Hard News (28 page)

It’s an emergency.” “Emergency? What d’you mean? What time is it?” “I’ve got to talk to you.” “You’re

okay?” “I’m all right. I found out something about Lance Hopper’s killing. It wasn’t an

accident. Randy and Jack were hired to kill him.” “What are you talking about?” The voice was sharper now; his mind was in gear. He

was a journalist probing for facts. “It was a professional hit.” “But who’d want Lance dead? “It was-“ Now Rune’s voice cracked too and the reason it did had nothing to do with being tired. She repeated in a whisper, “It was Piper.”

31 That?” Maisel cleared his throat. Rune heard the rustling of cloth. She pictured the producer sitting up, putting his feet

on the floor, feeling for slippers. “Piper hired them to kill Lance.” Again, a pause. He was waiting. She heard him clear his throat again then cough.

“This isn’t funny.” “It’s true, Lee.” “Come on, Rune. Why would she want him dead?” “Somebody took all the Randy Boggs files and tapes out of my desk. Everything was

gone.” “Who?” “Danny Turner, the head electrician on the set, told me it was Piper.” Maisel didn’t answer. Rune said, “And remember, she didn’t want to do the story in the first place, she

tried to get me to stop? She was going to send me to London? To get rid of me.” Maisel snapped, “What I was asking was
why
she’d want Lance Hopper dead.” “Because he was going to fire her. I went through her personnel file-“ “You what? How?” “I just did ... Anyway, you know what I found? That Hopper tried to fire her a year before he died. Piper filed two EEOC complaints against him. They were both dropped but there’s lots of memos - it was this huge war.” “Rune, people don’t kill people for jobs.” “Maybe not usually - but you know Piper and her temper. You told me that her job was her whole life. And how much does she make? A million a year? That’s enough to kill somebody for.” “But how is she going to find professional killers? This is just too-“ “What were some of her assignments?” She continued, “In Africa, in Nicaragua, the Middle East. She could’ve met some mercenaries. The fat guy - Jack -he looked just like a soldier. And he probably hired Randy to help him.”

Maisel considered this. He was less skeptical than a moment ago. He said, “Keep going.”

Rune felt like a juggler. It was tough to keep all the parts of the story in the air at once. “When Mr Frost, the new witness, died? It wasn’t an accident at all. Piper knew his name. She saw it from my story. She sent that fat guy to kill him. And then what happens? All the cassettes disappear. And she knew where I’d put the duplicate cassette of Frost. And she’d know how to get into the computer and steal the master.”

She felt the silence from the other end of the line -his concentration as he weighed her words, the shock. But maybe also the excitement reporters must feel when they first sniff a lead to a hot story. When he spoke it was almost as if to himself. “And she was pretty smooth when she ad-libbed the broadcast.” Rune said, “Like she’d known all along she was going to have to do it.” A long pause. “This is a nuclear bomb we’re playing with, Rune. You’ve got a lot of

speculation. There’s no direct evidence linking her to the killing.” “I
know
she did it, Lee.” “The way you
knew
Boggs was innocent?” She said nothing to that. The producer continued. “Just let me ask you one thing. You’re bitter because Piper fired you and ruined your story. If that hadn’t happened, if you were an objective reporter, would you still be coming down against Piper?”

“Yes, I would. Maybe there’re no eyewitnesses but there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence.”

Maisel was silent for a moment. “I’ll have to call Dan Semple. I’ll. . .” His voice was fading. “Semple . . .”

Rune asked, “What are you thinking, Lee?” She remembered Semple’s picking Piper up in his limo after she and Rune had dinner at that French restaurant. “Oh, no, you think he’s in on it too?” “They had an affair, you know. Piper and him. Around the time Hopper was killed.” Rune said, “After Hopper was killed Semple got his job . . . ! “What are we going to

do, Lee?” Maisel said, “Okay, stay on the line. I’m going to make some calls.” She heard him use his cell phone to talk to Jim Eustice at home and tell him what Rune suspected. He then called Timothy Krueger, the Network lawyer who’d presided over Rune’s unemployment. Then she heard a conference call as Maisel spoke to Krueger and, apparently, the police. She deduced that they were all going to rendezvous at the Network in a half hour - in Studio E, an old, unused space in the basement of the building where they could meet in private.

Maisel hung up his mobile phone and came back on the other line. “Rune, you there?” “I’m here.” “I talked to Jim and our legal department.” “I heard.” Maisel confirmed that they were meeting two homicide detectives in Studio E. “I’ll be there,” Rune said. “Lay low until the cops get there. We don’t want Piper to see you.” “Sure.” “Man, this’s bad,” he muttered. But that was the only emotion he showed. Instantly he was Edward R. Murrow again. He said to her, “You did a good job, Rune. Whatever the fallout from this, you did good. See you in a half hour.” These were the longest minutes of her life. The hour was late but television networks never sleep and she was afraid that if she got to Studio E before Maisel or Krueger or the police, a security guard might see her and word would get back to Piper or Dan Semple.

So she sat in the booth at the Greek diner, bouncing her toes on the linoleum, feeling the terrible sting of betrayal.

Feeling fear too. Recalling all the time she’d spent alone with Sutton, inches away from her, a killer whose heart was as cold as her journalist’s eyes.

After fifteen minutes Rune could stand it no longer and she left the deli and headed back to the Network. She slipped in through the door Bradford had doctored to let her inside then started down the corridor through a slightly more populated part of the studio. A noise nearby. Rune froze. But it turned out to be only Bradford. “What’s up?” he asked, noticing her troubled face. She looked around. “Just between us, okay?” “Top secret,” he whispered. “Piper Sutton had Lance Hopper killed.” “Are you serious?” the young man said. “You bet I am,” she answered. “He was going to fire her. She found out about it and

hired Boggs and his friend to kill him.” “Jesus!” “I’m going to meet Lee down in Studio E.” Then her face broke into a smile. “And

after she’s in jail I’m going to talk Lee into letting me do the story for the Network.” “You?” “Sure. Why not?” Bradford apparently couldn’t think of any reason why not and simply nodded. He said finally, “Brother, you’ve sure graduated from overturned ammonia trucks. Say, after your meeting, how ‘bout that beer?” “How ‘bout some
champagne?”
Rune said. “It’ll be on me,” he said.

The Network building was like a warren - as complicated and big as a huge high

school. Rune got lost several times on her way to Studio E, which was at the end of a dozen dim corridors. At least she didn’t have to worry about being seen now. The studio was in a completely deserted part of the Network building.

She pushed inside and waved to Lee Maisel, who sat at a battered swivel chair, engaged in a somber discussion with someone whose back was to Rune. This would be either Jim Eustice or the lawyer, Tim Krueger. The cops weren’t here yet. “Rune, come on in,” Maisel said. He nodded at her hand. “You’ve got the files you

found in Personnel?” “Right here,” she said. “Good.” Maisel stepped forward and took it from her. Rune sat down at the table and turned to the other man as she started to ask when the

police would be here. She froze. The man was Jack, the killer. He eyed her up and down and said, “There you go, Lee, I
told
you them girls look alike. No wonder I shot the wrong one.”

32 It was like the time she had three frozen margaritas, crazy drunk - her mind giddy

and spinning, her body sick. She tensed to leap up out of the chair. But Jack shook his head. “Naw, naw, don’t

bother.” He showed her the butt of a pistol in his waistband. She relaxed. He was right. There was no place to go even if she’d had the strength to

get past Maisel, which she didn’t. Maisel closed the door and leaned against it. Her mind was racing, trying to pin down the speculation. “It was you?” she

whispered. Maisel sighed and nodded. Rune said, “When I called you at home you just
pretended
to call Eustice and

Krueger and the cops, right?” “That’s right, Rune. There won’t be any cops.” “You did it just to get me here. So you could kill me.” Maisel didn’t answer. “You bastard,” Rune hissed at him.

Jack wore a short-sleeved striped shirt over his huge belly and gray baggy pants and some kind of rounded, scuffed brown work shoes. He looked her over then picked up a cup of coffee, noisily drunk from it.

“Sorry, Rune. I’m so sorry.” Maisel gave her a grim smile but the disappointment and disgust in his face overwhelmed it. He blew air slowly out through his rounded cheeks. Rune could see he was suffering. Good, she thought. Maisel poured his drink down in one swallow. “I don’t know what to say to you. I

tried to stop it all without hurting you.” Jack said, “Yeah, he’s right. We tried to kill Boggs in prison. That would’ve solved-“
“You
tried to . . .” Rune looked at Maisel; he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Paid to have a buddy of mine in Harrison kill Boggs. Then when you got him out I

tried to do it myself. But that man just wouldn’t die.” “It wasn’t Piper? But she did everything she could to stop the story.” “Well, sure” Maisel said. “The story would’ve been bad for her image she didn’t want the EEOC suits coming to light. She hated having to run to the courts to fight her battles for her. But just because she didn’t
want
it to run didn’t mean she was going to stop it.”
“You
encouraged me to keep going with it.”

“There’d been rumors that there was more to Hopper’s death than just Randy Boggs acting alone. We needed you to find the evidence, witnesses. We knew we could control you.” Rune said to Maisel, “Why did you do it?” “What does it matter?” “It fucking matters to me!” she snapped. “Beirut,” Jack said. Shut up, Nestor,” Maisel snapped. “The story where those people got killed?” “Right.” “She doesn’t need to know,” Maisel muttered. “Why not?” Jack said. “You fucked up, Lee. You may as well admit it.” To Rune he

said, “You know Lee’s big scoop a few years back? His big fucking award?” She remembered his Pulitzer. She nodded. “Well, it was all fake. He made up the interviews, he made up the names of the locals. Who understands all those raghead names anyway? He said they had machine guns and hand grenades and rockets. He scooped everybody.” “Jack . . .” Maisel said angrily. But Jack kept right on going. “Only the problem was the U.S. Army believed the story and when they went into this village they were loaded for bear. Some Arab kid shot a round at a dog or rabbit or whatever they got over there and, jittery trigger ringers, the whole platoon opened up. When the smoke cleared there were a bunch of dead ragheads and a couple of our own boys. All friendly fire. All courtesy of Mr Newsman here.” “You made up the whole story?” she asked. “It wasn’t a big deal,” Maisel said bitterly. “I mean, it
shouldn’t’ve
been. I didn’t even think anybody’d pay attention to it. You have to understand - there’s so much pressure to get stories. There’s so much time to fill and so little hard news. And always the fucking competition breathing down your neck. I started just adding a few quotes and the next thing I knew it got out of hand. I never thought it would have any consequences.”

“But it did,” Jack Nestor said, laughing cruelly. “And one of ‘em was that Lance Hopper was going to investigate what happened.” “So you hired him.” Rune nodded toward Jack. The killer said, “Mercenaries and journalists hang out a lot together in combat zones. Isn’t much difference between them, really, you think about it. Lee and me spent some time together over there, looking for the underground bars - fucking ragheads can’t even drink - and hanging out. I go off to Sri Lanka and come back to California, where I do some funny stuff that lands me in Obispo for a while, doing easy time.

When I get out Lee calls me and flies me into town to talk to him. The rest is history . . .”

Maisel didn’t look good. He was pale and sweating. Beneath his salt-and-pepper beard, you could see his lips pressed together. She wondered what bothered him the most: That he’d nearly been caught violating journalistic ethics or that he’d had several people killed to cover it up. Rune said, “What about Randy?” “Boggs?” Jack snorted. “That loser? We set him up. He didn’t know anything about the hit. He couldn’t kill anybody if he was about to get whacked himself. He lost his job in Maine and called me looking for work on a fishing boat in Florida. I had him meet me in New York. I made up some shit about a credit card deal. Lee and I were going to make it look like he hit Hopper then I’d waste him and leave the gun. There would’ve been a few loose ends but basically there’s a perp and there’s a vie so the cops’d be happy. But the son of a bitch ran right into a cop car. Well, he doesn’t know we’d planned to kill Hopper so he plays stand-up guy and doesn’t turn me in.”

Jack continued. “Everything was going along fine but then I read in the paper about you planning on getting him out. So I come to town and talk it over with Lee. We try to make the story go away and in the meantime I have this spic buddy of mine happens to be in Harrison try to move on Boggs but that doesn’t work. Then you get himout and things go to hell. He’s got his money and he’s gone.”

The wave passed over her like a fever. So Randy was innocent - to the extent he could be innocent after having been mixed up with people like these. She swallowed. “Please let me go. I won’t say anything. I don’t care about Hopper. Just let me go, please? I’ll be quiet about it.”

Maisel looked at Jack, who was shaking his head no in a humorous, exasperated way. “Can’t, Lee. You can’t trust her.” Maisel said, “Rune, Rune ...” Her teeth were pressed together, and she felt anger, hot and searing. Oh, what she wanted to say to him . . . But the words were logjammed in her mind and even if she found the strength and the calm to sort them out she knew he wouldn’t comprehend them.