‘How do you want to stage this thing?’ Bill asked.
Wayne looked at Bruce. ‘Bruce, you’re the director. Where should these people set up?’
But Bruce remained tightlipped. He wasn’t going to facilitate his own disgrace if he could avoid it.
Wayne shrugged. ‘Well, I guess I can do this myself. Maybe I’ll get an Oscar too, ha ha! OK, I reckon you guys should set up the camera right there in front of the fireplace.’
Bill and Kirsten did as they were bidden and began to arrange their equipment. Meanwhile, Wayne thought about his staging. ‘I believe we should use this couch as kind of centre of the action, OK? ‘Cos one thing I know is that whenever anybody’s doing any talking on the TV there is just about always a couch somewhere. So if I push it round a little, then I guess you’ll be able to include Brooke in the shot. Is that right, Bill?’
‘Yes, I can see her,’ Bill answered.
‘Well that’s good, because I think she looks just great lying on the floor like that. Like some kind of wounded swan or something.’
Scout loved it when Wayne talked like that. She firmly believed that, given an education, he could have been a poet. Bill would not have agreed. Seen through his viewfinder, Brooke did not look like a wounded swan at all. She looked like a wounded person, a badly wounded person. Bill had seen many such sights during his career as a war correspondent but he never got used to them and never found them anything but appalling.
‘She’s dying,’ said Velvet, placing a coat over Brooke.
‘We’re all dying, darlin’,’ Wayne replied, ‘from the very first day we’re born. What I’m saying is that her pathetic condition kind of underlines the point I’m making here. A kind of livin’, or maybe I should say dyin’, example of what men like Bruce here exploit and promote. So get that coat off her, sugar. It ain’t cold and that coat’s spoiling my picture. Ain’t nothing sexy ‘bout a coat.’
Velvet did as she was bidden.
‘OK, that’s good.’ Wayne nodded his approval. ‘This thing’s really coming together now. So how ‘bout you?’ He turned on Farrah. ‘What can we do with you?’
‘What do you mean?’ Farrah was startled. She had begun to imagine herself exempt from the action. She was sadly deluded.
‘This is TV, honey. Goodlookin’ woman like you’s gonna be a big draw, particularly ‘longside of your cute li’l daughter. Scout baby, take Mrs Delamitri and Miss Delamitri and cuff them to that lampstand behind the sofa… C’mon, c’mon, get over there, girls. We ain’t making Gone with the Wind here, this is live action.’
Scout put her hand in Wayne ’s bag and produced a pair of handcuffs.
‘Got these off a cop,’ she explained, adding darkly, ‘He don’t need ‘em no more.’
As Scout manacled Farrah and her daughter to the lampstand, with uncharacteristic humility Wayne asked if it would be OK to take a look through the camera lens.
‘You’re the director,’ said Bill.
‘Well, that’s right, I guess I am.’ Wayne dropped the humility and strutted over to the camera as if he was Cecil B. de Mille. Pressing his eye to the viewfinder, he surveyed the scene thoughtfully. He could see Bruce sitting on the couch. Behind him were Farrah and Velvet and to one side lay Brooke.
‘OK now, Scout,’ Wayne said, further composing his shot, ‘get down there beside Bruce, ‘cos that’s where we gonna to be sat, OK? Right next to the man.’
But he was still not quite satisfied.
‘It seems all right to me,’ Kirsten commented nervously. ‘I mean, it contains all the elements, doesn’t it?’ She wanted to get done and get out of there.
‘The elements is just the basics of the shot,’ Wayne replied. ‘What we got to do here is make one compelling fuckin’ image. I mean compelling. Because if we ain’t good, pretty soon the networks are going to go back to their regular schedules and all we’ll be left with is CNN. What are we up against, honey? What’s the opposition? I guess you know more about daytime TV than any woman of your size and weight in the whole USA.’
‘Star Trek: The Next Generation, Family Ties, Cosby and Oprah repeats,’ Scout recited proudly. ‘I don’t know all the cable stuff.’
Kirsten looked up from her equipment. ‘ Wayne, when this goes out live, every station in the country will pick up on it. You’ll be the only thing showing nationwide.’
‘Y’hear that, Bruce? I’m making you bigger than you was already. Now, you sure you’re going to be able to get all this in, Bill? What’s your edge of frame?’
‘Edge of frame’. Scout nearly cried, she was so proud of Wayne.
‘We have plenty of width,’ Bill said. ‘I’ll just lock it off and take the whole thing in a static five shot. Have another look.’
Wayne did so and then, with a thoughtful frown on his face, crossed to the two handcuffed women. He studied them for a moment and then ripped open Velvet’s smart little pink jacket, causing the buttons to fly off.
Scout was not at all happy with this development. Nor, of course, was Velvet, but she was in no position to protest.
‘ Wayne, take your hands off that girl right now!’ Scout shouted.
‘You want the ratings, honey? Huh? You want people to watch this thing? Sex is important on TV, sex sells.’ Wayne tore open Velvet’s blouse and pulled it down off her shoulders, revealing her brassière. ‘Cute, huh?’ he said. ‘Can’t show too much. There’s strict rules. Just enough for the couch potatoes out there in TV land to get themselves off on… OK, I guess we’re just about ready. Bruce, in just a moment or two you’re going to sit here on this couch ‘tween me and Scout and tell America what I said to tell them.’
‘Look, Wayne, this is-’
‘And if you don’t, I’ll kill sweet little Velvet here, and Mrs Delamitri – not that you give a flying fuck in a thunderstorm ‘bout her. Also of course, I’ll kill you. I think you’re going to do what I tell you. Ain’t you, Bruce?’
Chapter Thirty Four
Outside they were waiting for pictures. The media, the police and, increasingly, the nation were all waiting for pictures, because the siege was now the numberone news story USwide.
‘So is this asshole going to make his statement or not?’ said Chief Cornell, pacing about outside his command truck. ‘How long do we wait before we hit him?’
Already the police chief could sense his splendid day getting away from him. He wasn’t the only one, either. His subordinates were getting increasingly frustrated and were putting Cornell under enormous pressure to take control of the situation. Sieges, in their opinion, were a matter for the police, not the media, and a lot of cops felt pretty bad about being usurped and upstaged in this manner. Particularly the SWAT boss.
‘We’re being blackmailed,’ he said. ‘This killer has bought his piece of immortality by murdering people, and now we’ve brought every TV station in the country to his door. The guy is making us kiss his ass, when what we need to do is kick his ass. We should pull the damn plug, get in there and show that motherfucker, and every motherfucker watching, that you do not mess with the LAPD.’
That was easy for the SWAT man to say. His wasn’t the uneasy head that wore the crown. Chief Cornell was the cop with whom the buck would stop, and he knew that if he crashed in now and deprived the media of its prize they would finish him. If even one hostage got killed, which in all truth would almost certainly happen, he and his force would be pilloried as gungho, macho assholes, Neanderthals who couldn’t wait and talk like responsible adults but had to barge in like the overexcited thugs they were.
Besides which, as the police publicist pointed out, there was another way of looking at it. ‘With respect, we have no right to go in now. By any standards at all, a televised confrontation between the country’s top action filmmaker and the country’s top criminal is an astonishing event. It’s genuine and important news, no matter how it may have been brought about. The police have to allow the media to do its job. It’s our responsibility to defend, and if necessary facilitate, an open and democratic society.’