Before the Fall Read online

  “Saint Mary’s Landscaping Academy.”

  “Seriously. I went to Stony Brook. State school. And when I got out, none of those fucks from Harvard or Yale would give me the time of day. And pussy? Forget it. I had to sleep with Jersey girls for six years until I got my first on-air.”

  They were in a Cuban-Chinese place on Eighth Avenue, eating eggs and drinking paint-brown coffee. Cunningham was a big guy, tall with a deliberate loom. He liked to get in your face, to unpack his suitcase and move in.

  “What do you think of TV news?” David asked him.

  “Shit,” said Cunningham, chewing. “This pretend impartiality, like they don’t take sides, but look at what they’re reporting. Look at who the heroes are. The working stiff? No way. The churchgoing family man who works a double so his kid can go to college? It’s a joke. We got a guy in the White House getting blowjobs from those guys’ daughters. But the president’s a Rhodes Scholar so I guess that makes it okay. They call it objective. I call it bias, pure and simple.”

  The waiter came and left the check, an old striped carbon sheet torn from a pocket-size pad. David still has it, framed on the wall of his office, one corner discolored by coffee. As far as the world was concerned Bill Cunningham was a washed-up, second-rate Maury Povich, but David saw the truth. Cunningham was a star, not because he was better than you or me, but because he was you or me. He was the raging voice of common sense, the sane man in an insane world. Once Bill was on board, the rest of the pieces fell into place.

  Because at the end of the day, Cunningham was right, and David knew it. TV newsmen tried so hard to appear objective when the truth was, they were anything but. CNN, ABC, CBS, they sold the news like groceries in a supermarket, something for everyone. But people didn’t want just information. They wanted to know what it meant. They wanted perspective. They needed something to react against. I agree or I don’t agree. And if a viewer didn’t agree more than half of the time, was David’s philosophy, they turned the channel.

  David’s idea was to turn the news into a club of the like-minded. The first adopters would be the ones who’d been preaching his philosophy for years. And right behind them would be the people who had been searching their whole lives for someone to say out loud what they’d always felt in their hearts. And once you had those two groups, the curious and the undecided would follow in droves.

  This deceptively simple reconfiguration of the business model turned out to bring a sea change to the industry. But for David, it was simply a way to relieve the stress of waiting. Because what is the news business, really, except the work of hypochondriacs? Anxious men and women who inflate and investigate every tic and cough, hoping that this time it might be the big one. Wait and worry. Well, David had no interest in waiting, and he had never been one to worry.

  He grew up in Michigan, the son of an autoworker at a GM plant, David Bateman Sr., who never took a sick day, never skipped a shift. David’s dad once counted the cars he’d built over the thirty-four years he worked the rear suspension line. The number he came up with was 94,610. To him that was proof of a life well lived. You got paid to do a job and you did it. David Sr. never had more than a high school diploma. He treated everyone he met with respect, even the Harvard management types who toured the plant every few months, sluicing down from the curved driveways of Dearborn to slap the back of the common man.

  David was an only child, the first in his family to go to college. But in an act of allegiance to his father, he declined the invitation to go to Harvard (full scholarship) in order to attend the University of Michigan. It was there that he discovered a love for politics. Ronald Reagan was in the White House that year, and David saw something in his folksy manner and steely gaze that inspired him. David ran for class president his senior year and lost. He had neither a politician’s face nor charm, but he had ideas, strategy. He saw the moves like billboards in the far distance, heard the messages in his head. He knew how to win. He just couldn’t do it himself. It was then that David Bateman realized that if he wanted a career in politics, it would have to be behind the scenes.

  Twenty years and thirty-eight state and national elections later, David Bateman had earned a reputation as a kingmaker. He had turned his love of the game into a highly profitable consulting business whose clients included a cable news network that had hired David to help them revamp their election coverage.

  It was this combination of items on his résumé that led, one day in March 2002, to the birth of a movement.

  Chapter 7

  David woke before dawn. It was programmed into him now after twenty years on the campaign trail. Marty always said, You snooze you lose, and it was true. Campaigns weren’t beauty contests. They were about endurance, the long, ugly blood sport of gathering votes. Rarely was there a first-round knockout. It was usually about who was still standing in the fifteenth, shrugging body blows from rubbery legs. It’s what separated the something from the something else, David liked to say. And so he learned to go without sleep. Four hours a night was all he required now. In a pinch he could get by with twenty minutes every eight hours.

  In his bedroom, the wall-size windows across from the bed framed the first glow of sunlight. He lay on his back, looking out, as downstairs the coffee was making itself. Outside he could see the towers of the Roosevelt Island tramway. Their bedroom—his and Maggie’s—faced the East River. Glass as thick as an unabridged copy of War and Peace blocked the endless roar of the FDR Drive. It was bulletproof, along with all the other windows in the town house. The billionaire had paid for the installation after 9/11.

  “Can’t afford to lose you to some jihadi cabdriver with a shoulder rocket,” he told David.

  Today was Friday, August 21. Maggie and the kids were out at the Vineyard, had been all month, leaving David to pad the marble bathroom floors alone. Downstairs he could hear the housekeeper making breakfast. After a shower, he stopped at the kids’ rooms, as he did every morning, and stared at their perfectly made beds. The decor in Rachel’s room combined scientific gadgetry and horse worship. JJ’s was all about cars. Like all children, they tended toward chaos, a juvenile disorder the house staff erased systematically, often in real time. Now, staring at the sterile, vacuumed order, David found himself wanting to mess things up, to make his son’s room look more like a kid’s and less like a museum of childhood. So he went over to a toy bin and kicked it over with his foot.

  There, he thought. That’s better.

  He would leave a note for the maid. When the children left town she was to leave their rooms as she found them. He would tape them off like a crime scene if he had to, anything to make the house feel more alive.

  He called Maggie from the kitchen. The clock on the stove read 6:14 a.m.

  “We’ve been up for an hour,” she said. “Rachel’s reading. JJ is seeing what happens when you pour dish soap in the toilet.”

  Her voice was muffled as she covered the mouthpiece.

  “Sweetie,” she yelled. “That is not what we call a good choice.”

  In New York, David mimed drinking and the housekeeper brought him more coffee. His wife came back on the line. David could hear the frazzled energy she got in her voice when she spent too long parenting by herself. Every year he tried to get her to bring Maria, the au pair, with them to the island, but his wife always refused. Summer vacation was for them, she said, family time. Otherwise, Rachel and JJ would grow up calling the nanny Mommy, like all the other kids in their neighborhood.

  “It’s super foggy out,” his wife said.

  “Did you get the thing I sent?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said, sounding pleased. “Where did you find them?”

  “The Kiplings. They know a guy who travels the world collecting old-world clippings. Apples from the eighteen hundreds. Peach trees no one’s seen since McKinley was president. We had that fruit salad at their place last summer.”

  “Right,” she said. “That was yummy. Were they—is it silly to ask?—were t
hey expensive? This seems like something that you’d hear on the news is the price of a new car.”

  “A Vespa, maybe,” he said.

  It was just like her to ask price, as if part of her still couldn’t fathom their net worth, its implications.

  “I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Danish plum,” she said.

  “Me either. Who knew the world of fruit could be so exotic?”

  She laughed. When things were good between them, there was an easiness. A rhythm of give-and-take that came from living in the moment, from burying old grudges. Some mornings when he called, David could tell that she had dreamed about him in the night. It was something she did from time to time. Often she told him afterward, biting off her words, unable to look him in the eye. In the dream he was always a monster who scorned and abandoned her. The conversations that followed were chilly and brief.

  “Well, we’re going to plant the trees this morning,” Maggie told him. “It’ll give us a project for the day.”

  They made small talk for another ten minutes—what his day looked like, what time he thought he’d be out tonight. All the while his phone chimed, breaking news, schedule changes, crises to be managed. The sound of other people’s panic reduced to a steady electronic hum. Meanwhile the kids buzzed in and out of Maggie’s end of the line like yellow jackets scouting a picnic. He liked hearing them in the background, the melee of them. It was what set his generation apart from his father’s. David wanted his children to have a childhood. A real childhood. He worked hard so that they could play. For David’s father, childhood had been a luxury his son could not afford. Play was considered a gateway drug to idleness and poverty. Life, Dad said, was a Hail Mary. You only got one shot at it, and if you didn’t train every day—with wind sprints and grass drills—you would blow it.

  As a result, David had been burdened with chores at an early age. At five, he was cleaning the trash cans. By seven he was doing all their laundry. The rule in their house was that homework was done and chores were completed before a single ball was thrown, before a bike was ridden or army men were dumped from the Folgers can.

  You don’t become a man by accident, his father told him. It was a belief that David shared, though his was a milder version. In David’s mind, the training for adulthood began in the double digits. At ten, he reasoned, it was time to start thinking about growing up. To take the soft-serve lessons about discipline and responsibility that had been fed to you in your youth, and cement them into rules for a healthy and productive life. Until then you were a child, so act accordingly.

  “Daddy,” said Rachel, “will you bring my red sneakers? They’re in my closet.”

  He walked into her room and got them while they were talking so he wouldn’t forget.

  “I’m putting them in my bag,” he told her.

  “It’s me again,” said Maggie. “Next year I think you should come out here with us for the whole month.”

  “Me too,” he said immediately. Every year they had the same conversation. Every year he said the same thing. I will. And then he didn’t.

  “It’s just the fucking news,” she said. “There’ll be more tomorrow. Besides, haven’t you trained them all by now?”

  “I promise,” he said, “next year I’ll be there more.” Because it was easier to say yes than to dicker through the real-world probabilities, lay out all the mitigating factors, and try to manage her expectations.

  Never fight tomorrow’s fight today, was his motto.

  “Liar,” she said, but with a smile in her voice.

  “I love you,” he told her. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  * * *

  The town car was downstairs waiting for him. Two security contractors from the agency rode up in the elevator to get him. They slept in shifts in one of the first-floor guest rooms.

  “Morning, boys,” said David, shrugging on his jacket.

  They took him out together, two big men with Sig Sauers under their coats, eyes scanning the street for signs of threat. Every day David got hate mail, apoplectic letters about God knows what, sometimes even care packages of human shit. It was the price he paid for choosing a side, he reasoned, for having an opinion about politics and war.

  Fuck you and your God, they said.

  They threatened his life, his family, threats he had learned to take seriously.

  In the town car he thought about Rachel, the three days she was missing. Ransom calls, the living room filled with FBI agents and private security, Maggie crying in the back bedroom. It was a miracle they got her back, a miracle that he knew would never happen twice. So they lived with the constant surveillance, the advance team. Safety first, he told his children. Then fun. Then learning. It was a joke between them.

  He was driven cross-town through the stop-and-go. Every two seconds his phone blorped. North Korea was test-firing missiles into the Sea of Japan again. A Tallahassee policeman was in a coma after a car stop shooting. Nude cell phone photos of a Hollywood starlet sent to an NFL running back had just dropped. If you weren’t careful it could feel like a tidal wave bearing down, all this eventfulness. But David saw it for what it was, and understood his own role. He was a sorting machine, boxing the news by category and priority, forwarding tips to various departments. He wrote one-word replies and hit SEND. Bullshit or Weak or More. He had answered thirty-three emails and returned sixteen phone calls by the time the car pulled up in front of the ALC Building on Sixth Avenue, and that was light for a Friday.

  A security man opened the back door for him. David stepped out into the bustle. Outside, the air was the temperature and consistency of a patty melt. He was wearing a steel-gray suit with a white shirt and a red tie. Sometimes in the mornings he liked to veer away from the front door at the last second and wander off to find a second breakfast. It kept the security guys on their toes. But today he had things to do if he was going to make it to the airport by three.

  David’s office was on the fifty-eighth floor. He came off the elevator at a fast clip, eyes focused on his office door. People got out of the way when he walked. They ducked into cubicles. They turned and fled. It wasn’t the man so much as the office. Or maybe it was the suit. The faces around him seemed to get younger every day, David thought, segment producers and executive administrators, online nerds with soul patches and artisanal coffee, smug with the knowledge that they were the future. Everyone in this business was building a legacy. Some were ideologues, others were opportunists, but they were all there because ALC was the number one cable news network in the country, and David Bateman was the reason.

  Lydia Cox, his secretary, was already at her desk. She had been with David since 1995, a fifty-nine-year-old woman who had never married, but had never owned a cat. Lydia was thin. Her hair was short, and she carried a certain old-school Brooklyn chutzpah that, like a once thriving Indian tribe, had long since been driven from the borough by hostile gentrifiers from across the sea.

  “You’ve got the Sellers call in ten minutes,” she reminded him first thing.

  David didn’t slow. He went in to his desk, took off his jacket, and hung it on the back of his chair. Lydia had put his schedule on the seat. He picked it up, frowned. Starting the day with Sellers—the increasingly unpopular LA bureau chief—was like starting the day with a colonoscopy.

  “Hasn’t somebody stabbed this guy yet?” he said.

  “No,” said Lydia, following him in. “But last year you did buy a burial plot in his name and send him a picture of it for Christmas.”

  David smiled. As far as he was concerned there weren’t enough moments like that in life.

  “Push it to Monday,” he told her.

  “He’s called twice already. Don’t you dare let him blow this off, was the gist.”

  “Too late.”

  There was a hot cup of coffee on David’s desk. He pointed to it.

  “For me?”

  “No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s the pope’s.”

  Bill C
unningham appeared in the doorway behind her. He was in jeans, a T-shirt, and his trademark red suspenders.

  “Hey,” he said. “Got a sec?”

  Lydia turned to go. As Bill stepped aside to let her pass, David noticed Krista Brewer hovering behind him. She looked worried.

  “Sure,” said David. “What’s up?”

  They came in. Bill closed the door behind them, which wasn’t something he normally did. Cunningham was a performance artist. His whole shtick was built on a rant against secret backroom meetings. In other words, nothing he did was ever private. Instead he preferred to go into David’s office twice a week and yell his head off. About what didn’t matter. It was a show of force, like a military exercise. So the closed door was a concern.

  “Bill,” said David, “did you just close the door?”

  He looked at Krista, Bill’s executive producer. She seemed a little green. Bill dropped onto the sofa. He had the wingspan of a pterodactyl. He sat, as he always did, with his knees spread wide so you could see how big his balls were.

  “First of all,” he said, “it’s not as bad as you think.”

  “No,” said Krista. “It’s worse.”

  “Two days of bullshit,” said Bill. “Maybe the lawyers get involved. Maybe.”

  David got up and looked out the window. He found the best thing you could do with a showman like Bill was not look at him.

  “Whose lawyers?” he asked. “Yours or mine?”

  “Goddammit, Bill,” said Krista turning on the anchor. “This isn’t a rule you broke, Don’t spit in church. It’s a law. Several laws probably.”

  David watched the traffic go by on Fifth Avenue.

  “I’m going to the airport at three,” he said. “Do you think we’ll have reached the point by then, or are we going to have to finish this by phone?”

  He turned and looked at them. Krista’s arms were crossed defiantly. Bill’s gotta say it, was her body language. Messengers get killed for delivering bad news, and Krista wasn’t going to lose her job for another one of Cunningham’s dumb mistakes. Bill, meanwhile, had an angry smile on his face like a cop after a shooting he’ll swear on the stand was justified.