Jack Du Brul - Vulcan's forge

“I know, I know, forty-five minutes to air.” Only her producer would disturb her in the editing room.

“You’ve got five.”

“What in the hell are you talking about, Hank? We don’t air for an hour.”

“You know the rules, Jill. Every piece that chronicles the violence must be cleared by Hiroshi.” Hiroshi Kyato was the station’s news director.

“That’s bullshit and you know it. You can shove your five-minute deadline. I’m not some second-class citizen.”

“Wait, I didn’t mean anything by it, I mean I don’t mean any disrespect for who you are. It’s just, well, you know…” His voice trailed off.

The producer backpedaled so fast that it truly stunned Jill. Race was polarizing the station, too. Jill was half-Japanese, and Hank was a caucasian from New Jersey, and he was now deadly afraid that he’d offended her.

“Hold on, Hank,” Jill said quickly. “What I mean to say is that I’m not a cub reporter on her first assignment. I know what the boundaries are. I don’t need Hiro and his thought police telling me what to say on the air.”

“I’m sorry, Jill,” Hank said tiredly. “I’ve been on edge ever since Hiro agreed to help Mayor Takamora reduce tensions in the city by running tamer pieces on the situation. So far you are about the only reporter who hasn’t called me a graduate of the Josef Goebbels School of Broadcast Journalism.”

“Haven’t you talked to Hiro about this?”

“Sure did. He told me to hand over every segment about the violence or hand in my resignation.”

“All right, listen, my piece isn’t done yet, or, well, it is, but I’m not going to let that son of a bitch cut it up. I’m going to take it home tonight, tone it some. If anyone is going to censor my work, it’ll be me. I won’t be the person to cost you your job.”

“Jill, you can’t do that. Your story belongs to the station. It’s not your private property.”

“Try and stop me, Hank.”

Jill set the phone back in the cradle and popped the tape from the editing machine, slipping it in her handbag slung across the back of her chair. She stood.

“What are you going to do?” Ken asked from behind his thick glasses.

“I don’t know yet.” She left the darkened room.

The subtle chirping of cicadas was a rhythmic accompaniment to the moon-drenched night. The air was warm, but charged with the humidity of a recently passed thunderstorm. Jill sat on the lanai of her condo, her bare feet propped against a patio table and a glass of zinfandel idly twirling between her long fingers.

She’d been home for a couple of hours, but the long bath and half bottle of wine had done little to calm her frayed nerves. Three months she’d been working on the Ohnishi piece, three fucking months, and it would be chopped up into tiny pieces on the cutting room floor and run as a human interest story, no doubt. If she’d ever questioned the connection between Ohnishi and Takamora, she had her proof now — and the links ran even deeper, to her own news director. Was no one immune to this racial factionalism other than her?

She was really wondering if it was all worth it. All the sacrifices she’d made in her life, all the thought she’d put into her career, and here she was, about to have her accomplishments hacked apart because they cut too close to the truth.

“Son of a bitch.” Despite herself, she was almost in tears.

Everything in her life had been built around journalism. She’d let almost everything else go in order to reach the upper echelons of her profession. Few boyfriends lasted more than a month or so of her eighty-hour work weeks. She’d spent her last vacation working as a temporary secretary at a sewage treatment plant, tracking down allegations of groundwater contamination.

Her infrequent talks with her mother invariably turned to Jill’s lack of a husband and children. Every time Jill bragged about a breaking story, her mother would ask where her grandbabies were. Jill would always end the conversation angrily defending her career, but would always be racked with guilt, knowing that her mother was partly right.

Jill did want a husband and children, but she also wanted to be a journalist. There was a balance between the two that she just couldn’t seem to find. How much of her career should she give up for a family? How much family should she forego for a career?

And now her career might be about over. She could refuse to hand in her story and face probable dismissal, or she could cut the piece herself, destroying every shred of her integrity.

She wondered if she should send the story directly to New York. She had a few friends in the network — maybe she could get someone to watch it, see if it was worth running on the national feed. Lord knew nothing like it had been sent from Hawaii in a long time.

Her phone rang. Jill got up from the lanai to answer it, but as soon as she put the receiver to her ear, the line went dead. Crank call or wrong number, she didn’t care.

She finished the last bit of wine in a heavy swallow and put the empty glass in the dishwasher, leaning against the tiled counter. She’d exhausted two of the three traditional female relaxation techniques, the bath and the wine, and there weren’t any stores open this late, so she couldn’t go shopping. She decided on a masculine diversion — she’d go out. Sitting at home and brooding wasn’t her style anyway. She could do the voice-over in the morning, but tonight she wanted a diversion, something to get her mind off her job, off her parents, off everything.

There would be a vast assortment of eligible bachelors at the tourist hotels near the beach. Before heading into her bedroom, she put an Aerosmith CD into the player and cranked the volume to seven. The heavy bass and pounding tempo immediately made her feel better. Defiantly bad-girl music for a bad-girl type of night.

She spent over an hour choosing her outfit and makeup. Finally she was dressed to kill, from black tap panties to a hip-hugging Nina Ricci dress. Six hours a week in a gym ensured that she had a body that would turn even a blind man’s head.

Just as she was resettling her breasts in the strapless dress, there was a crash of breaking glass. She whirled toward the sliding glass bedroom doors as a darkly dressed figure burst through the gauzy curtains. The first man was quickly followed by two more, their booted feet crushing the shards against the teal carpet.

Jill screamed shrilly. For an instant her panic overcame the natural urge to flee, and that hesitation cost her.

Two of the men raced toward her, guns clamped in their gloved fists. Jill began backing away, but a pistol whipped out and caught her on the jaw, snapping her head around and knocking her to the floor. She was unconscious before her diamond pendant necklace settled in her cleavage.

The man who had struck her peeled off his black ski mask. It was Takahiro Ohnishi’s assistant, Kenji.

“Tie her,” he ordered.

He searched the house until he found the room Jill used as an office. Two walls were lined with expensive video equipment, the type used for high-quality editing work. More than likely her piece on Ohnishi was here. Kenji rifled the filing cabinet and desk with professional adroitness, but turned up nothing.

In disgust he went back out to the living room. On a small geometric lucite table near the front door rested a thick manila envelope. He tore it open and a videocassette slid into his hand. He returned to the office and slid the tape into a VCR.

Jill Tzu’s story ran for the first and only time. As Kenji had suspected, it documented his employer’s known violations of civil employment laws and Ohnishi’s support of Honolulu Mayor David Takamora’s gubernatorial election bid for the fall. Jill had also managed to slip in several references to the escalating violence surrounding the campaign and the possibility that Ohnishi was financing that as well. Popping the tape from the VCR, Kenji slid it into the inside pocket of his dark windbreaker.