Justice at Risk (24 page)

“Mr. Justice! What happened to your poor face!”

“A pool shark in high heels tried to redecorate it with his cue stick.”

Harold rose behind his receptionist’s desk and came around to meet me, looking genuinely alarmed. His hair was two-tone this morning, shocking yellow on one side, bright chartreuse on the other, with the gelled points shooting in every imaginable direction like the spikes on a psychedelic blowfish. He’d pierced his lip over the weekend with a tiny gold ring, and may have added to the rings in his ears, though I couldn’t be sure. During the short time I’d known him, I’d lost count.

“You need to do something about your face, Mr. Justice.”

“Yeah, like trade it in for a new one.”

“Seriously.”

As I came across the lobby, he reached up to touch the souvenirs I carried from my visit to the Powder Room the night before. I raised a hand to keep him at bay. “I’m fine, Harold. Nothing that hasn’t happened before. Cecile in?”

“Down in the conference room, getting ready for the big lunch meeting. You know, the fund-raiser with the rich liberals who like to give away a little tax-deductible money every now and then to a worthy cause—so they can pretend they’re different from Republicans. Then, afterward, they can drive away in their nice cars and go shopping on Rodeo Drive without so much guilt.”

“If I didn’t know better, Harold, I’d say you were turning into a political animal.”

I started toward the stairs. Behind me, his voice became snippy, maybe a little hurt.

“Just because I like to change my look and express myself with unconventional jewelry doesn’t mean I’m a total airhead, Mr. Justice. Appearances can be deceiving.”

“I’m sorry, Harold. I didn’t mean to imply that.”

The sharpness went out of his voice as I continued up the stairs.

“If you’d like, you can call me Harriet.”

I stopped in my tracks.

“What did you say?”

I turned; he stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up.

“When you first came to work here, Mr. Justice, I told you I had a special nickname. That I’d share it with you if we became friends.” He threw up his flighty hands. “Well, that’s my secret name—Harriet!”

I came back down the steps slowly, my mind racing.

“And before that—what was it you said?”

“Mr. Justice, you’re looking at me like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Before that, Harold.”

“Appearances can be deceiving.” He giggled self-consciously, and threw a wave at me from the end of his loose wrist. “It’s just a joke, silly. I haven’t had surgery, or anything like that—I can’t stand the thought! I don’t even like to shave down there!”

He glanced at me sideways, batting his lashes.

“Trust me, Mr. Justice—under all this glitter, I’m every inch a man.”

I was smiling, but my mind was a million miles away, rocketing to another galaxy.

“I have no doubt that you are, Harold. I mean, Harriet.”

“We’re friends, then?”

“Bosom buddies, so to speak.”

I took his face between my hands and planted a grateful kiss on his forehead, which left his mouth agape. Then I turned back up the stairs, reminded once again that things are rarely what they seem at first glance. A minute later, I was entering the office of the operations supervisor, which was positioned between the videotape library and the editing bays, so she could track the tapes as they were checked in and out. I told her I needed to see the time codes and tape numbers used in putting Cecile Chang’s fund-raising video together. She suggested we check the editor’s digitized log, which listed every cut in the videotape and the original source tape from which it came.

She crossed the room, to a bank of file cabinets.

“This is OK with Cecile?”

“She personally gave me a tape of the show to study, to learn how it was put together.”

“You’re certainly being thorough, going back all the way to the source tapes.”

“You can learn a lot seeing how something’s built from scratch.” I smiled mildly. “Kind of like writing articles.”

“That’s right, you worked in journalism before coming to us, didn’t you?”

“You probably saw the
GQ
piece.”

“It’s been passed around. You have a fascinating background.”

“Fascinating hardly covers it.”

“You were fortunate to meet Cecile, Mr. Justice. She’s very good about giving people second chances.”

“Like she did Tommy Callahan.”

“Exactly.” She shook her head as she rifled through the file drawer. “A shame what happened to Tommy.”

She found the file she was looking for, opened it, and pulled out some stapled sheets printed with columns and grids that were filled with brief shot descriptions, followed by tape source numbers, and time codes down to the split second.

“This is a digital printout of the editor’s log, in the order the show was cut, shot by shot. I’m not sure what you’ll learn from it, but you’re welcome to make a copy.”

I ran my finger to the last shot on the final page, before the fade-out. “If I could, I’d like to look at the original tape used for this particular shot.”

She glanced over my shoulder at the column.

“That appears to be a fairly complicated edit. It looks like they did some kind of image nesting, or maybe a matte shot. Chroma key possibly. Those tapes would be in the library.”

I followed her down the hallway to the videotape library, which she unlocked with a set of keys that jangled on a big ring. Inside were rows of tall shelves filled with videotape cassettes organized by code letters and numbers for easy reference. The room had a section for tapes in the beta format on the right, and three-quarter-inch VHS tapes on the left. She found the ones I needed, locked up, and we returned to her office, where I signed for them.

“Those are masters, Mr. Justice. They aren’t to leave your sight. I’d prefer it if you viewed them up here, where I can keep an eye on them.”

“No problem.”

An hour later, after I had confirmed what Peter Graff had already suggested, and with the lunch hour already under way, I signed the tapes back in.

“So what did you learn, Mr. Justice?”

“What amazing things can be done with the AVID.”

“Remarkable, isn’t it, how creative an editor can be?”

“Or the producer who’s calling the shots.”

I thanked her for her help and took the stairs down to the first floor. A corridor led me to the conference room on the north side of the building. The hallway ended in a small lobby where a buffet lunch had been set up, with two servers standing behind the food trays and plates. Across the small lobby space was the meeting room I was looking for. As conference rooms go, it was modest in size and appearance: a practical, undecorated room with a glass wall that revealed a long oval table surrounded by fifteen chairs, a podium, and a large video monitor at one end. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows on the far side, shutting out the sunlight, and the overhead lights had been dimmed.

Chang stood at the podium while her fund-raising pitch played on the high-definition screen, accompanied by her recorded narration. She wore high heels and a flowing dress of apricot chiffon that was bare at the shoulders and belted snugly at her slim waist, an outfit that accentuated her femininity and grace yet wasn’t so frivolous that her business acumen and leadership skills were forgotten. Seated in the fifteen chairs were her prospective grant donors, an assortment of women and men of varied ages and attire, who nibbled at their food as they followed the story unfolding on the screen. I stood at the glass wall, looking in, until Chang noticed me and reacted. She didn’t look pleased to see me.

I stepped to the open door, where I waited until the twenty-minute presentation came to an end. The group put down its forks and applauded.

Chang’s eyes left me with some reluctance and returned to the room.

“That’s the story of New Image Productions, what we do, and how we do it. While we’re a nonprofit company dedicated to examining controversial issues and alternative viewpoints, we hold ourselves to the highest technical standard. The new technology, from digital cameras to digitized editing, allows us to do things we never could have done a few years ago, at a fraction of the time and cost. Still, the kind of equipment needed to maintain those standards comes at quite a price, which is why your financial support is so important to us.”

I stepped into the room.

“I believe that’s my cue.”

Sixteen heads, including Chang’s, turned in my direction.

“Ben, we’re in a private meeting.”

I crossed to the VCR, pushed the rewind button.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there’s a rule in documentary filmmaking—show, don’t tell. It’s an adage that holds true for all writing, all storytelling, but it’s especially vital in film and video, where pictures are so important. Cecile herself taught me this valuable lesson—whenever possible, show by concrete example. So let’s illustrate just what she means when she refers to the wizardry that can now be performed in the new digital age.”

“Ben, please—”

“Notice toward the end of the presentation when Cecile is in the research room at the end of the night, closing the show. It’s late, eight forty-five according to the clock in the background, as well as the CNN program seen on the TV set. The footage was shot on a Monday, two weeks ago, when most of the staff had gone home for the night and the camera crew was in its last hour of a twelve-hour day. But that’s not really Cecile you see in the shot.”

I hit the pause button, freezing the image.

“Let me correct myself. It is Cecile, but the Cecile you see was videotaped that morning, before she lost one of her lovely jade earrings prior to the evening’s taping. To avoid a continuity problem with her physical appearance, she simply ordered her camera crew to tape the research room without her in the picture. Then, during the editing phase, she ordered a special effect that allowed her morning image to be keyed in against the background shot at night, covering up the little problem of the missing earring. Any references to the late hour were covered in voice-over. Isn’t that clever?”

There were impressed murmurs around the table. A well-dressed, matronly woman raised her hand.

“You mean you can actually take different pieces of footage, shot in different times and places, and mix and match to make it appear it’s all one shot?”

“Exactly. The only problem in this case is that the editor neglected to put in a shadow behind Cecile in the evening shot, a minor oversight that could be corrected with another special effect. Otherwise, the morning and evening shots would have been a perfect match, and no one would ever have known the difference. In the unreal world of video, Cecile never would have misplaced that earring at all.”

I turned to Chang, who had a death grip on the podium.

“Isn’t that true, Cecile?”

“An excellent catch, Ben. And very nice of you to share it with us.” She turned to the room again. “Enjoy the rest of your lunch. I’ll take your questions over dessert and coffee, in just a few minutes.”

Chang took my elbow and turned me out of the room. She led me down the hall, found an empty office, maneuvered me inside, and closed the door.

“You’re completely out of bounds.”

“I’ve been trying to reach you, Cecile.”

“Yes, Tiger told me. She also told me you went to the Powder Room and physically assaulted her.”

“It was self-defense, but I’m still not proud of it.”

“You had no right—”

“I’ve left you a half-dozen phone messages in the past twenty-four hours.”

“I’m a busy woman. I don’t have any obligation to—”

“Cut the crap, Cecile.”

She paced in her tall heels, rubbing her hands together.

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

“How about the truth, for starters?”

She kept pacing, rubbing, but said nothing.

“Let’s go back to the day I first met you, Cecile. The day when Peter Graff mentioned that he hadn’t heard from Tommy Callahan for several days. The minute you heard that, you shot out of here like a bat out of hell. I saw you drive away burning rubber. An hour later, Peter and I ran into you as you hurried back into the building, lying about where you’d been. I didn’t notice at the time that you were missing one of your jade earrings, but you did. Not half an hour later, I saw that earring on the floor of Callahan’s motel room. You went to extreme lengths to show me your fund-raising video, to point out your jewelry, hoping I’d be convinced you still had both earrings when you’d taped that evening, should the subject ever come up with the cops. Unfortunately, the truth is in the missing shadow, isn’t it?”

“And what truth would that be, Ben?”

“You were in that motel room that afternoon, Cecile. What I want to know is why, and what you did there.”

“If you think that’s so, why didn’t you tell the police?”

“Because I didn’t want to get involved. Because my life’s a mess, and I’m trying to straighten it out, and I needed this job in the worst way. The last thing I needed was to get drawn into another nasty murder investigation. It’s a bad habit of mine I’m trying to kick. But I did get involved, little by little, and now I’m in it up to my balls and then some, in worse ways than you can imagine.”