"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 ofNighttime 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 theCurrent 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 haveanything! 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 forCurrent 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 duringCurrent 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 newCurrent 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 wasabout to die.
Randy Boggs.
At 7:58p.m. Lee Maisel was sitting in the huge control booth overlooking theCurrent 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 theCurrent 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 toCurrent 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.