Hard News, Page 3

  Rune said, "I was going to do the story right. I know how to research. I know how to interview. I wasn't going to go with anything that wasn't ..." Oh, hell: corroborated or collaborated'? Which was it? Rune wasn't good with sound-alike words. "... backed up."

  Sutton calmed. "All right, what you're saying is you have a hunch and you want to check it out."

  "I guess I am."

  "You guess you are." Sutton nodded then pointed her cigarette at Rune. "Let me ask you a question."

  "Shoot."

  "I'm not suggesting that you not pursue this story."

  Rune tried to sort out the nots.

  Sutton continued, "I'd never suggest that a reporter shouldn't go after a story he feels strongly about."

  Rune nodded, wrestling with this batch of negatives.

  "But I just wonder if your efforts aren't a little misplaced. Boggs had his day in court and even if there were some minor irregularities at trial, well, so what?

  "But I just have this feeling he's innocent. What can it hurt to look into it?"

  Sutton's matte face scanned the room slowly then homed in on the young woman. She said in a low voice, "Are you sure you're not doing a story about you?"

  Rune blinked. "Me?"

  "Are you doing a story about Randy Boggs or about a young, ambitious journalist?" Sutton smiled again, a smile of fake innocence, and said, "What're you concerned with most--telling the truth about Boggs or making a name for yourself?"

  Rune didn't speak for a minute. "I think he's innocent."

  "I'm not going to debate the matter with you. I'm simply asking the question. Only you can answer it. And I think you've got to do a lot of soul-searching to answer it honestly.... What happens if--I won't say it turns out he's innocent because I don't think he is--but if you find some new evidence that can convince a judge to grant him a new trial? And Boggs gets released pending that trial? And what if he robs a convenience store and kills the clerk or a customer in the process?"

  Rune looked away, unable to sort out her thoughts. Too many tough questions. What the anchorwoman said made a lot of sense. She said, "I think he's innocent." But her voice was uncertain. She hated the sound. Then she said firmly, "It's a story that's got to be done."

  Sutton gazed at her for a long moment, then asked, "You ever budgeted a segment on a news program? You ever assigned personnel? You ever worked with unions?"

  "I'm union. I'm a camera--"

  Sutton's voice rose. "Don't be stupid. I know you're union. I'm asking if you've ever dealt with the trades, as management?"

  "No."

  Sutton said abruptly, "Okay, whatever you do, it isn't going to be as sole producer. You're too inexperienced."

  "Don't worry, I'm, like, real--"

  Sutton's mouth twisted. "Enthusiastic? A fast learner? Hard working? Is that what you were going to say?"

  "I'm good. That's what I was going to say."

  "Miracles can happen," Sutton said, pointing a long ruddy finger at Rune. "You can be assistant producer. You can report and you can ..." Sutton grinned. "like' write the story. Assuming you write more articulately than you speak. But I want somebody who's been around for a while to be in charge. You're way too--"

  Rune stood up and put her hands on the desktop. Sutton leaned back and blinked. Rune said, "I'm not a child! I came here to tell you about a story I think is going to be good for you and for the Network and all you do is insult me. I didn't have to come here. I could've gone to the competition. I could've just sat on the story and done it myself. But--"

  Sutton laughed and held her hand up. "Come on, babes, spare me, please. I don't need to see your balls. Everybody in this business has 'em or they'd be out on their ear in five minutes. I'm not impressed." She picked up her pen, glancing down at the document in front of her. "You want to do the story, go see Lee Maisel. You'll work for him."

  Rune stayed where she was for a moment, her heart pounding. She watched as Sutton read a contract as dense as the classified section in the Sunday Times.

  "Anything else?" Sutton glanced up.

  Rune said, "No. I just want to say I'll do a super job."

  "Wonderful," Sutton said without enthusiasm. Then: "What was your name again?"

  "Rune."

  "Is that a stage name?"

  "Sort of."

  "Well, Rune, if you're really going to do this story and you don't give up halfway through because it's too much work or too tough or you don't have enough chutzpah--"

  "I'm not going to give up. I'm going to get him released."

  Sutton barked, "No, you're going to find the truth. Whatever it is, whether it gets him released or proves he kidnapped the Lindbergh baby too."

  "Right," Rune said. "The truth."

  "If you're really going to do it don't talk to anybody about it except Lee Maisel and me. I want status reports regularly. Verbally. None of this memo bullshit. Got it? No leaks to anyone. That's the most important thing you can do right now."

  "The competition isn't going to find out."

  Sutton was sighing and shaking her head the same way Rune's algebra teacher had when she'd flunked for the second time. "It's not the competition I'm worried about. I'm worried that you're wrong. That he really is guilty. If we lose a story to another network, well, that happens; it's part of the game. But if there're rumors flying around about a segment we're doing and it turns out to be wrong it's my ass on the line. Comprende, honey?"

  Rune nodded and quickly lost the staring contest.

  Sutton broke the tension with a question. She sounded amused as she asked, "I'm curious about one thing. "Do you know who Randy Boggs was convicted of killing?"

  "I read his name but I don't exactly remember. But what I'll do--"

  Sutton cut her off. "His name was Lance Hopper. Does that mean anything to you?"

  "Not really."

  "It ought to. He was head of Network News here. He was our boss. Now you see why you're playing with fire?"

  chapter 4

  LEE MAISEL WAS A LARGE, BALDING, BEARDED MAN IN HIS fifties. He wore brown slacks and a tweed jacket over a tie-less button-down dress shirt and a worn burgundy-and-beige argyle sweater. He smoked a meerschaum pipe, yellowed from smoke and age. The pipe was one of a dozen scattered over his desk. He didn't look like a man who made, as executive producer of one of the country's most popular TV newsmagazines, over one million dollars a year.

  "I mean, how was I supposed to know who Lance Hopper was?" Rune asked.

  "How indeed?"

  Maisel and Rune sat in his large office in the Network's portion of the old armory building. Unlike Piper Sutton's office in the parent's high-rise, Maisel's was only thirty feet in the air and overlooked a bowling alley. Rune liked it that he was down here with his troops. Maisel even looked like a general. She could picture him in khaki shorts and a pith helmet, sending tanks after Nazis in North Africa.

  Rune sat next to a large Mr. Coffee machine. She looked at it uncertainly--as if the pot contained the nuclear sludge that the coffee resembled. He said, "Turkish." He poured a cup for himself and raised an eyebrow. She shook her head.

  "Piper really rides on hyper, doesn't she?" Rune asked. Then it occurred to her that maybe she shouldn't be talking about Sutton this way, at least not to him.

  Maisel didn't say anything, though. He asked, "You don't grasp the significance? About Hopper?"

  "All I know is Piper said he was head of the Network. Our boss."

  Maisel turned and dug through a stack of glossy magazines on his credenza. He found one and handed it to her. It wasn't a magazine, though, but an annual report of the Network's parent company. Maisel leaned forward and opened it to a page near the center, then rested a thick, yellow fingertip on one picture. "That's Lance Hopper."

  Rune read, Lawrence W. Hopper, executive vice president. She was looking at a tall, jowly businessman in a dark suit and white shirt. He wore a red bow tie. He was in his fifties. Handsome in a businessman sort of way. Rock-hard eye
s.

  "You understand what you've done?" Maisel said.

  "No, not exactly."

  Maisel's tongue touched the corner of his mouth. He toyed with one of his pipes, replaced it. "Boggs was convicted of killing a man I knew and worked with. A man Piper knew and worked with. Lance could be a son of a bitch but he was one hell of a journalist and he turned the Network around. He was in the Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley and Mike Wallace pantheon of broadcast journalism gods. He was that good. Everybody respected Lance Hopper. When Boggs was convicted of killing him you should've heard the applause in the newsroom. Now here you come and say Boggs isn't guilty. That's going to cause problems around here. Loyalty problems. And it could get you and everybody involved in the project in a lot of trouble."

  Maisel continued. "Look, I interviewed Boggs myself. He's a drifter. He's never had a decent job in his life. Everybody agrees with the jury that he did it. If you're right and he's innocent you're going to be pretty unpopular around here. And you aren't going to win any awards from the judge and prosecutor either. And if you're wrong you'll still be pretty unpopular but not around here because you won't be working here anymore. See the significance?"

  "But what difference does popularity make? If he's innocent he's innocent."

  "Are you as naive as you seem to be?"

  "Peter Pan's my favorite play."

  Maisel smiled. "Maybe it is better to have balls than brains." Rune smelled sweet-sour whisky on his breath. Yes, Maisel certainly fit the mold of an old-time journalist.

  "Why don't you find a nice criminal who's been wrongly imprisoned and get him out of jail. Why do you have to crusade for an asshole?"

  Rune said, "Innocent assholes shouldn't be in jail any more than innocent saints."

  Which earned an outright laugh. Rune could tell he didn't want to smile but he did. He looked at her for a minute. "Piper called me and said there was a, well, an eager young thing from the local station who--"

  Rune asked, "Is that how she described me? Eager?"

  Maisel dug into his pipe with a silver tool that looked like a large flattened nail. "Not exactly. But let's let it go at that. And when she told me that, I thought, Oh, boy, another one. Eager, obnoxious, ambitious. But she won't have grit."

  "I have grit."

  Maisel said, "I think you may. And I have to tell you--even though I think he's guilty the Boggs case went a little too smoothly. Too fast."

  "Did the media hang him out to dry before the trial?" Rune asked.

  Maisel leaned back. "The media hangs all defendants out to dry before the trial. That's a constant. No, I'm just speaking of the cops and the court system.... I think this may be--may be--a story worth telling. If you do it right."

  "I can do it. I really can."

  "Piper said you're a cameraman. You have any other experience?"

  "I did a documentary. It was on PBS."

  "Public Broadcasting?" he asked derisively. "Well, Current Events is a hell of a lot different from PBS. It costs over a half-million dollars a week to produce. We don't get grants; we survive because of advertising revenue geared to our Nielsen and Arbitron. We earn our way. Last week we had ten-point-seven rating points. You know what a point represents?"

  "Not exactly."

  "Each point means that nine hundred and twenty-one thousand homes are watching us."

  "Awesome," Rune said, losing the math, but thinking that a lot of people were going to see her program.

  "We're fighting against some of the biggest-drawing shows in the history of television. This season we're up against Next Door Neighbors and Border Patrol."

  Rune nodded, looking impressed, even though she'd only seen one episode of Neighbors--the season's big hit sitcom--and thought it was the stupidest thing on TV, full of wisecracking and mugging for the camera and idiotic one-liners. Border Patrol had great visuals and a super sound track, though all that ever happened was that the cute young agent and the older, wiser agent argued about departmental procedures, then saved each other's ass on alternate weeks while administering large doses of political correctness to the audience.

  Current Events, on the other hand, she watched all the time.

  Maisel continued. "We've got four twelve-minute segments each week, surrounded by millions of dollars of commercials. You don't have time to be leisurely. You don't have time to develop subjects and give the audience mood shots. You'll shoot ten thousand feet of tape and use five hundred. We're classy. We've got computer graphics coming out of our ears. We paid ninety thousand dollars for synthesized theme music by this hotshot New Age musician. This is the big time. Our stories aren't about sex-change operations, dolphins saving fishermen's lives, three-year-old crack dealers. We report news. It's a magazine, the way the old Life and Look were magazines. Remember that."

  Rune nodded.

  "Magazine," Maisel continued, "as in pictures. I'll want lots of visuals--tape of the original crime scene, old footage, new interviews."

  Rune sat forward. "Oh, yeah, and how about claustrophobic prison scenes? You know, small green rooms and bars? Maybe the rooms where they hose down prisoners? Before-and-after pictures of Boggs--to see how thin and pale he's gotten."

  "Good. I like that." Maisel looked at a slip of paper. "Piper said you're with the local station. I'll have you assigned to me."

  "You mean I'll be on staff? Of Current Events?" Her pulse picked up exponentially.

  "Temporarily."

  "That's fantastic."

  "Maybe. And maybe not," Maisel said. "Let's see how you feel about it after you've interviewed a hundred people and been up all night--"

  "I stay up late all the time."

  "Editing tape?"

  Rune conceded, "Dancing usually."

  Maisel said, "Dancing." He seemed amused. He said, "Okay, here's the situation. Normally we assign a staff producer but, for some reason, Piper wants you to work directly with me. Nobody else. I don't have anybody to spare for camera work so you're on your own there. But you know how the hardware works--"

  "I'm saving up to buy my own Betacam."

  "Wonderful," he said with a bored sigh, then selected a pipe and took a leather pouch of tobacco from his desk.

  A secretary's spun-haired head appeared. She said that Maisel's eleven o'clock appointment had arrived. His phone started ringing. His attention was elsewhere now. "One thing," he said to Rune.

  "What?"

  "I'll support you a hundred percent if you stick to the rules, wherever the story takes you. But you fuck with the facts, you try to create a story when there isn't one there, you speculate, you lie to me, Piper or the audience, and I'll cut you loose in a second and you'll never work in journalism in this city again. Got that?"

  "Yes sir."

  "So. Get to work."

  Rune blinked. "That's it? I thought you were going to, like, tell me what to do or something."

  As he turned to the phone Maisel said abruptly, "Okay, I'll tell you what to do: You think there's a story out there? Well, go get it."

  "THIS AIN' YOU."

  "Sure it is. Only what I did with my hair was I used henna and this kind of purple stuff then I'd use mousse to get it spiky...."

  The security guard at the New York State Department of Correctional Services' Manhattan office looked at Rune's laminated press pass from the Network, dangling a chrome chain tail. It showed a picture of her with a wood-peckery, glossy hairdo and wearing round, tinted John Lennon glasses.

  "This ain' you."

  "No, really." She dug the glasses out of her purse and put them on then grabbed her hair and pulled it straight up. "See?"

  The guard looked back and forth for a moment from the ID to the person, then nodded and handed the pass back to her. "You want my opinion, keep that stuff outta yo hair. That ain' healthy for nobody"

  Rune put the chain necklace over her head. She walked into the main office, looking at the bulletin boards, the government-issue desks, the battered water fountains. It seemed like
a place where people in charge of prisons should work: claustrophobic, colorless, quiet.

  She thought about poor Randy Boggs, serving three years in his tiny cell.

  The first thing you think is Hell, I'm still here....

  A tall man in a rumpled cream-colored suit walked past her, glancing down at her pass. He paused. "You're press?"

  Rune didn't understand him at first. "Oh, press. Yeah. I'm a reporter. Current Events. You know, the news--"

  He laughed. "Everybody knows Current Events." He stuck his hand out. "I'm Bill Swenson. Head of press relations here."

  She shook his hand and introduced herself. Then she said, "I guess I'm looking for you. I have to talk to somebody about interviewing a prisoner."

  "Is this for a story?"

  Rune said, "Uh-huh."

  "Not a problem. But you don't have to go through us. You can contact the warden's office directly for permission and then the prisoner himself to arrange a time to meet if the warden agrees."

  "That's all?"

  "Yes," Swenson said. "What facility?"

  "Harrison."

  "Doing hard time, huh?"

  "Yeah, I guess it would be."

  "Who's the prisoner?"

  She was hesitating. "Well ..."

  Swenson said, "We've got to know. Don't worry-- I won't leak it. I didn't get where I am by screwing journalists."

  She said, "Okay, it's Randy Boggs. He was convicted of killing Lance Hopper."

  Swenson nodded. "Oh, sure, I remember that case. Three years ago. Hopper worked for your company, right? Wait, he was head of the Network."

  "That's right. Only the thing is, I think Boggs is innocent."

  "Innocent, really?"

  Rune nodded. "And I'm going to try to get the case reopened and get him released. Or a new trial."

  "That's going to make one hell of a story." Swenson glanced up and down the halls. "Off the record?"

  "Sure." Rune felt a chill of excitement. Here was her first confidential source.