In a soft, spiny voice, Rune said, "I want the story to air next week." She folded her hands and put them in her lap.
They both looked at her.
Rune continued. "What's going to happen if somebody finds out that we could have saved his life and we just didn't get around to doing the story in time?"
Silence, as Sutton and Maisel exchanged glances. Maisel broke the tension, asking the anchorwoman, "What do you think?"
Rune felt her teeth squeeze together with tension. Sutton responded by asking, "What else was scheduled for that show?"
"The Arabs in Queens," Maisel said. "It's half edited."
"I never liked that story," Rune offered.
Sutton shrugged. "It's soft news. I hate soft news." She was frowning, apparently because she found herself agreeing with Rune.
"My story isn't," Rune said. "It's hard news."
Sutton said, "I suppose you'll want a credit."
For ten million people to see.
"You bet I do."
The anchorwoman continued, "But that name of yours. You'll have to change it."
"Not to worry," Rune said. "I have a professional name."
"A professional name?" Maisel was fighting to keep down the smile.
"Irene Dodd Simons."
"Is that your real name?" the anchorwoman asked.
"Sort of."
Sutton said, "Sort of." And shook her head then added, "At least it sounds like the name of somebody who knows what she's doing." She pulled her personal calendar out of her purse; the scents of perfume and suede followed it. "Okay, honey, first we'll get together and do a script--"
"A script?" Rune blinked. "But it's all finished." She nodded at the sheets in front of them.
Sutton laughed. "No, babes, I mean a real script. We'll meet at six-thirty tomorrow morning in the Current Events newsroom."
Rune's first thought was: Shit, a baby-sitter. Where'm I going to get a sitter? She smiled and said, "Six, if you want."
"Six-thirty'll be fine."
YOU DON'T HAVE A RIGHT TO TALK ON THE PHONE BUT they usually let you. A privilege, not a right. (One day, Boggs'd heard some prisoner yelling, "Gimme the phone! We got rights." A guard had answered, pretty politely under the circumstances, "You got what we give you, asshole.") But maybe because Boggs had been knifed or maybe because he wasn't a punk or just maybe because it was a nice warm day, the guard in charge of the mail and telephone room sent somebody to find him so he could take the call.
"Randy, how you feeling?" Rune asked.
"That you, miss?"
"You out of the infirmary?"
"Kicked my butt out yesterday. No pain to speak of, unless I stretch. I read that story. In the book you give me. I like it. Don't think I look much like him, though, and if I ever stole fire from the gods I sure don't know a fence who'd handle it...." He paused and she laughed, like she knew she was supposed to, figuring he'd probably spent a good amount of time thinking up the joke. Which he had.
"Guess what?" she asked.
"Don't know."
"I found a new witness."
"New witness?"
"Sure did."
"Well, my, tell me about it."
She did, from start to finish, all about Bennett Frost, and Randy Boggs didn't utter a single word the entire time she was speaking. In fact, not a single syllable or grunt or even a breath.
When she was through there was silence for a long moment.
"Well," she said, "you're not saying anything."
"I'm grinning, though, I'll tell you that. Damn, I can't believe it. You done yourself something, miss."
"What's going to happen now is I'm going to try to get the program on the air next week. Megler said that if he gets his name and picture on the story he'll do the motion for a new trial for free."
"Mr. Megler said that?"
"It hurt him to. I could see the pain but he said he would. He said if the judge buys it, and grants the motion, you could be out right away."
"The judge might not grant it, though, I suppose."
"Fred said that having the program on Current Events would really help. The judge'd be like more inclined to release you, especially if he was up for reelection."
"Well, damn. Goddamn. What do I do now?"
"You just take care of yourself for the next week. Don't go getting knifed anymore."
"No, ma'am ... One thing ... What you did ...?"
Silence.
"I guess I'm trying to say thank you."
"I guess you just did."
After they hung up, Randy Boggs, the grin still on his face, left the administration building to go find Severn Washington and tell him the news.
AS BOGGS LEFT THE BUILDING, ANOTHER PRISONER, A short Colombian, followed, then overtook him. Prisoners like this were what used to be called trusties in the prisons of the forties and fifties and were now generally known as pricks or assholes or scum. He'd just had a short conversation with the guard he worked for, the guard who randomly monitored prisoners' phone conversations. The prisoner smiled at Boggs, said, "Buenas dias," and walked ahead, not hearing what Boggs said in reply. He didn't particularly care what the response was. He was in a hurry. He wanted to get to Juan Ascipio as soon as he could.
chapter 21
RUNE DECIDED SHE'D FOUND A GREAT NEW DRUG, ONE that was completely legal and cheap. It was called "awake," and you didn't even take it. All you did was not sleep for thirty hours straight and it sent you right on the most excellent psychedelic trip you could imagine.
Gremlins climbed out of the Sony, dragons swooped down from Redhead lights and trolls had abandoned bridges and were fox-trotting on the misty dance floor of her desk. Weird amoeba were floating everywhere.
It was six P.M. on Tuesday and the reason for the hallucinations--and sleeplessness--was a small plastic cassette containing a one-inch videotape master of a news story to be shown in a few hours on that night's Current Events program. The story was called, "Easy Justice." The voice-overs were mixed, the leads and countdown added, the "live" portions of Piper Sutton's commentary inserted.
The tape, which ran the exact time allocated for the segment, rested somewhere in the bowels of the Network's computer system, which acted like a brilliant, never-sleeping stage manager, and would start the segment rolling exactly on time, at 8:04:36 P.M. The system would then automatically broadcast the Randy Boggs story for its precise length of eleven minutes, fourteen seconds, which was the Network's version of a quarter hour--a bit shorter than in Edward R. Murrow's time, but back then each additional minute of advertising didn't mean another half-million dollars in revenue the way it did today.
Rune squinted away a few apparitions and sat back in her chair.
The last few days had been a nightmare.
Piper Sutton had been satisfaction-proof. "What's this? What do you call this?" she'd shouted, pacing back and forth behind Rune, who sat terrified, willing her hands not to shake as she typed. "Is this supposed to be fucking poetry? Is it supposed to be art?"
Sutton would walk another ten feet, leaving behind a wake of cigarette smoke and Chanel No. 5.
Nothing she'd write could please Sutton. "Is that a fact? Is it supported? Who's your attribution? ... What the fuck is this? A figure of speech? 'Justice is like a lumbering bear'? Sure, I know a lot of lumbering bears. Our audience is really going to relate to lumbering bears. Just look out on Broadway Rune, you see many bears? Come on, babes ..."
Rune would write some more then Sutton would lean over and look at the word processor screen, focusing on the words like a sniper.
"Here, let me ...," Sutton would say and practically elbow Rune aside.
Tap, tap, tap... The delete code would chop another dozen sentences. Sutton's nails never chipped. They were like red Kevlar.
But finally the story had been finished.
Sutton and Maisel approved the completed script Monday night (the twenty-eighth draft). Sutton had recorded her on-camera portions and sent thos
e to editing, along with the clips from Rune's interviews and atmosphere footage. As she was leaving the studio Tuesday morning at one A.M. Rune asked her, "You, like, always spend this kind of time with producers?"
"No, I don't, like, spend this kind of time. Most producers can spell."
"Oh."
Now, though, Rune had nothing to do but try to stay awake and watch the show itself while she fought the sensation that she was levitating. There were a couple options. Her first choice: She wanted to be home watching it with Healy. But he'd gone to investigate a package sitting in front of an abortion clinic in Brooklyn. Another possibility: There was a bar not far from the houseboat-- Rune was a regular there--and everybody there would be glad to watch her program (fortunately this was Tuesday so no Monday night sports programs would create difficult choices for some of the regulars).
But that involved standing up and walking somewhere. Which at the moment was a feat Rune believed she was incapable of.
So, she sat where she was--at her desk. There was a nice color monitor in front of her and maybe--just maybe--Piper and Lee would come and join her. They'd all watch the show together and they'd tell her what a good job she'd done then take her out for a drink at some fancy bar afterwards.
Her thoughts shifted and she found she was thinking of Randy Boggs. She hoped the guards were letting him watch Current Events. That thought sounded funny--letting him watch, like when she was a kid and she'd begged her parents to let her stay up to read more fairy stories or watch TV.
"Hey, Rune."
She looked up, thinking the hallucinations were getting stranger: Some heavyset guy was disattaching himself from a camera and coming toward her. How did he do that? Like the monster in Alien, climbing out of the pipes to eat Sigourney Weaver.
"Rune," he said again. She squinted. It was Morrie Weinberg, the chief engineer of the show. He wore engineer clothes--blue jeans and a black shirt and a tweed jacket.
"Morrie," she said. He was frowning--the first time she'd ever seen him do this. Engineers are usually Rolaids-poppers but Morrie didn't understand the concept of stress. She had an image of him as a lumbering bear and that made her want to laugh out loud.
"What's up?"
"Your segment."
She giggled. "Uh-huh."
"What happened?" His voice fluttered.
The humor was leaving quickly. "Happened?"
"Jesus, how come you didn't get your segment in? 'Easy Justice.' It should've gone into the computer by three. It was already a day late. We had to have it there by three. You know that."
Her eyes swept around the studio. Was he saying what she was hearing? "I did. I gave it to Charlie around four. But he said that was all right."
Morrie looked at a clipboard. "This is a problem. It ain't in there now. We got eleven minutes of blank airtime starting at eight-oh-four-thirty-six."
"Check again." Her voice was edged with panic.
"I just did check. Five minutes ago."
"Check again, check again!" No laughing, no lumbering bears, no amoebae. Adrenaline had wakened her completely.
Morrie shrugged and made a call. He held his hand over the mouthpiece and said to her, "Zip."
"How did it happen?"
"The way it usually happens is the producer doesn't get the tape in on time."
"But I got it in." She ran through her vague memory. She didn't think she'd screwed up. It was too major a mistake even for her. It was like the pilot forgetting to lower the airplane's wheels before landing.
Anyway, there were other tapes. She had a dupe of the final cut. This was an inconvenience, not a tragedy.
Her hands were shaking. Morrie listened into the phone again. He looked up and said to her, "All right, your butt is safe so far. Charlie says he remembers you delivering it. He put it in the computer but somehow it's vanished. You have a dupe?"
"Sure."
He said into the phone, "We'll get another one up to you in five minutes." He hung up. "This's never happened before. Thank you, dear Lord, for dupes."
The gratitude was premature. The dupe was missing too. Rune's voice was shrill in panic. "I put it there. On my desk." She pointed frantically to an empty corner.
"Oh, man."
"I put it right there."
He stared skeptically at the bald spot.
She said, "I'm not making this up."
"Rough cuts?" Morrie was looking at his watch. "Shit, we don't have time. But we maybe--"
She opened a drawer. "Oh, no," she muttered breathlessly.
He said, "They're gone too?"
Rune was nodding. She couldn't speak.
"Oh, boy. Oh, shit. Eleven minutes of blank air. This's never happened before. This's never happened."
Then she thought of something else and ripped open her credenza.
The original tape she'd done of Bennett Frost, the new witness, and the dupe of that were also gone. All that remained of the story about Randy Boggs were scripts and notes and background interview tapes.
"We've been robbed," Rune whispered. She looked around in panic, feeling a terrible sense of violation. "Who was it?" She looked at Morrie. "Who'd you see on the set today?"
"Who'd I see?" he echoed shrilly. "A dozen reporters, a hundred staffers. That intern kid with the blond hair who was helping you with the story. Piper was here, Jim Eustice, Dan Semple.... I mean, half the Network walked through here today." Morrie's eyes strayed uneasily toward the phone and she knew what he was thinking: Somebody had to call Piper Sutton. The large quartz wall clock--timed, for all Rune knew, to the pulse of the universe--showed that they had forty-four minutes until Current Events was going to air. Forty-four minutes until it became the first prime-time television program in history to air eleven minutes and fourteen seconds of blank space.
THE ONLY THING THAT KEPT PIPER SUTTON FROM EXploding through the double doors into the newsroom was the live broadcast of Nighttime News With Jim Eustice, the Network's flagship world news show, now on-air thirty feet behind Rune.
But still she stormed ferociously toward Rune's desk. During the broadcast the veteran anchorman was so damn reassuring and smooth that even the crew enjoyed watching him. Tonight, though, only the head engineer and the producer kept their eyes on his craggy, square face. Everyone else in the huge studio gazed at Sutton and Maisel, as they hurried toward the Current Events desks like surgeons answering a code blue.
"What the fuck happened?" Sutton asked in a shrill whisper.
"I don't know." Rune felt the tears start. She dug her short nails into her palms furiously; with the pain the urge to cry lessened. "Somebody robbed me. They took everything."
Maisel looked at the clock above the control booth. "We don't have anything? Nothing at all?"
"I don't know what happened. I turned the tape in--"
Morrie said delicately, "She did. Charlie got it. He programmed it in. Sometime after four it disappeared."
"Son of a bitch. How long was that segment?"
Morrie consulted his clipboard but Rune answered from memory. "Eleven minutes, fourteen."
Sutton whispered furiously, "You should always make backups, you should--"
"I did! They were stolen too. Everything. Even the original tapes ..."
"Fuck," Sutton spat out. Then she turned to Maisel, whose mind must have been in the same place and known what she was thinking. There were three other stories programmed for Current Events that evening. But Maisel said they had nothing else finished that could be used as a replacement for "Easy Justice." He said, "We'll have to cancel the show."
"Can we go with Arabs in Queens?" she asked.
He said, "We never finished editing. We stopped all postpro for the Boggs story."
"What about the former-mayor profile?"
"Mostly unshot and a lot of unattributed quotes. It's legally hot."
"The Guardian Angels piece?" she snapped.
"We've got footage but there's no script."
"It's outlined?"
"Well, in general. But--"
"I know the story." She waved her hand. "We'll do that."
"What do you mean?" Maisel asked, frowning. "Do what?"
"We do the original three stories plus the Guardian Angels."
Maisel's voice rasped, "Piper, we'll have to cancel. We can slot a rerun." He turned to Morrie and started to say something. But she said, "Lee, a rerun of a news show? We'll go with the Angels."
"I don't understand what you're saying, Piper. We don't have a script. We don't have footage of you. We--"
"We'll go live," she said.
"Live?"
"Yep."
Maisel looked at Morrie. "It's too late, isn't it?"
He answered calmly. "We can't do half and half. We can shut off the computer and queue up the other stories by hand, using a stopwatch. Like in the old days. You'll have to be live in all of your on-camera commentary. Hell, we'll have to manually roll the commercials too and you know how many fifteen-second buys there are during Current Events? It'll be a nightmare."
"Then it'll be a nightmare." the anchorwoman said.
"But, Piper," Maisel said, "we can slot something else."
She said evenly, "Lee, every TV guide, cable guide and newspaper in America shows that we're running a new Current Events tonight. You know what kind of questions it'll raise about the program if we go to a rerun or slip in something from syndication?"
"We'll say technical difficulties."
"There are no technical difficulties on my show."
"Piper--" Rune began.
But Sutton didn't even hear her. She and Maisel hurried off and Rune stayed behind, in her cubicle. She curled up in her chair, the way Courtney did sometimes, drawing her legs up. She thought of all the work she'd have to do over again. She felt numbed, stunned, like somebody had died.
Uh-uh, she thought. Like someone was about to die.
Randy Boggs.
AT 7:58 P.M. LEE MAISEL WAS SITTING IN THE HUGE CONtrol booth overlooking the Current Events set. The booth was filled with three times its normal staff (most of whom were from the Jim Eustice crew and had experience with the rare and demanding art of live production).
Maisel hadn't done live producing for years and he sat forward, sweating and uneasy, like the captain of a torpedoed ship still doing battle with an enemy destroyer. He was holding an expensive digital stopwatch in his hand, gripping it tightly.
Maisel and Sutton had managed to write half the Guardian Angels piece and get it, handwritten, into the TelePrompTer, but at 7:56 they'd had to break off. So Sutton had said, "I'll ad-lib."