Stephen Cannell - Runaway Heart

"I'll call once I get my hands on him," Shane

yelled from the helicopter over the rotor noise. "Alexa's on her way over to give you a lift."

"Thank you," Susan shouted back.

Shane nodded and waved, then the helicopter engine roared as the blades picked up rpms. The big chopper lifted off and flew into the night sky.

Alexa Scully arrived ten minutes later. She pulled up to where Herman and Susan were now waiting by the back station entrance, reached over and unlocked the rear door of her black-and-white D-car, then shoved it open.

"I'm Alexa. You guys look like you need a ride," the surprisingly beautiful black-haired woman announced.

Herman and Susan introduced themselves, then got in the back seat of the car. They ducked down out of sight as Shane's wife pulled out of the Hollywood station parking lot and drove past the unmarked government sedan.

"Four guys in a gray Lexus," Alexa reported as she left the DARPA vehicle behind. "They're doing lot of hand-wringing. Got some confusion going on there."

After they were a mile away Susan and Herman sat up.

"You and Shane have been unbelievable," Susan said. "Without you, I don't know what we would have done."

"Jack's our friend. Of course we'd help."

Alexa drove them to the Van Nuys Airport and dropped them at the Peterson Executive Jet Terminal. After saying good-bye she waved and drove off.

Susan sat in the Jet Terminal thinking about Jack, who had somehow managed to slip by her emotional defenses and had been silently rearranging the furniture in the private, ruminative part of her head. Worse still, he was nothing like what she had been looking for. His list of superficial negatives seemed mind-boggling. He was a broken warrior who ignored, or seemed to.

laugh at, most of her important beliefs. He didn't belong in her temple of dreams, yet there he was dripping sarcasm and disrespect all over her carefully constructed value system. To her amazement, he seemed a perfect fit. Now he had been kidnapped, possibly was in mortal danger, and she couldn't get her mind to stop spinning or her heart to stop pounding. Her father had once told her that when you worry, you define your weakness, and when you dream you define your goals. She wondered how these feelings defined her.

Susan had a strange sense of impending disaster. She had been pushed into an unfamiliar role, not knowing if she would be able to hold up her end. She felt tiny and overwhelmed.

At a little past 10:30 a private jet landed; a green-and-white, forty-million-dollar Global Explorer. The main door hissed down and Donald Trump was standing in the threshold dressed in a perfect New York ensemble a black three-piece suit, yellow silk tie and matching pocket square. His blonde combover flapped slightly in the light L.A. breeze. He came down the steps and across the tarmac toward them, smiling as he approached.

"Herman! You've gained weight since you stopped suing me. You need better adversaries." Trump was referring to a suit Herman filed against his casino division a year earlier, when they had tried to build a hotel in Tahoe, cutting down trees and adversely impacting the environmental resources of that small community. In the end Herman and Donald had compromised and found to their amazement that they liked one another.

Herman smiled. "Thanks for coming, Donald. I'm kind of in a crack here. You're the only person I know who can dig me out."

"Hey, this could be great for me. Are these guys ready to meet?"

Herman said. "They're gathered and waiting."

"Then let's go," The Donald said, smiling while his blue eyes danced with excitement.

When Susan and Herman escorted Donald Trump into Chief Ibanazi's den, the room was at standing-room-only. Thirty members of the tribe were present. It may have been billed as a tribal lodge meeting, but Chief Ibanazi was looking very record-industry chic in Gucci and Rive Gauche. He couldn't believe that Donald Trump was standing in his temple of creativity the very room where he laid down his grooves and slammed on the Yamaha Sound Machine.

"My God, it's you," he started off, shaking Trump's hand. "It's really you."

"Yep. Me," Donald said.

"I mean, you're Donald Trump."

"Yep, sure am. No doubt in my mind," he chuckled.

"I mean, 'The Donald' is in my house. Amazing… I can't believe you're really here."

"Yep… in the flesh. It's me."

It went on like that for two or three more rounds, until Herman stepped in and broke it up.

"I'm Herman Strockmire," he said to Russell Ibanazi and the rest of the people in the room. "I'm the one who called you six hours ago. I think you know my daughter Susan."

"You mean, Lois," Russell corrected, smiling at her. "How's Clark? Did Mimi like the background stuff we did?"

"Uh…" She shot a look at Herman, whose eyebrows had climbed up somewhere in the middle of his forehead.

Susan stammered: "Uh, Izzy, I'm afraid that wasn't exactly all true, what we told you about 213 Magazine…"

"What part of it wasn't true?" His handsome face wrinkled in distress.

"Well, more or less… all of it."

"Clark doesn't want to do the 'L.A. Sound' cover story?"

"Well, he would if he could, but since there is no Clark Lane, and no 'L.A. Sound' cover, and since we're not with the magazine at all… I don't think you should count on it."

"Not with the magazine?" Distress morphed into depression.

"No. We were just trying to find out more about the reservation and what was going on out there. It's why Mr. Trump is here now."

Russell Ibanazi looked at Donald, then at Herman.

"Okay," he said. "Then what's going on?"

Donald stepped forward, dropping his cashmere overcoat over the back of a large club chair. He looked at the faces of the rest of the Ten-Eyck tribe that included men and women of all ages, as well as half a dozen teenagers and a few children. They were handsome, black-eyed people, all dressed in the best Rodeo Drive had to offer.

"As you undoubtedly know," Donald began, "I'm involved in some big casino developments in Atlantic City and elsewhere…"

"Yes, of course we've heard," Russell Ibanazi said, leaning forward respectfully.

"I understand from Herman that you've voted in a government administrator to run your reservation and that he now has total control," Trump went on. "Is that pretty much the gist?"

"Yes, sir, that's exactly the situation. Correct." Russell was measured and precise no more show-biz buzzwords. He was back to being tribal chief.

"I also understand that the government pays you around forty million a year for the use of your seventeen-hundred acre reservation east of Indio."

Russell Ibanazi looked at Susan, then nodded. "It nets out at a little over two thousand dollars an acre a month."

"I hate to be blunt," Donald said. "But you're being screwed. Who negotiated that deal?"

"We… well, I set it up, and the entire tribe approved it at council." Concern shadowed his features.

"Since California passed the Native American Casino Gaming Bill, I'm sure you're aware that your reservation can now host a full-service gambling casino. That reservation is a tremendously valuable asset. Seventeen hundred acres could be worth a fortune if developed correctly. However, it can't be done if the government is fouling the land, dumping toxic waste into illegal ground fills." Trump had them all listening intently.

"There can't be much waste yet, Donald, it's only been eighteen months," Herman said quickly.

"Look, I can most likely deal with the toxic waste issues. I can probably force the government to clean it up at their expense or face a shit-storm of negative publicity. What I can't deal with is this non-Indian administrator hired by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency," Donald said. "He will block any attempt of mine to redefine land usage."