Hard News

"Not at the time I didn't think so. And then, when maybe I started to think itwas a little off he give me all that money. I needed a nest egg. A hundred thousand dollars – where'd I ever get money like that otherwise? Nowhere I know of."

Rune's head swam with painful emotions. Wanted to slap him, to scream, to grab his thin collar and shake him.

Randy Boggs said, "I'm sorry."

She didn't answer.

"I coulda just left. I'm thinking of going to Hawaii after everything gets settled in court, you know. I coulda just got my money and kept going there."

" Hawaii?" she asked as if he'd said "Mars."

He nodded. "Buy me a store of some kind. On the weekends I could sit on the beach and drink those drinks that look like pineapples. With umbrellas in them. You could come visit. You like them drinks?"

She didn't answer.

"I wanta give you some money."

Rune said, "Me? Why?"

"It was on account of me that your house got burned down. How's ten thousand?"

"I don't want your money."

"Maybe fifteen?"

"No, forget it."

"Maybe your little girl-"

"She'snot my little girl," Rune snapped.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Boggs said, "I'm just trying to tell you I'm sorry."

Rune said, "I wanted to help you. That was why I did the story in the first place. Everybody told me not to. Everybody told me to forget about you, that you'd killed a man and that you deserved to be in jail."

Boggs said, "I'd appreciate it if you'd consider taking the money."

"Give it to Courtney's mother, Claire. She needs it more than me."

"I'll give her some, sure. But I'll give you some too. How's that?"

Rune slapped the top of the police car. She shook her head then laughed. Boggs was looking around, smiling too, though he didn't know what was fu

"Haven't held on to it too good. That much is true."

She turned to him and said, "I need to do my story again. I'll have to interview you. Will you talk to me? And this time give me thewhole story?"

"If I do that will you forgive me?"

She said, "I really don't know."

"Could we go drink beer some time?"

"I don't go out with felons."

"I've done some things that'recriminal, I admit that, but I'm not sure I'm a felon exactly."

The detective returned and said to Rune, "Need to get some statements from you both now." He was in his politely firm civil-servant mode.

"Sure," she answered.

He took Boggs aside first and, for the moment, Rune was alone, surrounded by a pool of dull colors on the wet street – reflections from the streetlights, from apartment windows, from the emergency cars. She felt a huge desire to get home, to go back to her houseboat and to Courtney. But, of course, the boat was gone: And the little girl was with her grandmother.

Rune looked at the scene in front of her.

The news crews – at last joined by one from the Network – were busy taping their three-minute segments on the shooting. But they were virtually the only ones left on the street. Like the explosion of the shotgun that killed Jack Nestor the incident had erupted fast and then vanished immediately, pulled into the huge gears of the city and ground up into nothing. But for TV audiences throughout the metro area the events would live on in future newscasts until they were preempted by other stories, which would in turn be replaced by still more after that.

Rune sat down on a doorstep to wait for the detective, and to watch the young reporters, holding their microphones and gazing sincerely into the eyes of their loyal viewers as they tried once again to explain the inexplicable.

34

Wrestle with it, fight it. Standing in front of Claire's hospital bed, Rune wore a white sleeveless

T-shirt and black miniskirt. Beside her was Courtney – who was no longer New Wave preschool. No more black and Day-Glo and studs. She was in her new Laura Ashley cornflower-blue dress and lopsided hair ribbon (it had taken Rune ten minutes to get the navy-blue satin to impersonate a bow).

A sharp, sweet smell was in the air. Rune didn't know whether it was disinfectant or medicine or the smell of illness and death. She didn't like it; she hated hospitals.

"Where's your mom?" Rune asked Claire.

"At her hotel," the girl said. "She was with me all night. That's something about mothers, huh? Abuse 'em all you want and they keep coming back for more."

Courtney clumsily set a paper bag on the bed. "I got this for you."

One-handed, Claire shook it open. Out fell a stuffed dinosaur. Courtney made it walk across the bed. "Rune helped me buy it," her daughter told her.

"How'd I guess?" Claire examined the plush face with serious scrutiny. "He's like sensitive and ferocious at the same time. You can really pick them."

Rune nodded absently. "It's a talent."

Fight it. Fight it down…

Claire didn't look good. She could sit up okay, with some help, but otherwise she was pretty immobile. Her skin was paler than Rune had ever seen it (and Claire was somebody who went as a vampire on Halloween the year before and hadn't bothered with a costume).

"I won't see in my left eye," she a

Rune looked her straight in the good one and was about to offer something sympathetic when Claire moved on to another subject. "I got this job. At a department store. It's kinda bullshit. I have a couple bosses and they're like, 'Well, we'll try you out,' And I'm like, 'What's to try?' It's not, like, the best thing in the world but it's working out okay. Like listen to this – I've got health insurance? I got it just before I left to come down here. Man, they're going to get some friggin' bill."

This room was better than the Intensive Care Unit where she'd been for a few days. From here Claire had a view of rolling Jersey hills and the Hudson and, closer to home, one of Rune's favorite hangouts: the White Horse Tavern, the poet Dylan Thomas's hangout, where Rune had spent a number of afternoons and evenings with a literary and artistic crowd.

Hospitals were pretty icky but here at least you got a view and sunlight and history.

Claire was talking about her mother's house in Boston and how weird it was that nobody in the neighborhood wore black leather or had shaved heads and how she hadn't met any musicians or short-story writers but the one guy she met who she liked was a salesman. Wasn't that the craziest thing you ever heard?

"Crazy."

Rune nodded and tried to listen. The muscles in her abdomen clenched against the crawly feeling, like she was possessed by a space creature that was getting ready to burst out of her. Fight it down… Fight it!

Then Claire was into a travelogue, telling Rune and Courtney about Boston – Faneuil Hall and Cambridge and Chinatown and the lofts and antique stores around South Street Station. "There's this one really, really neat place. It sells old bathtubs that must be three feet deep."

Rune nodded politely, and a couple times said, "Wow, that's interesting," in an uninterested way, which Claire seemed to take as encouragement to keep rambling. Rune found she was holding Courtney's hand tightly. The little girl squirmed.

Fight it…

Rune didn't say much about Boggs or Maisel or theCurrent Events story. Just the bare bones. Claire must have known Rune was the reason she'd been shot and Rune wanted to steer clear of that. Not that she was racked with guilt – you could also say that Claire got hurt because she'd abandoned her daughter. But that got into the way gods or fate or nature worked and if you started thinking too much about cause and effect, Rune knew, it'd drive you nuts.

There was silence for a minute. Then Rune said, "I bought Court a new dress." Nodding at the little girl.