I point Glenn’s attention to the monitor in front of us and watch the first video of the governor of New Jersey and the girl with the blacked-out face in Franklin’s massage room.
Big portions of it are, of course, cut to protect the innocent. Most of the content is too graphic to show on the morning news but Jackie has edited enough of them together to show the face of the governor, the attorney general, the senator from New York, and a few other higher-ups that regular people would recognize.
“This is hard to believe,” Glenn says, shaking his head. “But at the same time, the videos… How did you get these?”
“I have a source and he or she is willing to come forward at the right time and place. Given the power of the people that are involved in the crime, I decided that the best way to expose the truth is to show the American people directly.”
I’m about to say something else but before I know it, Franklin jumps on stage and punches me in the face. Blood gushes into my mouth and I make a fist and swing at him. I make contact and he falls to the floor. I punch him again and again. When I take a breath, he raises his hand and knocks the wind out of me.
I pause for a moment to try to catch my breath and when I look around all I see are phones pointing in my face.
Everyone is recording everything.
“How could you do this to me?” Franklin whines and punches me again in the ear.
My head starts to buzz and I lose my footing.
“How could you do this to them?” I bark back, bashing him in his chin. He falls down again, this time without getting up.
Aurora rushes out of the control room and grabs onto my hand. I look down at my knuckles. The skin has been torn off and they’re bleeding profusely.
Being the professional that he is, Glenn doesn’t stop reporting. It’s almost as if having a real story right before him, unfolding right here in the studio, invigorates him. Instead of trying to cut to a commercial to protect the station, he grabs the microphone and walks right to me.
“Henry Asher,” he asks, “can you tell me what just happened? How are you feeling? How did you feel having your boss, the CEO of this company, jump right out here on stage and punch you on live television, in front of all of America?”
“Well, I was a little bit surprised,” I say, still trying to catch my breath. I take a few forceful breaths and add, “Perhaps I shouldn’t be. We have exposed his lies and his secrets and now everyone knows who he really is.”
Franklin doesn’t get another chance to hit me.
The FBI are already here. They have been waiting in the wings and they put him in handcuffs right in front of all of the cameras.
That was the deal. They promised Aurora that they wouldn’t arrest him until the live broadcast.
It took her some time to convince them. They weren’t sure it was such a good idea but she promised them that he would incriminate himself.
She was right.
34
Henry
After they arrest Franklin, Aurora follows me to the makeup room and applies ice to my face.
Neither of us know what to say for a while. This is only the beginning of the story. She checks her phone and scrolls through Twitter.
Stories and comments start to appear like an avalanche. The first story to hit, the one that Franklin saw on his phone before he tried to break into the control room, was written by me for Tate News, an online magazine owned by Tate Media that Aurora arranged placement for.
I spent all night last night writing up all the details, quoting and verifying sources when I could. The story is developing and ongoing.
Aurora is not the only eyewitness as there were other employees who have seen things but have been forced to sign nondisclosure agreements to keep quiet. When I told them about the tapes, they finally decided to come forward.
At first, I was categorically against Aurora’s plan. I wasn’t sure that we would be able to pull it off.
So many things had to go right.
I had to write the right story. The story had to be published. Besides the fact that it also had to be fact checked by the editor.
Nothing was set in stone.
We had agreed on the date and everyone promised to keep their word to not disclose it until it was published, but that was just one part one of the plan.
Aurora wanted to expose Franklin on television. Live.
We had no idea what kind of relationship he had with his anchors or the producers of the morning show so we couldn’t let any of them in on what I was about to do.
So, we hatched the plan that I would come on the show to promote my podcast. Franklin had arranged the whole thing, but little did he know that the story would actually be about him.
When he found out, he tried to get into the control room and stop it from happening but Aurora was already there. She had locked the doors and she told them to keep rolling. The more I talked, the more the executive producer believed us.
So, when she put in the cut-up video files to broadcast for everyone to see, Franklin couldn’t stop her.
None of this was a given or certainty.
There was a lot of luck involved.
The one thing that I did not expect him to do was to rush the stage but that just added to the sizzle of the story. After that, social media took over and it blew up.
“How is this?” Aurora asks, pressing the ice to my eye.
“It’s fine,” I say, pushing it away.
In reality, the ice is more painful than the bruise.
Aurora continues to scroll through her phone, checking Twitter and Facebook and the stories directly on Google News.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“The news outlets seem to be picking it up. It’s definitely trending. More and more people are retweeting and talking about it. Your article has a thousand comments already.”
I lie back in the chair and smile.
“Okay,” I say quietly to myself.
I did something good. I don’t know what’s going to happen from here but at least I did my part.
“Everything is going to work out, right?” Aurora asks, taking my hand in hers.
I snap out of the trance and look into her big, wide eyes. Suddenly, I remember that she had to do a lot more to get here than I did.
I wrote the article, I told the world what was going on, but it was she who did all the dirty work.
If she didn’t get those recordings, if she didn’t risk her life, and if she didn’t let him hurt her, to some degree, none of this would’ve happened.
The FBI assured me that they were going to press charges. We gave them a lot of evidence. There’s still a lot to go through but it has to work out.
Aurora shakes her head, clenching and unclenching her jaw.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says with tears welling up in her eyes. “I want to be happy and I want to celebrate but I just have this heavy heart. What if we haven’t done enough?”
There’s a knock at the door and Agent Richter walks in. I’ve only talked to him once before, when I came into his office and told him about our plan.
Then I invited him to the studio to watch the show unfold in real time. I wasn’t sure if he was going to show up. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if he even believed me.
He walks over to me and shakes my hand.