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 reportnews. It's a magazine, the way the oldLife orLook 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? OfCurrent 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 tocreate 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?"
"Yessir."..
"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 knowsCurrent 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.
"Every year there're dozens of people wrongly convicted in New York. Sometimes they get out, sometimes they don't. It's a scary thing to think it could happen."
"I think it'll make a good story."
Swenson started down the hall back toward the exit. Rune followed him. He said, "They'll give you the phone number of the warden in Harrison at the main desk." He escorted her through the security gate and to the door. She said, "I'm glad I ran into you."
"Good luck," he said. "I'll look for the show."
5
When Rune climbed up the gangway onto her houseboat, which was rocking gently in the Hudson River off the western part of Greenwich Village, she heard crying inside. A child's crying.
Her hand hesitated at the deadbolt then she unlocked the door and walked inside.
"Claire," Rune said uncertainly. Then, because she couldn't think of anything else to say, she added, "You're still here."
In the middle of the living room the young woman was on her knees, comforting three-year-old Courtney. Claire nodded at Rune and gave her a sullen smile, then turned back to the little girl.
"It's okay, honey."
"What happened?"
"She just fell. She's okay."
Claire was a few years older than Rune. They looked a lot alike, except that Claire was into a beatnik phase, while Rune shunned the antique look for New Wave. Claire dyed her hair black and pulled it straight back in a severe pony tail. She often wore pedal pushers and black-and-white-striped pullovers. Her face was deathly white and on her lips was the loudest crimson lipstick Max Factor dared sell. Her only advantage in her rooming here – since she'd stopped paying rent – was that her fashion statement added to the houseboat's decor, which was Eisenhowererce suburban.