Hard News

by Jeffery Deaver

  Maisel was nodding. But Rune didn't get it.

  "I ..."

  "Think," Sutton snapped.

  "I don't know. I'm sorry."

  Maisel supplied the answer. "That another magazine or feature program'll pick up the lead and bring out the story at the same time we do. It's a news policy--we don't spend time and money on a story if there's a chance we'll be preempted."

  Rune rocked forward in the chair. "It won't happen again. I promise. I'll be so skeptical you won't believe it."

  "Rune," Sutton began.

  "Look, what I'll do is ask people when I interview them if anybody from any other station has been asking them questions. If they have been I'll tell you. I promise. That way you can decide if you want to go ahead with the story or not."

  Maisel said, "The only weapon journalists have is their minds. You've got to start using yours."

  "I will. Just like the Scarecrow."

  Sutton asked, "The what?"

  "You know, The Wizard of Oz. He wanted a brain and--"

  "Enough." Sutton waved her hand, managing to make her face both blank and hostile at the same time. Finally she said, "All right. Keep on it. But if anybody beats us to the punch--I'm talking anybody: a rap station, MTV, Columbia's student station--we drop the project. Lee?"

  "Okay with me," Maisel said.

  Lighting another cigarette, Sutton nodded and said, "All right. But this was your last strike, babes."

  "I thought you got three," Rune said, standing up, retreating to the door.

  Sutton tossed the lighter onto her desk; it skidded into a crystal ashtray. "We play by my rules around here. Not the American League's."

  THE CHAMELEON SAT ON THE WALL, AT AN ANGLE, FRO-zen in space, hardly breathing.

  Jack Nestor lay in bed and watched it.

  He liked chameleons. Not the way they changed color, which wasn't so spectacular when it came right down to it. It was more the way they were fragile and soft. He sometimes could get up real close to them--the ones around the Miami Beach Starlite Motor Lodge were used to people. He'd pick one up and let it walk along his massive, tanned forearm. He liked feeling the baby-skin of the lizard and the pleasant tickle of its feet.

  Sometimes he'd plop one down on his dark blurred tattoo, hoping it would turn to that deep blue color, but it never did. They didn't change to flesh color either. What they did was they jumped the hell off his arm and scurried away like long roaches.

  Nestor was forty-eight years old but looked younger. He still had a thick wavy mass of hair, which he kept in place with Vitalis and spray. It was dark blond though contained some timid streaks of gray. Nestor had a squarish head and a hint of a double chin but the only thing about his body that bothered him was his belly. Nestor was fat. His legs were strong and thin and he had good shoulders but his large chest sat above a round belly that jutted out and curled over his waistband, hiding his Marine Corps belt buckle. Nestor didn't understand why he had this problem. He couldn't remember the last time he'd sat down to a proper meal, roast beef and potatoes and bread and vegetables and pie for dessert (he thought it was probably Christmas Day six years ago, when the prison cooks had laid out a really good spread). What he ate now was just Kentucky Fried and Whoppers and Big Macs. He missed Arthur Treacher's Fish 'N Chips and wondered if they were still in business anywhere. Anyway, he thought it wasn't fair that all he was eating was these fucking tiny meals and he was still gaining weight.

  Nestor noticed two red-and-white-striped boxes in bed. The Colonel grinned at him. Nestor kicked the boxes onto the floor. They tumbled open and bones and coleslaw shreds scattered on the floor.

  The chameleon took off.

  "Ooops," Nestor said.

  He pulled on his T-shirt and smoothed his hair back. He yawned and groped on the bedside table for a cigarette. The pack was empty but he found a used one, still an inch long, lit it and stacked the cheap pillows against the headboard. He sat back, yawned again, and coughed.

  Flashes of sun shot off speeding cars and burst against the wall. The room's window, as advertised, did overlook the beach; that much was true. However, the view had to get across six lanes of highway, two access roads and the hotel parking lot before it eased through the streaked window of room 258. Nestor listened to the sticky rush of the traffic for a few minutes, then reached over and squeezed the butt of the young woman lying next to him.

  The third time, when he got a little rougher, she stirred.

  "No," she mumbled with a thick Cuban accent.

  "Rise and shine," Nestor said.

  She was in her mid-thirties, with a body that looked ten years younger and a face that went ten years the other way. Her eye shadow and mascara were smeared. The lipstick, too, was a mess and it looked as if her lips had slid to the side of her face. She opened her eyes briefly, rolled over on her back and pulled a thin sheet up to her navel.

  "No, not again."

  "What?"

  "Not again. It hurt last night."

  "You didn't say nothing about it hurting."

  "So? You wouldn't have stopped."

  That was true but he would at least have asked if she felt better before they went to sleep.

  "You all right now?"

  "I just don't wanna."

  Nestor didn't want to either. What he wanted was breakfast--two Egg McMuffins and a large coffee. He crushed out the cigarette and bent down and kissed her breast.

  Mumbling, eyes closed, she said, "No, Jacky I don't wanta. I have to go to the bathroom."

  "Well, I gotta have either you or breakfast. So, what's it gonna be?"

  After a moment: "What you want for breakfast?"

  He told her and five minutes later she was in her orange spandex miniskirt struggling along the glisteningly hot sidewalk to the McDonald's up the street.

  Nestor took a shower, spending most of the time rubbing his stomach with this green-handled pad with bumps on it. Somebody'd told him that if you did that, it broke up the fat cells and flushed them away. He thought he noticed a difference already even though on the scale he hadn't lost any weight yet. He kneaded the large glossy star-shaped scar six inches to the left of his navel, a memento of the time a hollow-point 7.62mm slug had made a journey through his abdomen. Nestor had never gotten used to the leathery feel of the flesh. He had a habit of squeezing and running his fingers over it.

  He rinsed off, stepped out of the shower and spent a lot of time shaving then getting his hair into shape. He dressed in a dark-green, short-sleeved knit shirt and the gray pants he always wore. Dungarees. He wondered why anybody would call pants anything that started in "dung." Shitarees, Craparees. He pulled on thin black nylon socks, sheer like women's stockings, then strapped on black sandals.

  He stepped out of the bathroom, which was filled with steam and hair spray mist, and smelled the food, resting on the TV. The woman was sitting at the chipped desk putting on her makeup. For a minute, looking at her buoyant breasts in the tight yellow sweater, Nestor's hunger for food wavered, but then the McMuffins won and he sat on the bed to eat.

  He ate the first one quickly and then, with the edge off his appetite, lay back on the bed to read the paper and sip his coffee while he worked on the second one. He noticed she'd bought some insurance; a third McMuffin was also in the bag--to keep his appetites and his hands occupied. He laughed but she pretended she didn't know he'd caught on.

  He'd gotten halfway through the front section of the Miami Herald, reading the national news, when he sat upright in bed. "Oh, shit."

  She was curling her eyelashes. "Huh?"

  But Nestor was standing up, walking to his dresser, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He pulled out a jumble of underwear and socks and knit shirts.

  "Hey, iron these for me?" He handed her the shirts.

  "Jacky what is it?"

  "Just get the iron out, okay?"

  She did and spread a thin towel on the desk for an ironing board. She ironed each shirt, then folded it precisely.
>
  "Whatsa matter?"

  "I've got to go away for a little while."

  "Yeah, where you going? Can I come too?"

  "New York."

  "Oh, Jacky, I've never been--"

  "Forget about it. This's business."

  She handed him the shirts then snorted. "What business? You got no business."

  "I got a business. I just never told you about it."

  "Yeah, so what do you do?"

  Nestor began to pack a suitcase. "I'll be back in a week or two." He hesitated then took out his wallet and handed her two hundred and ten dollars. "I'm not back then pay Seppie for the room for next couple weeks, okay?"

  "Sure, I'll do that."

  He looked at the dresser again then said to her, "Hey, check in the bathroom, see if I left my razor?"

  She did this and when she wasn't looking Nestor reached way back into the bottom drawer of the dresser and took out a dark-blue Steyr GB 9mm pistol and two full clips of bullets. He slipped these into his bag. Then he said, "Hey, never mind, I found it. I packed it already."

  She came up to him. "You gonna miss me?"

  He picked up the paper and tore out the story. He read it again. She came up and read over his shoulder. "What that about? Somebody getting some guy outta jail in New York?"

  He looked at her with irritation and put the scrap in his wallet.

  She said, "Who is that guy, Randy Boggs?"

  Nestor smiled in an unamused way and kissed her on the mouth. Then he said, "I'll call you." He picked up the bag and walked outside into the blast of humid heat, glancing at a tiny chameleon sitting motionless in a band of shade on the peeling banister.

  chapter 7

  "IF HE DIDN'T DO THIS CRIME HE DID SOMETHING."

  The man's voice went high at the end of the sentence and threatened to break apart. He was in his late forties, so skinny that his worn cowhide belt made pleats in slacks that were supposed to be straight-cut.

  "And if he did something the jury says, 'What the hell, let's convict him of this.' "

  Rune nodded at the taut words.

  Randy Boggs's lawyer sat at his desk, which was piled high--yellow sheets, court briefs, Redweld folders, letters, photographs of crime scenes, an empty yogurt carton crusty on the rim, a dozen cans of Diet Pepsi, a shoe box (she wondered if it contained a Mafia client's fee). The office was near Broadway on Maiden Lane in lower Manhattan, where the streets were grimy, dark, crowded. Inside, the building was a network of dirty, green corridors.

  The office of Frederick T. Megler, J.D., P.C., was at the end of a particularly dirty and particularly green corridor.

  He sat back in his old leather chair. His face was gray and mottled and would make occasional forays into exaggerated expressions (wonder, hatred, surprise) then snap back into its waiting state of innocent incredulity, punctuated with a breathy, nasal snort.

  "That's what I have to deal with." The bony fingers of his right hand made a circuit of the air as he explained the judicial system in New York to Rune. "The way it works ..." He looked at Rune and his voice rose in volume for emphasis. "The way the system works is that the jury can only convict you for the crime for which you've been accused. They can't convict you because you're an asshole or because of the three guys you wasted last year or because of the old lady you're going to mug tomorrow for her social security check. Just for the particular crime."

  "Got it," Rune said.

  Megler's other set of bony fingers joined in. They pointed at her. "You get things like this true story. My client's arrested for killing some poor son of a bitch. An ADA--assistant district attorney--bless her young, virginal soul, brings him up on four counts. Murder two, manslaughter one and two, criminally negligent homicide. Those last three counts are what they call lesser-included offenses. They're easier to prove. If you can't get a conviction on murder--which is hard to prove to the jury-- maybe you can get the manslaughter. If you can't get that maybe you'll get criminally negligent homicide. Okay? So. My client--who's got a rap sheet a mile long--had a grudge against the victim. When the cops arrested him based on an informer, he was in a bar in Times Square, where four witnesses swore he'd been drinking for the past five hours. The victim was killed two hours before. Shot five times in the head at close range. No murder weapon."

  "So your client had a perfect alibi," Rune said. "And no gun."

  "Exactly." The voice dipped from its screech and sounded earnest. "I grill the informant in court and by the time I'm through his story's as riddled as the vic's forehead, okay? But what happens? The jury convicts my guy. Not of murder, which is what they should've done if they believed the informant, but of criminally negligent homicide. Which is total bullshit. You don't negligently shoot five bullets into somebody's head. Either you don't believe the alibi and convict him of murder or you let him off completely. The chickenshit jury didn't have the balls to get him on murder but they couldn't let him walk because he's a black kid from the Bronx who had a record and'd said on a number of occasions he wanted to cut the vic's spleen out of his body."

  Rune sat forward in her chair. "See, that's just what I'm doing my story on--an innocent man got convicted."

  "Whoa, honey, who said my client was innocent?"

  She blinked and mentally reviewed the facts for a moment. "I thought you did. What about the gun, what about the alibi?"

  "Naw, he killed the vic, ditched the gun, then paid four buddies a couple six-packs of crack to perjure themselves...."

  "But--"

  "But the point is not is he guilty? The point is you gotta play by the rules. And the jury didn't. You can only convict on the evidence that was presented. The jury didn't do that."

  "What's so wrong with that? He was guilty and the jury convicted him. That sounds okay to me."

  "Let's change the facts a little. Let's pretend that young black Fred Williams, National Merit Scholar with a ticket to Harvard Medical School, who all he's ever done bad is get a parking ticket, is walking down a Hundred and Thirty-fifth Street when two of New York's finest screech up behind him, get him in a choke hold then drag him to the precinct and book him for rape. He gets picked out of a lineup because they all look alike, et cetera, and the case goes to trial. There the DA describes to a predominantly Caucasian middle-class jury how this kid beat, raped and sodomized a mother of two. Then a predominantly Caucasian middle-class witness describes the perp as a black kid with razor-notched hair and basketball sneakers and the predominantly Caucasian middle-class doctor gets up and describes the victim's injuries in horrifying detail. What the fuck do you think is going to happen to Fred? He's going to jail and he ain't gonna be just visiting."

  Rune was quiet.

  "So every time a shooter who Glocks some poor asshole five times in the head gets convicted by a cheating jury--i.e., a flawed legal system--that means there's a risk that Fred Williams is gonna go down for something he didn't do. And as long as that's a risk then the world's got to put up with people like me."

  Rune gave him a coy look. "So's that your closing argument?"

  Megler laughed. "A variation on one of them. I've got a great repertoire. Blows the jury away."

  "I don't really believe what you're saying but it looks like you do."

  "Oh, I do indeed. And as soon as I stop believing it then I'm out of the business. I'll go into handicapping or professional blackjack. The odds are better and you still get paid in cash. Now, I've got some truly innocent clients arriving in about a half hour. You said you wanted to ask me about the Boggs case? Anything about that article I read?"

  "Yes."

  "You're doing the story?"

  "Right. Can I tape you?"

  His thin face twisted. He looked like Ichabod Crane in her illustrated copy of Sleepy Hollow. "Why don't you just take notes."

  "If you'd feel more comfortable ..."

  "I would."

  She pulled out a notebook. She asked, "You represented Boggs by yourself?"

  "Yep. He was a Section
Eighteen case. Indigent. So the state paid my fee to represent him."

  "I really think he's innocent."

  "Uh-huh."

  "No, I really, really think so."

  "You say so."

  "You don't?"

  "My opinion of my clients' innocence or guilt is completely, totally irrelevant."

  She asked, "Could you tell me what happened? About Hopper's death, I mean."

  Megler sat back in a thoughtful pose. He studied the grimy ceiling. The window was open a crack and exhaust-scented April air riffled stacks of paper.

  "The district attorney's case was that Boggs was in Manhattan, just driving through from, I don't know, upstate someplace. Some witness said Boggs was standing on the sidewalk talking with Hopper and then they got into a fight over something. Hopper'd just gotten home from work and had just pulled into the courtyard of his building on the Upper West Side. The prosecutor speculated it was a traffic dispute."

  Rune's eyes made a sardonic circuit of the room. "Traffic? But he was on the sidewalk, you said."

  "Maybe he parked after Hopper cut him off and got out of the car. I don't know."

  "But--"

  "Hey, you asked what the assistant district attorney said. I'm telling you. I'm trying to be helpful. Am I being helpful?"

  "Helpful," Rune said. "What was Randy's story?"

  "Part of the problem was that he had a story."

  "Huh?"

  "I tell all my clients, if you're arrested don't take the stand. Under any circumstances. The jury can't--the judge tells them this--the jury can't draw any conclusions from the defendant's not taking the stand. But Randy-- against my advice, I wanta point out--did. If you do that the prosecutor can introduce evidence of prior convictions for the purpose of attacking your honesty. Only that--not to prove you have a criminal tendency. Just to show that you might lie. But what does the jury hear? Fuck credibility--all they hear is his string of arrests for petty crimes. Next thing you know, Boggs, who's really a pretty decent guy who's had some bad luck, is sounding like Hitler. He's got a petty larceny bust in Ohio, some juvie bullshit down in Florida, GTA in--"

  "What's that?"

  "Grand theft auto. So suddenly, the ADA's making him sound like he's head of the Gambino family. He--"