Hard News

2

Rune watched the tape once and then a second time. And then once more.

She sat in a deserted corner of the Network's newsroom, a huge open space, twenty feet high, three thousand square feet, divided up by movable partitions, head-high and covered with gray cloth. The on-camera sets were bright and immaculate; the rest of the walls and floors were scuffed and chipped and streaked with old dirt. To get from one side of the studio to the other, you had to dance over a million wires and around monitors and cameras and computers and desks. A huge control booth, like the bridge of the StarshipEnterprise, looked out over the room. A dozen people stood in clusters around desks or monitors. Others carried sheets of paper and blue cardboard cups of coffee and videocassettes. Some sat at computers, typing or editing news stories.

Everyone wore casual clothing but no one behaved casually.

Rune was hunched over the Sony 3/4-inch tape player and small color TV that served as a monitor.

A ti

The man on the screen was a gaunt thirty-something, with high cheekbones and sideburns. His hair was slicked back and crowned with a Kewpie-doll curl above his forehead. His face was very pale. When Rune had first cued up the tape and started it ru

He wore a tight gray jumpsuit, which under other circumstances – say on West Broadway in SoHo

– mighthave been chic. Except that the name of the designer on the label wasn't Giorgio Armani or Calvin Klein but the New York State Department of Correctional Services.

Rune paused the tape and looked at the letter once again, read the man's unsteady handwriting. Turned back to the TV screen and heard the interviewer ask him,"You'll be up for parole, when?"

"Parole? Maybe a few years. But hell…" The thin man looked at the camera quickly then away."A man's i

Rune watched the rest of the tape, listened to him tell about how bad life in prison was, how nobody in the warden's office or the court would listen to him, how incompetent his lawyer had been. She was surprised, though, that he didn't sound bitter. He was more baffled-like somebody who can't understand the justice behind a plane crash or car wreck. She liked that about him; if anybody had a right to be obnoxious or sarcastic it was an i

She paused the tape and turned to the letter that had ended up on her desk that morning. She had no clue how she'd happened to receive it – other than her being your typical low-level-person-of-indeterminate-job-description at a major television network. Which meant she often got bizarre letters dumped on her desk-anything from Publishers Clearing House award notices to fan mail for Captain Kangaroo and Edward R. Murrow, written by wackos.

It was this letter that had motivated her to go into the archives and dig up these old interview tapes.

She read it again.

Dear to who it may concern:

You have to help me. Please.

It sounded so desperate, pathetic. But the tone wasn't what affected her as much as the third paragraph of the letter. She read it again.

And what it was was that the Police which I have nothing against normally, didn't talk to all the Witnesses, or ask the ones they DID talk to the questions they should of asked. If they had done that, then I feel, in my opinion, they would have found that I was i

Rune looked at the image freeze-framed on the screen. A tight close-up of Randy Boggs just after his trial several years ago.

Where was he born? she wondered. What was his history? In high school, had he been a – what did her mother call them?-a hood? A greaser? Did he have family? A wife somewhere? Maybe children? How would it be to have to visit your husband once a month? Was she faithful to him? Did she bake him cookies and send them to prison.

Rune started the tape again and watched the dull-colored grain on the screen.

"You want to hear what it's like to be in here?"Now, at last, bitterness was creeping into the thin man's voice."Let me tell you 'bout the start of my day. Do you want to hear about that?"

"Tell me whatever you want, "the invisible interviewer asked.

"You wake up at six and the first thing you think is Hell, I'm still here…"

A voice from across the room: "Rune, where are you? Come on, let's go. We've got an overturned something on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway."

The Model was standing up from his desk, pulling on a tan London Fog trench coat that would keep him ten degrees warmer than he needed to be on this April afternoon (but that would be okay because this was areporter's coat). He was an up-and-comer-one of the hotshots covering metro news for the local O amp;O, the Network's owned-and-operated New York TV station, Rune's present employer as well. Twenty-seven, a round face, Midwest handsome (the word "sandy" seemed to apply to him in a vague way). He spent a lot of time in front of mirrors. Nobody shaved like the Model.

Rune worked as a cameraman for him occasionally and when she'd first been assigned to him he hadn't been quite sure what to make of this auburn-ponytailed girl who looked a bit like Audrey Hepburn and was just a little over five feet, a couple ounces over a hundred pounds. The Model probably would have preferred a pickled, chain-smoking technician who'd worked the city desk from the days when they used sixteen-millimeter Bolex cameras. But she shot damn good footage and there was nobody better than Rune when it came to blustering her way through police barricades and past backstage security guards at Madison Square Garden.

"What've you got there?" he asked, nodding at monitor.

"I found this letter on my desk. From this guy in prison."

"You know him?" the Model asked absently. He carefully made sure the belt wasn't twisted then fitted it through the plastic buckle.

"Nope. It was just addressed to the Network. Just showed up here."

"Maybe he wrote it a while ago." Nodding toward the screen, where Randy Boggs was freeze-framed. "Looks like you could carbon-date him nineteen sixty-five."

"Nope." She tapped the paper. "It's dated two days ago."

The Model read it quickly. "Sounds like the guy's having a shitty time of it. The prison in Harrison, huh? Better than Attica but it's still no country club. So, suit up. Let's go."

The first thing you think is, Hell, I'm still here…

The Model took a call. He nodded. Looked at Rune. "This is great! It's an overturned ammonia tanker on the BQE. Boy, that is go

Rune shut the monitor off and joined the Model at his cluttered desk. "I think I want to see her."

"Her? Who?"

"You know who I mean."

The Model's face broke into a wrinkleless smile. "Not Her, capital H?"

"Yeah."

The Model laughed. "Why?"

Rune had learned one thing about TV news: Keep your back covered and your ideas to yourself-unless the station pays you to come up with ideas, which in her case they didn't. So she said, "Career development."

The Model was at the door. "You miss this assignment, you won't have any career to develop. It's ammonia. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Ammonia," Rune repeated. She wound a paisley elastic silkie around her ponytail then pulled on a black leather jacket. The rest of her outfit was a black T-shirt, yellow stretch pants and cowboy boots. "Just give me ten minutes with capital H Her."