Popcorn

Chapter Thirty Four

Outside they were waiting for pictures. The media, the police and, increasingly, the nation were all waiting for pictures, because the siege was now the numberone news story USwide.

‘So is this asshole going to make his statement or not?’ said Chief Cornell, pacing about outside his command truck. ‘How long do we wait before we hit him?’

Already the police chief could sense his splendid day getting away from him. He wasn’t the only one, either. His subordinates were getting increasingly frustrated and were putting Cornell under enormous pressure to take control of the situation. Sieges, in their opinion, were a matter for the police, not the media, and a lot of cops felt pretty bad about being usurped and upstaged in this manner. Particularly the SWAT boss.

‘We’re being blackmailed,’ he said. ‘This killer has bought his piece of immortality by murdering people, and now we’ve brought every TV station in the country to his door. The guy is making us kiss his ass, when what we need to do is kick his ass. We should pull the damn plug, get in there and show that motherfucker, and every motherfucker watching, that you do not mess with the LAPD.’

That was easy for the SWAT man to say. His wasn’t the uneasy head that wore the crown. Chief Cornell was the cop with whom the buck would stop, and he knew that if he crashed in now and deprived the media of its prize they would finish him. If even one hostage got killed, which in all truth would almost certainly happen, he and his force would be pilloried as gungho, macho assholes, Neanderthals who couldn’t wait and talk like responsible adults but had to barge in like the overexcited thugs they were.

Besides which, as the police publicist pointed out, there was another way of looking at it. ‘With respect, we have no right to go in now. By any standards at all, a televised confrontation between the country’s top action filmmaker and the country’s top criminal is an astonishing event. It’s genuine and important news, no matter how it may have been brought about. The police have to allow the media to do its job. It’s our responsibility to defend, and if necessary facilitate, an open and democratic society.’

The SWAT commander had never heard so much pansy bullshit in his entire life. ‘It’s our responsibility,’ he barked, ‘to fuck all over these scum until we have made damn sure that they never fuck with us again. Besides which, you know damn well that if someone gets killed while we’re hanging around and holding the media’s hand, the media will turn right round and blame us for not intervening. They can’t lose and we can’t win, so we should ignore the fuckin’ parasites and get on with our damn job.’

Ignore the media? The police publicist nearly fainted.

Even Chief Cornell knew it was a stupid thing to say. ‘You might as well say ignore the traffic, ignore the buildings, ignore the public,’ he said. ‘TV isn’t an observer any more. It isn’t two hours of news and entertainment in the corner of people’s lounges, in the corner of people’s lives. It’s in the middle, right alongside of food. There’s two results to every event, what actually happened and what people think happened. That’s a fact, pal, and if you believe you can ignore it, then you don’t have no election to face come the spring.’

If Brad Murray had heard Chief Cornell speak, he would have nodded sagely. Like it or not, the chief was right. It had long been accepted that TV shaped events, that things happened because the cameras were there, that what the cameras saw was what the event became. Now, however, TV was the event. Before, events didn’t get seen without television; increasingly events no longer existed without television.

‘We wait,’ said Chief Cornell. ‘Let the guy have his air time.’

‘It’s our duty as democrats,’ said the police publicist.

‘Bulldoubleshit,’ said the SWAT commander.