But there was something Rune wanted to add. She wanted so badly to turn to this poor woman and tell her exactly what she was thinking right now. Which was that she didn't give a shit about the news story anymore, she didn't give a shit about the Lance Hopper murder. She cared about one thing, and that only: finding the two of them - Randy Boggs and his fat friend, Jack.
She'd get into the Network somehow -Bradford would help her - and steal her tapes and notes, get all the details on where Randy'd lived over the past ten years, where he liked to go, what he hoped to do in the future. Somewhere in that material would probably be a clue as to where he was running to right now. She'd find him and Jack and make sure they both went to Harrison prison.
But then, when it occurred to her that Claire might die and her mother would take Courtney back to Boston, she thought she might not turn them over to the police at all. She'd kill them herself.
30
Bradford Simpson was uneasy. "The word is Piper wants you drawn and eighthed. Quartered isn't good enough." "Look, I just need to get into the newsroom." "If I were you I wouldn't be in the same city as Piper Sutton," the young preppy said. "The same building is a very, very bad idea. Very bad."
They were at Kelly's, a bar on the southern end of Columbus Avenue, around the corner from the Network. The shabby place couldn't make up its mind whether it wanted to be the home base for yuppies who traded insider information or for IRA sympathizers who argued politics. Rune ordered Bradford another martini, a reporter's drink. And one calculated to make him agreeable. She asked him again to get her inside the Network and appended a heartfelt "Please." "What for? Tell me what for." "I can't. It's just really, really important." "Give me a clue." He speared the olive expertly. Connecticutians are good with martinis. "You know, that might not be the best question to ask. I don't think you really want to know." "Now that's an honest response. I don't like it but it's an honest response." "What's the worst that could happen?" she asked. "I could get fired, arrested and sent to jail on Rikers Island." "If anybody asks I'll tell them I snuck in. I promise. I wouldn't jeopardize your career. I know what it means to you. Please, help me out. Just this once." "You're very persuasive," he said. "I haven't even started trying yet." He looked at his watch. "What am I supposed to do?" "Nothing serious." "Just distract the guard while you slip in?" "No, it's a lot easier than that. All you've got to do is deactivate the alarm on the fire door downstairs, open it up and let me in. Piece of cake." "Oh, Christ." The young man looked heartsick at this assignment. He poured down the last slug of martini. "And look at it this way," Rune said. "If you do get arrested and sent to Rikers Island you'll be able to do a great expose on what life's like in prison. What an opportunity."
It didn't go quite the way she'd planned it. She got in okay, thanks to Bradford. She even managed to get to her old desk unseen. The problem was that someone had beat her there. Everything about Boggs was gone.
Rune went through every drawer, every shelf of her credenza, every wadded-up Lamston's and Macy's bag under the desk. But there was zip about Randy Boggs. All the files, the background tapes, the notes - gone. Who'd done it? she wondered.
Rune sat at the desk until six P.M., when the first live Network newscast began. Everyone's attention was on the far side of the studio and not a soul noticed Rune walk up to a gaffer, a heavyset man in jeans and a white striped shirt. He wore a Mets cap. He was sipping coffee from a cardboard cup, watching the attractive Asian anchor-woman deliver a story about the mayor's press conference.
"Hey, Rune," he said, then looked back to the set. "Welcome back." "Danny, I need some help," she said. "Help?" he asked. "You're on set here every day, right?" "Yep. Working overtime to buy my boat." "Somebody went through my desk recently. You see who it was, by any chance?" He sipped more coffee, avoiding her eyes. "I'm off shift." "Danny." "Thought you were fired." "I am. But I need your help. Please." He stared at the newscaster, whose short-cut hair shone under the lights like a blue-black jewel. He sighed. "I saw." "Who was it?" "Oh, brother . . ."
Randy Boggs hadn't been on an airplane in years but he was surprised to find that they hadn't changed much. Seemed there were more men flight attendants and it seemed the food was better (though maybe that was just because of what he'd been eating off metal trays for the past thirty-three months, fifteen days).
He remembered what the United Airlines clerk who'd sold him this ticket had said about no one ever dying from getting asked out and he kept up that attitude on the plane, practicing a bit of flirting with the flight attendants.
He'd dozed and had had a dream that he couldn't remember now and then the weather got rough and the seat belt sign came on. He didn't mind flying but he hated the insides of airplanes. For one thing, the dry, close air bothered him. But they also cheated you. Here you were moving at five hundred miles an hour! But what did the airlines do but try their best to fool you into thinking you were in a restaurant and movie theater. Randy Boggs wanted the planes to have picture windows. Man, seeing the clouds go past like they were trees on the interstate!
Thinking too about his hundred ten thousand dollars. His nest egg. What his father called a "stake" (Randy used to think the old man meant "steak"). And now that he had one he was going to do something with it. Something real smart.
Boggs wondered if he should invest the money in a clothing store in Hawaii. He'd really enjoyed going into that place in Atlanta. He liked the smell - he figured it was aftershave - and he liked the even rows of clothes on the chrome racks. He liked the way the men who worked there stood with their arms folded in front of the shiny counters. If it was slow you could wander outside into the forever warm weather and have a cigarette while you paced the sidewalk under palm trees. He wondered how much it would cost to open a clothing store in Hawaii.
Buying a store. That would be the kind of investment he'd be proud of. Not like those other dumb-ass ideas: like lobster farming and selling amazing water filters and no-money-down real estate and computerized sign painting, all of which he'd tried.
But then again, maybe instead of a store he should invest the money in the stock market. He felt exhilarated, thinking of himself being driven to work, wearing his tan suit and alligator-skin loafers, riding in an elevator up to some penthouse office on Wall Street. The pilot announced they were landing and he looked out the window again. Hearing his father's words:
You listen to me, young man, you paying attention? If you're not I'll tan your hide. Come here, son, come here. You remember this: Don't work for any other man. Don't lien the house. Get paid in cash, not in promises . . .
Though the real advice from his father could be summarized much more easily. It was this: Don't be me. Just then the plane banked sharply and the engines slowed to a growl. Randy Boggs shut out the overhead light and plastered his face against the window, looking into the night. In the distance he believed he saw a shoreline, he believed he saw water. He definitely saw the runway rising to meet him as if the land were rushing forward to greet him like a lover and welcome him to his new life.
The break-in took only five minutes. The Network's personnel department was empty. Rune used a letter opener and fire hose nozzle to break the locks off two file cabinets. Inside, she found the bulky file she'd been looking for, examined it briefly then trotted out with it under her arm.
At an all-night coffee shop up the street she ordered take-out: a Greek salad - extra anchovies - and a large apple juice. (Which reminded her of Courtney and made her feel lonely. She canceled the juice and got coffee - the caffeine was a better idea anyway, she decided.) She sat at the counter, opened the stolen file and began reading. Her appetite faded by the time she was halfway through the salad. But she drank all the coffee. Then she looked up, squinting, walked to the phone and got Lee Maisel's number from Directory Assistance. She punched the numbers in, noticing only then that it was midnight.
Wondering if she was going to wake him up. She did. The producer's voice cracked. "Yes, hello?" "Lee, it's Rune. I've got to talk to you. It's an emergency." "Emergency? What d'you mean? What time is it?" "I've got to talk to you." "You're okay?" "I'm all right. I found out something about Lance Hopper's killing. It wasn't an accident. Randy and Jack were hired to kill him." "What are you talking about?" The voice was sharper now; his mind was in gear. He was a journalist probing for facts. "It was a professional hit." "But who'd want Lance dead? "It was-" Now Rune's voice cracked too and the reason it did had nothing to do with being tired. She repeated in a whisper, "It was Piper."
31
That?" Maisel cleared his throat.
Rune heard the rustling of cloth. She pictured the producer sitting up, putting his feet on the floor, feeling for slippers. "Piper hired them to kill Lance." Again, a pause. He was waiting. She heard him clear his throat again then cough. "This isn't funny." "It's true, Lee." "Come on, Rune. Why would she want him dead?" "Somebody took all the Randy Boggs files and tapes out of my desk. Everything was gone." "Who?" "Danny Turner, the head electrician on the set, told me it was Piper." Maisel didn't answer. Rune said, "And remember, she didn't want to do the story in the first place, she tried to get me to stop? She was going to send me to London? To get rid of me." Maisel snapped, "What I was asking was why she'd want Lance Hopper dead." "Because he was going to fire her. I went through her personnel file-" "You what? How?" "I just did ... Anyway, you know what I found? That Hopper tried to fire her a year before he died. Piper filed two EEOC complaints against him. They were both dropped but there's lots of memos - it was this huge war." "Rune, people don't kill people for jobs." "Maybe not usually - but you know Piper and her temper. You told me that her job was her whole life. And how much does she make? A million a year? That's enough to kill somebody for." "But how is she going to find professional killers? This is just too-" "What were some of her assignments?" She continued, "In Africa, in Nicaragua, the Middle East. She could've met some mercenaries. The fat guy - Jack -he looked just like a soldier. And he probably hired Randy to help him."
Maisel considered this. He was less skeptical than a moment ago. He said, "Keep going." Rune felt like a juggler. It was tough to keep all the parts of the story in the air at once. "When Mr Frost, the new witness, died? It wasn't an accident at all. Piper knew his name. She saw it from my story. She sent that fat guy to kill him. And then what happens? All the cassettes disappear. And she knew where I'd put the duplicate cassette of Frost. And she'd know how to get into the computer and steal the master."
She felt the silence from the other end of the line -his concentration as he weighed her words, the shock. But maybe also the excitement reporters must feel when they first sniff a lead to a hot story. When he spoke it was almost as if to himself. "And she was pretty smooth when she ad-libbed the broadcast."
Rune said, "Like she'd known all along she was going to have to do it." A long pause. "This is a nuclear bomb we're playing with, Rune. You've got a lot of speculation. There's no direct evidence linking her to the killing." "I know she did it, Lee." "The way you knew Boggs was innocent?" She said nothing to that. The producer continued. "Just let me ask you one thing. You're bitter because Piper fired you and ruined your story. If that hadn't happened, if you were an objective reporter, would you still
be coming down against Piper?" "Yes, I would. Maybe there're no eyewitnesses but there's plenty of circumstantial evidence." Maisel was silent for a moment. "I'll have to call Dan Semple. I'll. . ." His voice was fading. "Semple . . ."
Rune asked, "What are you thinking, Lee?" She remembered Semple's picking Piper up in his limo after she and Rune had dinner at that French restaurant. "Oh, no, you think he's in on it too?" "They had an affair, you know. Piper and him. Around the time Hopper was killed." Rune said, "After Hopper was killed Semple got his job . . . ! "What are we going to do, Lee?"
Maisel said, "Okay, stay on the line. I'm going to make some calls." She heard him use his cell phone to talk to Jim Eustice at home and tell him what Rune suspected. He then called Timothy Krueger, the Network lawyer who'd presided over Rune's unemployment. Then she heard a conference call as Maisel spoke to Krueger and, apparently, the police. She deduced that they were all going to rendezvous at the Network in a half hour - in Studio E, an old, unused space in the basement of the building where they could meet in private. Maisel hung up his mobile phone and came back on the other line. "Rune, you there?" "I'm here." "I talked to Jim and our legal department." "I heard." Maisel confirmed that they were meeting two homicide detectives in Studio E. "I'll be there," Rune said. "Lay low until the cops get there. We don't want Piper to see you." "Sure." "Man, this's bad," he muttered. But that was the only emotion he showed. Instantly he was Edward R. Murrow again. He said to her, "You did a good job, Rune. Whatever the fallout from this, you did good. See you in a half hour."
