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.’
The SWAT commander had never heard so much pansy bullshit in his entire life. ‘It’s our responsibility,’ he barked, ‘to fuck all over these scum until we have made damn sure that they never fuck with us again. Besides which, you know damn well that if someone gets killed while we’re hanging around and holding the media’s hand, the media will turn right round and blame us for not intervening. They can’t lose and we can’t win, so we should ignore the fuckin’ parasites and get on with our damn job.’
Ignore the media? The police publicist nearly fainted.
Even Chief Cornell knew it was a stupid thing to say. ‘You might as well say ignore the traffic, ignore the buildings, ignore the public,’ he said. ‘TV isn’t an observer any more. It isn’t two hours of news and entertainment in the corner of people’s lounges, in the corner of people’s lives. It’s in the middle, right alongside of food. There’s two results to every event, what actually happened and what people think happened. That’s a fact, pal, and if you believe you can ignore it, then you don’t have no election to face come the spring.’
If Brad Murray had heard Chief Cornell speak, he would have nodded sagely. Like it or not, the chief was right. It had long been accepted that TV shaped events, that things happened because the cameras were there, that what the cameras saw was what the event became. Now, however, TV was the event. Before, events didn’t get seen without television; increasingly events no longer existed without television.
‘We wait,’ said Chief Cornell. ‘Let the guy have his air time.’
‘It’s our duty as democrats,’ said the police publicist.
‘Bulldoubleshit,’ said the SWAT commander.
Chapter Thirty Five
Inside the house Bruce found himself sitting on the couch between Scout and Wayne. The camera was directly in front of him and he was staring down the barrel. He knew he was about to enter the national consciousness as a patsy, a pathetic loser, coerced and abused into making a snivelling, nevertobeforgotten, cowardly confession on live TV.
He would be like those combat pilots who are shot down by foreign dictators and then trotted out the next day, drugged and bleary, to renounce the US and profess allegiance to their adopted country. Everybody knows those guys have no choice, that they have been coerced, but somehow people never feel quite the same way about them afterwards. You can’t just forget it when your hero suddenly and publicly denies every principle he has ever held dear. There is a secret feeling that he should have fallen on his sword. Unfair and unreasonable, of course, but none the less there.
Bruce struggled to master his panic and anguish.
‘ Wayne, this isn’t going to work,’ he pleaded. ‘You’re both hated murderers and one single statement from me, made under duress, won’t change that. All it’ll do is screw up my life for ever.’
‘Well that’s a shame, Bruce, because it’s the best shot I’ve got and we’re going to try it. Bill? Kirsten? Everything ready?’