Chapter 72

The first stop in Dallas went perfectly.

The disc jockey was tame. He wasn’t interested in making a name for himself by ambushing Liz. He acknowledged that the national media had picked up on Steven Morton’s “gossip” before we went on the air and asked her if she wanted to make a comment.

Liz said that she made it a habit never to respond to innuendo and the guy said that was fine by him. He was more than happy to be the voice that brought the official announcement to the listeners. The station had begun promoting a live interview with Liz during their heaviest listening hours on Sunday and Monday.

After a bit of general small talk, letting Liz plug her disc and talking about the concert in Jacksonville, he got to the heart of the interview.

“I understand you’re visiting Dallas for a specific purpose,” he said.

“I am,” Liz said in a bright voice. “I’ve had a great time on this tour. I’ve met a lot of great people and received so much support. We’ve decided that we don’t want it to end just yet. So I’m in Dallas to announce that we’re going to put on one final show for the Fighter Tour. It’s going to be right here in Dallas and we’re hoping for a hundred thousand fans to come out in two weeks to see us wrap up what has been the finest tour we’ve put on so far.”

“Fantastic!” the guy said – even though he’d known about the concert for at least five days (and probably for longer). “It’s pretty short notice. When will the tickets go on sale?”

“Thursday morning at 8 a.m.,” Liz said. “They can be found online at the Radio Free Nashville website until 2 p.m. Central Time. Then they will be available at all major ticket retailers and through the stadium box office.”

“Excellent,” the man replied. “Now, as you know, the stadium here holds the record for the largest indoor concert. Are you hoping to break that mark?”

“No,” Liz said, shaking her head even though only the disc jockey, his engineer and I could see it. “The King is one of my musical heroes! I think it’s only fitting that he keeps the record. He has all the others: Most Number One songs; Entertainer of the Year nine times; Single of the Year 11 times. We are going to keep the number of tickets available to 500 less than his record. He earned that mark and I want him to hold onto it forever.”

The man Liz spoke about was a Dallas native and a living legend in the genre – and he had agreed to be one of the special guests to come on stage (but had asked Liz not to announce his presence since he no longer performed in public after his retirement).

“But I wouldn’t be upset to see my name beneath his in the record books,” Liz said with a coy laugh.

The segment moved into discussing a few of the others that Liz had made arrangements to join her. This was news to the disc jockey (because I hadn’t known when I briefed him during my earlier visit). It was an impressive list of country music stars from past and present.

“We’re taking the unprecedented step of making this a full four-hour show,” Liz said. “There are going to be a few other surprises but I want to keep those to myself.”

“A woman’s prerogative,” the disc jockey replied with a laugh. “I’ll tell you what: I’m going to make sure our morning host reminds our listeners as the time approaches. Do you want to give out the ticket details one more time?”

Liz listed the places the public could find the sales and I held up a piece of paper and pointed to a word I’d written in magic marker. Liz’s lip turned down for the briefest of moments.

“I also want to mention that, even though this show is going to be longer than my usual events, the ticket prices are going to remain the same,” she said. “We’ve lowered the prices of the upper-level seating and kept the field seats the same as the other venues I’ve played. I understand about working families. I was raised in one. We hope we’ve been able to keep the prices to a level where everybody has fun and can walk away with a positive experience. As always, we will not permit wholesale ticket brokers to charge a premium for any seat. The last thing I want to do is to see someone shell out a thousand dollars to a broker for a seat that would have cost a tenth of that at face value.”

“That’s why everybody should be up and at their computer at 8 a.m. Thursday,” the DJ said.

It hadn’t been easy to convince Liz to mention the prices. She had been adamantly opposed at the start but I was convinced that this information was crucial to getting people involved from the outset. Skye and Jill had come to my defense, pointing out that in order to ensure a sellout Liz needed to see at least half the tickets sold in the first eight hours. There would be a second media blast on Wednesday with the taped television interview and visits and calls to almost every country station in a 100-mile radius.

Then Liz would have an even tougher job. She would have to wait and see how things played out. I was already starting to dread Wednesday night but I buoyed my spirits with thoughts that Liz might want to keep her mind occupied with activities of a carnal nature.

“I don’t like talking about money,” Liz told me (again) on the drive to the television station.

I had gone almost 40 hours without sleep and I was wearing down. Liz had performed a concert, flown through the night and slept only a few hours. She was wearing down.

“Then don’t,” I said. “I’m not going to bicker with you over every little fucking detail. But stop asking my opinion on shit if you’ve already made up your mind.”

“Then you stop pushing your agenda when I’ve told you my decision,” Liz countered.

“If you’re so fucking smart why do you need us around?” I replied.

“I’m starting to wonder about some of that myself,” Liz told me. She turned to face Ryan on her opposite side and I looked out the window.

“You need to put on your happy face for TV,” Stephanie noted when we pulled up to the studio.

“Just give me a damned minute,” Liz said.

I violated protocol by exiting from the passenger side rear door. I was positive that I would find myself on Ryan’s shit list along with Liz’s but I needed to take a walk.

I wasn’t looking for accolades for managing to turn a potential fatal story into one that made Liz come out looking like the good guy but I thought that I might have proven that I knew what the fuck I was doing.

Apparently Hollywood wasn’t the only town that believed in “what have you done for me lately.”

“I know you’re beat,” Dom said as he came up beside me.

“I know,” I cut in. “I got out the wrong fucking door.”

“Well, yeah,” he said, patting me on the shoulder softly, “but I was talking about maybe finding a better time for your battles. She’s about to go into a studio and do a televised interview for the first time in five or six years and you decide now is the best time to lay into her.”

“Then she needs to pick better times to make me her fucking whipping boy,” I replied. “The last time I slept was Sunday night. It’s now almost supper time Tuesday. I’m too fucking tired to put up with whiny fucking bullshit.”

“I know,” Dom said ruefully.

“That’s all this is,” I said. “She doesn’t like it but she knows it has to be done. She bitches and moans about it and then gets on my ass instead of just fucking doing it like she expects everybody else to do. I’m not going to last long in this job if I have to constantly worry about what is or isn’t going to piss her off.”

“Just give it some time,” Dom suggested. “We’re all getting used to how you do things. You’re ... you’re sort of a maverick. You don’t really care how anybody looks at you. That’s hard for some of these people to understand. Liz is a professional entertainer and her image is important; Stephanie was an entertainer for a lot of years and she worries about it. Even Jill cares about how people look at her. You just ... say ‘fuck it’ and kick them in the nuts if they get out of line. You can’t really do that to Liz. She’s the boss.”

“She a boss that pays me to do a job that she doesn’t know how to do,” I corrected. “That’s the thing that nobody gets. Do you know how many people could have done what I’ve done in the last few weeks? Nobody making as little money as I’ve made, that’s for damned sure. I’m going to go $75,000 in the hole stopping something that really doesn’t affect me that much. Yeah, I did what I had to do and I did it because I care about her. But if I hadn’t wandered along when I did, you fucking people would be talking her off a ledge right now. It’s for damned sure that she wouldn’t stand a realistic chance of packing a 100,000-seat stadium in two weeks. Oh, and by the way, while I was sweeping up 10 years of debris that Liz managed to scatter across the country, I managed to put together a pretty decent marketing campaign for this show. And for this I get my ass jumped for daring to think I know how to do my fucking job. Fuck that! If I wanted this bullshit I could have stayed at the hospital.”

Dom nodded thoughtfully and then reached into his pocket for his phone. He sighed.

“The producer wants to discuss the segment,” he told me. “Are you up for it or I should I tell someone else to deal with it?”

“It’s my job,” I replied. “Unlike some people, I try to do what’s expected of me without a lot of drama.”

I took a deep breath and straightened my tie. I ran my fingers through my hair and then removed my sunglasses to rub my tired eyes.

“Ready,” I declared.

A middle-aged woman in a severe business suit greeted us when Dom and I entered. I hadn’t dealt with her directly, instead using my connections to set things up well over her head.

“We would prefer to do this live tomorrow morning,” she informed me.

“I know,” I said, feigning contrition. “I wish we could accommodate that. We can’t.”

It was a brazen fabrication. After much back and forth with my colleagues in San Diego, we had formulated an approach that would reach the maximum number of potential ticket buyers while limiting Liz’s exposure to any questions that might prove troublesome.

To that end, we had decided upon a targeted approach, giving first preference to terrestrial radio stations with an all-country format. After all, we reasoned that almost every person listening to a particular station would be acquainted with the genre and, likely, hold a favorable opinion of Liz Larimer. People with all tastes in music might tune into a television show. Even though television reached a broader audience we surmised we would reach more of the people willing to pay to see her perform by using the radio for our major push.

The second reason was just as important. Radio stations generally did not hire “hard” journalists to do their broadcasts and, thusly, the DJs were much more likely to veer away from any controversial topics.

Television stations were the opposite. They knew the fast way to leave the Dallas market for Los Angeles or New York was to be confrontational and look for the “gotcha” moment that the national feeds would pick up. My interactions with the television news crews in San Diego told me that the people working there weren’t any more a journalist than the idiots with a blog and a cell phone camera. They were just more telegenic.

So, I had no issue with marginalizing them.

“We’re willing to work around her schedule,” the producer pushed.

“Can’t be done,” I said firmly. “It’s this or we go elsewhere. Also, the format and topics have already been determined. Don’t stray or we’re out of here.”

“That isn’t how we operate,” the woman declared.

“It is today,” I cut in before she could get on a soapbox about her (likely fungible) ethics and standards. “The man whose name appears at the bottom of your paycheck has agreed. You don’t get to make that decision. If you think you do, give him a call before we waste any more time.”

The woman crossed her arms and I tilted my head as we engaged in a staring contest. I knew who had the bigger dick so I didn’t look away.

“Fine,” she said with a huff. “I need to talk this over with our on-air personality.”

“You do that,” I said. She stomped away and I rubbed my eyes again.

“What was that about?” Dom asked from my shoulder.

“I wasn’t sure what sort of information would be out there when I set this up,” I admitted. “In order to make sure that Liz wasn’t going to get ambushed I worked directly with the station manager and the owner to determine the format. This is a pretty big deal. Liz doesn’t do television and certainly not local television. They would have agreed if I wanted their ‘on-air’ personality to do the interview naked while astride a donkey. The producer just got another lesson in the fact that money talks and bullshit walks. They promoted the hell out of Liz’s appearance and now they have to live with the rules we’ve already established or I’ll pull the fucking plug and wreck their recording equipment to make sure that even a second of the interview is never seen.”

“Just take it easy,” Dom said.

“Oh, no, I told the station manager this face to face,” I said with a shrug. “He agreed that we could have control of the questions and the focus. He’s an advertising guy. He knew that ratings for this segment would be high. The fact they ran a commercial touting the interview so often means they’re charging a premium for the ad time. I’m certain he passed the word down the food chain ... and I made certain that he understood I was a completely serious about what I’d do if they fucked with me on this.”

Dom laughed and patted my arm again.

“Are you good with Skye’s idea of working for Liz?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said with a smile.

“I’m finding it isn’t easy to be around the same person 24 hours a day,” I confessed.

“I’m pretty sure that a lot of what you’re experiencing is the stress of what you’ve both been dealing with,” Dom told me. “You need to relax and let some of that bleed away. Get a good night’s rest and you two should take things easy.”