I Am India Fox Read online

  I AM

  INDIA FOX

  VIRGINIA NOSKY

  ALSO BY VIRGINIA NOSKY

  The Fall From Paradise Valley

  To A Certain Degree

  White River

  Chance Encounters

  Blue Turquoise White Shell

  Pima Road

  Kachina

  I AM INDIA FOX

  By Virginia Nosky

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations and events are either a product of the author’s imagination, fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to any event, locale or person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Virginia Nosky

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or part in any format.

  Cover Designer: Maegan Beaumont – MW Designs

  Interior Design and Formatting: Deborah J Ledford

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1699025222

  DEDICATION

  For Richard, who is gone, but not from my heart.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1Chapter 2Chapter 3

  Chapter 4Chapter 5Chapter 6

  Chapter 7Chapter 8Chapter 9

  Chapter 10Chapter 11Chapter 12

  Chapter 13Chapter 14Chapter 15

  Chapter 16Chapter 17Chapter 18

  Chapter 19Chapter 20Chapter 21

  Chapter 22Chapter 23Chapter 24

  Chapter 25Chapter26Chapter27

  Chapter 28Chapter 29Chapter 30

  Chapter 31Chapter 32Chapter 33

  Chapter 34Chapter 35Chapter 36

  Chapter 37Chapter 38Chapter 39

  Chapter 40Chapter 41Chapter 42

  Chapter 43Chapter44Chapter 45

  Chapter 46Chapter 47Chapter 48

  Chapter 49Chapter 50Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Also by Virginia Nosky

  Acknowledgements

  Author Bio

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Stanford University Campus, January, 2008

  INDIA FOX RAN over the possibilities in her mind why the dean, William Cartwright, wanted to see her. She crossed the Stanford Mall on that cool, sunny Friday afternoon, the Santa Clara foothills like papier maché in the crystalline air. Her grades: Excellent. Late papers: None. Attendance: Perfect. She wasn’t worried, or even uneasy. She’d always had a fine relationship with the dean, had been in several of his classes and seminars. He might be said to look at her legs a little too intently, drape his arm around her shoulders a wee too much. Well, a lot too much, but that was all. He wasn’t the only male on the faculty who did that. She shrugged it off. She knew how she looked, and it wasn’t like most journalism majors looked, thank the God of Blondes.

  She stopped and rummaged in her backpack for a mirror and lipstick. Then she leaned over and tousled her thick long hair, straightened and checked her reflection. So artfully déshabille. Perfect. Attention to the little details paid off sooner or later. Sooner better than later.

  India hurried through the mission architecture arches and pushed open the thick glass door to the Journalism building, picking her way through the corridor crowded with changing classes.

  There was a tug at her arm. “Hi, Chaz,” she greeted the muscular redhead.

  “Wassup, India? You finished for the day?” He glanced at the little brunette beside him. “Tammy and me are going over to the Elbow Bend for a beer. Wanna come along?”

  “How about I meet you. Have a meeting with Dean Cartwright.”

  Tammy giggled and wiggled her small bottom. “Ole Wandrin’ Paws? Keep the door open, girl.”

  India laughed. “I don’t have the first clue what he wants, but whatever. Gotta go. It shouldn’t take long. See you in a few.”

  The dean’s outer office was deserted, his secretary gone for the day. His door was closed. India tapped lightly against the pebbled glass with her fingernail. Then pushed it open.

  “Come in, come in, India. Right on time as usual. Close the door, will you? Sit, sit.” He smoothed his sparse comb-over and waved her to a chair in front of this desk. “I’ve been going over your transcript.” He rubbed his hands together. “Excellent. Just excellent.”

  She sat, dropping her back pack on the floor beside her and looked up expectantly.

  “India. Unusual name. Always meant to ask you about it.”

  “I was born in New Delhi. My father was in the Foreign Service. It was his first posting and I guess it sounded romantic to him and my mother.”

  “Were you brought up there?”

  “Until I was three. Then my father went on to posts in the Middle East and Africa. I was sent to school in Switzerland for high school.”

  “Quite the well-traveled girl.”

  “Yes. And it’s why I wanted to major in journalism. I speak a number of languages. I think I’ve a lot to offer.”

  The dean leaned back in his big office chair, the diamond on his pinkie ring twinkling as he placed his hands behind his head. “Oh, yes. My, yes. That’s what I want to talk to you about, my dear.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’ll be graduating in June. What are your plans?”

  “Well, I’ve got my application and a demo out to a number of television stations. I sent some feelers to some newspapers, but print journalism is not my first choice. I did a lot of different things with the campus TV station, so I had good examples. It’s television journalism that really I want to do. I’d love to start in a big market. L.A., San Francisco on the west coast. New York eventually, and then on to overseas assignments.”

  “How do you see yourself in five years?”

  “I admire Amanpour. She’s always right in the middle of the hot spots, where the bullets are flying. I’d love that.” She laughed. “Some places my father was stationed weren’t unfamiliar with gunfire. What’s that Churchill said? ‘Nothing is as exhilarating as being shot at and missed.’ Something like that. Anyway, that’s what my plans are.”

  He watched India for a moment before he spoke. “KNSF-TV’s manager is a longtime friend of mine.”

  India swallowed a smile. The old goat’s got friends?

  “He’s very open to my recommends and I’ve placed several of my students there. You say San Francisco appeals to you. I can pretty much guarantee he’d welcome my candidate. Would that interest you? I think you’d do very well there.”

  India’s heart skipped a beat. She allowed herself to lean forward. “That would be a fantastic opening.”

  “I’ve had my eye on you for sometime.”

  Something in his tone made a small tick in India’s head. I’ll say you have. “Yes, I’ve worked very hard. I’ll get what I want. I always have. I’m very determined.”

  “Yes, I could see that.” The dean studied her, his face impassive. “I’m considering recommending you to my friend.”

  “Oh, Dr. Cartwright, how very kind of you. I…”

  “There would be, ah, some prerequisites before I could do that.”

  India felt a buzzing in her ears. She looked at him steadily. “Really?’

  His voice was rough. “What would you do to get that recommendation?”

  The room was very still, a phone rang in a distant office. A door slammed somewhere.

  Her eyes locked on his. She licked her lips, brushed a thick lock of hair back over her shoulder and lazily uncrossed her legs. “Anything.”

  There was a twitch at the dean’s mouth. “Anything?”

  “Anything, Dr. Cartwright.” She lowered her voice. “Anything at all.”

  He rose and moved to the office door and snapped the lock, then turned toward her. “Call me Bill.”

  She’d told Chaz
it wouldn’t take long. And it didn’t.

  CHAPTER TWO

  City Hall, San Francisco, September 2008

  THE SUN COATED the bay with diamonds, while the brick-red Golden Gate Bridge was slowly being swallowed up in the fog bank—a typical splendid city summer day that in hours would be drawing to a close.

  India’s heels clicked on the pink Tennessee marble floor of San Francisco’s City Hall Rotunda. She hurried up the imposing staircase on her way to the Board of Supervisors’ Meeting Room where the city’s governing supervisors held their weekly four o’clock meetings. There were important budgetary decisions on the agenda and the station had sent her to cover it. Not the most exciting reporting, but as a newbie with the top TV station in the city, she was expected to get the dull stuff.

  The huge room was only sparsely filled. She nodded to a couple of reporters from the Examiner and the Chronicle, like herself young and bottom-rung-of-the-ladder news gatherers. A smattering of tourists gawking at the frescoes and pillars, plus a whispering tour group of school children were herded along the periphery. That made up most of the attendees. The people mingling with the board members India assumed were those who had a stake in the budgetary items on the agenda.

  She sat and opened her laptop, the easiest way to take notes in these long, dry sessions. She’d get no air time in the evening news, unless something startling happened. She smiled ruefully to herself. Like the building falling down.

  The President’s chair stood empty on the high dais. The Clerk came in and sat immediately below, facing the President and the Board seated in a semicircle to his left and right. There sounded the faint hum of conversation as the observers waited for the proceedings to begin. The warm September sun streaming through the tall windows made the room uncomfortably hot.

  Bored, India reviewed her present situation with the top TV station in the city. Dean Cartwright had been good on his promise to recommend her to his friend. The incident in his office had not been pleasant. The dean had been in a hurry and perhaps nervous about being discovered—in a quickie, with her back jammed across the desk.

  Their subsequent trysts, from January to June, had been in various motels across the city. The dean’s familiarity with their locations strengthened her belief their rendezvous weren’t an unusual part of his life, not that she gave a damn. And it wasn’t as if he dragged it out. All in all, the time she had invested screwing him had been worth pretending she liked it. All she had to do now was get a few months under her belt, a few reporter-gigs on the air, then she’d begin looking at L.A.

  The President of the Board of Supervisors had come in and sounded his gavel. Now her immediate problem was to stay awake. Her long lunch and glass of wine with several of the staffers had made her sleepy.

  IT WAS AFTER five when India forwarded her notes to her desktop at the station, snapped the laptop shut and made her way out of the ornate hall.

  The City Hall Chronicle reporter, a chubby-cheeked dishwater blond Jake something-or-other, caught up with her on the wide marble staircase, his eyes rolling in disgust. “Well, that was just about the dullest three hours I’ve ever dozed through. Care to come and have a drink to regain consciousness. I find a good couple of frosty classic gin martinis a terrific antidote to the droning of the august council. Three is even better.”

  “Like to, Jake, but the boss wants a few pithy sentences for the ten o’clock news to show how the city fathers are spending our money. Gotta get back to the station and condense this mess of notes into something coherent that may or may not make it onto the air. You newspaper guys can bury this on page fifteen…did you feel something?”

  There had been a slight feeling of disorientation. Like her footing wasn’t solid.

  “Huh? No? I don’t think…”

  The two stopped abruptly on the marble floor of the rotunda and looked at each other. People hurried past them, anxious to get home at the end of the day.

  Jake grabbed her hand. “C’mon.”

  The two ran to the big entrance doors and out onto the steps of the ornate City Hall. Nothing seemed amiss. Traffic flowed out on Dr. Carlton B. Goode Place, the two block section of Polk Street that ran in front of the municipal complex.

  “There it is again,” India exclaimed. Others were now slowing and looking around uneasily.

  A low rumbling shook the air and the ground beneath their feet shifted imperceptibly.

  People ran, milled about. San Franciscans were used to being jiggled about, but always was the subconscious dread that this tremor was the “Big One.”

  “I’ve got to get to the paper.” Jakes’ voice was excited.

  “I’ve got the station van, c’mon, I’ll drop you. I’m parked down there in the special uses slot. We can find out what’s going on.” She was already speed-dialing the office.

  They got to the van when the ground trembled again. India jumped behind the wheel and whipped a U-turn onto Van Ness and headed to the station. She threw on the speaker to hear the editor, “You’ve got the big van. Get back here to the station and pick up a cameraman. The epicenter seems to be to the north out to sea. There might be a tsunami. Hurry the hell up. And be careful.”

  India grinned over at Jake. “Huh. Be careful, he says. Can you swim, Jake?”

  Jake talked rapidly into his cell phone and gave her a thumbs-up.

  The lobby, KSFW-TV

  JAGGED CRACKS RAN through the remaining plate glass windows of the television headquarters. Glittering shards and rubble strewn across the marble floors of the foyer showed through a haze of dust hanging heavily in the air. Outside, sirens screamed against an ominous rumbling, crashing and crumpling of city buildings.

  India Fox paced in front of her cameraman. “Dammit, quit your grousing, Georgie. You’re safer out on the street instead of in some building like this one that’s liable to fall on your pretty head.”

  “You’re fucking nuts. This place is quake proof. Everybody knows that.”

  “Grow some balls, Georgie and let’s go. Being chicken isn’t how you get ahead in this business. If it doesn’t kill you, you’ll get a raise, get to do the big stuff. I don’t want to be down at the City Hall beat all my life.” India grinned. “Besides, I’ll let you feel me up later if you get out there with me.”

  Georgie groaned. “India, don’t joke. This isn’t funny.”

  Her smile vanished. “They made you my cameraman. I’m not joking.” She turned and, picking her way, eased over the jagged glass of the big street door of KNSF-TV and stepped over a mound of broken window. She looked back. “They’re waiting upstairs for footage, Georgie. Are you with me? If you aren’t, give me the goddam camera. I’ll figure something out.”

  Georgie trudged after her, camera on his shoulder, to the network van at the curb.

  “I’ll drive,” India threw back at him. “We’ll get down to the Marina somehow. Ever seen a tsunami?”

  “Fuckin’ nuts, fuckin’ nuts,” Georgie muttered as he climbed into the passenger seat.

  India laughed. “Man up, Georgie. I’m going to make you a star, darling.” She turned the ignition and gunned the motor. The van squealed away into the littered street.

  CHAPTER THREE

  New York City, later the same day

  THE LUXURIOUS GLASS and chrome executive offices of Broadcast World News TV’s Evening Report were subdued. Late breaking news glued people to the ubiquitous television monitors positioned around the corridors and offices. The detritus of take-out food overflowed waste baskets. It was ten PM and the gathered staff was tired and glum. They’d been summoned from evening activities at the first signs of the big story. Sumner Hardwick, WBN’s Vice President of News, stared at the bank of monitors on the opposite wall. Chin in hand he slumped in a Hermann Miller designed chair covered in the soft leather of unborn Austrian calves, propped his Italian loafers on the custom desk of brushed aluminum and polished curly monkey pod wood.

  An hour before, San Francisco had experienced a Richter sca
le seven earthquake and the twelve screens were showing the various networks’ coverage of the disaster. A woman and two other men were in the office as well, attentive to the drama playing out on the television screens.

  The first wave of the temblor had occurred during the west coast five o’clock news slot and most of the local San Francisco stations were showing anchors at their desks, albeit most with a bad case of nerves.

  One particularly timorous newsreader spoke from under his desk. Some of the aftershocks made the pictures waver. Scenes of the damage were beginning to come in. A ramp to the Bay Bridge had sagged, but that graceful structure and the Golden Gate had escaped serious damage. There were sirens, whirling red, white and blue emergency lights, broken glass, street rubble, and gridlock traffic jams. Pedestrians rushed through the choking air to only God knew where.

  Hardwick’s attention was drawn to a screen in the bottom right hand corner of the array where a striking, disheveled blonde stood amidst the devastation, calmly describing the chaotic scene. An aftershock made her sway and struggle to catch her balance, but her delivery scarcely missed a beat. The director turned that monitor’s volume up.

  “…considering the severity of the quake, most people I’ve talked to are remaining relatively calm, hurrying to safe havens. San Franciscans are a hardy lot. They live with the specter of quakes daily and most have been through temblors before and remain…” Another shudder had momentarily blurred the screen, made the reporter stagger, then catch her balance again. “…remarkably blasé.” She brushed back a veil of honey-colored hair that had fallen over her eyes, leaving a dramatic dirty streak across her porcelain cheek.

  “Everyone I talked to has expressed…” The camera caught a glimpse of the reporter helping an elderly gentleman, crumpled at her feet, knocked down by the aftershock. He smiled nervously and scurried away as she straightened and resumed, “…has expressed relief that the quake, though the first shock occurred during rush hour when the bridges are heavily congested, the human toll has been surprisingly light.”