"Bennett Frost," he said. He was about seventy-five years old. He wore a cardigan sweater with a moth hole on the shoulder and cheap gray pants. He was balding and had dark moles on his face and head. He leaned forward, a vestigial bow, as he shook her hand. He held it for a moment longer than one normally would have and looked at her closely. The touch and the examination, though, were not sexual. He was appraising her. When he was done he released her hand and nodded at the glass case.
"The Minnesota Princess. Odd name, don't you think, for a ship that spent most of her time in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic? My very first ship. No, I shouldn't say that. My very first profitable ship. Which is, I suppose, better than my first ship. I named her Minnesota because I was born there."
He walked into the large apartment. Rune studied the squarish ship. The deck was covered with tiny boxes. Then she followed him. In the cluttered living room she noticed suitcases. "You going on a trip?" "I have a place in Bermuda. Haiti was my favorite. The Oloffson - what a hotel that was. Not true any longer, of course. I never used to go to British colonies but you know how things are elsewhere." He looked at her with slits of eyes, a shared secret. She nodded.
His eyes fell on her camera. "You have a press pass or something?" She showed him her Network ID. He scanned her up and down again, a CAT scan of her soul. "You're young." "Younger than some. Older than others." He gave that a curly smile and said, "I was young when I got started in business." "What did you do?" He gazed at the model. "That was my contribution to the shipping industry and the aesthetics of the sea. She isn't beautiful; she isn't a stately ship." "I think she looks pretty nifty." Frost said, '"And the stately ships go on/To their haven under the hill/But O for the touch of a vanished hand/And the sound of a voice that is still.' Tennyson. Nobody knows poetry anymore."
Rune knew some nursery rhymes and some Shakespeare but she remained silent. He continued, "But she made money hand over fist for a lot of people." He lifted a heavy decanter and started pouring two glasses of purple liquor, as he asked, "Would you like some port?" She accepted the glass and sipped. It was cloying as honey and tasted like cough medicine. "I started out as a ship's chandler. Do you know what that is?" "A candle maker?" Rune shrugged. "No, a provisioner. A supplier. Anything a captain wanted, from a ratchet to a side of beef, I would get it. I started when I was seventeen, rowing out to the ships as soon as they dropped anchor, even before the agents arrived or they'd started off-loading. I gave them cut prices, demanded half as a deposit, gave them fancy-looking receipts for the cash and always returned with what they wanted or a substitute that was better or cheaper." "I was wondering, sir-" she began.
Frost held up a hand. "Listen. This is important. During the thirties I moved into the shipping myself." Rune didn't see what was important but she let him talk.
And talk he did. Fifteen minutes later she'd learned about his growing fortune in the shipping business. He was talking about ship propellers he'd designed himself. "They called them Frost Efficiency Screws. I got such a kick out of that! Efficiency Screws! So my ships could make the run from the Strait of Hormuz around the horn to the Abrose Light in thirty-three days. Of course, I was wrong about the Suez Canal but I still had the fastest oil carriers in the world. Thirty-three days."
Rune said, "If I could ask you a few questions. About the Hopper killing." "There's a point I'm trying to make." "Sorry." "I got out of shipping. I could see what would happen to oil. I could see the balance of trade shift. I didn't want to leave my ships; oh, that hurt me. But have to think ahead. Did you hear about the buggy-whip manufacturers who went out of business when autos were developed? You know what their problem was? They didn't think of themselves as being in the accelerator business. Ha!" He loved the story, had probably told it a thousand times. "So what did I go into?" "Airlines?"
Frost laughed derisively. "Public transportation? Regulations ad nauseam. I thought about it but I knew that it would take one Democrat, two at the most, to ruin the industry. No, I diversified - financial services, mining, manufacturing. And I became the fourth-richest man in the world . . . You're skeptical. I can see that. You've never heard of me. Some old crackpot, you're thinking, who's lured me in here for who knows what nefarious prospects. But it's true. In the seventies I had three billion dollars." He paused. "And those
were the days when a billion meant something." He sat forward and Rune sensed he was getting to his point.
"But what could I do with money like that? Provide for my wife and children. Buy comfortable shoes, a good set of golf clubs, a warm coat, an apartment where the plumbing worked. I don't smoke; rich food makes me ill. Mistresses? I was contentedly married for forty-one years. I put my children through school, set up trust funds for the grandchildren, though not very fat ones, and. . ." He smiled, significantly."... I gave most of the rest away. Hence, you." "Me? What exactly does all that have to do with the Hopper killing?" Frost considered this for a moment. "I'm confessing." She blinked. "But," he said, "you have to understand. It didn't make any difference, you know." "Uh, like, how exactly do you mean?" "They had the other witness. You can't blame me really." "Could you explain please." "At the time, when he was killed, I had rny fortune. I was giving money away. I had people who worked for me who depended on me for their livelihood. Their families . . . You people in the media - a man never has any privacy around you." He pronounced it with a short i, privacy. Like "privileged." He continued. "I was simply scared back then. I was afraid to tell the police that I'd seen Hopper killed. I'd be on news programs. I'd be in court. There'd be stories about my wealth. Kidnappers might come after my family or me. Do-gooders would start hounding me for money for their causes. I felt guilty at first but then I heard that that Breckman woman downstairs saw the whole thing and told the police about the killer. It took the pressure off me." "But now you don't mind telling me what you saw? What's different now?" Frost walked to the window and looked into the gloomy courtyard. "I have a different attitude toward life."
Oh, please, Rune was praying, do it now. Tell me what you saw. And, please, make it good. "May I?" She gestured toward the camera. A pause. Then he nodded.
The lights clicked on. The camera hummed. She aimed it at Frost's long face. "It's odd," he said wistfully, "what giving away your fortune does. It's a marvelous thing. I don't know why it hasn't caught on." He looked at her seriously. "Let me ask you, you know anybody else giving away a billion dollars?" "None of my friends," Rune said. "Unfortunately."
19
Rune and Piper Sutton sat in front of the anchor woman's desk, watching the monitor. Out of it came two tinny voices.
"Mr Frost, did you see the shooting?"
"Plain as the nose on my face. Or your face -however that expression goes. It was horrible. I saw this man come up to Mr Hopper and pull out this little gun and shoot him, just push the pistol at him. It reminded me of the pictures of Ruby, you know, Jack Ruby, when he shot Oswald. Mr Hopper held his hands out like he was trying to catch the bullet..."
Sutton stirred but didn't say anything.
"Could you describe him?" "He was a fat man. Not fat all over but with a beer belly. Like a timpani." "A what?" "A drum. Dark blandish hair. A moustache . . . What's that? Sure, I'm positive about the moustache. And sideburns. A light jacket. Powder-blue. "
Rune said to Sutton, "That's Jimmy. The man who picked up Randy and drove him to New York." Sutton frowned and waved her silent.
"Why didn't you go to the police?" "I told you." "If you could tell me again. Please." "I was afraid - of retaliation. Of publicity. I was very wealthy. I was scared for me and my family. Anyway the killer was caught and identified. That woman downstairs identified the man, and I read that the police caught him practically red-handed. Why would they need me ? " "I'm going to show you a picture of someone . . . Could you tell me if this is the man you saw in the courtyard?" "Who? This skinny fellow? No, that wasn't him at all." "You'd swear to it?" "Sure I would."
Click.
Rune kept staring at the monitor, a proud schoolkid waiting for the teacher's praise. But Sutton's only comment was a breathy "Damn." Rune tried not to smile with pleasure and unadulterated pride. Sutton looked at her watch, then added, "I'm late for a meeting with Lee. Did you make a dupe of that tape?" "Sure," Rune said. "I always make dupes. It's locked in my credenza." Sutton said, "We've got a story conference on Friday. Bring your proposed script. You'll present to both of us and be prepared to defend every goddamn line. Got it?" "You bet." Sutton started to leave the office. She paused and said in a soft voice, "I'm not very good at praise. Just let me say that there aren't many people who would've stuck with it long enough to do what you did." Then she frowned and the old Sutton returned. "Now get some sleep. You look awful."
"This is the story of a man convicted of a crime he didn 't commit unjustly ..."
Uh, no.
" ... of a man unjustly convicted of a crime he didn't commit..."
Well, sure, if he didn't commit it it's unjust.
". . . the story of a man convicted of a crime he didn't commit..."
Words were definitely the hard part. Rune spun around in her desk chair and let out a soft, anguished scream of frustration. Words - she hated words. Rune saw things and she liked seeing things. She remembered things she saw and forgot 'things she was told. Words were real tricky little dudes.
"This is the story of a man convicted of a crime he didn 't commit, a man who lost two years of his life because
..."
Why? Why?
". . . because the system of justice in this country is like a big dog ..."
A dog? Justice is like a dog? Are you insane? "Crap!" She shouted. "Crap, crap, crap!" Half the newsroom looked at her. What is Lee Maisel going to say when he reads this stuff? What's Piper going to say?
". . . because the system of, no, because the justice system in this country, no, because the American justice system is like a bird with an injured wing ..."
Crap, crap, crap!
Fred Megler was as enthusiastic as could be expected, considering that his lunch was three hot dogs (with kraut and limp onions) and a Diet Pepsi and considering too that his view while he was eating was the Criminal Courts Building - the darkest, grimiest courthouse in all of Manhattan. And considering finally that one of his clients, he explained to Rune, was about to be sentenced on a three-count conviction for murder two.
"Stupid shmuck. He fucking put himself away. What can I say?" Megler, still skinny, still gray, was chewing, drinking and talking simultaneously. Rune stood back, out of the trajectory of flecks of hot dog that occasionally catapulted from behind his thick, wet lips. He was impressed with her story about Frost even as he tried not to be. He said, "Yeah, sounds like Boggs might have a shot at it. Not enough to reverse the conviction, probably. But the judge might go for a new trial. I'm not saying yes, I'm not saying no. There's new evidence, then there's new evidence. What you're telling me, this was evidence that could have been discovered at the time of the trial." "I was sort of wondering about that. How come you didn't find Frost?" "Hey, I was making minimum wage on that case. I don't have an expense account like you newspeople do. I don't sit around at five o'clock drinking manhattans in the Algonquin." "What's a manhattan?" "A drink. You know, rye and vermouth and bitters. Look, the Boggs trial, I did what I could. I had limited resources. That was his problem. He didn't have any money." The tail of the last hot dog disappeared. Rune had an image of a big fish eating a small fish. "Doesn't sound like justice to me."
"Justice?" Megler asked. "You want to know what justice is?" Rune sure did and as she pressed the record button on the little JVC camcorder hidden from his view in her
leopard-skin bag, Megler - who could probably have cited all kinds of laws on being taped surreptitiously - was polite enough to finish chewing and to take on a reflective expression before he spoke again. "Justice in this country is luck and fate and circumstances and expedience. And as long as that's true, people like Randy Boggs're going to serve time they shouldn't." "Will you handle the case?" "We had a conversation about my fee . . ." "Come on. He's innocent. Don't you want to help him out?" "Not particularly. I don't give money to homeless people. Why should I be more generous with my time?" "I don't believe you." Rune's voice went high. "You-" "Would your network pay my bill?" Something sounded wrong about it. She said, "I don't think that'd be ethical." "What, ethical? I wouldn't get into hot water for that." "I meant journalists' ethics." "Oh, your ethics." He swilled the last of the Pepsi, glanced down and noticed a spot on his navy-blue tie.
He took a pen from his pocket and scribbed back and forth on the tie until the smudge was obscured. "Well, that's the net-net. I work, I get paid. That's carved in stone. But you got some options. There's Legal Aid. Or ACLU - those dips get orgasmic they get a case like this. One of those three-piece do-gooders from Yale or Columbia or Hahvahd might get wind of it and pick up the case. So you run your story - I'll guarantee you, some scrawny little NYU graduate'll be banging on your door begging to get Boggs's phone number." "But that could take months. He's got to get out now. His life's in danger." "Look, I've got to walk back to that hellhole in twenty minutes and stand next to a man who - it is alleged machine-gunned three rival gang members while he told Polack jokes to one of his mistresses. I have to stand there and listen to the judge explain to him that he's going to spend at least fifteen years in a ten-by-twenty cell. When he came to me he said, 'Fred, I hear good things 'boutchu. You get me off. You do that? You get me off.'" He laughed and slapped his chest. "Hey, I didn't get him off. He's not happy and he and his friends are killers. What I'm saying is, Boggs's in danger, I'm in danger. Think about it. You're in danger too. You 're the one saying the cops, the prosecutor and your own Network're a bunch of dickheads. Life is dangerous. What can I say?" Megler looked at his watch. "Time to do my bit to beautify America and get some more garbage off the street."
