Chapter 72: Attention Hound

“I can’t believe it. Still, no luck.” Alicia Martinez, a young reporter with KSAT-TV in San Antonio, got an early jump on the story of the year: an apparent riot broke out at a high-end, popular downtown restaurant. According to her sources, the riot was not a simple fight getting out of hand but also involved international star singer/songwriter/model/actress Olivia King and her boyfriend, YungBalla69. He was an Internet billionaire and notorious “traveling sideshow” of bad boy behavior. To make it interesting, the up-and-coming model and daughter of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover model Heidi Klum, Leni, was also there.

“Fuck! We go on air in...” she snarled as she paused to look up at the digital clock on the wall. “Fuck! Less than an hour, and I can’t get a confirmation from the police or the restaurant owners of how the fuck it ended.”

Alicia held her head in her hands, mourning the demise of her just-flowering TV career, when Chuck Thomas heard her wails of despair. Chuck recently celebrated his first full year as a sports reporter at KSAT. His real name was Chuck Thomasino, but he shortened it for his illustrious career.

“What’s wrong, Ali?” he asked, genuinely concerned. The young Lothario had learned long ago that if you could fake sincerity, the panties dropped easier than a couple of Vicodins and a Percocet.

Chuck and Alicia had dated a few times about four months ago. She ended the dating relationship when she recognized his scoping out every room for a hotter piece of ass to conquer. When she called him out on it, he agreed they shouldn’t be dating, but he liked their time together and asked if they could stay friends. Alicia thought that was a good idea, and they soon discovered they had similar interests and liked being friends, with the possibility of sex struck down permanently.

Alicia looked up from the editing bay console she was using to piece together her report on the riot. “I can’t get official confirmation on who was at the riot tonight. I have several people telling me who was there,” she said, patting her notebook and sliding back in her chair to the neighboring workstation before continuing to confide in her friend, “but the ending of the riot is kinda sketchy at best, and I can’t get any confirmation as to who supposedly stopped everything from exploding beyond the restaurant.”

“Wait a second. What are you talking about?”

Alicia understood Chuck was a decent guy and a better friend, but he was not the sharpest knife in the drawer. “You know about the riot tonight, right?”

He nodded as he took an empty seat.

“Well, the story I’m getting is that YungBalla’s entourage was drinking too much and too soon. When they met up with Olivia King’s group for the pre-concert meal, things got quickly out of hand – too much testosterone and not enough female attention.”

Chuck nodded his understanding and leaned back in the chair, motioning for Alicia to continue her story. “So, eventually, YungBalla’s people started throwing food and getting into arguments with other diners in the restaurant.”

“Okay, I’m with you so far,” Chuck replied in understanding. He had learned Alicia had a problem elaborating a little too much when being quick and to the point was a much better way to make a news story. “I mean, it sounds like you got the nuts for the story. What exactly are you trying to nail down from those official sources?” he asked.

Alicia forced out a deep breath she didn’t know she was holding. She leaned over to her reporter’s notebook and flipped through a few pages before finding her most up-to-date notes on the riot. “Well, from a couple different sources, it was one of the other diners there tonight responsible for beating up more than half of YungBalla’s crew. He was the one who stopped the riot before it got way out of hand and did more property damage or maybe in hurting people. The descriptions have him described as some sort of mountain of a man.

“When SAPD arrived and began detaining people, he was initially put into handcuffs and even tased a few times by the cops. He was separated from the track-suited hooligans who hang out with YungBalla,” she mumbled toward the end of her rant.

“Wait a second. Isn’t YungBalla that horse’s ass who got his crew into that mixed martial arts shit, and they have been causing trouble everywhere they go since?” Chuck checked, and Alicia nodded. “All right, now I get you. You’ve got a possible superhero, and you can’t confirm it.”

She nodded while absentmindedly resetting a video file to the beginning on the workstation. “The station purchased the video from a stringer who happened to be the first on the scene. Supposedly, this guy got there before the police did and filmed the tracksuits as they locked the entrance to the restaurant to keep anyone from leaving,” she added.

“Do you at least have some decent art?” he asked, leading to the critical point for TV news.

“Well, it’s not great, but it is something. We got a lot of tracksuits being hauled out of the restaurant and tossed into police vans and a bunch of others by ambulance,” she explained.

“Ambulance?”

“Oh, yeah. It looks like this mountain of a Samaritan...” She paused and quickly fumbled through her notebook to frantically write down an idea.

At the same time, Chuck pointed at her to indicate she found a remarkable turn-of-phrase to use in the piece or subsequent ones. It sounded like an excellent line for the anchor to work into the introduction lines before cutting to the story.

“Okay, so it looks like he beat the fuck out of several of the track-suited punks and even saved a couple of the personal security guards working for either Olivia King or Leni Klum. I can’t confirm which one. Ooh, wouldn’t it be great if it was both?”

“Whoa, pump the brakes there, Ali. I’d wait until you get firm confirmation before even hinting at something like that. I wouldn’t put it past anyone looking to get litigious since lawyers are going to be all over this,” Chuck warned.

Alicia nodded her understanding. She crossed out something on her pad. Chuck smiled at her and then spent a few seconds thinking of how to help her with the sweeter parts of the story.

“So what kind of footage did you get from the stringer?” he directed.

He picked up a copy of the requisition form everyone used to track the payment to the stringer, determined by how much of his footage they will use on the TV story and what they eventually put online. According to the form, they would make the full, unedited video version available online and give the stringer a flat fee. It wasn’t cheaper, but it did make it easier to keep track of the payment information for the reporter who authorized buying the footage, the station, and the stringer.

“Oh, Joey Kingler. He’s all right, but yeah, now I have a better idea of why you’re worried about the film,” Chuck said understandingly. “Come on, let’s check it out.”

Joey Kingler was an adolescent in a boomer’s body. Ten minutes of fast-forwarding through some unusable footage, either out of focus or entirely too focused on cleavage, passed before something caught Chuck’s eye.

“Hold up a sec! Can you roll back about ten seconds?”

Chuck let Alicia pilot the editing software to own the story completely. He was only there to offer advice. “There! That big bastard sitting on the stairs,” he nearly yelled. He tapped the screen for emphasis.

Alicia rewound the video and paused it when the large man with the shredded and stained shirt remnants draped over his body became centered in the frame. He was seated on the stairs leading up to the restaurant’s second floor. He was surrounded by a half-dozen men dressed in identical tracksuits receiving medical care. Police talked to some of them, trying to determine their parts in the riot. Across the floor, more track-suited men held bags of ice over swelling wounds on various body parts.

The enormous man sat alone, hands behind his back, and an overall pissed-off aura wafted off him. Alicia refocused the shot and framed him in the center of the on-screen view. She then continued the video at double speed to get an overview of what had happened to him.

“Shit! They tased him, and he didn’t react. I’ve never seen anyone be able to just shake off being tased,” Chuck crowed.

“Oh, yeah. Didn’t you do that story with the Sheriff’s office for the daytime show and get tased to show what really happens?” Alicia teased.

“Ugh,” Chuck rolled his eyes and leaned back into the chair again as Alicia openly laughed. “Don’t remind me. Don’t remind me.”

“Awe, fuck off, Ali.”

She let another chuckle out and turned, focusing back on the video. A higher-ranking police officer reached the mountain with another individual in a long-sleeve shirt and tie. The second man was likely the restaurant manager. They watched as a sneering police officer, the same one that had tased the handcuffed man, glowered over him and seemed frustrated.

Apparently, on orders from the higher-ranking officer, the tasing officer reached to cut off the zip ties used to keep the man under control. However, before he could, the mountain stood up and snapped the zip ties in one move, letting the pieces fall to the floor. He caught a clean towel from the restaurant manager, took the stairs up to the next floor, three steps at a time, and caught a young, crying girl that jumped into his arms before he walked further into the upstairs restaurant.

“Is that...?” Chuck mumbled to himself as he jumped out of his chair. “Hang on!” he yelled as he ran out of the editing bay and into the newsroom next door.

Alicia stared, flabbergasted, as her friend and colleague launched out of the room. She looked at the slightly out-of-focus face of the large man before he powered out of the zip ties.

“Greg! Greg! Where the hell are you?” he called out.

Chuck comically poked his head in and out of each office, circling the vast sea of cubicles around the large, open-spaced center of the TV news station offices.

“Christ, Chuck! What the hell are you yelling about?” the balding lead sports anchor and head of the sports department, Greg Simmons, yelled back while coming out of the men’s room.

Chuck jogged up to his boss and mentor, quickly grabbing him by the arm and pulling him off balance. “Greg, come with me. I need you to see something, and tell me I’m not crazy!”

Alicia heard the two coming around the corner and rolled back in her seat from the console for Greg to look at the screen.

“Why are you showing me a picture of Mayhem covered in food and surrounded by cops and what looks like a bunch of thugs in terrible tracksuits?” Greg had a history of yelling at younger workers and was one of the biggest headaches for the Human Resources department.

“I thought so,” Chuck stood up straight and looked smug.

“Who?” Alicia was lost.

“Mayhem. He’s a defensive end for Roosevelt High School. Damned good player. He’ll probably be the number one football recruit when it’s time for him to go to college. If he’s as good as he’s looked, he’ll be in the NFL, no question,” Greg answered the gobsmacked reporter seated in front of the editing console. “But I still have a question. Why the hell were you screaming like a madman in the newsroom?” Greg was almost yelling himself.

Chuck began by gesturing to calm the older reporter down before he possibly blew his lid. “Greg, this is footage from that riot at the restaurant earlier tonight with that rapper and his singer girlfriend.”

“Anybody else have this?”

Alicia jumped in to answer. “We had a stringer who got there early, and no one else saw what he saw or got on tape.”

Greg was quiet for a few seconds, and a huge grin took over his face as he lowered himself into a seat and growled, “Show me.”

One of the Murphy family SUVs pulled into their home driveway. A few seconds behind the Murphys, the Matthews pulled into their driveway. Everyone slowly pulled themselves out of their respective vehicles. With waves and wishes for a good night, the Murphy and the Matthews families silently went inside their respective homes.

Tim heard his cell phone ringing in his room. He hated the thing and didn’t want to keep looking at it every time it vibrated with calls. The system thought too many things were essential news items he needed to read about then and there. He made it a point to leave the phone at home.

Tim sat at his desk, flipped the phone right-side up, and saw several people had called since they left for dinner, but it was Johnnie Boynes calling.

“Yo, Johnnie. What’s up?”

“What’s up? What’s up? Mother fucker rescues Olivia King and whoops YungBalla69’s ass, and first thing he says to his best friend is, ‘what’s up?’ What the fuck, dude?”

“How did you hear about this already? I just walked in the door from the whole thing.”

“You ain’t answered me yet!”

“So you want the story?”

“Yes, motherfucker, yes!”

The call-waiting ding interrupted Tim before he could begin. He pulled the phone away from his face and saw it was Jeff Smith. “Hang on. That’s Jeff calling on the other line.”

“Hey, Jeff, what’s up?” Tim lightly slapped himself on the forehead.

“What’s up with you? You all right? I just saw on the news how you were in the middle of a riot downtown, and you were arrested by the cops!”

Tim almost started laughing but kept his feelings to himself. “I’m good. And no, I wasn’t arrested. I was with my parents and sister, so I wasn’t gonna get in trouble. Can you wait a sec? I’ll tell you the story, but I got Johnnie on the line, also. I’ll put us all together, and I can tell the story once, and you guys can tell everybody else. How about that?”

“Yeah, that’s cool. I’ll take notes,” Jeff joked.

Juanita was seated on the side of the bed, lightly sobbing. She had been able to hold it in until they got home, and Raymond had considered that a minor miracle. Juanita was an emotional person and subject to fits of anger or despair, depending on the situation.

“How in the world did he survive all that? I mean, I saw several of those assholes just beat the holy...” Juanita mumbled before succumbing to another bout of sobbing. She was working on keeping quiet for the well-being of her daughter. “They hit him so much, and he didn’t even acknowledge the hits. He just kept mowing them over.”

Raymond kept quiet as he continued hugging her and letting her emotions pour out in a controlled manner. After a couple of minutes, Juanita was more coherent and aware of where she was and who she was with.

“It’s all right, darling. Just remember his...” Raymond paused and looked over her shoulder to the bedroom door. It was securely closed, as he’d left it when they entered it. “Remember his friends.”

“Well, sure, Ray, but he didn’t even react to the hits.”

“Well, I’m sure he felt them, but he didn’t react because he didn’t have time to react. He was in the middle of something and needed to finish it to protect all of us. I’m pretty sure a regular person could have done the same thing – it’s the adrenaline – but your son’s got adrenaline for his adrenaline. As to not reacting, think about when he plays. He’s got bigger guys than those chumps in matching outfits trying to beat his ass. He just pours over them as well. Only difference is this time, he wasn’t smiling.”

Juanita was still sniffling, but the sobbing had run down significantly. She got up and commandeered the master suite’s bathroom. She giggled when she opened the door, threw a towel at her husband’s face, and cooed, “I’m gonna take a bubble bath. Go check on the kids. Then come and check on me.”

Raymond got up off his knees, stuck his head through the partially-opened bathroom door, and gave his wife a love-felt kiss. He slowly backed away from the door and turned to complete her orders.

A few steps into the hallway, Raymond could hear a radio going in the main bathroom. He briefly wondered which child was taking a shower when he recognized his daughter singing along with some new K-Pop song the younger kids sang along with incessantly. His eyes momentarily rolled into the back of his head while he continued his trek down the hall to his son’s room.

Tim’s door was closed. A moment after Raymond knocked, Tim answered, carrying a throw-away plastic bag from the local grocery store. The remnants of his destroyed dress shirt were inside. He was tying the ends together to throw it away.

“Hey, Pop! What’s up?” Tim asked as he sat down at his desk and began removing his shoes.

“Just checking on you. You okay after all that?”

“Oh, I’m fine. My phone was blowing up when we got home, though.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. First Johnnie, then Jeff, checking if I was arrested.”

“I don’t know about your friends, Tim,” Raymond smiled and shook his head in disbelief. Tim showed his confusion when his father began shaking with laughter. “Your friends thought you were in jail, so they called you on your phone.” The laughing was infectious, and both father and son enjoyed an excellent emotion-cleansing laugh together.

“While officials still have not fully accounted for what happened here tonight, Bohanon’s will be closed for the next couple of weeks while they make repairs.” Alicia Martinez smiled into the camera while standing outside Bohanon’s in downtown San Antonio. “This is Alicia Martinez, KSAT-12 news, reporting.”

Reporters from other TV stations and some newspapers were stunned by her report since no one else had footage of the arrests. The police did a great job of keeping everyone away from the scene. No other reporters could confirm which celebrities or their entourages were there or involved with the riot. No one else knew that the most significant high school football player in the San Antonio area was possibly involved.

When the red light over the camera turned off, the other reporters began shouting at Alicia. They wanted to know more details about the involvement of YungBalla69, his girlfriend, international model and singer/songwriter Olivia King, and up-and-coming model Leni Klum, daughter of former Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover model Heidi Klum.

“Fellas, sorry. I can’t tell y’all anything more. You’ll just have to read the story on our website to get more!” She waved goodbye to the other reporters as she helped pack the gear into the station van to return to the studio. None of the reporters were mad, but they were all green with jealousy.

While Alicia was returning to the station, she began looking forward to the cheers from her fellow reporters. The more experienced reporters, who did not get a whiff of even half of the confirmed information she had for her report, would be read the riot act by their bosses for losing out on the juiciest meat of this story. The next day was sure to be rough for everyone involved because every other reporter was looking for their hunk of steak from this very juicy story.