Popcorn

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.

Chapter TwentyNine

Bruce’s mind was no longer reeling. It was reeling, jigging, jitterbugging and doing the mashed potato.

‘You are bringing a TV crew in here? Into my home?’

‘That’s right, Bruce, and you, me and Scout are going to make a statement.’

‘I will not make a statement with you, you crazy bastard. You can shove your damn statement up your ass!’

Bruce scarcely knew what he was saying. Farrah and Velvet gasped at his audacity, but on this occasion Wayne did not seem to mind being cheeked.

‘That’s right, Bruce, get all that profanity out of your system. Don’t want to go using no lewd words on TV,