Jeffery Deaver - Hard News

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 ofmy friends," Rune said. "Unfortunately."

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. Runesaw things and sheliked 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 adog? 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 newevidence. 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 comeyou 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.'"