Hard News (20 page)

lumbering bears. Our audience is really going to relate to lumbering bears. Just look out on Broadway, Rune, you see many bears? Come on, babes . . .”

Rune would write some more then Sutton would lean over and look at the word

processor screen, focusing on the words like a sniper. “Here, let me. . . ,” Sutton would say and practically elbow Rune aside.
Tap, tap, tap . . .
The delete code would chop another dozen sentences. Sutton’s nails

never chipped. They were like red Kevlar. But finally the story was finished.

Sutton and Maisel approved the completed script Monday night (the twenty-eighth draft). Sutton had recorded her on-camera portions and sent those to editing, along with the clips from Rune’s interviews and atmosphere footage. As she was leaving the studio Tuesday morning at one A.M. Rune asked her, “You, like, always spend this kind of time with producers?” “No, I don’t
like
spend this kind of time. Most producers can spell.” “Oh.” Now, though, Rune had nothing to do but try to stay awake and watch the show itself while she fought the sensation that she was levitating. There were a couple options. Her first choice: She wanted to be home watching it with Healy. But he’d gone to investigate a package sitting in front of an abortion clinic in Brooklyn. Another possibility: There was a bar not far from the houseboat - Rune was a regular there and everybody there would be glad to watch her program (fortunately this was Tuesday so no Monday night sports programs would create difficult choices for some of the regulars).

But that involved standing up and walking somewhere. Which at the moment was a

feat Rune believed she was incapable of. So, she sat where she was - at her desk. There was a nice color monitor in front of

her and maybe just maybe - Piper and Lee would come and join her. They’d all watch the show together and they’d tell her what a good job she’d done then take her out for a drink at some fancy bar afterwards.

Her thoughts shifted and she found she was thinking of Randy Boggs. She hoped the guards were letting him watch
Current Events.
That thought sounded funny
letting
him watch, like when she was a kid and she’d begged her parents to let her stay up to read more fairy stories or watch TV. “Hey, Rune.” She looked up, thinking the hallucinations were getting stranger: Some heavyset guy was disattaching himself from a camera and coming toward her. How did he do that? Like the monster in
Mien,
climbing out of the pipes to eat Sigourney Weaver.

“Rune,” he said again. She squinted. It was Morrie Weinberg, the chief engineer of the show. He wore engineer clothes - blue jeans and a black shirt and a tweed jacket.

“Morrie,” she said. He was frowning - the first time she’d ever seen him do this. Engineers are usually Rolaids-poppers but Morrie didn’t understand the concept of stress. She had an image of him as a lumbering bear and she wanted to laugh out loud. “What’s up?” “Your segment.” She giggled. “Uh-huh.” “What happened?” His voice fluttered. The humor was leaving quickly. “Happened?” “Jesus, how come you didn’t get your segment in? ‘Easy Justice.’ It should’ve gone into the computer by three. It was already a day late. We
had
to have it there by three. You know that.”

Her eyes swept around the studio. Was he saying what she was hearing? “I did. I gave it to Charlie around four. But he said that was all right.”

Morrie looked at a clipboard. “This is a problem. It ain’t in there now. We got eleven minutes of blank airtime starting at eight-oh-four-thirty-six.” “Check again.” Her voice was edged with panic. “I just did check. Five minutes ago.” “Check again, check again!” No laughing, no lumbering bears, no amoebae.

Adrenaline had wakened her completely. Morrie shrugged and made a call. He held his hand over the mouthpiece and said to

her, “Zip.” “How did it happen?” “The way it usually happens is the producer doesn’t get the tape in on time.” “But I
got
it in.” She ran through her vague memory. She didn’t think she’d screwed up. It was too major a mistake even for her. It was like the pilot forgetting to lower the airplane’s wheels before landing.

Anyway, there were other tapes. She had a dupe of the final cut. This was an inconvenience not a tragedy.

Her hands were shaking. Morrie listened into the phone again. He looked up and said to her, “All right, your butt is safe so far. Charlie says he remembers you delivering it. He put it in the computer but somehow it’s vanished. You have a dupe?” “Sure.” He said into the phone, “We’ll get another one up to you in five minutes.” He hung

up. “This’s never happened before. Thank you, dear Lord, for dupes.” The gratitude was premature. The dupe was missing too. Rune’s voice was shrill in

panic. “I put it there. On my desk.” She pointed frantically to an empty corner. “Oh, man.” “I put it right
there.”
He stared skeptically at the bald spot. She said, “I’m not making this up.” “Rough cuts?” Morrie was looking at his watch. “Shit, we don’t have time. But we

maybe-“ She opened a drawer. “Oh, no,” she muttered breathlessly. He said, “They’re gone too?” Rune was nodding. She couldn’t speak. “Oh, boy. Oh, shit. Eleven minutes of blank air. This’s never happened before.

This’s never happened.” Then she thought of something else and ripped open her credenza. The
original
tape she’d done of Bennett Frost, the new witness, and the dupe of
that
were also gone. All that remained of the story about Randy Boggs were scripts and notes and background interview tapes.

“We’ve been robbed,” Rune whispered. She looked around in panic, feeling a terrible sense of violation. “Who was it?” She looked at Morrie. “Who’d you see on the set today?”

“Who’d I see?” he echoed shrilly. “A dozen reporters, a hundred staffers. That intern kid with the blond hair who was helping you with the story. Piper was here, Jim Eustice, Dan Semple ... I mean, half the Network walked through here today.” Morrie’s eyes strayed uneasily toward the phone and she knew what he was thinking: Somebody had to call Piper Sutton. The large quartz wall clock - timed, for all Rune knew, to the pulse of the universe - showed that they had forty-four minutes until to air. Forty-four minutes until it became the first prime-time television program in history to air eleven minutes and fourteen seconds of blank space.

The only thing that kept Piper Sutton from exploding through the double doors into the newsroom was the live broadcast of
Nighttime News With Jim Eustice,
the Network’s flagship world news show, now on-air thirty feet behind Rune.

But still she stormed up to Rune’s desk. During the broadcast the veteran anchorman was so damn reassuring and smooth that even the crew enjoyed watching him. Tonight, though, only the head engineer and the producer kept their eyes on his craggy, square face. Everyone else in the huge studio gazed at Sutton and Maisel, as they hurried toward the
Current Events
desks like surgeons answering a code blue. “What the fuck happened?” Sutton asked in a shrill whisper. “I don’t know.” Rune felt the tears start. She dug her short nails into her palms furiously, with the pain the urge to cry lessened. “Somebody robbed me. They took everything.”

Maisel looked at the clock above the control booth. “We don’t have
anything!
Nothing at all?” “I don’t know what happened. I turned the tape in-“ Morrie said delicately, “She did. Charlie got it. He programmed it in. Sometime after

four it disappeared.” “Son of a bitch. How long was that segment?” Morrie consulted his clipboard but Rune answered from memory. “Eleven minutes,

fourteen.” Sutton whispered furiously, “You should always make backups, you should-“ “I did!
They
were stolen too. Everything. Even the original tapes . . .” “Fuck,” Sutton spat out. Then she turned to Maisel, whose mind must have been in the same place and known what she was thinking. There were three other stories programmed for
Current Events
that evening. But Maisel said they had nothing else finished that could be used as a replacement for “Easy Justice.” He said, “We’ll have to cancel the show.” “Can we go with Arabs in Queens?” she asked. He said, “We never finished editing. We stopped all postpro for the Boggs story.” “What about the former-mayor profile?” “Mostly unshot and a lot of unattributed quotes. It’s legally hot.” “The Guardian Angels piece?” she snapped. “We’ve got footage but there’s no script.” “It’s outlined?” “Well, in general. But-“ “I know the story.” She waved her hand. “We’ll do that.” “What do you mean?” Maisel asked, frowning. “Do what?” “We do the original three stories plus the Guardian Angels.” Maisel’s voice rasped, “Piper, we’ll have to cancel. We can slot a rerun.” He turned to Morrie and started to say something. But she said, “Lee, a rerun of a news show? We’ll go with the Angels.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Piper. We don’t have a script. We don’t have footage of you. We-“ “We’ll go live,” she said. “Live?” “Yep.”

Maisel looked at Morrie. “It’s too late, isn’t it?” He answered calmly. “We can’t do half and half. We can shut off the computer and queue up the tapes by hand, using a stopwatch. Like in the old days. You’ll have to be live in all of your on-camera commentary. Hell, the commercials too and you know how many fifteen-second buys there are during
Current Events.
It’ll be a nightmare.” “Then it’ll be a nightmare.” the anchor woman said. “But, Piper,” Maisel said, “we can slot something else.” She said evenly, “Lee, every TV guide, cable guide and newspaper in America shows that we’re running a new
Current Events
tonight. You know what kind of questions it’ll raise about the program if we go to a rerun or slip in something from syndication?” “We’ll say technical difficulties.” “There are no technical difficulties on my show.” “Piper-“ Rune began.

But Sutton didn’t even hear her. She and Maisel hurried off and Rune, uninvited, stayed behind, in her cubicle. She curled up in her chair, the way Courtney did sometimes, drawing her legs up. She thought of all the work she’d have to do over again. She felt numbed, stunned, like somebody had died. Uh-uh, she thought. Like someone was
about
to die. Randy Boggs. At 7:58 P.M. Lee Maisel was sitting in the huge control booth overlooking the
Current Events
set. The booth was filled with three times its normal staff (most of whom were from the Jim Eustice crew and had experience with the rare and demanding art of live production).

Maisel hadn’t done live producing for years and he sat forward, sweating and uneasy, like the captain of a torpedoed ship still doing battle with an enemy destroyer. He was holding an expensive digital stopwatch in his hand, gripping it tightly.

Maisel and Sutton had managed to write half the Guardian Angels piece and get it, handwritten, into the TelePrompTer, but at 7:56 they’d had to break off. So Sutton had said, “I’ll ad-lib.”

Maisel called over the loudspeaker, “You got a ten-second countdown and a five second cheat. . .”

Sutton, in full makeup, under the hot lights, gave him a fast nod and sat down in the black leather chair behind the desk bearing the
Current Events
logo. A technician clipped the lavaliere mike onto her lapel and inserted the small earphone into her left ear, the one hidden under the flop of hair (where it was less visible and no one would absently think she was wearing a hearing aid). Maisel called, “All right, this is it.” She gave another nod and fixed her eyes on the TelePrompTer that a floor producer

pointed at. In the control booth Lee Maisel shut off the loud speaker and began talking into the microphone that would carry his words to Sutton’s and the rest of the crew’s earphones. He glanced at the big clock on the control room wall and began counting down. “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one . . . Graphics up now . . . Theme running . . .”

Exactly four seconds later, he said, “Graphics dissolve, camera one fade in ... Theme down . . . Okay, Piper, you’re . . . on.”

Piper Sutton’s eyes locked directly into those of ten million people. She gave a sincere smile and said in the low comforting voice that so many people had come to trust more than that of their own spouses, parents, children and friends, “Good evening. Welcome to
Current Events
for Tuesday, April twentieth. I’m Piper Sutton . . .” The program began. Exactly fifty-six minutes later, the credits rolling at a breakneck pace, viewers around the country stood or stretched, arguing about some of the stories or critiquing Piper Sutton’s fashion selection of the week or wondering which sitcom to turn to now, all unaware that they’d just seen TV history.

Morrie Weinberg oversaw the passing of the scepter back to the computer and the fifty-million-dollar

system began sending the spurious art of television advertising into American households.

As soon as the studio mikes were shut off, the newsroom applauded. Sutton was far too diplomatic to ignore it and she gave a brief smile and offered a bow - not a curtsy - to her audience.

Maisel left the booth and walked straight up to her, hugging her and kissing her on the cheek.

Both Dan Semple and Jim Eustice had been watching from the control booth. They now joined her. Eustice shook her hand formally and complimented her then left with Maisel. Semple kissed Sutton quickly and the two of them walked into the corridor.

Not a single one of them glanced at Rune, who sat in her desk chair and stared at the monitor where her program would have run. The next morning, Courtney woke her up by climbing into bed. “Can we go to the zoo?” Rune had collected the girl just after the program was over the night before. They’d gone home, had tuna sandwiches for dinner and Raisin Bran for dessert. They both went to bed at ten. Rune rolled over and sat up. “The what?” “The zoo.” “First, coffee, then we’ll think about the zoo.” “I want some juice. Coffee’s icky.”

Rune was feeling better now that she’d gotten some sleep. The horror of last night had faded. True, the tapes had been stolen but there were some upsides to what’d happened. For one thing, it was clear proof that somebody else had killed Hopper. Randy obviously hadn’t stolen the tapes; the real killer must have. Also, there was now another dimension to the story: Somebody’s breaking into a major television network studio and stealing a news program- that was a story in itself.