Hard News (8 page)

be a mother. My life is over with already.” “It’s only temporary, isn’t it?” “That’s the part I’m not too sure about.” Rune looked toward Courtney’s room. Her

voice was panicky when she said, “You think she drinks too much juice?” “Rune.” “She drinks a lot of juice.” “You should worry a lot less.” “Sam, I can’t have a kid with me when I interview people. What am I-?” “I’m going to give you the name of the day-care center Cheryl and I used to take

Adam to. It’s a good place. And some of the women there work nights as baby-sitters.” “Yeah?” “Look at the bright side: You didn’t have to go through labor.” Rune sat close to him and laid her head on his chest. “Why do I get myself into

things like this?” “She’s a sweet little girl.” Rune put her arms around him. “They’re all sweet when they’re asleep. The thing is

they wake up after a while.” He began rubbing her shoulders. “That’s nice.” “Yeah,” he said, “it is.” He rubbed for five minutes, his strong fingers working down her spine. She moaned.

Then he untucked her T-shirt and began working his way up, under the cloth. “That’s nicer,” she said and rolled over on her back. He kissed her forehead. She kissed his mouth, feeling the tickle of the moustache. It

was a sensation she’d gotten used to, one she liked a lot. Healy kissed her back. His hand, still inside her T-shirt, worked its way up. He

disarmed bombs; he had a very smooth touch. “Rune!” Courtney shouted in a shrill voice. They both jumped. “Read me a story, Rune!” Her hands covered her face. “Jesus, Sam, what’m I going to do?”

9 The train up to Harrison, New York, left on time and sailed out of the tunnel under Park Avenue, rising up on the elevated tracks like an old airplane slowly gaining altitude. Rune’s head swiveled as she watched the redbrick projects, clusters of young men on the street. No one wore colorful clothing; it was all gray and brown. A woman pushed a grocery cart filled with rags. Two men stood over the open hood of a beige sedan, hands on their wide hips, and seemed to be confirming a terminal diagnosis.

The train sped north through Harlem and the scenes flipped past more quickly. Rune, leaning forward, climbing onto her knees, felt the lurch as the wheels danced sideways like a bullfighter’s hips and they crossed the Harlem River Bridge. She waved to passengers on a Dayliner tour boat as they looked up at the bridge. No one noticed her.

Then they were in the Bronx - passing plumbing supply houses and lumberyards and, in the distance, abandoned apartments and warehouses. Daylight showed through the upper-story windows.
You wake up in the morning and you think . . .
Rune tried to doze. But she kept seeing the tape of Bogg’s face, broken into scan

lines and each scan line a thousand pixels of red, blue and green dots. . . . Hell, I’m still here. The way their eyes looked at her was weird. She’d figured the prisoners would lay lot of crap on her - catcalls, or whoops or “Yo,

honey,” or long slimy stares. But nope. They looked at her the way assembly line workers would glance at a plant visitor, someone walking timidly between tall machines, careful not to get grease on her good shoes. They looked, they ignored, they went back to mopping floors or talking to buddies and visitors or not doing much of anything.

The warden’s office had checked her press credentials and guards had searched her bag and the camera case. She was then escorted into the visitors’ area by a tall guard - a handsome black man with a moustache that looked like it was drawn above his lip in mascara. Visitors and inmates at the state prison in Harrison were separated by thick glass partitions and talked to each other on old, heavy black telephones.

Rune stood for a moment, watching them all. Picturing what it would be like to visit a husband in prison. So sad! Only talking to him, holding the thick receiver, reaching out and touching the glass, never feeling the weight or warmth of his skin . . . “In here, miss.” The guard led her into a small room. She guessed it was reserved for private meetings between lawyers and their prisoners. The guard disappeared. Rune sat at a gray table. She studied the battered bars on the window and decided that this particular metal seemed stronger than anything she’d ever seen. She was looking out the greasy glass when Randy Boggs entered the room. He was thinner than she’d expected. He looked best straight on; when he turned his head to glance at a guard his head became birdish - like a woodpecker’s. His hair was longer than in the tape she’d studied and the Dairy Queen twist was gone. It still glistened from the oil or cream he used to keep it in place. His ears were long and narrow and he had tufts of blond, wiry hair growing out of them. She observed dark eyes, darkened by an overhang of bone, and thick eyebrows that reached toward each other. His skin wasn’t good; in his face were patches of wrinkles like cities in satellite photos. But Rune thought it was a temporary unhealthiness - the kind that good food and sun and sleep can erase. Boggs looked at the guard and said, “Could you leave us?” The man answered, “No.” Rune said to the guard, “I don’t mind.” “No.” “Sure,” Boggs said, as cheerful as if he’d been picked for first baseman in a softball

game. He sat down and said, “What for d’you want to see me, miss?” As she told him about receiving his letter and about the story she grew agitated. It wasn’t the surroundings; it was Boggs himself. The intensity of his calmness. Which didn’t really make sense but she thought about it and decided that was what she sensed: He was so peaceful that she felt her own pulse rising, her breath coming quickly - as if her body were behaving this natural way because his couldn’t.

Still, she ignored her own feelings and got to work. Rune had interviewed people before. She’d put the camera in front of them, washed them in the hot light from Redhead lamps and then asked them a hundred questions. She’d gotten tongue-tied some and maybe asked the wrong questions but her talent was in getting people to open up.

Boggs, though, took a lot of work. Even though he’d written the letter to the station he was uneasy around reporters. “Don’t think I’m not grateful.” He spoke in a soft voice; a slight southern accent licked at his words. “But I’m. . . Well, I don’t mean this personal, directed at you, miss, but you’re the

people convicted me.” “How?” “Well, miss, you know the expression ‘media circus’? I’d never heard that before but when I read about my trial afterwards I found out what they mean. I wasn’t the only person who felt that way. Somebody who got interviewed in
Time
said that’s what my trial was. I wrote a letter to Mr Megler and to the judge saying that I thought it was a media circus. Neither of them wrote back.” “What was a circus about it?” He smiled and looked off, as if he was arranging his thoughts. “The way I see it, there was so many of you reporters all over the place, writing things about me, that the jury got it into their head that I was guilty.”

“But don’t they . . .” There was a word she was looking for. “You know, don’t they keep the jury in hotel rooms, away from papers and TV?”

“Sequester,” Boggs said. “You think that works? I was on
Live at Five
the day I was arrested and probably every other day up till the trial. You think there was one person in the area that didn’t know about me? I doubt it very much.”

Rune had told him she worked for
Current Events
but there was no visible reaction; either he didn’t watch the program or he didn’t know that it was on the Network, the employer of the man he’d supposedly killed. Or maybe he just wasn’t impressed. He glanced at the Betacam sitting on the table beside Rune. “Had a film crew in the other day. Were shooting some kind of cop movie. Everybody was real excited about it. They used some of the boys as extras. I didn’t get picked. They wanted people looked like convicts, I guess. I looked more like a clerk, I guess. Or ... What would you say I look like?” “A man who got wrongly convicted.” Boggs smiled an interstate cloverleaf into his face. “You got some good lines. I like

that. Yeah, that’s a role I’ve been acting for a long time. Nobody’s bought it yet.” “I want to get you released.” “Well, miss, seems like we’ve got a lot in common.” He was definitely warming up

to her. “I talked to Fred Megler-“ Boggs nodded and his face showed disappointment but not anger or contempt. “If I had money to hire me a real lawyer, like those inside traders and, you know, those coke kingfishers you see on TV, I think things might’ve been different. Fred isn’t a bad man. I just don’t believe his heart was in my case. I reckon I’d say he should’ve listened to some of my advice. I’ve had a little experience with the law. Not a lot of which I’m proud of but the fact remains I’ve seen the inside of a courtroom several occasions. He should’ve listened to me.” Rune said, “He told me your story. But I knew you were innocent when I saw you.” “When would that’ve been?” “On film. An interview.”

The smile was now wistful. He kept evading her eyes, which bothered her. She believed this was shyness, not guile, but she didn’t want shifty eyes on tape. Boggs was saying, “I appreciate your opinion, miss, but if that’s all you have to go

on I’m still feeling like a six-ounce bluegill on a twenty-pound line.” “Look at me and tell me. Did you do it or not?” His eyes were no longer evasive; they locked onto hers and answered as clearly as

his words, “I did not kill Lance Hopper.” “That’s enough for me.” And Boggs wasn’t smiling when he said, “Trouble is, it don’t seem to be enough for

the people of the state of New York.” Two hours later Randy Boggs got to: “That’s when I decided to hitch to New York.

And that was the biggest mistake of my life.” “You were tired of Maine?” “The lobster business didn’t work out like I’d hoped. My partner - see, I’m not much for figures - he kept the books and all this cash coming in didn’t no way equal the cash going out. I suspicioned he kept the numbers pretty obscured and when he sold the business he told me he was letting it go to a couple creditors but I think he got paid good money. Anyways, I had me maybe two, three hundred bucks was all and two new pair of jeans, some shirts. I figured I’d be leaving that part of the country before another winter come. Snow belongs in movies and in paper cones with syrup on it. So I begun thumbing south. Rides were scarce’s hens’ teeth but finally I got me some rides and ended up in Purchase, New York. If that isn’t a name I don’t know what is.” He grinned. “Purchase ... It was raining and I had my thumb out so long it was looking like a bleached prune. Nobody stopped, except this one fellow. He pulled over in a - we call them - a Chinese tenement car. Big old Chevy twelve or so years old - you know, could ride a family of ten. He said, ‘Hop in,’ and I did. Biggest mistake of my life, miss. I’ll tell you that.” “Jimmy.” “Right. But then I told him my name was Dave. I just had a feeling this wasn’t a

person I wanted to open up with a real lot.” “What happened after you got in?” “We drove south toward the city, making small talk. ‘Bout women mostly, the way men do. Telling how you get put down by women all the time and how you don’t understand them but what you’re really doing is bragging that you’ve had a ton of ‘em. That sort of thing.”

“Where was Jimmy going? Further south?” “He said he was only going so far as New York City but I was thankful I was getting a ride at all. I figured I could buy a Greyhound ticket to get me on my way to Atlanta. In fact I was thinking just that very thing when he looks over at me in the car and says, ‘Hey, son, how’d you like to earn yourself a hundred bucks.’ And I said, ‘I’d like that pretty well, particularly if it’s legal but even if not I’d still like it pretty well.’

“He said it wasn’t
real
illegal. Just picking up something and dropping it off. I told him right away, ‘I’ve got a problem if that’d be drugs you were talking about.’ He said it was credit cards and since I’ve done a little with them in the past I said that wasn’t so bad but could he maybe consider two hundred. He said he’d more than consider it and said if I drove he’d make it two hundred fifty. And I agreed was what I did. We drive to this place somewhere. I didn’t know New York but at the trial I found out it was on the Upper West Side. We stopped and he got out and I scooted over behind the wheel. Jimmy, or whatever his name was, walked into this courtyard.” Rune asked, “What did he look like?” “Well, I wasn’t too sure. I oughta be wearing glasses but I’d lost them overboard in Maine and couldn’t afford to get new ones. He was a big fellow, though.

He sat big, the way a bear would sit. A moustache, I remember. It was all in profile, the look I got.” “White?” “Yes’m.” “Describe his clothing.” “He wore blue jeans with cuffs turned up, engineer boots-“ “What are those?” “Short buckled boots, you know. Black. And a Navy watch coat.” “Weren’t you a little nervous about this credit card thing?” Boggs paused for a minute. “I’ll tell you, miss. There’ve been times in my life - not a lot, but a few - when two hundred fifty dollars hasn’t been a lot of money. But had then it was. Just like it would be now and when somebody is going to give you a lot of money you’d be surprised what stops becoming funny or suspicious. Anyway, I sat for about ten minutes in the car. I had me a cigarette or two. I was real hungry and was looking around for a Burger King. That’s what I really wanted, one of those Whoppers. There I am, feeling hungry, and I hear this shot. I’ve fired me enough pistols in my life to know a gunshot. They don’t boom like in the movies. There’s this crack-“ “I know gunshots,” Rune said. “Yeah, you shoot?” “Been shot at, matter of fact,” she told him. This wasn’t ego. It was to let him know

more about her, make him trust her more. Boggs glanced at her, decided she wasn’t kidding, and nodded slowly. He continued. “I walk carefully into the courtyard. There’s a man lying on the ground. I thought it was Jimmy. I run up to him and see it’s
not
Jimmy and I lean down and say, ‘Mister, you okay?’ And of course he isn’t. I see he’s dead. I stand up fast and I just panic and run.”

Boggs smiled with a shallow twist of his lips. “And what happens? The story of my life. I run into a police car cruising by outside. I mean, I really run right into it, bang. I fall over and they pick me up and collar me and that’s it.” “What about Jimmy?” “I glanced around and seen the car but Jimmy wasn’t inside. He was gone.” “Did you see any gun?” “No, ma’am. I heard they found it in the bushes. There wasn’t any of my prints on it but I was wearing gloves. The DA made a big deal out of it that I was wearing gloves in April. But I got me small hands . . .” He held one up. “I don’t have a lot of meat on me. It was real cold.” “You think Jimmy shot Mr Hopper?” “I pondered that a lot but I don’t see why he would have. He didn’t have any gun that I saw and if it was just a credit card scam Mr Hopper wouldn’t’ve been in on that, credit cards’re small potatoes. I think Jimmy had the cards on him and just panicked when he heard the shot. Then he just took off.” “But you told the cops about Jimmy?” “Well, not the credit card part. It didn’t seem that was too smart. So I kept mum on that. But sure I told them about Jimmy. Not one of them - to a man -believed me.” Not even your own lawyer, Rune thought. “Assuming Jimmy didn’t shoot Hopper,