Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

Boots scraped on the asphalt outside.

Nestor felt a low itching and rubbed his scar. He felt the weight of the Steyr automatic in his pocket.

But he left it where it was and climbed out onto the deck.

He watched her open the door, clumsy, tilting against the weight of a movie camera and cassettes and a leather belt of batteries or whatever, which looked like a bandolier of M16 clips. She stacked it all by the door and disappeared into the bedroom. He waited a few minutes to see if he'd get a glimpse of skin but when she came out in a boring work shirt and stretch pants he silently left the boat and disappeared into the West Village.

A genius, but always controversial…" Click.

"A genius, but always controversial, Lance Hopper…"

Click.

Rune hit the rewind button again. It was a good shot of him: Lance Hopper. Or a good shot of his mortal remains, at any rate – the gurney holding his body as it was wheeled out of the deadly courtyard three years before. She wished she could use the footage. Unfortunately, it had been filmed by another station.

"… controversial, Lance Hopper was disliked by coworkers and competitors alike. Although under his brief leadership the sevenp.m. national news program rose to number one in the ratings, he managed to embroil the network in several major scandals. Among them was an uproar caused by numerous firings of staff members, massive and – his critics said – arbitrary budgetary cutbacks and intense scrutiny of the network's news programs and their content.

"Perhaps the incident that gave his network the blackest eye, however, was an Equal Employment Opportunity suit brought by five women employees who claimed that Hopper's hiring and promotion practices discriminated against them. Hopper denied the charges and the suit was settled out of court. Associates of the late executive, though, admitted that he preferred men in executive positions, and felt that a woman had no business in the higher echelons of network news. His flamboyant personal life belied that reputed prejudice, however, and he was often seen in the company of attractive women from society and the entertainment industry. There were rumors of bisexual behavior and of his having had several young male models as companions. His penchant, however, was for tall blondes…"

Click.

Tall blondes. Why is it always tall blondes?

Rune was at her desk, surrounded by piles of newspapers, magazines, computer printouts, videocassettes and the refuse from a dozen fast-food meals. It was four-thirty in the afternoon and everyone was gearing up for the news at seven. She felt that she was in the eye of a hurricane. Motion everywhere. Frantic, crazed motion.

Rune had also learned that while Hopper's internship program had indeed launched many a career in journalism he himself was maybe a bit more interested in the young people than he should have been. In the archives Rune found a confidential memo in which the network's ethics committee heard complaints from two interns, eighteen and nineteen, that he'd made improper advances toward them. The names weren't given and there seemed to be no follow-up references to the incidents.

She asked Bradford about the reports but he said he knew nothing about them and didn't believe the stories for a minute. Powerful people, he explained, attract rumors. He obviously didn't want his idol to have feet of clay and Rune wondered if it had been purely an oversight that the young man had missed the memo about the investigation when he was digging through the archives in search of material on Hopper.

Click.

Rune watched the tape of Hopper's body rolling out into the spring night, the snakes of afterimage etched into the screen by the revolving lights on the EMS vans and police cars, the crowds – pale in the video camera's radiance of light – that looked curious and bored at the same time.

"Rune." A calm voice, a woman's voice.

"Oh, hi." It was Piper Sutton.

Should've cleaned up my desk. She thought. Remembering how neat the anchor-woman's was. And seeing how neat she looked now, standing here in a dark red suit with black velvet tabs on the collar and a white high-necked blouse and and dark fleshy stockings disappearing into the slickest patent-leather shoes Rune'd ever seen. Shoes with high heels sand one red stripe along the side.

Shoes that'd put me on my ass I tried to wear them.

But, man, they looked cool.

"You're busy." Sutton's eyes scanned the desk.

"I was just working on the story."

Rune casually picked up several of the closest paper bags – one Kentucky Fried and two Burger Kings -and dropped them into, well, onto an overflowing wastebasket.

"You want to, like, sit down?"

Sutton looked at a ketchup packet that rested on the one unoccupied chair. "No. I don't." She leaned forward and ejected the tape that was in the Sony player, then read the label. "Brand X," she said. "It's from a competitor. You can't use this footage, you know. I'm not putting a super in any of my news programs that says 'Courtesy of another network.'" She handed the tape back to Rune.

"I know. I'm just using it for background."

"Background." Sutton said the word softly. "I want to talk to you. But not here. Are you doing anything for dinner?"

"I was just going to John's for pizza. They're like real generous with their anchovies."

Sutton walked away. "No. You'll have dinner with me."

"The thing is, there's this person. Can they come with us?"

"I want to talk to you in private."

"Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of her. She's, you know, discreet."

Sutton shrugged, took one last look at the desk and didn't seem to like what she saw. "Whatever." Then she scanned Rune's pink T-shirt and miniskirt and fishnet stockings and ankle boots and she said, "You do have a dress, don't you?"

Rune said defensively, "I've got two, as a matter of fact."

She wondered what she was missing when Sutton laughed. The anchorwoman wrote out an address and handed it to Rune. "That's between Madison and Fifth. Be there at six-thirty. We'll do the pretheater. Don't want to spend more than we need to, do we?"

"That's okay. My friend likes to eat early."

You couldn't call it a tip. It was a bribe.

Jacques, the maitre d', took the money Sutton offered him and slipped it into the pocket of his perfectly pressed black tuxedo. However much it was – Rune didn't see – the cash might have bought them access to the dining room but it did nothing to cheer up the poor, sullen man. He sat them at a table off to the side of the main dining room then surveyed Courtney. He said, "Maybe a phone book."

Rune said, "Yellowand White Pages."

Jacques pursed his unhappy Gallic lips and went off in search of the best child-seating device New York Telephone could offer.

Rune looked around the room. "This is like really, really amazing. I could get into it. Living this way, I mean."

"Uhm."

The theme of L'Escargot seemed to be flowers and – probably as with the food – excess was in. The center of the room was dominated by a twisty vined centerpiece, sprouting orchids and roses and baby's breath. The walls held huge paintings of flowers. Rune liked them. They were what Monet would have done if all he'd used electric-colored Crayolas instead of oil paint. Rune more or less matched the decor. She'd raced home to change into one of the two dresses, a purple-and-white Laura Ashley Floral, which was her spring and summer dress. It was several years old, but had very little mileage on it.

On the table in front of them was a bird of paradise in a tall glass vase and some kinky-looking green thing like a pinecone, which, if you were to see it inNational Geographic, you wouldn't be able to tell whether it was a plant or fish or huge insect. Rune pointed at the bird of paradise. "I love these dudes." She petted it. "I don't think it looks like a bird at all. I think it looks like a dragon."