Hard News

other pocket to get the keys.
    “Hey,” the drunk called, staggering in their direction. His head drooped forward in his stupor. His clothes were drenched from rain and he looked like a straggly mutt. “Change? For something to eat. You got some change?”
    “Shit. Fucking people in this town,” Nestor muttered, pulling the keys out of his pocket. He leaned down and said to Rune, “I can feel you, honey. You’re thinking the guy comes up and he’s going to distract me and then you’ll run for it. You think I’m stupid?” He shoved her in the car. “You think I’m not expecting that?”
    Nearby now, the homeless man called, “Change, please?”
    Jack Nestor, his eyes still on Rune, said to him, “Fuck you, mister.”
    The drunk suddenly stood up and became completely sober. “Fuck you too, Jack,” Randy Boggs said and leapt forward, slamming his fist into Nestor’s face.
    “ RANDY!” RUNE CRIED.
    “Run!” Boggs shouted as he grabbed Nestor around the waist and tried to pull him to the sidewalk.
    Rune scooted out of the car fast. She hesitated, watching them scuffle. It wasn’t a fight—they were wrestling. Boggs was gripping the killer’s shoulders, pinning his arms so he couldn’t reach his gun. Nestor, blood streaming from his nose, tried to knee Boggs in the groin but couldn’t get his leg up without falling over.
    “Run, damn it!” Boggs shouted again.
    She did. To the nearest corner, to a phone kiosk. Hitting 911 as she watched the men, on the ground now, a dark squirming mass, half in, half out of the street. She told the calm voice of the police dispatcher about the fight, about the gun. By the time she hung up, she heard sirens. Distant, but moving in close. She thought she should go back, distract Nestor, hit him with something. But she didn’t move. For some reason an image of Courtney came into her mind and she thought, No, even if Claire’s back, I can have
some
role in the girl’s life and it wouldn’t be fair to her to risk myself. This was their battle now.
    Then Rune saw Nestor break free and scramble away. He had the gun in his hand. Randy leapt back into the street, scrambling beneath a car for cover. Nestor fired two fast shots at him then turned to run just as three blue-and-white police cars squealed around the corner. The officers poured out, shouting like madmen for Nestor to stop, to drop the gun. He fired at their cars twice and turned to run but he slipped and went down on one knee.
    “Drop the weapon,” a metallic voice came over the loudspeaker.
    Nestor leapt to the side and lifted the gun again.
    The big sparking explosion of a shotgun was like a thunderclap. The killer tumbled backwards. He tried to get up, muttering some distorted words. Something about “pictures,” Rune thought. The fat man lay back. His body convulsed once. Then he was still.
    TEN SQUAD CARS, WITH LIGHTS FLASHING, WERE PARKED in front of the Network building. Several EMS ambulances were here too and, for some reason, so were two fire trucks. Already the crowd of spectators was large. Rune noted with a laugh to herself that the three news crews on hand to capture the story on tape were all from the competition; no one at the Network seemed to have heard about the incident.
    Rune was standing next to Randy Boggs, who leaned against a squad car. His hand and chin were bandaged. Nestor had missed when he’d fired those two shots at him but he’d cut himself in several places during the fight. (He seemed most upset because the ugly tan suit he wore was torn and greasy.)
    Bradford Simpson
had
been hit by Nestor’s bullet but only in the leg. He’d be all right.
    Lee Maisel was in custody.
    “How did you get here?” Rune asked Boggs, shaking her head in confusion.
    “I went to your houseboat—saw what’d happened there. I’m plenty sorry about that. Did Jack do it?”
    “Indirectly.” She didn’t mention that the actual arsonist was three years old.
    Boggs continued. “I just came to the TV station here to see if maybe the guard or somebody could tell me where you were. I saw you and Jack coming out of the back door. Didn’t know what was going on but I figured it wasn’t good. And that I better do something about it. So I pretended to be a, you know, homeless man so I could get in close.”
    A detective came up to her and said, “Could you give us a few more details, miss?”
    Rune answered, “Can we be alone for a couple minutes? Just him and me? Then I’ll tell you