Hard News

prison
.
    Inside, anybody can be bought.
    And, when it comes right down to it, anybody can be killed.
    Boggs still had no idea why Ascipio wanted to move on him. But it was clear he was marked. No doubt in his mind. And right now, hearing footsteps come closer to the door, he knew—not a premonition or anything like that— he
knew
something was going down.
    He stood up instinctively. The possibilities for weapons were: a book or a chair.
    Well, now, neither of them’s much help at all.
    Oh, he didn’t want the knife again. That terrible feeling of the glass blade. Terrible …
    He looked at the chair. He couldn’t pull it apart. And when he tried to lift it, a searing pain from the first knifing swept through his back and side.
    He tried again and managed to get the chair off the ground, holding it in both hands.
    Then part of his mind said, Why bother?
    They’d burst in, they’d circle around him, they’d take him. He’d die. What could he do? Swing a chair at them? Knock one of them off balance while the others easily stepped behind him?
    So Randall Boggs, failed son of a failed father, simply sat down in the chair, in front of a fiberboard table in a shoddy prison library, and began thinking for some reason, suddenly and obsessively, about Atlanta and the Sunday dinner menu of his childhood.
    From his pocket he took out the book the reporter girl had given him and put his hands on it as if it were a Bible then he thought that was funny because probably to the old-time people, the old Greeks or Romans, or whatever, this myth book probably
was
a bible.
    Prometheus got freed.
    But it didn’t seem like this was going to be a replay of that story. Not here, not now.
    The footsteps stopped and he heard mumbled voices.
    Randy Boggs swallowed and tried to remember a prayer. He couldn’t so he just swallowed again and tried not to think about the pain.
    The door swung open.
    “Hey, Boggs.”
    He blinked, staring.
    “Boggs, come on. Haul ass.”
    He stood up and walked toward the guard. He opened his mouth to say something but nothing came out, which was just as well because he didn’t know what to say anyway.
    “Let’s move it along, Boggs.”
    “What’s up?”
    The guard had drowsy eyes and a voice to match. “The warden wants to see you. Hustle it.”
    •      •      •
     
    “ YOU GOT YOURSELF A PRETTY LITTLE GIRL,” FRED MEG ler said to Randy Boggs.
    The lawyer was trooping around the office. He couldn’t sit still and was on some kind of energy trip.
    Randy Boggs was sitting forward in a chair in Megler’s office, his hands pressed tightly together as if they’d been manacled. He wore blue jeans and a blue denim work shirt, clothing he’d worn when he’d entered the prison three years before. Rune, sitting nearby, smelled mothballs.
    “Little girl, yessir.” Boggs was nodding a lot, agreeing with what everybody said. But at the little girl part he looked questioningly at Rune, who launched Courtney toward him. Boggs’s hands reached out and she gave him a shy hug.
    “Daddy,” she said and looked at Rune to see if she’d gotten the line right. Rune nodded at her, smiling, then said to Boggs, “Mr. Megler didn’t know that you had a little girl. That was one of the reasons he was so nice to help you even though the program hasn’t run yet.”
    “Yeah,” Boggs said, squinting to see if that helped him understand things any better. It didn’t seem to. “Sure appreciate it.”
    Megler paced. His polyester tie with the Bic repair job flopped up and down on the baggy shirt where his belly would have been if he weighed forty pounds more. His hair jutted out behind his thin skull as if he were facing into a gale. He said, “So, here’s the deal: The young lady here found some pretty good evidence that would’ve gotten you out but it seems some asshole …” He looked at Courtney but she was playing with daddy’s shoelaces and missed the word. “… some
person
got into the studio and stole it. That was strike one. Then—”
    “Oh, you should’ve seen it!” Rune interrupted. “It was a really great story, Randy. It would’ve gotten you out in a minute. I did the fades just perfect. The sound was mixed like a symphony. And I had a really, really super shot of your mother—”
    “Mom? You did?” He grinned. “What kind of stuff’d she say?”
    “Didn’t make a lot of sense, I have to tell you. But she looked real motherish.”
    “Yeah, that’s one thing