"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.
After Claire had lost her job at Celestial Crystals on Broadway and been evicted from her fifth-floor East Village walk-up she'd begged Rune to take her and her daughter in. Claire had said, "Come on. Just a day or two. It'll be fun. Like a pajama party."
That had been six weeks ago-and what had followed had been like no pajama party Rune had ever been to.
That morning, before Rune went to work, Claire had told her that she'd gotten a new job and promised that she and Courtney would be gone by dinnertime.
Now, Claire stood up and shook her head in disgust. "What it is, that guy, he backed out. Some people, some effing people."
Rune didn't exactly remember who "that guy" was or what he was backing out of. But Rune was now even madder at him than Claire was. She's gotta go… Talk now or later? Now, she decided. But her courage broke. Shit. She dropped her leopard-skin bag on the purple shag kidney-shaped scrap of carpet that she'd found on the street then bent down and kissed the three-year-old's forehead.
Courtney stopped crying. "Rune," she said. "Story. Read me a story?" She was dressed in blue jeans and a dirty yellow pullover.
"Later, honey, it's time for dinner," Rune said, crouching down and smoothing the girl's curly dark hair. "This hair is like totally audacious." She stood up and walked into the galley of the houseboat. As she poured Grape-Nuts into a large bowl and added chocolate chips and cashews she shouted to Claire, "Her hair, I was saying. What it is is all that garbage we use. We dye it and we mousse it and we perm it. I'll bet if you never touch your hair it'd be as nice as that forever."
Claire said sourly, "Well, sure, but that would like be so boring."
Rune came back into the living room, eating the cereal and drinking a Molson Golden. "You eaten?"
"We ate Chinese."
"Courtney too? Is that good for her?"
Claire said, "Are you kidding? There are a billion people in China and whatta you think they grew up on?"