"… Anyway, it wasn't heaven we ended up in but Miami and some opportunity thatturned 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 shifters 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.
"Iwas 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 theCurrent 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 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 alclass="underline" 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.
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 theChallenger 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 aleg," 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 them 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. Sheknew better than she couldsay (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 tiny 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 1 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…