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.

Chapter Thirty Five

Inside the house Bruce found himself sitting on the couch between Scout and Wayne. The camera was directly in front of him and he was staring down the barrel. He knew he was about to enter the national consciousness as a patsy, a pathetic loser, coerced and abused into making a snivelling, nevertobeforgotten, cowardly confession on live TV.

He would be like those combat pilots who are shot down by foreign dictators and then trotted out the next day, drugged and bleary, to renounce the US and profess allegiance to their adopted country. Everybody knows those guys have no choice, that they have been coerced, but somehow people never feel quite the same way about them afterwards. You can’t just forget it when your hero suddenly and publicly denies every principle he has ever held dear. There is a secret feeling that he should have fallen on his sword. Unfair and unreasonable, of course, but none the less there.

Bruce struggled to master his panic and anguish.

‘ Wayne, this isn’t going to work,’ he pleaded. ‘You’re both hated murderers and one single statement from me, made under duress, won’t change that. All it’ll do is screw up my life for ever.’

‘Well that’s a shame, Bruce, because it’s the best shot I’ve got and we’re going to try it. Bill? Kirsten? Everything ready?’

‘Yes it is, boss,’ said Bill, who had deduced rightly that Wayne would enjoy being called ‘boss’.

Bruce decided the time had come to make a desperate pitch, one he had been considering ever since the camera crew had arrived. He turned and tried to look Wayne in the eye – not an easy thing to do when you’re sitting next to someone on a deep, soft couch.

‘Debate me,’ he said.

‘Say what?’

‘Debate me.’

Wayne frowned; he didn’t understand. Bruce hurried to establish his idea.

‘Listen, Wayne. You’re not stupid, and neither is Scout. You know that the best you have here is a long shot. You know, deep down, that me sitting here with a gun at my head, claiming reponsibility for your actions, is not necessarily going to cut a lot of ice.’

‘Like I say, it’s all we got,’ Wayne said. ‘OK, Bill let’s-’

Bruce pushed on. ‘It isn’t. It isn’t all you’ve got. You could take a risk. Debate me, prove your point without coercion. Establish your case live on TV.’

‘You be careful, Wayne.’ Scout was uneasy. ‘You got a plan, you stick to it.’

‘Come on, Scout.’ Bruce twisted round on the couch to face her. ‘Think what you were saying earlier – all that stuff about me exploiting the ugly and the downtrodden, how I get rich leeching off the suffering of the poor. That’s a better argument than just using me as some kind of puppet. Put your case. Establish my guilt and let me deny it. Think what extraordinary television it would make… You guys could be real stars, not just blackmailing hoodlums but proper participants. Stars.’

‘Stars?’ said Scout. That had got her.

‘Of course stars. It’s obvious. The public loves a fighter.’

Bruce had to win them round. He knew this was his chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat, to turn himself from a victim into a hero, to be the man who stood by his principles even when the very forces of darkness and reaction had invaded his own home. To be the man who gave America its wakeup call establishing for once and for all that ‘We are all responsible for our own actions’ – particularly violent criminals.

‘Think about it, Wayne,’ Bruce said. ‘I represent the cultural élite of this country. You represent the dispossessed, the underclass, the lowest group in society. What a confrontation, what an image!’

‘Yeah, and what’s in it for you, mister?’ Scout was no pushover. She had already demonstrated in her terrifying defeat of Brooke that she was not to be taken in.

‘I get my chance to refute your allegations. I get a chance to present you as the independently minded, personally responsible murdering maniacs that I believe you to be.’