Hard News (Rune 3)

But what finally did it was the honey.

Rune had spent all Thursday taking footage of the exteriors of the building where Lance Hopper had been killed and of the crime scene itself. She'd picked up Courtney just before the day-care center closed and had to spring for a cab to get fifty pounds of equipment and thirty pounds of child back to the houseboat.

Rune plopped her in front of the old Motorola console TV, queued up The Wizard of Oz and took a shower.

Courtney, who didn't like the black-and-white Kansas portion of the film, wandered off to find something to play with. What she located was a jar of clover honey, sitting on the galley table. She climbed up on a chair and pulled it down carefully then sat on the floor and opened it.

Courtney loved honey. Not so much because of the taste but because of the great way it poured so slowly down the stairs. Which was a lot of fun but what was even better was the way she could use it to paste together Rune's videotape cassettes. She made a wall out of them, and pretended it was the Wicked Witch's castle.

Then the water in the shower shut off and it occurred to Courtney that playing with the honey might be one of th

ose things she shouldn't be doing. So she hid the rest of the evidence, pouring it into the Ikegami video camera case.

Courtney closed the door, then slipped the empty jar under the coffee table. At that point Dorothy arrived in full-color Oz and the little girl settled down to watch the film.

Rune surprised herself by actually screaming when she saw the camera. She was trying to shout that the camera had cost fifty thousand dollars but the words weren't even getting out of her mouth. Courtney looked down at the camera, bleeding honey, and started to cry.

Rune then dropped to her knees and surveyed the ruined tapes. She cradled the camera like a hurt pet. "Oh, God, oh, no ..."

"Oh-oh," Courtney said.

"I can't take it," Rune gasped.

ONLY TWO PHONE CALLS.

She was surprised to find that when it came to children, you could cut through city bureaucracy pretty fast. The administrator she was speaking to told her that a protective diagnostic caseworker could be on her way in a half hour. Rune said not to bother, she'd come to their offices tomorrow. The woman gave Rune the address.

The next morning she packed up the girl's few possessions and they walked to the subway. After transferring three times they got off at the Bleecker Street stop and climbed to the sidewalk.

"Where're we going?" Courtney asked.

"To see some nice people."

"Oh. Where? At the zoo?"

"I'm sure they'll take you to the zoo."

"Good."

The building looked like one of those massive, grimy factories in ten shades of gray--a set from a 1930s movie about a tough, slick-haired industrialist who learns that life with floozy blondes and martinis can be pretty unsatisfying.

But when Rune considered it again she decided that the building on LaGuardia Place looked more like a prison. She almost turned around. But then she free-associated: prison, Randy Boggs.... And she realized that she had a responsibility to do her story and save him. And that having Courtney in her life was going to make that impossible. She shifted the girl's fingers, still slightly sticky from the honey, into her left hand and led her toward the squat, dark building.

Rune glanced at the granite slab above the front door to the building, which would have been a good place to carve the words, Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter.

Instead of: New York Child Welfare Administration.

Rune and Courtney walked slowly toward the main office, through green corridors, over green linoleum. Through fluorescent light that started life white but turned green when it hit the skin. It reminded her of the shade of lawyer Megler's office. A guard pointed to a thin black woman in a red linen suit, sitting behind a desk covered with recycled files and empty cardboard coffee cups.

"May I help you?" the woman asked.

"You're Ms. Johnson?"

The woman smiled and they shook hands. "Sit down. You're ...?"

"Rune."

"Right. You called last night." Paper appeared and civil servant Johnson uncapped a Bic pen. "What's your address?"