As soon as I hung up, Allie grabbed my arm and tugged me into a side room. Actually, that’s an understatement. She nearly yanked my arm out of its socket, and I yelped as I catapulted through the doorway.
“Ouch!” I said, giving her a menacing glare.
“Don’t be such a wimp.”
“But that hurt,” I complained. And it did. It hurt a lot, partly because I was already beat-up and shot, and partly because she was strong as an ox. It struck me that if Allie wanted to wipe the floor with me, she probably could. Even if I were in top form, she’d probably tear me to pieces.
She ignored my suffering. “How did it go?”
“Not good,” I admitted. “Moran and Jackson walked on each other a bit, but it’s nothing Golden can’t repair with a little careful coaching. We’re still nowhere.”
Her face melted into a mask of deep unhappiness, which looked quite odd – one, because she had that kind of face; and two, because I’d only seen her expressions range between anger and disdain. No, that’s not true, because I’d also seen her gaze affectionately at Maria, so this new expression reminded me how very agonizing this case had become for her. She’d lost her lover, maybe in a way not directly related to Whitehall’s guilt or innocence, but clearly on behalf of the cause. Proving Whitehall’s innocence was now the only way she could salvage her loss.
While she seemed like the last kind of woman you’d feel pity for, I did. I just couldn’t think of anything helpful to say.
“I’m sorry,” I told her. “I’m plain out of ideas.”
She stewed on that a moment. She said, “What about the films of the massacre? Why don’t we study those?”
“For what? The whole world’s already looked at them a few hundred times and nobody’s seen anything worth talking about.”
“It can’t hurt.”
I didn’t want to waste my time, but I also didn’t want to disappoint her. “You know it’s a long shot?”
“We’re into any kind of shot, aren’t we?”
I couldn’t argue with that, so I dumbly nodded. Allie then called the local ABC affiliate and actually sounded quite charming and maybe even sexy as she sweet-talked some guy into letting us come over and view the film. It was quite odd hearing her sound so girlish and flirty, but it worked.
But just wait till the guy on the other end of the line actually got an eyeful of the woman behind the voice.
The studio was located on the twelfth floor of a huge, gleaming new high-rise on Namdung Plaza. We took the elevator up, and the Koreans who rode up with us stared curiously at Allie, who was about two feet taller than any of them, but would’ve been a sight even if she were two feet shorter.
Then they glared at me, I think because they suspected she was the one who’d beaten me to a pulp.
From their faces, you could picture what they were thinking. Americans! Such an odd people. How did they ever get so rich? So successful? So powerful?
Good questions, actually. I’ve often asked them myself.
Anyway, a skinny guy in jeans and a raggedy T-shirt met us in the lobby of the tiny studio. He stared at Allie in sheer shock, and it was immediately obvious he was the one she’d sweet-talked. Allie winked at me, and I had to work hard to suppress a laugh, because until this moment I hadn’t thought of her as a woman, with feminine wiles and some of the necessary skills in the battle between the sexes. At least the two sexes.
The guy said his name was Harry Menker. He was the cameraman who’d captured the massacre on tape, and he was very proud of this. He spent a moment reliving how he’d dared shot and shell to get the film that was aired by just about every network in the world. He bitched for a moment about how he got no royalties for that, because he worked for the network, and the network pocketed all the profits from his daring.
Allie and I listened patiently and cooed sympathetically. It was his film. He led us to a room in the back he called the review room. Two technicians awaited. The film was loaded and ready. They told us to sit, then they dimmed the lights.
Harry helpfully explained, “What you saw on TV were clips. We cut out the particularly gory scenes, you know, like bodies getting blown away, the sounds of people cursing. What you’re about to see is the full, uncut version.”
I glanced at Allie and she smiled back triumphantly. The trip might be worth our time after all.
The first five minutes were switchbacks from the protesters to the riot police. I was prominently on display a few times. Harry said, “We were surprised to see an Army guy there. In uniform, no less. You got balls.”
Then we heard the recording of the first shot and the camera went crazy. We stared at flashes of tarmac, of feet, of legs. The camera was being jerked and swung around so hard, it was enough to give you vertigo. You could hear Harry’s frantic voice on the tape: “Shit… crap… oh Jesus.”
Harry slid down in his seat a little. “I… uh, I got scared.”
I said, “Me too.”
As if on cue, I was on the big screen. I was shoving people aside, and bodies were flying everywhere, not from my shoves, but because most of the bodies around me were being shot and knocked over. I hadn’t realized how close I came to being hit.
“Oh my God,” Allie murmured, and I felt her hand grip my arm so hard I almost groaned.
She must’ve seen something, so I said, “Could you stop the film? Run it back to when the shooting started. Run it in slow motion.”
So they did. Then they did it again.
“You’re friggin’ lucky to be sittin’ here, man,” said Harry the cameraman.
He was right. The shooter was aiming at me from his opening shot. There was no question of it. He was trying to hit me. The people being struck by bullets around me were simply the by-product of his lousy marksmanship.
But what I didn’t notice until the third replay was what Allie had observed in a single glance. The protester directly to my rear deliberately shoved me forward, right into the ranks of the riot police. She’d had her head turned to the left so she saw the two people beside me get hit, and she sensed the next shot would hit me, so she just reached forward and shoved me. She was such a tiny thing, it’s amazing she could muster enough force to drive me off my feet. But she did. And she saved my life, and deliberately exposed herself to the bullet meant for me.
I watched for the third time as her head exploded in a shower of blood. It was Maria, of course.
I turned and looked helplessly at Allie. Her chest was heaving and tears were streaming down her cheeks. She was moaning from pain and loss. I felt something deep inside my chest get thick and sour.
I put an arm over her shoulder. Her being so much bigger than me, and the way she looked, we must’ve seemed a very strange-looking couple. Harry and his two assistants watched us until they recognized that Allie and I were terrifically affected by something. They froze the projector and diplomatically slid out of the room.
I finally said, “Allie, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
She didn’t answer. She just sat and cried and moaned, and I felt as miserable as I could ever remember being in my whole life. Or maybe miserable is the wrong word. Maybe what I felt was shame and inadequacy. Maria had owed me nothing. No, actually she’d owed me less than nothing. From the moment I’d laid eyes on her, I’d judged her and ignored her, which, if you think about it, is maybe the worst form of disdain there is.
You always read stories about heroes who save people’s lives, where they recount what they were thinking and how they felt in that fleeting instant when they did something unbelievably courageous. What you never read is what it feels like to be the one who gets saved, particularly when your savior dies. So I’ll tell you what it feels like. It makes you feel so guilty you want to rip your own heart out of your chest.
Somehow, I guess Allie sensed that, because she slipped her long arm across my shoulder and pulled me toward her. And that’s how we sat for the next few minutes, neither able to say a word, sitting in mutual misery, her because of her loss, and me because I wished more than anything I could trade places with Maria, even as I was guiltily content that I couldn’t.
Allie finally withdrew her arm, stood up, and went to retrieve Harry and his boys. They flipped the projector back on and we grimly returned to our viewing.
There was one sequence where I quickly bent over to pick up the riot baton. On the film, the second I leaned
