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  Finally--it was close to three A.M.--he began to think about the French girl, the one with the straight teeth. With the thought of her, and a little bit of effort on his part (elbow grease was the way he thought of it), Jack Nestor finally began to relax.

  IT WAS ENOUGH OF A DATE TO KEEP BRADFORD SIMPSON happy and not enough of one to worry Rune.

  They were at an outdoor table at a Mexican restaurant near the West Side Highway, the table filled with red cans of Tecate beer and chips and salsa--and a ton of printed material about Lance Hopper and Randy Boggs.

  Bradford had wanted to ask her out again, as it happened, but Rune was content to keep the evening mostly professional.

  The intern scooted his chair closer to hers and Rune endured a little knee contact while they read through the Hopper files. "Where's Courtney?" Brad asked.

  "Let's not go there," Rune said.

  "Sure. She's okay?"

  Yes, no. Probably not.

  "She's fine."

  "She's really cute."

  Let's not go there, she thought and turned back to the files on Lance Hopper that Bradford had found in the archives.

  As they read she began to form a clearer picture of the late head of Network News.

  Hopper was a difficult man--demanding that everyone at the Network work as hard as he did and not let their personal lives interfere with the job. He was also greedy and jealous and petty and wildly ambitious and several times, when his contract was up, virtually extorted the parent company for stock options that increased his worth by hundreds of millions of dollars.

  Yet he was also a man with a heart. For instance, spending as much time with the interns as he did, as Bradford had mentioned. He advocated educational programming for youngsters on the Network, even though shows like those produced far less revenue than after-school cartoons and adventure programs.

  Hopper regularly appeared in Washington before the FCC and congressional committees, testifying about the importance of unfettered media. He was often vilified by conservative, family-oriented groups, who thought there should be more censorship on TV.

  Hopper also took responsibility for the worst black eye in the history of the Network. Three years ago--just before his death--the Network had run an award-winning story as part of the coverage of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in Lebanon. The story was an exclusive about a village outside of Beirut that appeared to be liberal-minded and pro-Western but was in fact a stronghold for fundamentalist militants.

  But when a U.N. force made a sweep of the village to look for suspected terrorists they were so prepared to meet resistance that the operation turned into a bloodbath after a solitary sniper fired one shot near the convoy. A chain reaction of shooting followed. There were twenty-eight deaths, all by friendly fire, including some U.S. soldiers. The "sniper" turned out to be a ten-year-old boy shooting at rocks. The militants, it seemed, were long gone. Some blamed the U.N. for relying on a news story for its intelligence but most people thought it was the Network's fault for doing the story in the first place or for not at least following up and reporting that the terrorists were no longer there.

  Hopper took responsibility for the incident and personally went to Beirut to attend the funerals of the slain villagers.

  Bradford and Rune continued to pore over the files and, though a portrait of Hopper as a complex, ambitious and ruthless man appeared, no evident motive for his death emerged.

  From there they turned to the transcripts of interviews Rune had made over the past week as she'd traveled around the East Coast and the South talking to people who knew Randy Boggs.

  Yeah, Randy Boggs worked for me for close to two years. He come in and was looking for a job. Good boy. Dependable. He wasn't no killer. He pushed a broom with the best of them. I'm sure it was the sixties. We had the Negro problem then. Course, we still have the Negro problem. 'Bout that, I'd like to say a few words, seeing how you have a camera--

  Next ...

  Randy Boggs? Yeah, I knew the Boggs family. Boys I don't remember. Father was a mean motherfucker. Man, the--

  Next ...

  Randy? Yeah. We had this lobster business. But--you got the camera rolling? Okay, let me tell you this story. The wife and I were one time over to Portland and we were driving in the Chevy--we always buy American cars, even if they're a pile of you know what. So we were driving along and there were these three lights in the sky, and we knew they weren't planes because they were so bright. Then one of them--

  Next ...

  Rune yawned violently.

  "You okay?" Bradford asked.

  "More or less." She opened another file.

  Her life had become an endless circle of long hours by herself, of flying on airplanes and staying in hotels that somebody else paid for, of tense meetings at the Network, of interviews that sometimes careened out of control and sometimes worked, of a lonely houseboat, of a chaotic editing room. (One morning she woke up to find that she'd fallen asleep with the Betacam next to her--which wasn't so scary as the fact that she'd slept with her arm around it all night.) She gave up late-night clubs, she gave up West Village writers' bars. Even gave up seeing Sam Healy much. Piper Sutton would occasionally swoop by Rune's cubicle for a status report, like an eagle grabbing a squirming trout in its talons.

  As she and Bradford pored over all this material now, amid the raucous laughter and boasting and flirting of dozens of young lawyers and businesspeople drunk on tequila and the thrill of life in Manhattan, Rune felt both more and more incensed that such a vital and important man as Lance Hopper had been killed and more and more certain that Randy Boggs hadn't done it.

  chapter 12

  "COME ON, SAM. PLEASE?" SHE'D TRIED CHARM AND NOW she was pleading.

  But Sam Healy was a detective who disposed of bombs for a living; it was tough to talk someone like that into anything he didn't want to do.

  They were sitting on the back deck of the boathouse, drinking beer and eating microwave popcorn.

  "I just want to look at it. One little file."

  "I can't get access to the files in the Twentieth Precinct. I'm Bomb Squad. Why would they even talk to me?"

  Rune had spent a lot of time trying to decide if she was in love with this man. She thought she was in a way. But it wasn't like the old days--whenever they were-- when you were either in love or you weren't. Love was a lot more complicated now. There were degrees, there were phases of love. It kicked in and out like a compressor in an air conditioner. She and Healy could talk easily. And laugh. She liked the way he looked like the man in a Marlboro ad. She liked the way his eyes were completely calm and deeper than any man's eyes she'd ever seen. But what she missed was that gut-twist, that weight-losing obsession with the object of your desire that was Rune's favorite kind of love even though it was totally rare.

  Also, Healy was married.

  Which, oddly, didn't bother Rune that much. At least he was separated and had no problem being bluntly honest about the times he saw Cheryl. Rune looked at his marriage like an air bag in a car--a safety feature. Maybe when she got older, if they were still together, she'd force him to make a decision. But for now his marriage was his business. All she wanted was honesty and a boyfriend who kept you guessing. And no boyfriend kept you guessing like one on the New York City Bomb Squad.

  Rune said, "They got the wrong man."

  "I know your theory about Boggs."

  "I don't need to prowl around the evidence room. I just want to read one file."

  "I thought you wanted to be a reporter."

  "I am a reporter."

  "Reporters don't cheat. It'd be unethical to use me to get information."

  "Of course it wouldn't. You know about unnamed sources. Come on, you can be my Deep Throat."

  "It's a murder investigation. I'd get suspended for leaking information."

  "It's a murder conviction. It's a closed case."

  "The transcript is public record. Why don't you--?"

  "I've got the transcript.
I need the police report. It's got the names of all the witnesses and the bullet angles and pictures of the exit wounds. All the good stuff. Come on, Sam." She kissed his neck.

  "There's nothing I can do. Sorry."

  "The man's innocent. He's serving time for something he didn't do. That's terrible."

  "You can talk to the public information officer. They'll give you the department's side of the case."

  "Bullshit is all he'll tell me."

  "She," Healy said. "Not he." He stood up and walked into the galley. "You have anything substantial?"

  "Well, first, everybody I've interviewed said that no way in the world could Randy Boggs kill anyone. Then--"

  "I mean to eat."

  "Oh." She squinted into the galley. "No."

  "Don't mope."

  "I'm not," she said quickly. "I just don't have anything substantial. Sorry. Maybe some Fruit 'N Fiber cereal."

  "Rune ..."

  "A banana. It's pretty old."

  "I can't get the report. I'm sorry."

  "A can of tuna. That's a pretty icky combination, though, if you mix it with the cereal. Even with the high fiber."

  Healy wasn't buying it. "No file. Give it up." He walked back with pretzels and cottage cheese. "So where's your little girl?"

  She was hesitating. "I took her to Social Services."

  "Oh." He was looking at her, his face blank. Not saying anything, eating the cottage cheese. He offered her a forkful she wasn't interested in.

  She said defensively, "They were a really, really good bunch of people there. They were, you know, real professional."

  "Uh-huh."

  "What they'll do is keep her in a foster home for a while then they'll track down her mother...." She was avoiding his eyes, looking everywhere else. Studying his buttons, the stitching of his shirt seams, the trapezoid of floor between his shoes. "Well, it was a good idea, wasn't it?"

  "I don't know. Was it?"

  "I had to."

  "When I was a portable, walking a beat, we found kids sometimes. If there's any suspicion of neglect or abuse you have to bring them in or get a caseworker out to see them."

  Rune said, "Those people are okay, aren't they?"

  "I guess so."

  She stood up and paced slowly. "What was I supposed to do? I can't take care of a baby."

  "I'm not saying--" Healy began.

  "Yes, you are. You're saying 'I guess so,' 'I don't know.'"

  "You did what you thought was right."

  Clench, loosen. Her short, unpolished nails dug into her palm, then relaxed. "You make it sound like I gave her away to the gypsies."

  "I'm just a little surprised is all."

  "What am I going to do? Keep her with me all the time? It cost five hundred dollars to fix the camera because of her. I had to reshoot eight hours of film. I can't afford a baby-sitter--"

  "Rune--"

  Volume and indignation rose. "You make it sound like I abandoned her. I'm not her mother. I don't even want her."

  Healy smiled. "Don't be so paranoid about it. I'm sure they'll take fine care of her. Have some cottage cheese. What's in here?"

  Rune looked. "Apple? Pear? Wait, I think it's a zucchini."

  "Should it be that color?"

  She said, "It's only until they find Claire."

  Healy said, "Just a couple days probably."

  Rune stood at the round porthole, looking out over the water, at the way the lights in Hoboken made lines in the waves like runway approach lights. With her eyes she traced them to the land and back again. She watched them for a few minutes, until they were shattered by a passing speedboat. When the colors began to regroup she turned to Healy and said, "I did the right thing, didn't I, Sam?"

  "Sure you did." He capped the cottage cheese. "Let's go get something to eat."

  PIPER SUTTON SENSED THE POWER SHE HAD OVER HIM and it made her uncomfortable because it was purely the power of sex.

  And therefore a power she couldn't exercise. Or, rather, wouldn't let herself exercise.

  As she looked at the man across the desk from her she crossed her legs and her cream-colored stockings whispered in a reminder of that power. She was sitting in an office exactly two floors above hers--the penthouse of the parent company's monolith.

  "We'll have coffee," the man said.

  "No, thank you."

  "Then I will." Dan Semple was a trim forty-four, compact, with short salt-and-pepper hair curling over his forehead in bangs. He was not--like Piper Sutton or Lee Maisel or his predecessor Lance Hopper--a newsman. He'd sold advertising time for local stations, then for the Network, and eventually he had moved into entertainment and then news programming. The lack of reporting experience was irrelevant; Semple's talent was for money--making it and saving it. No one in the television business was naive enough to believe that high-quality journalism alone was enough to make a network a success. And, with a few exceptions, no one was surprised when Semple was given Hopper's job as director of Network News. The similarities were obvious: Hopper had been a great newsman in the incarnation of a son of a bitch; Dan Semple was a great businessman in the body of a cruel megalomaniac.

  Although one thing he wasn't the least bit cold about was Piper Sutton.

  She had had affairs with various Network executives in the past--only those men, however, who were on a corporate level equal to hers and only those men whom she desired physically or because she truly enjoyed their company. Sutton didn't give a shit about rumors and gossip but one of her few rules of ethics was that she wouldn't use her body to advance her career; there were plenty of other ways to fuck those you worked for.

  The affair with Semple had lasted one year, when they were both on the ascendancy in the Network. But that had been several years ago. Then came Hopper's death, one consequence of which was what Sutton had predicted would happen: Semple was named Hopper's replacement. The day after the board announced the appointment she walked into his office to say how happy she was for him. Sutton had then taken Semple's hand, kissed his cheek and ended the affair.

  Since then Semple'd waged an almost adolescent campaign to win her back. Although they saw each other often and dined together and attended benefits and formal functions she'd decided that their intimate days were over. He didn't believe her when she said it was a hard decision for her as well, though it was. She was attracted to him physically and she was attracted to him for his strength and brilliance and decisiveness. Sutton had settled for weak men in the past and had learned her lesson; she had a number of exes to prove it.

  This romantic tension was an undercurrent in every conversation she and Semple had. It troubled her that although Semple respected her immensely for her ability he desired her only on the most visceral level. The power she had over him was the power of a mistress, not a reigning queen, and that infuriated her--at the same time her continual refusal to resume the affair stung him.

  "How was Paris?" she asked.

  "Comme ci, comme ca. How is it always? The same. Paris never changes."

  The coffee arrived. The executive vice presidents had their own dining room, which delivered their requests for food or beverages on Villeroy & Bosch china, carried on parent-company-logoed lacquer trays. Semple poured a cup and sipped it "Tell me about this story."

  Sutton did, quickly, without emotion.

  "Her name is Rune? First or last?"

  "Some kind of stage name bullshit. She's a cameraman with the O&O here in Manhattan."

  "What does Lee think?" Semple asked.

  "Slightly more in favor of doing the story than I am. But not much."

  "Why are we doing it, then?" he asked coolly. Semple's dark eyes scanned Sutton's blouse. She was glad she'd worn the wool suit jacket over the white silk. But only a part of his eyes was seeing her body. What the other part was considering and what was happening in the brain behind those eyes were a complete mystery to her. It was one of his most magnetic qualities--that she hadn't been able to fathom him. It was also o
ne of his more frightening.

  She answered, "The girl said, in effect, that if she didn't produce it for Current Events she'd do it independently and sell it elsewhere."

  "Blackmail," he snapped.

  "Closer to youthful fervor."

  "I don't like it," Semple said. "There's no point to the story." He sipped more coffee. Sutton remembered that he liked to sit naked in bed in the morning, a tray resting on his lap, the cup and saucer directly over his penis. Did he like the warmth? she used to wonder.

  He asked, "What does she have so far? Anything?"

  "Nope. Nothing substantial. Lots of background footage. That's all."

  "So you think there's a chance it'll just go away?"

  Sutton avoided his eyes. "She's young. I'm keeping a close eye on her. I'm hoping she gets tired of the whole thing."

  Semple had the power to make this story go away forever, leaving behind fewer traces than a couple of pixels on a TV monitor. He glanced at Sutton and said, "Keep me informed on what she finds."

  "Okay."

  "I mean daily." Semple looked out the window for moment. "I dined at a wonderful restaurant. It was off St. Germain."

  "Really?"

  "I wish you'd been there with me."

  "It sounds nice."

  "Michelin was wrong. I have to write and urge them to give it another star." And he uncapped a fountain pen and wrote a note on his calendar reminding himself to do just that.

  chapter 13

  RUNE WAS SLEEPWALKING. AT LEAST, THAT'S WHAT IT felt like.

  She'd been sitting at her desk, in the same curvature-of-the-spine pose, for seven hours, looking over tapes. The close air of the studio was filled with the buzz of a dozen yellow jackets, which she'd thought was the video monitor in front of her until she'd shut it off and realized that the buzzing had continued; the sound was originating from somewhere inside her head.

  Enough is enough.

  She stood up and stretched; a series of pops from her joints momentarily replaced the buzzing. She left Bradford in charge of logging in the recent tapes she'd shot and headed outside. Rune walked through the complicated maze of corridors and into the spring evening. She removed the chrome chain necklace of her ID from around her neck and slipped it in her leopard-skin bag.