Ben Elton - Popcorn

‘Son of a bitch!’ exclaimed Crawford. ‘That was quick.’

A convoy of trucks and cars was piling through Bruce’s gate. Some had the markings of various TV news stations on them, some bore the badge of Los Angeles ’s finest. The noise of chopper blades joined the cacophony as a couple of helicopters appeared, swooping overhead. Both aircraft were owned by the media; the police had taken a little longer to scramble theirs, but they would be arriving soon.

The two detectives watched from their car, and Wayne watched from the window, as the convoy surged up the long drive and spread out dramatically on to the immaculate lawns (crushing the sprinkler system) and started to disgorge hundreds of people. Within no more than three minutes the quiet solitude that Jay and Crawford had so recently enjoyed was just an impossible memory. There was a marksman behind every wall and hedge, and a news reporter plus his or her crew on what seemed like every available piece of open ground. The only things missing were the gawping sadacts who like to stand in the background waving and grinning whenever an event is occurring and news reports are being filed.

Within the besieged house, Bruce joined Wayne, uninvited, at the window. Suddenly, just when he had nearly given up, hope was dawning. They were no longer alone.

‘They’ve found you,’ he said ‘like they were always going to.’

‘Found me Bruce?’ Wayne responded without taking his eyes off the extraordinary amount of activity going on outside. ‘Found me? They didn’t find me, man, I told them where I was. I told them to get on up here right now.’

Wayne turned away from the window, grabbed the TV remote control and began channelhopping.

It was not difficult to find what he was looking for. Basically, the choice was either kids’ morning cartoons or Bruce’s house. It divided up at about twenty channels each.

Wayne flicked through the news shows.

‘… notorious mass murderers, Wayne Hudson and his beautiful young female companion, Scout…’ the first channel said, its reporter standing against a backdrop of Bruce’s prime orange grove.

‘They never know my whole name,’ Scout remarked petulantly, although secretly she was delighted to be called beautiful by a genuine Hollywood cable TV news reporter.

Wayne flipped to one of the network channels, the Today Show, or Good Morning America.

‘… the criminals appear to have taken refuge at the home of Bruce Delamitri, the renowned filmmaker, the man who is said to have inspired their brutal killing rampage…’ The immaculately groomed young reporter was making her report from beside Bruce’s pool.

‘Daddy, that’s our pool!’ Velvet exclaimed in astonishment.

Bruce stared at the screen. He scarcely knew what to think. There were so many things to think. The danger his daughter was in… Brooke bleeding to death on his carpet… His murdered agent and the security guard… Wayne ’s inexplicable behaviour in telling the authorities of his whereabouts…

But despite all these thoughts, any one of which could have stood some considerable mulling over, Bruce’s paramount preoccupation at that point was one of intellectual outrage. ‘They’re blaming me. Jesus! Those facile morons are blaming me!’

‘I sure hope so, man,’ Wayne remarked, and hit another channel.

‘… Mr Delamitri, last seen leaving the Oscars ceremony in the company of nude model Brooke Daniels…’ A couple of photos from Brooke’s Playboy spread appeared on the screen. Somebody at the TV station been doing some excellent and very speedy picture research.

Astonishingly, despite the fact that Brooke’s whole body was in shock and she was already semidelirious, she was still able to take in the sense of what was being broadcast. ‘I’m a fucking actress!’ she gasped from her position on the floor.

‘Keep it down, Brooke, I’m watching TV here,’ Wayne said, and flipped to another channel, where another immaculate, hairsprayed head appeared, this time standing in front of Bruce’s garages.

‘… leaving a trail of pillage, mayhem and death, murdering indiscriminately in the manner of the fictitious antiheroes of Bruce Delamitri’s Oscarwinning movie, Ordinary Americans …’

‘They’re blaming me! Jesus Christ, they are blaming me …’ Bruce was astonished. This reporter was in front of his garage, literally only yards from where he himself stood, broadcasting live from outside his house, where he was being held prisoner by armed killers, and she was blaming him. Blaming him for the mayhem going on, mayhem which, as he had been assuring people for many months, had nothing to do with him.

Wayne changed channel again.

‘Homer, I’ve been reading Bart’s report card,’ said Marge. ‘It says our boy is academically challenged.’

‘Really?’ said Homer, drinking some beer. ‘Academically challenged, huh? That sounds good. He probably gets it from me.’

‘It mean’s he’s stupid, Dad,’ said Lisa.

‘Eat my shorts,’ said Bart.

‘Sorry about that,’ said Wayne, and flipped to another channel.

‘Leave it on,’ Scout protested. ‘I like The Simpsons and I don’t think I ever saw that one.’

‘Later, precious pie.’

Another reporter was speaking out of the screen. ‘… and so these two “Ordinary Americans” have taken refuge in the home of the man who foresaw their coming, who, some might even argue, brought them forth…’

Bruce shouted at the TV, ‘Nature makes killers not movies!’

Wayne turned the television off.

‘Well, I guess if you’re just going to keep on talking we might as well have the damn TV off. Can’t hear it none, anyways.’

Farrah spoke up. It had taken her some time to recover from the terror of staring down Wayne ’s gun barrel, but her spirit was returning. There were already hundreds of police officers outside. Maybe they were going to make it after all.

‘Look,’ she said, lighting a very long, very thin cigarette, made with pink paper and a golden filter, ‘if the cops are here you can’t escape-’

‘I told you already, lady, I don’t want to escape. I asked them to come here. I called them when I came down to get you.’

Bruce could make no sense of this at all. ‘You called the cops?’

‘Well, no, as a matter of fact I called NBC, told ‘em to get all the stations down here. I guess they must have called the cops as well. It don’t matter none. Me and Scout here are used to ignoring cops.’

There were now so many cops in the grounds of Bruce and Farrah’s mansion that Wayne would have had to have been Buddha himself in order to ignore them. There were nearly as many cops as journalists, and more were arriving all the time. Detectives Jay and Crawford passed them as, with heavy hearts, they themselves left the scene of the action.

‘Nothing more for us to do here,’ Jay had been forced to admit.

It was a bitter pill to swallow. Having pulled off a brilliant piece of intuitive police work, locating two desperate and elusive felons, he was now forced to accept that virtually the whole force had been only seconds behind him. There was nothing left for them to contribute and so, as the helicopter and trucks disgorged squad after squad of paramilitary human gunships, the two detectives retired from the scene with what dignity they could muster.

One of the helicopters swooping overhead contained the chief officer of the LAPD, and he was in a hurry. Chief Cornell had been woken with the thrilling news that the Mall Murderers had Bruce Delamitri and his family held hostage in the Delamitri mansion. Chief Cornell had immediately decided to take charge of the operation himself.