen. I’ve made up my mind—this is going to be my last assignment.”
He shrugged. “Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
An awkward silence hung between us as we entered my neighborhood. Lined with the greenery of summer, it was like an oasis in a concrete jungle.
By the time we arrived at my brownstone, the blue sky was just a memory. The wind had picked up and was whipping the tree limbs. It seemed like a symbol of something ... I just wasn’t sure what.
We entered the pre-war building, escaping the volatile weather, and I sniffed the comforting fragrance of home. I smiled again—happy with the new life I was heading for, even if Carter wasn’t.
“I don’t know why you’re pining for other chicks when you got a great girl like Lauren Bowden,” Carter said with a grin, breaking the tension. “And what’s with the John Peter stuff?”
“It shows what type of reporter she is. JP actually stands for John Pierpont. My mother is head of the historical society in Rockfield, Connecticut and …”
“Is that like one of those cults where they have those rituals with the strange masks and robes?”
“No, that’s professional wrestling. She happens to be one of the leading history experts in the state and named my brothers and me after famous people who were born in Connecticut. I’m named after JP Morgan, whose full name was John Pierpont Morgan. My brother Ethan is named after Ethan Allen, the Revolutionary War hero, and Noah is named after Noah Webster. He was the guy, you know, like Webster’s Dictionary … that would be a book that contains words, they are the things that …”
Carter shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m getting my balls busted by a guy named Pierpont.” Then as quickly as the skies darkened outside, he changed the subject, “How’s Noah doing?”
“Better,” was all I said. It wasn’t a place I wanted to go right now.
We entered a mudroom on the garden floor. French doors led to a backyard that looked more rural Connecticut than Manhattan. It looked inviting, but we had business upstairs.
As we began to climb the stairs, a sound stopped us in our tracks. Carter pulled his gun from the waistband of his jeans.
Chapter 8
I put up the stop sign.
“It’s Christina, the girl who house-sits while I’m away.”
“Is she hot?” Carter asked, going quickly from gun-toting to horny, as he often did.
“It’s not like that.”
“I rest my case—what have you done with JP Warner?”
“First of all, you need to put both your guns away. She goes to Fordham and interned at GNZ. Most of her classes are at the Lincoln Center campus, so it’s convenient for her to stay here. And in return, she takes care of the place while I’m gone.”
We climbed a spiral staircase to the spacious second floor. It featured a twenty-foot ceiling and walls covered with oversized windows that provided a view of the Manhattan skyline. On a normal summer day, light would saturate the room, but the impending storm had now painted the sky black. The room looked as if I didn’t spend much time there, which was accurate. It was furnished with just the essentials—a black leather couch, flat-screen plasma TV, and a large desk.
Lauren once tried to decorate the place with what she called an “Old South antebellum motif.” When I rebuffed her, she returned with an interior decorator. That’s when I decided to have Christina move in to watch the place.
Christina was seated behind my desk, furiously typing on a laptop. She looked up suspiciously. “Hey, JP,” her voice jumping three octaves, “they have the new GNZ website up. You should check it out.”
It didn’t take me long to figure out the reason for her nervousness. Walking out of the bathroom was a college-age kid wearing my evergreen colored bathrobe with the letters JP embroidered on the pocket.
My new perspective became a distant memory. When I smelled my own cologne—very expensive cologne—my inner J-News boiled over. The young man in the robe stuck out his hand for me to shake and tried to introduce himself.
Bad move.
“JP, this is my friend Daman. They lost hot water in his dorm, so I let him borrow the shower. He was just …”
“Leaving.”
Before Daman could even stutter his way through an apology, Carter’s arm reached out and wrapped around his neck. He then escorted—dragged—Daman down the stairs like a rag doll.
I turned my attention back to Christina. “I thought we had one rule—nobody over. There are people who would pay big bucks to get their hands on some of the information I have in here.”
“What’s your problem?”
“My problem is I let you live free in an apartment that you couldn’t afford in three lifetimes. All I had was one rule, and you couldn’t follow it!”
