Hard News

learned that while Hopper’s internship program had indeed launched many a career in journalism he himself was maybe a bit more interested in the young people themselves than he should have been. In the archives Rune found a confidential memo in which the network’s ethics committee heard complaints from two interns, eighteen and nineteen, that he’d made improper advances toward them. The names weren’t given and there seemed to be no follow-up references to the incidents.
    She asked Bradford about the reports but he said he knew nothing about them and didn’t believe the stories for a minute. Powerful people, he explained, attract rumors. He obviously didn’t want his idol to have feet of clay and Rune wondered if it had been purely an oversight that the young man had missed the memo about the investigation when he was digging through the archives for her in search of material on Hopper.
    Click.
    Rune watched the tape of Hopper’s body rolling out into the spring night, the snakes of afterimage etched into the screen by the revolving lights on the EMS vans and police cars, the crowds—pale in the video camera’s radiance of light. They looked curious and bored at the same time.
    “Rune.” A calm voice, a woman’s voice.
    “Oh, hi.” It was Piper Sutton.
    Should’ve cleaned up my desk, she thought. Remembering how neat the anchorwoman’s was. And seeing how neat she looked now, standing here in a dark red suit with black velvet tabs on the collar and a white, high-necked blouse and dark fleshy stockings disappearing into the slickest patent-leather shoes Rune’d ever seen. Shoes with high heels and one red stripe along the side.
    Shoes that’d put me on my ass, I tried to wear them.
    But, man, they looked cool.
    “You’re busy.” Sutton’s eyes scanned the desk.
    “I was just working on the story.”
    Rune casually picked up several of the closest paper bags—one Kentucky Fried and two Burger Kings—and dropped them into, well,
onto
an overflowing wastebasket.
    “You want to, like, sit down?”
    Sutton looked at the ketchup packets that rested on the one unoccupied chair. “No. I don’t.” She leaned forward and ejected the tape that was in the Sony player, then read the label. “Brand X,” she said. “It’s from a competitor. You can’t use this footage, you know. I’m not putting a super in any of my news programs that says ‘Courtesy of another network.’ “She handed the tape back to Rune.
    “I know. I’m just using it for background.”
    “Background.” Sutton said the word softly. “I want to talk to you. But not here. Are you doing anything for dinner?”
    “I was just going to John’s for pizza. They’re, like, real generous with their anchovies.”
    Sutton walked away. “No. You’ll have dinner with me.”
    “The thing is, there’s this person. Can they come with us?”
    “I want to talk to you in private.”
    “Anything you can say to me, you can say in front of her. She’s, you know, discreet.”
    Sutton shrugged, took one last look at the desk and didn’t seem to like what she saw. “Whatever.” Then she scanned Rune’s pink T-shirt and miniskirt and fishnet stockings and ankle boots and she said, “You do have a dress, don’t you?”
    Rune said defensively, “I’ve got two, as a matter of fact.”
    She wondered what she was missing when Sutton laughed. The anchorwoman wrote out an address and handed it to Rune. “That’s between Madison and Fifth. Be there at six-thirty We’ll do the pretheater. Don’t want to spend more than we need to, do we?”
    “That’s okay. My friend likes to eat early.”
    YOU COULDN’T CALL IT A TIP. IT WAS A BRIBE.
    Jacques, the maitre d’, took the money Sutton offered him and slipped it into the pocket of his perfectly pressed black tuxedo. However much it was—Rune didn’t see— the cash might have bought them access to the dining room but it did nothing to cheer up the poor, sullen man. He sat them at a table off to the side of the main dining room then surveyed Courtney. He said, “Maybe a phone book.”
    Rune said, “Yellow
and
White Pages.”
    Jacques pursed his unhappy Gallic lips and went off in search of the best child-seating device New York Telephone could offer.
    Rune looked around the room. “This is like really, really amazing. I could get into it. Living this way, I mean.”
    “Uhm.”
    The theme of L’Escargot seemed to be flowers and— probably as with the food—excess was in. The