Hard News

by Jeffery Deaver

  Sutton said, "We've got a story conference on Friday. Bring your proposed script. You'll present to both of us and be prepared to defend every goddamn line. Got it?"

  "You bet."

  Sutton started to leave the office. She paused and said in a soft voice, "I'm not very good at praise. Just let me say that there aren't many people who would've stuck with it long enough to do what you did." Then she frowned and the old Sutton returned. "Now get some sleep. You look awful."

  "THIS IS THE STORY OF A MAN CONVICTED OF A CRIME HE didn't commit unjustly...."

  Uh, no.

  "... of a man unjustly convicted of a crime he didn't commit..."

  Well, sure, if he didn't commit it it's unjust.

  "... the story of a man convicted of a crime he didn't commit..."

  Words were definitely the hard part.

  Rune spun around in her desk chair and let out a soft, anguished scream of frustration. Words--she hated words. Rune saw things and she liked seeing things. She remembered things she saw and forgot things she was told. Words were real tricky little dudes.

  "This is the story of a man convicted of a crime he didn't commit, a man who lost two years of his life because ..."

  Why? Why?

  "... because the system of justice in this country is like a big dog..."

  A dog? Justice is like a dog"? Are you insane? "Crap!" She shouted. "Crap, crap, crap!" Half the newsroom looked at her.

  What is Lee Maisel going to say when he reads this stuff? What's Piper going to say?

  "... because the system of no, because the justice system in this country, no, because the American justice system is like a bird with an injured wing ..."

  Crap, crap, crap!

  FRED MEGLER WAS AS ENTHUSIASTIC AS COULD BE EXpected, considering that his lunch was two hot dogs (with kraut and limp onions) and a Diet Pepsi and considering too that his view while he was eating was the Criminal Courts Building--the darkest, grimiest courthouse in all of Manhattan.

  And considering finally that one of his clients, he explained to Rune, was about to be sentenced on a three-count conviction for murder two.

  "Stupid shmuck. He fucking put himself away. What can I say?"

  Megler, still skinny, still gray, was chewing, drinking and talking simultaneously. Rune stood back, out of the trajectory of flecks of hot dog that occasionally catapulted from behind his thick, wet lips. He was impressed with her story about Frost even as he tried not to be. He said, "Yeah, sounds like Boggs might have a shot at it. Not enough to reverse the conviction, probably. But the judge might go for a new trial. I'm not saying yes, I'm not saying no. There's new evidence, then there's new evidence. What you're telling me, this was evidence that could have been discovered at the time of the trial."

  "I was sort of wondering about that. How come you didn't find Frost?"

  "Hey, I was making minimum wage on that case. I don't have an expense account like you newspeople do. I don't sit around at five o'clock drinking manhattans in the Algonquin."

  "What's a manhattan?"

  "A drink. You know, rye and vermouth and bitters. Look, the Boggs trial, I did what I could. I had limited resources. That was his problem. He didn't have any money."

  The tail of the last hot dog disappeared. Rune had an image of a big fish eating a small fish.

  "Doesn't sound like justice to me."

  "Justice?" Megler asked. "You want to know what justice is?"

  Rune sure did and as she pressed the record button on the little JVC camcorder hidden from his view in her leopard-skin bag, Megler--who could probably have cited all kinds of laws on being taped surreptitiously--was polite enough to finish chewing and to take on a reflective expression before he spoke again. "Justice in this country is luck and fate and circumstances and expedience. And as long as that's true, people like Randy Boggs're going to serve time they shouldn't."

  "Will you handle the case?"

  "We had a conversation about my fee...."

  "Come on. He's innocent. Don't you want to help him out?"

  "Not particularly. I don't give money to homeless people. Why should I be more generous with my time?"

  "I don't believe you." Rune's voice went high. "You--"

  "Would your network pay my bill?"

  Something sounded wrong about it. She said, "I don't think that'd be ethical."

  "What, ethical? I wouldn't get into hot water for that."

  "I meant journalists' ethics."

  "Oh, your ethics." He swilled the last of the Pepsi, glanced down and noticed a spot on his navy-blue tie. He took a pen from his pocket and scribbled back and forth on the tie until the smudge was obscured. "Well, that's the net-net. I work, I get paid. That's carved in stone. But you got some options. There's Legal Aid. Or ACLU--those dips get orgasmic, they get a case like this. One of those three-piece do-gooders from Yale or Columbia or Hahvahd might get wind of it and pick up the case. So you run your story--I'll guarantee you, some scrawny little NYU graduate'll be banging on your door begging to get Boggs's phone number."

  "But that could take months. He's got to get out now. His life's in danger."

  "Look, I've got to walk back to that hellhole in twenty minutes and stand next to a man who--it is alleged--machine-gunned three rival gang members while he told Po-lack jokes to one of his mistresses. I have to stand there and listen to the judge explain to him that he's going to spend at least fifteen years in a ten-by-twenty cell. When he came to me he said, 'Fred, I hear good things 'boutchu. You get me off. You do that? You get me off.'"

  He laughed and slapped his chest. "Hey, I didn't get him off. He's not happy and he and his friends are killers. What I'm saying is, Boggs's in danger, I'm in danger. Think about it. You're in danger too. You're the one saying the cops, the prosecutor and your own Network're a bunch of dickheads. Life is dangerous. What can I say?"

  Megler looked at his watch. "Time to do my bit to beautify America and get some more garbage off the street."

  "I've got an offer," Rune said.

  The lawyer looked over his shoulder. "Make it fast. You don't keep drug lords waiting."

  She said, "You know how many people watch Current Events?"

  "No and I don't know the average annual rainfall in the Amazon either. Do I care?" He started up the stairs.

  "Depends on whether or not you want ten million people to see your name and face and hear what kind of incredible work you do."

  Fred Megler stopped.

  Rune repeated, "Ten million."

  Megler glanced at the courthouse door. He muttered something to himself and walked back down the steps.

  ME, OKAY. I WAS BORN IN ATLANTA, AND WE LIVED THERE for ten years before our daddy decided he was going to the land of greater opportunity which was the way he put it, and I can still remember him saying that...."

  From inside a thirteen-inch Japanese television monitor, the color unbalanced, too heavy in red, Randy Boggs was telling his life story.

  "Greater opportunity. I was scared because I thought we were going to die--because I got 'land of greater opportunity' confused with 'Promised Land,' which I remembered from Day of the Ascension Baptist Church meant heaven. At the time I was close to eleven and religious. Okay, I got myself into some pretty fair scrapes at school. Somebody, some older kid'd cuss, 'Jesus Christ,' and I'd get madder 'n a damp cat and make him say he was sorry and what happened was I got the hell beat out of me more times'n I can recall or care to."

  Editing videotape was a hundred times easier than film. It was an electronic, not mechanical, process and Rune thought that this represented some incredible advancement in civilization--going from things that you could see how they worked to things that you couldn't see what made them tick. She liked this because it was similar to magic, which she believed in, the only difference being that with magic you didn't need batteries. The ease of editing, though, didn't solve her problem: that she had so much good tape. Thousands and thousands of feet. This particular footage was from
the first time she'd interviewed Boggs and it was all so pithy that she had no idea what to cut.

  "... Anyway, it wasn't heaven we ended up in but Miami and some opportunity that turned out to be ... Man, that was just like Daddy. This was right after Batista and the place was lousy with Cubans. For years I didn't like, you know, Spanish people. But that was stupid 'cause a few years ago I went down to Central America--the only time I was ever out of the country--and I loved it. Anyway I was talking about before, when I was a kid, and I saw these wealthy Cubans who were no longer wealthy, and that's the saddest kind of man there is. You can see that loss in his walk, and the way he looks at the car he's driving now, which isn't nearly so nice as the kind he used to have. But what happened was they begun sucking up the jobs us white folks oughta've been having. Not that I mean it in a racial way. But these Cubans worked for next to nothing. They had to, just to get work and feed their families. Which were huge. I've never seen so many little shitters in one family I thought my daddy was bad. He'd practically roll over on Momma and bang, she was carrying. Home, I had six sisters and two brothers and I lost a brother in Nam, and a sister to ovarian cancer....

  "Daddy had a head for mechanics but he never applied himself. I'm just the opposite. You pay me and I'll sweat for you. I like the feel of working. My muscles get all nervous when I don't work. But I have problems with calculating. My daddy was out of work many days running. My eldest brother signed up, marines, and I was coming up on sixteen so naturally I considered doing the same but started working instead."

  The careers of Randy Boggs: warehouse picker, then carny hawker, then ride operator, then sweeper at a Piggly Wiggly then selling hot dogs on the highway near Cape Kennedy (where he saw the Apollo moon launching and thought he might like to be a pilot), then a stock boy, then fisherman, then janitor, then cook.

  Then thief.

  "I was to Clearwater once with Boonie, that was my brother, what I called him and a friend from the service. And we went to this drive-in and they were talking about the money they were making and how Boonie was going to buy himself a Bulltaco motorcycle, the kind with the low handlebars, and here I was--oh, heavens--I was nineteen and my brother had to pay my way into the theater? I was pretty embarrassed by that. So that night they went to a, well, you know, whorehouse--which wasn't all that easy to find in Clearwater--and they let me keep the car for a couple hours. What I did, I was feeling so bad about being busted flat, I drove back to the drive-in, which was just closing up, and I did this distraction--set fire to some brush near the screen--and when everybody ran out to see what was going on I ran into the booth and was going to grab the money. Only what happened was there was no money. It'd been packed up and taken somewhere already, probably the night deposit at the bank. I run out, right into one of the owners. I'm a thin man now and I was a thin boy then and he saw what was happening and laid me right out.

  "... You know what they got me for? I have to laugh now. They couldn't arrest me for stealing and they couldn't arrest me for burglary. They arrested me for arson. For burning a plant that wasn't more'n a weed. You believe that?"

  The tapes went on and on and on, endlessly.

  The format of the Current Events stories made Rune's job tough. Piper Sutton insisted that she herself be on camera for a good portion of each segment. Most of the story would be the interviews Rune was now editing. But every three minutes or so there would be a cut back to Sutton, who would continue with the story, reading off a TelePrompTer. Then, back to more tapes--the crime scene, atmosphere footage, interviews. The Bennett Frost revelation. Coordinating everything--the voice-over and the dialogue on the tape segments, and Piper Sutton's script--was overwhelming.

  ("And," Lee Maisel had warned her, "if you put a mixed metaphor or string of sibilants into her mouth, not even God can help you.")

  But so what if it was tough? Rune was ecstatic. Here she was--three in the morning, Courtney (and a stuffed bear) dozing near her feet--editing tape into what was going to be a sensational news story on the number-one-rated prime-time newsmagazine on network television. Best of all, the story would get seen by ten million people, who unless they made a snack or john run immediately after the Fade Out would also see her name.

  And, she considered for a moment, the best part of all: She'd be responsible for getting an innocent man released from prison--a man whose muscles got nervous when he couldn't move.

  Prometheus, about to be unbound.

  chapter 20

  THE CONFERENCE ROOM.

  The legendary conference room on the fortieth floor of the Network's skyscraper.

  It was here that the executives and senior newsmen planned the special coverage for Martin Luther King's assassination and Bobby Kennedy's and Nixon's resignation and the taking of the hostages in Iran and the Challenger explosion. It didn't look very impressive--yellow-painted walls, a chipped and stained oval table and ten swivel chairs whose upholstery had faded to baby-blue from the parent company cerulean. But the shabbiness didn't detract from the fact that history had been chronicled--and sometimes even made--in this room.

  Rune paused outside the teak door. Bradford Simpson, who hadn't been invited to the meeting, handed her the files he'd helped carry from her desk. "Break a leg," he said and gave her a kiss on the cheek--one that lasted a bit longer than your standard good-luck buss, she thought. He disappeared back to the lowly newsroom.

  Rune looked inside. Lee Maisel and Piper Sutton sat at the table. Behind them was a map of the world with red stickers showing where the Network had permanent bureaus. No more than a couple inches of space separated any of the red dots, except in the oceans and at the North and South Poles.

  This was a room Rune never thought she'd be in. When she'd applied at the Network for a job as assistant cameraman they'd told her there was no chance to move into news, producing stories herself; those slots were all reserved for newsmen with experience or star journalism school students.

  But here she was, a line producer working for Lee Maisel, and holding in her nervous hands a draft script, one she'd actually written for Piper Sutton.

  Rune fought down the assault of anxiety.

  She shifted the huge stacks of notes and tapes from one arm to the other. Her heart was beating wildly and her palms left sweaty stains on the black cassettes she held. Sutton noticed her and nodded her in. "Come on," she said abruptly. "What're you waiting for?"

  Maisel gave Rune a fast distracted glance.

  "Let's get on with it," Sutton said. "Let's see the script. Come on."

  Rune distributed the sheets and they both read in silence, except for the tapping of Piper Sutton's gold Cross pen, impatient, on the table. Stone-faced, they skimmed the sixteen pages. First Sutton, then Maisel, slid the sheets into the center of the table.

  "All right," Sutton said. "Why is it so important that you do this story?"

  This was right out of left field. Rune hadn't expected a question like that. She swallowed, looked at Maisel but he didn't offer anything. She thought for a moment and began to speak. She knew better than she could say (words, goddamn words again). As she responded to Sutton a lot of "uhms" and "what I means" slipped in. She corrected herself, said the same things twice. She sounded defensive. She tried to look into Sutton's eyes as she spoke but that just turned her mind to jam. Words came out, about justice and journalism's responsibility.

  Which was all true but Rune didn't, of course, tell Sutton one piece of the answer: She never once said, Why am I dying to do this story? Because part of me wants to be you. I want to be tall and have crisp blonde hair that stays where I put it, and walk on high heels and not look like a klutz. I want presidents of networks and corporations to look at me with envy and lust. I want a mind that's as cool and sharp as a black belt's body. I want to try your kind of power, not mine. Not like magic in fairy stories but the power to cast the strongest kind of spells--the ones that make it seem like you know exactly what to do every minute, exactly what to say....

&nbs
p; But she talked about the press, about innocence, about Boggs. When she'd finished, she sat back. Sutton must have been satisfied with the response. She said, "All right, let me ask you a few specific questions."

  These were even worse, though, because they were about things Rune should have thought of herself. Did you interview the original crime scene team? (Good idea; never occurred to her.) Did you talk to any of Boggs's earlier lawyers? (Rune didn't know he'd had any.) Did he ever see a shrink about his criminal tendencies? (She never asked.) The three of them debated for ten minutes and in the end both Maisel and Sutton nodded and said that the program should go forward as long as the show didn't claim Boggs was innocent--only that there were some serious questions about his guilt.

  That left only the question of when the story should air.

  They asked her opinion.

  Rune cleared her throat, shuffled papers, then said, "Next week's show."

  Maisel said, "No, seriously."

  And the battle began.

  "The thing is," Rune said, "he's got to get out of prison as soon as possible. They don't like him in there. They've already tried to kill him. I told you that."

  Sutton said, 'They'? Who's 'they'?"

  "Other prisoners."

  Maisel asked, "Why?"

  "I don't know. A guard told me he isn't popular. He's a loner. He--"

  "Today's Friday," Maisel barked. "Rune, to air next Tuesday, the whole program should have been shot and edited by now. It has to be in the computer by Monday. That just can't be done."

  "I don't think he'll last another week. They tried to kill him once and they'll try again."

  Sutton and Maisel looked at each other. Sutton looked back to her and said, "Our job is to report the news, not save anybody's ass. Boggs gets killed the story's still valid. We could--"

  "That's a horrible thing to say!"

  "Oh, come off it," Sutton said.

  Maisel said, "Piper's right, Rune. The story is the important thing, not springing a prisoner. And I don't see how we can do it. There just isn't time."

  "The script's all written," she said. "And I've spent the last three nights editing. I've got everything timed to the second."

  "The second," Sutton said in a tired sigh.

  Maisel said, "Piper'd have to tape on Sunday night or Monday morning."