Popcorn

Chapter TwentyEight

Wayne and Bruce stood together, staring out of the window at the instant city below. There were a hundred rifles trained on Wayne, but, unless the police could be sure of hitting Scout as well, no order to fire would be given.

‘Someone to take the blame?’ Bruce asked. ‘What the hell do you mean, someone to take the blame? Some kind of magician, who can explain that the whole thing was an optical illusion and that actually someone else shot all those people?’

Bruce was feigning astonishment, but in the back of his mind a terrible suspicion had dawned.

On the floor, over by the drinks cabinet, Brooke coughed. Maybe she was trying to say something, maybe she was just coughing.

‘This woman has to have a doctor,’ Velvet pleaded. ‘You have to let her have one.’

Wayne swung his gun towards Velvet, suddenly angry again. ‘Listen, I did not ask that bitch to threaten my baby, OK? She is in this dire situation by her own choosing, on account of the fact that she pulled a piece on my girl. So shut the fuck up, because me and Bruce are talking here. Or maybe I should shut you up. Huh?’

He advanced a step towards the girl and raised his fist. Velvet burst into tears.

‘If you hurt her,’ said Bruce, ‘I swear that whatever you want from me you will never get.’

‘You’ll do what the fuck I tell you to, whether I bust this bitch’s head or not.’ Wayne ’s mood swings really were most alarming.

‘Please don’t hurt me,’ Velvet sobbed.

‘There’s no need to go beating up on no little girls, Wayne,’ Scout remarked. ‘It’s beneath you.’

‘This ain’t no little girl, precious pie. Kids’re born old in Hollywood. Why this little slut musta spent more money already in her few short years than your sweet momma woulda earned in fifty lifetimes. She deserves to get slapped around some.’

‘I’ve told you,’ said Bruce, ‘you’ll get nothing from me if you hurt her.’

Wayne lowered his fist slowly. ‘I want you to know, Bruce, that I am minding the wishes of my baby here and not yours. Because I can assure you that you will do whatever I tell you to do, whether I hurt your little girl or not.’

Bruce seized upon the point. ‘And what is it you want me to do?’ He was almost begging. He had to know the worst, deeply fearful of it though he was. Fearful because in truth he had already guessed.

‘I want you to plead on our behalf. I want you to speak up for us and save us from the chair.’

‘Plead on your behalf? You’re crazier than I thought. You really think my word’s going to save you from the punishment you deserve? You’re guilty as Hitler.’

‘Sure we’re guilty, if by that you mean we done all the stuff they say we done, but that ain’t the point, is it? Not these days. These days, no matter how guilty you are, you can still be innocent.’

He had lost them. They all stared at him, all except Scout, who had hold of one of her feet and was inspecting her toenails.

‘For instance,’ Wayne explained, ‘like that spick chick who cut off the guy’s pecker, right? She was guilty for sure, she never denied it. She cut off that of boy’s manhood and threw it out of a car window. Do you see that bitch in prison, huh? Is she breaking rocks in the hot sun? No, I don’t think so, because although she was guilty she was innocent too. In America you can be both.’

Scout looked up from her toenails. ‘That’s right, she done it, but she was innocent and I agree. That bastard beat up on her and he done raped her too. He got his, and I hope she used a rusty knife.’

Wayne winced. ‘Now, Scout, you know that you and me disagree on this issue. Personally, I don’t see as how no woman can get raped by her husband, on account of the fact that he is only taking what’s his anyway. What’s more, I think that any Mexican bitch who cuts the dick off an exUnited States Marine who has served his country should rot in a hole.’

‘She was abused.’

‘If you think a man’s abusing you, honey, you leave him. You do not cut his dick off.’

‘The court agreed with her.’

‘The court was a bunch of lesbians and faggots.’

Scout made a sulky face and returned to her toenails.

‘Yeah, well, whatever,’ Wayne said, ‘we’re getting off the point here. What I’m saying is, right or wrong, the greaseball bitch walked free. She done it, she said she done it, she was glad she done it, but she walked. Guilty but innocent, you see. You can be both in the Land of the Free, always assuming, that is, that you got an excuse.’

‘Are you suggesting’ – Bruce tried to sound firm and intelligent – ‘that there is any excuse for mass murder?’

‘Bruce, there is an excuse for anything and everything in the USA! What about them cops who beat up on the nigger and started a damn riot? They was videoed! You see them doing time? No sir you do not. Remember O.J.? They said he killed his wife. Turned out they’d got the wrong victim. The dead chick wasn’t the victim at all. No way, O.J. was the victim. He was the victim of a racist cop, who incidentally also walked. Nobody gets blamed for anything in this country, nothing is anybody’s fault. So why the Hell should we take the rap for what we done, huh?’

In his mind’s eye, Bruce suddenly saw again the beautiful idiot he had harangued at the Bosom Ball. When had that been? The previous evening? The previous lifetime, more like. Bruce heard once more his own voice rising above the banality and the hypocrisy he’d thought he heard around him: ‘Nothing is anybody’s fault.’

He’d said it himself.

Could Wayne actually be right? Could the bastard get away with it?

‘ Wayne, be serious. You have killed so many people – there can be no excuse for that.’

Wayne smiled, picked up the phone and began to dial. ‘Bruce, you just won the “Best Director” Oscar. I ain’t flattering you when I say that you are currently the most celebrated moviemaker in the world. It ain’t no more than you deserve, mind. You worked hard and you have reaped the rewards… Excuse me.’ He turned to the phone.

On the other end of the line Chiefs Cornell and Murray grabbed their respective receivers and began simultaneously to announce their credentials.

‘Shut up and listen to me,’ they heard Wayne say. ‘We gonna make a statement, y’hear? We gon’ announce our intentions and tell it like it is, OK? Now what we want is a small ENG crew in here, jus’ as soon you can get it together.’

‘Yes, yes, an electronic newsgathering crew, OK,’ said the head of NBC, pleased to be able to answer the questioning look on the police chief’s face.

‘I know what ENG is, else I wouldna asked for it!’ Wayne shouted down the line.

‘Yes, I was just explaining it to-’

‘Shut the fuck up! I am talking here. One more interruption and that’s it, we do our talking with guns, OK? Now, this crew has to be hooked up to all the other stations, you understand? Cable too. We ain’t giving no exclusive here, everybody gets the story. One more thing. The recordist must have a direct feed to the ratings computer. I want to know just how big a TV star I am, minute by minute. Now, if you do this, I give you my word as a freeborn American that, whoever else I decide to kill, the TV people get safe passage. I guarantee they will not be harmed, on account of you are observers, man, we are the action.’

With that Wayne put the phone down and turned to his hostages. ‘Now we wait,’ he said. ‘How ‘bout we all have us a drink?’

‘You seem to know an awful lot about the workings of TV,’ Bruce said, and for one insane moment it crossed his mind that perhaps in some weird way or other this whole thing was a hoax. Maybe Wayne and Scout were not what they seemed, not mass murderers at all, but journalists or students or something, out to prove a point. Was it all an illusion? Brooke had tricked him before. Maybe she hadn’t really been shot. Maybe this whole thing was a setup…?

It was a sad, hopeless thought and it lasted about a quarter of a second. His agent’s blood and tissue still clung to the glasscovered poster on to which they had been propelled by Wayne ’s bullet. Fresh gore was welling up inside Brooke’s mouth, threatening to choke her before she bled to death. Bruce could smell the torn and jagged flesh. There was so much stark, horrifying reality in the room it was a wonder that there was still room for the furniture.

‘How’d I know about TV?’ Wayne explained. ‘Hey, Bruce, everybody knows everything these days. Especially TV. Think about it. Home video shows, community cable channels – real life as it happens. Not a simulation, actual footage. We’re all part of it, man. It’s an electronic democracy. There ain’t no “you” and “us” any more because “us” is in your face every day. Appearing on your game shows. Caught on video, robbing your banks. Confessing our sins on Oprah, ‘‘n’ getting them forgiven on the Inspiration Channel. People are television, man, and you’re asking me how I know how to use it? Well, it sure don’t take a lot of finding out. You know, for a smart man you’re real dumb. Excuse me, I have to speak with the cops.’

Down below, in the armoured police command vehicle, Chief Cornell was almost quivering with excitement. Wayne Hudson was playing right into his hands.

‘Get me the equipment he wants,’ the chief barked at Murray. ‘That little ENG crew is going to be composed of armed operatives from Special Forces. We are sending in an undercover SWAT team. Two seconds after my men get in there, they will have neutralized that maniac, plus the fucking shedevil he hangs with.’ The police chief was already preening himself for the press conference that would follow this heroic operation.

The phone rang again. Both men grabbed it.

‘Now, I know what you’re thinking, guys,’ they heard Wayne ’s voice say. ‘You’re thinking ‘bout putting a bunch of damn commandos on me, right? Well forget it. The crew you send me best be the smallest crew there is. I am talking one camera operator and one recordist. That is two people, OK? Two. TWO. What is more, they have to come barefoot and wearing only their underwear. Y’hear me? Underwear, that’s all, and I ain’t talkin’ no baggy longjohns or old lady’s bloomers here. I am talkin’ ‘bout the smallest, tiniest, skimpiest fuckin’ bits of nothing a person can wear and still keep their modesty. I’m going to check every inch of the people you give me, plus their equipment, and if I get even the idea that there might be a piece, a stun grenade, even a fucking penknife, within about fifty yards of those two motherfuckers, I’m gonna holler to Scout to spray bullets into every hostage we got, and you know she’ll do it, on account of how she loves me and she does what the fuck I tell her. So basically what I’m saying here is that if you fuck with me, cop, four more innocent people gonna get very dead real soon, and it will be your fault, man, and every TV station in America’s gonna see it. Byebye, now.’

The phone went dead again.

This time it was the newsman’s turn to quiver with excitement. Disaster had been averted. Police Chief Cornell, had, through his crass, macho zeal, been on the verge of hijacking what was clearly a cathartic media event and turning it into a police matter. Television had nearly been prevented from taking up its rightful position at the very centre of the drama, not just covering the story but being part of it. This, the news and current affairs chief felt, was what news and current affairs had been invented for. To get cameras and, if possible, personalities deep, deep inside events, moulding them, shaping them, actually being the news; while the old forces of authority – the cops, the politicians, the civic leaders – could only watch impotently from the sidelines.

He had so nearly lost it. For a moment there it had looked like the cop was getting ready to grab all the glory. Thanks, however, to the villain himself having a proper sense of proportion and society’s natural pecking order, the media would be centrestage where they belonged.