Hard News (18 page)

He continued. “I was simply scared back then. I was afraid to tell the police that I’d seen Hopper killed. I’d be on news programs. I’d be in court. There’d be stories about my wealth. Kidnappers might come after my family or me. Do-gooders would start hounding me for money for their causes. I felt guilty at first but then I heard that that Breckman woman downstairs saw the whole thing and told the police about the killer. It took the pressure off me.” “But now you don’t mind telling me what you saw? What’s different now?” Frost walked to the window and looked into the gloomy courtyard. “I have a

different attitude toward life.” Oh, please, Rune was praying, do it now. Tell me what you saw. And, please, make

it good. “May I?” She gestured toward the camera. A pause. Then he nodded. The lights clicked on. The camera hummed. She aimed it at Frost’s long face. “It’s odd,” he said wistfully, “what giving away your fortune does. It’s a marvelous thing. I don’t know why it hasn’t caught on.” He looked at her seriously. “Let me ask you, you know anybody else giving away a billion dollars?” “None of
my
friends,” Rune said. “Unfortunately.”

19 Rune and Piper Sutton sat in front of the anchor woman’s desk, watching the monitor. Out of it came two tinny voices.

“Mr Frost, did you see the shooting?” “Plain as the nose on my face. Or your face -however that expression goes. It was horrible. I saw this man come up to Mr Hopper and pull out this little gun and shoot him, just push the pistol at him. It reminded me of the pictures of Ruby, you know, Jack Ruby, when he shot Oswald. Mr Hopper held his hands out like he was trying to catch the bullet
...”

“Could you describe him?” “He was a fat man. Not fat all over but with a beer belly. Like a timpani.” “A what?” “A drum. Dark blandish hair. A moustache . . . What’s that? Sure, I’m positive about the moustache. And sideburns. A light jacket. Powder-blue. “

Rune said to Sutton, “That’s Jimmy. The man who picked up Randy and drove him

to New York.” Sutton frowned and waved her silent.

“Why didn’t you go to the police?” “I told you.” “If you could tell me again. Please.” “I was afraid - of retaliation. Of publicity. I was very wealthy. I was scared for me and my family. Anyway the killer was caught and identified. That woman downstairs identified the man, and I read that the police caught him practically red-handed. Why would they need me ? “

“I’m going to show you a picture of someone . . . Could you tell me if this is the man you saw in the courtyard?” “Who? This skinny fellow? No, that wasn’t him at all.” “You’d swear to it?” “Sure I would.”

Rune kept staring at the monitor, a proud schoolkid waiting for the teacher’s praise. But Sutton’s only comment was a breathy “Damn.” Rune tried not to smile with pleasure and unadulterated pride. Sutton looked at her watch, then added, “I’m late for a meeting with Lee. Did you

make a dupe of that tape?” “Sure,” Rune said. “I always make dupes. It’s locked in my credenza.” 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.”

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.

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,

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

three 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 scribbed 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 Polack 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
...”

“Greater opportunity. I was scared because I thought we were going to die because I got ‘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. Rune 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 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 thesame 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?”