Reynaldo said, “She could be in New Delhi for all I care. Point is, I’m producing the Barletta segment. Get used to it, buddy.”
Willie settled back to sip his planter’s punch and enjoy the rosy tropical dusk. They had a deck table facing the ocean at an outdoor bar, not far from the Sonesta on Key Biscayne. Reynaldo Flemm was nursing a Perrier, so Willie was confident of having the upper hand. Reynaldo was the only person he knew who blabbed more when he was sober than when he was drunk. Right now Reynaldo was blabbing about his secret plan to force Dr. Rudy Graveline to confess in front of the television camera. It was the most ludicrous scheme that Willie had ever heard, the sort of thing he’d love to watch, not shoot.
After a decent interval, Willie put his rum drink on the table and said: “Who’s blocking out the interview?”
“Me.”
“The questions, too?”
Reynaldo Flemm reddened.
Willie said, “Shouldn’t we run this puppy by the lawyers? I think we got serious trespass problems.”
“Ha,” Reynaldo scoffed.
Sure, Willie thought sourly, go ahead and laugh. I’m the one who always gets tossed in the squad car. I’m the one gets blamed when the cops bang up the camera.
Reynaldo Flemm said, “Let me worry about the legalities, Willie. The question is: Can you do it?”
“Sure, I can do it.”
“You won’t need extra lights?”
Willie shook his head. “Plenty of light,” he said. “Getting the sound is where I see the problem.”
“I was wondering about that, too. I can’t very well wear the wireless.”
Willie chuckled in agreement. “No, not hardly.”
Reynaldo said, “You’ll think of something, you always do. Actually, I prefer the hand-held.”
“I know,” Willie said. Reynaldo disliked the tiny cordless clip-on microphones; he favored the old baton-style mikes that you held in your hand—the kind you could thrust in some crooked politician’s face and make him pee his pants. Christina Marks called it Reynaldo’s “phallic attachment.” She postulated that, in Reynaldo’s mind, the microphone had become a substitute for his penis.
As Willie recalled, Reynaldo didn’t think much of Christina’s theory.
He said to Willie: “This’ll be hairy, but we’ve done it before. We’re a good team.”
“Yeah,” said Willie, half-heartedly draining his glass. Some team. The basic plan never changed: Get Reynaldo beat up. Now remember, he used to tell Willie, we got to live up to the name of the show. Stick it right in his motherlovingface, really piss him off. Willie had it down to an art: He’d poke the TV camera directly at the subject’s nose, the guy would push the camera away and tear off in a fury after Reynaldo Flemm. Now remember, Reynaldo would coach, when he shoves you, jiggle the camera like you were really shaken up. Make the picture super jerky looking, the way they do on Sixty Minutes. If by chance the interview subject lunged after Willie instead of Reynaldo, Willie had standing orders to halt taping, shield the camera and defend himself—in that order. Invariably the person doing the pummeling got tired of banging his fists on a bulky, galvanized Sony and redirected his antagonism toward the arrogant puss of Reynaldo Flemm. It’s me they’re tuning in to see, Reynaldo would say, I’m the talent here. But if the beating became too severe or if Reynaldo got outnumbered, Willie’s job then was to stow the camera (carefully) and start swinging away. Many times he had felt like a rodeo clown, diverting Reynaldo’s enraged attackers until Reynaldo could escape, usually by locking himself in the camera van. The van was where, at Reynaldo’s insistence, Christina Marks waited during ambush interviews. Reynaldo maintained that this was for her own safety, but in reality he worried that if something happened to her, it might end up on tape and steal his thunder.
Reflecting upon all this, Willie ordered another planter’s punch. This time he asked the waitress for more dark rum on the top. He said to Reynaldo, “What makes you think this doctor guy’ll break?”
“I’ve met him. He’s weak.”
“That’s what you said about Larkey McBuffum.”
Larkey McBufrum was a crooked Chicago pharmacist who had been selling steroid pills to junior high school football players. When Reynaldo and Willie had burst into Larkey’s drug store to confront him, the old man had maced Willie square in the eyes with an aerosol can of spermicidal birth-control foam.